Apps are designed to make our lives simpler. No other app could boost our productivity more than Hours. Its aim is to take the pain out of time-tracking, and that it definitely does.

If you’ve ever had to use, often archaic methods of time tracking, you’ll know how much of a headache it can often be. Now, there are no more excuses for painful spreadsheets or guessing what projects have filled our day. With Hours, you’ll no only stay on track you’ll perform tasks better.

What you get with Hours is a visual timeline, displaying colour-coded projects you are working on. Setting up and using Hours is very easy. You can add a project name and assign it a colour; if you want to, you can further clarify clients or tasks depending on the level of detail you want.

Once your projects are created, you simply tap the clock icon to start. Once you are ready to move on to a different project, hit a different clock next to that project, automatically stopping the previous project.

You can set how you round your minutes, which is great if you bill in minimum time blocks.

Plus, you can edit your timeline if you forget to switch timers, or account for a break. If you are naturally forgetful, Hours can also be set to send you reminders, schedule regular working days and special rules, such as “remind me to track if I haven’t done so for an hour”.

At the end of each week you can see where you’ve spent your time, and send yourself a spreadsheet or pdf report, great for billing, exporting to your companies system, or so you know where to spend more or less time the week following.

I found the Hours app a great way to help focus on a particular task, and not be distracted by incoming emails or social media feeds. It would be a valuable tool for any business, or student.

It does however, cost a little money, approximately $6.49 on the app store; but it is worth the small investment. Learn more about Hours here >

Viber is a great app to use to keep in contact with people when you are overseas. The app allows you to send free messages and free calls to other Viber users. You can download it to your smartphone, or use it on desktop.
This is a great tool for anyone who travels regularly and needs to keep in contact with colleagues, friends and family.

Use Viber to:

• Best-quality HD voice calls
• Video calls
• Text, photo and sticker messages
• Full sync between your mobile and Windows
• Transfer ongoing calls between devices

You can also make international calls with Viber, to any mobile or landline number (someone who doesn’t have a Viber account) for much lower rates than your local supplier would charge.

Viber is really easy to use, much like using messaging on an iPhone; the design is clean and simple. The app supports group chats with up to 100 Viber members and you can send or take photos and video from within the app, or send existing ones stored on your phone or computer.

Messages are sent and received seamlessly, and call quality is really great.  The only downside with Viber is there is no status display, so you can’t let people know you are not available to take a call, but this is really the same with receiving any type of call, you just don’t have to answer!

Viber is available for free download, visit www.viber.com for more details.

VideoBite makes it easy to create short movies on your smartphone—no experience necessary!

This app is great if you like to take video using your iPhone. Let me just say upfront, sorry this app is currently only for iOS. If you are an Android user you’ll find some alternatives, such as Kinemaster Pro, but video editing seems to be an area of weakness within Android.

Adobe are the crowd behind VideoBite. The app is really easy to use, and lets you create a video masterpiece, which you can upload to Facebook or Youtube, save on your phone, or send privately via SMS or email.

How it works is:

• Shoot your video as normal using your iPhone camera.
• Open VideoBite to edit.
• Mix and match clips from your camera roll.
• If you like, insert photos you’ve taken, add titles and transitions.
• You can add music directly from iTunes or use the pre-loaded soundtracks
• Trim long clips, add effects and filters, add text, preview and share.

This is a great little app that can really compete with iMovie, with an added bonus that it only takes up 28 MG of space, compared to iMovie’s 635MB.

Edit and create movies for your presentation while you are on your way in the taxi! Upload demos of your product in a jiffy. Also great app to have on hand for weddings, parties, or showcasing your trip.

Download your VideoBite app today for free from iTunes.

At Zeald we are avid users of Google Drive. It is a great tool for business collaboration. Google Keep is an app that lets you quickly take and save notes, photos, voice memos, and checklists to Google Drive, and then access them again on your other devices via the web.

If you are out and about when inspiration strikes or you see something that sparks an idea – you can quickly take a snap, jot down a note, or compile a to-do list all in one place. Google Keep gives you the opportunity to save what’s on your mind.

The layout of Google Keep is colourful and grid-like, reminiscent of a stack of post-it notes, colour co-ordinated so you can quickly and visually arrange your notes by subject, project, or client. The ability to arrange such notes all in one place can boost productivity alone, even without added features like voice memos.

Notable features of Google Keep:

• The home screen allows you to see your notes at a glance.
• Easy to add notes with a simple tap – great for quickly taking down a phone number at a networking event!
• Voice notes are a breeze – the app also converts your speech to text – great for when you are commuting or interviewing.
• It syncs with Google Drive – your data is easily accessible, and it yours to keep.
• Similar to Gmail, Keep has a search function and an archive – making organisation that much easier
• You can add hashtags to categorise your notes.

