Sketches by LateNiteSoft. Next time you get a middle-of-the-night design idea, or just want to jot down some designs during an initial walkthrough, call up the Sketches app. Create a line drawing from scratch, or snap a photo of the client’s home or a particular feature and draw right on it. The tool lets you change colors, zoom in and out, and send images to others. Download price: $4.99
Editor says: Users need to know before they purchase Sketches that the program isn’t meant to be a CAD application for iPhone. The app lets you change the color and size of your line drawings, and also lets you enter geometric shapes and numerous other characters. Shapes and lines must be placed using two fingers, which makes it tricky to see what you’re doing and reduces accuracy, though the standard graph-paper background helps a bit. Once an object is placed, it can’t be moved, but you can undo one step at a time. For designers, the name “Sketches” says it all — this is a fun tool for designing on-the-fly and jotting down design ideas when more accurate tools aren’t available.
MarginCalc by Steve Greenley. We all know that if a job costs you $1,000 and you sell it for $1,200, your margin is not 20%. But what is it? And what do I have to sell it for to make 20%? The MarginCalc app will help you figure that out. The program has regular calculator functions but also includes three pairs of pricing buttons for margin, cost price, and sell price. Just enter the two numbers you have and MarginCalc will calculate the third.
Editor says: MarginCalc wasn’t an intuitive program to just pick up and start using, and with no Help button in the program, I visited www.margincalc.com to learn the ropes. With their quick tutorial, it all made sense. If you’re calculating margin, just input your cost price and press the “Cost” button under the % Margin header. Enter your sell price and click the “Sell” button. Your margin automatically appears as a percentage. The $1.99 app is worth the price, if it means you never underestimate your margin again.
EverNote by EverNote. With lots of projects to juggle — not to mention a personal life and a family — remodelers have many details and to-do lists to keep track of. EverNote lets users keep all their ideas, lists, and other notes in one place, accessible both by the iPhone app and the Web-based desktop version. Written notes, photos, and even voice notes can be recorded and saved, then synced so that both devices (phone and computer) are up-to-date. All notes are highly searchable as well. In addition to searching the text of written notes, EverNote will search the tags (keywords) that users add to each note, and will record the GPS location of photos taken with the iPhone, so you can also search by location. Snap a photo of a product label, newspaper article, or other printed piece — even a handwritten note — and EverNote will also make the text of that item searchable. Download price: free.
Editor says: For remodelers who have to manage a lot of details on many projects (and who doesn’t?) — not to mention projects and to-do lists at home — EverNote has the potential to be very useful, particularly given its iPhone mobility. However, that promise hasn’t been fulfilled yet for this user. The program takes a long time to load, search, and make edits to notes, and judging by the “Pending” button, doesn’t save notes instantly. The iPhone version syncs with a Web-based version at www.evernote.com, so you can save notes either to your phone or computer and have the two devices update each other with every sync.
EverNote organizes notes into notebooks, but currently you can only create new notebooks on the desktop version, so start the day prepared. If you know you want to make a visual punch list at the Smith jobsite, create your “Punch List — Smith Family” notebook before you go. Because both the app and desktop version are free downloads, the program is worth checking out, but may need some updates for smoother mobile use.
