Android Apps for design, business, and productivity

For productivity, I found Rehearsal Assistant voice recorder so that I don’t lose all of the ‘mental notes’ I find myself making during my traffic-y, 30 to 60 minutes each way car commute to work.  It’s a nice way to (sort of) recover some of the productivity I lost when I gave up a train commute, and it lets you make little voice memos without too many steps. Which apps are you currently using?

Thanks – I’ll try those! Dirr app would be AWESOME – hopefully someday! Wonder if there are other good tree/plant apps in the interim?

Check out HipVoice they will be on Android soon.  http://www.hipvoice.com   They have a push to talk application that is cell phone carrier independant.  As long as the other person you are talking to has hipvoice you can PTT.

I second Researsal Assistant. Has been really useful . . . also recording lectures, etc.

Will do. Just found this tree app from Audubon – little pricey but no doubt worth it! Think I’ll see how I like the two Mark suggested below (just downloaded) before coughing up 10 bucks though.

http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/books_and_reference/audubon-trees_lbhz.html

I’m in design/build.  I just went to a Techo-bloc seminar and they have an app for iphones and ipod touch that allows you to calculate areas.  You set your pace distance, hold the phone flat and pace the perimeter of the area for the proposed patio and/or walls.  You can then input which of their products you want to use and it will give you the quantity required.  They also have their entire product line w/pictures and details so you can show a client (kind of small photos) some examples.  Also they will give you a list of closest suppliers to job site using GPS.  Obviously this is limited to this manufacturer but maybe shows what is coming.

Android is still a relatively young platform for productivity apps.  Though it has promise it has a long way to go before catching up with more mature platforms such as Windows Mobile.  Though I scratch my head sometimes at Microsoft’s strategies.  Most all of the productivity apps for Windows Mobile are for WM 6.5 and lower.  WM 7 is a complete rewrite and Microsoft doesn’t seem to want the business community to move to WM 7 as a lot of the features the Business community is use to using in WM 6.5 and lower are missing in WM 7.  It appears to me that Microsoft was in such a hurry to create a product to compete with the iphone that they left the business community behind.  Since the iphone wasn’t created origonally for business users I guess Microsoft didn’t see the need to put those features in WM 7.  The whole smartphone phenomena is hampered by the cell phone carriers.  Each phone has to be certified by each carrier.  And carriers don’t always see the need to certify a new device (Look how long it has taken to get another carrier besides AT&T to certify the iphone)