An apple for the adviser: Making your iPad perform

The following is an edited transcript of a May 1 webcast, “Advisers and iPads — Making the Most of Your Tablet.” InvestmentNews technology reporter Davis D. Janowski moderated.

InvestmentNews: Sunit, you've been running your practice on Macs and know the strengths and weaknesses of the Apple platform, and the iPad itself. So let's start with you.

Mr. Bhalla: I bought my first iPad soon after it came out, and I was amazed how much I used it in my daily life. I think the iPad is very good for content creation, for writing documents, for creating mind maps and making outlines, but it really is amazing for content consumption — for reading, watching videos, keeping up with social media.

READING IN COMFORT

Let me talk about reading on an iPad. We all do a lot of reading in our jobs — e-mails, newsletters, books, articles, social media — and I never found that reading this content sitting at my desk, with great posture, was very comfortable. But I do love reading the same content sitting on a nice chair with my iPad.

For reading, let me talk about three different iPad apps: the Kindle app from Amazon; GoodReader, for reading and annotating PDFs; and Instapaper, for reading other web content.

For books, the Apple iBooks app and the Amazon [Inc.] Kindle app are great. I like the Apple iBooks app a little better visually, but I love the availability in the Kindle app to sync to more devices. I can sync bookmarks and highlights and notes from my Kindle app on my iPad to my Mac, iPhone and a physical Kindle device. With the Apple iBooks app, I can only sync to other IOS devices — an iPad and an iPhone. So I tend to buy more books in the Kindle app because these books are more portable.

GoodReader is an amazing app to read and annotate PDFs. I read all my newsletters, mutual fund annual reports and other PDFs in GoodReader. And when I go to conferences, GoodReader stores all my conference information — all my flight and hotel information, my conference agenda and my conference slides. When I attend a presentation, I can see the slides on my iPad, and highlight key information and take notes in GoodReader, as well, which makes it a great app to read and annotate PDFs.

Instapaper is a great app to read other web content because it strips out extraneous content, formats the article for the iPad and allows me to read the article offline.

For instance, I use Reeder as my RSS reader in the iPad and it syncs with Google Reader, which many of you may be using for your RSS reader. I can quickly scan my articles in Reeder, and if I want to read an entire article, I can simply swipe the iPad screen, and that article gets sent automatically to Instapaper. And since TweetBot is my Twitter client, if a Tweet contains a link that I want to read, I can click on the link and send the article to Instapaper, as well. And again, Instapaper will strip out extraneous content, format the article for the iPad and allow me to read the article offline.

InvestmentNews: For readers who are unfamiliar with RSS or have forgotten what it is, it's “really simple syndication.” Just about every website offers an RSS feed that you can subscribe to, and that way, rather than your having to go to their site and read on your own initiative, the content produced by that site can be sent to you using RSS. What Sunit is referring to here is that you can sign up for a typical site's RSS feed, take it and send it to Instapaper, which then strips out any extraneous material so you can read it within the Instapaper interface.

Mr. Bhalla: Right. Each morning in the past, I would go to the CNN website, the InvestmentNews website, the ESPN website and so on, and read articles there. Now I can have those articles pushed to me. I can scan them very quickly in this Reeder app, and the articles I want to read in more detail I can send to Instapaper very easily. I also can see articles posted by my Facebook friends.

InvestmentNews: How do you do that on Facebook? How do you set it so that things are sent to Instapaper?

Mr. Bhalla: You have to link up your Facebook and Instapaper accounts so that links that are posted to Facebook get sent to an Instapaper separate-item list.

DAY TO DAY

InvestmentNews: Michael, tell us a little bit about how you use the iPad in your practice.

Mr. Loftus: I've got a practice in Delaware and I'm pretty much all Mac. NetX has a beta version for Mac, which is nice; Morningstar now works on FireFox, and of course today we are talking about the iPad.

I do my morning reading first thing, and the device is automatically on. I look at CNBC, obviously, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, and then I go to TheStreet, Barron's, etc., and then all the publications from our industry, plus just general reading.

I've got a Zinio app that gets around all of the issues with magazines on the iPad and revenue sharing, and allows you to purchase magazines. I don't get magazines in paper anymore — BusinessWeek, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, MacLife, you name it.

I slowly have been putting on some of the fund partners, and I will go on tonight and get a Franklin [Templeton Investments] piece that I think is great; Oppenheimer[Funds] has done a nice job of putting out some really good information. I also use a Brinker [Capital Inc.] app and the Smart Money app. Those help with what I will call the consumption aspects of communication.

