I’ve been a huge advocate of Xobni for a long, long time. When I started using it, it was a powerful tool to fix a specific problem; now it’s an app that every smartphone user should be using. 

I first discovered Xobni around five years’ ago when it was in its infancy. It was initially a turbocharged version of search for Outlook that lived in a special side bar. It handled threaded conversations and generally made managing mail simple, as well as collating info about my contacts together for me. It showed me how many emails, links and files I had exchanged with the contact. I could click on a link and open that file or email from within the sidebar. Very clever and helpful: making your life easier by putting all your data in one place. 

Xobni would find stuff that would defeat classic Outlook search in the older versions of Office (2003). Over time, it added integration to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter so that it would discover and link that live update data to the contact in the Xobni tool bar. So up until about 18 months’ ago, it was a great tool to maximise your use of Outlook and put lots of useful data at your fingertips. It was like a “get out of jail free” card for finding stuff!

One of its lesser known features was how it created relationships between contacts: it could find all the people you had ever been cc’d into an email with and make them a Xobni contact. It would know who you had directly contacted and who you were just in a cc’d mail with, so you could establish relationships, search for connections, get introductions and generally be a smarty pants on your email communications. 

It also offers email analytics. For example, you can measure almost any aspect of your email volume, response time or effectiveness. You can see how many emails you’ve exchanged with someone, how long it takes you to reply or them to reply to you. You can see who emails you the most, least and at what time of day/week/month you get the most/least emails. The business intelligence this gives you is very powerful if you need to measure the effectiveness of the communications in your business and which business doesn’t need that? You know who jumps to attention and who needs a shove on email. Maybe it’s better to give them a call?

This was great and a common part of the toolset in the Efficient Thinking training I deliver. But what changed everything and made it an essential tool was the launch of the Smartr Contacts apps for iPhone, BlackBerry and Android handsets. At the same time, Xobni rolled out the Xobni Cloud service. This glued all of my emails in Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo Mail together with your phone and other contacts. Suddenly all your contacts from everything you used were in one place, searchable with relationships and basic email history/data analytics built in!

It meant there was a cloud back up of all my contacts if I needed them, all my disparate contact sources were merging into one powerful, searchable address book and I could see all of the top level email history of our interactions. I could call, email, Facebook or Tweet them from the one app.

So where’s the downside? There’s always a downside. The first is that the “special sauce” is only really in the paid for version at $48 a year or $7.99 a month; the free version ties itself into the auto-complete on email addresses and “allegedly” hijacks your auto-completes unless you pay for the full version. It doesn’t really do that but certainly gives that impression to end users. Some of the funky cloud syncing/back up doesn’t play ball unless you pay for it. Plus some of the nice sidebar features around links and appointments are disabled. Xobni Free is certainly functional, has its place and will suit many users but Xobni really does benefit from a full subscription. 

The other downside: it’s reportedly a resource hog in some set-ups  As it uses the Outlook PST file, some IT managers are nervy about using it in case it causes corruption or hogs memory. Arguably, Outlook is as likely a culprit of data corruption and memory hogging!

Other than that, I don’t see why not to use it. The apps are free, there’s a free version to trial so you can see if it works for you and your business. You can try it on your personal email first in Gmail/Yahoo Mail and then extend out to business use.

Download a trial now and see how Xobni can make you work Smartr. If you want to learn more about how Outlook and smarter thinking about email can help your workload, look at the training on offer from our sister brand, Efficient Thinking.

On 26th March 2013, O2 Travel is changing for all O2 customers. It’s a “give and take” change in my view. 

The first big change is that the calls still cost 41p per call to connect but incoming and now outgoing calls no longer use your UK minutes. That’s a theoretical benefit, if you don’t have enough minutes on your plan, but pretty much everyone now has more minutes than they need now. 

