As developers for tablets and smartphones we like to keep abreast of the latest mobile technology developments . This is a daily digest of mobile development and related technology news gathered from the BBC, the New York Times, New Scientist and the Globe and Mail to name a few. We scour the web for articles concerning, iPhone, iPad and android development, iOS and android operating systems as well as general articles on advances in mobile technology. We hope you find this useful and that it helps to keep you up to date with the latest technology developments.
30 Plus Apps that Will Help you Grow your Business and Leverage Technology
In our working building marketing clouds we use an ever-changing suite of apps and products.
Here are 30 of our favorites with a functional description of each.
Sendy is a self hosted email newsletter application that lets you send trackable emails via Amazon Simple Email Service (SES). This makes it possible for you to send authenticated bulk emails at an insanely low price without sacrificing deliverability.
Caveats: setup requires a developer to set up on your server, has a one time cost of $59.99, your business has to create its’ own templates (these are not built in). But, it’s a great service, will save your business money and reporting functionality is more than adequate.
Trello is a stellar “cloud” based project or CRM application: free and paid versions – enables virtual teams of people to easily collaborate on any size of project. The learning curve is about 20-30 mins, they have great tutorials and Dropbox and/or standalone images are easily shared.
Yoast the Best SEO plugin ever for WordPress: a bit geeky on some of the settings but powerful plugin and must use for all WordPress installs.
We love WishPond’s applications and their customer service is excellent: create great contests on Facebook, build great landing pages and integrate email campaigns and more. Their dashboard user interface is powerful but not too geeky and pricing is high value/low cost.
For any Small Business that wants to understand where and how visitors are engaging with your web site CrazyEgg provides “head map” visualization improving your lead tracking and analysis.
Mixpanel is one of the best “real time” analysis tools (cloud based) that lets you ask real questions about how visitors are engaging with your business. Robust functionally including smartphone analytics.
If your using Gmail to run your business email correspondence then Rapportive is a must use application for any busy biz exec. Giving you rich contact information right inside of Gmail.
KissMetrics connects people with your analytics: it’s a powerful tool for understanding who your customers are and what they are doing. It’s a bit more pricey than the other nine apps/services with $150. per 500K “event’s per month and going up in price from there.
Any WordPress install on a self-hosted site should use JetPack - it’s powerful, comprehensive and has 30-50 build in features that extend the awesomeness of WordPress; it’s free too.
Canva is a great way to create anything graphically (cloud based of course) – powerful yet really easy to use. It’s free and has a list of tens of thousands of templates available.
Save time using Name Chk to know if your brand name or vanity URL is available across all key platforms.
Rival IQ is a great way to stay on top of what your competitors are doing across social networks.
BuzzSumo shows you the most shared links and key influencers for any topic or website. Ideal for content strategy, outreach and competitive research. It’s a great free tool for analyzing content engagement.
The Think Map tool by Visual Thesaurus is one of the best tools for sourcing words and ideas. At under $25. per year, it’s a great value.
Bottlenose builds a real-time cognitive map of every topic, much like the human brain. It’s a powerful tool for brands big and small that want to unearth trends driving your business or market.
We’ve been using IFTTT to automate mundane tasks for several years and it’s functionality is improved on an almost weekly basis. It’s a cool productivity tool.
Every busy exec should take a break and read content published via Medium - it’s a five star example of what great content can be. (we snuck it in)
Newsie is a very cool way to stay in touch with what’s happening with your GMail, Facebook or LinkedIn contacts. It’s relationship curated.
Zemanta is a great publishing and advertising platform. It’s part of the new breed of emerging publishing platforms.
Echo transforms websites, mobile apps and ads into real-time experiences that boost traffic and engagement.
RebelMouse is a cool platform for selecting and publishing content and it looks like it’s morphing to a standalone social platform.
Riffle has great real time analytics, interests and engagement insight for Twitter.
MailCharts moves competitive intelligence into email analysis in a unique and powerful way.
Send In Blue lets you manage marketing campaigns, transactional emails and SMS messages within one platform.
Guides enables creating actionable, helpful and interactive content to connect directly to your readers.
Three Cents has really moved polling forward and on any smartphone: powerful, easy to use and it scales well.
