Perhaps you work remotely. Or maybe you have started operating from a coworking space. Or maybe you have gone full digital nomad and move your job with you as you travel the world. If you are one of the estimated 17 million workers who aspire to have mobility and work outside of a traditional office, we have some apps that can help make your life easier.  

Working in a foreign country or while traveling presents certain challenges: translation issues, currency exchanges, differing time zones and mail regulations, and organizational and communication issues associated with working remotely. Thankfully, we live in an age of technological plenty and talented people have developed amazing apps to help fix all of these issues. Here are 11 app suggestions to get you situated and keep you productive.

Apps to Get you Comfortable in a New Place

Every Time Zone

Everyone working internationally has missed at least one important call because of mixing up time zones! Its especially bad when daylight savings time occurs at different dates in different countries! There are lots of time zone apps, but we appreciate the aesthetic layout of Every Time Zone and the way it allows you to slide between times and see the results in multiple countries.

ITranslate

Congratulations if you’ve mastered more than one language, but even if you speak a few, translation issues will arise if you are an international traveler. Having iTranslate in your pocket is one of the reasons modern travel is so great! Translate from over 100 languages on the fly to make sure you understand and are being understood.  This app can translate text, websites, even live conversations!

XE Currency

As a traveler and an international worker, you need to calculate currency exchanges on the go. XE Currency offers live rates as well as historical charts. It can be important when pricing your product to understand exactly how it will translate into your own currency.

Earth Class Mail

It is great that tech enables us to go green and be digital, but some things still require a paper trail. If you are on the road or don’t want to set up a new postal address in a different location, Earth Class Mail provides an amazing service: an affordable mail forwarding service that scans and forwards your mail to the e-mail address of your choice, deposits your checks (for a fee), saves PDFs of your postal mail online and offers in-person pickup and package signing.

Workfrom

The coworking trend continues to boom and now the app Workfrom is there to help you find the best coworking option in your area. Users provide feedback about noise levels, wifi reliability and atmosphere. Coffee houses, libraries, parks and other public areas are also reviewed.

WHA

Technology has driven the digital nomad trend and enabled work to accomplished in any location—so when connectivity is suddenly compromised, productivity can come to a sudden halt. This app finds the nearest places offering wifi and the user community helps build a profile to let you know where connectivity is great and where it is halting.

Private Internet Access

Now that you know you can find wifi in any location, protect your computer and your information with a good VPN service. While you can access wifi in almost any location, it may not always provide encrypted service. This app will keep your passwords and data safe.

Apps to Keep You Productive in Any Location

Focus@will

Working remotely means you might be in your own space at home—or you might be in a loud coffee house, crowded train station, or noisy coworking space: anywhere that might offer good wifi access. Focus@Will is an app that takes a scientific approach to creating white noise and music that engineered to help you focus. Many fans report the sounds boost creativity as well.

Contactually

Managing your business relationships is important in any line of work. When you are traveling or working internationally, time zones and distance can make this even more difficult. Contactually is a relationship management app that keeps you on a schedule for making outreach and suggests the best contact schedule for maximizing the potential of a contact. Its smart features include contextual suggestions based on your usage.

Trello

When you are working remotely, organization is key. The typical structure of a traditional office is not there and that can make keeping on top of multiple tasks more difficult. Trello is a highly popular project management application that can track tasks, dates, and details, and enables collaboration as well. It offers an attractive interface and is intuitively designed.

TeamViewer

 TeamViewer is a powerful free-for-private-use tool allows you to access and use remote devices as though you were sitting in front of them. You can access your office desktop, for example, with all o its documents and installed applications. This virtual experience is particularly handy while you are traveling and need to resolve issues as they arrive from a distance. It enables collaborative meetings with video and audio for up to a whopping 300 people and contacts can be recorded for later review.

You can hold remote web meetings with audio, video and text chat, a whiteboard, file sharing and more. It’s possible to collaborate with up to 300 people at once, and meetings can even be recorded for reference later.

Interested in learning more about how to support international employment opportunities?

Passport Career provides more detailed career information and extensive resources about networking, finding an international job or internship, country-specific business protocol and culture, alternative career opportunities, writing country-specific resumes/CVs, cover letters and interview strategies for other countries. If your university/college, organization, company, embassy, library, or other institution would like access to our country portfolios and global career training program (50,000+ pages of expert content for 90+ countries and 275+ cities) to share with your students, employees, spouses/partners, and others managing a national or international career transition, please click here to contact us (or send email to: global@passportcareer.com) regarding a free, live, online demo and details on how to obtain a license to access Passport Career. Individuals making a career transition are also encouraged to contact us for a free demo of our portal.