When I last wrote about Alfred (and how amazing it is)—10 Awesome Alfred Actions to Speed Up Your Day—the first item in my top 10 was:

Powerpack Alfred App – Powerpack. Yes, the free version of Alfred is great, more than half of my favorite things to do with it are core to the free version. The thing is that some of the most useful shortcuts come with the Powerpack.

Right, getting the Alfred Powerpack. Now beyond unlocking a ton of amazing new abilities (scripting, send commands to Terminal, extra actions) with the Powerpack you can install Alfred Extensions which takes all the cool things you can do with Alfred and dials it up to an 11.

Right now there are hundreds of extensions that you can get—Alfred Extensions & Scripts – Alfred Support—and more being added all the time. So with that kind of selection, where do you start?

Exactly.

So, here are my top 5 Alfred Extensions to start with:

1. Create a Task in Things: My task manager of choice is Things, but yours might be OmniFocus or whatever. Regardless, having a action to quickly create a to do item just rocks. Oh, and if Things isn’t your thing, there are extensions for pretty much any to do manager.
2. Note taking extensions (like Evernote): I’m a big Evernote fan and pretty much everything I save in Instapaper goes right into Evernote, but there are times you just need to create a note. These extensions let you add notes, search notes, and add tags to Evernote with a few keystrokes.
3. Extension Updater for Alfred: This extension, well, the name says it all. Extensions in Alfred, like a lot of other plugin-type systems, get updated now and then. Maybe there was a bug, maybe a new feature is added, maybe a system update borked something. In any case this extension automatically checks for updates to your extensions and updates them.
4. iTunes now playing: It might not be sexy, but it sure is useful! Yeah, yeah — you know – all the songs in your iTunes library. Well…I have so many operas, concertos, symphonies, and such that I can’t keep all the tracks straight, so I like to use to figure out what part of a longer piece is playing.
5. Open AirDrop: A place I worked recently, we used AirDrop a lot to quickly move files around. Stuff like, “Hey, is that updated header ready?”. The thing was often we forgot to keep an AirDrop window open so the person could just drop the file. This fixes that. No switching to the Finder and opening…just tappity-tap and done.

Now that you’ve read my top 5 extensions, I have a confession. Most of the time—and believe me I use Alfred all the time—I don’t use the extra capabilities in the extensions. It’s like this post today—Why Complicated Productivity Tools Will Get You Stuck—don’t sweat if you’re getting everything out of an app if you’re getting what you need out of an app. So, no, I don’t use a lot of Alfred extensions and I don’t use them very often. I have them installed, I like them, but most of the time I use the tools that come with the Powerpack.

That, I think, really says the most about an app, doesn’t it? You can adapt it to what you need and only what you need and still have it be an essential part of your workflow.

Tris Hussey is a technologist, author, teacher, and Canada’s first professional blogger. He has written several books on social media and technology including Create Your Own Blog (1st and 2nd editions), Using WordPress, Sam’s Teach Yourself Foursquare in 10 Minutes, WordPress Essentials (video lessons), and Sam’s Teach Yourself WordPress Themes in 24 Hours (forthcoming in late 2012 with Catherine Winters). You can read Tris’ posts on TrisHussey.com, the FutureShop Tech blog, and other sites around the Internet.

Modern technology really is a wonderful thing. It gives us all manner of affordable gizmos and gadgets to help us manage every element of our lives and get more stuff done.

Yet when it comes to getting more stuff done effectively and to the best standard possible, there’s one set of tools we often over-look; the humble pen and paper.

In praise of paper

It goes without saying that paper is much cheaper, doesn’t suffer too much damage should you drop it on the concrete and doesn’t require batteries or chargers, but they present less obvious advantages too:

Sure, technology provides us with lots of useful, productive tools, but it also provides e-mail, social networks, oh-so-hilarious videos of piano-playing felines and a host of other distractions that otherwise keep us from creating our best work.

The only thing a notepad ever gave us was a blank canvas on which to store thoughts, make notes and create masterpieces.

Distraction free

This very article began life as a basic idea scrawled in a pocket-sized notebook en route home from dinner one evening before being expanded, tweaked and crafted into two rough drafts on a legal pad back at the dining table.

Eventually, when all thoughts were nearly organised and I had an article I was happy with, I typed it up and here it sits before you.

Saving time

Was that more work than heading straight to the computer and hacking at the keyboard until I had something close to a competent piece?

Yes and no.

Okay, so my drafts took me longer to write than if I’d typed them, fully-formed and almost perfect into a word processor, but the honest truth is that had I been at the computer during first-draft, I would have spent just as much time browsing through blogs, tweeting and generally wasting time on unproductive things as I would actual writing.

In the long run then, I saved myself some time and found it easier to enter a state where I was completely focussed on producing the best possible work I could.

“Sometimes I would rather hang upside down in a bucket than write.” - Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

No matter how much we try to tell ourselves that we’re 100% motivated and productive 100% of the time, we all have those days when, just like Douglas Adams, the last thing in the whole world that we feel like doing is the task at hand.

No matter how disciplined we may think ourselves, technology offers such an abundance of distractions that it’s sometimes too much to resist temptation and indulge in those distractions.

Even when we’re motivated enough to get on with the job, sometimes the very process of working at a computer, nothing more than hitting a buttons and inputting data, can thwart the creative process.

Because of this, ideas don’t come as freely, and that completely productive state of working takes a little while longer to reach.

Before we go any further, it’s probably worth pointing out that what you’re reading isn’t the inane ramblings of an out-of-touch old man with a gripe against ‘all this newfangled cyberspace stuff’ just because he doesn’t understand it.

I adore technology. I adore it because it’s portable, convinient, accessible. I adore it because it lets me work from anywhere in the world, and I adore it for all the many wonderful things I can’t do without it.

Though the one thing I can’t do with technology, is think, brainstorm and create half as well as I can when faced with a blank sheet of paper.

Flow states

There’s something about that blank canvas, devoid of distractions and ready to be filled with ideas, that enables a faster entry into what psychologists call the Flow state; that feeling of being fully absorbed in your work, completely energized and so focused on the task at hand that nothing can take you from what you’re doing until you’ve achieved what you set out to do.

You may not call it Flow, you may call it ‘being in the zone’ or use some other term entirely, but the point is that you’re likely to reach that most productive and satisfying state much faster as you feed off the energy created by dragging your pen across a blank sheet of paper than you are simply inputting data into a machine.

You don’t even have to be doing anything particularly creative either.

Having experimented with both technology and paper-based products for all areas of my life, including creating to-do lists, planning projects, personal finance work and just about anything that requires me to get stuff out of my head and onto some form of page, I’ve found that the ideas I have come quicker, and are more inspired and defined than I ever had bashing buttons on a keyboard.

Of course, it would be quite absurd to encourage you to replace your Ipad with a notepad forever more; we wouldn’t be talking right now were it not for technology. Though if you want to create your best work in an environment free from distractions that allows you to quickly and effortlessly reach your Flow state, laying the laptop aside and picking up a sheet of paper may just be what you need.

(Photo credit: Notebooks via Shutterstock)

My go-to app for working with PDFs on my iPad is PDF Expert from Readdle. When I need to sign a contract, mark up documents for review (very handy for book chapters before they go to print), or just work with a PDF in general PDF Expert just works. Until today I hadn’t tried the iPhone version. For some reason I didn’t ever think about having a robust PDF app on my iPhone—until today. The folks at Readdle just updated PDF Expert for iPhone ($9.99) with all the awesome features of the iPad app…like stamps, filling out PDF forms, playing audio and video within PDFs, annotations, and signatures, and I think a very, very clever UI. Oh…and they gave me a couple of codes to share with you, too.

But first, let’s talk about the app.

According to the folks at Readdle, PDF Expert is the only PDF reader for the iPhone that lets you fill out PDF forms (including calculations!). Now that’s pretty handy alone, but you add to that being able to annotate, sign, stamp, and sync with cloud services (I sync documents with Dropbox and it works amazingly well) you really have a killer PDF app.

But, what about a complex PDF with really small text? Come on, most PDFs are made to be read on much lager screens than the iPhone, right? Well, PDF Expert has a special “Text Reflow” mode which scales the text in the PDF to fit the screen (but removes the images) for easy reading. Of course you can switch to “regular” view and quickly zoom in to annotate, check out the images, fill in the forms, or sign something.

I know a lot of us are trying to streamline our cluttered lives and going paperless using PDF documents is a great way to achieve that. The challenge then is being able to get to your PDF files whenever and wherever you need them. I’ve found that PDF Expert fits the bill for me. Open from email, pull from Dropbox, SkyDrive or GoogleDocs (and other), or just download from the web you can read, annotate, sign, and share PDF files with PDF Expert.

Here’s the bottom line: There might be cheaper PDF apps in the App Store for the iPhone (or the iPad for that matter—they are two separate and different apps), but I highly doubt you’ll find a better one than PDF Expert.

(Oh…I mentioned that a couple of you could win a copy, didn’t I? To enter to win a copy of PDF Expert for iPhone just leave a comment on this post and I’ll pick two winners at random next Saturday May 26th. Simple as that.)

So, what’s your big PDF challenge? Sound off in the comments.

Tris Hussey is a technologist, author, teacher, and Canada’s first professional blogger. He has written several books on social media and technology including Create Your Own Blog (1st and 2nd editions), Using WordPress, Sam’s Teach Yourself Foursquare in 10 Minutes, WordPress Essentials (video lessons), and Sam’s Teach Yourself WordPress Themes in 24 Hours (forthcoming in late 2012 with Catherine Winters). You can read Tris’ posts on TrisHussey.com, the FutureShop Tech blog, and other sites around the Internet.