Unfollowers lets you understand who is not connecting with you, or unfollowed, unearth target profiles and schedule Tweets & supports Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Social Oomph is an all in one general purpose yet powerful tool that automates a great deal of the tactical social media marketing processes.
SpyFu gives you actionable information and intelligence about where and how competitors are advertising: media spend, keywords and ads.
AdBeat enables you to uncover competitor’s online strategy; more advertising focused as opposed to PPC & Keywords like SpyFu.
Ispionage is somewhat similar to SpyFu as well, providing access to and insight about a competitors organic keyword ranking and PPC keywords use for ad spend.
SiteAlerts is another great competitive analysis tools that lets you understand what direct competitors are doing: web site updates, social media activity and more.
PipelinerCRM is a highly targeted CRM Service just for sales professionals. If your in sales this is a great way to understand who is in your pipeline with an informative visual “at a glance” functionality.
Smartphone Summary for Frazzled Execs
E.F. Schumaker, the distinguished British Economist wrote the best seller, Small is Beautiful in the 70′s – it’s as applicable today as it was then, especially for smaller more nimble businesses.
Your greatest strength is your ability to reinvent your business using technology as a competitive driver.
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“Why Every Marketing Campaign Lives or Dies on this Foundation”
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Crowdpac Helps Small Donors Find A Perfect Match In Politics
WASHINGTON — Combining a unique data set with a nonpartisan outlook, a new organization called Crowdpac hopes to break out of the pack of political campaign innovators with a feature that helps ordinary people find and contribute to candidates who share their views.
Crowdpac, an online and open campaign fundraising hub, resembles the progressive fundraising platform ActBlue in that it allows anyone to start a fundraising page to donate to their chosen candidates. Instead of being focused on one political party or persuasion, Crowdpac uses a data-driven formula developed by Stanford University professor Adam Bonica that draws from sources that include campaign contributions and public statements that place political candidates on the traditional liberal-conservative spectrum on a variety of issues.
Crowdpac’s new feature, launched Tuesday, enables users to group candidates they support into their own slate for others to donate to. The new feature will allow donors to give a lump sum to the entire slate, rather than choosing individual candidates. The process essentially provides anyone with the ability to form a joint fundraising committee, a common vehicle used by political parties to direct contributions to their favored candidates.
Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor, campaign finance reform advocate and head of the pro-reform super PAC Mayday PAC, is one of a few big names planning to create a Crowdpac slate. Lessig, whose slate will feature the four remaining candidates Mayday has endorsed, is joined by California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and the Women’s Campaign Fund in starting their own slates.
Crowdpac is spearheaded by Bonica and Steve Hilton, a former aide to British Prime Minister David Cameron. Hilton told The Huffington Post that he had long had the idea for Crowdpac, but it didn’t take off until he taught at Stanford and was introduced to Bonica’s data and formulas determining political ideology.
Crowdpac data combines campaign contributions made to and by a candidate, public speeches from the floor of a legislature or to a Facebook or Twitter profile, bill sponsorship and voting records. Its formula can determine an accurate ideological placement for that candidate. The Crowdpac formula is unlike others because it adds to voting records with behind-the-scenes ideological markers in campaign finance records.
“Voting records are not the most informative in trying to find out where a politician lies,” Hilton said. Not only do they exclude non-incumbents, but legislative votes are often highly orchestrated affairs designed to create a political narrative for elected officials running the show.
“Everyone is aware — highly aware — of the scrutiny that voting records have,” Hilton said. “They pay great attention to present them in a way that’s helpful.”
That is not the case with campaign contributions, which are “much harder to manipulate,” according to Hilton. It provides a voter with a sense of where the politician stands “when no one is really watching.”
This kind of ideological sorting and pairing for users may seem like it would further balkanize American politics, but that is not Hilton’s intent. He said he sees Crowdpac and its new features as a way for people, especially those not already politically active, to easily navigate the political process in a way that takes them to candidates who do not fall easily into ideological or party labels.
“There’s a growing group of people who don’t feel well served by the narrow party system,” Hilton said.
This is “not well reflected in the basic Republican-Democratic divide,” according to Hilton. Crowdpac would create a “better marketplace … that would enable people to better find candidates that match their point of view.”
