Seidman talked about how Gigwalk is based on the idea of using a mobile device to match jobs that need doing with people who are well-equipped to do them. The idea is that the apps can be moneymakers for users, instead of just cash draws. He discussed the fact that mobile is also a key inflection point, which will fundamentally change how we work.

Work, at least the kind people seek through mobile means, can be one of two types, says Seidman. It can be casual and meant to cover small gaps or financial needs in a user’s life says Seidman, like helping them pay a specific bill. Or it can be more substantial, looking for a way to fill out the remainder of a part-time schedule, for instance. The spectrum includes jobs that take a few minutes to complete or longer-term contracts that can span days. Mobile can cater to both ends of this spectrum.

Mobile tech also allows companies to fill positions incredibly quickly: Seidman said that Microsoft had a 24-hour turnaround when it used Gigwalk for a recent engagement.

In the interest of opening up opportunities to even more workers, Gigwalk is launching an Android client in private beta on Thursday, which will be available on its site.

Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
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The update brings that same functionality to those on PCs by letting them click to call through Skype or Microsoft Lync. Gunjan Bhow, VP and general manager of New Ventures at Plantronics, says the goal is to ensure employees with VoIP clients and softphones can still take advantage of cheaper rates instead of going directly to their mobile phones and racking up big charges while traveling. It’s a pretty specific use case, but Plantronics is on the cutting edge of a shift in how people work, and how smarter and more personal computers, such as mobile phones, are allowing this shift to happen.

A personal assistant for everyone (no, it’s not Siri)

InstantMeeting on the iPhone

Apps such as InstantMeeting, Expensify and yes, Siri are taking mundane tasks top managers might have hired an assistant to handle and making delegating them affordable for all. In the case of InstantMeeting, it means I can work right up until a minute before my conference call or hop in the car knowing I’ll get a reminder when I need to get on the call, and will effectively touch a button to connect. I do have to manually enter some conference numbers because the app can’t read the bridge information, but it’s pretty solid. It’s similar to having someone outside my office connecting my calls so I can move seamlessly through my work until the exact moment I’m needed.

Expensify lets me snap a picture of my receipts and then automatically scans them for the relevant line items to create an expense report in a few minutes. The mobile app allows me to take those pictures on my mobile the moment I get my receipt and shoot them to the cloud, where Expensify does all the heavy lifting. My days of scrounging receipts from the bottom of my bag and taping them to copy paper are over, as are my efforts to then transfer that information to Excel.

Siri, of course, takes all kinds of dictation like a pro and helps find nearby restaurants, services and other items much like a real personal assistant would. Vlingo also does some of this for Android users. There are scores of other apps such as TripIt Pro making it easier and less time-consuming to book and keep track of travel, something those lucky souls who have worked at a company with a travel bureau will be glad to learn.

This isn’t just nice; it’s necessary

Just as computers helped drive productivity thanks to replacing typewriters with word processing software and calculators with spreadsheets, these new apps will help boost productivity for the masses who don’t have an assistant at their beck and call. And given that workers are being asked to do more in a day, gaining those two or three hours back each month that it takes to pull together an expense report, or the thirty minutes required to book a trip (or even avoiding the hours lost to flight delays) is a necessity.

And as we handle more and more information coming at us, it’s harder to sink into the uninterrupted flow of work, so being able to maximize that time knowing your phone can ping you when you have to join a call and then connect you can help you relax into work. Yes, these apps all take some time to set up and learn how to use (some may require you to invest in setting up rules so the app can better learn what you need from it), but much like training an assistant, the effort pays off. And thanks to advances in natural language processing, artificial intelligence, better data processing and algorithms, employees don’t have to pay quite as much to offload non-core tasks.

For more on how apps, computing and broadband will change the way people work, come to our GigaOM Net:Work event in San Francisco next week.

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• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
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Beginning November 22, 2011, we will end support for the Gmail App for BlackBerry (installed native app). Over this past year, we’ve focused efforts on building a great Gmail experience in the mobile browser and will continue investing in this area. Users may continue to use the app, if installed, however it will not be supported by Google, or available for download starting November 22.

I am guessing they want us to use the “exchange” equivalent for logging into Google Mail for Business, but for me, it was a great way to use personal Gmail account in an easy and efficient manner. Others too are lamenting Google’s move.