The Adobe Portable Document File (PDF) has become a popular standard for publishing documents online, do it yourself publishing of eBooks, and even for sending business documents out for review. Adobe Acrobat Professional is the best known standard application for creating and editing PDFs. However, the Adobe PDF is an open not a closed standard and you actually do have choice for PDF creation tools. If you want to look beyond the full version of Adobe Acrobat, the first place to start is with Nitro Pro 7  from NitroPDF . It’s feature rich, robust, with a price below what you would pay for a full version of Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Leaving Adobe Acrobat behind doesn’t mean leaving behind features. Nitro Pro 7 brings a lot to the table including:

Compatibility

Being able to read files somebody else sends you is always a worry if you diverge from the application standards your coworkers, partners, and clients use. But since PDF is not some closed proprietary standard, you can open, read, and edit PDFs generated from Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Office 2010 with Nitro Pro 7.

I am sitting on a quite sizeable library of PDFs from technical documentation to writing samples to research for past projects. During my testing, never did I see Nitro Pro 7 have issues or even come close to choking on PDFs generated in my current version Adobe Acrobat.

Productivity

Nitro Pro 7 integrates with Microsoft Office and Windows providing one-button PDF creation from Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (in 32-bit Microsoft Office only). If you are using a 64-bit version of Microsoft Office, the one-button PDF creation isn’t available but Nitro Creator 2 does show up as a Printer option in the Print menu. NitroPDF promises further 64-bit Microsoft Office support in a future release of Nitro Pro 7.
You can open PDFs in Google Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Nitro Pro 7 also has a handy preview features that allows you to preview PDFs. It also displays PDF files in Windows folders as thumbnail document previews not the standard old static PDF icons.

Other productivity features of note include tools for digital signatures, PDF annotation, forms creation, and securing PDFs. You can also create PDFs from scanned documents and even send PDFs to Evernote from within the application (this last feature is a personal favorite of mine!).

PDF Creation and Conversion

Nitro Pro 7 can create PDF and PDF/A documents from the major document and graphic file formats. You can also use it to batch convert files to PDF and you have the tools to convert and combine separate files into a single PDF document.

My tests converting Microsoft Office documents to PDF ran about average. You may notice some performance differences with larger documents but nothing that is going to sacrifice a deadline much less make you late for lunch.

The bane of anybody who has ever inherited documents is being able to only find the PDF version – the location of the original Microsoft Word document disappeared with the original author. Nitro Pro 7 includes an Convert PDF to Word feature, which lets you convert a PDF to an Office format. While the conversion wasn’t perfect (they never actually are) but I had the information, I needed to work with in a Microsoft Word format that was more palatable than PDF. You can also convert documents into Microsoft Excel (*.xlsx) files but don’t expect any formulas to make it through the conversion.

User Experience

I grew up on Adobe Acrobat as a technical writer and can say from a user experience perspective I actually like Nitro Pro 7 for more novice users because it has a clean and simple interface. NitroPDF has put together an easy to use application because they don’t have the cross application integration options to concern themselves with like Adobe. Think about it, most of Adobe’s applications including Adobe Acrobat have seen some bloat in recent years (some features welcome, others not so welcome) that have affected the user experience for those people who may never tap into those advanced features.

Final Thoughts

Nitro Pro 7 is a solid alternative to purchasing the full version of Adobe Acrobat. You don’t lose file compatibility and Nitro Pro 7 packs some powerful features in a well implemented user experience. It also has a light footprint, which can be appealing to those who might see Adobe’s core apps as becoming more bloated with each new release.

Will Kelly is a technical writer who occasionally steps out of software documentation to write for tech websites and publications. His interests include iPad productivity apps, making Microsoft office work efficiently, and online collaboration. Check out his blog at http://willkelly.org or connect with him on Google+, Twitter, or LinkedIN.

Imagine this: Your desk is full of paper and it’s all related to unfinished work. Also, your task list never seems to shrink – instead, it’s growing bigger and bigger.

Even if you work hard on your tasks, you have this nagging feeling of incompletion in your head. You also feel that it is impossible to meet your inner critic; you are never satisfied to your results.

You are frustrated and burnt out. And even if that’s not enough, you start to procrastinate on your tasks.

You only wish that you could leave the office at 5PM and spend time with your family. And then you look at the piles of paper on your desk.

It is going to be yet another night spent working.

There is no finish line in sight

Unfortunately, this image is way too common in offices around the world. Most people are overwhelmed by the amount of unfinished work they have.

There are really four reasons why this is happening:

First, it’s because the amount of distractions. They don’t have a chance to work in a focused manner and their work performance slows down.

Secondly, it is because working on too many things (tasks, projects, etc.) at once. When they work like this, they are unable to get anything properly completed.

Third, they don’t have an organized way of handling the workload; they have issues with prioritization and they don’t know what tasks to focus on next. This in turn may be caused by a non-existent day planning.

Now, even if those three previous conditions are met, there is still one thing that causes people to procrastinate and be overwhelmed: It’s the unfinished work and the fact that they are never 100% percent satisfied to the quality of their work.

When they are unsatisfied to their work quality, they keep tweaking and tweaking the results but they are unable to finish anything. This is a sure way to overwhelm their selves and generate unnecessary stress.

It is also a sure way to make other people angry – especially if their performance is dependent on the person who is never capable of finishing his/her part of the task/project.

If it’s not perfect, it is not ready!

Inability to let go of tasks and never finishing them are symptoms of perfectionism.

The fact is that you are never going to satisfy your inner critic because you think that there is yet another tweak that you have to do until you can let go of the task.

What is causing all this?

It’s the underlying fear that is holding you in its arms; the fear that others label you as a failure if you release something imperfect. The fear that you are letting yourself down (and not meeting your standards) if everything is not 100% perfect.

Well, I have some news for you — perfection doesn’t exist!

I admit that in certain circumstances (for e.g. professions) you always have to be striving for perfection, for example when you are an airline pilot or a surgeon.

But in 90% of other cases perfection is not serving you. Instead, it is slowing you down, making you procrastinate and increasing your stress levels.

Let’s talk Scrum

If perfection is slowing you down, help can be found from a surprising source; from the world of agile software development and Scrum.

“Hmm… Scrum? What is Scrum?” you are asking.

Scrum is a software methodology that software developers use and one of its components is “Definition of Done” (DoD). It describes what a development team has to have ready by the end of the development iteration (also known as sprint).

When the team declares something as done, it means that the new functionality is fully tested, documented and could be even put to production.

Even if the DoD is used in context of software development, it can be easily applied to individual productivity needs as well.

Definition of Done describes clearly and explicitly what needs to be achieved until a task can be declared as done. And when you define your “done”, you can get rid of your perfection bug.

What is your definition of done?

Let’s take the concept DoD, simplify it a bit and put it into the context of personal productivity. To create your definition of done, follow these steps:

1. Define a task you want to accomplish
2. Explicitly describe (in written form) what requirements have to be met before it can be called ready
3. Mark a task as checked when it’s ready
4. When all the rows are checked, that particular task is done

Let’s say that you are blogger, you want to define your “done” regarding a new blog post. In that case part of your DoD could look like this:

Writing a blog post:

• Outline a post [checked]
• Write a post [checked]
• Proofread the post [ ]
• Create a compelling headline [ ]
• Find a accompanying picture [ ]
• Schedule the post in WordPress [ ]
• Write an email message to your autoresponder [ ]
• … [ ]

The previous DoD is clearly explaining what has been achieved so far and what still needs to be done.

To make your DoD even more effective, share this with an accountability partner if you have one. This way you can make continuous checks on how you are progressing with your work and if the individual tasks have been accomplished or not.

If you still try to strive for 100% perfection, your partner can remind you of the agreement that you have created (your DoD). This way you are not endlessly wasting your time by making irrelevant tweaks to your tasks.

Conclusion

I have been guilty of striving for perfection and this bad habit has slowed me down on my projects.

However, once I started defining my “done” (in a written form), I was able to see clearly which parts of the project were finished and which still required my attention.

Once the item on the list is checked, it’s done and I can move to the next task or project.

How do you handle perfection?

(Photo credit: Program code on a monitor via Shutterstock)

Timo Kiander, a.k.a. Productive Superdad, teaches WAHD super dad productivity for work at home dads. If you want to get more productive in your own life, grab 222 of his best Tips for Becoming a Productivity Superstar.

To-do apps are great because they help you to remember and complete the tasks that you need to do. Whether it is a task in business or family life (or any other field), to-do apps can help you keep on top of them and complete them in time. They make your life easier. They make you more productive.

The iPhone has many to-do apps available, but it can be difficult for you to find out the best to-do app for your iPhone from the plethora of choices from both paid and free app lists. To help you get started on being more productive with your iPhone, let’s take a look at the top five to-do apps.

1. Orchestra

Orchestra is a free to-do list app. You can create your to-do list and even share the list with others. It also allows you to send tasks to others. Even if the other people are not using Orchestra, then also they can check the tasks sent to them. You can add task in several different ways. You can type the task; speak to the app or forward emails. There are several filters that you can use to filter your tasks and you can also organize your tasks in different methods. It is very simple and easy to use.

Orchestra Download Link

2. Wunderlist

Wunderlist is another popular to-do app — and it is also free. It is a simple to-do app that focuses on the basic features necessary for managing your tasks. It has got its Windows and Mac counterparts and allows you to create multiple lists. You can add different tasks to the lists you make and can also sort out the tasks by due date and priority — as well as add notes to the tasks. Then when your task is done, you can check items off the list and it syncs with the Wunderlist servers, meaning that no matter what version or platform you’re using Wunderlsit on you will have an updated list. As a bonus, the app allows you to add tasks using your e-mail, which is great if you find you spend a lot of time in your email inbox.

Wunderlit Download Link

3. Reminders

If you have iOS 5 in your iPhone, then you can easily use this very good built-in app. Reminders is one of the simplest to-do list apps that you will ever find. Another great advantage is that you can make use of your location and the app will remind you when you’re near a place that allows you to complete a task. You can also create to-do items with deadlines attached to them. And Reminders integrates with Siri on the iPhone 4S, allowing you to add tasks, appointments and errands using your voice.

4. ToodleDo

ToodleDo is a popular paid to-do app, costing $2.99 USD in the App Store. You can easily add your tasks using its simple interface — a common theme throughout all of the to-do apps mentioned here. When adding tasks, the app allows you to set priorities and due dates and you can also assign the tasks to folders, schedule reminders, and much more.

