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Useful apps for those in the busy world of business

8th June 2012 7 Replies Christopher Roberts

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If you work in business, then this article is aimed at you. If you have a busy diary which you need to keep track of, always seem to need to be paying someone, and like to check your stocks and shares from anywhere, at any time, then these three apps will (hopefully) be right up your street.

PayPal

The first app I am going to look at is the PayPal app. If you haven’t heard of PayPal, it is a free online service, which lets you send money to people via simply using an email address. I should point out that there are costs/fees involved, which is how PayPal make their money.

The PayPal app lets you request money, as well as send money. It also shows you your accounts recent activity, so you can keep track of your finances.

The app has a few cool and really useful features, that you should know about. The first cool feature is the ‘Bump’ feature, this feature lets you send or receive money to/from your phone, and someone else’s, simply by bumping/tapping your phones together. Pretty clever?

One of the really useful features I should also mention is the check deposit system. Usually, to deposit a check, you need to go to a bank, pay it in and then wait for it to clear. With the PayPal app, you can do the whole process a lot quicker, simply take a picture of the check and it will deposit it directly into your bank account.

Week Calendar

Nick recently wrote a post about how to climb the mountain to success in online business. A key part of Nick’s article was his ‘effective time management’ section. Nick wrote how you need to plan in advance, and allocate certain activities certain time, whilst not forgetting others.

To help you stick to your business schedule, online or off, the next app is the Week Calendar app. This app is much more advanced than the standard iPhone/iPod calendar, with loads of extra features and helpful tools. Check out the screenshot below to see the apps calendar interface in action.

The disadvantage of this app is that it costs £1.49, so you can judge for yourself if the interface and features (like handy drag and drop event tool) are worth the extra money.

City Trading Pro

The final app on my list is called City Index iPhone Trading platform Pro, which gives you access to market data from all over the world. The app is a spread betting app, which means that it enables you to trade on the price movements of thousands of markets, including shares and currencies.

Any good businessman has to take risks, and this app gives you a good way to make money from taking calculated risks. If you think a market value is going to rise then you can buy, and if you think it will fall you can sell. Each market has a sell and buy price – the difference between the two is what is referred to as the spread, hence ‘spread betting’.

To ensure you are always kept in the loop, the app gives you access to the value of shares from a whole host of different companies, currencies, commodities and indices including the FTSE 100, the Dax and the Dow Jones.

The app also lets you can set a stop loss, buy with one or two clicks of your finger, (it is even faster than doing it online!) view your orders, pending, completed and cancelled, create your own ‘watch list’ so that you have super quick access to the data you need, get detailed historical data, and so much more.

Below is a screenshot of the sort of information you get when looking at a firm.

The charting features on the app are really good, they are very detailed, and if you tip your iPhone on its side, the graph reorientates itself, to give you a clearer view of the data you are viewing.

You may be worrying about security, but there is no need. Probably the most comforting feature of the City Trading Pro app is that you can be confident that all your information and transactions are secure, so there is no need to worry.

Unlike the Week Calendar app above, this app is free, you just need a City Index trading account.

So, there is my list of apps! Feel free to try them out and leave feedback in the comments section, to let us know if you like them as much as me 🙂

Are smartphone battery life improvements on the way?

4th June 2012 12 Replies Joe Pawlikowski

We all want a little more power. Smartphone manufacturers have catered to this desire, as they’ve continually pumped out increasingly powerful devices.

This year we’re seeing many quad-core devices with 1.5GHz processors, powered by 4G LTE networks, and with vibrant high-resolution displays. Yet these high-powered devices are about to hit a wall if we don’t see some critical changes in battery efficiency. Without adequate battery life, even the most powerful smartphone is useless.

Thankfully, there are a few reasons to believe that we’ll see appropriate improvements in the near future. Here are three reasons why we will see smartphone battery life improve in the coming months and years. It will be a great boon to consumers, who will be able to use their phones heavily for longer.

1. Consumer disappointment

Earlier this year, Motorola made something of a bold move. In a world of thinning smartphones, it actually released, and heavily marketed, a smartphone that is considerably thicker than many of its other models.

This only worked, however, because with the increased thickness came greater battery life. By most reasonable tests, the Droid RAZR MAXX lasts nearly twice as long on a single battery charge than most of its competitors.

The rationale behind this marketing campaign was simple. People love their smartphones, but get frustrated when they can’t last on a single charge throughout a day. Again, a powerless smartphone is a useless smartphone.

You can stuff all the features in the world under the hood of a phone, but if people need to constantly recharge in order to use those features there’s not a lot to be gained. Improved battery life will simply become a necessity that manufacturers cannot ignore.

2. Changing energy trends

The way we consume energy is always changing. The recent technology revolution will change it yet again. Most of our modern computing devices employ DC power, but our wall sockets deliver AC power. That leads to a few inefficiencies, since the difference requires a converter of sorts, whether that’s in the device or in the power source itself. We might see that change in short order.

As Technology Review notes, there is a growing demand for DC current source. It is possible that we could see power companies start to deliver DC power to our outlets in the next few decades, which should make the whole charging and powering process more efficient. The lack of conversion could make that big a difference.

Yet, given our consume-driven culture, it probably won’t make as much of a difference as my next point.

3. Apple’s doing it

It seems that whatever Apple does, other companies copy. Apple has long been an iconic force in technology, and their iPad and iPhone empire has helped solidify its spot at the top.

What they do with the iPhone 5 could again change the smartphone industry. As GigaOM’s Kevin Tofel notes, Apple could focus on battery life with the new iPhone, rather than creating another thinner model. He cites the increased battery capacity of the new iPad, which seems reasonable enough.

If Apple does indeed create a thicker smartphone that focuses on battery life, others will be pressed to follow suit. Remember, Apple essentially tells consumers what they want. Perhaps they wanted it previously – and plenty of customers have demanded better battery life from smartphones – but Apple does have the definitive word.

It’s hard to explain, but it’s clearly the case based on how the smartphone industry has developed. If Apple goes for battery life, we can expect others to jump on the bandwagon too.

Battery life has become a pressing issue for the future of smartphones. Manufacturers have created devices that are as powerful as full-sized computers of recent memory. Now they need adequate power for them.

Since a powerless smartphone is a useless smartphone, expect companies to jump on the better-battery bandwagon soon enough. Apple could get things kick-started this year. Things will likely develop rapidly from there.

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