Looking for Something?
Posts Tagged for

apps

4 Essential Apps for Increasing Profits in a Small Business

Author:

When it comes to running a business, it’s important to take advantage of every tool you can find to make things run more efficiently. This is especially true of small businesses where you don’t have as many employees to take care of organization, payment and other tasks. Fortunately, the following apps are examples of tools  that can help your small business become more profitable by helping you save time and keep organized.

paypal PayPal – Stay Connected to Your Transactions

PayPal is easily one of the most used services for payment on the Internet. It’s become practically a staple for bother buyers and sellers. Additionally, both casual users and business users will find plenty to like about the app. Some features that are especially useful for streamlining the payment process for small business owners include the following.

  • Automated Shopping Carts

This allows you to setup an easy way for customers to buy items through stores like eBay. You can get “add to cart” buttons, add shipping costs automatically, and even receive automatic records about all of the funds that you have going in and out through that part of your business.

  • Accept Credit Cards in Person

As part of the Virtual Terminal program, you can sign up for a PayPal card reader that will connect to the top of your phone or other compatible consumer tech. PayPal will actually send you the reader device for free in the mail.

There are multiple options for taking payments in person. CardFellow has a great comparison of PayPal and Square, and this is another great comparison can be found on Digital Trends.

Image via Google Play


expensify Expensify – Keep Track of All Expenses

Managing expenses for a business can be a colossal time sync. The amount of time and paperwork required to keep track of everything your business and employees are spending can be staggering. This app lets you and your employees take pictures of receipts with your phone and upload them to an account.

The app can also keep track of additional business details including the following:

  • Time

By adding a rate per hour and an amount of time, the app can calculate any expense incurred based on time. An example could include any additional temporary personnel hired.

  • Mileage

The app can either let you add mileage directly, or use the “GPS” feature to  automatically add mileage based on your phone’s changing GPS location.

Image via iTunes


google drive app Google Drive – Store Information in a Limitless Cloud

One serious concern for small business owners is how you get employees who aren’t in the same area to work on the same projects.

Google Drive is a free solution for organizing all of your company’s documents in a single place. You can create a single document spreadsheet that all employees can add to no matter where they are. You can also give yourself, employees, outside collaborators or clients access to documents in a fast and efficient way, straight from your mobile phone, tablet, or other device.

In addition to Google Drive, the Dropbox app is a great way to share documents and resources among employees, even if you aren’t in the same office.

Image via Google Play


timebox Timebox – Efficiently Distribute Your Time

Timebox lets you keep track of the time you spend on various different tasks using the Pomodoro technique, which breaks down you work into cycles called pomodori.

Each cycle lasts for 25 minutes, with a 5 minute break given right after to help you refocus. Once you do four of the cycles in a row, the app will give you a longer break of 15-20 minutes. You can easily look down at the app on your phone at any given point to get a sense of how much time you have left in each cycle or task.

Looking for more time-saving tips? Check out this edition of Brilliant Bloggers.

Image via Google Play


Overall, management apps will do much more than save you time. They’ll save you energy and sanity as well, which small business owners often need to keep their stress low and their profits up. 

Mobile Apps That Would Make The Pentagon Proud

Author:

Apps these days go far beyond fun games and finding a great restaurant. These extremely useful apps seem a little like something out of a spy movie. Nevertheless, this technology can really be helpful if you lose your phone, want to create hidden accounts or snap a stealth photo of the person who stole your iPad. After all, there is no such thing as having too much security for a device that holds some of your most sensitive information.

Find My iPhone 1. Find My iPhone

Forget cell phone insurance. Next time you lose your phone, simply track it on a map to pinpoint its exact location and go there to pick it up. It’s easier than you think with the Find My iPhone app.

This app has a ton of great features. You can display a custom message to the screen of your device, sound an alarm that will go off for up to 2 minutes, or even remotely wipe all of your personal data if there’s no chance of getting the actual device back.

This app also has a feature called “Lost Mode” that works with your passcode to display your phone number on the lock screen for the good Samaritan to call you once they find your phone.  It also tracks the various locations you phone might travel to if it happens to be stolen.

Editor’s note: This would be great to download before the next NMX, since lots of cell phones are misplaced during the course of the conference.

2. GadgetTrak

Whether you lose your iPhone or it gets lifted by a thief, you greatly increase your chances of getting it back if you have GadgetTrak. This app allows you to initiate tracking so you can pinpoint your device. You can even take a picture of the thief to help the police catch the criminal. Similar to the, Find My iPhone app, it also provides you with detailed reports about the location of the device and allows you to data wipe your device, which provides a piece of mind to those who save their banking information on their devices.

