If you are like many small businesses that use Quickbooks, you will be happy to hear that Intuit, has announced the QuickBooks Mobile app for Android. This is great news for those business owners out there who use QuickBooks Pro, QuickBooks Premier, or QuickBooks Online to manage their invoicing and accounting.

Finally, owners will have the access to their data from their Android 2.1 or higher phone. Features include: access to customer and sales info, as well as customer balances, the ability to create estimates on the fly and on-site invoicing. You can manage sales by creating and viewing estimates and invoices, convert estimates to invoices and lastly, email those same estimates and invoices. All these features are secured and properly backed up. Information added to QuickBooks Mobile is automatically synced with QuickBooks when the service is launched on a PC or Mac.

Adding an Android app is an important move on the part of Intuit. I wonder if the business software giant in the future will add credit card swiping from its Intuit card reader to support its QuickBooks app. That would be a natural way to integrate if you ever have a client or customer who owes money and is available to pay instantly. Just think, Intuit could make their app a one big do it all on your phone experience for those business owners who stay on the move.

In less than 30 days, a new, interesting tablet will hit the market.  I discovered AndyPad awhile back and have been keeping tabs on it. It looks to be an inexpensive Android tablet that small business or individuals could easily use. The price tag also is very reasonable!!

There are 2 versions coming out:

Regular version which has 8 GB, front camera, 800×480 resolution,  7 inches ~$210

Pro version which has 16GB, front and rear camera, bluetooth, 1024×600 resolution, 7 inches ~$290

For more info check out their homepage, facebook, twitter accounts.

Well, Capital One has released an app for Android, so you too can answer the question.   Capital One Services has thus joined the ranks of large financial institutions offering native Android mobile banking apps with the introduction of the official app.

Capital One account holders can now check their balances, pay bills, transfer funds between accounts, view recent transactions and rewards, and, of course, find the nearest branches and ATMs.  Some screenshots:

The app works on Android phones running Donut (1.6) and up, but cannot yet be installed on Honeycomb tablets (support for them is coming later). You can download it today from the Android Market here.

Source: AndroidPolice

Every once in a while, there are posts out there where folks list their thoughts on the apps you need. Well I have gone through my list and decided to publish the list of lists.

5 Android Apps for Business

35 Android Apps to Run Your Business

Business Productivity Apps You Absolutely Need

CNET 100: We pick our favorite Android apps

Top 10 Android Apps for Internet Marketers

We’re all used to using our phones to spend money. Whether you’re buying the latest game, a cool app or an additional purchase within an app, smartphones cost us lots of money. It’s pretty refreshing, then, to see Zoho: an application which helps you make money from your phone by invoicing clients on the move.

Zoho is a cloud based service which offers its users lots of tools such as business email, customer tracking, and document collaboration. If you use Zoho, you’ll be glad to know that it has just made the jump over from the iPhone to Android. It’s free to use if you’re only invoicing 5 people or less every month, but let’s be honest, if you’re only invoicing 5 people or less every month then you need to stop worrying about Zoho and start worrying about making money from your business. Plans for those invoicing over 5 people a month start at $15.

Using the application, you will be able to not only manage invoices, but also track estimates issued to your customers, view customer records and monitor expenses. Also, all of the functions are instantly accessible from the main menu so they are easy to access without hunting them down.

If you’re a Zoho user, you can try out the application right now by downloading it for free from the Market if you have a phone running Android 2.1 or later.

source: Android Police

From the Webex website:

Announcing the Cisco WebEx Meetings for Android app! Available now with great features, including the ability o easily attend, schedule, and start meetings. The Cisco WebEx Meetings for Android app allows you to enjoy the full meeting experience with simultaneous data and audio. Take mobile web conferencing to a whole new level, tap into a WebEx online meeting, wherever you are!

Here is the Android Market link.

Amazon announced the other day (July 6) a number of enhancements to its Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, including an unlimited music storage option and a Cloud Player for iPad.

For a limited time, Amazon customers who purchase a $20 annual Cloud Drive storage plan will receive unlimited storage space for their MP3 and AAC (.m4a) music files. Previously, Amazon Cloud customers automatically started with 5GB of free storage, upgradable to 20GB with the purchase of an Amazon MP3 album. Additional storage space could then be purchased in plans beginning at $20 per 20GB per year.

In comparison, Google Music Beta offers free storage for up to 20,000 songs, although it is unknown what if any subscription plans Google might offer. Meanwhile, Apple plans to launch its iTunes Match service in the fall, which will allow customers to “back up” up to 20,000 non-iTunes music files to the cloud for $24.99 a year.

While Amazon customers can also upload photos, videos, and documents to Amazon’s Cloud, the unlimited storage offer applies only to music files. Amazon did not elaborate on how long the “limited time” offer would last.

In addition, storage of Amazon MP3 purchases will be free in the Cloud Drive, including all purchases made before the launch of Amazon Cloud. As before, Amazon MP3 purchases don’t count again customers’ Amazon Cloud Drive storage quota. Amazon said customers who qualified for 20GB of free storage from earlier promotions will receive the unlimited space for music at no additional cost.

Also new, Amazon announced it had release a Cloud Player for Web on iPad. As with Android smartphones, Android tablets, Macs, and PCs before it, the iPad owners will be able to play music files stored on Amazon’s Cloud servers as well as those stored on the device. However, conspicuously absent from the announcement was any mention of the service working on other iOS devices such as iPods and iPhones.