Take, for example, the libertarian Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.). Amash ranks as maximally conservative on nearly every issue, but maximally liberal on intelligence and surveillance issues. Or look to Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), an anti-war, anti-abortion, anti-Wall Street conservative lawmaker who defies contemporary classification. According to Crowdpac, Jones ranks close to the middle on many issues, save for gender equality, where he is very conservative.
These classifications provide a more nuanced view of each political candidate that could match views held by many members of the American public, according to Hilton. He said he hopes this helps leads donations according to donors’ interests — not those dictated from the parties or the big donors who fund them.
“There are lots of great organizations who are campaigning for transparency and reform of the system and we’re very much in touch with those people,” Hilton said. “We’re not making a judgment on any of those longer-term aims, but here is something practical that we can do today to dilute the power of the big donors and boost the power of small donors.”
J.K. Rowling's Twitter Riddle Might Having Something To Do With 'Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them'
Calling all muggles, wizards and witches alike: Author J.K. Rowling has posed a riddle on Twitter and so far, neither brainpower nor magic has been able to crack it.
The adventure started innocently enough, with the “Harry Potter” author tweeting about how busy she’s been lately:
Very busy at the moment working on a novel, tweaking a screenplay and being involved in @lumos campaigns. Back when I’ve finished something!
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 5, 2014
She followed that up with a response to a fan:
.@peruseproject See, now I’m tempted to post a riddle or an anagram. Must resist temptation… must work…
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 5, 2014
It took roughly 14 hours, but it looks like Rowling ultimately gave in to that temptation:
Cry, foe! Run amok! Fa awry! My wand won’t tolerate this nonsense.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 6, 2014
And just for good measure, she added:
Something to ponder while I’m away X
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 6, 2014
So is the big mystery about Rowling’s screenplay, presumably for the upcoming film “Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them,” or does it have something to do with her upcoming novel?
Reddit users soon discovered that the words “Newt Scamander” and “New York” are both hidden inside the tweet. Newt Scamander is the main character in “Fantastic Beasts,” and the film will be set in New York 70 years before the time of Harry Potter.
The rest of it, however, remains anyone’s guess (and that’s assuming the “Newt Scamander” and “New York” parts aren’t a red herring).
If you have a guess of your own — or if you think you’ve solved the riddle — be sure to post it in the comments.
(h/t Time)
Briefly: 1Password 5.1, Cycloramic both updated for iPhone 6
A new version of password manager 1Password has been released for the iPhone and iPad, offering support for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in the form of 3x higher resolution images and improved icons. The update also improves Touch ID support to be more reliable, and simplifies the app’s security settings. A new option has been added to disable third-party keyboards inside the 1Password app (since theoretically such keyboard could transmit keystrokes), and users can now create tags to help sort data. The app itself is free, but a “pro” in-app purchase to unlock additional features costs $10.
Samsung forecasts 60% fall in profit
Samsung Electronics forecasts a 60% fall in third-quarter operating profit, missing estimates, because of slowing smartphone sales.
From Alien to Fifa: The art of noise
From Alien: Isolation to Fifa 15, the magic of video game sound effects
VIDEO: 'Is that a barista in your pocket?'
BBC News’s Dougal Shaw checks out a smartphone-enabled coffee tap, designed for both business and home use.
Health tech start-ups face long race to launch
Health tech start-ups face a slower road to market
A Buddhist Monk's Advice On Overcoming Tech Addiction
“iPads are great,” laughed the Venerable Pomnyum Sunim, a Korean Buddhist monk and global humanitarian leader. But he added an important caveat: They’re only great if you can use them without becoming too attached or fixated. And as many of us know, this isn’t always an easy thing to do.
Asked his advice on how to mindfully interact with technology, Pomnyun explained that technology itself is neither bad nor good.
“There’s no value judgment,” Pomnyun said in a discussion with Huffington Post editors last week. “The bad thing is if you’re obsessed over it every day.”
Technology use becomes a habit, or even an addiction, when we need to check our devices every few minutes because we are curious to see what we might have missed, explained Pomnyun.
“It is good for us to be free from habit or addiction, because you become a slave to the object or technology,” he said. “It’s good to take a step back to examine yourself. Test yourself, and see how you react — from a third person — when you go without technology for a whole weekend. If you’re always curious and trying to hold yourself off, then you know that you’re addicted.”
Here’s another experiment Pomnyun recommends: For one day, try not bringing any cash or credit cards with you and see how you feel.