The other big change is that the £1.66 daily data cap is now only 15MB, down from 25MB, However, you can get an additional 15MB for an extra £1.66 that day. See O2’s details below

“Customers can add more data to their O2 Travel allowance at any point during the day. If they need more data they’ll be able to reset their allowance for a further £1.66 by texting moredata to 23336 which will give them an additional 15MB that day. These texts cost 7p”. 

For more detail, direct from O2, click here.

So what’s the impact?

For the vast majority of O2 clients, this change has minimal impact and it is only the data allowance change that needs careful examination. Most people don’t go over 15 MB a day in normal use; there’s a reason the most common data bolt on is 500MB (16.6MB per day!).

I would advise it’s generally business as usual but just be mindful: install a data counter app on your smartphone. Most phones have a data record built in but the iPhone’s is a bit buried! I prefer a specific solution called Data Usage. It’s worth 69p to prevent a nasty shock. 

Everyone’s had that sinking feeling in the belly when you don’t know where your phone is. What is that sinking feeling? The fear of how much it costs to replace it; all that data you haven’t backed up; everybody’s phone number; all the personal details stored that you don’t want in the wrong hands; the irreplaceable photographs? 

If you have any kind of smartphone or tablet, help is at hand.  Most manufacturers have some variation on a theme to keep the data secure, make devices traceable and remote wipe capable to stop the data falling into the wrong hands. If you lose your device, you can locate it and erase it if need be. However, if you haven’t set it up before it happens, it’s too late! So don’t delay: this post is designed to inspire and inform you how to do it for yourself.

Almost all modern phones (above a very basic specification level) have the ability to be plugged in via USB cable to a PC to back up key data. The classic piece of software for this is the Nokia Ovi/PC Suite. This allows for almost a complete image of a Nokia handset to be saved to a PC, ready to restore data in case of faults, data corruption or loss. 

It’s a great bit of software with one huge flaw, known in tech circles as PEBKAC (“Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair” i.e. human error). It’s not the phone’s fault, it’s not the PC’s fault, but it is the user that doesn’t plug the phone in. It’s very easy for a human to forget to backup/plug in a device regularly enough to prevent loss of data: it’s not your fault; it’s the way we’re all wired!

That’s why automated/cloud back-ups that require no cables are the way to go to secure data. You still haven’t solved the issue of what to do when it goes missing though! So here’s how to handle that challenge across the common platforms, as well as their respective backup services.

Windows Phones have device wiping built in via Microsoft Exchange servers. In fact, any mobile device with email connected via Exchange has the option of a data wipe. Speak to your IT team about this or we can introduce you to our IT guy, Tony, to advise.  It doesn’t work if you aren’t using Exchange but that’s rare for a Windows Phone user.

Exchange also doesn’t help you locate the phone if you can’t find it. Luckily, Windows offers a solution here: however, you still have to set up a Windows ID first. It will also allow a basic device wipe for non-Exchange users.

Apple is the most well-known solution with its iCloud and Find My iPhone service.  The personal data synchronisation in iCloud isn’t particularly great. I would only ever trust it with contacts, possibly calendars and some documents. “Photo Stream” and “iTunes Match/iTunes in the Cloud” takes care of the rest of the tricky stuff and turning on iCloud backup of your device is definitely worth doing to backup all the niggly little bits that sit outside of the classic sync services.  You would find Office 365 or a Google Account does a better job of synchronising your email, calendars, contacts and tasks.

However, Find My iPhone is truly brilliant. It enables you to locate your device wherever it might be. Not only does it show you where it is on a map, you can also trigger an audible alert on the device, PIN code lock it, send a message to the screen (“please return to me for a £50 reward, no questions asked”) or remote wipe all the data. With the iPhone 5 on iOS 6, you can even make it ring you back!

A client was able to work with us to track his iPhone travelling down a road every few seconds (on its way to the police station, in fact). We sent a message to the phone and it was returned to the owner within fifteen minutes. 

