The iPhone isn’t just a lovely looking piece of kit that allows you to make calls, it’s so much more than that. Since buying an iPhone, my life has become a lot easier thanks to all those great apps available via the App Store; I use them to shop for my weekly groceries, make dinner reservations, play scrabble with my friends from all over the world, find the name and artist of a song playing on the stereo in a bar, find out when the next train going to my destination arrives. I’ve become so dependant, I’d be lost without it. It’s equally useful when I’m at work; I have a technical role within the IT industry and I’d like to share 5 apps that I’ve found indispensable.
RedLaser
Picture the scene, I’m doing a computer network upgrade for my customer on site, I find that one of the pieces of hardware I’m supposed to be installing is dead on arrival (DOA). I need a replacement, fast. I fire up my RedLaser app and simply scan the barcode on the outside of the box; RedLaser quickly produces a list of nearby shops that have my item in stock. I call the shop, purchase the item over the phone, arrange for a taxi to collect it and bring it to me. My customer is impressed with the use of technology to solve such a problem; that’s what he remembers and why I still get the chance to provide them with further IT solutions.
Cisco Global Internet Speed Test
I actually use this app to measure the quality of the wi-fi connection I’m using, I do this whenever I play online poker via my iPhone. The reason I do this is simple; if the quality of the connection is poor, I choose not play at very high stakes incase I’m involved in a big pot and lose connectivity. The better quality the connection, the higher the stakes I play. This would also be a usefeul tool when working with a customer that uses a wireless network.
Cisco Mobile 8.1
This awesome app allows me to make voice calls over any wi-fi network using Voice Over IP (VOIP) instead of making the call using my mobile carriers’ network. The company I work for has a VOIP phone system that uses Cisco Unified Communications Manager; I simply connect to the company network when I’m at work, or I connect to the company network using a virtual private network (VPN) when I’m away from work and my calls are routed over the Internet instead of my costly carrier network. This has saved me a bundle.
Network Ping
A very cool app indeed that allows me to ping not only a single IP address, but also a whole subnet via my iPhone. My iPhone shows displays all addresses within the subnet, telling me which addresses are working, which addresses have a problem and which addresses aren’t on the network anymore. I can also use this app to Telnet into a router and to perform a Traceroute command. Ive used this app as a starting point when debugging IP based networks and highly recommend it.
Analytics Pro
There are a bunch of apps that access Google Analytics based data for your website, but this is by far the best I’ve come across. The information is presented very neatly and it contains all of the most important features of Google Analytics such as visitors, traffic sources, website content, plus any goals or e-commerce related data that you’ve asked to be reported on. You can manage more than one Google Analytics account and export that data to pdf and text format. I’ve become addicted to checking my website statistics via this app and with the quality of the presentation used in this app, I’m certain you will too.