Advocate's Studio

I usually save the mobile apps for my Mobile App of The Day blog, but this one seems particularly useful for attorneys and worth a mention here in the Studio. Remarks is a new PDF app designed for the iPad from the fine folks at Readdle who know a thing or two about annotation and PDFs on the mobile screen. It is a fully featured PDF annotating application, with a variety of tools to fine-tune your marks. You can highlight, underline, strikeout text, draw upon the documents – that means pretty much anything you can do with the document on paper. But what sets Remarks apart from other apps, like another fav of mine iAnnotate and the like, is the extremely simple view / interface. It drops the complex layers and just gives you the WYSIWYG experience. Combine that with an able note-taking interface and it seems Remarks might be a replacement for more than few apps on your iPad. Notes become PDFs, which can then be easily viewed, printed and edited on your computer. Share notes with others for their perusal and comments. From the iTunes description, here are a list of features:

★ Make notes

Write everything you think is important on a meeting, lecture or presentation.
★ Sketch new ideas
Draw the plan to take over the world. Maybe even two, just in case.

★ Type in text notes
Prefer typing text to handwriting? We have a tool for that.

★ Annotate PDFs
Mark important things in books, journals or documents that you need to review.

★ Draw with your finger
Use it to make remarks in scanned books or simply draw something beautiful.

★ Co-edit notes with friends
You can edit notes made by any other Remarks user and vice versa.

What else Remarks lets you do:

✓ Add Notes Quickly
Only one tap is needed to start new a note, no matter where in the application are you located at the moment.

✓ Exchange documents with your computer
Use a USB cable and iTunes File Sharing to transfer notes and PDFs between your iPad and your computer.

✓ Edit your notes on the Mac or PC
You can make changes into your notes using any PDF editing application like Preview on the Mac or Adobe Reader on the PC

✓ Annotate Email Attachments
Open PDF attachments directly from the Mail app to annotate them.

✓ Share Notes With Your Friends
Email your notes to any other person with Remarks and they will be able to edit it like their own.

✓ Import PDFs from Dropbox, Box.Net, Safari and other applications.
Use “Open In” to transfer documents for note-taking or annotation from any popular cloud storage or iPad app.

You can get Remarks for $4.99 in the app store – a small price to pay if it becomes your favorite note-taking, PDF annotating, document collaboration app on the go.

Do you have use for a free project management application that helps you organize your efforts and the efforts of others in an easy to understand format? Check out Trello – a great app billed as a super-simple team workflow and list manager.

Based on the Web so its easily accessible by members of your working team, tasks can be assigned and tracked via a “board.” On the board, users can create “to do” lists, which serve as the point for creating and assigning tasks, updated upon completion.

Cards are tasks. The card is intended to track something that needs to get done. Cards can hold attachments, be embedded with video, be assigned users, include due dates, hold checklists. And because “drag and drop” is so much fun, you can drag and drop board members onto a card and drag cards into the “to do” list. Invite users to the board via email. Receive notifications about board activity so you can keep on top of what is happening. Or ping a user using the Twitter convention of @ in front of their name.

I like the fact that the board updates in realtime so that you can see progress as it happens – when others update the board, lists or cards, you will “see” it happen. With an eye towards organizational use, Trello will also support permissions for users. Or make your board public and show your business’ goals and efforts. It comes in Web app and iOS app flavors, but can be easily manipulated on any devices browser via trello.com. For now is free to use. It uses SSL security.  Add outside content via embed.

I can see dozens of uses for Trello. Use it to plan an event, prepare for a presentation, get a work project done, write a novel, or deal with customers. What a cool tool – thanks Trello!

DoAT, a mobile search startup that launched last spring at Techcrunch Disrupt, has taken the adage “out with the old, in with the new” in the New Year to heart. With a brand new mobile-optimized web app, DoAT promises that its new iteration, found at the site everything.me, will offer you everything on every topic imaginable in a very easy to use format. I have been playing around with the app and like it enough to offer it a spot on my home screen.

You can try it out on your computer or your mobile device, but it really shines on the latter. When you navigate to it, you are greeted with an attractive splash page showing a search box and trending searches. DoAT clearly recognizes that we lead with our eyes – the layout is really gorgeous. Click on shortcuts and see a list of popular categories. Drill down further and you will get to the real jewel of the service – mini web apps within everything.me for the most popular sources and search engines related to your search topic. When you click on this sub-apps, you will get information tied to your original search within the selected sources. The sources appear to change based on the search you run. And, when you click on an app like Twitter, for example, you will not only get tweets related to your search, but also Twitter accounts that tweet about your topic so that you can follow for future on point updates.

I can’t overstate the attractivenes of the app – DoAT has really done a nice job laying out the functionality. I was a fan of the original DoAT which promised a search experience on the mobile phone that gave homage to the apps that make such phones so useful and attractive. They are really making it happen with everything.me.

If you are a mobile search devotee, please check out DoAT and check back in here with your comments. This is a really cool interface and I believe it heralds the future of pocket computing.

One of the benefits of online research is the ability to organize results in ways that vastly improve upon the old fashioned version of collecting scraps of paper, writing notes in the margins of books and using sticky pads. Most people have at least heard of Evernote, the universal notetaking application, and many have heard of the equally cool Springpad. These apps are undoubtedly very useful, but sometimes I don’t need all the bells and whistles they offer. Sometimes, I prefer using an app called Simplenote for my basic notetaking and information-bit-saving — it offers a simple text editor for notes accessible on the web at Simplenote or via mobile app. You can tag notes and search them by keyword. It is my go-to application for basic, text-based notetaking.

You can turn Simplenote into a web clipping and saving service with the use of a couple of Chrome extensions.  Syncpad for Simplenote allows you to create notes while browsing the web, and append URLs to the note. Syncpad Webnotes (Beta) allows you to create a visual “sticky note” on a desired web page that persistently appears when you revisit the page. Using both extensions, you can write a standard note related to a certain web page and attach a sticky note on the page at the place where your target information is located, with a bit more explanation about why you saved the site in the first place while on your desktop. And then you can access the note on your Android or iOS mobile device when you are out and about.

Kind of brilliant and simple – a set of tools for saving content without the complexity that comes with Evernote’s notebook system. I am not the only one who loves Simplenote – check out the other great add ons, downloads and tools created by developers who also love the bare-bones service. Start clipping and saving virtually with Simplenote!

I just got a new work smartphone – its Android-powered, but more on that later. With a quick download of a Nitro app, I have sufficient security to access my Outlook mail, contacts, calendar and tasks. I understand my IT department is deploying tools to further integrate the mobile and desktop experience – first, iOS and Blackberry, with Android-friendly tools coming soon. When I come into work these days, a new wireless network pops up on my phone’s screen: iPad Test. Yes, Virginia, businesses are definitely going MOBILE.

Zendesk has published a cool infographic detailing the marriage between the enterprise and their smartphones. It’s tight, and only getting tighter. Check it out below, hat tip to WebWorkerDaily: