Archive for category iPhone Productivity Apps

Roundup: 6 Online Banking Apps for the iPhone

Sep 19

Posted by John Hawkes in Best iPhone and iPod Touch Apps, Free iPhone Apps, Mobile Banking Apps, Productivity Apps, iPhone Financial Apps, iPhone Mobile Banking Apps, iPhone Productivity Apps | No Comments

Online banking has changed the way the world handles money. Now with the iPhone, it can change how and when you pay your bills or balance your checkbook. Below are 6 iPhone apps for the major US banks that let you do your online banking anywhere.

Bank of America – Mobile Banking

Bank of America – Mobile Banking (free, iTunes link) gives you access to your BoA account while on the go. With the app, you can:

Check balances anytime, anywhere
Pay bills
Transfer funds
Find the closes BoA branches and ATMs usings the iPhone’s GPS

The app uses Bank of America’s SiteKey to verify your identify and prevent fraud. Their Online Banking Guarantee ensures you won’t be responsible for unauthorized transactions.

Bank of America – Mobile Banking is a free download from the iTunes App Store.

Citi Mobile

Citi Mobile (free, iTunes link) is an easy-to-use app that lets customers bank anywhere. With the app, you can:

Check your account balances (savings, checking, credit, loan, mortgage, etc)
Pay bills
Transfer funds
Find ATMs and bank branches using the iPhone’s GPS
Contact customer service with one-touch dialing

The app uses 128-bit encryption to protect your data. Should you lose your iPhone, access to your account via Citi Mobile can be deactivated instantly by calling a toll-free number.

Citi Mobile is a free download from the iTunes App Store.

Chase Mobile

Chase Mobile (free, iTunes link) lets Chase Online customers access their accounts while on the go. With the app, you can:

Pay bills and credit cards
Transfer money
View account balances
View transaction history
Find the closest Chase ATM or branch using the iPhone’s GPS

Chase Mobile for iPhone and iPod Touch

Chase Mobile is a free download from the iTunes App Store.

Wells Fargo Mobile

Wells Fargo Mobile (free, iTunes link) lets you check your balance, pay bills, and transfer money between accounts. Using the iPhone’s GPS, you can also find the nearest Wells Fargo bank or ATM.

To protect your data, the app uses 128-bit SSL encryption.

Wells Fargo Mobile is a free download from the iTunes App Store.

PNC Mobile Banking

PNC Mobile Banking (free, iTunes link) gives 24/7 access to your PNC Bank account. It’s a free service to all PNC online banking customers, but requires you to sign up first on the website.

To enroll and activate, go to PNC Online Banking, click Mobile Banking, and click Enroll under the Mobile Banking Application. Follow the instructions to get an Activation Code.

With the app, you get the typical features:

Check balances
View transactions
Pay bills
Transfer funds
Locate PNC ATMs and branches

The app offers PNC’s Security Assurance, which protects, detects, and resolves cases of theft and fraud.

PNC Mobile Banking is a free download from the iTunes App Store.

USAA Mobile

The cool thing about USAA Mobile (free, iTunes link) is that you can deposit checks by snapping a picture with the iPhone’s camera. Yup, take a picture with the app and send it in, and the money’s in the bank. Remember the days when you actually had to handle cash? Ahh, c’est la vie.

USAA Mobile Cash Check with iPhones Camera

Of course, USAA Mobile offers all the classic features you’d expect from an iPhone mobile banking app, including:

Check accounts
Check transactions
Pay bills
Loan calculator
ATM and branch locator
Accident checklist (things to do if you get in a car accident)

USAA Mobile is a free download from the iTunes App Store.

Review: YouNote for iPhone

Feb 5

Posted by Alan in Free iPhone Apps, Productivity Apps, iPhone App Reviews, iPhone Productivity Apps | No Comments

YouNote (free, iTunes link) is a simple but versatile note-taking app for the iPhone. It offers 5 types of notes: text, camera, audio recording, drawing, and web.

What’s best about YouNote is its simple interface. There is one step to taking a note. Tap any of the icons at the top to write, draw, or record your note. I found YouNote’s process for note taking and note viewing to be a little more simple than Evernote, another great iPhone note-taking app.

