Monthly Archives: November 2011

10 Great Apps for Businesspeople

by November 29, 2011
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1. Google Translate

Google Translate won’t quite replace a real-life human translator, but it works well enough to give you a basic idea of what foreigners are saying about your company. Be sure to hire a translator for the important stuff, but this app can tell you what your international consumers are saying about your business. With a text feature and a voice recording option, Google Translate is handy enough to grab.

2. CareerBuilder App

This app isn’t exactly for businessmen, exactly, but everyone has to start somewhere. This application uses global positioning to search for job openings near you.

3. Local City Real Time Traffic Reports

Great for those of us with jobs that require a lot of travel, this handy app gives you real-time information about local traffic conditions. Spare a few seconds to check this app before you step into your taxi. It may just make the difference between being late to your meeting and making it on time.

4. Prosper

Prosper is the ideal app for small businesses. This program establishes an online community among investors and borrowers. You might find the perfect investor for your company by spending just a few minutes browsing through the profiles. Find the money you need to get your business rolling, or put your name out there so that small businesses can find you.

5. Harvest

What exactly did you all day? Harvest can help you figure it out by giving you a convenient way to track how you used your time. When the work day is over, you can look back and locate problematic projects that are too time consuming, or locate periods of work when you were particularly efficient.

6. Attendance Countdown

Ideal for those workaholics out there, Attendance Countdown tracks the amount of time spent on the job down the second. Just tap the application when you start work and tap it again when you stop work to get an accurate measure of your day. Never get short-changed for overtime again.

7. NetworthIQ

NetworthIQ is a fun, handy little app for businesses that are just starting out. The program tracks the net worth of your business, as well as your personal net worth. One of the most interesting features of the app is that it lets you compare the net worth of your business with other famous businesses. Is business booming or are you behind the curve? Download this app to find out.

8. ConceptShare

You’re familiar with wikis, right? They’re online webpages that can be modified by anybody with an account. ConceptShare works under the same principle, except that it also allows users to edit documents and images. With ConceptShare, you can have multiple people working a single project simultaneously, even though one worker is at lunch, another is in a cab, and the third is in the office.

9. Qoop

Grab Qoop if you’re looking to generate a bit of buzz about your business. Qoop serves as a simple tool that lets you stamp your company logo on a variety of objects, such as posters and calendars. Distribute your company creations to the public to help create some traffic to your website.

10. Meebo

You’ve got lots of associates, and none of them use the same instant messaging program. Luckily, Meebo removes the need for multiple IM accounts by linking each of your program accounts together. Talk to your business partner on Google Talk, your girlfriend on AIM, and a prospective buyer on MSN Messenger all at the same time.

The Future of Cloud Technology Involves a Link to the Past

by November 26, 2011
on Cloud no comments read more

Cloud Technology

Cloud technology is a new information management system that has emerged just recently. As such, most of us are thinking of it from a modern perspective. What other features can we include in cloud technology? How can we incorporate more elements of daily life into the cloud? What will the future hold for this technology?

While all of these questions are very forward-thinking, one unexpected way to answer the question will be to look in the past. That is to say, don’t try to imagine where cloud technology will be 100 years from now. Imagine what kind of impact cloud technology will have on us because it is 100 years old.

The Past

Look at it this way. Your grandparents experienced the photography revolution, so they took pictures and stored them in photo albums, which inevitably end up in somebody’s attic. Your parents experienced the digital revolution, so they took digital pictures and stored them on hard drives. You experienced the cloud revolution, so you take pictures and store them on a cloud.

Your grandparents’ and your parents’ photographs are all physically represented, meaning that there is an actual photo album or personal computer that stores all of these pictures. On the cloud, these pictures will be accessible from anywhere, meaning that they will also be accessible at any time.

The Future

Imagine opening up your cloud to your children, so that they can view all of the pictures you took and things that you experienced in your life. Your children move to different parts of the country, and then they have children, and so on, until you have half a dozen grandchildren spread across the world. Each of these grandchildren will be able to access your cloud data and add to it, thereby creating a continuous stream of digitally stored genealogical history.