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Email and calendars. Email is, unsurprisingly,  still the most important mobile app. According to Forrester, 87 percent of smartphone workers use email on their devices (which leaves me wondering what other 13 percent use their smartphones for), and collectively, they do 32 percent of their email on a smartphone. While most smartphones come with their own email and calendaring tools most users will use, there are some third-party options worth considering:

• Gmail and Google Calendar. If you use Gmail, it’s worth noting that the mobile-optimized versions of the Gmail and Google Calendar sites are pretty good. They are fast and have a great UI, and one of the advantages of using them is that you can seamlessly switch from device to device without having to set up IMAP details in your various devices’ email clients.
• Touchdown. Brings superb Microsoft Exchange support to Android devices.

Document-based collaboration. Mobile workers need to be able to access their documents while out of the office on any of their devices. Cloud-based document collaboration tools need to include mobile access to be truly effective.

• Documents to Go. Dataviz’s Documents to Go is a popular mobile document editing app. It’s available for a variety of platforms, including iOS, BlackBerry, Android and Palm. When combined with a cloud file sync service like Dropbox or box.net, it enables users to access and edit their documents no matter where they are.
• Soonr. Soonr is a cloud-based document sync service. However, it also offers integrated MS Office document editing capabilities , which means users don’t need to use a separate app like Documents to Go.

Web conferencing. According to Forrester, 18 percent of information workers and 34 percent of senior staff use web conferencing at least weekly. Mobile access means being able to attend meetings even while away from the laptop.

• Fuze Meeting. Fuze Meeting’s impressive service is accessible with mobile devices. Its new Telepresence Connect service can extend traditional room-based telepresence to iPads and Android tablets.
• Join.me. LogMeIn’s simple and easy-to-use web conferencing app is accessible through iOS and Android apps.

Activity streams. Forrester thinks activity streams are becoming a critical resource for organizations that work collectively: sales teams, project teams, and executive staff, for example. Mobile support is crucial as it enables workers to stay updated no matter where they are.

• Yammer. Yammer is a popular enterprise social networking tool very much like a private Facebook for the enterprise. It offers mobile support though mobile apps available for a variety of platforms.
• Socialtext. Socialtext is another enterprise social networking and collaboration app that offers activity streams. It offers mobile support via an optimized version of the website.

Presence and chat. Knowing whether a colleague is available or not is a killer feature when out of the office. While this category of app lags today, Forrester expects adoption to accelerate. These types of features are often also often included in other mobile collaboration tools.

• eBuddy. A multi-protocol mobile chat app that supports AIM , ICQ, Google Talk, Yahoo! and MSN Windows Live Messenger within a single interface. It’s available via a native client for Android and iPhone and there’s also a mobile-optimized website.
• IM+. Another popular “all-on one” IM app that supports a variety of protocols, including AIM, iChat, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and Skype Chat, and works on a number of different mobile platforms.

Social collaboration. In this category, Forrester includes access to internal blogs, wikis, community sites, and social networks from a tablet or smartphone. Mobile access allows every professional will remain connected and part of the collaborative process.

• IBM Lotus Connections. IBM’s social suite is supported on a range of mobile platforms, including Android, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry and Nokia.
• Jive Software. Jive Software’s enterprise social suite provides mobile  access though apps for iPhone and BlackBerry.

Expertise location. Forrester says this type of application is on the rise as firms look for ways to make mobile employees productive by helping them identify experts from anywhere. This type of app brings together presence, notifications, social profiles and data from HR. Many social business tools provide this kind of functionality, including:

• IBM Lotus Connections
• Jive Software
• Yammer
• Socialtext

Video conferencing. Skype has some 170 million active monthly users, and 39 percent of those people use Skype for work. Web conferencing vendors are also adding video to their products. Due to heavy resource requirements, there are few multi-party mobile video conferencing apps, though.

• Skype. Skype provides video calling for mobile platforms including iPhone and Android.
• Fring. One of the first apps to bring four-way video calls to the iPad, Fring provides native mobile apps for a variety of platforms, and also has mobile browser access.

