Gene Smith's Lifestream

Being productive on the iPhone?!?! Who would have thunk that. What with the various Fart apps and the game changing Beer app.

Seems like a lot of my friends have gotten iPhones over the past few weeks. I’ve had mine for about a year and a half (wasn’t quite an early adopter). Like the new crop of users, the first thing I did was bloat my new purchase up with time wasting games. This ultimately ended up with me literally burning out the battery within the first two weeks of having it. I quickly replaced it and decided to get serious about my new and indispensable tool. No more time and hard drive wasters for me — I moved full speed in molding my iPhone into something that would make my life easier, more productive and less hectic. In short, I wanted a computer (notice, I don’t call my iPhone a phone — I hate phones) that could fit in my pocket and extend my productivity when I’m away from my laptop (my second home). Nowadays, marketers call such a tool a netbook, but whatever. Here’s some of what I use:

Dropbox: This is actually a website and not a native iPhone app. It’ll work with any browser, but the layout is optimized to work on an iPhone. For those not familiar, Dropbox allows you to place files on the web making them available to you where ever you are. On a Mac, Dropbox integrates with your Finder and allows you to easily move files around on what would appear to be a folder like any other folder on your box. I use it primarily to store PDF and Word files (books, proposals, etc) for viewing when on the road and away from my laptop.

1Password: This iPhone app keeps track of all of my passwords. It synchs with its counterpart on my laptop and requires a password to access in case in the wrong hands. Very cool and handy.

Radiant iPhone extension: Radiant is a great Content Management System built using the Ruby on Rails framework. To help manage my Radiant sites, I use an app developed by Andrea Franz that allows me to manage my sites via my iPhone. It doesn’t allow for complete access to the CMS, but it does allow me to do basic site management, such as editing pages and creating page parts.

Things: This app keeps me sane. I’m not big on the whole GTD thing, but I do recognize that I do need some structure to my day otherwise things will go spiraling out of control. Hence, Things. I use it on my laptop to organize my many projects and drill down to actionable to-do items. When on-the-go and away from my lap, I can synch it up to my iPhone. I can even create new to-dos on my iPhone and synch it up over wi-fi when I get back to the casa. Essential.

Evernote: This is a beast of an app and I haven’t quite been able use it to its fullest capabilities yet. For the uninitiated:

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

I had to quote them, because I was unable to adequately summarize all that the app does. I use it for many things, but primarily for capturing the many, many, many random brain farts that I have throughout the day. With Evernote, I’m able to jot ideas down using a “Text Note”. Or if I see something that, for whatever reason, may be of importance to an idea I’m having, I can snap a picture, tag it, and write a quick reminder as to why the object is important. If I’m in a particularly verbal mood (which is rare), I can leave a “Voice Note”. I capture my thoughts when on-the-go, come back to the house and synch it up with my lap for further development or deletion. Good stuff.

When I first bought my iPhone, I was doing a lot of web development using Media Temple’s servers (I’ve since moved to Slicehost and loving it — MT is great too). While there, MT was probably one of the first hosting vendors to roll out an iPhone app that allowed you to manage your account via the iPhone. Very cool.

I’m always on the hunt for more time saving/productivity enhancing iPhone apps. What do you use?