Many apps originally built for the Apple iPhone have been making their way to the iPad as well, a transition that makes particular sense for visually intensive, data-rich application features, such as spreadsheets and graphs. That migration is sure to please fans of MeLLmo's Roambi, which since its debut on the iPhone last year became a popular, unified way to access and work with some of the most common spreadsheet, report and graph software programs while mobile.
The iPad version of Roambi, announced in the spring, sticks to the original vision for Roambi--to render desktop productivity tools onto smaller mobile screens in a functional way that doesn't make them just cluttered, Mini-Me versions of the desktop tools. After downloading the free app to your iPad from the Apple iTunes store, you go online to the secure Roambi Publisher site and upload your Excel spreadsheets, Salesforce.com CRM data, SAP BusinessObjects reports or Google Docs, which are then converted to Roambi's sleek, dark format that makes color bars pop with significance.
But Roambi isn't just for reading. It allows you to reformat reports from each of these original popular desktop programs into new, interactive views, including SuperList for presenting tabular data; CataList, catalog format; Cardex for a file cabinet approach; and PieView for doing pie charts.
The iPhone gives busy mobile executives convenient access to these apps, but it probably isn't the most practical way to work with them. The iPad should bring Roambi into its element.
