App reviews: Skitch, Quick Tax Reference
Skitch
Plenty of people use the note-taking service Evernote, but the company has another great productivity app, Skitch. Skitch is best for more visual thinkers and lets you annotate pictures you take with elements such as drawings, arrows and text. That means that instead of telling someone to "choose the second item in the third drop-down menu from the right," you can just take a snapshot and circle the option in question. You can share your edited snaps over email, by text, on Facebook and Twitter or in Evernote, if you have an account.
The app works best with an Evernote Premium subscription, which also gives you the handy option of annotating PDFs within Skitch - good for layout and other critiques on the go. But even without hooking into its sister app, Skitch is a useful tool for more efficient communication.
Quick Tax Reference
Can I deduct that? How much should I be counting for mileage? What's my tax rate? These are the kinds of questions that are bound to generate frantic searches on April 14, but for those ahead of the curve, consider downloading Bloomberg's free Quick Tax Reference app. There's probably more information here than you'll ever need, and the app itself isn't flashy or fun. But if you want a quick reference that puts a ton of tax information at your fingertips, it's well worth a download - and cheaper than an audit. Free for iOS and Android devices.