12 Awesome iPad Apps for Road Warriors

LogMeIn Ignition offers the simplest, fastest, and most intuitive way to control and access files from your desktop computer with your iPad. Additional software is required on the desktop, but setup is a breeze, and it's amazing what you can do remotely. You can even play Flash games on your iPad through your home computer. It operates smoothly over Wi-Fi, and it's a great way to make sure that you always have the files you need.

Bento is a clean and intuitive personal organization and database app. If you already use Bento for Mac or your iPhone, this one is a no-brainer. Among other great features, it gives you the capability to create audio notes and play them back within the app; you can also add a location field that will pull from your GPS. It's a great choice for distilling the chaos in your life into something more manageable.

FlightTrack Pro is simply the best way to monitor your flights. It integrates seamlessly with your TripIt account, it automatically populates when you add a new flight, and it can send you push alerts if any flight changes crop up. It can also supply maps and weather, and it can sync with the iPad's calendar. It's not the cheapest app, but it is the most full-featured flight-tracking tool out there. If you fly a lot, it's a worthy investment.

If you travel frequently across multiple countries, you know how tough it can be to keep currency straight. The Awesome Currency Calculator allows you to convert 160 world currencies, and you can view your native currency and multiple foreign ones at the same time. The rates constantly update, and you can calculate tax and keep track of previous calculations. The attractive interface takes advantage of the iPad's larger screen, and the realistic sound effects are a nice touch.

If you do a lot of foreign travel for work, iTranslate is indispensable. It's like a pocket translation dictionary, but much better. You can translate to and from more than 50 languages, and it starts working instantly, as you type. It also has 11 free voices to help with pronunciation, and you can save words and phrases you've already looked up to gain faster access to commonly used terms.

Corporate world, rejoice! Cisco has an iPad app for its WebEx conference software, which handles data and audio simultaneously. You can view video on any iPad, but if you want to send a video stream, you'll need an iPad 2, as the original iPad has no camera. You can follow presentations live, chat with everyone in the conference, and even request a call back on your phone from within the app. Video is fluid over Wi-Fi; it works over 3G, too, though at a lower resolution.

Through Square, you can create a mobile point of sale. The app has a sleek interface, and it allows you to accept credit card payments for your business just about anywhere you can get online. You can keep a library of items you sell regularly, accept tips, and even manage and record sales conducted in cash. The app is free, but using the service involves some fees. You also have to order the free Square Card Reader to authenticate cards.

Minimal Folio is, as you might expect, quite minimal, but that's intentional. This simple, clean presentation tool lets you add PDFs, images, and video, and since it puts no branding in the way, your audience sees only what you want them to see. The interface is extremely easy to navigate, and you can sync presentations across multiple devices through Dropbox integration. It's cheaper than some other presentation apps (such as Keynote), and it works well.

OmniFocus is a productivity app that helps you get things done (it works with the GTD methodology, too). It's certainly not the only task manager available for the iPad, but what sets it apart is its understanding of contexts. For instance, it will remind you about all of the food you need to pick up when you're at the grocery store, but you won't see that stuff when you're at the hardware store. It can sync with OmniFocus for Mac, iPhone, or iPod Touch via MobileMe, WebDAV, Bonjour, or the creators' own Omni Sync Server. The app is not cheap and it takes some time to learn, but if you already use it on your other devices, it's worth the cost.

1Password for iPad is designed to make your Web browsing more secure, and to give your brain a rest. Instead of trying to remember your password for every site you visit, store your login information in the highly encrypted 1Password. Once you log in to the program (via the last password you need to remember, theoretically) you can log in to any of your Websites with a single click. The app syncs easily with 1Password on your Mac or on other devices. It's worth mentioning, though, that this selling point also becomes a single point of failure: If someone learns your 1Password password, they gain access to everything. Needless to say, guard your password carefully.

Apple has done a terrific job in creating a tablet version of its OS X productivity suite. Pages is a robust word processor, Numbers is a full-featured spreadsheet program, and Keynote capably creates, plays, and manages presentations on the go. All of these apps can read from and export to their Microsoft Office counterparts (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), and they are the best apps of their kind in the App Store. To learn more, see the full review of iWord for iPad.

iAnnotate PDF is a simple app for marking up PDFs. You can highlight, scribble, underline, and even draw freeform. Unlike with many other PDF-markup apps, in iAnnotate you aren't just drawing a layer on top of the PDF; you are actually editing the file. You can save the result as a plain old PDF, and then your markups will be visible to anyone, regardless of what PDF reader they use. It's a straightforward app, but it's a useful collaboration tool.

Here's more coverage of tools and accessories that can help make working (and playing) on an iPad more enjoyable:

Drop-Proof Your iPad 2

15 Must-Have Accessories for Your iPad 2

15 Best iPad Apps for Newbies

12 Cool Things to Do With an Old iPad

10 Totally Pointless iPad Accessories