The next area is what I call the social aspect. And this is the social media that I use with my iPad. Obviously, we've got Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, which finally just came out with an app for the iPad. It's a great tool. The way I have social media set up, if I put something on Twitter, it automatically goes out to LinkedIn and my Facebook page. I have all the accounts linked and talking together.

I also use HootSuite, which is a program that allows you to have all three programs in one, and I use that if I am going to program something. Obviously, you don't want to get stuck on social media during the day too much, because it gets overwhelming. So in the morning, I set up six or seven tweets or articles that I am going to put out there during the day, and do it through HootSuite on my iPad or online.

I also have a WordPress app. Although I am not using it today, I'm building a new website with a WordPress theme, with a much more social aspect where I can blog and whatnot, and ultimately use that to drive all my tweets and messages out to all the different social-media sites.

AN APP FOR ANALYTICS

And then the last thing in the social-media area is the analytics tool AnalyticsPro, which I have hooked up to my website. That's where I can get information on all the hits to my website.

The next area is business apps. 1Password is just a phenomenal program, which allows you to store passwords. The beauty of it is that if you've got an iPhone app and an iPad app, this will keep all your passwords up to date no matter where you are. We all have a million passwords that constantly change; this way, wherever you change a password, it gets saved and pushed out to all your other devices.

The next one, which really is the same idea, is EverNote. It's basically a program to store notes, and it can be used on all platforms — your laptop, whether it's a PC or Mac, your iPhone and your iPad. I use it for notes, for whenever I find good articles that I want to go back to and review, and when I'm looking for marketing ideas or things like that. I put ideas in there for funds that I find, etc., and again, they link with everybody.

NetX has an iPad app that lets you view all your client accounts and do trades and everything else you'd like to do. I use it a lot, especially when I'm home and don't feel like booting up my computer; I can just check something real quick on some accounts.

STORING INFORMATION

Sunit talked about GoodReader, which I have, as well, but how do you store some of this information? There's DropBox and Box.net, and behind all of those companies, there's Amazon, which is the largest supplier of memory. I use DropBox if I'm going out for a quick presentation. I sync it to my iPad so when I am meeting with a client, I can do a full presentation. I just fly through where my Albridge [Solutions Inc.] statements, quarterly statements and other materials are.

The issue with DropBox and Box.net is security. They don't have what I will call high-level security. Yes, it is password-protected on your iPad, but I am not particularly comfortable with that, so I use it offline; I use Amazon storage for all my offline cloud storage. But on the front end, I use a program called Jungle Disk. It will create a hard drive on your laptop, and you can view everything on your iPad as well, except it's got several levels of passwords and encryption.

The last one I will point out is Air Display, which is great when meeting with clients. Air Display links to your laptop, so whatever presentation you are showing in your laptop also automatically goes through to your iPad. When a client comes in, I put an iPad in front of them and they can just follow along with the presentation right in their hands as I zoom in and zoom out.

My clients all love the technology, and I've had a couple of clients buy iPads after our meetings.

InvestmentNews: Michael, has your broker-dealer questioned your use of DropBox?

Mr. Loftus: I haven't seen anything on DropBox or Box.net. If there is any type of sensitive information, meaning paperwork that has been signed, Social Security numbers, etc., all of that goes into my Jungle Disk and it's all encrypted in some way. With Jungle Disk, you have the ability to add several levels of encryption, and no matter where you are, you can get access to it. I don't keep anything on my laptop, because you hear stories about laptops' being stolen. This way, your information is protected by the highest level of security.

To answer an attendee's question, Jungle Disk is in the clouds, so if you are on your iPad and there is also an iPhone app, it is available.

InvestmentNews: Michael, how many of the apps you just discussed are free?

Mr. Loftus: Let me see: 1password is a payment program. EverNote has a general one that is free; I think I pay $9.99 a year for the one that allows me to have offline notebooks, so that way, I break it up into different categories such as marketing, prospecting, etc. NetX is free. Air Display was $9. DropBox is free. The WebEx app and GoToMeeting are free. All the social-media stuff is free. So a good amount of it is free, but to get the fullness of the app, you usually pay a few dollars, but not a lot. A mind-mapping app that I have called Popplet was about $19.99.

InvestmentNews: Many of the reading apps are free, though often you have to pay a subscription price just as you would if you were subscribing to various publications. Now let's get a few words from Holly on how she is using her iPad.

Ms. Thomas: I'll divide my comments into content creation, a little bit about client meetings and gadgets, and a little bit on storage to supplement what Michael has already said.

