My top 5 “System Architect” iPhone applications
by Craik Pyke on 23/08/09 at 9:17 pm
Craik Pyke is telecommunications architect and software developer specializing in mobile applications and an editor for iPhoneCTO.
As a software developer and systems architect as well as something of a geek, I’ve been striving to find the best applications for whatever mobile device I happen to be using that will help me do my job more effectively and efficiently (thereby giving me more time to play with new technologies).
The iPhone is certainly not the first device I’ve made use of to keep me organized and on-track, however it is the most polished device I’ve used with the best applications suite for both personal and professional use. There really is no end to the applications available for “research and development knowledge workers” such as myself. Rather than produce a list of every application I use on a routine basis, I thought I’d focus on a combination of the apps dealing with the communications side of my job (documents, slides, spreadsheets) and the operating side (what I need to do, when, where).
Given my propensity to become… let’s say distracted… by “nifty” technologies, it’s important for me to make use of a couple of applications to keep my actions in order and for me to record new tasks. Therefore, my most used application is OmniFocus 
. There is certainly no shortage of applications for task management in the App Store, but for me OmniFocus is by far and away my best option given that I’m also a user of the Mac version. There is some setup involved with OmniFocus as you have to organize yourself into the GTD (Get-Things-Done) methodology. Once you’ve entered the contexts and projects you need, you can then easily create new actions and tasks within the iPhone application and sync them (via MobileMe, Bonjour, or WebDAV). Sorry Windows users, there’s no OmniFocus client for you at this time. You can also attach photos (which I make use of for whiteboard capture) and audio.
As I mentioned earlier, I use a couple of applications for task management. When I’m mobile and need to create new tasks for myself, I often find it easier to verbally dictate my task. However using OmniFocus’ audio attachments didn’t fit with my personal workflow. I like to see things in text and often would defer transcribing the audio until it was too late. Enter QuickVoice2Text Email . QuickVoice permits me to record my audio and then have it sent to myself as text. Once I receive the text in email, it’s a quick shortcut to push the action into OmniFocus. QuickVoice is powered by a company called SpinVox which provides extensive speech-to-text services. [Note: SpinVox has had a rash of negative publicity recently around their use of human intervention in the translations process. I cannot comment on how extensive this intervention is in relation to the functions QuickVoice uses, so it’s best to use caution with regards to confidential materials at this time].
Beyond tasks, I spend a fair amount of time dabbling in the black arts of system architecture via documents and slides. This means that, even when mobile, I need to access documents emailed to me. For viewing Microsoft and iWork documents, I use Documents To Go . I’ve been a ‘DTG’ user dating back to my days as a Palm V user. While the race between DocumentsToGo and QuickOffice is far from won, I prefer DTG based on its User Interface and it’s support of iWork ’09 files. I do miss QuickOffice’s iDisk integration and am patiently awaiting Excel editing capability on DTG, but it’s still my preferred solution. The need for a desktop client to sync files between the iPhone and the desktop may be viewed by some as detractor to the functionality, however I prefer it organisation that the desktop client permits me in terms of transferring an entire folder in one shot. Again – I believe this is a personal workflow thing, and that it may not be the right fit for everyone. (Here is the review iPhoneCTO did of Documents To Go.)
Another aspect of my job (and activities outside my primary job) require me to access various servers. In this case, I’ve come to rely upon two applications. The first is iSSH – SSH / VNC console . This combines the two most needed capabilities for my needs – command line interfaces via SSH and Windows / OS X access via VNC. There’s not much else I need for server access when not at my MacBook Pro. The other application is really a time saver – and that’s iEC2Cloud . iEC2Cloud gives me a simple management tool for Amazon EC2 machine instances. It permits me to start, stop, and configure machine instances from a simple application without fumbling through the same operations on Mobile Safari.
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