5 Great iPhone Apps for Your Business

iPhone users don't go anywhere without their phone and they've found they can put it to great use. From planning your travel itinerary to your grocery list, there's an iPhone app for just about everything you can think of, and now many people are even using their iPhones to run their businesses. Here is a look at five great apps, suggested by TechStartUps.com's Rick Singer (via bloggingstocks.com).

1. Bento: For $4.99, this app helps you keep track of contacts and calendars, monitor projects, to-do lists, and keep up with inventory. It even lets you keep up with your diet! The app is is created by FileMaker (which is owned by Apple).

2. Box.net: Box.net is a web-based collaboration service that allows you to edit and share large files with anyone. Its app allows you to post, view, or reply to comments on any file or folder, such as editing Microsoft Word files. Best of all, it's free!

3. HoursTracker: If you need to keep track of your employees or contractors, this app can do it all for just $2.99. Simply click on a clock and add a description to keep track of any timesheet. You can even calculate hourly wage and estimated tax percentages.

4. Invoice2go: This app allows you to create invoice, bill your client, or generate reports, using several different customizable templates. It is $9.99.

5. Business Card Reader: This one is probably self explanatory. If you have an ever-growing pile of business cards that you need to enter into your contact list but don't feel like doing all that typing, just take a picture, and the cards will be scanned and converted into a contact list for only $4.99.

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Astrid Android App is Your Own Personal Assistant

Between work, kids, a social life, and other obligations, you probably often find yourself wishing you had a personal assistant. If you're an Android owner, now you can! Meet Astrid! Astrid is according to its website, "to-do list / task tracking system for Google’s Android platform built with your productivity in mind. Astrid’s goal is to be simple to use with the features you need to stay productive and get things done."

The app manages the deadlines and priorities on your to-do list so you don't have to. The app is free and it organizes your tasks by date and time. Simply enter the task - anything from "go grocery shopping" to "pick up the kids from school" - and the date and time, tag it with tags such as "important," "work," or "bills" and you can even enter how much time you belief the task will take.

Once you've created a reminder, you can determine if it's to reoccur or if it's just a one-time activity. You can also decide if you want the phone to notify you at the time the task is scheduled, before it's scheduled, or at the absolute deadline (something else you can fill in). A task meter shows you how many of your tasks you've completed and you can even hide certain entries. And every once in a while, the app will give you a reminder to do something such as, "When you have a minute: Clean out your inbox."

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Apple Increases 3G Download Capacity

In a move that some say is preparation for the upcoming release of the iPad, Apple has increased capacity for downloads over its 3G networks. The move from 10MB to 20MB would support the heavier multimedia content for the iPad. Not only will give iPhone users more flexibility with content they can download, but it's also a sign that the iPad may have higher resolution graphics and more complex applications.

From now on, if you're trying to download a podcast or app from the App store, you're less likely to get the message (pictured above) asking you to connect to Wi-Fi because the file is too large. This will allow you to download more videos and podcasts using the 3G networks. But of course, if you try to download something that's over 20MB, you'll still receive the Wi-Fi message.

The original 10MB limit was there because iPhone downloads had the potential to put a huge strain on wireless networks. And as many iPhone users know, AT&T is already struggling to handle the traffic it does get currently. Even so, Apple continues to partner with the company, giving them exclusive rights to the 3G-enabled iPad, despite the fact that AT&T's exclusive contract with the iPhone in the United States ends soon.

AT&T also announced this week that they would be enabling Sling Player 3G streaming on the iPhone. The company supposedly held back on this feature in the past due to fears of increased traffic.

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Motorola Devour At Best Buy For $150?

The Devour is the newest smartphone coming out of the brains at Motorola at now, it seems, we finally have a price. In a leaked Best Buy flyer, it seems that the Motorola Devour will be selling at Best Buy for a mere $149.99 which doesn't seem bad given the spec sheet on the device.

The Devour is 3G capable and runs on the Android 1.6 platform. It has a 3 megapixel camera with continuous digital zoom as well as a fixed focus and image editing tools like cropping, geo tagging and rotating.

The Devour is also MOTOBLUR enabled. It has picture id, ringer id, and social network status on the main display and it is capable of directly messaging Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. The Devour also lets you share photos via MySpace, Photobucket, Picasa and Facebook.

With this device you can also customize your homescreen with MOTOBLUR's Happenings, Status and Messaging widgets which deliver you status posts and things like that. You can also customize it with RSS news widgets to keep you informed 24-7. MOTOBLUR also synchs personal and work contacts and connected social networks.

As far as music and video goes, the Devour has a native music player and is video capable with AAC, AMR, H.263, H.364, MP3, MPEG-4, WAV, WMA, WMV, MIDI and AAC+ playable formats. The Devour can also stream media video with a video capture rate of 23 fps.

The Devour can also web browser if you so desire. The device has the Android HTML Webkit with Adobe Flash Lite web browser. Stereo Bluetooth technology, Class 2+ EDR, which supports profiles A2DP, HSP and HFP is enabled as well as 802.11 b,g Wi-Fi. The Devour has a USB 2.0 high speed data transmission with data access and a Micro USB connector.

In the messaging part of the Devour the device has AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk for IM and Corporate, Gmail, IMAP, POP3, Attachment and Browser document viewer (Microsoft Office and pdf) and HTML email composer for e-mail.

All of this combined with a 1400 mAh Lithium Ion battery with a suspected 389 minuets of continuous use on a single charge makes the Devour seem pretty good for a mere $150. A price that is sans mail-in rebate if you grab it from Best Buy with a new 2-year agreement.