BlackBerry has remote wipe built into their BES servers, but not device tracking. If you don’t have a BES server and/or want device tracking, BlackBerry Protect is for you. It offers cloud backup via Wi-Fi, device tracking and wiping. So it has benefits for every BlackBerry user. Even better, like iCloud, it’s free! Here’s the home page for Protect and it’s really easy to set up with your BlackBerry ID.

Android is a bit trickier, as there is nothing “out of the box” to do it. However Where’s My Droid should tick the security boxes, with services like Dropbox and Google Drive taking care of document sync. 

There are also some alternatives here: http://www.tested.com/how-to/3743-how-to-remote-wipe-data-on-an-android-phone/

So now you know how to secure the data on your mobile phones and tablets, your valuable data should be as secure as possible.

If you are sitting there and thinking, “I know I should but I don’t have the confidence to do it”, get in touch (rob@carphonecompany.com) and we can help you do it.  For a call-out fee, we’ll make sure it’s backed up, there’s no data loss and you have peace of mind going forwards. 

Last July, we covered how to protect your phone from water damage as part of our roaming/holiday update. The current wet weather (and Centre Court’s roof keeping play continuing) made me think an update was in order. 

What’s changed since last year?

The general advice of sensible usage and ensuring you understand how you get charged hasn’t changed. However, in the past couple of months, the EU regulatory changes have certainly altered the landscape for using your mobile in Europe.

On O2, the new “O2 Travel” service has become the default option. For almost every user, it’s a better choice than paying as you go: hence why it is the default setting. Unless you receive a very high volume of incoming calls or make very short calls when you use the phone in the EU, O2 Travel is better value.

On Vodafone, the new Euro Traveller option is not the default option and careful analysis needs to be made to make sure the deal fits your usage. I would define the simple “back of a postage stamp” calculation as: if you are happy to spend £35 plus VAT to use your mobile for a two week holiday in the EU, Euro Traveller is for you. It removes the risk of bill shock by using your UK inclusive allowance so if your current UK allowance suits you, there is no need to alter how you use the mobile when abroad on Euro Traveller.

Check out our last two blogs for full details of how the propositions work financially and the network web pages are below

http://www.o2.co.uk/international/o2-travel/business

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/business/price-plans/working-abroad/eurotraveller/index.htm

The updated blog

As it’s approaching holiday season, we felt it was time to share the tips and tricks to save a fortune and protect your phone from harm when taking it away on holiday.

One of the things you learn in school science is that oil and water don’t mix. When it comes to mobiles, I would say that sand/water and mobiles don’t mix! What do you tend to gravitate towards when on holiday, sand and water!

Our biggest tip is to stick your phone in a sandwich bag when heading to the beach. A rogue grain of sand can scratch a phone screen: if it gets under the plastic lens, it can crack the LCD screen. The classic sandwich bag with a Ziploc or press seal pretty much stops this from happening. As a side benefit, it also makes the phone moderately splash proof. I wouldn’t go swimming with it in a bag but it offers a degree of protection that it isn’t going to get without it.

If it does get wet, turn it off, take it apart (if the handset allows you to) and immerse in a bowl of dry rice for 24 hours. Silica gel (the stuff you find in little white bags with DO NOT EAT on it) is even better at drying out moisture but that’s not the kind of thing you can easily get down the supermarket. We have a more detailed guide we can email you; just email us.

If you get in touch and are one of the first fifty to respond, we will even send you a sandwich bag to protect your phone for you. We will need your full postal address though.

If you are really clumsy and expect to have a water bound problem, get one of these in advance of your trip. http://www.save-a-phone.co.uk/

So now your phone is safe, let’s stop it costing a fortune when abroad.

Tip 1

Do you need to take it abroad? If you leave it at home, it can’t run up roaming charges! Plus you get guaranteed peace and quiet from the office.

Tip 2

Switch off your voicemail. Every time you pick up a voicemail, it’s a roamed call. Outside the EU, you are charged when the voicemail is left too! Dial 1760 on O2 to do this or 1210 on Vodafone to turn it off. Dial 1750 or 1211 to switch on when back home.