Personally, I’m not convinced expertise location is really a “must-have” category of mobile collaboration app just yet. Do you agree with Forrester’s categories of “must-have” apps, and which apps do you recommend for each category?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Yagan Kiely

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Rather than trying to cram in all of the functionality that’s present in the web app, the iPhone app concentrates on the tasks that a user is likely to need when out of the office. Matthew Work, Cohuman co-founder and CEO, notes that the app was developed for “those times when we’re getting ready to go to work or have just left the office — usually the times when we’re the least connected.” The app concentrates on providing access to tasks, co-workers and activity; the home screen offers users five options: Add Task, My Tasks, Cohumans, Projects and Activity, but there’s no access to calendars or search functionality, as there is in the web app.

I tried the app on my iPhone, and it works well, enabling fast and easy access to team members, upcoming tasks and updates to projects — all of the data I’m likely to need while away from my laptop. Tasks added using the app can be delegated to other users, commented on, added to projects and have due dates set, just as with the web app. Files attached to tasks can be viewed in the app, but there’s no facility for uploading files. I can imagine the lack of a search feature being an issue for users with lengthy task lists or large numbers of co-workers; those users will probably need to use the web app to access the search feature to find particular tasks or co-workers. The app should also theoretically work on the iPad, although I haven’t tried it. It would probably look odd, as the app is designed for use on a smaller screen and it cannot be used in portrait mode. I’d recommend sticking with the web app for iPad users.

The Cohuman iPhone app is free and can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store. An Android app is also in the works and should follow in a few months. To use it you’ll need a Cohuman account. A Cohuman Basic plan offers 1 GB of storage and is free. A Cohuman Pro plan provides greater control over permissions, HTTPS connections and offers 10GB of storage at a cost of $19.95 per month.

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• A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015
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Soonr is the first cloud file storage service to offer integrated editing for Microsoft Office documents on the iPad. Unlike cobbling together of file storage apps such as Dropbox and SugarSync with editing apps such as QuickOffice and Documents-To-Go, Soonr brings it all together so you can directly edit any files stored in the cloud using a single app. No configuration, no hassle, no cross-app interdependency. It also works offline when you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection and will sync back up when you do. And you can store, share, access, search, edit and sync your files from any tablet securely through Soonr.

Available both on iTunes and the Android Market, Soonr offers a 30-day free trail. A Premium account costs $7.95 per month for three users with 10 GB of storage, while Soonr Pro is $19.95 per month for five users and 40 GB of storage. Soonr supports Mac and PC, and mobile devices including Android, iPhone and BlackBerry; and iPad and Android (Honeycomb) tablets. The Soonr editing feature currently supports Microsoft Office 2003 (Excel, PowerPoint, Word) and Microsoft Office 2010 (Word only) files.

Here’s a short video demo of Soonr’s editing function:

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• A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015
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The free Android app can be downloaded through the Android Market, and will soon also be offered through the Amazon App Store. It provides more functionally than the current iPad app as it allows you to take a photo with your phone’s camera in lieu of using a scanner, giving you more flexibility while you’re on the go. The text contained on the documents you photograph becomes searchable, in the same way that text in documents scanned in through the OfficeDrop desktop app do.

Using OfficeDrop, you can connect a scanner directly to many cloud storage apps, including Evernote, Dropbox, Google Docs and OfficeDrop’s own digital filing cabinet, which allows users to organize, search, share and access documents from anywhere. If you’re concerned about security, the Android app and the other OfficeDrop apps and services use a fully encrypted system to protect your files and data.

OfficeDrop also offers mail-in scanning services, similar to Shoeboxed, where you can mail documents to the company and have them scanned and added to your account. Its online Digital Filing System starts at $9.95 per month for 10 GB storage ($44.95 per month for teams). Mail-in scanning services start at $19.95 per month for home office use and up to 50 scanned pages per month, going up to $99.95 per month for the Paperless Team account.

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• A Media Tablet Forecast, 2011 – 2015
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The app installs quickly, and it’s reasonably sized at around 2.5 MB. Unfortunately, it can’t be moved to an SD card.

When I first launched the app, it didn’t ask me to log in to my Google Apps account, since my phone already syncs with my account. It took a few minutes for the documents in my account to appear in the app’s home screen. You can scroll down to see previous documents, or click the search icon.