ToodleDo Download Link

5. TeuxDeux

TeuxDeux is another solid paid to-do app that also comes in at $2.99 USD. It got its starts as a web app and has since moved into the world of iOS. Featuring a stylish interface, the main focus of the app is on your to-dos. It doesn’t offer many features like other to-do apps, but you can sync your tasks with the web app and rearrange your tasks as well. But if you feel you need lots of additional features, then this is not an app for you.

TeuxDeux Download Link

Do you have any to-do apps for the iPhone that you use that deserve consideration? Let me know about them in the comments.

Bikash Kalita writes for the technology blog Take the Plunge and also manages Nirvana Sutra, the complete Content Management Agency. He is a netpreneur, who is working on some other online projects for offering more value to the Internet users.

Due to the widespread confusion and misinformation on the following subjects, please take a few moments of your time to alert yourself to the following:

It’s Okay to Unplug…

Your phone. The impulse that you must answer anything that rings dates back to olden times when people had to answer the phone as there was no other way of knowing who was calling or whether it was an emergency. The advent of technology such as caller ID, voice mail, and text messaging has freed us from this urgency. We are now able to tell who is calling us, decide whether we are free to pick up, and the caller has the option of leaving a message which we can then use to determine the action we need to take.

You are hereby officially allowed to turn off your ringer or your phone altogether for important occasions like: family dinners, driving a car, sleeping, and having anything else you need to concentrate on. Please note that this permission extends to both work and personal phones.

The TV. The average American watches 5-6 hours of television a night. The percentage of quality entertainment on the 50,000+ stations currently in existence is approximately 7%.

In contrast, human beings have the capacity to perform up to 100 billion different tasks at any given time, from playing with their children to starting their own business to lying in a hammock under a tree and watching what shapes the clouds take. The average human being utilizes around 0.000001% of these abilities on a daily basis.

None of these statistics are scientific, but they’re probably pretty darn close. Turn off the TV.

Twitter/Facebook. You will never be able to catch every single remark your friends/random celebrities have made. You will never manage to see every picture someone posts of the dinner they’re having which I’m sure is magical in person but just looks like a glob on a plate when viewed on a computer screen. Your friends will not hate you because you missed their witty 140-character review of Ice Road Truckers—and if they do, you hereby have permission to find new friends.

On the rare occasions when social media is used to impart truly significant information like the birth of a child or the arrival of a hurricane, be assured that you will eventually hear the news by some other means even if you miss the tweet/post about it. Your sister will undoubtedly mention the arrival of your new nephew the next time you talk to her. You will see things like trees and cars flying past your window. You will know the big things without having to constantly monitor for them. Everything else is just fluff. Entertaining fluff, granted, but still fluff.

Your e-mail notifications. E-mail is a non-urgent form of communication. By its very nature, it is sent out into cyberspace with the understanding that it will be opened and read whenever the recipient gets to it/feels like it. There is no way for the sender to know when this will happen. If the sender has an urgent message to convey, it should be done by another method. This is the responsibility of the sender to understand.

As such, there is no need for you, as the recipient, to have a little pop-up notification alert you every single time a message comes in. This is the equivalent of the Postal Service taking each individual piece of mail the moment it’s dropped in a mailbox and delivering it immediately—by standing outside your window and tapping on the pane, waving the letter in the air and mouthing “Got another one!” (Then coming back five minutes later when another letter is sent.)

Turn off the notifications. It will be okay. I promise you.

Addendum

If you feel any other devices/sources of distraction should be added to this PSA, please feel free to leave your vote in the comments.

(Photo credit: Hand Press Power Button via Shutterstock)

Kelly Gurnett runs the blog Cordelia Calls It Quits, where she documents her attempts to rid her life of the things that don’t matter and focus more on the things that do. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook and check out her ebook here. She also offers her services as a blogger extraordinaire to those in need of some bloggy awesomeness.

Losing weight and getting healthy is a huge commitment and if you don’t take the time and energy to track your progress and your goals, the chances of you falling off the “health bandwagon” are great.

Rather than fail at your weight loss goals, why not use a tool to track those goals that’s at your disposal 24/7? With the capabilities of the iPhone, use these top 10 iPhone apps to lose weight and get in shape.

1. Fitocracy (Free)

Some people don’t like the idea of “gamifying” applications, but having some fun goals to accomplish when it comes to losing weight and getting healthy can really push you to succeed.

Fitocracy is basically an RPG for getting in shape where you can unlock achievements and earn points by accomplishing workout plans and reaching your fitness goals. It’s built around being social interaction with groups as well as challenging others.

2. RunKeeper (Free)

If you have an iPhone and you want to lose weight by running, instead of buying an expensive GPS watch, just download RunKeeper instead. RunKeeper is a great tool for tracking your runs and activity by using the GPS capabilities on your iPhone. You can also keep track of your progress on runkeeper.com, share your results with friends, integrate your iPod music with the app, geo-tag photos while on your run, and more.

Something else that is nice is you can manually enter data, so if you are caught inside on a treadmill one day, you won’t lose your activity tracking for the day.

3. Lose It! (Free)

Lose It! is a great free iPhone app that allows you to track your daily calorie intake as well as the calories you burn during your workouts. You can track your weight and set up daily calorie in/out goals to challenge yourself.

With Lose It! you can also use the camera on your iPhone to scan barcodes on foods and they will automatically be entered into your diary. Lose It! has a great food database, so if you need a good app for tracking food as well as activity, Lost It! is it.

4. SparkPeople (Free)

SparkPeople is the best way to interface with the popular SparkPeople online fitness community. You can track your food intake as well as your workouts, your weight, and even your calorie differential. Another nice touch is the added exercise demos that show you how to do popular exercises that are in your scheduled SparkPeople workouts.

5. Gain Fitness (Free)

Gain Fitness wants to be known as your own “digital personal trainer”. The app can basically build you a custom workout on your available time and the equipment that you have at your disposal.

After your workout is built, Gain can keep track of your progress and create you a custom “Gain Plan” calendar to keep you working out regularly. It sounds like magic, because it sort of is.

6. Nike+ GPS ($1.99)

The Nike+ GPS apps uses the iPhone’s GPS to track your runs, sort of like RunKeeper, but is much more focused on running. You can see your runs on a map, share them socially when you are completed, keep track of your calories burned, and get voice feedback during your run.

One of my favorite features is that you can share on Path :)

7. Fitbit Activity and Calorie Tracker (Free)

The Fitbit app requires a Fitbit to really get the most out of, but if you are serious about losing weight, a Fitbit is a great $100 investment just for the shear fact of seeing how much you are active during a day.

With the Fitbit app you can track your food intake and see your current steps taken (as long as your Fitbit has recently been synced). You can also track your weight, water intake, and added activity (that wasn’t tracked by the Fitbit).

8. Nexercise (Free)

Now, if you want to truly “gamify” your fitness experience, then Nexercise is the app to do it (it even has Game Center integration!). Nexercise allows you to gain “XP” (‘experience’ for all you non-RPGing playing nerds), earn rewards, defeat challenges, and interact with a the Nexercise community.

Nexercise doesn’t track food intake, just activity, but it supports 90+ different activities. Also, you can use your Fitbit, Fuel Band, and Jawbone Up to integrate your activity.

9. Weightbot ($1.99)

Weightbot tracks your weight in a beautiful way. If you want the best app for tracking your weight on the iPhone, then this is the app. Seriously, look nowhere else.

Input your weight for the day, view your BMI, view your weight over a timeline, and also view your weight goals. Simple, easy, and a beautiful way to track your weight loss.

10. Calorie Counter & Diet Tracker (Free)

Calorie Counter is another reliable app for tracking your calorie intake and your weight. You can track what foods you have eaten and at what times. According to MyFitnessPal (the makers of the app) Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker has the largest food database of any iOS app out there. The app also has a barcode scanner for scanning in nutrition labels from popular foods.

Alfred is more than an application launcher for your Mac, though I bet that’s what most Alfred users do most often—I’m certainly no exception. A quick command-space, type what I’m looking for, tap enter, done. But there is so, so much more that you can do. In fact I learn more things to do the more I use it. But to get you started here are my top 10 tips and Alfred actions…

1. Powerpack Alfred App – Powerpack. Yes, the free version of Alfred is great, more than half of my favorite things to do with it are core to the free version. The thing is that some of the most useful shortcuts come with the Powerpack.
2. System commands. Need to quickly lock your machine to step away? How about empty the trash without your hands moving to the mouse? Oh yes, all of these and more are right at your fingertips with Alfred. You can even change the default commands so if “emptytrash” is too pedestrian you could use “eradicate”. If “shutdown” doesn’t work, maybe “abort”. They are your commands…do as you wish.
3. File searches. Sure Spotlight is great and doing a search in a Finder window when you’re in a Finder window is convenient, but what if you aren’t? Start with “find” and Alfred will search through all your files or use “in” and Alfred will search within your files instead. Found what you’re looking for? Email it, open it, go to it, even delete it. Pretty much just control it.
4. Searching the web. Sure it’s simple, but just start your Google (or other engine) search with a couple taps and your fingers barely have to leave the keyboard. Oh, and it’s not just Google, it’s Bing, Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay, IMDb, even your Gmail and Google Docs, and even more.
5. Calculator. Quick what’s (3+4)/2*8+10? Yeah, with Alfred you start with the “=” (enable the advanced calculator in the preferences) type it in and the result is there to copy (38 is the answer).
6. Spelling. Look up definitions or find the right spellings in a few seconds.
7. Clipboard (PP only). This is my fav of all the Powerpack add-ons, built in clipboard history. And with Alfred 1.2 you can now append to the current clipboard item and then paste that. You can even save snippets of things (like in TextExpander) that you wind up using often.
8. Address Book (PP). Look up people in your by just typing their name. Then copy info to the clipboard or email them. Right there.
9. Email (PP). Speaking of email, you can start emails right from Alfred too. Oh and with the myriad different file actions you can do, emailing a document to someone is never more than a few taps away.
10. 1Password (PP). This is another new feature in Alfred 1.2 for Powerpack users. If you use 1Password start with 1p then start typing the service you’ve saved a password for…select, enter, and your browser opens and logs you in.