Tip 3

Whenever you can, use text. It’s often cheaper than making a call and receiving an SMS is free when roaming.

Tip 4

Turn off data roaming. It’s potentially very expensive and can rack up huge bills in no time. In the EU, there is a £40 data cap in place to control costs if your tariff doesn’t override it.

Tip 5

Ask us about various add-on’s the networks offer to reduce roaming costs. Our last two blog posts cover the new rates from O2 and Vodafone. As a general rule of thumb, the more you use the handset when abroad, the better your options are.  

We can add services to reduce calls in certain countries, offer inclusive roamed calls or add inclusive roamed data. Just get in touch well before you go and we can advise on the best route to take.

Tip 6

If there’s local or free WiFi, use it. Use it for email, data and look into using Skype or Facetime to make calls as it is free to call Skype to Skype.

Follow all of these and you can enjoy your holiday without a risk of bill shock with a phone that should return in one piece.

On July 1^st, the EU is implementing regulatory changes on the cost of calls, SMS and data whilst roaming in the EU. This means that the major networks are altering their propositions: as with any change, you need to take care and analyse the options to see if there are real benefits. Mobile tariffs and contracts are full of clauses that perform “smoke and mirror” tricks.

OR

You could read on further and we have done the hard work for you! There’s a huge history of old tariff options on O2: One Rate 300, International Traveller Service, Discount Country, My Europe Extra, Chosen Country Spain and International Favourites are just a sample of the past options.

It’s impossible to cover every scenario in a blog to compare what you may have now and what the new options are offering. The safest route is to get in touch and arrange some time to explore the best solution together. You can still keep any of the old options but cannot access the new stuff without retiring all of the old options on your account.

What can be covered though is the top level understanding of the new Europe only proposition: O2 Travel. It breaks down in to the classic three elements: calls, SMS and data.

Calls

• 42p ex VAT per call to receive a call with up to 60m free on that call. 30p per minute after the first 60m.
• 42p ex VAT per call to make a call to UK or Europe with up to 60m deducted from UK allowance per call. 30p per minute after 60m.

Texts

• 9p ex VAT per text sent to the UK or Europe, free to receive.

Data

• £1.66 ex VAT for 25MB of data usage per day in Europe.

“So Rob, that seems great but what does it actually mean and how do I choose if it’s good for me?” I have simplified the key indicators as follows. Ask yourself or research if your usage matches the following statements (if unsure, contact me to help you find the answers from your billing).

1. If your average outgoing call duration whilst roaming in Europe is over two minutes, O2 Travel is cheaper.
2. If your average incoming call duration whilst roaming in Europe is over seven minutes, O2 Travel is cheaper.
3. If you have a smartphone (not a BlackBerry) that has any moderate level of use when roaming in Europe, O2 Travel is cheaper.
4. If you have a BlackBerry that has any moderate level of use when roaming in Europe, O2 Travel is possibly cheaper.

If you match more than one of the first three options and have no special add-on’s for roaming in Europe, O2 Travel is almost certainly for you.  It would be prudent to make/receive infrequent long calls to maximise your value for money. There are certain ratios of incoming to outgoing calls that provide worse value but by understanding the basic rules, you can modify your usage to avoid this.

If you only match one of the first three, it’s still probably a good choice and offers more potential usage for less spend. If you match option 4 or have optional roaming bolt-on’s, it needs a bit more analysis to establish the best solution for your needs; get in touch to find out the best options for you.

What do you need to do?

If you think it’s a winner, email me (rob@carphonecompany.com) and let us make the changes on your account for you. We will  discuss/analyse your usage first to ensure it’s the correct route for you and whether an alternative option is better.

If you are unsure, email me (rob@carphonecompany.com) and let us discuss/analyse your usage to establish the correct route for you.