Once in a document, you can edit it by clicking on the “Edit” button, which appears to take you to the mobile web version of Google Apps, but it’s so tightly integrated with the app that it’s hard to tell. You can also upload documents from your phone, print documents through Google Cloud Print, and access a web-based help function.

Editing word processing documents is pretty easy; just click anywhere in a document and the current paragraph will be outlined in blue and the keyboard will pop up. Editing spreadsheets is a bit trickier, but still reasonably easy to navigate. I’m not sure I would care to write an entire document in this editor, but it’s fine for minor edits.

The Google Docs app also lets users create documents from photos taken with the phone’s camera, and even tries to convert them into text using optical character recognition (OCR). Just click on the new document icon and select “document from photo.” Take a picture with the camera, give your new document a name (or let the app assign one), then wait a few seconds for the new document to appear in the document list, or go off and do something else. The app notifies you when the conversion is finished.

Unfortunately, the results were less than stellar. Here’s a sample of a document created from an 8″ x 6″ card that I happened to have, about a solar charger I recently wrote about. As you can see, Google Docs only managed to recognize a couple of lines. Results weren’t any better with several other printed documents and business cards that I tried. It’s hard to say whether Google’s OCR system is limited (although Simon has previously reported reasonably good results from using Google Docs OCR), or whether the photos my camera takes just aren’t good enough, but at least the Google Docs app also includes the original image in the document, so you can edit it manually as needed.

There’s also a widget with direct links to open the app, go directly to starred documents, take a photo to upload, and create a new document.

I’m impressed with the app so far, with the exception of its OCR capabilities.

The free Google Docs app is currently available in English and works on Android 2.1+ phones. It’s  available by scanning the QR code, or by visiting the Android Market.

Have you tried the Google Docs app? What do you think?

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• Mobile Q1: All Eyes on Tablets, T-Mobile and AT&T
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The purchase seems like a smart move for RIM. Tungle offers an attractive set of features for RIM’s core customer base of enterprise users, and should enable the company to bolster the calendaring tools it offers under the BlackBerry brand. Tungle provides a very easy-to-use online meeting scheduling app that lets users propose multiple meeting times to one or many people, inside or outside their organization and across time zones. It also allows for users to broadcast their meeting availability on a publicly accessible page; others can then schedule meetings. The app integrates with a variety of calendar, email and scheduling applications, including Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Entourage for Mac, Lotus Notes, BlackBerry Yahoo, Windows Live, Facebook, TripIt and Plancast. There are Tungle mobile apps available for iPhone and BlackBerry.

Financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed, but the Tungle acquisition is the latest in a string of productivity and UI-related purchases RIM has made recently. It bought social contacts service Gist back in February, and prior to that, had acquired connected navigation company Dash, WebKit browser experts Torch Mobile and UI shop The Astonishing Tribe. These purchases should enable RIM to augment and improve the kind of applications — email and calendar tools — that appeal to the BlackBerry’s core set of business users. Perhaps a renewed focus on productivity and UI will be enough to stave off the threat of Apple and Android, which have already gained a significant foothold in an enterprise market that was once dominated by RIM.

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The new Android version lets users share documents and notebooks (groups of documents). Shared documents can be edited if both users are Premium subscribers, and Premium users can also view shared documents offline.

Evernote for Android now has the ability to share notes directly to Facebook, Twitter and other services. It has also added the ability to include map locations in notes (a feature that its competitor Catch has had for a while).

Evernote for Android’s interface has also been revamped, making it easier to navigate, while it also includes a more useful home screen widget. Evernote Premium users can now set up a PIN to lock the app. At over 3MB, the program is fairly large as Android apps go, but it can now be moved to an SD card.

Meanwhile, the note-taking alternative Catch, which I wrote about a few months ago, has added a new premium version that supports file attachments, including images, sound files, PDFs, RTF files, and Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. It’s also added the ability to share notes via Facebook, Twitter and email, although Catch does not offer shared editing.

Both services are available in free and premium versions. Evernote Premium allows users to upload any file type up to 50MB in size, totaling up to 1GB per month, for $5 per month or $45 per year. For the same price, Catch Pro also allows uploading of 1GB per month.

I still find Evernote more compelling than Catch. And while the latter service’s simple interface will appeal to some, Evernote’s enhanced sharing capabilities will be helpful in many collaboration situations.