If we become aware of our behavior, Pomnyun stressed, we can keep from being addicted to any habit. This kind of self-awareness is essential to finding peace of mind.
“Addiction is something natural that happens to the brain when we do something repeatedly,” said Pomnyun. “That cognitive habit — and the whole scheme of cognitive habits — is called karma. That karma becomes your master. So it’s that karma, or group of habits, that is leading you. So it’s very important to practice freeing yourself from that karma.”
Fostering an Early Love of STEM Through The Power of Storytelling
It’s no secret that the U.S. is at a crossroads when it comes to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. The U.S. is losing its lead in both research and development and creation of new science and engineering graduates. According to the National Math and Science Initiative, in 2008, 31 percent of U.S. bachelor degrees were issued in science and engineering fields, compared with 61 percent in Japan and 51 percent in China. To create more scientists and engineers, it is essential to create an early love for science and there is no better way to encourage that love than to capture that early curiosity with play.
Yet many of the toys and apps that our kids are playing with do nothing to encourage an early love of science. Whether our kids are building virtual cake pops or crushing candy on a tablet or smashing cars together, we are missing an opportunity to answer their questions about the science and engineering in the world around them.
According to research conducted by PBS, at the age of 2, children’s language skills are developing rapidly and much of that development is driven by not only on their reading and writing skills but also on their curiosity. Combining these developmental milestones with the power of storytelling creates the perfect platform for fostering an early love of STEM. But as parents, we wondered where are those stories?
As former theme park engineers, we helped major companies tell amazing stories to people all over the world. If we said the names Elsa and Anna, or Lightning and Mater, most parents would immediately recognize the power that stories have to capture the hearts and minds of kids. So why aren’t we using those amazing stories to answer kids’ questions about the science and engineering they encounter everyday?
In our search, we did find there are actually a few products out there that use storytelling to encourage a love of learning about STEM. They all seem to offer something a little different, so parents can choose what makes the most sense for them. Probably the most popular late-comer is Goldiblox, a storybook and building block style board game targeted to girls. It works to solve a need for attracting girls to Mechanical Engineering via a relatable character. Snap Circuits is a popular building kit that teaches children about Electrical Engineering topics. It doesn’t have storytelling, but one could see how powerful adding a book series could make this even more engaging and relatable. One growing popular mix of both Mechanical and Electrical Engineering is Roominate. Roominate is a house-building story-telling mechanism targeted towards girls. All of the above are targeted towards elementary school children. There is also our connected plush toy called TROBO, which reads stories on iPads across all STEM topics (not just Engineering) to children as early as 2-years-old. All of these are bridging the gap between what has traditionally been seen as a hard-to-reach area of advanced education to an exciting area of early childhood education.
The importance that products like these have is that they plant early seeds. Many children choose what they want to do when they grow up, based on some events that happened in early childhood. Jeremy wanted to be a theme park engineer due to his childhood exposure to Disney. Laurie, Chris’s wife is a doctor and wanted be one her entire life, because she helped take care of her ailing grandmother at a very early age. On the other hand, Chris did not know what he wanted to be. Many children don’t have mentors who can show them the potential futures they have available. Toys make it possible to make early impressions on children, even when they don’t have mentors. Storytelling toys are even better at this, because they create emotion and ignite imagination. Once those two things are triggered, learning becomes fun, and more importantly, it can influence one for a lifetime.
24 Video Games You Can Say Yes to After School
By Jeff Haynes, Common Sense Media Video Game Editor
Summer’s over, and school’s back in session. Time to pull the plug on your kids’ video games, right? Not so fast, Mom and Dad. To the great relief of kids everywhere, it turns out video games and school are not incompatible. New studies on the effects that playing games has on kids indicate positive benefits for learning, thinking, social-emotional skills building, and, yes, even school performance.
Games provide new ways to engage with various subjects, whether it’s learning about math through an air-traffic-control simulator or practicing musical timing with a dance app. So, the next time you see your kid playing a strategy or music game, know that he or she may actually be learning history or working on physical fitness. Below, we have recommendations of apps and games to support every subject on your elementary, junior high or high school student’s schedule.
