Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Favorite Productivity apps: DropBox and Genius Scan

Being here in NJ helping my mom with her medical issues and appointments has definitely been a team act with my sister and I have really come to rely on a couple of great productivity apps: Dropbox and Genius Scan, both of which are currently free and are not limited to the iPhone.

Dropbox is a mobile server where I can load up files (documents, photos, mp3s, pdfs, etc.) from my iPhone or PC that I can access from either of them or share links to those files.  It's great to load up say, the French Macaron primer pdf and be able to access it at home on the laptop or at a friends house on the iPhone.  This example shows I obviously have not fully utilized all the efficiencies that this app has to offer but the possibilities are fairly clear.

I came to really put Dropbox to use in conjuction with Genius Scan on this trip. Genius Scan allows me to "scan" documents with my iPhone camera and save them as pdfs in my Dropbox.  As my sister and I were sharing some of the appointment and follow-up duties, it was handy that I scanned some lab reports (she took the originals with her to fax) with Genius Scan and saved them in my Dropbox.  I was able to e-mail the lab reports and expedite some appointments.  Between the two apps, I'm able to scan and save records and paper work that I'd like to keep a copy of and not have to find a copier to make copies and then carry around a bunch of paper files.  Upgrading to Genius Scan+ (for $2.99) gives you direct upload choices to Dropbox, EverNote, etc., but so far the free version just has the extra step of hitting the "other apps" icon and then selecting Dropbox, Evernote, etc. from there, so I'm totally happy staying with the free version.

Currently you get 2GB of memory on Dropbox for free and you can pay a monthly fee for more space.  Or they offer incentives that earn you more space, like referring friends to Dropbox.  So on that note, if you are interested in Dropbox, help this girl out and use this link: http://db.tt/cJyBd4A  We'll both get an additional 250MB of space if you get it.

Anyhoo, whether personal or for work, both these free apps are pretty handy and easily applicable to a variety of situations.  I highly recommend both--especially since they're both free!

4 comments:

Blah said...
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Pound said...

have you tried google docs? anyone you invite to access it can from anywhere.

Ruby said...

Pound, Google Docs is slightly different from these apps. It is more advisable to use in a laptop or desktop rather than a mobile gadget. These two apps here use the opportunity of being mobile… these two would be a good fit for people who are always on the go and who rely on gadgets to keep connected.
Ruby Badcoe

PJ said...

Nice list thanks for sharing…Hey friends I would suggest you to download the Productivity apps (Paid).
1. Future Scheduler - It has features of scheduling sms and additionally it also allows scheduling phone calls, status updates and emails.
Download from
http://itunes.apple.com/app/future-scheduler/id515936774?mt=8
2. Location Alerts – Schedule text based reminders, future text and calls based on the location.
Download from
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/location-alerts/id567479415?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D2