Thing 6

The first app I wanted to try was SignNow, a program that records an electronic signature for you and archives it and makes adding this sig to PDFs, Docs and even photos pretty easy. Honestly, I have no use for this app at work or at home, but I could see it being used by someone at an administrative level that does a lot of paperwork. It looks like a great tool for small business and I suppose employes of big business as well because it's a one stop place for your signature that works on multiple devices and it will keep your hand from getting tired ;) Like I stated earlier, I'm not a big fan of electronic writing, though this time it doesn't look so bad...and e signatures are here to stay. I had a previous job in the shipping and receiving field and e signing is they way they were going, even back in 2008. It makes sense thoug, you can save paper, you can quickly retrieve a sig and email it or add it to a Proof of Delivary document. UPS and FedEx drivers have you e- sign for your packages, if you haven't already noticed. I suppose with time and technology, I will get better at it. For fun, I will include a couple of samples from SignNow to show a couple of its uses and how they turned out

The first image is a sample of the sample document you use when initially registering for SignNow.

The second is an autographed photo of me, save it! It may be worth something someday...you know, like a good chuckle...gosh I look fat there. Anyway...

On to my next choice, which was going to be QuickOffice, until it kept crashing after I would sign into my Google account. We finally updated the work iPad to iOS 7 so that may or may not be the problem...I would like to have tried it, it looked cool. Oh and ps to anyone that actually reads this...don't be mislead by the poo-poo one star reviews in the App Store since they are from people complaining about changes and not really about performance issues. If anyone can get the darn thing to work, I'd like to try it. I like the idea of being able to create Office files on an iPad, upload them to the cloud and the be able to access them via a PC, which I would love to do. Right now, I don't have much use for that capability professionally, but I do see some advantages in it...such as being able to bring work home or on the go. Why not do something productive while I wait for my oil change? At home this would be such an awesome tool since my wife and I were very PC based for several years and this would allow us to save, upload and download Office files we actually use often (receipes, household expenses spreadsheets, etc) and access them via our iPad. 

Since QuickOffice was a no-go, I tried CloudOn instead. Maybe the whole situation is a blessing in disguise! CloudOn allows you to create, edit, save and access files via multiple Cloud platforms. I used my Google drive since I have one. I was SO impressed; it's really like using a mini version of MS Office that was tinkered with for iOS. I can totally see using this at home and eventually at work. I think I will hype this app for my coworker since he needs some MS Office support that an iPad doesn't usually have. Long story short, we have more employees that computers (which is probably normal) but we don't have a workroom unit at my library and sometimes he needs to get away from the hustle and bustle while doing things.

In the end, I think both QuickOffice and CloudOn are very useful apps. They will (probably) never replace a PC or a Mac since cloud storage is only so many GBs right now while a hard drive on a laptop or desk top is much higher. I see these as a possible wave of the future since they will allow us to take our Office files on the go on our phones and tablets and they look almost exactly the same as their traditional counterparts. Not everyone will want to adapt to this method, but I could see myself doing so. It's nice to be able to take work and/ or personal files with you and be able to access them while you wait for an appointment. I'm sure some folks are concerned about the work-life balance and always being connected and/or in their own digital bubbles and while those are highly valid concerns, I'd rather address them elsewhere.

Below are the links to my Google Drive saved files I created using CloudOn, feel free to open them and take a look, if you can...These are on-the-fly notes and thoughts I had while using the app and making the files

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7ubhOdeWCmXQUtoM3VpMHhHYWM/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7ubhOdeWCmXS0N4RDFJX1FCWWM/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7ubhOdeWCmXZmhZNkNfYW1nY0E/edit?usp=sharing