Math
Elementary School: Math Blaster Online, 7+
Do your little ones need help with equations? Math Blaster Online gives them plenty of practice as they join the Blaster Academy to save the universe using their math skills. It also lets your kids team up with other players to solve problems together in a safe, socially positive online environment.
Middle School: Monkey Tales: The Valley of the Jackal, 10+
The Valley of the Jackal is part of the math-focused Monkey Tales series, which tasks players with taking on a villain named Huros Stultas in his plan to resurrect the ancient Egyptian god Wepwawet. Using logic, strategy and math skills, players defeat booby traps, fight mummies and explore underground temples in an attempt to save the world. The game gauges how well your child does with its puzzles and it ramps up the difficulty accordingly, so there’s always a challenge for players to test what they’ve learned.
High School: Sector 33 App, 12+
Sector 33 gives kids an idea of how math works in the real world, as they take on the role of an air traffic controller, directing flights to San Francisco International Airport. Players must not only gauge distance, time and the rate of speed of each plane, they also have to balance flight plans, delays, and other complications.
Science
Elementary School: Lifeboat to Mars, 8+
Young scientists can experiment with creating a brand-new ecosystem on Mars to help support terrestrial life on Earth. Players can choose to work on microbes or on animal and plant missions to accomplish the task of terraforming the red planet. Even cooler, once they’ve finished a few missions, players can design their own missions for other players to try.
Middle School: Spore, 11+
Can you design and develop the perfect creature? Spore lets you develop a species from its microscopic origins to an intelligent, social alien life form that can venture into space and interact with other sentient life forms. This is a great way for your young scientist to explore the methods and ideas behind biology.
High School: Solar System for iPad, 13+
Bring stargazing to life for teens with this far-out collection of astronomy facts, photos and animations. The app focuses on our solar system in particular, with information about the sun, planets, moons, asteroid belts and more. Kids can learn about gravity, patterns (such as rotations around the sun) and each planet and moon, including facts about diameter, mass, volume, gravity and atmosphere.
Language Arts
Elementary School: My Reading Tutor, 5+
My Reading Tutor builds on the basics of early reading skills to help strengthen kids’ literacy. Phonics, letter sounds and more are presented in a fun, engaging manner, and kids can even record their voices as they read stories. Parents can track their children’s progress in the reading tasks to see how well they’re doing and what they need help on.
Middle School: Duolingo App, 12+
Whether your kids need help with a foreign language class or are simply interested in learning a new language, Duolingo can help. In a friendly environment, the app provides practice in basic words, phrases and sentence structure in six languages. Players can test what they’ve learned against the computer or other players in competitive games or help translate Web pages for other users around the world.
High School: Shakespeare in Bits: A Midsummer’s Night Dream, 13+
Shakespeare is a staple of high school English, but the old English text is challenging. Shakespeare in Bits helps make the Bard more accessible, with animated characters acting out the plays and multiple ways to understand confusing or obscure words.
History/Social Studies
Elementary School: Oregon Trail, 9+
Oregon Trail has been teaching and entertaining kids for more than 40 years. The game continues to innovate through digital versions that provide realistic story lines and context. Players take on the role of a wagon leader directing settlers from Missouri to Oregon in 1800s America while dealing with issues such as disease, food, and weather.
Middle School: Sid Meier’s Civilization V, 11+
With a total of 43 playable civilizations from around the world, Civilization V is an ideal supplement to history class. Players lead a civilization from the Stone Age to the future with a range of political, scientific, or military goals, learning how cultural, ideological and geographical factors can change a world’s geopolitical landscape.
High School: Tropico 4, 15+
Political analysts frequently talk about unstable or corrupt countries that spring up around the world, but how many times do you get the chance to run your own? Tropico 4 makes you president of your own island and lets you choose factions to appease according to your political goals. A parody of political simulations, Tropico 4 will make teens laugh — and teach them at the same time.
Music
Elementary School: Just Dance: Disney Party, 5+
You don’t have to be a fan of Disney classics such as “It’s a Small World” to love Just Dance: Disney Party. Players imitate characters on-screen that are dancing to hit songs from Disney movies and TV shows. The completely contagious game teaches how movement and music work together in a fun, social environment.
Middle School: GarageBand, 10+
GarageBand has exactly what fledgling musicians need to take their music to the next level. Kids can record vocals and instruments and mix tracks to create — and share — new songs while learning essential audio-engineering and composition skills. It’s like having a professional recording studio in the palm of your hand.