The app also has something called “SIM change detection.” This feature alerts the owner whenever the thief attempts to add his friends to your contact list. This feature should make finding your device much easier.

GadgetTrak is available on all your devices, not only your phone or tablet. And is designed to encrypt both your photos and contact information. As an added bonus, GadgetTrak is the, “first and only mobile security solution to be enterprise certified by AT&T,” according to the GadgetTrak website.

3. Stash: Private Photos, Videos, Docs and Browsing

Stash is a fantastic app if you want to make sure no one knows what you’re doing what you’re doing online via your phone. They’re the self-proclaimed “most advanced private media and download manager in the App Store.”

You can use Stash’s private web browser to download media directly to your library and make sure it’s all cloaked. You can create hidden accounts that are only accessible if you use a secret gesture, transfer photos and other media wirelessly, and utilize the boss button to immediately hide whatever it is that you’re doing.

4. Safe Eyes Mobile

This is the app every mom has been waiting for and is the “first internet filter for the Apple iPhone.” With Safe Eyes Mobile, you can ensure that your children are not exposed to inappropriate content, from websites to ads and more. The app allows you to block things like pornography, violence, certain websites, etc. You can even use the app to enforce time limits across devices.

This app was recommended by Parents.com for cyber-bullying safety, and is a great app for those who have youngsters that access the Internet. It was a Mom’s Choice Gold Award Winner in 2011.

What apps do you use to make your phone more secure? Leave a comment with your recommendations!

Google Re-Releases Gmail App for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch Users

Author:

When Google first released the Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch on November 2nd, there were some unfortunate glitches. The app kept crashing, was giving error messages and was over all a big huge mess.

They have re-released the app today. The problems have been fixed but users still aren’t happy with the outcome. Some say the notifications are super slow and that it’s still basically the same app that was originally pulled.

Google does plan on enhancing some of the features, which they mentioned in a blog post from today:

In the short time the app was public we received a lot of helpful feedback and feature requests. This included requests for everything from bigger features like multiple account support to customizations like improved notifications and mobile specific signatures.

We’re just getting started with the Gmail app for iOS and will be iterating rapidly to bring you more features, including all the ones listed above plus many more. Based on your comments we have already improved our handling of image HTML messages – they are now sized to fit to the screen and you can pinch to zoom in.

Here’s a description of the features from the iTunes app store:

With the Gmail app, you can:

  • Receive notification badges for new messages
  • Read your mail with threaded conversations
  • Organize your mail by archiving, labeling, starring, deleting, and reporting spam
  • Keep track of important messages with priority inbox
  • Auto-complete contact names as you type
  • Send and receive attachments
  • Search through all your mail

Have you tried out the new Gmail app for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch? Let us know what your experience has been with it.

Kobo’s New App Adds Social Functions

Author:

E-book retailer Kobo announced a new feature to its app which adds a social functionality to the e-book reading experience. It’s called Kobo Pulse and it’s been integrated into the Kobo app to take your reading to a whole new level.

With Kobo Pulse, you can see who’s reading the same book you are, share ideas on passages and books with other readers. The new feature also has Facebook integration using their newly announced Open Graph.

Back in December of 2010, Kobo announced a new product called Reading Life. It collects your reading activities and displays your reading statistics in a series of graphs and charts. It also rewards users with badges when they meet new characters or reach new milestones in their reading. Kobo Pulse has been integrated into this product as well.

The new feature was announced last week at f8, Facebook’s developer conference.

Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis said, “We’re moving into an era where social eReading will change the nature of how and what we read. With Kobo Pulse, readers can get more out of reading. Books are now alive.  The end is no longer the end.  Readers get to participate, adding their voice, which actually lives within the reading experience itself through Pulse.”

Here’s a video walking you through the Kobo experience.

For those of you who are big e-book readers, what do you think of the added social features? Is this something you would find useful and fun?

Adobe Launches CreatePDF for your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch

Author:

You can now create PDF files from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch with CreatePDF. Adobe launched the mobile app today for $9.99 at the iTunes store. This is Adobe’s first official crack at enabling PDF creation on iOS devices.

CreatPDF for the iPhone

Here are a few of the features for CreatePDF:

High Quality PDF Creation

  • Creates PDF files that look exactly like the original using the same technology as Adobe Acrobat

Intuitive Interface for PDF Conversion

  • Convert email attachments or files stored in the cloud or any application by opening them within the Adobe CreatePDF application

Share

  • Hand over converted PDF files to other applications, including sending as email attachments with one touch

For those of you on the go and working from your iPad or iPhone, you can use this app for any document that needs to be sent as a PDF. This eliminates the need to be at your desktop, unless you’re doing something more sophisticated.