YouNote lacks some of Evernote’s more powerful features like synching of notes with online and desktop versions of the app. There is an application that lets you backup YouNote data, but it involves some tricky home network setup that is mostly likely beyond casual users. Evernote, on the otherhand, offers a seamless synching experience for notes.

One of YouNote’s strengths is the ability to tag notes with different types of information. You can tag notes with your current location via the iPhone’s GPS. You can also tag items with keywords, colors, and contacts. When viewing notes on the main screen, you can sort or search the notes by the different tags.

YouNote’s biggest weakness is immobility of the data. You can’t email the notes to yourself or download them for use with another application. However, its lack of bells and whistle also gives the app a streamlined feel. We recommend it for people who are looking to capture small, disposable bits of information on their iPhone. For more advance note taking, we recommend Evernote.

YouNote is a free download in the iTunes App Store.

Email Multiple Photos on the iPhone With Multi-Photo Email App

Jan 20

Posted by Alan in iPhone Applications, iPhone Productivity Apps | No Comments

The iPhone’s default email app only allows you to send one photo at a time. Multi-Photo Email ($0.99, download) solves this problem by allowing you to send multiple photos in one email.

The app works with most email providers. You should check in the iPhone Settings (Settings –> Mail, Contacts, Calendars –> Your Email Account –> Then browse down to Outgoing Mail Server) to make sure your email service has SMTP (it will say SMTP under Outgoing Mail Server).

The app comes with a video tutorial as well as a user guide.

Multi-Photo Email is a 99-cent download in the iTunes App Store.

Edit Excel Spreadsheets on the iPhone with MobileFiles Pro

Jan 4

Posted by Alan in Productivity Apps, iPhone Office Apps, iPhone Productivity Apps | 1 Comment

MobileFiles Pro ($9.99, download) is a versatile office app for the iPhone, but its most intriguing feature is the ability to edit and create Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

Here are some of the spreadsheet features:

View Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets (supports Excel 2003 and 2007).
Create Excel 2003 spreadsheets.
Switch between sheets within a workbook.
Change inputs and recalculate.
Use over 125 Excel functions
Change fonts and colors.

The app is mainly for light editing of Excel spreedsheets. For instance, basic editing works well, but most time-saving features like copy and paste are missing.

Editing Text Formatting in MobileFiles Pro

MobileFiles Pro also lets you access and transfer files between your desktop (Mac or PC) and iPhone, then view those files. It also includes a file manager to create folders and keep files organized.

It supports the viewing and playing of the following file formats:

Microsoft Word: .doc and .docx
Microsoft Excel: .xls and .xlsx
Microsoft PowerPoint: .ppt and .pptx
Images: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .tif, .tiff, .gif and .svg
iWork: Pages, Numbers and Keynote [iWork files can be viewed only with MobileFiles Pro]
Adobe Acrobat: .pdf
Web Pages: .htm and .html
Web Archive: .mht
Text: .txt
Audio: .mp3

For synching, MobileFiles Pro requires either a WiFi connection or iDisk (Apple’s subscription MobileMe service). iDisk is useful for people who want to access files over cellular service.

Name: MobileFiles Pro
Developer: QuickOffice Link
Price: $9.99
Download:

iPhone Wikipedia Apps Reviewed

Dec 1

Posted by Alan in Best iPhone and iPod Touch Apps, Free iPhone Apps, Productivity Apps, iPhone 3G Native Apps, iPhone Applications, iPhone Productivity Apps | 2 Comments

The good folks over at iLounge took a look at 16 Wikipedia apps available for the iPhone. Their top picks were Wikipanion (free) and its pay verison Wikipanion Plus ($4.99). The free version brings a large feature set, including

Bookmarking, including bookmarking of specific sections of articles
Organization of bookmarks into folders
Table of contents for each article available with a tap at the bottom of the screen
Related articles availabe with a tap at the bottom of the screen
iPhone-optimized viewing of articles
Opening of external links in Mobile Safari
Ability to search for text within the article
Adjusting of font size
Locking of orientation (good for browsing while lying down)

The pay version, Wikipanion Plus, is for the more serious Wikipedia user who wants to save and view articles offline. It offers queuing and offline browsing. The queuing allows you to tap on links to articles in search results. The articles will begin downloading in the background as you continue your search. Any article can be downloaded fully for access later.