High School: The Beatles: Rock Band, 14+
The Beatles created classic, timeless music, and this Rock Band will take teens on a magical mystery tour of their entire career. Similar to the other Rock Band games, you can sing and play drums, bass, or guitar on 45 remastered Beatles tracks.
Art
Elementary School: Art Academy, 8+
Art Academy is more than a video game — it’s a fun art tutorial. The game walks you through the basics of drawing, shading, and other skills so you can apply them to real-life creations.
Middle School: Scribble Press App, 10+
With more than 500 writing and drawing tools and 50 pre-made story templates, Scribble Press lets kids write and illustrate their own tales. This is kid-led learning at its creative best, as kids choose which type of writing or storytelling they want to try — for example, greeting cards or full books — as well as whether they prefer private sharing or online or print publishing.
High School: Scoot & Doodle, 13+
If you’re looking for a way for kids to collaborate on artwork or projects, Scoot & Doodle is the solution. Teens can gather up to nine Google+ friends to work on a single shared artwork, communicate their ideas via video and voice chat, and share the final products via social media channels.
PE
Elementary School: Zumba Kids, 6+
Want to get your little ones’ blood flowing? Zumba Kids takes kid-friendly songs from pop artists and lets them perform 30 routines in a wide variety of dance genres. Plus, they get to imitate the kids dancing on-screen, who provide lots of positive reinforcement through each song.
Middle School: Wii Fit U, 10+
Wii Fit U turns getting physically fit into a game. In between the many mini-games and activities, kids will learn that moving their bodies can be fun and yield meaningful results. Wii Fit U comes with a pedometer to help track your steps taken, calories burned, and distance traveled so you can make fitness progress even away from the game.
High School: Dance Central 3, 13+
The most advanced dance game on the market, Dance Central 3 tracks every bit of your body, making you a better dancer as you perform routines for more than 60 popular songs. This game includes a new story mode for dancers to move through, as well as a dance tournament for up to eight players and even a fitness mode that acts as a serious workout for dedicated players.
Social Skills
Elementary School: Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster, 6+
Parents who want to make sure their kids learn about friendship, generosity and other positive life skills should look no further than Sesame Street: Once Upon A Monster. An interactive experience wherein players engage with characters from the show, the game teaches as it lets kids play active roles in stories and participate in entertaining games.
Middle School: Thomas Was Alone, 10+
Thomas Was Alone is a unique puzzle game. It doesn’t focus on graphics, complex control schemes or tense gameplay; instead, the two-dimensional game tells a story about friendship and human relationships. With humor, well-paced storytelling, and an emphasis on diversity and trusting others, Thomas Was Alone will stay in players’ minds long after they’ve finished it.
High School: Papers, Please, 15+
Papers, Please manages to meld social and historical commentary with an exercise in making ethical decisions and navigating their consequences, forcing you to think during every portion of the game. Players take on the role of an immigration inspector in a communist nation, approving or rejecting applicants seeking to enter the country. As political events change throughout the story, players will need to handle situations such as terrorist attacks, asylum seekers and the undocumented while also dealing with the effects of their choices.
About Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media is dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology. We exist because our kids are growing up in a culture that profoundly impacts their physical, social, and emotional well-being. We provide families with the advice and media reviews they need in order to make the best choices for their children. Through our education programs and policy efforts, Common Sense Media empowers parents, educators, and young people to become knowledgeable and responsible digital citizens. For more information, go to:www.commonsense.org.
Use Your Phone as a Piggy Bank: The 10 Best Personal Finance Apps
By Matt Hussey
The app economy has turned the humble phone into a personal travel advisor, DJ, photo editor, news reader, stock trader and movie maker. The announcement that Apple will at last fit its smartphones with NFC, and therefore allow the iPhone to be used as a means to pay for goods and services, will mean our phones are likely to become our financial advisor as well.
Juniper research has predicted that in little over three years, $180 billion worth of goods and services will be paid for using NFC, which means managing our finances will become more vital than ever. Thankfully, developers from the fintech world have been building apps that can restrict spending, save money, or allow you to keep abreast of multiple accounts with minimum fuss.