It might be hard to see this impact because cloud technology hasn’t been around long enough, but it is inevitable. Our grandchildren will be able to see all the information that their parents stored, as well as everything that we stored in clouds.

How would you feel if I told you that there was a chest of old documents, pictures, and items that belonged to your great-great-grandparents, the ones who travelled across the Atlantic to settle in America in the 1800s? Would you be interested to see what’s in that chest? I know I would. But it’s more than that. Not only would you get to view the contents of the chest, but so would your distant cousins who are also descended from your ancestors.

In short, the future of cloud technology is that it opens up the past, a past that we are continuously creating for future generations as we store more and more of our experiences in clouds.

5 Ways to Keep Your iPad Organized

by November 17, 2011
on iPad no comments read more

1. Be Realistic with Your Dock

The whole point of the dock, that ever-present bar at the bottom of the screen, is to give users instant access to their favorite apps. The dock starts with Safari, mail, photos, and music. It might be tempting to leave the default apps there, but the dock is customizable for a reason. Add or remove your favorite apps to the dock to give yourself quick and easy access. Once you’ve discovered that you have a new favorite app, just add it to the dock, and simply remove apps that you don’t use as much. Simple as that.

2. Use Folders

The iPad automatically includes pages where you can place your apps, but you can get even more organized by using folders. Organize apps by folders and, if necessary, organize those folders by page. For example, if you’re an avid game player, you can keep all of your games on one page. If you have enough games to fill up two or more pages, however it might be a good idea to organize those games into folders. Give your folders a short, simple, and accurate title to make your life a little bit easier in the future.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Delete

Sometimes, apps outlive their usefulness. But you paid a buck for that app, so you might be reluctant to delete it. Don’t worry, just trash the thing and move on with your life. Besides, if you have deleter’s remorse, you can always go back into the iTunes store and download it again for free. Once you’ve bought an app, you own it forever, so you’ll never need to purchase the same app twice. Go ahead and delete those old apps with confidence.

4. Update Often

Changing around the app configuration of your iPad literally only takes a few seconds, so organize frequently. Over time, the old organization method that you used might not be applicable anymore. For example, leaving a single photo app next to your pictures and movies worked a month ago, but if you’ve downloaded 5 more photography and movie-making apps since then, it might just be time to add a photography folder.

5. App it Up

With all of the apps available, you can find a program to suit virtually any need. Shop around and read user reviews to find the app that is perfect for you. Try out popular apps like Fileboard, Evernote, Facebook, and Angry Birds. After all, popular apps are usually popular for a good reason. Let the iPad community do some of the shopping for you.

4 Things You Didn’t Know Evernote Could Do

by November 16, 2011
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Evernote is a fantastic personal information management app, but most people think that the functionality stops there. Evernote is so good at what it does, in fact, that every other management app tries to be compatible with Evernote. As a result, it can do a ton of things beyond what you would expect.

1. Take You to New Places

We don’t expect Evernote to throw us many curveballs and give us unexpected information. After all, the whole point of Evernote is that it helps us remember things, so everything that Evernote tells us is information that we already know about.

Well, not quite. Evernote’s ShopAdvisor does more than just store your shopping list. ShopAdvisor searches the Internet for the best deals for things on your list. It’s convenient when Evernote reminds you to buy a new pair of shoes, but it’s just plain awesome when it tells you about a nearby department store that you’ve never been to before, which just happens to be having a sale.

2. Pay for Lunch

One of the great things about travelling as part of your work is that you get to do it on the company’s dime. The only catch is that you have to remember to report work expenses, or it really does come straight out of your pocket. Expensify can help you organize your work expenses by tracking your purchases. This electronic go-getter takes it a step further by creating and submitting expense reports. Who knows? Maybe there will be a reimbursement check waiting for you by the time you get back from lunch with your client. And to keep everything above-the-table, Evernote will store and categorize all of your Expensify submissions.

