Washington – Every week sees a plethora of new apps hitting the market. Hayley Tsukayama takes a deeper look at two.
Outlook
Microsoft has updated its Outlook app for iOS and Android devices, adding many productivity features that can improve the way you use email on your phone, especially your work email. It adds a lot of features you can find elsewhere such as a priority inbox, the ability to set emails to come back to your inbox later and calendar integration. It draws all of those features together in a clean, seamless way and also supports multiple types of accounts.
The app can work with Dropbox, Box and Microsoft’s own OneDrive to store and save attachments that you may need to send. Overall, the feature set is great, and makes Outlook one of the best email apps on the market. But the app isn’t always stable – particularly for the Android preview. It isn’t yet available for Windows Phone devices; Microsoft promises it’s coming soon. Free for iOS; in open preview for Android.
DocuSign
It’s tax season, which probably means there are documents that need your signature. But if you don’t want to hunt down a fax machine or mess with scanners, consider adding your John Hancock via DocuSign’s mobile app.
The app lets you save your signature by drawing on the touch screen or snapping a photo of your pen-and-paper signature with your phone – a process that requires you to get the lighting just so.
You can also save a version of your initials, and request signatures from other people. (You need an account to use it.) Plus you can add your signature to documents saved in a Dropbox, Google Drive or Box account.
With DocuSign’s free account, you can sign as many documents as you want and make as many as three requests for others to sign. Unlimited access to all features requires a membership fee of $20 per month or $180 per year. Free, for iOS, Android and Windows devices.
Washington Post-Bloomberg