If you’re a business traveler you know how annoying it is to manage your travel expenses. Even worse if you forgot to book a hotel or car you have to scramble to call someone at the office for help. With Concur mobile you can manage all your expenses from your mobile and you can even book hotels and cars from the device. You don’t even need a credit card. The system will use the credit card that you have saved. Just do a search through the Concur software and choose a hotel or car. All the search info is pre-populated based on your flight itinerary.
With the software you can add your expenses as you go. You don’t have to wait until you get back to the office and enter all the information while sifting through all your receipts. We all know that more than one or two receipts have been lost when traveling on business. Now there’s no excuse. With the application you can even take a picture of the receipt and the picture will automatically be attached to your expense report. There’s even an option for your boss to approve your expenses on the go. This means that you’re entire trip can be proceed before you even make it back to the office. How great is that!
The Concur Mobile software can be used on any Blackberry phone and any phone using Windows Mobile. A version for the iPhone is in the works. If you’re a Concur user you can read more about the product at Concur Mobile.
There are thousands of free applications that are available in the iPhone App Store and Androdid Market, but many of them are game remakes or gimicy applications. Many other applications are just cell phone compliant applications of existing web sites. There aren’t a lot of apps that are truly innovative. When I say innovative I mean that utilize the functions of a cell phone and can’t be performed easily by another device such as a computer. One such app is Shazam.
Shazam allows you to put your phone up against a speaker and Shazam “listens” to the song being played and the tells you the name of the song, artist and album. Try picking up your computer speakers or laptop and putting them against a radio. Not very easy. Only through a portable device like a cell phone can you take the device with you in the car and find out what’s being played on the radio. How many times have you said in the car, “i wonder what the name of that song is”. Often radio stations leave out the name of the song and artist so listeners are left guessing. With Shazam that’s now a problem of the past. I’ve used the Shazam application a number of times and let me tell you it’s great and accurate. It only takes a few seconds before Shazam tells you what song is being played. If you like the song you can even purchase the song directly from your cell phone.
I hope as the cell phone application market matures more innovative apps become available. Applications that truly utilize the functions of a cell phone that can’t be easily duplicated by another device. Cell phone are packed with power and the best applications and most innovative applications are sure to come!
Well it looks like Microsoft doesn’t want to miss out on all the app store fun. The picture above is a snapshot from a real Microsoft website. The page has been optimized for mobile web browsers. If the mobile web approach is being adopted by Microsoft then their goal is not to simply have a direct link such as the Apple and Google app stores. Instead users would download applications directly from the web.
It will be interesting to see what type of apps come from a Microsoft based initiative. There are no estimates of when the store will be ready. My guess would be sometime later this year. Stay tuned!
Amazon recently has been touting their newest Kindle, the KIndle 2. In case you didn’t know the Kindle is a book reader. The latest Kindle release is lighter and thinner than the original, but it is still too large for most. You can’t put the Kindle in your pocket or carry it in your purse. No worries. The Kindle has just gotten a whole lot smaller. Actually, it’s not the Kindle that has changed, it’s a new app for iPhone. Amazon is offering their famous Kindle software in the form of a downloadable iPhone app. The app can be found in the iTunes store for free. The books will cost you around $9.99 each. I think this is a very smart move for Amazon. After All Amazon isn’t making money off of the Kindle device, they make money from the downloadable books.
Are you one of the Palm users that have been screaming, “what about us”? Palm users have seen Apple and Google open up their own apps stores and nothing for Palm. Well that has changed. Palm officially has it’s own apps store powered by pocketgear.com. The site says that there are 5,000 games and apps to choose from and 1,000 are free! The apps store supports 25 different Palm phones from the Centro to the Treo. Now all you Palm users can feel as special as the rest of us.
I’ve been talking about all the uses and future uses of cell phones, but using a cell phone as a musical device wasn’t in my crystal ball. Sure you can use a cell phone to listen to music, but have you ever thought about actually “playing” your cell phone like a flute, trumpet or even guitar? If you don’t think it’s possible check out this video from Japan. Of course when it comes to cell phones and Japan anything is possible.
