For those of you running the Google Android OS on your smart phone, I’ve come up with my current top-10 FREE Android app list. Some you’re probably familiar with, hopefully some are new to you. In no particular order…
Google Sky – If you’ve ever wanted to know what star or planet you’re looking at, this is a killer app and one of the best I’ve seen in the category. Point your phone anywhere in the sky and with your present GPS coordinates, it will show you exactly what you’re looking at.
KeyRing - Tired of carrying a bunch of loyalty cards around? Well, no more, with KeyRing you can accept as many as you like. Just scan the bar code and it’s in your phone. When you go to a particular store, all you have to do is bring up the app and they can scan your bar code from your phone.
ShopSavvy – If you’re in a store and just about to buy something, but not sure if it’s a good price…just scan the UPC code and ShopSavvy will search area stores and online sites to let ya know.
Shazam – How many times are you listening to the radio and you wonder who the heck is singing that tune? Just turn on the Shazam app and let it listen to the song for a few seconds and it will tell you. Shazam will even find the song online for you to purchase if you like.
Movies – If you like movies as much as I do, this is a pretty cool app. Again, with the GPS cordinates you just select a movie you’re interested in seeing and it will pull up theaters near you and give you current play times.
Talk To Me – If you travel to foreign countries and don’t speak the language…not to worry. All you have to do is launch TalkToMe and speak in English what you need to say, then it translates it into German, Spanish, French, Italian, etc. Pretty cool stuff.
Goggles – This is such a killer app, it is however in its infancy, but the future is bright for this technology. Basically, you can surf the web/get info by taking a picture of something, i.e. a storefront, landmark, book, artwork, etc. Check out this video for more info, it’s really worth it!
Loopt - Discover the world around you is their tag-line. Find out what friends are near you, get coupons for places nearby, check-in service and much more. It’s a social compass.
Evernote - Lets you capture your ideas, experiences, and inspirations as they happen, wherever you find yourself.
TaskKiller – The downside to Android’s multi-tasking is that sometimes apps can become bandwidth hogs, or bring your phone down with them when they crash. Few apps provide a direct, easy “Quit” option and sometimes you can’t get to the app to close it. TaskKiller is a free app-killing utility that works from its standard icon.
If you’re a small business owner today and you can’t easily accept credit or debit cards, you’re significantly hindering your sales efforts. Credit card processing has become easier and more affordable over the years with solutions such as PayPal—however in-the-field/mobile credit card acceptance has been a bit allusive. There are and have been mobile credit card solutions out there for a while now…but, never this simple! Check out “Square,” and new and extremely simple way to accept credit cards in the field.
SQUARE credit card processing made simple
Square was founded by a St. Louis glass artist named Jim McKelvey who saw a problem that needed a solution. Jim teamed up with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to bring Square to fruition. SquareUp.com allows small business owners to begin accepting payment cards without contracts, expensive hardware or monthly fees that are typical with other mobile solutions. All you need to get started is the Square Up app and a small plastic device that plugs into the phone audio input jack (which allows you to swipe and process a variety of payment cards). Customers have have receipts sent to them via e-mail or text message.
2/10/10 update to this post: CNN Money ran a great article on the iPhone credit card swipe war.
Twitter and Airports have something in common—they help create a more connected community. Airports can be a lonely place while waiting for a flight…A new Twitter app aims to remedy this issue. All a traveler needs to do is tweet #boarding along with an airport code (i.e. PHX), and they’ll get a reply with a list of folks currently connected to Twitter in that airport.
Web developer Damien Guinet created the @boarding ‘twitterbot’ when he realised many of his followers would tweet just to say they were in an airport. He decided to add value to this by letting them find out who else was there. Boarding.fr displays a map of all the world’s airports and the users in them. Users can choose which random stranger they’d like to tweet and maybe meet while in transit.
If you haven’t noticed yet, Google added a new feature to its Analytics program called, “Intelligence.” Intelligence is a new reporting feature that will generate alerts to specific actions, for example: you can create automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods. For instance, Intelligence could call-out a large surge in visits from a particular referral site, or let you know about bounce rates of visitors from a specific geographic region.
Instead of you having to monitor reports and comb through data, Analytics Intelligence alerts you to the most significant information to pay attention to, saving you time and providing traffic insights that could affect your business.
Custom Alerts make it possible for you to tell Google Analytics what to watch for. You can set daily, weekly, and monthly triggers on different dimensions & metrics, and be notified by email, or right in the user interface when the changes actually occur.
Check out this YouTube video Google put together that will explain Intelligence in more detail.
Does this sound familiar…you run into a cool news story or a new web app, but you don’t have time to read it at that moment? Before you know it you have six browser windows open, some with a dozen tabs. This happens to me all the time, but before I can get back to reading…my computer restarts after some downloads, or it crashes—loosing all of those open windows before I had a chance to peruse.
Let’s say you’re working with a graphic designer or web developer and they send you an .EPS file (Adobe format, i.e. Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. ) of your logo or some other file and you don’t have any Adobe programs on your computer…what do you do? Or, let’s say all of your music is in .WAV format and you need it into mp3 for the web? Or, perhaps you have some sort of video you can’t watch…what do you do? Well, there is a great answer to that question…file conversion. Zamzar is an easy-to-use website application that will allow you to convert nearly any file into another supporting one. Best of all…it’s free!
You’ve probably seen screen shots of a website or other document in a video or PowerPoint presentation before—and, probably even on occasion have needed to perform this feat yourself. Well, there is the down and dirty way to accomplish this task…you can hit the function key on your PC, then the PRT SC button, then paste in a Word doc, however that method has some severe limitations.
There are also some specialized software apps that will assist you in the area of creating screenshots and thumbnail images…some are free, some are not. CNET has a list of many to choose from…one of the more popular free versions is ScreenHunter, which both CNET and users rank very high. If you need to create a lot of screen shots and thumbnail images, you may opt for Snagit, which I find to be an outstanding product. It does cost $49, but you might find the added functionality work the price of admission. Snagit does offer the product Free-to-Try for 30 days and is also ranked very high by CNET and users.
If you’re interested in learning more about Snagit, here is a helpful video.
Here’s a cool web-based app…Turn your Blog into a Podcast and download to your I-Pod…now you can listen to your favorite Blog rather than reading it. Online publishers are starting to use a service from Odiogo.com that will enable users to listen to their favorite Blogs rather than reading them…can you say, “Multitasking?”
With the tremendous popularity in Social Media, you’re seeing an onset of creative ideas, tools and networks emerge. Many of the social media sites and tools will end up in the proverbial interactive dust bin—however some, those that solve a problem, have a solid chance of survival.
One such site/tool I ran into recently helps you create an online business card of sorts. Before you say something like, “isn’t that what my website is for?” Consider that we’re talking in the context of “Social Media.” If you are a savvy online marketer, you probably subscribe to a handful of social media sites. If so, one of the challenges is how to communicate to your market what sites you’re on and what your address(s) are.
In comes Card.ly…their main objective is to allow you to have your own mini-business card profile, without needing to have any design or programming skills. You can make a “tiny” portfolio online in which you’ll be able to integrate your various networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, etc.). In addition, you can add a blurb about your business and how to best reach you. You can even choose between many different skins and other features. Card.ly has both a free and paid versions of their service.