So far, the reviews have not been so great, although there’s only 2 at the time of this writing. One reviewer was disappointed when she discovered you could create PDF files, but could not open them from an email. She did like the clean interface, but would like it to be able to open the PDF documents.

Do you find this app useful enough to pay $9.99 for or would you rather just wait to send the PDF when you’re back in front of your computer?

Update: In regards to the comment made by the reviewer that she could not open PDF documents from an email, for opening and viewing PDF files on your iOS device, you can currently use the default PDF Preview. Adobe Reader for iOS will be coming later this year.

Summify Introduces a New, Clean Design

Author:

Summify is a mobile app that creates a daily summary of the most relevant news stories, from all of your social networks, and delivers it you by email, web or mobile. They’ve passed the 2 billion aggregated story mark, so they decided it might be time for a new design.

Their new design is simple, fresh and clean, with more pictures and Instapaper.

Here’s a brief description of some of the features and updates:

  • Profile Picture – visitors can now see who is behind each Summary. The picture is pulled from your Twitter or Facebook account
  • About Me – give people a taste of who you are in a few more words than Twitter. (200 character max) Found underneath your name
  • Accounts – easily view a Summifyer’s social accounts. Found to the right of their bio
  • More Summaries – under each profile picture, you will find buttons to previous and more recent summaries from that user.
  • Your News – headlines and excerpts now appear on top of each story’s image, contributors now appear on the right side of each story, filters have not changed, and share buttons are placed underneath each story, on the right side

The email summary also has a more simple flow and the social bar now includes a “Summary” tab.

For those of you who use Summify, what are your thoughts on the changes?

Does Amazon’s “Free App of the Day” Hurt Developers?

Author:

There’s quite an interesting story circulating on several different blogs regarding Amazon‘s Android app store. I am sure you’ve seen their “Free app of the day” and probably, like myself, have taken advantage of it. A free app? Sweet!

The problem with the free app, is that it may actually be hurting the developers of the apps. It all started when ShiftyJelly had one of their apps featured as Amazon’s Free App of the day and as Gizmodo says, the developer thought they had hit the jackpot. The jackpot ended up being a big fat zero when they found out developers do not receive a single cent from the free app of the day promotion.

Here’s the email ShiftJelly received before their app was featured:

As you may already know, the Free App of the Day offer placement is one of the most visible and valuable spaces on the Amazon Appstore. We would like to include your app “[name removed]” in our Free App of the Day calendar. We have seen tremendous results from this promotion spot and believe it will bring you a great deal of positive reviews and traffic. It is an opportunity to build your brand especially in association with a brand like Amazon’s. The current price of this placement is at 0% rev share for that one day you are placed.

The results ended up being that they “sold” over 100,000 apps that day and they received nothing. You might ask if at least being featured helped their sales the next day and maybe even the next? The answer – nope. They said that “the day after saw a blip in sales, followed by things going back to exactly where we started, selling a few apps a day.”

ShiftJelly ended up removing their app from Amazon’s app store. You can read their entire story here.

What do you think? Does Amazon’s free app feature benefit only Amazon and the customer, while leaving the developers short-handed?

 

 

Google+ App Now Available for iPhone

Author:

The Google+ iPhone app is now available in the iTunes store and can be downloaded for free here.

Description: Google+ for mobile makes sharing the right things with the right people a lot simpler. Huddle lets you send super-fast messages to the people you care about most. And no matter where you are, the stream lets you stay in the loop about what your friends are sharing and where they’re checking in.

Here are a few screenshots:

It seems so far there have been several glitches with the app from crashes, freezing and even no way to share. You can see some answers to the issues here.

With the 10 million people who have reportedly already created a Google+ account, it’s expected that there should be quite a few downloads of the app. Hopefully they will get these glitches fixed soon and more features to the app rolled out.

Have you downloaded the app and if so, what do you think?

Facebook Announces the “Facebook for Every Phone” App

Author:

Facebook announced today their Facebook for Every Phone app, which offers the Facebook experience for over 2,500 different phones. The app includes popular features such as the News Feed, Inbox and Photos – as well as allows you to upload photos and find friends from your phone’s contacts.

In celebration of the launch, Facebook is making the app free for 90 days in many countries, which they have listed here. The app is available today. Just go to go to m.facebook.com and scroll down to the bottom. You can also enter this: d.facebook.com/install directly into your phone’s browser to instantly download the app to your phone.

Go here for more information on how to download the app, as well as how to use it so you can stay connected with your family and friends. And don’t forget to download it within the next 90 days to receive it for free.

Learn About NMX

NEW TWITTER HASHTAG: #NMX

Recent Comments

Categories

Archives