Rumor has it that Apple may announce the release date for iPad 2 on March 2.  Since the initial launch last spring, iPads have revolutionized the way many small businesses work.  If you are considering upgrading or purchasing your first iPad, here are some must-have apps for small business owners:

Boxcar

Messages and notifications seem to come from everywhere now.  If you have the notifications turned on for your iPhone or iPad, every app you’ve installed could be sending you notifications, putting you into pop-up overload.  Check out Boxcar and add all of your social media accounts to consolidate your notifications, messages, retweets, mentions, DMs, new followers, new blog posts, and so much more.  This is the productive way to manage all of your social media accounts!

FileBrowser

We loved NetPortal on the iPhone, and FileBrowser is the app for the iPad.  With either of these, you can access any file and view files in common formats (PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, common image files, device compatible media files, and HTML files) on your computer from your device.   If you’ve ever been out and needed a file that was on your computer back in the office, this is a must-have app.

GoodReader

GoodReader is not only the best PDF viewer we’ve used; the ability to edit and mark-up PDFs make it one of our favorites.  From a viewing perspective, GoodReader pull the text out of PDFs to make reading much easier with the text fitting perfectly on the screen with no scrolling.  An added bonus is that GoodReader also supports Office document viewing too.

SharePlus

If you use SharePoint as a collaboration tool, SharePlus is the app you want to take SharePoint with you on-the-go.  Now, you can work with your team, sharing documents, calendars and task lists from a client site, a taxi, or the local café just like you would when you are sitting at your desk.  You can browse and edit documents, discussions, announcements, wiki pages and custom lists, and capture images, video and audio directly from your device into SharePoint.

Penultimate

Penultimate is the best-selling handwriting app for iPad.  You get the feeling of writing on paper, but with the added bonus of digital power, flexibility, and storage.  You can create separate notebooks to keep your content organized, and you can store an infinite number of pages in your notebooks.  For added protection, click a button to back-up all of your notebooks to iTunes. You can easily email your notes to others, and display your notes on a screen (with the iPad VGA adaptor).  Writing with our fingers doesn’t work for us – problem solved with a stylus!

What are your favorite apps for business?