20 Handy Mobile Apps for VARs

20 Mobile Apps That Fit The Solution Provider Bill

Value-added Resellers and solution providers will find a veritable plethora of mobile apps -- on Android, iOS and BlackBerry PlayBook platforms -- that can come in handy whether in the data center or in a business meeting.

The CRN Test Center has found 20 mobile apps that fit this bill.

IT Tools For iPad

IT Tools for iPad is like a Swiss Army knife for anyone who has to stay on top of a network’s performance, connectivity and attached devices.

A $4.99 download from the Apple iTunes App Store, IT Tools is a straightforward app by developer Kevin Koltzau that provides a quick way to flip through various aspects of a network’s activity and examine performance, status, and connections. Quick buttons at the bottom of the screen allow you to perform Traceroute and device pinging tasks, examine DNS status, and run a quick inventory of devices attached to your network.

Business Card Reader Lite For Android

We tried Business Card Reader Lite for Android from ABBYY Software House, which has a 5 MP rear camera. Not only does this app scan the card and convert the data into highly accurate text, it integrates it into your contact application of choice. You then have the option of ’looking the contact up’ on Facebook.

If you want to pay $9.99 for the full version, you receive additional features including the ability to look a contact up on LinkedIn or Twitter, an address search on Google Maps and the ability to recognize multiple languages.

Network Tester For Android

Network Tester for Android, a free download from the Android Market, will tell you download quality of a network, whether the network is providing access to the ’real Web’ (as opposed to the tablet just feeding off cache), and other network speed-quality measurements. Network Tester for Android was developed by Guillaume Cottenceau, an independent developer. In conjunction with other available apps to measure bandwidth, available Wi-Fi networks in range and more, this is an app that can provide value if network quality is important for what you’re doing with your Android tablet.

WiFi Monitor For Android

WiFi Monitor for Android, an app that’s a free download from the Android Market by developer John Park, provides a quick, clean look at available WiFi networks in a given range. It provides information on how far away a hotspot is from your given device. WiFi Monitor for Android also allows for a vibration alert when a specific access point is located, and will rank a series of hotspots according to signal strength.

Zoho Invoice For iPhone

Available as a free download from the Apple iTunes App Store, Zoho Invoice ties into your (necessary, but free) Zoho online account. From your iPhone, you’re now able to create customer contacts, work estimates, sale items, service items and expenses with just a few clicks. A few more clicks, and the invoice or estimate is automatically synchronized with your account on Zoho’s servers, and you can immediately email a PDF version of what you’ve created to your customer.

FCC Mobile Broadband Test For iPhone

The FCC Mobile Broadband Test provides upload, download and latency information, as measured in Mbps and milliseconds respectively. This app also provides information on both internal and external IP addresses -- even your longitude and latitude. The FCC Mobile Broadband Test is a free app from the Apple iTunes App Store.

AndInvoice Lite For Android

AndInvoice Lite is a free app, available from the Android Market, that helps automate the process of creating invoices for clients when you are on the go. Simply enter your own business’ information, address, contact and where payment is received, match it to pre-written product or service descriptions and fees, and hit a button. Your invoice will be turned into a PDF that allows you to simply email it to your client -- complete with a payment due date and a ’thank you’ note.

What we like about AndInvoice Lite for Android is that it does for business what tablet and mobile platforms should do: It takes a necessary, but at-times aggravating task, simplifies it for mobile workers and allows you to get to the next task at hand with little aggravation.

IP Scanner For iPad

IP Scanner on the iPad will run a network scan blazingly fast and identify every device on a network. Tap the device on a list, and you’ll see a pop-up for the device’s IP address, MAC Address and its manufacturer. It will let you add notations about the device, ping the device, run a port scan or open a device manager for that device in the iPad’s Safari browser. There’s a free version of the app, which basically acts as demo software since it will only scan for as many as five devices. The full app will run $4.99 from the Apple iTunes App Store.

Data Drilling Pro For BlackBerry PlayBook

Data Drilling Pro for BlackBerry PlayBook is simply one of the slickest data-handling apps we’ve seen on any tablet platform, bar none.

We tried Data Drilling Pro, a $4.99 download from the BlackBerry App world store. The app does what its name suggests it does: it drills down through Excel spreadsheet data, and presents in graphical format every aspect of the data you need to study.

Scan To PDF For iPhone

With Scan to PDF for iPhone, which is a free download in the Apple iTunes App Store, it’s possible to go beyond mere document scanning into a full menu of document editing options. Create PDFs from multiple pages, scan to color or black-and-white, turn images already on your phone into a PDF or use the on-board camera to shoot a photo and turn it right into a PDF – all are options with Scan to PDF.

Tipirneni Software is the developer of this app, which comes with a mini-training video, and allows for preferences that include defaulting scans to black and white, as well as high-definition image captures.

