Holiday Gift Guide: iPad apps & accessories for business

From one-person shops to giant enterprises, if businesses agree on anything right now it's "iPad Yay." The Apple tablet hasn't even reached the terrible twos yet, but it's clearly making its presence felt across countless verticals and different industries. For at least a couple of mobile professional writers (who might have been termed "ink-stained wretches" in times gone by), the iPad's capability as a writing tool has led it to largely replace their laptops for day-to-day work.
While consumers may be the drivers behind most iPad sales, chances are that the iPad-toting professional on your gift list is using his or her iPad for a combination of personal enjoyment and work tasks, so why not find a gift that supports and extends the biz savvy of everyone's favorite quasi-computer? Here's our brief list of gift ideas that you could conceivably write off on your taxes.
If your business iPad user is a sole proprietor or running a small business, they don't have to compromise about getting big-biz-level enterprise tools anymore. The same Google Apps or Box.com infrastructure that supports huge corporations can be theirs for a modest investment.Z3 iPad stand lets you balance your tablet ANYWHERE. Consider gifting a pro Dropbox account (50 GB is quite a bit of room to maneuver), or going with Box or Egnyte for more sophisticated file services & sharing. (Dropbox's Teams product is great, too, but requires more coordination with other colleagues.) Maybe a Pogoplug account, or a subscription to one of 37 Signals' highly-regarded services? If your businessperson is already a user of 37 Signals' Backpack business collaboration tool, the $9.99 Pouch app makes their iPad a fully-featured Backpack client. Another collaboration platform, Pagico, just released its official iPad app last week.
Then again, what we want from the cloud, often as not, is access to the files we have sitting right there on our computer at the office or at home. With the free Polkast service and iPad app, business users can quickly get to their PC or Mac storage over local networks or remotely as long as the computer is on. It's not the sort of thing that BigCorp IT departments find particularly appealing, but for a lean and mean solo operation or small team it might just do the trick. Speaking of big IT, the pricey ($29.99) but indispensable LogMeIn Ignition client makes it easy to remotely control one or hundreds of remote computers from the iPad's screen. If your gift recipient has to keep tabs on a lot of PCs, Ignition is a wonderful gift.