Must-Have iPhone, iPad, & iPod Touch Apps for IT Professionals

Have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch? Eric Geier shares his list of must-have apps for in and around the office. This article has something for you and every techie you know.

So now you have a flashy iPhone or iPod Touch and want to take advantage of it in and around the office. Well, we’re going to look at over a dozen mobile applications that can help you save time, money, and even headaches.

Whether you’re a networker, programmer, or manager, we hope you’ll find apps that will interest you.

Tech Certifications

Cert Flash Cards Online

Studying for a certification exam? Try these apps! It’s even brought to you by the same company that owns this site: Pearson Education.

It offers sample packs of its flash cards apps for a variety of IT certs, including A+, Network+, Security+, CCNA Security, CCNA Voice, CISSP, and VCP.

If you find them useful, you can make an in-app purchase. You might also consider accessing the Safari Bookshelf from your mobile device at http://m.safaribooksonline.com.

CertExam

Need more than just flash cards when studying for a tech cert? This collection of apps gives you more resources for many Microsoft and IBM certification tracks at $19.99 apiece.

Social Networking

CellSpin

For $1.99, you can start updating all the social networking sites with one app. This app can simultaneously upload text, video, photos, and audio to all the popular sites: Blogger, eBay,
Facebook, Flickr, Linkedin, MySpace, Picasa, Twitter, YouTube, and more. Stay on top of your social game while saving the most time.

Facebook

Stay connected and share with friends or colleagues with this free official Facebook app.

Update and check statuses or view or upload photos. See a friend online, strike up a conversation with Facebook Chat. Even access the phone numbers of your friends.

LinkedIn

With LinkedIn’s free official app, stay on top of your professional life.

Update your status to keep your colleagues up-to-date or send messages to connections. Easily import your iPhone address book. Quickly invite people you meet or search them out. Maybe you can do some quick research on someone before you meet with them, right from your phone.

Logpost

Do you tweet? Though Twitter doesn’t supply an official iPhone/iPod app, third-party developers sure do.

This free app lets you finger through posts so you follow friends, colleagues, publications, and more. You can even do direct messaging. You can always add new Twitter accounts to follow.

Technical Apps

Bytes

This is a 99¢ unit and number calculator for computer scientists, network engineers, and other IT professionals.

Convert between data storage units. Convert between decimal, binary, octal, and hexadecimal bases. Even reference ASCII decimal, hex, and char representations.

Hotspot Shield

As you may know, anyone within range at a Wi-Fi hotspot can snoop on your Internet activities. You might not care that they can see where you’re browsing, but some sites and services (like POP3 email and FTP) transfer login credentials and data in plain-text.

To secure your Internet communications from local eavesdroppers, you can use a free VPN app and service like this.

Jaadu RDP or Jaadu VNC

Remoting into computers is cool, but remoting from your iPhone or iPod touch is even cooler.

Jaadu offers a remote desktop client for both Microsoft Windows (RDP) and the platform-independent protocol (VNC) at $24.99.

See your work or home computer just as if you were sitting in front of it: View and edit documents, listen to audio files, access the local network, and more.

If you prefer a free app, you might check out Mocha.

Network Utility

This free app provides a quick and easy way to check website, server, or network status.

Run pings (ICMP Echo), TCP/IP port scans, and Whois queries. Plus look up IPs by locations with Google Maps.

Scanny

This 99¢ network and port scanner probes your entire network via a Wi-Fi connection and reports on 15+ parameters.

Check out what computers and devices are on your (or someone else’s) network. Perhaps reference a client’s IP or MAC address. Check your firewall. Do this all from your mobile device.

TouchTerm

If you use SSH to log in to your servers, consider this app for $3.99.

Perform maintenance, check logs, and troubleshoot anywhere. It uses the industry-standard OpenSSH open source library, which boasts about its top-notch support.

WiFiDisk

Turn your iPhone/iPod touch into a wireless NAT (network attached storage) drive for $1.99. It can even double as a wireless web server.

Install the app, connect to a Wi-Fi network, and bring up a web browser from a PC on the same network. You’ll have access to files on the Apple device, some file-editing capabilities, and FTP support.

WiFiFoFum

If you work with the wireless side of the network, consider this $2.99 app. You always gotNetStumbler for free on your laptop, but this sniffer fits into the palm of your hand.

Scan for nearby wireless access points (APs) and see their details: MAC address, RSSI signal, channel, encryption type, and more. Take it along on formal RF site surveys or keep for troubleshooting.