3. Embarrass Your Significant Other

Next time your love bug calls you up and starts sweet talking you with lovey-dovey poetry, open Evernote’s Call Trunk and hit record to eternally save these precious moments. Whether you want to keep the recording for a rainy day when you’re feeling down, or just because you want to show off how ridiculous your boyfriend is when he thinks no one is listening, Call Trunk can turn your phone conversations into notes that you can easily organize. And once you store the conversation in Evernote, you’ll be able to embarrass your significant other for the rest of your (probably short) relationship.

4.  Be a Super Spy

Ever see James Bond pull a pen out of his pocket, and then take a snapshot of a top-secret document with the tiny camera hidden inside the pen? Thirty years ago we were supposed to be impressed by that technology, but now it’s available to everybody. Genius Scan is an app that lets you take pictures with your iPhone, digitize them into text, and then save them into Evernote. With Genius Scan, Evernote is more than a personal organizational assistant. You can digitize, categorize, and organize the world around you – the ultimate in knowledge management.

Top 5 Items For Your Next Business Trip

by November 15, 2011
on Mobile no comments read more

When travelling on a business trip, it’s essential that you carry only the bare minimum without forgetting any necessities. Luckily, our list of five items can help you stay on top of it.

1. iPad 2

The Apple iPad 2 comes in the most travel-friendly form-factor known to man. In this post-PC era, you can forgo bringing that clunky laptop of yours, and just lean back as you get work done efficiently and in comfort. While some argue that Apple’s iPad 2 is underpowered, benchmarks and anecdotes reveal just the opposite. Not only is Apple’s iPad 2 adequate enough for all of your business needs, but this sleek slate also takes down its competition in the realm of video acceleration (7x faster than the Motorola Xoom).

2. Apple Wireless Keyboard

A lot of people don’t enjoy typing on a touchscreen. If you’re one of these people, you might want to consider grabbing an Apple Wireless Keyboard. Native to both iterations of the iPad, this wireless spectacle (a Bluetooth keyboard) keeps your typing speed and style at optimum.

3. Dropbox

With help from Dropbox, it doesn’t matter how much space is on that iPad or even your smartphone (or PC). So long as you keep your files on Dropbox, your documents will follow you everywhere you go, even if your computer crashes. Dropbox is what really makes your iPad invaluable on that business trip. No more panicking over forgetting that important document or data file that served as the basis of the trip–so long as you put it in your Dropbox folder at some point, your iPad will have it too. Document management has never been easier.

4. Evernote

These guys aren’t making anything up with the motto “Take note of everything”. With Evernote on your iPad, you can share content via notes, photos, and almost any piece of multimedia across all your devices, and view photos of your family with you at any distance away. There is no faster way to show your kids that picture you just took with your iPad than with Evernote.

5. iPad Games

Face it: whether you’re sitting on a plane or at your hotel room, you’re going to have some downtime during your trip to cut loose and toss some birds at a few towers. iTunes or a PDF reader for reading (don’t forget that Kindle app!) might be just as fun, but in reality those towers have to go down. Apple’s App Store hosts the largest library of iPad games known to man, and you’re going to need it!

There you have it. So long as you pack that iPad and keyboard, and maybe a water bottle, your business trip will be as stress-free as can be.

Fileboard version 1.9 for Documents, Attachments in the Appstore

by November 1, 2011
on Fileboard no comments read more

Exciting news!

We have just released version 1.9 of Fileboard for iPad. This is our first official release of the Fileboard application and we are very excited to take file management to the next level.

Integration with Dropbox and Evernote. Attach documents from Dropbox while creating a new message.

Dropbox integration for Attachments

Save e-mail messages and attachments directly to Dropbox/Evernote without having to leave the app.

Add Attachments to and from Dropbox

Many, many stability and performance improvements.
This is a big release for us and we are very excited as this release paves the way for realizing the vision that we have around improving your e-mail and attachments workflow.