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Cross-Platform and the Network Effect

Recently, I got the chance to catch up with LiveProfile CEO Phil Karl, whose messaging app recently managed to rack up approximately 1 million new users in just five days. The secret sauce that led to the app’s rapid growth? LiveProfile is available on all major U.S. smartphone platforms, including iOS, Android and BlackBerry, and it can operate between and on all three platforms, allowing platform-agnostic messaging.

Users in distributed teams want collaborative apps that work well on their preferred smartphone platform, but that also allow them to work with friends and colleagues using different devices; multi-protocol IM clients tend to do better in the App Store than do single-service offerings, for example. Many developers will be focusing on Android or iOS, but those that target BlackBerry (which, despite relatively flat growth, still commands a very large user base, particularly in the enterprise space) in addition to the newer entrants stand to gain the most traction now, even if only because BlackBerry users will become their most vocal supporters among other device owners in their circle.

UI and UX Are the Keys to the Kingdom

Once upon a time, you could get away with making an ugly app for enterprise use. As app selection moves from the hands of corporate IT to the general worker population, user interface and user experience design become much more central to an app’s likelihood of adoption. When a user isn’t just assigned a tool and given a certain number of hours training on that program, they’ll lean instead towards the apps that are most intuitive, and that require the least time investment on their own part to complete the task.

User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are no longer things developers can take for granted. If I’m faced with a choice between four spreadsheet apps, all of which use the same universally-accepted document formats, and all of which can get the job done, UI/UX is going to be a (if not the) key differentiator. App developers should recognize this and invest resources accordingly.

A Smart Web App Is a Safe Bet

Web apps may not have the same sex appeal as a native app, but a well-designed one that’s customized for the various smartphone platforms is a good bet. It’ll help you cast widest possible net in terms of device compatibility; it future-proofs your app against the whims and dangers OS platforms are subject to. Apple can’t reject a web app, for instance, and investment isn’t lost if, say, Windows Phone 7 gets axed by Microsoft.

That’s not to say going with a web app is easy, however. Building a good app that provides a solid experience no matter what platform it’s being used on is a challenge that can exceed platform-specific development in terms of degree of difficulty pretty easily. But making something like Facebook’s new mobile site, that intelligently monitors and responds to visitors’ hardware choices, will eventually pay off in terms of long-term development costs and user satisfaction.

Making apps that people want to take to work with them is the new backdoor to widespread enterprise adoption. It’s exciting, because it means even the smallest development studios can potentially compete with major publishers, but it also means competition will be fierce. But if you can strike a chord early with users by beating the competition in ways that are most appealing to the remote workforce of tomorrow, you’ll be ahead of the game.

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But I also have an HTC EVO 4G with a nice large screen, so I’ve been wondering if it would be feasible to use as emergency access to my work computer. After all, I found RDM+ for iOS usable on the smaller screen of an iPod touch. Unfortunately, Hamachi doesn’t have a client for Android, and I haven’t had a chance to try LogMeIn Ignition for Android yet, but the folks at RealVNC sent me a review copy of VNC Viewer for Android, which has just joined the existing VNC Viewer for iOS.

Once connected to the remote machine, VNC Viewer works well. The program responds quickly on a 3G or WiFi connection, and it automatically adjusts performance based on connection speed. The developer says that it can support screen resolutions up to 5,120 by 2,400 pixels (!) I couldn’t test that, but it does display both screens of my two-monitor Mac setup. Gestures like pinch and tap work as you would expect them to. Navigation takes a bit of getting used to, since by default, the cursor remains in the center of the screen, and the content moves around it. But it’s pretty simple to work with, and mouse button mode lets you emulate mouse clicks and scrolling.

I found it easy to manipulate windows, open and close programs, and do a little typing using the on-screen keyboard. I wouldn’t want to write a whole blog post, although I did type this sentence remotely!

As with most remote access solutions, VNC Viewer is just half of the system. You’ll also need a VNC server on the machine you want to connect to. Recent Macs have the required software built-in, as the VNC Viewer can connect using the Mac OS X Remote Desktop or Remote Management components. Windows and Unix users — and Mac users needing additional features (like 128-bit AES encryption, simpler authentication, and the ability to copy text between your device and the remote computer) — can purchase VNC Enterprise Edition, or use a third-party VNC server.