On content creation, I do a lot of writing — I have three blogs on WordPress — and so I use my WordPress app while I am sitting on an airplane waiting for them to tell me to turn my iPad off, and then I can post. By the time I land, I have got stats on who has opened and clicked on things. I also use a Constant Contact app, so sometimes I will create in Pages and post it into WordPress and then Constant Contact. And WordPress and Constant Contact are good at tracking stats of opens, and who has clicked, and those kinds of things on your iPad.

Also, I use HootSuite, not to send tweets — although I do some tweeting, but not a lot — but mostly to filter all the noise and come up with a listening strategy. I like HootSuite because I can just type in a search term and create a column of anybody who has tweeted with that in their tweet, and then I can focus on what I want to listen to — kind of like the financial reader apps that Michael and Sunit went over.

HAND IT TO THE CLIENT

A funny thing happened last week in a client meeting. I was using my Mac desktop and I happened to have the iPad on the table, and the client wanted to look up an account — like her bank account — to see how much cash was in it. But of course, I don't want the user ID and passwords and all that, so I just handed her the iPad and said, “Well, why don't you look up the account on the iPad?” And she had it pulled up on the iPad in 10 seconds because she was familiar with it, and I hadn't even thought to use it that way, where clients could be looking up their own stuff while we were in a meeting together.

Someone asked me about typing on the iPad. I don't mind typing on the iPad; I would rather do that than carry a keyboard around. But at home I also have a little gadget called a Mercury 360 Rotating Stand and it puts the iPad at a comfortable height, both to view it and to type on it. It really helps my neck and my back so I am not hunched over a lot.

And finally on storage, I haven't used 1Password, but I use RoboForm, and I think I paid for RoboForm maybe $9.99 or something. It is similar to 1Password in that you can store all your passwords in the cloud and sync between the devices. And I have iPhone, iPad, Mac Desktop and Mac laptop, so it is really nice to have those synced.

I also do almost all storage in the cloud or online, and I like DropBox, but as Sunit pointed out to me at a previous conference, you only get so much free storage with DropBox. I think after 5 gigabytes, you have to start paying for storage, so I think Michael's strategy of having several different apps for storage is good.

REQUIRED READING

InvestmentNews: Do you have a particular publication that is your favorite to read on your iPad?

Ms. Thomas: I am kind of boring. I just like The Wall Street Journal. When they came out with the iPad app, it was just such a better way to read the Journal, so I have been an avid fan ever since.

InvestmentNews: Michael? Sunit? Is there is a particular publication that has done a great job? And let me quickly answer one question before it is asked: There is no InvestmentNews iPad app just yet, but we're working on it.

Mr. Loftus: I would agree with Holly on The Wall Street Journal app, because they also have clicks for videos. I think BusinessWeek does a real nice job. Personally, I can't stand the paper version of Barron's — that smell and the dirt in your hands — but the online version is so much cleaner and easier to read. Those are the three that I read religiously.

InvestmentNews: Sunit, what about you?

Mr. Bhalla: I tend to read a lot of my content through the RSS feeds. I use Reeder to filter them and then the articles that I want to read I can put into Instapaper. So I tend to use that more than actually reading specific apps for a certain publication.

InvestmentNews: Do you ever explore particular publications that do come out with an app? Do you bother downloading them to look at them?

Mr. Bhalla: For media apps feed?

InvestmentNews: Yes.

Mr. Bhalla: Not typically. The other issue is, with the new iPad, the screen is so nice that I can go to the website and read the content from online, so I have read Time magazine and other magazines on the iPad. But I find that I don't use that as often as I thought I would initially.

InvestmentNews: Sunit, do you want to talk a little bit about how you actually do your presentations with clients?

Mr. Bhalla: Sure. There are times when we want to meet clients in a very formal setting, with nice chairs, nice tables and things. I have my office and also a boardroom in my executive office suite that I use quite often for meeting with clients, but there are other times when I want to meet more informally. There is also a room in my office suite for that. Some meetings are more appropriate in the informal room where I use an iPad and an app called Fuze Meeting, and that allows the client or me to control the content. We can zoom in on content, we can change to the next page, and it seems as though being in a more informal setting tends to lead to more informal, relaxed, conversational meetings. So again, there are times when I do formal meetings in a formal room, but there are other times where a more informal setting seems to be a better conduit for conversation.

InvestmentNews: You actually use a few iPads in the meeting, so each of you could be in a relaxing chair rather than having to sit side by side and use a typical computer display and go through it with a mouse. This way, each of you can highlight parts of the screen, correct?