You can download Alfred either through the Mac App Store or directly through the website (which is the course I’d recommend actually) and while the features included for free are, well, awesome, the real fun comes with spending a little coin, £15 (about $25 US/CAD) gets you the Powerpack, which ramps up Alfred to a whole new level of awesome.

Frankly, even pulling together this top 10 list I found another half dozen Alfred actions I want to try. Like opening the last files a particular app opened or navigating through the file system or launching URLs or controlling iTunes. Alfred is one of those apps that is awesome for the moment you start using it—and then it just keeps getting better from there.

(Photo credit: Man in Bowler Hat by Wonderlane via Flickr)

Tris Hussey is a technologist, author, teacher, and Canada’s first professional blogger. He has written several books on social media and technology including Create Your Own Blog (1st and 2nd editions), Using WordPress, Sam’s Teach Yourself Foursquare in 10 Minutes, WordPress Essentials (video lessons), and Sam’s Teach Yourself WordPress Themes in 24 Hours (forthcoming in late 2012 with Catherine Winters). You can read Tris’ posts on TrisHussey.com, the FutureShop Tech blog, and other sites around the Internet.

Have you ever been stuck as a customer in a large structure that functions like a black hole for cellular and broadband wifi?

If you have, you know the fury-inducing helplessness that accompanies being cut off from instantaneous access to whatever data you want.  If you own or manage any business that has a captive audience for more than a few minutes, this article is directed at you in hopes of aiding in the reduction of your clients’ stress and the enhancement of your customer service reputation.

I’ve written several articles previously on the fact that an inability to access data all of the time is good – and how to manage it – but the truth of the matter is if you haven’t planned for it, or you’re frequently caught in one of these places, it’s likely to be far less serenity-enhancing and far more stress-inducing.  The effect of this inability to access data actually reduces your productivity instead of enhancing it if you had planned to work through your GTD @Phone or @Internet contexts. In fact, if you find it particularly troublesome, you may find this piece on “iDisorders” of interest.

If you’re one of the folks who owns or manages a business, such as a restaurant, grocery store, car repair shop, department store, office building, or hospital whose building functions like a cellular black hole, and you aren’t providing free wifi, you’re making your clients’ lives more stressful.  I’m likely to stop being your client over this, whereas some others might tolerate it long enough to boost their blood pressure to dangerous levels.  It’s like the old adage about boiling a frog (although I would never advocate such a thing); if you throw it in hot water, it jumps out.  If you slowly raise the temperature, the frog sits comfortably until it overheats dangerously.

It’s 2012. If you can afford to operate a business that caters to customers who are required to wait, you can afford to save them from a dark hellhole of no broadband cellular signal.  You can do this by providing free wifi so they can access data services.

Solving this problem, and making your clients happier (or at least less stressed), is easy. Two effective solutions are:

• Install a wifi access point and make it free for clients. Invest in a lot of bandwidth…more than you think you need. At least as much as your geeky neighbor kid says you need. Ask him or her. You’ll probably get a good answer.  If you find you bought more wifi than your customers are using, yet you still have a waiting area full of customers, try streaming some movies or the news to a tv connected to the router.

• Install microcell repeaters. Pricey, but worth it in client satisfaction if you have a captive clientele.  Sure, the ability to access free broadband wifi will satisfy a great many people – clients and employees on break – but the ability to make calls inside a building that otherwise blocks them due to weak signal is a huge boon to everyone who has a phone.

(Photo credit: Wifi Road Sign via Shutterstock)

Andrew writes at 360 Minutes, where he shares his best advice on becoming more productive and effective, so you can gain the time to do the things that you love. Get his RSS feed directly, and take a look at his Getting Started page if you're looking for ways to get your head above water at work.

With any hit Apple device comes a ton of accessories and the iPad is no different. Ever since its release, all accessory manufacturers have been trying to create the next great iPad stand for your desk. After a few years of iPad, we can now see which stands for iPad stick out from the crowd.

Here are the 9 most attractive and functional stands for iPad.

1. The Thought Out Stabile 2.0 (~$79.99)

This iPad stand has a somewhat “futuristic” look and feel to it, but doesn’t necessarily look like something that would come from Cupertino (it’s close though). It’s made of solid steel, certified made in the USA (for all your patriots out there), and weighs in a 2 1/4 pounds.

And the Stabile comes in black, white, and “Apple” silver to match your iPad.

2. Joule for iPad 1 and 2 ($79.99 – $99.99)

If you want to keep in the minimalist tradition of your iPad, then the Joule case is for you. Made of “aircraft grade” aluminum as well as in the USA, the Joule has a very unique 3 position tilt-arm system. Basically, there are three holes in the back of the stand where you can place the tilt-arm. Depending on where you place the arm, the stand will be at different angles.

Comes in white, black, and aluminum.

3. Twelve South Compass Mobile ($39.99)

The Compass Mobile is an easel stand and allows you to view your iPad in both portrait and landscape modes. Even though the Compass looks a little “wobbly” you don’t need to worry, it’s made of heavy gauge steel and is precision cut.One potential drawback is that you can only have your iPad at a 60-degree angle, making it not the greatest thing to use if you need to type on the virtual keyboard.

But, if you are viewing apps, typing with a hardware keyboard, watching video, and FaceTiming then it would work out great.

4. Incase Origami Workstation ($29.95)

I’d be doing you a total disservice if I didn’t mention the Incase Origami workstation. This is my personal iPad “workstation” of choice. It’s a small Apple bluetooth keyboard case that folds into a small stand for the iPad. It’s super portable, durable, made of great material, and simple.

What’s nice about the Origami is that you don’t have to attach it to your iPad like other cases. It’s a separate entity that you can use when and where you want.

5. Kitchen Cabinet Mount ($49.99)

Not necessarily a desk stand for the iPad, the Kitchen Cabinet Mount by Belkin allows you to use your cooking and foodie apps while you are busy in the kitchen. One of the nicest things about this mount is that you don’t have to permanently place it in one place; there is a clamping system that allows you to move it anytime you want.

6. Just Mobile Lazy Couch Stands ($19.99)

I remember Mr. Ihnatko from MacBreak Weekly fame talking about something close to this idea. If you just want a simple way to prop up your iPad a tad on your desk, so you can use the virtual keyboard, then this is the solution for you.

There are basically two little “nubs” that sit under your iPad. They also connect together for storage.

7. @Rest iPad stand ($49.99)

Alright, if you want to get serious about your iPad standing, then you have to look at the @Rest before you make a decision. The @Rest is a well designed iPad stand that doubles as a MacBook stand. It’s made of solid aluminum that is powedercoated for a very nice finish. @Rest can be used to view your iPad in portrait or landscape at two different angles.

8. iRest (regularly $60, get it for $40 from Lifehack Deals)

The iRest is a hybrid product that you can use on your desk as well as your lap to hold your iPad. It has removable padding so you can easily use the iRest while you are on your couch or in bed and then remove the padding when you want to use it on your desk. The iRest has the same brushed aluminum finish as the iPad so it looks great with your device.

Also, iRest won the 2011 MacWorld Best of Show.

9. Griffin Technology Loop ($29.99)

I remember the first time that I saw the iPad at an Apple store in 2010 with its neat, rubberized stand that cradled it on the table. The closest thing to those stands that I have seen is the Griffin Technology Loop. The Loop has a pair of grooves so you can put the iPad at a 20-degree angle or you can place it on the ring so it is easier to type on the virtual keyboard.

The Loop is made of hard plastic and rubber.

Are there any other desk stands for iPad that you can recommend? If so, comment below.

When it comes to freelancing, having the right tools for the job can make all the difference.

And we’re not talking exclusively on-job tools here either; freelancers have the difficult task of managing all of their activities, work expenditures, and productivity, as they have only themselves to account for.

While you certainly don’t want to get bogged down in excess tools (succumbing to signing up to every free tool ever), there are certainly a few free resources out there that will greatly aid in your endeavors as a successful freelancer. So, here are 30 tools and web apps for freelancers.

Freelancer Time Management Tools

1. Teux Deux

The Teux Deux “to-do” list app first starting picking up some traction when it was mentioned to be used by the likes of Seth Godin for making daily to-do lists. The premise behind Teux Deux was to make a very minimal but visually compelling (“designy”) app that is highly usable and intuitive.

If making lists is a key part of your organizational structure as a free lancer, than you should definitely check out Teux Deux, it is one of the best options out there for creating and managing task lists (and it’s free!) You can also take Teux Deux on the go with their iPhone app.

2. RescueTime

You may be familiar with RescueTime it due to it’s association with a few big names, such as Matt Mullenwag of Automattic and WordPress. What you may not be familiar with is how useful RescueTime really is.

RescueTime allows you to keep track of how you spend your time on your computer, and lets you analyze how this time was spent later. If you find that last week you spent over 10 hours on Reddit, you can know that it is time to start managing your time more wisely ;).

3. Focus Booster

For freelancers, getting things done in a timely manner is of utmost importance, and entirely on the self as freelancing typically comes with a very variable schedule. While  the Pomodoro Technique provide great results for some people, it’s hard to implement on a regular basis without the right tools, and who wants to walk around with a timer all day?

That’s where Focus Booster comes in, it is an online timer made just for freelancers (or anyone!) using the Pomodoro Technique to get things done. If you aren’t familiar, this method relies on having 25 minute periods of work followed by 5 minute periods of rest, which helps you segment tasks and get them done one at a time.

4. Toggl

Toggl is a time tracking app which aims to help you track time with a single click, and to switch easily between different tasks and create reports so that you can get things done and turn that precious time into productive time.It is also available as a Chrome extension, and can be easily installed in your browser for use as soon as you fire up the web.

It’s been featured on an favorably reviewed by sites like Lifehacker, where it is described as:

“Toggl starts tracking the time spent in a live second by second timer right in the web browser. Hit stop when you’re done. Toggl will put together reports – PDF or CSV – for invoicing your clients. More portable than a kitchen timer, Toggl looks like a helpful little tool for hourly freelancers who need to keep track of exactly how much time they spent on what task in another Firefox tab.”

