The app market is constantly expanding. There are around 140,000apps available for iPads through iTunes (and 500,000 apps for theiPhone). Below are highlights of some of the most popular appsavailable for agents, brokers and other business-mindedindividuals, according to AlwaysCare Benefits.

Documents and Presentations:Pages, Numbers andKeynote are Apple’s tablet-friendly approximationof Microsoft’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint software. Otheralternatives include CloudOn and QuickOffice. If you work with PDFs, check outGoodReader, as well.

Note Gathering: Have you ever scribbled yourideas or meeting notes on a napkin? Evernote letsyou capture your napkin notes by photo, recognizes letters from thescreen shots, and allows you to search for them in the future.Dragon Dictation is an amazing app that usesvoice-to-text transcription. There are a variety of note-takingapplications such as Note Taker HD andPenultimate.

Traveling and Expense Reports:Concur, a cloud-based expense management app,enables users to enter expenses on the fly; take pictures ofreceipts; and submit, review and approve expense reports. Forgeneral travel purposes, check out Nightstand(alarm), Kayak (search for travel fares anddeals), and UrbanSpoon (search for restaurants andreviews).

Don’t forget the cloud

For those of you unfamiliar with “the cloud,” it’s time tobecome familiar. The cloud represents the intangible space wherefiles, music, videos and software can be held and accessed frommultiple devices. Cloud computing offers a variety of applications:storage, databases, collaboration and communication withoutrequiring users to maintain—or have any knowledge of—the actualinfrastructure. It allows you to access your information from alaptop, smart phone and iPad.

Recently Apple launched iCloud, which offers5GB of storage free (additional storage for a fee) to allow usersto access and update their digital content across all their Appledevices wirelessly. Another free service available for any platformis DropBox, which lets users access and sharefiles (including documents, photos and videos) anywhere.

Carriers and agencies also use apps from leading cloud computingcompany salesforce.com to view client data(Account Viewer), analyze performance(Mobile Dashboard) and collaborate “socially”(Salesforce Chatter, a private, secure socialnetwork) with others within—and soon outside of—theircompany.

Remember, while these apps can enhance productivity, eachbusiness has its own information security and privacy needs andconcerns. Be sure to consult with your agency’s informationtechnology/security expert or adviser before making final decisionson which apps to use and how.