There's An App for That

With today’s World of smartphones and tablets being so useful in managing personal matters, I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you some business and personal ‘Apps’ for those smartphones and tablets that I think are really cool. Do our blog readers have a favorite business or personal finance ‘app’ and if you do, would you share it with us on this blog?

1. Bloomberg Mobile. This business news app is free, and users go to it for real-time financial market data, company descriptions and the latest market news and stock quotes. Advisors can use the “my stocks” feature to create personalized portfolios of stocks to follow for themselves or clients

2. Nest Egg Estimator. This is one of Android’s top 10 apps. It’s a great retirement tool because it projects finances into future years showing income, taxes, assets and debt. It also allows you to try different scenarios such as purchases, expenses, job changes and more.

3. Flipboard Pages. This iPad app delivers content from a number of publications, including ABC News, All Things Digital, Bon Appétit, Lonely Planet, SB Nation, SF Gate, Uncrate and The Washington Post Magazine. When an article from one of those publishers is shared on Twitter or Facebook, a Flipboard user selects “Read Article,” and can thus stay up to date on the latest news and magazine content in the financial industry.

4. Hootsuite. “Hootsuite is king when it comes to social media convenience and efficiency. Instead of shifting back and forth between social media platforms, Hootsuite allows admins to oversee and access all of their social operations in one convenient place.

5. Mint Mobile Apps. Easy organization of your finances—automatic categorization of your transactions—plus active, zoom able charts and graphs.

6. Droid PDF Scan. A document scanner wherever you are.

7. CamCard can capture business card images with a phone-based camera, recognize the card image content, and automatically save the contact info in the phone’s address book and Card Holder. In addition, CamCard contains many useful features, such as email signature recognition and QR code generation and recognition.

8. Visual Records has made it quick and simple to track and manage your vehicle mileage for tax/business purposes. This app can track and manage Vehicle Types, Trip Types and Mileage information; duplicate previous mileage records; add specific notes for each record; and export mileage information, which can be saved and sent via e-mail.

9. Pixetell allows you to quickly add voice, screen recordings and video to e-mail or documents, giving you the opportunity to go beyond written text when explaining forms, proposals and designs verbally. Pixetell allows you to combine voice, screen recordings and webcam delivered through a URL in your e-mail.

10. Mavenlink is an online collaboration solution that allows you to manage projects from start to finish, including communications, docs, tasks, scheduling, time tracking, invoicing and payments. Mavenlink integrates with Google Docs, Calendar, and Contacts. Your networks, communications, project notifications, due dates, and deliverables related to your working world are captured in one place: your Mavenlink dashboard.

11. Vlingo. Tell your phone what to do! The Vlingo Virtual Assistant turns your words into action. Vlingo combines voice to text technology with its “intent engine” to help you quickly complete your desired action. Simply speak to your phone or type a command through the ActionBar to get just about anything done while on the go.

12. Barcode Scanner. Scan barcodes on products then look up prices and reviews. You can also scan Data Matrix and QR Codes containing URLs, contact info, etc.

13. Lookout Mobile Security helps you protect your phone and includes Anti-Virus, Backup and Find My Phone. The app allows you to block viruses, malware and spyware by scanning every app you download. Backup allows you to back up your contacts and photos, as well as restore data to a new or existing phone. Find My Phone can help you pinpoint your phone on a map, activate a loud alarm to find your phone, and if necessary remotely wipe your data if your phone is lost or stolen.

14. Seek Droid allows you to locate your lost or stolen device anywhere in the world. See your device on a map, set off an audible alarm, wipe the device, and more.

15. Wallet allows you to safely store all your sensitive data such as bank account details and passwords on your phone. Wallet is also useful for remembering all those bits and pieces of information in one place from frequent flier numbers to contact lens prescriptions.

16. Spotlight Six Software makes it easy to track your billable hours as you are working and then transfer the data into a spreadsheet to create your invoices. This app calculates hours worked and wages. Users can create customizable reports that can be exported via e-mail and view and edit time records within the app, among other things.

17. Long Term Care. The Genworth Cost of Care App provides a convenient way to view long-term care cost details in today’s dollars across various care settings, compare costs across multiple locations and estimate future long-term care costs. The App allows users to: (1) View long-term care costs on a daily, monthly and annual basis for 437 regions across the United States (2) View care costs in different care settings, including in-home care, Adult Day Health Care, Assisted Living Facility, and Nursing Home Care (3) Estimate future costs up to 30 years out (4) Compare care costs across multiple locations and (6) Use geo-locate functionality to automatically locate an area within the U.S.

18. Mortgage Calculator. Choose four calculators (1) rent or buy, (2) debt to income calculator, (3) monthly payment calculator, (4) refinance calculator and (5) the ability to search for homes.

19. Morningstar. The content for this application is provided by Morningstar.com – helping investors reach their financial goals – with comprehensive investment research and tools covering U.S. and Canadian stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, options, hedge funds, commodities and portfolio management.

20. Kiplinger. For more than 50 years, Kiplinger has been giving readers practical advice on investing, saving, budgeting, credit, spending and more. Now you can enjoy the same money-smart advantage with this convenient interactive app for your iPad.

What do you think of these ‘apps’? Got a better one you would like to share?