mLearnCon News and Updates

Last June I posted my iPad Office app showdown article looking at four available applications. This post has been extremely popular with readers and I have since received dozens of email inquiries for an updated article to see if my conclusions are the same or if there are more choices this year with the iPad and iPad 2 now available from Apple. As you will read in this article looking at six applications/suites there may not be just a single application that meets all of your needs, but there are a couple that clearly should be skipped and others that tend to stand out above the crowd.

In addition to the following text, I posted an extensive image gallerycontaining over 100 screenshots from the six applications. Make sure to check out the summary tables on the last page where I present some quick comparisons of all six apps, followed by my personal preferences.

In this article I present my experiences with the following (in alphabetical order):

1. Documents 2
2. Documents To Go
3. iWork apps (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote)
4. Office2 HD
5. Quickoffice Pro HD
6. Smart Office

My conclusion in June 2010 was that iWork was enjoyable, but had some limits at the time that I just couldn’t live with (import/export limitations primarily) while QuickOffice was my overall favorite that has since then evengotten better so make sure to read through to see if it is still what I recommend.

Read more about the recommendations here from ZDNet.

Nine out of ten UK businesses intend to increase productivity and reduce costs by using mobile technology and devices, a survey of IT decision makers has revealed.

Most UK companies will plan to use, or consider using, mobile technology over the next two to three years, according to the survey of 320 businesses of different sizes and sectors by SAP.

SAP says the survey shows accurate, real-time information is now expected anywhere, at any time. Companies want this data to improve customer service, business flexibility and productivity.

Some 80% of respondents said they will plan or consider the implementation of mobile business intelligence (BI) and mobile business analytics in the next two to three years, 76% said they will be looking at customer relationship management (CRM) and a further 64% said they will plan or consider an enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation.

This means there will be a significant increase in the number of companies running or implementing mobile applications, with only 43% running BI and business analytics, 49% running CRM and 43% ERP.

Tim Noble, managing director at SAP for UK & Ireland said the move toward ERP suggests businesses realise they have to innovate to remain competitive.

"With a third of companies expecting between 20% and 30% of employees to be mobile compared with only 4% now, it is no surprise they are starting to invest in on-device solutions," Tim Noble said.

Read the full article here ComputerWeekly

Android may have passed iOS once and for all indevice activations, but Apple is still winning in the enterprise market, according to Microsoft Exchange hosting provider Intermedia. Of all ActiveSync-capable smartphones activated by its 320,000 enterprise customers, 61 percent were iPhones, compared with only 17 percent Android smartphone devices. But the real hero of the enterprise story is the iPad, which is dominant among tablets.

The remaining 22 percent of smartphone activations fell into the "other" category, which includes Windows Phone devices as well as Symbian and Palm smartphones. The iPhone increased its share of all activations in April to 64 percent, and Android also saw an increase, with 33 percent of all new devices brought online during the month. Note that Intermedia's stats do not include BlackBerry devices, since they don't use ActiveSync.

While Apple maintains a strong lead with iPhones, the story of tablets is even more heavily weighted in favor of iOS. Intermedia saw 900 and 1,200 new iPad activations in March and April, compared with a monthly average of around 300 before that. IPads accounted for 99.8 percent of all new tablet activations, with the remaining tiny fraction split between the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Motorola Xoom, and the Huawei S7.

Read more here from BusinessWeek.

Google has released a version of its Docs productivity suite for Android, allowing people to view and edit text documents, spreadsheets and other content types on their smartphone without resorting to a third-party app.

The Android app solves one of the biggest problems with Gmail, which is the difficulty in opening up attachments that would be easily accessible on a desktop, using the full version of Google Docs. It works on Android phones at or above version 2.1 of the mobile OS — these shots show a Nexus S, which runs 'Gingerbread' Android 2.3 — and synchronises fully with the desktop version of the suite.

Read the full article here from ZDNet

How the smartest companies are letting employees use their personal gadgets to do their jobs

For lots of workers, the company BlackBerry just doesn't cut it anymore.

As people pack increasingly sophisticated smartphones in their personal life, they're clamoring to use those gadgets in the workplace as well. And many of their bosses are loosening up. They're ditching the traditional BlackBerry-or-nothing policy and allowing a wider range of mobile devices, including tablets such as the iPad.

This arrangement can bring benefits for both sides. Businesses don't have to buy as many phones for employees. Employees, meanwhile, don't have to carry two devices around, and people who didn't get a company phone before can have one now.

But there are a lot of potential pitfalls, too. Few smartphones offer the security features that the BlackBerry is known for. IT departments also struggle with supporting business programs on newer mobile operating systems such as Google Inc.'s Android. What's more, allowing personal phones raises a tough question: How much control does a company have over the device? What happens, for instance, when somebody leaves the company—and their phone is loaded with sensitive business documents?

Read the full article here from the Online Wall Street Journal