My Top 5 iPhone Apps for Productivity

1. Pocket: (Free)  Pocket allows you to save articles and websites that you come across to your account to read at another time.  You can link your account with Twitter and then tap a link or entire tweet to choose the option \”Send to Pocket,\”  This is particularly useful if you follow people or organizations from your particular industry and want to make sure you remember to read what they\’ve shared.  Pocket works with other apps such as Feedly, which I will describe in a few minutes.  It\’s also convenient to save websites that you want to view later, such as on your laptop.  You can access your account on any computer through their website which is very helpful.   
2. Feedly:  (Free)  Feedly allows you to subscribe to blogs and read the posts within the app.  The posts are very easy to read because the app displays it in an \”article format\” removing everything except the post title, text and other content such as photos.  You can create different categories (Personal, Technology, etc.) to organize all of the blogs you follow.  It\’s very easy to then save a specific post to your Pocket account. 
3. Sunrise: (Free)  Sunrise is a calendar app that supports Google Calendar as well iCloud and Exchange.  I use it with my google calendar and find it much more helpful than the native ios app.  First, the screen is split into two sections allowing you to see a few weeks at a glance on the top, and then individual days on the bottom.  The bottom part of the screen shows the individual days and appointments organized by \”morning\”, \”afternoon\” and \”evening\”.  You can add locations to your appointments using Google Maps which I find very helpful.  If you have Google Maps installed tapping on the appointment location will launch Google Maps directly instead of having to use Apple Maps.  You can also choose to see the weather forecast.  Finally, one of the features that is supposed to be part of the app (though I\’ve never gotten it to work) is the ability to view people\’s social media profiles when you add them to your appointments.  It\’s possible to include them in the appointment without actually sending them an email (like a meeting request).       
4. App Advice: ($1.99) & Apps Gone Free (Free) Both of these apps are developed/managed by AppAdvice.com and are very helpful.  The App Advice website is a deceent alternative for the $1.99 app because all of the app collections are listed there as well.  But it\’s pretty nice having it all organized within one app where you can get push notifications about things like new app reviews.  Apps Gone Free is also pretty neat because everyday you can see a short list of apps that have temporarily reduced their price to Free and have been handpicked by the App Advice team 
5. Battery Saver:  (Free)  Battery Saver has come in handy numerous times because it can tell me exactly how much time I have left before my phone dies.  It also provides helpful hints on how to extend my battery life between charges and can reallocate your memory to speed up your phone when browsing the web or using other apps.  There are

Bonus: 2 iPad Apps I Couldn’t Live Without

1. Notability: ($2.99)  I absolutely love Notability.  It\’s one of the first apps I downloaded.  I think they were having a special promotion when I downloaded it because I don\’t remember paying $2.99.  It\’s worth paying for though.  You can type and handwrite notes.  You can open up pdfs and annotate them (perfect for highlighting school articles or filling out quick forms).  You can also record audio while taking notes.  You can then export your notes in either a PDF or Rich Text format to a variety of cloud services.  You can create different categories for your notes (again, great for school) and those categories are turned into folders when you back them up.  There are a variety of pen/ink/highligher colors and you can create ordered/unordered lists..  It\’s hard to come up with reasons NOT to buy this app.  🙂 
2. Quick Office: (Free)  This app allows you to view and edit MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.  It\’s ideal for people who use Google Drive as that is the only cloud service that you can directly connect to within the app.  You can create, edit and save files to your iPad itself though.  It looks like some reviewers from the app store are doing this and then choosing \”Open files in\” to put them in their Dropbox accounts.  It just takes a little longer 🙂  The formatting options are not as advanced as MS Office, but for the most part it\’s fine.  It\’s a nice option if you don\’t have an Office 365 account because that\’s what\’s required for you to edit files using the official MS apps.