5. TextExpander

As a freelancer, you are likely sending a lot of emails. Worse yet, many of these emails are likely to contain similar (if not duplicate) information. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a free app that could cut down the time of sending these emails?

That’s where TextExpander comes in, allowing you to pre-program short abbreviations that an automatically insert all types of information and even images, CSS, and other longer forms of information, all from a few easy keystrokes. You can also pre-program to fix typos you often make, use different signatures for different clients, and auto-insert forms and other info on a per project basis.

Freelance Writing Tools

6. OpenOffice

All freelancers (but especially writers) need a full suite of office tools for their personal computer. While Google Docs offers a web based alternative, many folks like storing documents on their hard drive or external memory device. Instead of paying the cost of Microsoft Office, why not try the excellent and free OpenOffice alternative?

While OpenOffice comes with full suite of tools that are comparable to Microsoft Office, the OpenOffice writer is the biggest benefit here: it’s a fully featured writing platform that allows easy exporting to PDF, making it perfect for e-Books, guides, pamphlets, and other necessary documents to be easily shared on the PDF format. It comes fully featured with a similar selection of fonts and other tools (charts, formatting, etc.) that Microsoft Office has, all while being

7. WriteRoom (Mac)

When it comes to getting big writing projects done, focus is key. Nothing will give you more focus than a full-screen writing tool, and WriteRoom is the original offering that is available for Mac.

Featuring a totally black background and no menu options (as well as blocking out all toolbars, even the start menu), WriteRoom will keep your writing between you and the page, taking away all outside things to click so that you can focus you’re writing efforts.

8. DarkRoom (PC)

If you were reading the above and thinking “Oh great, another awesome free tool only available for Mac…”, worry not! There is another program designed to perfectly replicate WriteRoom, only for Windows. It is called DarkRoom and it is similarly free.

Want to really get rid of disctractions? Use either one of these programs and then do the unthinkable: turn off your Internet! That’s right, disabling the web with a full-screen writer will leave you with not many options but to get some writing done!

9. Zen Writer

While the above two options are great for most people, for some, the dark background and the “Matrix style” feel of the programs will be off putting and will not help them maintain focus when writing.

The solution? ZenWriter, a full-screen writing app that takes aesthetics into account. With a serene light and dark background and adjustable fonts, this is the best looking full-screen writer available. The catch? It costs $9 to use all of its features full-time, although you can download the program for free and try it for yourself.

10. Logline App

Logline is an interesting app to feature because it is marketed as being the perfect solution for writing screenplays, but I’ve found it to be a great tool for writing a far more common type of web writing: long, comprehensive e-Books. Simply put, a huge part of freelance writing and anyone using content marketing to grow their business.

With Logline, organizing your ideas and sections/chapters is as simple as a few clicks, you can write notes and organize sections painlessly, no need for immense .doc or .pdf files until the book is fully complete.

Freelance Organizational Tools

11. Dropbox

Most of us freelancers have heard of Dropbox before, and let me tell you any “hype” tied to the product is totally accurate: Dropbox is awesome, allowing you to sync all files on all of your devices with a simple drag-n-drop system.

Never again will you have to sit with downtime when you could be working on a project, or get stuck not having an essential file that you need: sync all of your files with Dropbox and you’re business files will be “in the cloud”, accessible from any of the devices that you own and have on you.

12. Shoeboxed

Shoeboxed allows you to turn piles of receipts and business cards into expense reports, accounting entries and contact lists, save time and cut admin costs by scanning and extract the data from your paper clutter. Shoebox is also accepted by the IRS, so you can use it for your business without worry.

The only downside? The free plan won’t be enough for most people, so if you want to take advantage of the full suite of Shoebox features multiple times a month, you are going to have to upgrade to a premium plan.

13. Now Do This

Now Do This is about the most simple a task management tool can be: it only allows you to make a simple text list which you then click “done” after you’ve… well, done the task.

The upside? No fancy features ensure that this is a true “Getting Things Done” tool, there is nothing to play around with and adjust, you just put up your things to do, and get to it.

14. Oh Don’t Forget…

If you are like me, emails can get passed over, voicemails unlistened to… but text messages? Opened every time. The Oh Don’t Forget team thinks like this as well, as they’ve made the best tool to get reminders via text.

With a ODF account you can text yourself reminders at any time of the day, and since they will be coming through your phone, you know you will be more likely to check and thus remember them.

15. Remember The Milk

Remember The Milk has definitely created some buzz recently, and with it’s Gmail addon, you can now access it through your email, which you are probably spending too much time in… ;)

RTM is simply one of the best task managers out there, with tools that can remind you from almost any device, set up specific location reminders, plan your time in advanced, and work together with others to get things done. An overall must have tool in my opinion.

16. BetterBuzzer

Did you think that text message reminders might be annoying? Well than stay far away from BetterBuzzer, the company that promises to “Not stop calling you until you pick up. We’re annoying like that, and you’ll love it!” :)

BetterBuzzer does as promised, if you set an important reminder via their calendar tool, you will get called at that time and your phone will not stop ringing until you pick up, useful for absolutely critical things that you cannot miss or forget.

Freelance Project Management Tools

17. MindMeister

Mind-mapping is all of the rage these days, although it is no different from the old school pen-and-paper method, with tools like MindMeister, you can create mind-maps on your electronic devices, which serve as much better storage than sheets of looseleaf.

Of all my trials with mind-mapping tools, MindMesiter is definitely the best, and it’s free plan will be enough for most people, although if you create a ton of mind-maps, the premium plans are very reasonable.

18. FreedCamp

FreedCamp promises to be the best viable (and free!) alternative to BaseCamp, which so far has not has any major competitors (especially ones that are free).

I’ve used FreedCamp myself and this tool gets better by the day, including all sorts of options which seem like steal to have on a free tool. Better yet, it comes with awesome features like project templates so that you can get up and running as soon as you start using the service, making it an absolute must try: if you’ve been thinking about using a platform like this, I’d advise checking out FreedCamp first.

19. Google Apps

A lot of these apps you are most likely familiar with if you use a Google Account. From messaging & task apps such as Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar to collaboration apps such as Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Reader and many more, Google Apps is an absolute must for any freelancer in my humble opinion.

If you want to include the recent Google+ into the mix, then you also have incentive to have a Google account in order to network on this new social networking platform. While you have to watch that it doesn’t turn into a time-sink, Google+ offers a way to connect with technologically savy users (it’s main adopters, at least for now) and as a way to further promote yourself on a platform run by the world’s biggest search engine.

20. Evernote

When creativity and good ideas strike, will you leave it up to memory to keep track of them? The scary truth is your brain is not as dependable as you’d like to think, but cut the poor guy some slack: in today’s world, we are forced to recall tons of information and are constantly being stimulated by new information.

The benefits of technology help to ease it’s woes, however, with tools like Evernote. Evernote allows you to capture any good ideas, images, or audio clips from your PC or phone, and then lets you sync them all for easy retrieval and edits no matter where you are. Don’t let a good idea slip away due to being too busy: let Evernote keep track of your spontaneous moments of creativity/inspiration and store them so you can come back and work on them later.

21. Helium

Helium is a super simple task management system to aid you in clearing out your inbox, assigning and delegating tasks easily, and to take action in order to get things done. Easily connected to your corporate email and Evernote account, Helium also does not need to be connected to the web to work: you can download it for your PC or Mac and it is ready to go.

Even better: you can use Helium to assign tasks whether or not other users use Helium or not, it is not dependent on others to have an account with the platform in order to use it’s benefits. Lastly, Helium features a clean interface and a drag-n-drop dashboard for easy management.

Entrepreneurial & Legal Tools

22. Mint

Mint has been a really popular tool for people looking to manage their money, and it’s no wonder: the interface is beautiful, the tools are excellent, and the service is free. I really cannot recommend another free money management tool over Mint, it has all of the essentials a freelancer could need to start managing their spending and saving more wisely.

Not only that, but the Mint blog is always full of excellent information in the form of detailed posts, infographics, and case studies. You will not find a better designed and made product for money management for free.

23. StreamerApp

The Streamer App is a really great tool that allows you to create custom dashboards for your business’s vital aspects. These include integrations with popular Web Analytics, CRM support, infrastructure, project management and sales tools… all in one place.

The amount of services that integrate with Streamer are impressive thus far and improving by the day, and include the likes of Basecamp, Twitter, MailChimp, Gmail, Google Analytics, Pingdom, Shopify, UserVoice and many more.

24. ContactMe

ContactMe touts itself as being the essential, all-in-one tool to allow you to consolidate all of your contacts—and the business information that relates to each one—into one convenient, online system.

Utilizing ContactMe to keep this type of information in order will allow you to stay updated and continually on top of your correspondences, tasks, details, deadlines and appointments. Definitely a major time savor that allows you to conduct your business more professionally.

25. DeskTime

DeskTime is an awesome tool that is perfect for business owners, designers, developers, accountants and many others types of freelancers and entrepreneurs. What does it allow you to do?

It allows you to keep track of people that you are employing, including the ability to automatically create timesheets (no more Excel!) lowering your payroll processing costs, and allowing you to see who is working, for how long, and at what hours. A must have for freelancers and business owners employing others.

26. DocStoc

Docstoc is the best online source for high quality (and a wide variety) of professional and legal documents that you can use to start, grow, and manage your budding new business, entrepreneurial endeavor, or freelance activities.

Docstoc provides the platform to upload and share documents with the world, and serves as a vast repository of free and for purchase legal, business, financial, technical, and educational documents that can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded.

Freelancer Social Media Tools

27. Tweriod

When it comes to social media (especially on Twitter), timing can be everything. Not only on the time you spend on it (get back to work!) but also on the timing of your updates, which can have big consequences on their reach and effectiveness.

Fortunately, there is a one-two knockout combo for Twitter that will make sure your updates go out at the perfect time, every time. The first part of this process is analyzing your followers over on Tweriod, which will give you a comprehensive (and good looking!) chart displaying the most popular hours on Twitter for your followers (when they are online the most).

