I won’t do a review because so many have been done before.

I will say, that Mariner Software is celebrating their 22nd anniversary and they’re offering 50% off their non-upgrade, desktop software. Try their free trial and if you like it, go for StoryMill. I love it for fiction (I like Scrivener for non-fiction).

It has the ability to break down a manuscript into scenes and has the flexibility of tagging them switching them around.  It’s regularly $49.95 and on sale it’s $24.97 until 5/1/12.  Just use Mariner22 at checkout.

Happy writing!

My pain is your gain though because I’ve researched plenty of apps and just like so many other things in life, sometimes exactly what you need is already in your possession. You just have to understand what you have.

Case in point, Apple’s Reminders for the iPhone and iPad.  I’ve surfed the App store and downloaded quite a few to-do apps.  Some for free, some paid.  Finally, I went back to Reminders, the built in app.

It’s not fancy, pretty simple in fact. Honestly that’s what I want my to-do app to be – easy. I don’t want to have to take a tutorial, I just want to get things done.

What I love most (yes, I’m releasing my inner fangirl) about Reminders is the view options. I can view my entire list or I can view it by day.  You can set the reminder for a certain day and time or you can make it location based. The reminder will go off if you and your phone are near a certain address – that does put a drain on the battery though.

If you’re like me (and I’d like to think I’m not so neurotic that others can’t relate) then you will love looking at the Completed list. It shows completed tasks by day. Not that I’m ultra-competitive or anything, but I like trying to check off more to-do’s than previous days.

The reminders show up on my iPhone and iPad as banners and also sync with my iCal. I don’t particularly use iCal that much, although I do sync my Google calendar with my iCal. Unfortunately, I can’t sink my Google Tasks with my Reminders but I’ve found that it doesn’t make a difference because it does sync with my iCal tasks.

For those of you who need to do project management, you can create different lists and still view the to-do’s by date.  For me, I create lists for my books and what needs to be done. So I can look at the big picture and then manage the tasks by putting them on my calendar.

Another plus, you can set your reminders verbally by using Siri on the iPhone.

I realize I probably have more than enough tools to run the world, all that’s left is to just go ahead and do the darn thing.

Square Credit Card Reader

1.)   Snapdat (Free) It was only a matter of time before business cards went digital. No more running out of cards or having to do another print run because you have to update your info. Snapdat allows you to create a business card with your picture and custom background. You can send them from your phone via email, Facebook or Twitter. It also creates a vcard that can be added to the contacts.

2.)   Sign-N-Send (Free) or Easy Sign ($.99 per 5 pages) As it always happens, the minute I leave the house, I get an email with a document that needs to be signed and retuned five minutes ago. Sign-N-Send makes it really easy to open up a document and add your signature to it. The free version includes a first page that has ads.  Easy Sign is free and includes three free credits. It’s $.99 per five pages after that. I like this app better because it’s more user friendly in terms of adding the signature.

3.)   Jot Not ($.99) It’s like having a portable scanner in your purse. You can take pictures with your phone of documents and turn them into easy to read .pdfs that can be emailed.

4.)   Square (Free) On those lucky days when I find someone who wants to buy my book but doesn’t have any cash – TADOW! I have Square, a credit card reader that’s compatible with Android and iPhones. With one swipe (maybe two cause sometimes it can be a little touchy) I can charge their card, and email or text them a receipt. It’s easy to transfer the funds to my account. No need to worry about bounced checks or carrying change around anymore.

5.)   Evernote (Free) I love Evernote!  I have it on my Mac, iPad and iPhone.  Keeps all my ideas and lists in easy to organize notebooks.  It syncs easily and best of all it’s free.  Check out this article about other ways to utilize Evernote – gave me tons of ideas and made me realize I had been underutilizing the app!

So those are my five faves, what are the ones you can’t live without when your home office goes mobile?  Tell me in the comments below.

Sibylla Nash is an author and freelance writer. You can visit her at sibyllanash.com.

I love the baking sheet as a memo board idea in the pic to the left.

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