Metall Detector For iPhone

Metall Detector (that’s the correct spelling, by the way) is an app that will signal you to the close proximity of electro-magnetic fields. That includes everything from magnets to laptops to cell phones.

Think of this as a nice utility for also finding live wiring inside a wall, or keys that may have a magnetic keychain, for example. The developer, Smart Solutions, says that the app works by using the iPhone’s internal compass; when that compass crosses into a magnetic field, the app detects variations in the electromagnetic fields. The app causes the iPhone to beep; when it comes closer to the electromagnetic field, it beeps faster. It’s a 99-cent download from the Apple iTunes App Store.

Wi-Fi Analyzer For Android

Wifi Analyzer, a free app by a developer called Farproc, sniffs out all available Wi-Fi networks and measures the strength of each.

The app then presents the data in several different formats, including very nice graphical formats and charts, which make it easier to determine which networks will provide, ostensibly, the best performance. For VARs or anyone in IT, that means that it provides a nifty tool in an environment with multiple wireless networks to constantly and easily monitor their performance against each other -- and monitor all of them while on the go.

Free-Time For iPhone

The calendar-filtering app is free from Apple’s iTunes App Store (a 99-cent upgrade is available to eliminate in-app adds), and also provides nifty features including exchanging free time availability with another iPhone user by simply bumping phones. The app integrates with your iPhone calendars, including Exchange, Google Calendars and more, and automatically picks through any blocks of one hour or two hours of ’down time.’

Free-Time also keeps track of when you have breakfast, lunch and dinner, when you wake up and when you go to sleep. This is one app that will immediately make your smart phone, and your day, just work better and easier. And the busier you are, the more you may find yourself loving it.

Network Mapper For Android

For $1.62 from the Android Market, you can install Network Mapper on your Android device and, within minutes, begin scanning a network to take an inventory of every device hooked into it.

We gave it a try in the CRN Test Center lab, and found it provided a comprehensive listing of every device on the network. It also provided the opportunity to scan ports on each device should we wanted to do that. For IT professionals, tools like Network Mapper for Android is another. For a buck and change from the Android Market, it’s an app to check out.

iNoiseMeter For iPhone

iNoiseMeter for iPhone is a 99-cent download that aims to use the iPhone's microphone to analyze noise and measure it in decibels. We found that it works fairly well as a general testing tool, as long as you're not using it for scientific purposes.

After downloading iNoiseMeter for iPhone from the Apple iTunes App Store, and installing it on an iPhone 4, we took it back to our server room and measured it against our battery-powered decibel meter, which had previously been calibrated. We found that iNoiseMeter for iPhone came to within 10-to-15 percent accuracy (when measured against the battery-powered, stand-alone decibel meter.)

Raw GPS For iPhone

Raw GPS for iPhone is a great app that will record as much data about any travel you do as you could want, neatly, graphically and with numbers.

A 99-cent download, Raw GPS ties into the iPhone’s GPS antenna and Google Maps to provide a slick trip tracker. Once you hit the ’Start’ button, it will record your location, velocity, altitude, average speed, distance and time traveled.

Ridgid Level App For BlackBerry PlayBook

Ridgid measures the degree of horizontal angle, vertical angle and diagonal angle, and also offers a camera that provides an image with a cross-hair that allows you to snap a perfectly level photo. Ridgid also let you ’freeze’ results, and calibrate results. One feature also allows for ’sound’ to be turned on, to provide a shrill beeping sound until the PlayBook is sitting at a level position. (We turned that feature off pretty quickly, though.) On top of all that, it’s a free app, too, from the BlackBerry App World store.

Inventory Droid For Android

We gave Inventory Droid a whirl on a Motorola Droid X, and within few minutes of downloading the $4.99 app we had created a new inventory database with product descriptions and acquisition details, taking product photos for that database, and even entering barcode data to help track physical inventory. It’s a fast, inexpensive and easy to use inventory app.

iOpenSource For iPhone

iOpenSource essentially provides several shortcuts to those seeking to pull open-source code down from the Internet into a handy zip file. First, it aggregates several search engines for finding code -- Google Code, Github, SourceForge and BitBucket -- onto one screen. Once one of the search engines returns a link to the open source code you want, it allows you to download it as a zip file and extract it right to the device. (We liked the download progress bar that also popped up to monitor progress.)

For developers who need access to open-source code on the fly, iOpenSource can be a nice help.

ExpenseBook For BlackBerry PlayBook

Developed by Slick8 Solutions, ExpenseBook provides rudimentary expense tracking in either U.S. or Canadian dollars. It allows for custom-tailoring expense categories, and sorting expenses on a category-by-category basis. Though it’s a very simple, straightforward app, it’s handy enough in the PlayBook form factor and easy enough to view on the 7-inch display that in a pinch it makes a decent way to track meals, entertainment, transportation and other costs as you incur them -- without having to boot up a laptop or squint into a smart phone.