An estimated 1 million people purchased the Apple Watch within the first 24 hours of its pre-order availability in early April, and countless more have jumped on the bandwagon since. There’s no doubt that even more are saving their pennies to slap one of these tech toys around their wrists, too.
After all, the Apple Watch may not be the first gadget of its kind, but it’s certainly the most popular. Even so, with prices ranging from $349 to $17,000, the Apple Watch is anything but an impulse buy.
The good news is, there are plenty of apps available for the Apple Watch already, designed to do everything from improve your fitness to manage your travel plans. Among these early apps are several that can take your Apple Watch from being a glorified calorie counter to a savvy career investment.
Put it to work for your next public relations campaign with these five extremely useful apps that keep the office within arm’s reach, no matter where you are:
1. Slack
Slack is a collaboration tool that makes sure your team does anything but. It offers an online hub for all team communications and integrates with Dropbox, Google Docs, Twitter, and dozens of other services for a seamless and robust team experience.
Even better, Slack is also available on most desktops and other mobile devices already, so it can be your team’s go-to tool no matter where (or what) you’re working from.
The app for the Apple Watch lets you easily respond to direct messages, see mentions, and create “off the cuff” replies so that you’re always up-to-date with the latest project developments.
2. Drafts
Never lose a middle-of-the night flash of inspiration or a morning drive “aha” moment again. This app is all about quickly and conveniently capturing text, and it is possibly the very best app to catch those moments of inspiration without pulling out the laptop.
The Drafts Apple Watch app lets you dictate notes into the watch’s speaker, and organizes them in a feed similar to your email inbox. You can send your captured ideas pretty much anywhere you want, from your iCloud to your Twitter feed.
You can also check your inbox status and browse recent drafts.
You already know PowerPoint. But what you may not know is that this old-school presentation tool got a cool upgrade with its latest iOS version.
The latest update makes the software Apple Watch-friendly, so forget about dusting off the old projector remote the next time you have a new business pitch —now you can navigate through your presentation straight from your wrist.
4. Evernote
Evernote is already wildy popular for its ability to sync notes between your computer, tablet and phone. Now you can pull up your cloud-based notes right to your wrist, too—perfect for when a reporter calls for a statement on-the-fly. Just pull up your talking points and you’re ready to go.
You can also use Evernote to share key documents with the whole team and archive relevant online news clips.
5. Hours
Because I know you’re tracking your time for all this fantastic work you’re doing on your watch. This app keeps those billable hours logged so you’ll never have to ask yourself, did you spend 12 minutes or 20 prepping for the big mid-morning meeting last night?
Hours claims that “the Apple Watch is about to become the best time tracking device known to man,” and it’s ready to be the tool that makes it happen.
With just a tap, you can start, stop and switch timers to move from work for one client to another. You can also adjust start and end times in your log, and add notes to your time log by dictation.
These are only a few of the 3,000-plus apps that are already available for the Apple watch, and it’s set to make its way into brick-and-mortar stores this June.
Much like the iPod, iPhone and iPad before it, the Apple Watch is well positioned to make a significant shift in how we connect, play, and work. As an industry always trying to stay ahead of the next trend, the Apple Watch could be just the thing to help you stay a step ahead.
Guest Contributor Emily Wenstrom is PR and Marketing Writer.
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