There are plenty of apps that can make you productive during work hours, obviously so. And then there are the others – unobtrusive ones that can increase your overall productivity by seamlessly integrating themselves with your work or lifestyle. Confused? Read on to figure out what I mean.
CamScannerThis is a brilliant little app that goes a long way in trying to make a lot of your work paperless. Use your phone’s camera to scan notes, receipts, to-do lists, sketches, business cards – basically anything scribbled by hand on paper. The app then smart-crops and converts the image into a clear, high-resolution one that can be shared for annotations, comments from team members, et al. The app also lets you download and use an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanner, so you can extract text from notes, and the InNote app to annotate the document. Subscribing to the premium version gives you access to 10GB of cloud space. And not just that, you are allowed to add upto 40 collaborators, and can share the document link with a password and expiration date. The app will also auto-upload your data to Box, Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote and OneDrive.
LongformYou’ve heard of the site, haven’t you? And you love it. Well, the app will make you fall in love with it even more. As per usual, the app lets you read popular stories doing the rounds on the Internet and browse staff picks; but it also includes an excellent new feature – you can now follow specific authors and magazine sites. You can read recommended stories from your friends and bookmark them for later – on Instapaper, Pocket or Readability.
ShortKind of like anti-Longform, the app helps you utilise your reading time optimally. You’ve saved almost a million articles on Instapaper or Pocket (I know I have; on both, in fact) and now have a reading list that’s 20 miles long. Short will help filter and read only the articles for which you can spare the time. Nuking food on a timer – get Short to give you a list of articles you can read in under four minutes. Movie starting in ten minutes and you got there early – Short will provide you with options you can read in under 10 minutes. You can even access the articles offline.
The new IFTTT appsIFTTT (If This, Then That) is probably one of the most efficient productivity apps today (as was expounded upon in an earlier edition of this column). And thanks to these three new apps that work in sync with IFTTT, your life is set to become even easier.
Do Camera – The app lets you create buttons specifically to trigger photo-related recipes. You can automatically add pictures to a new album, upload it just as quickly, share them on certain social media sites, or save them in Dropbox or add them to a document on Evernote.
Do Note – The exact same options are available on this app – but with notes. Create a note and automatically save it on Evernote, share it on Twitter, or add it as an event to your calendar.
Do Button – A personal favourite, all the app does is trigger recipes. Just add a list of recipes – send a late text to a friend, switch connected gadgets on or off, or even (this is a pre-made option, unfortunately only for U.S. numbers though) fake a phone call to yourself – and press the button for what you need.