If you’re a fan of Firefox then get ready for a Firefox experience on your cell phone with Fennec. Don’t jump for joy just yet. Fennec is only is alpha testing. If you have a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet then you can download the software right your device. My guess is that most of you don’t have the Nokia N810. Don’t fret, you can download a version of the software right to your computer for testing. Here’s what Mozilla is saying about the browser so far:
“The focus of development so far has been on building a new user interface that reflects Firefox’s design principles, and adds touch screen support and other features that are appropriate for mobile phones and other handheld devices.”
I think that the Fennec browser is going to be THE go to browser once it’s available for all cell phones. I’m really looking forward to the mobile browser coming out. You can test run the product yourself at Mozilla Fennec. I’ve included a couple screenshots below.
If you’re a Google fan then let me suggest you check out Google Mobile. Google Mobile allow you to get search, maps, Gmail, YouTube and other Google products on your mobile device. Google Mobile supports the following manufacturers: Blackberry, Apple, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung. They don’t support every phone in each line, but they do support most. I decided to give it a whirl to see how it all works. I used a Blackberry Pearl for my test. On the main Google screen I clicked on the Blackberry icon and was brought to the following screen:
As you can see there are tons of Google apps that are available for the Blackberry. I entered my cell phone number in the space provided and seconds later received a text message from Google with a download link. After selecting the link I was asked to download the software and the download began. It took about 30 seconds to download and install the application (using the EDGE network with T-Mobile). After installation was complete I found the application named “Google Mobile App”. After launching the application I was asked to accept the terms of service. Easy enough so far. The first app I tried was Google maps. It worked like a charm. It was just as good as accessing Google maps for a PC. Next I tried out the search functionality. Of course I typed in trendycellular and immediately the search results came back with trendycellular.com and other sites related to trendycellular. Although I do not use Google calendar there is a sync icon which allows you to sync your Google calendar with your Blackberry, a very cool feature. The applications such as Blogger, Notebook, GOOG-411 and the others listed below the main applications were not automatically downloaded to my phone. In order to download those apps I needed to download each one individually. The best application which actually isn’t an application at all is GOOG-411. GOOG-411 is a free service from Google. You can call GOOG-411 (1-800-GOOG-411) and ask for a business without being charged normal 411 fees. How awesome is that!
Overall I think that Google Mobile is a top notch application that every mobile phone users should have. The app has tons of features that are not only fun, but very useful. In the past you had to download each application individually, now you can have all the great Google apps plus more in one single app!
Yes it’s true. Now all you Blackberry users out there can have iTunes on your cell phone. You no longer have to look at iPhone users and wish that you too could have iTunes on your phone. Well, let me say, you don’t exactly get to have iTunes loaded onto your Blackberry, but you can sync your Blackberry with your iTunes library on your computer. With Media Sync all you have to do is connect your Blackberry to your computer and your iTunes music library will transfer to your phone. You can download the Blackberry media sync software for free. You can also see a demo of how the software works. In the demo I like how they show the soon to be released Blackberry Bold. I can’t wait for that phone to hit the market! Now if you’re a Blackberry user you can be as “cool” as all your iPhone friends.
I decided to give Earthcomber mobile a try. Earthcomber is a mobile map application unlike other mobile map related appls. With Earthcomber you tell the application what you’re looking for and it will provide suggestions. Sure it will find the local ATM, coffee shop and Wal-Mart, but Earthcomber sets out to do more than that. You can quickly and easily find places to “explore”. If you want to find a BBQ restaurant in your area all you have to do is select Food —> BBQ. When I performed the search it gave me a selection of BBQ restaurants in the area with the ability to map directions to the restaurant. It was that simple. There are many other options included such as fun times, health & body, nightlife, movies touring and more. If you’re looking for a nifty application to help get you around town or help you locate the nearest movie theatre then give Earthcomber a try. It works well and it will help you locate places of interest that you didn’t even know were there! You can go to their website to see if your phone is supported. Downloading the application is as easy as entering the Earthcomber website address in your mobile browser. I used a Blackberry Pearl.
