Mailbox for iPad is the first new product from the company since its Dropbox acquisition, which Om’s sources put above $50 million and potentially closer to $100 million. No matter the exact price tag, it was a significiant deal for the small company, and CEO Gentry Underwood said the transition to working within Dropbox has been remarkably smooth.

The new iPad app will look pretty similar to the existing iPhone app, with a few minor changes to account for the larger screen. Underwood said designing for the iPad is actually a significant challenge, since if you look at it one way it’s an overzized mobile phone, and another way it’s a small computer. Figuring out how to accomodate for the size of the keyboard (or wireless external keyboards), as well as not overcrowding the screen, is tricky.

“We’re trying to create an experience that’s as consistent as possible, that doesn’t misuse all that extra space,” he said, noting that it would be easy to see the larger size of the tablet and cram it with features. “And sometimes it’s like a luxury-sized mobile device and sometimes it’s a desktop replacement.”

Seemingly as soon as Mailbox launched, users were clamoring to download the app, which limited signups and put most people on a reservation list. The full app finally launched to everyone and Mailbox removed the signup list last month. At that point, it was delivering more than 100 million messages a day, and while Underwood said they are reluctant to continue releasing numbers, he said the growth remains strong, and that 40 percent of users hit inbox zero every week.

Mailbox for iPhone and iPad are available in the Apple iTunes store, and a full review of the iPhone app can be found on the GigaOM Pro blog.

Underwood said the company is working on an Android app (the iPad app was in the works before the acquisition), but he wouldn’t say when Android would launch. The company decided to go with iPad first since it was an often-requested feature, and because much of the code was the same for iPad, even if it presented new design challenges, whereas Android would be something of the opposite.

“There’s always this constant tension between, ‘This is great,’ and ‘Oh, there’s so much more we want to do.’”

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When Google released the first iteration of its Drive app in late June, iOS users were understandably disappointed by the lack of document editing. But even though Google shows spreadsheet editing on an iPad in the below informational video, the feature isn’t supported.

Here’s a look at the video, which also shows some collaboration features and new functionality for Android devices. Watch at the 0:50 mark.

I tried to edit a spreadsheet on my iPad in Google Drive, but there’s no Edit button; it only appears for documents. The video demonstration may be showing what Google is working on however as I researched spreadsheet editing for Drive and found this tidbit on the official support page:

“Google spreadsheets can currently be viewed and edited only through the mobile browser. We’re working on an iOS-native editor for Google spreadsheets.”

The same holds true for creating new documents; you can’t create a new spreadsheet — or a presentation, for that matter — from an iOS device. Your only option is to create a new text document.

This rather large limitation aside, I like the document editing function for Google Drive. The full editing menu doesn’t fit on the small screen of an iPhone or iPod touch, but slides nicely across the top of the display as needed.

And if you have other applications that support the viewing of editing of Google Docs, you can send your files to those apps directly within Google Drive: Think Evernote as one example that I saw.

Updates such as this for Google Drive are welcome, of course. It’s odd to me, however, that instead of using the Drive app, I’m still turning to Office2 HD to create and edit all types of documents on my Google Drive from an iPad. I’ve been using the $8 app since the original iPad launched in 2010 and it still delivers a far better experience than Google’s own app.

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The app was introduced for Apple’s iPhone two years ago, and since then has seen more than 350,000 downloads and a long run at the top of Apple’s business/productivity app charts. So why debut on the iPad now? Apple finally made a tablet with the necessary hardware, says Denys Zhadanov, Readdle’s marketing manager.

“We tried [to test the app] with the iPad 2, but the results were beyond terrible,” said Zhadanov in an interview. “You just couldn’t read anything. The new iPad finally has good camera.”