With this information, you can then use…

28. BufferApp

…the BufferApp, the second part in our awesome Twitter combo. After you’ve gotten your free report of when your Twitter followers are online, use Buffer to set up time periods in which your tweets will post every day, making sure they align with when your Twitter followers are online the most.

You can schedule tweets from the very beginnings of the day, and can set them to go out at very specific times, hitting the hot spots throughout the day, making sure your tweets are getting read by as large an audience as possible. This will maximize each tweet’s impact and you can rest assured that your important tweets won’t get buried. Buffer also now works with Facebook as well.

29. Ping.fm

Ping.fm is one of the best ways to cut through the 20 different logins that you might have for social media profiles: update once and done, and Ping will even shorten the links automatically for sites like Twitter.

I like Ping because I’m able to updates social media accounts, microblogs (such as Posterous and Tumblr) and that the Ping team is adding new accounts all of the time, assuring me that it will be a service that stays updated with the latest useful profiles for all types of sites.

30. SocialOomph

Social Oomph has some really great social networking tools in it’s arsenal, but it really shines when it comes to Twitter tools. The reason that so many of these web apps for freelancer tools focus on Twitter is because I’ve found it to be one of the best networking tools, with LinkedIn being a close second (and Google+ being a distant 3rd).

One awesome feature that I love to use (properly!) is the auto-DM tool. While this tool can be extremely obnoxious when used incorrectly, it can be a great asset done the right way. What’s the right way? Entice people to follow you by promising them a freebie (Follow me for a free video/e-book/whatever!), you will gain more potential followers and you also get to spread some content that you’ve made, making it a win-win.

(Photo credit: Glasses on Keyboard via sxc.hu)

Even though Microsoft Office is a standard Office suite in many organizations, on occasion you may work on a project of mixed Microsoft Office and Google Apps users. While this might sound open to frustration up front especially when it comes to multiple authors on documents, there is a growing list of options to help Microsoft Word and Google Docs play nicely together without a loss in productivity.

Beyond the multiple authors or geographically dispersed project team use cases, some of the tools in this post can even be helpful to freelancers to backup or sync their project documents with a Google Apps account.

Here are some free apps you can resort to if you are a Microsoft Office and Google Apps user to help with transferring documents back and forth:

1. Google Cloud Connect

Google brings us Google Cloud Connect, an installable Microsoft Office toolbar that adds collaborative editing, tracking tools, versioning, and sharing to the Microsoft Office interface. It also helps resolve the document hijinks that can ensue when it takes a lot of the complexity out of these tasks. I use Google Cloud Connect to synchronize certain project documents to my Google Docs account even if I am not collaborating with another writer. Google Cloud Connect requires Windows 7, Windows Vista or Windows XP with .NET Framework 2.0. It is compatible with Office 2010, Office 2007, and Office 2003. It is not available for Mac OS X, which is a bit of a disappointment to us Mac users.

2. Google Drive

As I write this post, Google Drive  is going live around the web. Even before the pundit complaints die down, it is easy to see that with the Google Drive desktop client (available for Mac and Windows), that Google Drive can become a handy bridge between Microsoft Office users and Google Docs users through straight up file synchronization between Google Drive’s free 5 GB online storage and a Mac or Windows desktop.

3. SyncDocs

I found this gem in the Google Apps Marketplace (always worth a visit!). SyncDocs is free up to the first 10,000 documents and lets you treat Google Docs as another drive on your PC. It creates a backup that is an exact mirror of your local files in your Google account. It is an example of the power of Google Docs for the freelancers and small to medium business users out there because it is easy to use and maintain without the need of an in-house IT department.

4. Harmon.ie for Google Docs

Originally, I wasn’t planning to mention this option because Harmon.ie for Google Docs  is a Microsoft Outlook Add-in. While, I have objections over using Outlook as a document management tool I do know there are those of you out there who live and die by the email inbox with Outlook open all day. This app is for you! After installing Harmon.ie for Google Docs, you have a new sidebar in Outlook, which you can use to upload and convert Office document into Google Docs. Since it is an Outlook add-in, Harmon.ie automatically shares linked document with your email message recipient(s). This is a great option for breaking Outlook users of email attachments because it asks you if you want to replace a file attachment with a link and then automatically uploads the file attachment into the sender’s Google Docs account for sharing. It has some useful search tools and lets you open and edit Google documents in Outlook (groan!). Most importantly, it lets users save Google native format documents in Microsoft Office formats, OpenOffice, PDF, HTML, and TXT. One annoying element of this app is the Thank you pop-up that appears after you use the sidebar encouraging you to share the fun of Harmon.ie with your social network contacts.

5. GoDocSync

To round out the list, I chose the free standard version of GoDocSync for this lineup. It’s a great example of how synchronization should work between Google Apps and Microsoft Office. GoDocSync supports Microsoft Office 2003/2007/2010. This Microsoft Office add-in application also includes a powerful search tool, local file history and restoring, and support for Google Docs file attributes. This app is simple and elegant in its implementation.

The apps I profiled in this post can help you get Microsoft Office and Google Apps to play nice together during a project, hopefully saving you time and frustration. Plus these apps let you and your team have the best of both Office suite worlds.

Will Kelly is a technical writer who occasionally steps out of software documentation to write for tech websites and publications. His interests include iPad productivity apps, making Microsoft office work efficiently, and online collaboration. Check out his blog at http://willkelly.org or connect with him on Google+, Twitter, or LinkedIN.

You know what the “number 1″ camera on Flickr is?

Yeah, it’s the iPhone 4.

Ever since Apple upped the ante with the iPhone 4 — and then blew that out of the water with the 4S — the iPhone has really taken off as a worthy alternative to a point-n-shoot camera. It’s perfect for those who want something that is both efficient and effective — something Lifehack readers yearn fro in a lot of their tech gear.

There are hundreds of photo apps out there (I should know…I think I bought most of them) that take your iPhoneography to the next level. I’ve picked top 10 camera apps for iPhone, but then I realized that there is so much more to taking pictures on the iPhone than just taking pictures, so as a bonus I’ve included my top 4 favorite apps to edit and enhance photos just to round things out.

Let’s get started…

1. Camera+ $0.99. This is my go-to app to take pictures. I wish I could set it as my default camera app. What’s great? The in-app photo edits and fast sharing. Yeah, man.
2. 360 Panorama $0.99. Want to make easy, peasy awesome looking panorama shots? Here you go. You’re welcome.
3. GridLens $0.99. What to take a series of shots laid out in a cool frame or grid? This is the app. Maybe one picture divided or several different shots over a few seconds, it’s just tap and go.
4. Hipstamatic $1.99. One of the leading “toy camera” app to let you give your iPhone shots different looks with software lenses, filters, and films. Its’ cool.
5. Retro Camera Plus Free. This is a simple way to get those Hipstamtic style shots without spending a penny. I really like the Soviet-era camera styles included. Gritty and real is what those shots are, gritty and real.
6. Snapseed $4.99. This might be the most expensive of these apps, but it’s also the one with the most robust editing suite as well. It’s like Camera+ meets iPhoto. Bonus…it’s a universal app that is awesome on the iPad too.
7. Mattebox $3.99. Maybe a little pricy for a “basic” camera app, but the focus lock, white balance, and ISO displays make this a nice app for taking well composed shots.
8. Instagram Free. Instagram is more than a photo app (or a Facebook property) it made photo sharing more social. Snap, tweak, share. Feel the love.
9. Camera Awesome Free. From the folks at SmugMug, this app focuses (hah, hah) on composition and processing to make for great shots. Hey it is free, so always worth a try.
10. 8mm Vintage Camera $1.99. This is the only pure video app in the list. What you get is an easy way to shoot “vintage” looking movies with your iPhone. It’s easy and the results are awesome.

Editing, tweaking, and extra:

1. Diptic $0.99. Diptic works like Grid Lens, except it doesn’t take pictures, just allows you to arrange existing pictures into frames. Before Grid Lens, this was my favorite way to make a photo collage.
2. WordFoto $1.99 Overlay words onto a photo to make a word collage. Makes for awesome photos to share for fun.
3. iPhoto $4.99. Until iPhoto came onto the scene, Snapseed was the only way to do serious photo editing on your iPhone (or iPad). iPhoto on the iPhone is a little cramped (so is Snapseed, by the way), but the features are great. Well worth the money.
4. Magic Hour Free. There is a period of time just before and just after sunrise/sunset when the light is amazing. Photographers and film makers schedule their entire day to make the most use of Magic Hour. Now, do you know exactly when magic hour is where you are? Probably not. With is this app you will and …well, the results are awesome when you tap into the sun low in the sky. Try it.

There are many more apps I could have included — like light meters and light boxes – but these are the top 10 camera apps for iPhone that I actually keep on my devices. Did I miss a great app? Let me know in the comments.

Tris Hussey is a technologist, author, teacher, and Canada’s first professional blogger. He has written several books on social media and technology including Create Your Own Blog (1st and 2nd editions), Using WordPress, Sam’s Teach Yourself Foursquare in 10 Minutes, WordPress Essentials (video lessons), and Sam’s Teach Yourself WordPress Themes in 24 Hours (forthcoming in late 2012 with Catherine Winters). You can read Tris’ posts on TrisHussey.com, the FutureShop Tech blog, and other sites around the Internet.

My fellow managing editor, Mr. Vardy and I have taken a liking to paper for note taking, especially when it comes to analyzing and clarifying problems. It’s durable, simple, easy to use, has an almost infinite resolution, is aesthetically pleasing, and just feels good. Although paper is awesome for clarifying your thoughts and actions, you can’t easily index, sort, and search it, something that digital notes will always have the benefit of.

SEE ALSO: 5 Tips for Effective Digital Note Taking

So, what do you do if you are a paper note taker in an increasingly digital note taking world? Here are some of the best ways to use note taking software if you are a paper note taking aficionado.

OneNote for Windows

OneNote is a great application for taking notes, storing files and links, pictures, graphs, or really anything if you use Windows or even iOS. The great part about OneNote is that you can organize it much like a notebook with different tabs and sections as well as click anywhere and instantly start typing.