Have you used Amazon’s new mp3 service? If so, lets us know what you think.

–Article syndicated from CNET.com

Found this article over at All Things D: Verizon’s Cure for CrackBerry Addiction: Android

Another handful of worrisome data points for Research in Motion, which appears to be slipping down carriers’ priority lists as the BlackBerry struggles for purchase in an increasingly sophisticated market. New Verizon sales metrics from ITG Investment Research analyst Matthew Goodman paint a picture of RIM that, while not yet dire, describe a worrisome trend.

According to Goodman, 80 percent of smartphone sales at Verizon in November were Android devices (46 percent of those were Droids). Which is astonishing for two reasons. 1.) That’s a huge percentage for a relatively new mobile OS in a very competitive market. 2.) In December of 2008, RIM was touting the BlackBerry as Verizon’s best-selling device. In two years, it’s gone from a flagship to a johnboat.

And with Android continuing to lead smartphone sales growth at Verizon, it seems increasingly unlikely that the BlackBerry will ever reclaim its lost title. With sales of the Tour/Bold series dwindling and no Storm refresh in sight, BlackBerry sales at Verizon are in serious decline. They dropped 45 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of this year, and Goodman sees them trending down 49 percent YOY in the fourth.

An ugly and humiliating decline, and worrisome. Because if the BlackBerry is faring this poorly against Android at Verizon, how will it fare against Android and the iPhone, which is widely expected to debut on the carrier’s network next year?

No wonder Verizon doesn’t think the upcoming launch of BlackBerry 6 devices on its network will have a “material impact” on sales. Why would it?

Incidentally, if you haven’t yet checked out our coverage of RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis’s appearance at D:Mobile earlier this week, you should.

This graph tells it all!

Running your webinar or meeting from a wireless devices is cool. Fuze has just launched their meeting software for the Android tablet. They also have an Android phone app (but it does not host meetings). Here is a press release on the new software:

San Francisco, Nov 11, 2010 – Today, Fuze Box is turning the Android tablet into a virtual conference room with the launch of Fuze Meeting, the ultimate mobile collaboration platform available for download at http://fuze.me/droid. With several Android tablets hitting American markets this quarter, eager enterprise customers can rest easy knowing that business-powering apps are available at launch. The company is also announcing the ability to host meetings directly from the Android device, set for launch in early 2011.

• VoIP into meetings – Users can attend a meeting via their tablet even if they don’t have a phone nearby. VoIP is also added to the Android phone app, solving persistent CDMA voice and data streaming limitations (read more)

• Content and Desktop viewing – Only Fuze Meeting offers the ability to view a shared computer desktop real-time from an Android device. Attendees are also able to watch and listen to high-quality video and audio – start, stop and pause with the same level of functionality as meeting hosts have.

• Share content from the tablet – Once the meeting host designates an Android attendee as a presenter, users can share video or image files by uploading directly from their device.

“We live and work in a mobile economy and our productivity should not be limited to the four walls of a conference room,” says Jeff Cavins, CEO of Fuze Box. “Now, members of a sales team on Android tablets, a prospect on an iPad, and a colleague on an iPhone can meet simultaneously and collaborate with unmatched productivity.”

Optimized for the Samsung Galaxy device, the app works best on 1024 x 600 tablets for now. Fuze Meeting will continue to optimize resolution for additional display screens as they are released. All functions available for Android tablets are also mirrored on the Android phone app, which Fuze Box originally launched in June.

Fuze Meeting for Android is available for free at http://fuze.me/droid.

A new Android App lets you run a tab at your local restaurant/bar and then pay using the app without having to wait for the server.  It also allows you to see your current tab so that you can decide if you really need another AppleTini.   The upside for business owners is that if a customer “forgets” to pay, then you already have their payment info and can close their tab and get payed.

Check out this article below about the funding for the new project.

Austin startup ATX Innovation has built a mobile application called TabbedOut to eliminate a big inconvenience in your life — or my life, anyway. It’s addressing those moments when you’ve finished a meal but have to wave your arm wildly for minutes before you finally get the check, then wave it again to actually pay. Or maybe those times when you’ve tried to close out your tab at a bar but found five people in line ahead of you.

ATX just raised $2.05 million in new funding to tackle that problem with its TabbedOut app.

After users download the app, they can choose their location from a list of supported restaurants and bars. Then they open a tab, which is assigned a special code that they share with their waiter or bartender. Items get added to the tab as they’re ordered. When you’re ready to go, you just use the app to pay by credit card. No more delays.

TabbedOut even includes a tip calculator and an option to call a cab.

There are plenty of companies tackling mobile payments from different angles. Perhaps the most prominent is Square, which allows business owners to read credit cards with their phones.

I like TabbedOut because it’s addressing a specific and familiar problem. The company also notes that it integrates with existing “point of sale” systems, which means that restaurants don’t have to buy new equipment to process the payments, and they get paid directly — they don’t have to wait for TabbedOut to send them a check.

It’s still early in TabbedOut’s growth. The company said it’s currently supported by more than 90 restaurants and bars in 28 cities, including Austin, Dallas, Denver, Houston, and Chicago. With the new funding, TabbedOut hopes to accelerate that growth, in part by striking deals with more partners and resellers.

The money comes from New Enterprise Associates. TabbedOut has now raised a total of $2.75 million.

–Article syndicated from VentureBeat.com