Unfortunately, actually getting connected is not as easy as I would have liked. Even with VNC’s instructions, I had to work with my company’s network expert to set up the appropriate firewall rules and port forwarding. If you’re not ready to tackle such configuration, you may want to look at some of the other remote access and remote control options we’ve looked at.

VNC Viewer for Android costs £5.99 (about US$10). Commercial licenses for VNC Enterprise Edition start at $50, with educational, nonprofit and volume discounts available, along with 30-day trials.

Have you used VNC Viewer? Do you connect to your desktop from a phone or tablet?

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As I frame my view of where mobile is going, I can’t avoid starting with some numbers I just saw in Seth Weintraub’s post in Fortune about Android.

Globally, market intelligence firm IDC counted 269.6 million smartphones sold this year, compared to the 173.5 million units shipped in 2009.

In 2011, we might see half a billion phones sold worldwide. Smartphones will likely blow by traditional computers next year as the way most of the world gains access to the Internet.

If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will.

Are you thinking about mobile yet? And if so, how are you thinking about it? Let’s plant our feet firmly on the ground and talk about how you should be thinking about mobile. Here are some guiding thoughts:

1. Don’t think product; think platform. People are excited about devices and apps: that is, products. As a marketer, you need to look at devices and apps as platforms for communication, conversation, conversion; pick your “C” word. Develop your app or apps with that broader concept in mind. Look to integrate mobile into your current marketing mix as a new communications and marketing platform. Don’t try to sell a product now; you can add sales later.

2. Leverage the ubiquity. Smartphones — and more recently, iPads and other tablets — are becoming essential tools. Their ubiquity is going to be unprecedented. We love these devices even more than our laptops. We are bringing them into places and situations we never imagined. There’s an intimacy, a necessity, that these devices are engendering in us. Whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent, it’s our new reality. So, as a marketer, how can you leverage this intensely personal, can’t-live-with0ut-it feeling smartphones generate? How can you be present on these devices in a way that’s meaningful, useful, and purposeful? How can your app be indispensable? Don’t think, “I want to create a cool app.” Think, “I want to solve real problems, offer real solutions, create a must-have feature” for your audiences’ mobile device. Create something essential.

3. Put goals in the driver’s seat. Don’t go crazy and forget the fundamentals of business and marketing. We saw companies forget these when they first went on the Web. They thought that they could spend a lot of money to build a website, and all their business problems would be solved. We have seen similar madness with people getting on Facebook and Twitter without any sense of why they should be there, who they are trying to reach, and what they are trying to get their friends, fans and followers to do — other than “buy our product” or “do business with us.” Without a clear plan and strategy, mobile will become this new year’s huge time and money suck.

Mobile can be a new platform for building brand loyalty, stimulating traffic, and enhancing interaction. Eventually, sooner than we think, mobile will drive sales. If you’re going to “go mobile,” make sure that your efforts are framed by clear and attainable goals.

What will be your mobile strategy in 2011?

This post was inspired by Fred Wilson and his post The Smartphone Explosion which references Seth Weintraub’s post in Fortune about Android.

Image by sxc.hu user mrceviz

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In Toshl, there are only two things to input to record an expense: an amount and a tag(s). The only way to enter your expenses is through your phone, which makes sense to me. Otherwise I’d have receipts stacking up next to my computer, and you know how that would end. You can sync your data with the website manually from your phone, or set it to sync automatically over Wi-Fi or other connection. And if you want to keep track of the cash leaking out of someone else’s wallet too, you can. Toshl lets you sync multiple phones, and you can create a tag for your name and theirs to see who’s spending what.

Essentially, the Toshl website is only used for viewing and exporting data. You can’t even create an account through the website; you have to do it from your phone. Your expenditures can be displayed by time period or tags in two different graph formats. With the free account, you can export your data in .csv format. With the Pro version ($19.95 a year), you have a few more options, including exporting to Excel, PDF and Google Docs.

