The Daily App: Office Assistant for iPad

Increasingly, iPads and other tablets are becoming the computing device of choice for task management, note taking and management, and other light office-productivity activities.

If you don’t believe that, look around the conference table at the next staff or business meeting in which you attend and there’s a good chance there will be more than one tablet in use.

That will mean, as well, that managing the various notes, schedules, tasks and communications will take on a new role. Office Assistant for iPad, a 99-cent download from the Apple iTunes App Store by developer Elinasoft Technologies, in a nifty – maybe even elegant – app that brings your various (sometimes tedious) office tasks under one umbrella on your iPad or iPad 2.

With support for “sticky notes,” audio recording of memos or meetings, reminders and file management (both on the device itself and on “cloud” apps like Google Docs or Dropbox), Office Assistant is a sort of “Swiss Army Knife” for light office productivity.

What we liked was how snappy the app presents itself. It’s just faster to open and navigate from one task to another (like moving from meeting notes to reminders to calendars) than other apps like Evernote. In iPad 2, Office Assistant also provides support for photo-based notes; items can also be shared via email or iMessage natively. (iMessage support is also a faster way to share information than most other iPad-based methods.)

If some aspects of your work day move at light speed, this is an app you really ought to consider.