Another great thing is that if you have paper notes you can snap a photo or scan them in and store them in OneNote. Then you can easily search your notes with OneNote’s built in optical character recognition (that is, if your handwriting doesn’t suck). It’s a great hybrid approach for the paper note taker.

Evernote

We wax about Evernote here at Lifehack because it’s truly a ubiquitous capture and note taking application. It works everywhere, and because of that gives you the quickness and ease of use like paper does. You can quickly add notes via your mobile device or the capture applications on Mac, Linux, or Windows.

Just like OneNote, Evernote gives you the ability to upload handwritten documents that the service will try to OCR for you. This allows you to take notes via pen and paper when you are away from your digital devices.

Circus Ponies Notebook

If you are working on a Mac and you want something like OneNote, then look no further than Circus Ponies Notebook. Notebook uses pages, tabs, and sections to make the app feel more like paper and is a great way to store a ton of information. There is also a great tool for recording audio while you are taking notes. Notebook will then map the audio to the notes that you took.

You can add charts and diagram’s to your Notebook notebooks and also “free hand” draw with some of the ink tools. Notebook also has a cool feature called “Multidex” which basically indexes all of your notes and even the changes you make to them allowing for an easier way to find notes that you may have forgotten about or “lost”.

Livescribe Smartpen

Livescribe is a paper/software hybrid that allows you take handwritten notes on special paper that takes “snapshops” of what you write. The best feature of Livescribe is that you can record any sound that is going on around you while you are taking your notes and the smartpen will map the note taking with the sound. This is great for note taking during a lecture or a meeting where you may want to refer to what was said later.

After you have taken your notes you can upload the handwritten notes as well as the audio that is tied to it to either a Mac or PC. You can then click anywhere in your notes and the audio that was recorded at the time of the note will play back.

Your handwritten notes are also fully indexed and searchable so you can quickly locate things later on. I have found that if you are a strick paper note taker but you want the benefits of note taking software, Livescribe may be your best bet.

Note taking software for the traditional paper note taker can be a tough sell, especially when it comes to ubiquitousness and speed, but these apps are a great way to transition your handwritten note taking habits to the digital realm. If you have any good note taking software and paper note taking workflows, please share them below.

(Photo credit: take notes via Shutterstock)

We’ve all seen it. The dreaded “Your mailbox is over the limit.” message.

This means that not only can you not receive any new mail messages, you can’t send any emails either. This usually happens right at the climax of a very important project. The question is: What can we do about it?

You could always ask your email administrator to increase your limits, but that could take some time depending upon how busy they are with other help desk tickets. Below I’ve offered ways to help yourself. Plus, if you’ve already done these steps below, then when you do request the help desk ticket for increasing your limits, you will stand a much better chance of getting them increased.

Three Solutions

The first thing that you can do is empty your Deleted Items folder. The following steps are if you are using Outlook, but the concepts work in almost any mail program. Like your trash can at home, if you don’t empty the Deleted Items once in a while, you won’t ever get the space back. Simply right-click on the Deleted Items folder and choose Delete.

The next one that’s often overlooked is your Sent Items folder. Outlook by default, saves every mail message to your Sent Items folder. Most other mail programs have the same capabilities. What this means is that every single “Hey…what are you doing for lunch?” email is in there. All five years worth of them. You don’t need to hang onto those messages. Go ahead and delete them. This step may take a bit longer than emptying the Deleted Items folder, but it will get the job done as well. You may want to sift through the messages, since there will be some messages that you have sent that you want to retain.

The third option is to use the AutoArchive function of Outlook. This one could be an issue for you, since the criteria for most archiving is by date. There are some messages (an annual or biannual contract negotiation with a vendor, for example) that you need to keep. Instead of auto-archiving those, move the messages to another folder manually.

Outlook is usually configured to store messages on the Exchange server, which is good because you can sign into any PC in your organization and still retrieve your messages. Likewise, you can sign into webmail while you are traveling and still have access to those same messages. Unfortunately, this is where those mailbox limits come into play.

For less critical mail, create an archive for yourself , since we’ve determined that AutoArchiving may not be the answer.

Your Own Personal Email Archive

The way to do this is to have Outlook open, then go to File > Account Settings. Click on the Data Files tab and click on Add. This will let you create a new .PST file. You can name it anything your want. (I would suggest something along the lines of “2011 Archives” vs. “Personal Folders”, which is the default name. And no, I don’t know how they got PST out of Personal Folders. It’s a mystery to me too…)

When you go to create the new PST file, you may want to create it in your shared files drive letter (commonly called H: for home, P: for Personal or U: for Users — your mileage may vary depending upon your network administrator.) This will create a new folder icon underneath your normal mailbox icons on the left. Expand this folder and start dragging emails over to the new folder. This folder used to have a limit of 2 GB in size, although you could always create more PST files. In Outlook 2010, they changed its formatting, increasing the limit to 50 GB — more than enough space. (If you need more than 50 GB of email, you have bigger issues than “mailbox full” messages.)

There are some caveats to this method of archiving. First, this PST file won’t be available to you from machine to machine, unless you saved it to your U: drive. Secondly, if the machine that you put it on gets corrupted or has a hard disk failure, say goodbye to your e-mail (unless it’s backed up…you do have a backup, right? ). Third, your email administrator or your network security may not favor you doing this. If there is a virus in the email system, they can clean the mail servers. If if makes it into your PST file, it’s a whole lot harder to eradicate it. Of course, you should have anti-virus scanning your email as it comes in, but it still is a concern.

If this still doesn’t do the trick, then you simply need a larger quota. Doing the steps above will help support your request for more space.

(Photo credit: White Email Symobls with One Red One via Shutterstock)

Brian K. Vagnini is a musician, designer, engineer and writer of fiction and technical topics. He was a technical trainer for five years and learned about almost every class of software. His additional writing can be found at Grey Matter Ideas and "a href="http://www.wicketbang.com">Wicketbang.com.

Looking to power up your Mac — and to do it for free?

Well, Lifehack Deals has another great giveaway lined up for you — as in we’re giving 1 lucky winner The Mac SuperBundle!

The apps in this bundle can help you in a wide variety of activities, from converting and managing digital media with Roxio Toast to searching for files more efficiently and effectively with Houdah Tembo to keeping track of your home inventory easily with Compartments.

All 9 apps would normally retail for $453 on their own!

Here’s what’s in this latest Lifehack Deals giveaway:

1. Roxio Toast 11 Titanium

Completely redesigned from the ground up, the best-selling Roxio Toast 11 Titanium features a new user interface that’s up-to-date, innovative and intuitive! With newly refined workflows, built-in video tutorials and much more, Toast 11 is the ultimate digital media toolkit for newcomers and experienced users alike. From capturing audio and video to converting media to copying, sharing, burning and more, Roxio Toast 11 quickly and easily gets you the media you love…wherever you want it! Regular price: $100

2. RapidWeaver 5

RapidWeaver 5 gives you the easiest yet most powerful tools available to create stunning websites on your Mac! With Code-Free creation, 11 built-in page types, 45 flexible design themes, including 6 new themes from world-renowned designers and built-in support for FTP & SFTPuploads, you’ll be creating and publishing an incredible website in no time at all. Whatever your website needs, a slideshow, company site or personal blog, RapidWeaver 5 lives up to its name – fast, fun and complete! Regular price: $80

3. Panorama Maker 5 Pro

Whether you’ve got landscape or city skyline digital photos or nature or vacation experiences on video, Panorama Maker 5 Pro offers a simple and easy way to turn your photos and videos to amazing panorama masterpieces. With a complete set of auto stitching tools, five different stitch modes, powerful media file management, photo editing and a built-in online print service; Panorama Maker 5 lets you produce stunning panoramas photos just like a pro! Regular price: $80

4. Disk Drill Pro

Designed by Mac users for Mac users, Disk Drill PRO is the way to recover important lost data in almost any situation. With patented technology that deep scans your hard drive; Disk Drill PROfinds files you thought were gone forever. Disk Drill PRO is the data protection and recovery app you need to protect your music, photos, import files, presentations and more. Offering Quick Scan & Recovery of HFS/HFS+, FAT and NTFS and Deep Scan & Recovery for any or no file systems, Disk Drill PRO is the perfect investment in your data’s safe and secure future. Regular price: $89

5. Hallmark Card Studio

Great for all occasions including birthdays, holidays, weddings – or just to say hello. You also get 10,000+ clip art images to complement your cards and projects. Hallmark Card Studio for Mac makes selecting photos for cards and projects easy. And, there’s no better way to personalize than by importing your own photos from iPhoto or an iSight camera. Regular price: $40

6. Houdah Tembo

Make finding files as easy as possible with Houdah Tembo – the efficient search tool that’s based on the Spotlight engine! Get search results grouped by categories and then drill-down for real search power – up to 2500 search results within each group! Context filters, including subject, sender and recipient, help you refine your results. With Tembo you’ll get more than just a file search tool – it even works as an extension to Apple Mail to locate messages or to Safari to search browsing history, bookmarks and more. Regular price: $15

7. Musicbox

It’s easy to download songs from your favorite music websites with Musicbox! Just paste or drag a URL with an audio or video player onto Musicbox for fast download and conversion into a native mp3 format that can be imported into your iTunes library. With Musicbox you can listen to your favorite web audio on your iPod, Mac or iPhone — anytime and anywhere! Regular price: $15

8. Font Explosion 500 Volume 1

Font Explosion includes five hundred 100% royalty-free, sensational TrueType® fonts for home, school and office. Each font is fully-scalable to any point size and easily integrates with your favorite applications like Microsoft Word, Pages, Keynote, Adobe® Photoshop® and more. With each font family fully compatible with all popular inkjet and laser printers, the Mac SuperBundle Font Explosion software makes print jobs a breeze! Regular price: $20

9. Compartments

Compartments is fast and effective home inventory app for Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard. Its beautifully laid out user interface ensures that you don’t have to spend hours entering your home inventory information. Access every category with keyboard shortcuts, enter dozens of your personal items in seconds with the Quick Add feature or select multiple items and tag them with Quick Apply, plus add photos and generate PDF reports. With Compartments you can even keep family members up-to-date with automatic data syncing via a free DropBox or MobileMe iDisk folder. Keep your valuables organized and protected with the easiest to use home inventory software available today. Regular price: $15

How to Win

The contest ends on April 30th at 11:59PM PST, after which we will select the lucky winner (The winner will be notified directly). To check out all of the official rules and regulations, head over to this page.