Even if you aren’t a current mobile client but want to explore what benefits there are for your business, please get in touch. You may be able to access a better all-round deal via us and access our knowledge.

Anything to be wary of?  

This only applies to mobile phones with voice, not data cards (dongle, iPad, MiFi)

UPDATED Vodafone roaming rates are changing

On July 1^st, the EU is implementing regulatory changes on the cost of calls, SMS and data whilst roaming in the EU. This means that the major networks are altering their propositions: as with any change, you need to take care and analyse the options to see if there are real benefits. Mobile tariffs and contracts are full of clauses that perform “smoke and mirror” tricks.

OR

You could read on further and we have done the hard work for you! There’s a huge history of old tariff options on Vodafone: Passport, World, European Data Traveller, roamed data bundles and Vodafone Europe Bundle are just a sample of the past options.

It’s impossible to cover every scenario in a blog to compare what you may have now and what the new options are offering. The safest route is to email me and arrange some time to explore the best solution together. You can still keep any of the old options but cannot access the new stuff without retiring all of the old options on your account and possibly moving to the latest Vodafone tariffs.  If you use data abroad at all when in Europe, you need to discuss the impact of these changes: please get in touch, you may need to alter your usage to control your costs.

What can be covered though is the top level understanding of the new Europe only proposition: Euro Traveller. It breaks down very easily: pay £2.50 ex VAT per day to use your UK allowance for the following three elements in Europe: calls, SMS and data.

Calls

• Outgoing calls deduct from your UK call allowances (excludes One Net allowances).
• Voicemail retrieved from UK call allowance.
• Incoming calls are free 

Texts

• Outgoing SMS deduct from your UK call allowances. Excludes MMS.

Data

• Data taken from UK core allowance.

“So Rob, that seems great but what does it actually mean and how do I choose if it’s good for me?” I have simplified the key indicators as follows. Ask yourself ,or research, the answers to the following questions/statements (if unsure, contact me to help you find the answers from your billing).

Do you have Vodafone Passport?

If yes, see 1,2,3 and 4 below: if no, go to section “No Passport?”

1. If you make on average more than four outgoing calls per day whilst roaming in Europe, you need Euro Traveller and will have to change tariff to access it.
2. If, on average, your total received/incoming call duration per day is less than thirty eight minutes whilst roaming in Europe, you need Euro Traveller and will have to change tariff to access it.
3. If you have a smartphone (not a BlackBerry) that has any moderate level of use when roaming in Europe, you need Euro Traveller and will have to change tariff to access it.
4. If you have a BlackBerry that has more than 4MB of daily use when roaming in Europe, you need Euro Traveller and will have to change tariff to access it.

This isn’t a shopping list: if you match pretty much any of the above options, Euro Traveller works for your needs.  It works even if you only partially match a couple of the options. If you only make a couple of calls, use a MB or two of data and receive one call per day, Euro Traveller still works out cheaper than Passport.

Your safest option?  Get in touch and we will check your usage over for you and ensure it’s the right decision.

“No Passport?”

If you don’t have Passport on your tariff, it’s an even easier choice. Do you have a smartphone or not? If so, what make is it?

1. If you have a smartphone (not a BlackBerry) that has any moderate level of use when roaming in Europe, you need Euro Traveller and may have to change tariff to access it.
2. If you have a BlackBerry that has more than 4MB of daily use when roaming in Europe, you need Euro Traveller and may have to change tariff to access it.

If you don’t have a smartphone, it’s easy too.

1. If you make over ten minutes of outgoing calls per day, you need Euro Traveller
2. If you receive over thirty eight minutes of calls per day, you need Euro Traveller. 

Again, if you mix and match the usage, Euro Traveller is often the best mix: only six minutes of outgoing (£1.44) and sixteen minutes of incoming calls (£1.06) still works out the same or better. Put simply, the more calls you make, the more likely Euro Traveller is likely to work better for you.

What do you need to do next?