But how do you sift through the 27 million results that appear on Google when you go looking for the right one? Below are the only ten apps that you will ever need to manage your money from your mobile.
For the business traveler
1. Expensify
Keeping track of business expenses on top of personal finances is a tall order, especially when you’re working on the go and keeping track of multiple bank accounts. Expensify‘s free app eliminates a lot of that pain by letting you track what you spend in real time.
Whenever you buy something online or in a physical store, Expensify can input that data for you.
The app uses eReceipts to mine your connected credit card, automatically drag out anything it thinks is an expense and generate an a digital receipt that it will then log inside the app. These eReceipts are even acceptable to use for your tax return. If you’re in store and receive a paper receipt, simply take a photo and SmartScan will drag out merchant name, transaction date and amount and keep it on file. It’s pretty accurate with some receipts, although you may struggle with ones that have been stuffed in your wallet and have lost some of the ink.
You only get ten free scanned receipts each month before you need to upgrade, but the time saved from logging your travel expenses by sifting through piles of paper receipts yourself, or dumping them on your personal assistant’s desk, makes it worthwhile. Expensify can be exported to and integrate with QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce and FinancialForce. The app, available on iOs and Android worldwide, also allows you to keep a tab on more intangible expenses like petrol by keeping track of your mileage, and it will convert any transactions you make while abroad into your domestic currency. There are corporate packages for small businesses if you don’t want to stump up the cost for making the accounts department easier.
2. Budgt
Expensify is a big beast of an app that can overwhelm those who are new to submitting expenses and tax returns without the aid of an accountant. Budgt on the other hand (available on iOS only for $1.99), presents itself as a simpler, easier way to stay on top of your cash flow.
The app focuses on providing a budget on your expenses on a day-to-day basis, rather than a retrospective look at what you may have spent over the course of a month or more. Input is all done manually: you put in how much money you have, be it an expense account or personal, and then Budgt will calculate how much you are able spend. As you make purchases you have to add them to the app so it can monitor your bank balance, but the calendar feature allows you to go back and add costs when it’s slipped your mind.
With each expense you add, this minimal app lets you you tag it with a category of your choosing, or one from a standard list like food, bills, etc. This tagging system creates a more detailed, visual breakdown of where your money is going via a series of color coded charts. This way, it’s easy to distinguish between your personal and professional spending habits.
For the budgeter
3. Level Money
If you’re looking to roll back your wayward spending, Level Money‘s award winning app can help you keep track of your daily cash flow. It acts like a GPS of your spending. The free app (currently only available in the US) works out how much you can save based on your spending history as a percentage.
The app works by dividing your finances into just four main categories: income, bills, save, and spendable, which each category displayed in a series comprehensible graphics. It also makes projections on your spending based upon how you currently spend.
So, on the first day of each month, Level Money “fills up” with your estimated income and subtracts your recurring bills and a savings rate. The app is connected to all of your credit, debit and banking accounts, so every time you make a transaction it adjusts the money meter accordingly. Any remaining money is what you have to spend.
The majority of US banks have all jumped on board, but those deals aren’t available to Android or iOS users in Europe or elsewhere. “What we wanted wasn’t a budget, but the digital equivalent of opening up your wallet and seeing how much you have left,” Jake Fuentes, 27, Level’s co-founder told the New York Times. While the app doesn’t allow you to tap in cash transactions, it’s one of the least labour intensive apps to make staying in the black, easier.
4. Mint
The likes of Wired, CNET and Digital Trends have all voted Mint as one of the best financial management apps out today, perhaps because the developers have made it free to download on both iOS and Android worldwide.
Setup is incredibly easy. Within two minutes of adding a bank account, the app will have cached a month’s worth of your recent transactions and recommend features to best manage your cash. There’s a desktop version that has more features available, but the smartphone app offers more than enough to keep a tighter grip on your spending.
Mint opens to its dashboard (called Overview), where it displays every element of the app without the need to scroll. While it’s probably the most basic looking of the apps on this list, its features certainly make up for it: it lets you create an emergency fund, save for a vacation, put away money for a down payment on a house and much more. Each of these extra features comes with a built-in calculator to help establish a plan to reach your personal goals. It can also give you access to your credit score, along with advice on how to improve it.
While it probably won’t win any awards for design, Mint’s beauty comes with its utility and the 89,00