Once you’re done that, go here and enter and give yourself a chance to win a bundle that will stack your Mac!

Best of luck!

Mike Vardy is the Managing Editor at Lifehack. An independent writer, speaker, podcaster and "productivityist", you can read more of his writing at Vardy.me. He is @mikevardy on Twitter.

One of the biggest reasons that Windows users have a hard time making the switch to a Mac is that they have obtained years and years of Windows software. Of course there is no real way to run Windows apps natively on the Mac operating system. But, instead of not becoming a Mac convert or starting your application collection from scratch, you can use these 3 ways to use Windows on your Mac.

Remote Desktop

One of the fastest ways to get Windows running on a Mac, especially if you already have an installation of Windows (XP, Vista, or 7 Pro or higher) is to use the free Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection application that is available for your Mac. You will need to do some initial configuration, like making sure that your Windows PC is accessible through a firewall and allows for remote desktop connections.

To allow remote desktop connection on Windows do the following:

XP

1. Click Start and then right-click My Computer.
2. Click Properties.
3. Click the Remote tab, and then click to select “Allow users to connect remotely to this computer”.
4. Confirm the change.

Windows Vista/7

1. Click the start button and in the search box type “Control panel” and hit Enter.
2. Double click the System icon.
3. Under Tasks to the left click Remote settings.
4. One the System properties dialogue under the Remote Desktop heading, choose Allow connections from computers running any version of remote desktop
5. Click apply.

If you are on a local area network with the Windows computer that you just allowed to be remotely accessed, all you need is the computer’s IP and that it be turned on to access it from the Remote Desktop Connection application from Microsoft. Simply enter your IP, click connect, and you are good to go.

Virtualization

If you don’t want to remotely access your PC, keep Windows with you on your Mac, and have the ability to use your Windows apps next to your Mac apps, then virtualizing Windows inside of OS X is the way to go. There are a handful of great virtualization suites out there including Parallels Desktop ($79.99) and VMware Fusion ($49.99). But, if you want virtualization done for free, you may want to look into VirtualBox that was originally created by Sun and is now owned by Oracle.

Virtualization is a great way to use Windows on your Mac but can be a little bit of a bear to setup, especially if you aren’t familiar with virtualization at all. The process basically includes installing the virtualization software, creating a new virtual machine, and then installing Windows on the new virtual machine. The creation of the virtual machine (especially with Parallels and VirtualBox) is pretty straightforward. Where you can run into issues with the virtual machine is when you are trying to virtualize certain hardware components and setups, but for most users, they will never have to touch these options.

Another thing about virtualization is that you will need a valid license and installation media for the version of Windows you want to install.

Probably the hardest part of virtualizing Windows on a Mac is installing Windows on the virtual machine. If you have installed Windows before with succes, then this won’t be an issue, but for those that have never installed Windows, it could pose a problem.

Luckily there are some great tutorials for installing Windows from the Microsoft Support Site. Also, since Windows Vista, the installation process has become much easier.

Boot Camp

While virtualization is a great way to use your Windows apps alongside your Mac apps, some power users may want the full power of their Mac hardware to run Windows. For this type of user I suggest using Apple’s Boot Camp to install Windows on a totally separate partition on your Mac. This gives you the ability to boot into either OS X or Windows when you turn your compter on.

The benefits of using this type of setup is that you get to use the power of your Mac to run Windows, rather than using a less powerful virtual machine because it doesn’t have to share resources with the “host” operating system. Also, using Windows 7 natively on a Mac is pretty great and can prove to be a better user experience than most of the high-end PCs that are available.

The installation guides for Boot Camp can be found here on Apple’s support site. Just choose the installation guide that is applicable to your Mac to make it happen. Once again, you will have to know how to install Windows natively and have a valid Windows license and installation media to get this to work.

Go forth, you cross-platform warrior

Now that you have the ability to use Windows on your Mac you can use pretty much all the software in the world. Pretty awesome, huh? You can now turn into a cross-platform, Windows on Mac warrior.

Resources

• Remote Desktop Client for Mac
• Install, reinstall, or uninstall Windows
• Parallels Desktop
• VMware Fusion
• VirtualBox
• Apple Mac OS Manuals

If you’re a LinkedIn addict like we are here — we’ve discussed ways to create an online resume and how to use your LinkedIn data to create a stunning visual resume – and have an iPad (again, like we do…and we’ve told you pretty much everything you need to know about it too) then you’ve probably been waiting for a real LinkedIn app for the iPad.

Sure, LinkedIn has had an official iPhone app for a while. Sure, you could use the app on your iPad in 2X mode. But that’s hardly fun is it?

Well, I’m happy to let you know that your long (long, long) wait is finally over.

Yes, LinkedIn has updated their iOS app to fully support both the iPhone and iPad. Oh, and not just support the iPad, but support the new iPad with Retina graphics and a gorgeously simple UI that, well…you just have to see for yourself. So, LinkedIn for iOS is a go.

Here is what my Home Screen looks like on my iPad:

And here’s the News Screen:

Both screens look as great as they are useful. Looking for news from your connections? Yeah it’s there. Groups? Tap. Got it. Now you might expect the iPhone version of this app to be, well, similar right? Sure, you’re correct—and wrong too. LinkedIn took the right features and layout from the new iPad version and applied them to the iPhone as well. Now, some of these features appeared in a recent update to the iPhone app, but I think LinkedIn added some nice touched to the iPhone version that came from putting the spit and polish on the iPad version. In case you don’t believe me, here are some screens from my iPhone:

In a side-by-side comparison of the two LinkedIn for iOS apps on my iPhone 4 and iPad (3rd gen), I think LinkedIn is aiming the iPad to be more of a content consumption and creation tool, while the iPhone app more of a connections tool. For example on the iPhone you can download all of your LinkedIn connections to your address book. I couldn’t find that on the iPad (of course if you sync your contacts with iCloud it doesn’t matter, really). Reading updates and news from my connections, groups, and other sources is great on the iPad, but a wee cramped on the iPhone.

Bottom line: if you only have an iPhone and use the LinkedIn app you have a great tool to manage and tap into your connections. If you only have an iPad, the app lets you read about your connections, and connect too. Now if you have both devices…then I think you have the total package.

Download LinkedIn for iOS (iPhone and iPad) for yourself and let us know in the comments if these apps will encourage you to use LinkedIn more — or maybe in a new way than you did before.

Tris Hussey is a technologist, author, teacher, and Canada’s first professional blogger. He has written several books on social media and technology including Create Your Own Blog (1st and 2nd editions), Using WordPress, Sam’s Teach Yourself Foursquare in 10 Minutes, WordPress Essentials (video lessons), and Sam’s Teach Yourself WordPress Themes in 24 Hours (forthcoming in late 2012 with Catherine Winters). You can read Tris’ posts on TrisHussey.com, the FutureShop Tech blog, and other sites around the Internet.

The last time I was here, we looked at how to use your Linkedin data to create a stunning visual resume with Re.Vu.

If you tried the service and found it wasn’t for you, here’s a few more nifty websites that also do a great job of displaying your resume.

1. Visualize.Me

Visualize.Me handles many of the functions I raved about when reviewing Re.Vu, and handles them very well.

The layout is simple yet very effective, with room for your work experience, skills and education, plus options to include languages spoken, recommendations and more. Pulling a page together takes no more than a few clicks, and where Visualize.Me triumphs over Re.Vu is in the ability to further customize fonts and colours.

Despite all that, the overall results aren’t quite as appealing to the eye as other sites, though as a good alternative to those sites, Visualize.Me is certainly the number one contender.

2. ResumUP

Another site offering to take your data from other services and make pretty pictures from it, ResumUP initially eschews Linkedin in favour of Facebook and Twitter. This is great if your data is available for the world to see on Facebook (more of which later), but if you’ve opted for privacy, this appears to be of little use.

Logging in for the first time presents you with a heavily-customizable resume that is quite overwhelming. Whereas other services place simplicity at their core, ResumUp has so much going on at once that it can be off-putting.

Sure, the infographs it creates are arguably the most attractive of any service we’ve looked at, but combined, they create a resume which seems far too busy to really be effective.

3. About.Me

About.Me may not be able to do anything fancy with social networking data, but that’s actually one its strengths.

Here, you only really need two things; a nice background image and some brief text. Put the two together with the site’s easy-to-use layout tools and what you’re left with is a great-looking profile which really grabs the attention. Most of that attention is immediately drawn to the background image, which unquestionably takes pride of place here. On the downside, this means that, unlike other sites who do the visual stuff for you, the onus on making your page stand out is all on you.

The site does have its own gallery of backgrounds that do look fantastic on any page, though using one of the ready-made backgrounds limits the opportunity to create a page that’s personal to you.

About.Me’s other main selling point is the stats it produces, providing you with a detailed background of how your page views, referrers and search terms people used to find you. Useful stuff that could well help you improve your page with a bit of search engine optimisation.

4. Facebook

More commonly known as the realm of embarrassing photographs and updates on the trivialities of every day life, Facebook’s new Timeline does provide a great opportunity to display your resume.

The ‘Life Event’ option can be used for inputting your work history, ‘Places’ for countries visited or areas of the world you’ve worked in and not to mention photos for a visual display of your proudest achievements. But if you’d rather keep your Facebook profile a private affair, why not consider creating your own Facebook page and making it another tool in your personal brand.

After all, what better platform to sell your skills than on one of the most popular websites in the world?

Conclusion

Whether its through one of the sites above or not, the opportunities to get creative with your online resume are abundant. Find what works for you and may your resume bring you much success — however you chose to create it.

(Photo credit: JOB via Shutterstock)