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15 Must Have iPhone & iPad Apps for Entrepreneurs & Executives

developer — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 10:36:26 +0000

With over 400,000 applications, finding what you need can be difficult. We have reviewed the App Store and compared dozens of apps to find those that increase business efficiency and help you remain competitive. Some are for free and others cost just few dollars; below is a listing of the top 15 apps for your iPhone or iPad.

Dropbox (Free)

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. After you install Dropbox on your computer, any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, your iPhone and iPad and even the Dropbox website! With the Dropbox app, you can take everything that matters to you on the go. Read your docs or flip through your albums when you’re out and about. Save photos or videos to your Dropbox and share them with friends in just a couple taps. Even if you accidentally leave your iPhone in a taxi, your stuff is always safe on Dropbox.

Tripit (Free)

Get peace of mind while traveling, by having all your plans in one place. No more frantic searching for confirmation emails in your inbox – or worse yet – hunting down that pesky manila folder. TripIt is an easier way to organize and share travel. TripIt “automagically” takes all your trip details and creates one truly helpful itinerary that’s there when and where you need it – on your iPhone or iPad, sync’d with your calendar, and online at tripit.com. When you receive a confirmation email from anywhere you book, simply forward it to plans@tripit.com. TripIt instantly recognizes reservations from 3,000+ booking sites including cruises, restaurants, concerts and more. You can easily share trip plans with family or colleagues directly, or let Facebook and LinkedIn contacts know when and where you’re headed.

Remember the Milk (Free)

Take your to-do list anywhere with this feature-packed app; never forget the milk (or anything else) again. Remember The Milk (RTM) for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad connects with the popular online service of the same name. With millions of users worldwide, Remember The Milk is everywhere you are: from mobile to the web to apps including Outlook, iCal, Gmail, Google Calendar, Twitter, and more.

Expensify (Free)

Sync company credit cards and bank accounts. For cash purchases, you could even snap a picture of the receipt with your phone to sync onto your account. Simplify your expense reports with this mobile app by automating the expense report process.

Dragon Dictation (Free)

Dragon Dictation is an easy-to-use voice recognition application powered by Dragon® NaturallySpeaking® that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages. In fact, it’s up to five (5) times faster than typing on the keyboard.

SkyGrid (Free)

Named a Featured App, Top 100, and Apple Staff Favorite, SkyGrid is a beautiful and captivating way to stay up to date on your news. Follow all the sources and topics you want, and effortlessly receive updates on the interests you care about. Read your favorite news, people, blogs, and topics in a customized Photo Grid™.

Skype (Free)

Call, video call and instant message anyone else on Skype for free with Skype for your iPhone or iPod touch. Plus call and text your Contacts (or any other number) at Skype’s low rates. It’s great value with Skype Credit.

Salesforce

Salesforce Mobile gives you instant access to your Salesforce information on your iPhone.

Instantly access and update critical Salesforce information from the field
Spend less time in the office and more time in the field selling
Quickly look up account activity before important calls or meetings
Log details from phone calls and meetings right after they take place
Respond immediately to new leads and customer requests
View Dashboards and access custom Visualforce mobile pages

Free Wi-Fi Finder

Instantly find FREE Wi-Fi Internet hotspots wherever you are in the world online or offline! JiWire’s Global FREE Wi-Fi app uses your iPhone’s GPS and network triangulation capabilities to locate free Wi-Fi Internet access.

Jotnot

JotNot converts your iPhone into a portable multipage scanner. You can use JotNot Free to scan multipage documents, receipts, whiteboards, business cards and notes into an electronic format. Use the in app purchase to upgrade directly to the Pro version of JotNot. The Pro version can convert scans into PDFs, JPEGs, or PNGs; can email scans directly; and can directly upload them to Dropbox, iDisk/WebDAV, Evernote, Box.net or Google Docs where they can be shared with others.

Quickoffice

Quickoffice® Pro is the essential Microsoft® Office productivity tool for your iPhone or iPod touch that offers an intuitive and easy-to-use interface for advanced editing of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files with an integrated file management solution with convenient access to multiple cloud service providers including MobileMe, Dropbox, Google® Docs, Box.net, Huddle and SugarSync.

Roambi

Roambi’s immersive dashboard-style analytics let you tap, turn and swipe to analyze and share up-to-the-minute company information on any iPhone or iPad – keeping you connected to your business, anytime and anywhere. Roambi Analytics is an innovative app that quickly transforms your business reports and data – from many popular business applications – into intuitive and engaging mobile analytics, instantly delivered to any iPhone or iPad. It lets you easily view and interact with your company’s latest information – giving you the insight you need for on-the-go analysis, impromptu presentations and smart decision-making – while in the office, or on-the-move.