But the new iPad’s 5 megapixel camera isn’t the only thing that makes this version of Scanner Pro different. Readdle says they took the opportunity to totally revamp the app — “every screen, every tap, every button. Nothing left intact – every idea and every feature had to prove its value for the iPad update.”The app is very simple and straightforward, so it’s no secret why it’s been so popular, even on a small screen. When you want to scan a document, book or magazine page, business card, white board from a meeting, or anything else you want to import or save in digital form, you open the app and hit the camera button. The app scans the image instantly. It will automatically find the right borders of your scan and crop out the stuff you don’t need, though you can manually fix if you need to. After tweaking the contrast and the brightness if necessary, you can save it to your iPad (as a JPEG or PDF) in Photos, iBooks or the Kindle app, send as an email, print, fax or upload it to your Google Docs, Dropbox or Evernote account.

A receipt I scanned with Scanner Pro and marked up with Remarks, both iPad apps from Readdle.

The most noticeable improvement in usability, however, might be its speed: Zhadanov says the reworked app scans 10 times faster than before.

Scanner Pro has added value because it’s not just a standalone app. Not only does it integrate with popular third-party apps and services like Dropbox and Evernote, but also hooks into Readdle’s own cluster of well-regarded iPad-based productivity apps like PDF Expert, Remarks and Printer Pro. Once you’ve got your PDF saved to your iPad through Scanner Pro, you can open it with PDF Expert and if it’s a contract, document or a form, you can sign or fill it out right on the iPad, mark it up in note-taking and annotation app Remarks or print it to any Wi-Fi-connected or networked printer with Printer Pro.

Readdle’s well-executed third-party integration and its own iOS-based ecosystem is yet another strong case for the integration of mobile, hyper-connected devices into work flows: the learning curve and barrier to entry are both incredibly low now. And that this is all coming together on the iPad first reinforces the Apple tablet’s importance in nudging businesses into the post-PC world.

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It’s an approach you’d imagine would appeal to a couple of ex-Facebookers now tackling the enterprise task management and productivity tool space. But as Justin Rosenstein and Dustin Moskovitz launch their new web-based product Asana out of beta this week, they’re actually out to prove the opposite: When it comes to getting things done at work, social is the wrong thing to focus on.

So what’s the foundation of professional productivity if it’s not breaking down org chart divisions, building relationships and easily sharing information? For Rosenstein and Moskovitz, that answer is deceptively simple: the work itself.

Tasks not people

In your personal life, your focus is naturally on building relationships, so “it makes sense to have a product that is fundamentally social,” says Rosestein, but to apply that same principle to your professional life just doesn’t work. The chatter on your Facebook account is the point; random comments and exchanges help you get to know people and stay in touch. At work, where your goal is, say, meeting a project deadline, chatter is just distracting noise that breaks your flow, wastes your time and limits your creativity.

In a professional context, the ultimate aim is not to get to know people (though surely that’s a facilitator and by-product of good work) but, as Rosenstein puts it, “to create interesting things.” So when it comes to professional productivity tools, “it makes sense to put the work as the fundamental unit, and for us, tasks are those atomic elements of productivity.”

Rosenstein elaborates: “Much in the way that email makes a message, the core notion, the fundamental unit that is being moved around and operated on, or say a social network makes people the fundamental unit, Asana is about making the task the fundamental unit.”

In essence, “Asana is basically a shared, collaborative task list,” he says, “allowing users to reference the product and know what everyone on the team is working on, as well as having all conversations, files and artifacts around those tasks collected in one place.”

By “following” a task, users are kept up to date on all actions and comments related to it via email, as well as who is assigned responsibility for the task. You can easily “unfollow” tasks that aren’t pertinent, set tasks as private or search the system for past comments and actions. Users can view tasks by project, including information on project priorities, group a project’s tasks by assignee, or sort by person and see all tasks an individual is involved in across all projects. A mobile version of Asana is a new improvement on the beta.

