Tech Essentials | The best business mobile apps for your phone

Swiss Army App
Bento is a Swiss Army Knife for the organizational fanatic. Designed by Filemaker, the app allows the creation of a range of database-driven tools. The app includes an address book and a digital media organizer (like iTunes, but one that can be used for graphics as well as audio and video), while the tutorial shows how it can be applied to everything from wine lists to lecture notes to exercise logs. Better still, the multi-user sharing features presumably offer more security in photo and information sharing than Facebook. Bento even has a desktop component (not required to run the iPhone version) which will sync with your phone via 3G wireless. Although Filemaker has for some time been designing cross-platform relational databases, the company does not seem to provide Bento for any device other than the iPhone.

Bento for iPhone by Filemaker:$5.99
Bento 3 for Mac (required to sync):
$49 Single User | $99 Family Pack

Not Your Father’s Rolodex

You’ve had a very successful day on the road, and are headed back to the office with 20 new business cards containing important contact information that needs to be stored securely. You could root around for space in your physical rolodex or take the time to enter them individually in your phone contact list, but the new generation of business-card scanning smart-phone apps renders those time-consuming chores obsolete. All you have to do is open the Business Card Scanner, hit “take picture,” centre a business card in the viewfinder of your phone camera and tap the screen (or toggle on BlackBerry). Some editing is required, but it’s much faster than the old way of doing business.

Business Card Scanner by SHAPE Services.
iPhone: $5.99 | BlackBerry: $9.99

Talk to Me

You’ve stepped away from the computer long enough to ruminate on an upcoming presentation, and the ideas are flowing. You could run back to the keyboard and start typing madly, only to run into a chatty co-worker, a pressing phone call, or a particularly compelling pile of fresh pastries and lose your train of thought. Or, you could just dictate it on the spot, with Dragon Dictation and leave the messy and time-consuming chore of transcription to one of these handy apps.

It’s easy to do, too. Simply tap the screen (or toggle on BlackBerry) and start speaking, slowly and clearly. When you’re done, you hit “End” and your audio recording is converted into text, ready for emailing or copying to clipboard. This is a tool with a lot of potential.

Dragon Dictation/Dragon for E-Mail by Nuance Communications.
Free for iPhone and BlackBerry