ThisIsLeon.co.uk

As a web designer/developer having an iPhone helps to make being productive just that bit easier. Here are some of the tools and work-flows I use to achieve this:

Email

Our company currently use Google Apps to provide email and shared calendar solutions. Since the iPhone is pre-configured with G Mail support I get access to my work mail via IMAP on the go. Whether I choose to read this or not is ofcourse another option.

Calendars

I use MobileMe for my personal calendar which is also synced to both my work iMac and home MacBook. As we use Google Apps for our calendars at work, I can view them by using NuevaSync. This is an externally hosted Exchange Server which offers Push notifications.

Contacts

Again I use MobileMe to take care of personal contacts and NuevaSync for anything work related. The ability to create a contact whilst out and about and then have that appear in Address Book is nothing short of brilliant.

Files

I use a number of tools to share files. For sharing things with clients I use DropBox which enables me to have a local folder which gets synced to ‘The Cloud’ so that my files are available anywhere in the world via a web interface or another Mac or PC. You can also share folders with other DropBox users to create collaborative folders.

As I have MobileMe I have also taken advantage of my iDisk for secure file backups. Download the iPhone apps MobileFiles and MobileDisk to access and download these files to your iPhone.

The first MobileFiles is my preferred choice as it allows you to download the files to your phone and has a much more polished interface. It also promises the ability to edit MS Office files on your device.

MobileDisk however does have a nice function that allows you to email the file as an attachment.

Back ups

I have created Automater tasks that will backup my address book contacts and save them to a folder on my iDisk, just incase some thing was to happen to my MobileMe sync process. This is also useful for backing up documents and other important files. My only gripe is that the transfer speeds for MobileMe are quite dismal. Instead I opt to use Transmit, which should automatically find your iDisk as long as you are logged in via the MobileMe pref pane in System Preferences.

Bento

Put simply Bento is a database app for Mac that allows you to create  database to hold any kind of information you desire. It integrates with Address Book, Mail, and iCal so any tasks and contacts created in Bento are instantly available in the Apple apps and as such sync to my iPhone. There is no native iPhone client at present but hopefully this shouldn’t be too far away.

 

Put simply the iPhone is a great tool to enable you to make your office truly mobile