Eroding barriers to adoption

Other more social productivity tools based on following people or conversations not tasks are often simply too noisy and too slow, frustrating new users who then fall back on old standbys like email, and in-person chats, according to the Asana team (and, to be fair, my personal experience as well). For this reason, Rosenstein feels their main competition isn’t other offerings in the space, but the inertia that drags down new tools:

When we think about who our competition is, it’s not really the other productivity tools or enterprise collaboration tools because that’s not what people are using. Even among the early adopters who have been trying out Asana, 75 percent of them prior to using Asana were using email and documents to keep themselves organized. Email, documents, white boards, notebooks, in-person meetings, that’s the competition. Those are the tools people are still using today in order to try and keep themselves on the same page.

We have certain people who signed up for the beta who said, ‘I’ve tried a dozen different tools for project management, for group collaboration and could never get any of them to work. None of them would ever stick. I couldn’t adopt them. My team couldn’t adopt them.’ And so I think the big differentiator from those tools is this is the only one that actually works.

Will it work? The team is striving to make Asana as fast, flexible and easy to get started with as possible, minimizing the number of keystrokes or clicks to accomplish anything and making sure the signal-to-noise ratio is high so users get only relevant information. Asana can also be used as a personal, rather than team, task manager and grows virally as a single user assign bits of work to others, though Rosenstein warns that managers looking to lead a top-down adoption of Asana for their teams think carefully before proceeding.

“The biggest failure mode for adoption has been when someone comes in, plays around for a minute, doesn’t think about how they want to organize things, say ‘everyone, hey, come use this,’ and doesn’t set up any structure ahead of time,” says Rosenstein. “You need some sort of order.”

The future

In short, Asana’s future is vague but hopefully populous. The team’s immediate goal is getting users signed up rather than bringing in revenue. “We’re really focused on going for ubiquity, for mass-scale adoption,” says Rosenstein, “so at this point in time, we don’t even have a pay model. That’s something we’ll announce later. The product is free and will remain free for teams of 1-30.”

The product was beta tested by everyone from a sports management firm to a political campaign (plus, obviously, plenty of tech companies) so Asana is aiming for a broad market, though one that’s not without serious competitors, including major players like Microsoft and Cisco, as well as alternatives from other startups.

Will Asana’s streamlined, task-centric approach and limited use of social be the secret sauce that makes its tool the irresistible pizza of task management rather than another worthy but unappetizing product your boss nags you to use? Check it out and let us know what you think.

Do you agree with the Asana team’s general point that excess sociability and noise makes many productivity tools hard to stick with?

Image courtesy of Asana.

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The iOS launch comes three months after Astrid raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Google Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners.

Astrid is already very popular on the Android platform on which it originated last year: The app has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times in the Android marketplace in the 15 months since it launched, having gained traction with a range of users from multi-tasking parents to power-using “life hacker” types. As we’ve written before, Astrid’s mobile app allows users to make to-do lists and share them with certain individuals or groups of people. Astrid lists can also be made entirely public, or completely private.

The app’s aim, Astrid co-founder Jon Paris says, is to help users get more things done through a healthy amount of social pressure. For example, my friends can give me a hard time if they see I haven’t gone to the gym this week like I planned to (a purely hypothetical situation, of course). Now that Astrid has crossed the iOS launch off its own to-do list, it will be interesting to see what the company does next.

Here are some screen shots of Astrid for iPhone (click to enlarge):

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First, the funding: AwayFind raised $800,000 in a seed round led by CAP Ventures and 500 Startups, with Baltimore Angels, Quest Software, and a variety of angel investors.

As for the app, the new version specifically targets paying business customers who use Google Apps. AwayFind will be available as a download in the Google Apps marketplace as a 30-day free trial, after which it will cost around $10 per seat per month. (Pricing fluctuates depending on the size of the business.) Since Google Apps is currently the fastest growing business email platform, AwayFind could grow very quickly in the months ahead.

AwayFind's contextual gadget for Gmail (click to enlarge)

The Google Apps marketplace version of AwayFind has a few perks for paying customers: instant status reports so users are alerted in seconds instead of minutes when they receive an important email, and one-click setting up of alerts.