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Garmin-Asus M10 Offers Windows Mobile 6.5.3

The M10 from Garmin-Asus is the follow up from the A50 Android handset released by the company not too long ago. The interesting thing about this device is that is is only the second device available on the market now to feature Microsoft's latest Windows Mobile 6.5.3. The M10 is as up to date on all the latest software though it it may have a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM 7227 CPU which seems dated to most hardware enthusiasts.

But that shouldn't dampen your spirits too much when you realize that the m10 has 512MB of not only RAM but also ROM as well as a very nice 4GB of integrated storage. Another feature you can add to the list is a 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreen that will do a good job of displaying the built-in turn-by-turn navigation. Ingrained in everything the phone does is location awareness and navigation functions are said to be attached to the calendar, web browser, messaging and e-mail clients.

One of the selling points with the M10 is the click and go navigation. The advanced navigation features are equivalent to a high-end Garmin nuvi with such features as lane assist with junction view that guides drivers to the correct lane for an approaching turn or exit as well as realistically displaying road signs. The M10 also has a highway mode which informs the driver of the upcoming three street exits allowing the driver to plan ahead.

There has been no word on a price listing as of yet though the device is said to launch in the first half of 2010. I'm sure more details will surface at MWC next week.

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Gigabyte M1405 With External GPU

A couple of months ago, Gigabyte was showing off their M1305 laptop that had the ability to add an extra GPU as well as extra gaming capabilities to your laptop. Well Gigabyte, it seems, doesn't waste any time cranking out the next version of the device as it just showcased the M1405 at the 2010 Taipei Game Show.

The idea behind the external GPU was for you to maintain a thin, light notebook for easy mobility and then for you to dock it into a station Gigabyte calls the Booktop when you need more performance for entertainment or gaming. The M1450 has a spec sheet fairly similar to that of the M1350 with a few interesting improvements.

The M1450 comes with a 14-inch TFT LED display with 1366x768 resolution, Intel Core 2Duo SU7300 processor, up to 4GB of memory as well as 500GB of storage, DVD drive, Windows 7 and GMA 4500MHD graphics. All that comes in the mobile version but attach the GPU and you get an extra 6 USB 2.0 ports, GeForce GT220 graphics and 1GB discrete memory.

The M1450 also has a 6-cell battery but even that can be increased to 9-cells by adding an extra 3-cell battery in place of the disk drive. You can also overclock the Intel CULV by almost 20% without voiding the warranty. The M1350 hasn't even been released to the public yet but is supposed to cost somewhere around $1,200 for both the laptop and Booktop dock. There has been no word yet on a price or release date for the M1450 but a fully working version is said to be officially launched at CeBIT later this year.

Gigabyte designed the M1450 as well as the M1350 for professional businessmen who are always traveling or busy on the road and who want to balance a really professional mobile device with a heavy-duty gaming machine all in one package. This laptop would be perfect for a businessman who wants to kick back and game on one of those long trips.

Keep checking back as we will have more information about the M1450 as it arrives.

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Meet Your New iPhone Personal Assistant

Ever wish you could bark orders at your technology and have it do exactly what you asked? If you're an iPhone owner, your wish is becoming much more realistic thanks to Siri. The artificial intelligence-based voice-recognition startup has created an iPhone app that takes your questions and fields them to the appropriate search engine or web service.

To use the app, you simply voice a command into your phone. The app takes the sound, interprets your request, displays a transcript of your words and then searches for an answer. The results are displayed and you can tap the screen to correct or adjust the information.

While, other phones, such as Google's Nexus One do have voice recognition abilities, Siri is the first to actually interpret your words. The Nexus One simply displays a transcript of what you say, so that you don't have to type it. Siri was created out of artificial intelligence research done at SRI, a lab located in Silicon Valley that was also the birthplace of the mouse and graphical user interface.

The app can answer questions such as "Will it storm today" and "Where can I go to get a hamburger" because it's integrated with about twenty information services such as Yelp, CitySearch, and OpenTable. Others are expected to connect in the future. According to Wired.com, it will also answer more specific questions and commands such as, "Find the nearest Chase bank."

The app is free and can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store. You must have an iPhone 3GS to make use of it, but the company is currently working on a version compatible with older phones, as well. To see more about the new app, check out the video below.

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Samsung 3.3-inch AMOLED Touch Panels to be Mass Produced

You know that layer of nothing in between the touch-sensing glass and the display on your phone? Well Samsung is about to push it aside with the company's new 3.3-inch WVGA AMOLED touchscreen which is set to be released in March.

You may be wondering how this all works. Well, touchscreen products were typically made by separately connecting the display and the touch panel. What Samsung has done is placed a touch sensor (on-cell) over the mirror display and evaporated it. This creates a 0.001mm thick touch sensor providing the user with a screen capable of creating more clear, high-quality images.

This process marks the first time a touch sensor has been placed over an AMOLED substrate. Adding to this, Samsung has said that they will mass produce this product starting in March with their 3.3-inch WVGA (480x800) resolution AMOLED. A representative from Samsung stated that "Through mass production, we want to make this touch embedded AMOLED panel number one in the LCD and AMOLED market. Also, we want to mass produce touch screens and construct a system so that we can expand the display market."

If everything goes according to Samsung's plans, the company should be giving us lighter and thinner phones with better touchscreens as soon as March. This could be a huge step forward in the touchscreen market but it looks like we will have to wait about a month to see what happens.

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