If you think it’s a winner, email me (rob@carphonecompany.com) and let us make the changes on your account for you. We will discuss/analyse your usage first to ensure it’s the correct route for you and whether an alternative option is better for you.

If you are unsure, email me (rob@carphonecompany.com) and let’s discuss/analyse your usage to establish the correct route for you.

Even if you aren’t a current mobile client but want to explore what benefits there are for your business, please get in touch: you may be able to access a better all-round deal via us and access our knowledge.

Anything to be wary of?

Some newer tariffs may increase the basic rental costs on your bill: this has to be considered against the benefits of the Euro Traveller options. This will of course factor into the analysis performed for any current clients by Car Phone Company Limited.

This only applies to mobile phones with voice, not data cards (dongle, iPad, MiFi)

Once you ditch the old tariffs, there’s no going back!

Other details you may need

Here’s a map of where it can work

The £2.50 (excl. VAT) daily charge is triggered by the following:

• Making a call.
• Initiation of a data session (above 50Kb usage).
• Sending an SMS.
• Retrieving a Voicemail.

Usage outside of allowance will be charged at the current domestic out of bundle rate.

The following do not trigger the £2.50 (excl. VAT) charge:

• Answering a call.
• A call that is not answered or where a Voicemail is left.
• Data under 50Kb usage (to allow for background data activity).
• A call to 191.
• Use of extras not part of core tariff (e.g. Premium numbers).

With the upcoming long Bank Holiday weekend, my thoughts turned to how many people use the bank holidays to get more bang from their holiday allowance buck. One of the biggest challenges when off work is how to handle mobile voicemail.

Even if you announce “I’m away, it’s unmonitored and please call A.N. Other person,” that additional call may never happen and often you come back to a mailbox full of messages that may or may not be answered or dealt with. This week’s app/service solves that problem and a load more: Hullomail.

We stumbled upon Hullomail when looking for Visual Voicemail alternatives for the iPhone. Visual Voicemail is brilliant: play messages in any order, rewind, and pause them. However, it only works on the iPhone on O2. What about other networks or other phones? Well, Hullomail works on Android, BlackBerry and iPhone. The basic service is free and it’s much better than the inbuilt iPhone voicemail.

How come? Well, it’s cross platform so more people can get its benefits. The mailbox is centralised so your iPhone, iPad and Blackberry could all access the same messages and get the same alerts. You choose which device you use to interact with it and it doesn’t have to be a phone. It can email the voicemails and alerts to you so you don’t even need your phone. (I’ll come back to this later.) 

It picks up missed calls even if the caller doesn’t leave a message, so you never miss an incoming call.

You can upgrade to have personal greetings per person. That’s right, you can announce “Hi John from AB Company, sorry I missed you call, I’ll be right back to you.” How special will that make a caller feel? 

It can also upgrade to Scribe services: “Get the Gist” sends the first ten seconds of the message as a text file so even when you can’t listen to the message, you can get an idea of  who and what it’s about. 

So how does it solve the holiday voicemail issue? If you are using the “email the voicemail to you” service, you can forward that email on…

You can write an incoming mail rule in Outlook in server based environments (if you aren’t in that environment, why aren’t you? It’s from only £4 a month per user on Office 365 and Car Phone Company offers a free trial). So how do I do that?

• Select “Create a new rule in” in the Office 2010 ribbon or right click an email from Hullomail and select “Create Rule”.
• Write a rule that runs on any email that comes from noreply@hullomail.com.
• Tell the rule to forward those mails to another user who is covering for you.
• As soon as the Hullomail voicemail message is emailed to you, the email forwards on to whoever is covering for you, sound file, number dialling and all!
• Plus you can also write a second rule so that the message moves from your inbox to another folder, ready for you to review when you get back. 

If you need help on rules, get in touch: you can also create rules in webmail such as Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail.  

It also means that you can keep email as evidence of orders, special messages you want to keep for business/sentimental reasons or use to forward on to the police if you have abusive callers.