Here’s a look at all of the Wikipedia iPhone apps iLounge took a look at:

Name	Price	Grade
Wikipanion	Free	A
Wikipanion Plus	$4.99	A
Wikiamo	Free	A-
Eureka	Free	B+
Wiki Tap	Free	B
Quickpedia	Free	B-
Kiwi	$0.99	C+
Wapedia	Free	C
InfoPedia	$1.99	C
Qwikipedia	Free	C-
WikiPDA	$0.99	C-
Encyclopedia	$7.99	D
Look Up Wikipedia	$2.99	D
GeoPedia	Free	NR
Next Wiki	$2.99	NR
WikiME	$0.99	NR

BdEmailer: Controversial Landscape Email App

Nov 22

Posted by Alan in Email, Mail, iPhone 3G Native Apps, iPhone Applications, iPhone Productivity Apps | No Comments

Previously, we’ve taken a look a two apps that offer landscape email typing: Firemail and TouchType. BdEmailer ($0.99) offers similar functionality but with one added feature: the ability to send email directly from the app.

For those who send lots of email with the iPhone, BdEmailer might be a better choice over competing apps because it offers fewer taps to send an email. The other landscape email apps require you to send the text to the iPhone’s Mail client before sending the email.

Some say the approval of BdEmailer by Apple is controversial because Apple is contradicting its own rule of not allowing apps that offer redundant functionality of the iPhone’s built-in apps. I would counter that even before there were third-party apps on the iPhone, you can send emails through various webapps, including iPhone-friendly Gmail.com. Perhaps it is the storing of incoming email on the iPhone that worries Apple most because of the possible security risk.

Nevertheless, BdEmailer offers some interesting functionality for heavy emailers. It is available now in the iTunes App Store for $0.99 (download).

Touchtype Brings Landscape (Widescreen) Email Typing to the iPhone

Oct 8

Posted by Alan in Best iPhone and iPod Touch Apps, Mail, Productivity Apps, iPhone 3G Native Apps, iPhone Applications, iPhone Native Apps, iPhone Productivity Apps | No Comments

Touchtype Widescreen Landscape Email Typing

Touchtype ($0.99) is a simple but incredibly useful app that allows you to write emails in landscape mode. Typing with the iPhone’s keyboard in landscape is much, much more comfortable than the default portrait mode. The keys are larger and have more space between them. This is a basic feature I hope Apple will get around to adding to the iPhone.

It’s simple and easy to use. Launch Touchtype, turn the iPhone on its side and begin typing. When you are finished, tap the icon in the top right corner and it will launch the iPhone’s email app with your text in the body of the email.

From there you can add the address, subject, and change the “From:” field if you have multiple email accounts.

Touchtype also allows you to reply to emails. Hit the reply button while viewing an email in the iPhone’s email app. Hit the home button, then launch Touchtype. Write the message, hit the button in the top right, and your text will be placed in the body of the reply email.

Touchtype is a must-have app if you do a lot of emailing.

Name: Touchtype
Developer: Michael Schneider
Version reviewed: 1.0
Price: $0.99
iTunes Download: Click here

Review of Grocery IQ

Oct 3

Posted by Alan in Best iPhone and iPod Touch Apps, iPhone Applications, iPhone Productivity Apps | 1 Comment

Grocery IQ ($4.99) is a very useful, well-designed app that helps create quick and accurate grocery lists. Begin typing an item’s name, and suggestions appear that predict the name of the item. This can save a lot of finger taps, especially with longer brand names. It’s sort of like Google’s suggest feature.

Check out our video review below for a closer look.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pel_5ZS09uI

The app currently has 130,000 grocery items in its database (with more to come), featuring everything from general food names like “Frozen Pizza” to specific brands like “California Pizza Kitchen – Thai Chicken.”