The announcements have been months in the making for AwayFind, which started as a side project for CEO Jared Goralnick but now has seven full-time employees. AwayFind for Google Apps has been in beta testing for several months with 2,000 companies, and Goralnick says he’s confident the professional world is the ideal customer base for the app.

“There is a huge disparity between signal and noise in most people’s work inboxes, and the problem is the greatest at large companies, where workers receive so much email every day from internal and external sources,” Goralnick told me in a recent interview. “The problem of interruptions in the workplace is very apparent.” And if businesses are willing to pay money to make their workers a bit less distracted by their inboxes, AwayFind could be at the start of something big.

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Quickoffice HD adds editing capabilities (for Microsoft Word and Excel) to give you more abilities to draft and update documents. Formatting options include changing font type, color, size, underlining, italics, and bold in Word, and formating cells and using functions in Excel. In addition, the free update includes many performance and multitasking enhancements.

It’s good to see a third-party developer and launch partner deliver features that were promised, although it’s likely that most of the software work was completed by the time HP decided to shelve its tablet just 49 days after debuting it. Regardless, there are now many TouchPad owners that can benefit from the new Quickoffice HD functions: Once HP decided to sell off inventory as low as $99 per device, several hundred thousand consumers snapped up the device.

Prior to this update — which hasn’t yet appeared on my TouchPad at the time of this writing — I’ve used Google Docs directly in the browser to edit Microsoft Word documents. The process has worked well, but was sometimes slow or laggy. Once my software is updated, I’ll likely switch over to Quickoffice HD, as the native application should perform better than a web-based editor. The useful software isn’t limited to a specific data source for my document library either. I have it synched up with my DropBox account, Google Docs and the free 50 GB of Box.net storage that came with the TouchPad.

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“We didn’t raise the money we did simply to be a to-do list company,” Astrid co-founder Jon Paris told me in an interview this week. He was short on specifics, but it seems that Astrid may be keen to expand its services beyond task scheduling — and into helping with task completion.

To date, Astrid has focused purely on helping people make to-do lists — albeit in a very unique way. Astrid’s mobile app allows users to make to-do lists and share them with certain individuals or groups of people. Astrid lists can also be made entirely public, or completely private. Astrid is currently available in the Android app marketplace; an iOS version is in beta testing now and will launch to the public later this month.

Astrid for Android has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times in the past year alone, and it currently has more than 250,000 active users monthly. The reason for Astrid’s popularity is two-fold, Paris tells me: The simple user interface attracts the multitasking-mom contingent, but the app has power features under the hood that satisfy power using “life hacker” types.

Meanwhile, Astrid’s social features add fun to the often staid practice of task management, Paris says. “When my buddies see that I haven’t biked to work in a week, they like to give me a hard time about that,” he said, adding that sharing goals also makes people more motivated to get them done. The CEO said he likes to joke that Astrid is a “cure for the lazy husband and nagging spouse” cliche, since it allows couples to check in and remind each other of things that need to be done in a quicker, less direct way.

But now Astrid has a bigger picture in mind. Paris told me the company plans to put its new funding toward building offerings beyond its signature to-do list app. “We’re trying to discover how to give more help to people to help them be more productive,” Paris said. “I think there are a lot of really interesting ways we can help people get important things done.” Given that one of Astrid’s new investors is Jack Herrick, who co-founded the crowdsourced how-to website WikiHow, does this mean the company could start providing the capability to outsource the completion of certain tasks on their to-do lists to other people — or even robotic services? The question elicited a smile from Paris, but he made a point of holding specific plans close to the chest: “We’re happy to have the domain expertise that every one of our investors bring,” he said.

The task completion space is certainly heating up at the moment: TaskRabbit, an online marketplace where people can pay others to run their errands, recently raised $5 million in funding and is actively working on a nationwide expansion; and new startup Fancy Hands promises to provide virtual personal assistants at affordable prices. Astrid already has the list-making process down pat; it may be smart for the company to get further into helping people cross things off their to-do lists, as well.

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