Instapaper is one of the most popular offline reading apps available and with good reason. Reading web articles offline on an iPhone or portable device can be surprisingly difficult. If you find yourself sticking to places with wi-fi specifically because you want to keep up on news articles from all your favorite sites, Instapaper can give you the freedom to roam beyond those internet accessible spots. Instapaper is particularly good for daily commuting and long distance traveling, allowing you to gather many hours worth of offline reading material in just a few minutes online. If you need to read online reports or follow business specific news, then Instapaper could be a huge help.

Simply download the app – the basic version is completely free! – and start browsing your favorite sites. When you find something you want to read, simply save it to Instapaper. Then, once you’re offline, you can get back into Instapaper and read the offline versions of your chosen articles.

Another way you can use Instapaper is to simply save articles you’ve been wanting to read to the app. This way, you can save your desired reading for when you have the time. Whether you’re catching a bus to work or flying halfway across the world, having an archive of reading material saved on Instapaper will keep you working or entertained while also saving time.

Image: Marco Arment

Spam is one of the great inconveniences of modern life – every day you have to carefully sift out unwanted (and likely offensive) emails from business communications, in order to get your job done. There is then an added level of risk should you open a message containing a virus or accidentally discard important messages along with the garbage. All this means that an anti-spam filter is essential for anybody using email for business.

What qualifications separate a good program from one that is only average? There are a number of factors that have to be looked at in order to narrow down the list of candidates.

1). It has to be able to work by itself, checking each packet header of incoming emails, and deleting those that are inappropriate.

2). It has to kill these spam emails before they reach a user’s inbox. This saves on bandwidth, and reduces the need to sort out the important stuff from the junk.

3). It must be able to effectively analyze both sides of the firewall, checking each part of the message, including the header, body and source. A list of addresses, that is easy to adjust by the administrator of the system, is also of great help in filtering spam out. A Bayesian filter is an important feature for a good anti-spam application.

4). A good program will be able to let a user preview any of the emails that have been marked as spam. Sometimes emails are miss labeled for a variety of reasons and these may need to be retrieved on some occasions.

The spam utility should also allow for flexible filtering and a separate folder should be available for spam emails. The software should also allow a user to recover an accidentally deleted email.

Generally speaking, this type of program has to be able to work by itself, be easy to use and have the best filters, able to be easily adjusted by any user. There are many great options, but three top choices include SpamFighter, ChoiceMail, and SpamEater Pro. By making the right choices you can save yourself a considerable amount of time every day.

Image: TOR/Unknown

While it might seem like a quirky idea, using a Solar Powered Laptop Charger comes with a number of benefits and can save you incredible amounts of time. It can be just the thing that an on-the-go business professional needs to keep productivity up.

Aside from the obvious benefit of being environmentally friendly and a good way to get clean energy, many devices are very portable, which makes it possible to charge your laptop from just about anywhere you can see sunlight. When you don’t have to waste time sitting around waiting for your laptop to charge, you can be on the move, getting things done. Don’t let travel stop you from working because you can’t get power – with the Solar Gorilla Laptop charger, you can charge your laptop while traveling. The device is powerful enough for continuous usage, so you have virtually unlimited power. You can work from anywhere, and never lose time due to a low or empty battery.

The Solar Gorilla Laptop Charger can connect to any Mac or Windows laptop, as well as a number of different cell phones. It provides enough power to charge a cell phone completely in just a couple of hours, or to run a laptop. If you can get access to sunlight, whether outside or near a window, then you have all the power you need to stay productive, while also working cost effectively.

Image: Ed Yourdon

An iPad is a great tool to help you with work projects, do research and keep up with your schedule – and a multitude of other tasks that can help you work smarter. Knowing a few ways to save time while using your iPad will make it even more useful.

i) Use Autofill: You can fill in forms automatically by enabling the Autofill feature. In the settings menu choose Safari, Autofill and select “use contact info”. Then your iPad will use the information in your contacts list to fill in information automatically, saving you lots of typing.

ii) Add a Web Page on the Home Screen: You can add an icon for a frequently used website to the main screen for quick access. Simply press the “+” while you are in Safari and then select “add to home screen”. Then you can go directly to that website instead of searching through your Safari bookmarks.

iii) Insert Information Quickly: When you are typing and you make a mistake don’t press backspace, just touch the word containing the mistake and a magnifying glass comes up so that you can easily insert a correction.

iv) Add Apps to the Dock: Instead of having only four apps at the bottom of the home screen you can add two more for instant access. Press any icon and hold your finger there until it wiggles. Then you can drag it to the dock at the bottom of the home screen.

v) Search with Spotlight: Spotlight search will find information on your iPad. Flick to the right on the main Home screen. When Spotlight opens type in a keyword and it will search your iPad. This allows you to easily go to a particular song, contact or calendar event.

Image: bfishadow

One of the skills that is useful in life when it comes to managing your time properly is recognizing when to do something right away, and when it should be done later. An excellent tool for doing this on the internet is called Read It Later, a Firefox plug-in (and iPhone app) that allows you to archive sites for later reading.

When you come across a site that you know contains information that you need, but you are in the middle of another project, it is best to come back to that site at a later time. This is because switching from one task to another slows you down and when you switch tasks part of your mind is still focused on the previous task, so you work less productively. This is why it is better to focus on one project until you are done with it, before moving onto another task.

Normally saving sites to be read later can be somewhat awkward as you pile up potentially useful links. Bookmarks and tabs can build up fast and you can lose track of them, which can be annoying if you only intend to visit the site once.

Read It Later lets you archive sites to your hard drive or direct to your iPhone. It saves them in the order that you saved them and they can be accessed when you are not connected to the web. This way you can still access a site of interest on the subway or on the go, even if you don’t have a wireless connection.

Image: Idea Shower