The ability to save, forward and manage voicemail as individual files is an amazing tool. Maybe you could use it to enhance your CRM system and details stored on client interactions. Maybe it can massively speed up your business processes and delivery to clients. Maybe it just makes a few days off a lot less stressful and easier when you get back! 

Give it a try, you can always turn off the service if it doesn’t suit you, but once tried, it’s hard to imagine a different way. And if you have a Blackberry or Android phone, you can have one less thing for the iPhone users to brag about with you. 

After email, contacts and calendars on the move, the next most requested smartphone feature is the ability to access Microsoft Office apps on the go. Pretty much every smartphone has some kind of viewing functionality but only Windows Mobile has inbuilt true Office integration. No surprise the Windows phone will play happily with Office, SharePoint and SkyDrive but that can be a limiting ecosystem to many businesses.

For every other brand, it’s been a traditional challenge to find a solution to let you view, edit and sync on the go. I tried for years across a range of devices to get something that worked and didn’t destruct the formatting of the files I was working on. 

For iOS users, they tend to turn to the iWork suite of apps: Pages, Numbers and Keynote. They are very powerful, create beautiful looking documents but are awful at syncing easily across phone, tablet and desktop/laptop. It is drag and drop, open browsers, etc: just horrible and “un–Apple” like! Maybe with the new Mountain Lion OS releasing onto Mac, it may work better but that still leaves PC users with a broken experience to sync changes without effort or making files look screwy. 

The best app we have found to allow tablet and smartphone users to work on the go with the most common platforms (iOS and Android) is Quickoffice Pro. It has optimised versions for tablets that really make use of the extra screen space. It syncs with pretty much any popular cloud based service: Dropbox, box.net, Sugarsync, Google Documents, Ignyte, Evernote. Even better, it doesn’t destroy the formatting or convert to a “mobile version” 

Here’s an example of how it can help if you need to edit a document. It’s not in your email, it’s not on device but is in your cloud sync solution.

• Open up Quickoffice Pro, 
• Provide your credentials for the cloud account to access the file, 
• Edit the file, 
• Save the changes to that file or as a new file. 
• The cloud solution sends those changes back to every other device linked to it.

 It’s so powerful: files created, edited or updated wherever you are, even if you don’t have it on the device when you start. You can send files from other apps into it and then save back to the cloud (and back to your desktop/laptop again)

Think of it as a “Swiss Army Knife” to work with Office on the fly: it works on older and current Office document formats; it preserves formatting and hooks into cloud storage. Everything you need on the road: you wouldn’t want to design a sophisticated presentation on it but that’s not really what you want to be doing anyway on a smartphone. 

Arguably, its only flaw is that it isn’t a free app but for the huge benefit it brings, a few pounds for a one off purchase is insignificant.  If you want to do more creative work, the Pages and Keynote apps are better and slicker but are a bit of a “walled garden”. There’s almost always more work to do once you have exported and imported it back into Word or PowerPoint. Compared to buying the iWork suite at £6.99 each, £13.99 for the iPad to manage all three Office apps is great value.

Give it a try, especially if you have taken our previous advice and used cloud storage.

Here’s the Quick Office website to find out more 

To directly download the apps, see below. 

iPad

Android Tablet (Galaxy Tab , Motorola Xoom, HTC Flyer, etc) 

iPhone

Android mobile

The Principal of Murphy’s Law says that anything that can go wrong, will.  It’s often applied in business that the one thing you need, is the one thing you don’t have.  Similarly, there is one universal law about syncing data to devices: the file you desperately need is always the one you didn’t sync.

The best way round it is to sync everything to the cloud and download what you need as you need it, call it just in time delivery if you will. Nothing wrong with syncing a few high use files but having everything available any time, on any device, anywhere is the best way to work when mobile and not tied to your desk in the office!  We have found that SugarSync is the best solution for cloud backup, storage and sync. Why is it better than Dropbox, box.net, Syncplicity and the rest?