Credit Card Terminal

Turn your iPhone into a mobile credit card terminal and accept customer payments when you’re on the go. It’s the simple, secure way to ensure you never miss a sale.

Accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Amex
Optional credit card reader accessory
Transaction Log
Full and partial refunds
Email PDF receipts with maps
Capture digital signatures
Customer tip/gratuity
Fill customer contact info from Address Book

AroundMe

AroundMe quickly identifies your position and allows you to choose the nearest Bank, Bar, Gas Station, Hospital, Hotel, Movie Theatre, Restaurant, Supermarket, Theatre and Taxi. AroundMe shows you a complete list of all the businesses in the category you have tapped on along with the distance from where you are.

HBR Tips

Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review offers quick, practical management tips and ideas. New business tips are delivered to the app five days per week.

7 Handy Linux Keyboard Shortcuts

developer — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:05:10 +0000

Although learning each and every keyboard shortcut on Linux may be challenging, with a bit of practice you could significantly increase your personal productivity and speed while learning some of the common ones, like below:

1. Ctrl + Alt + Backspace
Helpful shortcut that is used when X isn’t responding or a program has locked up your desktop and is unresponsive. This combination logs you out of X and takes you back to the login screen.

2. Ctrl + Alt + Delete
Use this shortcut if you need to reboot when all access to the desktop is frozen. All unsaved data will be lost when executing this combination.

3. Alt + Tab
You can use this shortcut to cycle through all open windows without needing the mouse. Browse through them by holding down the ALT key and press Tab until it lands on the window you want.

4. Ctrl + Alt + F*
This shortcut helps switch to various virtual terminals almost seamlessly. The default terminal you’re working in is 6. So you can switch to another terminal by holding down Ctrl + Alt and hitting F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F7, etc. Quite a helpful combination for debugging problems with the desktop or eliminating frozen applications.

5. Alt + Arrow key
Thanks to the pager within Linux, you can have multiple desktops simultaneously. This shortcut can help you move from one desktop to another without using the mouse.

6. Ctrl + C
You can quickly eliminate a process in the terminal window with this combination.

7. Ctrl + Z
You can easily send a running process to the background without stopping the application by using this combination from the terminal.

5 Ways to Speed Up Windows 7 on your PC or Laptop

developer — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:01:40 +0000

Here are some quick steps you can take to speed up the performance of Windows 7 on your PC or laptop.

1. Disable unnecessary start-up programs
By default, some programs are set to start during system start-up which can cause longer load time and slower performance. To avoid this, you could disable some of the non-essential programs by following the steps below:

Click Start
In the search field type msconfig and press
In the System Configuration window, go to Startup tab
Uncheck the box next to those programs that are not essential for you during start-up. This will only disable them from auto-running during start-up but you could still use these programs whenever necessary.
Once you’ve unchecked the selected ones, click and

2. Clean up the hard drive
You could use Windows built-in Disk Cleanup tool to remove unwanted data, temporary files and download program files to free up space and improve performance.

Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup
At first, the system will estimate how much space can be freed up.
In the Disk Cleanup window that appears, select the files that need to be deleted
Then click

3. Perform Disk Defragmentation
Defragmenting is one of those essential features you should consider using every 6 months or so. It is another built-in Windows tool that enables the operating system to perform more efficiently.

Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter
In the window that appears, select the drive you want to defragment and click disk
This will determine a time estimate for the process, following which you can click disk
Once complete, you can either or click

4. Minimize Sound Effects
To disable certain sound effects, do the following:

Click Start
In the search field type mmsys.cpl and press
In the new window that appears click on tab
Set the sounds scheme to
You could set the essential sounds if needed in Program Events; by selecting the specific event and then choosing the sound from the Sounds drop-down menu
In addition to that you could also disable the option
After the settings are applied, click and

5. Minimize Visual Effects
If you don’t mind a less visually appealing interface, then proceed with the following steps:

Go to your desktop
Press on your keyboard and while holding, press key
In the new window, click system settings
In the Advanced tab under Performance Section, click
In the Performance Settings window, under Visual Effects tab, disable the features that you do not need
Or you could simply select which will auto-disable all non-essential options
Then, click and

We’d like to hear from you. Feel free to share some of your own personal tips on improving Windows performance.

60 Most Common Keyboard Shortcuts for Outlook

developer — Wed, 26 May 2010 08:45:17 +0000

Microsoft Office Outlook is known to have hundreds of keyboard shortcuts for all kinds of functions, below we will share with you just some of the most commonly used ones.