Grocery IQ automatically groups together items by aisles. This helps save time when shopping by letting you grab all the items located in the same aisle at the same time. You can even rearrange how the order of the aisles appears to match your grocery store. I know I’ve got mine memorized.

Creating a list of favorites will allow for quick adding. A history view shows all the items you’ve checked off on past visits to the store. Items in the history view can also be added to your current grocery list.

The app’s icon even has a notification feature that let’s you know about many items you have on your grocery list.

Some other features are the ability to email a grocery list to your significant other, set the quantity and size/weight of items, change the aisle (for instance, if you want the cheese in the gourmet section), and add your own notes to items.

What I like most about Grocery IQ is that its advanced features don’t get in the way of creating a quick-and-dirty grocery list. However, if you take the time to learn the other features, you can build grocery lists even quicker and become a more efficient shopper.

My only complaint would be the price of the app at $4.99. But there’s obviously been a lot of work and thought put into making this a superslick app. I experienced no bugs, hangups, crashes, or other operating quirks.

The developer says they working on adding support for multiple stores and lists for version 1.1, and version 2.0 will add synching of grocery lists for multiple iPhones, so you and your significant other can always be in sync on what’s needed at the grocery. The synching will occur via a free service hosted by Grocery IQ servers. Version 2.0 is scheduled for late November.

Conclusion

Grocery IQ is a very useful tool for creating grocery lists quickly and accurately. Its ability to retain a history and remember favorites will make you a smarter, less impulsive shopper. And the ability to arrange items by aisle will make you a more efficient shopper. And since you’ve always got the iPhone in your pocket, you’ll always have a way to “remember the milk.” We like it so much, we’ve made it one of our Best of iPhone Apps.

Name: Grocery IQ
Version reviewed: 1.0.1
Developer: Free State Labs
Price: $4.99
iTunes Download:

To see all of Art of the iPhone’s Best of iPhone Apps, click here.

Ambiance iPhone App: Soothing Sounds at a Touch

Sep 4

Posted by Alan in Productivity Apps, iPhone Applications, iPhone Native Apps, iPhone Productivity Apps | 6 Comments

Ambiance ($0.99) is an iPhone app that features 44 sounds to help you fall asleep or generally block out other bothersome environmental noise while you’re working or studying.

*Update 3/7/2009* We no longer recommend this app, as the developers have dramatically changed the app with a recent update. Sounds no long come with the app, but require you to register on an online website in order to download them.

Ambiance offers a range of sounds, from the soothing gurgle of a stream to the buzz of an electric fan. All sounds are looped for endless listening with the option to add a timer for automatic shutoff.

The timer functionality makes Ambiance useful as a sleep tool. Choose crickets, set the timer for an hour, and drift off to sleep to the soothing sound of nature. There is also a feature to automatically lower the volume slowly over time while the counter counts down to zero, or have the sound slowly fade after it reaches zero.

I’ve tested out the app several times at work, and there are definitely some very pleasant sounds on here. Some of my favorites are Coast, Creek, Wind, and the various rain sounds. (See after the break for an entire list of sounds.)

Yet, included are some truly annoying sounds, too. Cicada, for instance, is a high-pitched constant screech that makes me want to rip my earphones off. And the low buzzing Light Saber was likewise uncomfortable.

There are also several “color” noises available, in particular, white noise, which is supposed to block out most environmental noise and increase concentration. I found it uncomfortable to listen to, unlike a white noise machine I already have at work that easily fades into the background.

Ambiance does offer some menu options. You can place a timer on the sounds, remove the “color noises” from showing, add an alarm, have the app quit after the timer goes off, or have the volume fade during or after the timer countdown.

Ambiance is simple to use and has a clean interface. I enjoy using it at work and seems to help me concentrate. Its large variety of sounds offer something for everybody. And at $0.99, it’s also a big bargain.

Name: Ambiance
Developer: Matt Coneybeare
Price: $0.99
iTunes Download: Click here

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Editor's Picks:

Traffic Rush (free, iTunes link)

Tower Bloxx Deluxe ($0.99, review, iTunes link)

Dungeon Hunter ($4.99, review, iTunes link)

Need for Speed: Undercover ($4.99, review, iTunes Link)