Mr. Bhalla: Right. If it's two spouses and me, having one iPad would be hard, so it's usually one iPad for me and one that they share. They typically don't fight over the iPad — at least they haven't yet.

And by the way, this Fuze Meeting app is free, at least for now. So you can have meetings with two iPads and two people for free. They have other plans if you need to add on other iPads or other features, but I have used this app for free and been able to have very good meetings with it.

InvestmentNews: There are many questions about phone carriers. Any opinions?

Mr. Loftus: Yes, this is one that gets asked all the time — would you recommend 3GI, 3G, 4G or regular Wi-Fi due to ease of access? It all depends on your practice. I've found that I don't use that much bandwidth — I just have a Wi-Fi-only version. It really depends on how much you are out of the office.

InvestmentNews: Sunit, you have different views on that, right?

Mr. Bhalla: Yes. With my first iPad, I did not buy the 3G model; I bought the wireless model. And my thought was, I could buy a MiFi mobile hot-spot device and connect up to five devices with it instead of having just a 3G model with only Internet access on one device. But with the newest model, you actually have the hot-spot feature, at least with Verizon for now. So I did buy the 4G LTE model with the hot-spot feature and it's amazing. I can avoid ever spending money for hotel access, or if I go to a coffee shop, I don't need to worry about their unsecure wireless network. I can just use my iPad as a 4G hot spot for my computer, my iPhone and other devices.

CONNECTIVITY

InvestmentNews: Is getting 4G an issue in some cities?

—-Mr. Bhalla: I think that GoToMeeting sort of allows that, but the issue is that I think you need to control the meeting from the laptop. So you can do laptop-to-iPad, but I don't think you can do iPad-to-iPad.

InvestmentNews: Maybe just use your iPads for Facetime, which is the new use for the PC — it is second-fiddle, in terms of sharing your screen.

Mr. Bhalla: There is a question about mind-mapping apps. Michael, you mentioned one.

Mr. Loftus: I use Popplet, and here's how I use it. When I meet with a client and they tell me to move forward, I've created a bunch of mind maps that show the paperwork for everything we've discussed — like an IRA adoption agreement, for example — as well as a timeline. I can export that all to a PDF.

Mr. Bhalla: I use iThoughts-HD,which I'm sure has features similar to what Michael has mentioned. I love the power of doing my maps on the iPad. I could be in my office using my keyboard, mouse and screen to create mind maps, but I tend to work better when I am in a coffee shop using my iPad and just letting my mind flow. It allows me to brainstorm more efficiently.

Ms. Thomas: I like the SimpleMind app, as well, for mind mapping.

InvestmentNews: Holly, you noticed a question about planning on the iPad; do you want to comment on that?

Ms. Thomas: Yes. Somebody asked about doing financial planning on the iPad. I use MoneyGuidePro because it operates in the cloud, and I access it through Safari. I find there is very little I can't do. Some people have asked about printing, which we may want to talk about, but so far, I have chosen not to print from the iPad.

Mr. Loftus: I use eMoney. I'd love to see those guys come up with an app; surely, it would make things a little bit easier, but I just log in through the regular Safari, and go through and look at things that way.

Mr. Bhalla: I use MoneyGuidePro, as well, and I tend not to use it on my iPad, but I could see certain meetings where the client has an iPad and we are doing scenario planning and we are just changing different possibilities — if we are trying to run an age, for instance, and see how it changes the plan. That would be a really cool app through MoneyGuidePro, if they ever supported that. It would be something to look forward to.

Mr. Loftus: There are a couple out there, but they are still clunky in terms of getting real numbers. I used MoneyGuide before, but I use eMoney, and that is not easy. There are a lot of buttons you have to go to and a lot of information you have to press to get an actual number, so I haven't used it with the iPad, because there are a lot of moving parts.

InvestmentNews: Do you use the iPad to link up to a hosted service or a hosted storage area and view sensitive client information? On an iPad, how do you know that you are, in fact, on an encrypted connection? If it's an app versus the browser, where you would see that it is an SSL encryption?

Mr. Loftus: Well, for me because I am taking it from Amazon, that is an SSL — the whole storage is SSL — so I know that everything there is encrypted. I don't have an issue with that. Does that answer you?

InvestmentNews: It does, but when you are using an app versus Safari, is there a way to tell that it is an encrypted session versus unencrypted?

Mr. Bhalla: I don't think so. I don't think there is a way in the app itself to check whether the pipeline is encrypted or not.

InvestmentNews: Read the fine print on the app itself when you are downloading it, or go back to their site.