1. Cross platform. PC, Mac, even sync PC’s and Macs. iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian. They all work and play happily together. Email me at rob@carphonecompany.com to make sure your device works with it.
2. It works on all your current files and folders. No need to rearrange your data or put files in special folders. You make SugarSync backup any file or folder you choose to your own secure cloud storage 
3. It’s easy to share files and folders. Send a huge 100MB PowerPoint via email? You can’t, it’s far too big. SugarSync can send a link to the file via email, IM, Facebook and Twitter. You can also share folders for collaboration between users or only let them view files.
4. It’s secure: No USB sticks to lose and it’s all password protected with bank level security.
5. It’s an offsite backup: not only can you access your day to day files anywhere, it also can back up all the irreplaceable data if you had a disaster. 
6. It’s automatic: it all happens as soon as you save the document. Let’s be honest, most of us don’t backup as often as we should. This is one less thing to worry about.
7. It’s FREE. 5.5GB for free if you click here.You can upgrade it cheaply for business grade usage if you want huge amounts of space down the line.

What would you lose if your hard drive failed tomorrow? Your business, your life? 

Combine this with Microsoft Office 365 (free trial here), you pretty much have a full disaster recovery solution for your business. We have tested these solutions in house over a number of years so can vouch first hand for them.

Give it a try, it’s the one business decision you won’t regret this week. 

Hope you enjoyed this article and look forward to seeing you back here with more hints and tips very soon.

We often get asked what tools we use on a daily basis to make our lives easier. As acknowledged time management and “Kaizen” junkies, I think people want to discover our “secret”.  It’s no secret; we just apply some smart thinking to how we use technology.

However, we will be regularly sharing some of the very best tools to help your life and business run better on the blog so let’s start with…

Evernote

The best note taking tool ever created.

It’s cross platform so pretty much everyone can get access to it:  

PC, Mac, web 

iOS/BlackBerry/Android/Windows 7  

Firefox/Chrome/Safari

Ubiquitous access is the key: whatever the situation, you almost certainly have a device handy that can capture your notes, ideas, inspiration or thoughts. Type it, photo it, speak it: Evernote will grab it all. Evernote uses one account that syncs across the web and to every device you use so you have access to everything, everywhere, all the time.

There are two key concepts that Evernote uses that make it so powerful.

1. It can capture what you see and what you hear at a specific time and space

2. It can translate images into meaningful, searchable data automatically. 

It can capture what you see and what you hear at a specific time and space

Evernote can take photos of what you see, capture audio files of what you say/can hear, knows when it was captured and where in the world you were. It’s great for compliance and proof of when you did something. It can allow you to wrangle information that may not be totally clear from the notes. If you can see or hear it, you can capture it meaningfully for later.

On certain mobile platforms, it even checks your calendar and defaults the note’s title to the actual event you should be attending at that time! You never have to delay capturing that thought. There’s a reason it’s icon is an elephant: as you can do it straight away, it means you never forget!

It can translate images into meaningful, searchable data automatically. 

Evernote’s killer feature is that it can character recognise text in photographs, including handwriting. It gives an easy method to marshal “analogue” stuff (paper, images) and make it easy to search and refer back to. Here’s an idea: photograph a whiteboard after a brainstorming session, but now with all the text searchable. Photograph job sheets and be able to search the job number from the picture. 

You can also manually tag notes to organise or provide further ways to search them. There are lots of different ways to use this: use the Web Clipper to save web articles for later, all tagged. Photograph your receipts and tag them as “Expenses”: the character recognition will find invoice numbers, the date and time stamp on the photo will let you arrange chronologically. 

There really is no better way to see how much power Evernote can bring to your life other than to use it. It’s free to use, providing you don’t need the high end features a premium account brings. Even then, it’s under £30 a year for a full account.  

In our opinion, Evernote is the first app every smartphone, tablet or computer owner should add to their device