Travel Top Five: Must-Have Apps for Business Travelers

January is the time of year everyone seeks to streamline their lives: shedding pounds, decluttering their houses, and organizing their must-haves. And most business travelers want to travel as light as possible, just so you’re not carrying a bunch of unnecessary paper around in your briefcase.
We’ve come up with five different apps that business travelers should have on their mobile phone, their tablet, and their laptop. With these apps, you can store information in the cloud, keep it secure, and get work done no matter where you are.
Evernote is ideal for file sharing, note taking, idea storing, and even snapping photos of business cards and syncing them to your contacts file.
Evernote. If you’re unfamiliar with this amazing note taking and online storage app, we recommend you investigate it immediately. It allows you to retain stored information in one place so that you don’t have to carry it in physical form. For example, you can create a document with all your loyalty card numbers so that you don’t have to carry the physical cards any more. You can take notes during a meeting and share them with others at a later date. You can save images as well and sync them with your mobile device or laptop. You can even clip articles and websites that you want to read later, like when you’re on the plane. Evernote’s Plus and Premium versions offer even more options.
Google Drive or iCloud . These two applications virtually eliminate the need for traveling with photos, documents, files, and videos. It offers 15GB storage free, and there are upgrade options available. iCloud offers similar options with 5GB storage free. iCloud will let you sync documents from specific folders on your laptop up to your cloud-based account, where you can access them on your mobile phone, tablet, or even another computer. Google Drive will let you save documents where you can work on them in the cloud. And don’t forget Dropbox for general storage and file sharing.
Gmail. This free email service provides ample storage and syncs with Google Drive. It also allows you to check email from other platforms like Outlook and Apple Mail free of charge. It has a built-in chat and video conferencing app called Hangouts, which functions like Skype without having to leave email to open another application. You can use this to communicate, share documents, and keep in touch with the office, especially if you’re traveling overseas and only have access to free wifi.
Your airline’s app. If you don’t have this app on your mobile phone, you’re missing out on features that will expedite your check-in process and keep you apprised of any flight delays or gate changes while you’re on the go. If nothing else, the ability to bypass the check-in line makes this app a no-brainer.
1Password or LastPass. No one has time for identity theft or having any of their accounts hacked. And that could happen if you’ve got simple, easy-to-remember passwords for some of your most crucial apps and systems. If you haven’t upgraded your passwords lately and you’re trying to remember all your passwords for your sites, you’re vulnerable. Apps such as 1Password or LastPass only require you to remember one master password. Then you use your system to generate complex, hack thwarting passwords every time you log in.
You have better things to do than to deal with stacks of paper and trying to remember hundreds of passwords, all while standing in line to check in to your flight. With these mobile apps, every business traveler can make their life simpler and easier to manage.
Business travelers, what are your must-have apps? Do you have any favorites, or even ones to avoid? Share them with us in the comments below, on our Facebook page, or in our Twitter stream.
Photo credit: ZyMOS (Wikimedia Commons, part of the Open Icon Library, Public Domain)