Navigation
Switch to Mail	CTRL+1
Switch to Calendar	CTRL+2
Switch to Contacts	CTRL+3
Switch to Tasks	CTRL+4
Switch to Notes	CTRL+5
Switch to Folder List in Navigation Pane	CTRL+6
Switch to next message (with msg open)	CTRL+PERIOD
Switch to previous message (with msg )	CTRL+COMMA
Go to a different folder	CTRL+Y

Create an item or file
Create an appointment	CTRL+SHIFT+A
Create a contact	CTRL+SHIFT+C
Create a distribution list	CTRL+SHIFT+L
Create a folder	CTRL+SHIFT+E
Create a Journal entry	CTRL+SHIFT+J
Create a meeting request	CTRL+SHIFT+Q
Create a message	CTRL+SHIFT+M
Create a note	CTRL+SHIFT+N
Create a task	CTRL+SHIFT+K

All item functions
Save	CTRL+S
Save and close	ALT+S
Save as	F12
Undo	CTRL+Z
Delete an item	CTRL+D
Print	CTRL+P
Check spelling	F7
Forward	CTRL+F
Left align text	CTRL+L
Center text	CTRL+E
Right align text	CTRL+R

Email
Switch to Inbox	CTRL+SHIFT+I
Switch to Outbox	CTRL+SHIFT+O
Send	ALT+S
Reply to a message	CTRL+R
Reply all to a message	CTRL+SHIFT+R
Forward a message	CTRL+F
Mark a message as not junk	CTRL+ ALT+J
Check for new messages	F9
Open the Address Book	CTRL+SHIFT+B
Add a Quick Flag to an unopened msg	INSERT
Mark as unread	CTRL+U

Format Text
Display the Font dialog box	CTRL+SHIFT+P
Switch case (with text selected)	SHIFT+F3
Make letters bold	CTRL+B
Add bullets	CTRL+SHIFT+L
Make letters italic	CTRL+I
Underline	CTRL+U
Increase font size	CTRL+]
Decrease font size	CTRL+[
Cut	CTRL+X
Copy	CTRL+C
Paste	CTRL+V
Insert a hyperlink	CTRL+K

Search
Find a message or other item	CTRL+E
Use Advanced Find	CTRL+SHIFT+F
Expand search to include the desktop	CTRL+ALT+K

Contacts
Find a contact or other item	F3
Select all contacts	CTRL+A

Tasks
Show or hide the To-Do Bar	ALT+F2
Accept a task request	ALT+C
Decline a task request	ALT+D

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7 Quick Tips to Secure your Blackberry and Protect Personal Data

Grafdom — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:58:21 +0000

Most of us keep important information on our BlackBerry smartphones. The last thing you would want is your private and confidential data getting into the wrong hands when your device is lost or stolen. Follow some of the tips below to ensure you are protected:

1. Bluetooth Connectivity
Leaving your Bluetooth enabled raises the risk of virus transmission and unauthorized access by others. Ensure you have it disabled when not in use. Another layer of protection you could enable is by going through Options and within the Bluetooth section selecting “No” under the “Discoverable” field.

2. Saving Accounts and Passwords
Using Blackberry’s built-in Password Keeper Utility to save your user accounts and passwords protects is highly recommended. Storing your login information on the Internet Browser makes it a lot easier for external sources to access your data from other locations.

3. Data Encryption
The Blackberry device contains a “Content Protection” feature which you could enable by going through the Options and Security Settings. This invaluable configuration gives you the option of protecting your address book and restricting access.

4. Configure Password Protection
To enable your device password feature go to > Options > Password
In addition to choosing a strong password, you also have the option of setting other features such as the timeout duration, permission for application installation, number of password attempts and logging restrictions.

5. Don’t Accept File Transfers from Unknown Contacts
Whether you are downloading files from sites or receiving from another device, make sure it is from a trusted source. Corrupted files, viruses and trojans transmitted through photos, voice notes, Blackberry Contacts and other applications can all affect your Blackberry device severely. You could also install a reliable Anti-Virus software application to ensure all transmitted files are scanned and clean.

6. Memory Cleaning
This is one of the most overlooked tools on the Blackberry as it can increase data protection and device performance substantially. Once enabled, it allows you to clear the memory of your device by deleting confidential data such as encrypted documents, emails, SMS messages, internet browser cache, unused applications, pictures, media files and call logs
To enable this feature go to > Options > Security Options > Memory Cleaning

7. Safeguarding your BBM with Privacy Features
To begin with, you could enable a security question on BBM invites which would help filter through some of the unrecognized users. To activate, go to > BBM > click Blackberry Menu Key > scroll down to Options > check “Display security question on invitation”. Within the same screen, you can also uncheck “Auto-accept voice notes”, which will prevent offensive or harmful audio files.

For privacy reasons, you may also wish to keep your location and time zone information hidden.
For this, go to > BBM > go to the top bar and click “Profile” > here you can uncheck the areas which state “Show my Location / Time Zone Information”