Mr. Loftus: Yes, and someone just told me that there is an eMoney app and I just downloaded it as we were talking here. I downloaded it on my iPhone, not on my iPad, I don't know if it is iPad-available yet — it didn't say.

InvestmentNews: Another registrant asked if having a Mac is a requirement for using Air Display?

Mr. Loftus: No, you can use a PC with it.

Mr. Bhalla: There was a question about editing spreadsheets and documents on the iPad, and like Michael, I use KeyNote for presentations. I use the Apple suite — Pages for documents, Numbers for spreadsheets, and KeyNote for presentations. There is no Microsoft equivalent on the iPad, but there is an app called Quickoffice Pro HD that I used a couple of years ago that allowed me to edit Word and Excel documents. I don't use it anymore, but it can be used on the iPad to edit Excel and Word documents.

MEETING WITH CLIENTS

InvestmentNews: Going back to what we were talking about a little bit ago, have any of you actually used Facetime for client meetings?

Mr. Loftus: I have. I used it for a presentation with a client in Puerto Rico, and the whole thing went great — almost as if they were here. The challenge is the speed of your connection.

InvestmentNews: There is a legion of EverNote fans out there, and they are asking about any compliance issues you have noted with it.

Mr. Loftus: I don't use it for anything that I am worried about. I use it for RSVPs for events, event ideas, notes I take on a conference call or articles.

InvestmentNews: Instead of using the EverNote app, is it just as easy to aggregate all the notes that you take with EverNote on your iPad back into your repository, where you have everything else?

Mr. Loftus: It is so easy. Again, I pay $9.99 a year for the upgraded version, which allows me to have the offline notebooks, or folders. I thought it was worth it.

InvestmentNews: Sunit, anything to add there?

Mr. Bhalla: No. I did use EverNote when I first got my first iPad. I did like it both on the iPhone, iPad and on my computers, but I tend to use GoodReader now to sync up content — especially PDFs — between those three devices. So with GoodReader, you can sync it up to the DropBox folder and get content both from and to the iPad; I tend to use that more often.

InvestmentNews: Here's a question: What are the best keyboards to use with an iPad — and other peripheral devices that you can't live without?

Mr. Bhalla: I have used the Apple Bluetooth keyboard and it has worked great. I have taken it to conferences and on vacations, and have used my iPad as my only device with the Bluetooth keyboard, and I can respond to e-mails very effectively. There is also a Zag keyboard that I have heard a lot about, which is also a case. You can flip up the iPad stand within the case and it is almost like you are using a laptop, where the screen is really the iPad. One other thing that I want to mention about the new iPad is that there is also a dictation feature where you can press a button and dictate to the iPad instead of typing. It works quite well.

Mr. Loftus: Best Buy sells the all-in-one case and keyboard for $79, and Brookstone has one, I think, for $99 or thereabouts. I also have a roll-up one, just to keep it simple, which is a Bluetooth, as well. Somebody asked about a stylus. I bought one and I never used it. My daughter used it for one of her drawing games, but that is about it. It just doesn't seem to make sense.

InvestmentNews: Which apps have saved you the most time? Sunit, we will start with you.

Mr. Bhalla: I have one that Michael also mentioned — it's 1Password, which does a great job of generating, storing and syncing passwords across Macs, PCs, iPhones, Androids and iPads. It's very secure.

Mr. Loftus: Before I answer, I just got an e-mail from somebody at eMoney saying that their iPad app will be released May 4. I look forward to seeing it. As far as the app that has saved me the most time, it's Instapaper, which saves about a half hour to 45 minutes of my time.

InvestmentNews: Holly, any final thoughts?

Ms. Thomas: I used to think that the iPad was a luxury, and it is, I guess. But I encourage everyone to get one and just watch how much more productive you can be. Push it to its limits; it's really a fantastic device.

InvestmentNews: Sunit?

Mr. Bhalla: I agree with Holly. The other thing I wanted to mention is that we touched on the theme of portability versus security. We want all our information everywhere — from our very small laptops, on our phones and our iPads, and we need to make sure that the client data is preserved and kept safe in that portable world.

InvestmentNews: Michael?

Mr. Loftus: It has become a Mac world. Whether it is the iPad or Mac, give it a shot; they're superior machines. Davis, you inspired me. For anyone who is interested, we created a group on LinkedIn called Apple4FAs, where there's a lot of sharing of ideas about how advisers are using iPads and Macs in their practice.

Visit investmentnews.com/ ipadwebcast for more.

Related Topics: Practice Management