There are a number of other expense tracking apps out there, but most have many more features than I need or have the patience to learn how to use: Mobile app ProOnGo (not free) also syncs with a website, has a receipt reader and exports to QuickBooks. Expensify (free) also exports to QuickBooks and can be used for tracking time and mileage. PageOnce (free) allows for globally tracking of all of your expenses and bills, and offers alerts and notifications. EasyMoney (Android-only, not free)can also be used for tracking both expenses and bills, and allows you to enter more specific info for each transaction. Expenditure (iPhone only, not free) has a nice interface, but it doesn’t offer syncing or graphs. SplashMoney (not free) can connect to your bank account, and also has a desktop version.

Toshl is available for iPhone, Android, Nokia Maemo and Symbian. The company plans to add more features gradually, but I hope they don’t abandon their less-is-more approach.

What do you use to track your spending?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
• Who Owns Your Data in the Cloud?

Since I’m already a Gmail and Google Apps user, synchronizing mail, calendars and contacts to the EVO was a snap. And the phone comes with well-designed apps for Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, Google Talk, and Google Voice. There’s also a multi-service social network client for Facebook, Flickr and Twitter called FriendStream.

But there a bunch of other Android apps available, both paid and free. So if you or a loved one are in line to get an Android phone for the holidays, here are some apps to get you started.

Communication and Social Networking

• Multi-protocol IM apps eBuddy and Nimbuzz are worth trying. Nimbuzz also offers international calling at low rates, comparable to Skype and Google Voice, but I find eBuddy’s IM interface richer and easier to use.
• Scott and I have both found Gist useful, and the Gist Android app does a pretty good job of presenting a lot of information in a small space.
• The DroidIn app keeps LinkedIn users connected from their Android phones. The app isn’t as complete as the official LinkedIn app for iOS, but it does the basics well.
• HTC’s built-in Twitter apps (Peep and FriendStream) are fine for basic needs, but if you want to manage multiple Twitter apps, use a specific service to shorten URLs, or to post images and videos, you might want to check out Seesmic. There are lots of others, too, including such well-known cross-platform apps as HootSuite, which I don’t care for, but others like. And if you like using Ping.fm to post to a bunch of services simultaneously, try the AnyPost app.

Internet

• One of the nice things about Android is the large choice of web browsers. In addition to Android’s native Webkit-based browser, there are half a dozen alternatives, including Opera, Dolphin and the beta version of Firefox Mobile.
• Unfortunately, there isn’t yet a simple way of syncing bookmarks from desktop browsers. Since I’m an Xmarks user, and it seems that the sync service will now remain in business, I’ve decided to make Xmarks’ “My Bookmarks” page my home page in the Android browser.

News and Weather

• The EVO comes with an RSS news reader app (just called News). It’s nice, but for some reason, it doesn’t have any way of importing feeds via an OPML file. Since I don’t want to have to re-create the several hundred feeds I already have in Google Reader, I looked for an RSS app that syncs with Google Reader. So far, I’m finding the unofficial gReader app quite adequate for news reading.
• The phone’s native Weather app is pretty, but doesn’t include many details. If you live in a place with interesting weather like I do and want more info, check out WeatherBug. It uses data from Weather Underground’s extensive network of local weather stations, and is available in ad-supported or paid versions.

File and Idea Management

• We’ve written about Dropbox many times; it’s one of our favorite file sync services. The Android app seems to work as well as its counterparts for other platforms.
• The Android app from another favorite, Evernote, syncs smoothly with other locations, too.
• I rather like Toodledo, the cloud-based to-do app. Toodle Droid, the Android version, is actually nicer-looking than the service’s web interface.

Password Management

• I can’t do without 1Password to manage and sync passwords. It can be used with Dropbox to make your password data available on multiple machines.
• And since it doesn’t hurt to have multiple backups, I also use LastPass.

Utilities

• As a web worker, I tend to need to get “under the hood” of my Android devices more than some users. If you’re in the same category, you might need the App Installer, which allows you to install apps other than those found in the Android Market.
• I’ve also added AndExplorer, a file browser app, which lets me get into the phone’s file system.
• For sending files, there’s AndFTP, a surprisingly nice FTP client.

I’m sure that I’ll be adding apps in the days and weeks to come. For instance, I haven’t yet found a solitaire app to match Awesome Solitaire for iOS, so recommendations are welcome!

What Android apps do you recommend for newbies?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
• Are You Empowering Your Mobile Workforce?