A negative is that you can’t share the notes directly from the app; you have to send a copy of the note via an email. (A great app for note sharing in real-time is simplenote, you can add items to a shopping list from home while your partner is out purchasing the items.)

Overall, if you're looking for a syncing note-taking app, you are on Android, and use Google Drive and Chrome; Keep could be the productivity and organisational tool for you.

Available on Android. 

Imagine a world of websites, online articles and other tidbits that it tailored to what you want to read, free of other clutter and distractions such as banner ads. You don’t have to imagine it, there’s an app for it!

Pocket (formerly Read It Later) lets you bookmark websites, article, twitter posts and even videos, so you can read or watch it later at your leisure.  Great for when you a researching a blog article! You no longer have to clutter your bookmarks tab or try to remember where you saw that product you want to buy.

There are other apps on the market that provide a similar service to Pocket; Instapaper was one of the first to do this. Where Pocket excels is the design and layout of the articles; clean and simple with eye-catching images to identify your article. Think of it more like your own curated magazine, rather than a newspaper.

Content you “put in your pocket” is available on your phone, tablet or computer. Plus, once saved to Pocket, you don’t even need an internet connection to catch up the latest news.

Download it free from iTunes or Google Play.

Have you ever been on the road and needed to send a document back to the office, and know you'll never make it before closing time? Perhaps you need to make a copy of an important document for your records or the kids need their permission slips sent immediately to the school? 

TinyScan is a great little app that can solve all these problems daily, for both business and personal use. It turns your Smartphone or Tablet into a mini scanner for documents, photos, receipts and other text. You just scan your document with your device and store or email as a PDF file. You can even upload to Google Drive or Dropbox at a touch of a button. And if you are too lazy to walk a document across the office, you can share using WiFi!

The app lets you export your documents in different pages sizes, such as A4, B5, letter etc. Your PDF files are high quality, and there are multiple scanning modes; black & white, grayscale &colour, depending on your original documents. The scanner is really simple to use, with the app automatically detecting your page borders. 

Frequently receiving 5/5 star ratings across the internet, we agree that TinyScan is a great little app that you'll actually use.

Available on Google Play and iTunes for free.

I’ll confess I’m one of those people who have been blessed with a good memory. I’m especially good at remembering birthdays, and I always won the chocolate fish playing the memory game at birthday parties. Not so long ago I would look at people with their to-do lists with pity. Those fools who could not remember to buy milk or what time their meeting was. Then one Christmas I got an iPhone, and suddenly there was no longer a need for my brain to store all the information I normally put into it.

I had to start making lists. However, there were no scrappy bits of paper or back of envelopes for me. I wrote my lists on my phone’s notepad and could refer to them as I pleased. However, the notepad lacked the ability to satisfyingly tick or cross out what I had achieved on my list. There had to be a better way. There was, all I needed to do was add an app.

Now all my shopping lists, work tasks and appointments are neatly organised into one little app: Wunderlist. It works across Apple, Android and desktop platforms, so your list can go with you, wherever you are. It is simple to use and beautifully designed, with several choices of backgrounds and a cleanly illustrated checklist.

You can create several lists at once, which display the number of outstanding items next to each one. Priority items can be starred and accessed from a separate tab, where you can add due dates and notes with the swipe of your finger. Any due dates entered then show up under the calendar tab. If you don’t complete them on time, those items move to the overdue tab. You can also view your to-do items for tomorrow, the next seven days, or later dates and when you have an outstanding item for the day, the app icon displays a red badge (how handy!) The Wunderlist app also syncs with the free desktop application, so your lists will update when you are on the go.

Wunderlist features include:

• Sync across all your Devices: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android, Windows and the Web
• Shared Lists: Collaborate with your friends and teammates
• Due Dates & Reminders: Never miss a deadline again
• Recurring To-dos: Make   getting things done a habit
• Star Items: Important to-dos are flagged
• Add Notes & Images: For all-important details
• Notifications: Stay in the loop with email, push and the Activity Centre
• Action Bar: Sort, print and email your lists
• Mail to Wunderlist: Turn your emails into actions

Did I mention it is free? You can upgrade to the Pro version for a small monthly fee if you want even more features, such as add files, including spreadsheets, assign to-do tasks, unlimited subtasks and conversations with collaborators. There is also a version for business, which allows teams to collaborate, transfer and store data.

If you are struggling keeping your life organised, my advice is to become a list taker and download Wunderlist for Apple or Android today. That way your brain will have room for remembering all those upcoming birthdays, unless you have an app for that too!