How To Quickly Load Business Card into Contacts: App to load Business Cards

May 5, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Business cards are great ways to share contact info, but unless people start including QR codes on their cards (some people are), loading them into contacts apps is a pain. Here’s an app to load business cards in seconds.

  1. Download Cardmunch (free) from the app store.
  2. Open Cardmunch, and log into Linkedin (they own the app, so you have to log in – still free).
  3. Take a picture of your card, using the in-app camera function. Make sure text is crisp, and clear. Submit it.
  4. Walk away (or close the app). You’re done. In a few minutes, your card will load into your contacts, without you having to enter a single piece of data, and as a bonus, it will load data from their linkedin profile for you too, giving you instant access to more info on them.
  5. Your welcome, for the time savings.
iphone app to load business cards

baby loves his business cards – and he uses the app to load business cards

 

P.S if you see this. If there’s an app to load business cards into your iPhone, there’s an app for everything.

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Filed Under: app, app review, apps, business, how to, tutorial Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Google Now For iOS Tutorial: Get the most out of Google Now

May 1, 2013 By Leave a Comment

We explained the setup process in a separate tutorial here.

Google Now, Google’s vocal assistant, can be a powerful tool, if you know its’ abilities and limitations.

There are two parts to Google Now. The first is called “cards”, and the second is voice search.

We’ll start with cards.

Cards are like little apps to check on different parts of your life. Cards are “smart” in that they “learn”, based on your searches and actions, and they update to match your lifestyle. They’re perfect little life management tools.
Google Now Sports
Cards can Show:

  • the weather
  • Sports results for teams you’ve shown interest in
  • traffic to your next likely destination – determined by patterns in your life
  • schedules and addresses for public transportation. This card appears right around the time that you’re expected to be on the move.
  • flight information for flights you’ve searched for, or confirmed through your connected gmail.
  • Your next appointment, as determined by your calendar
  • Translations. This is one of the coolest. When your phone detects you’re in a foreign country, it will appear, set to the language of that country, and offer instant translation.
  • Currency Conversion – similar to Translations on how it’s determined
  • “Time at home”. How many times have you been in a different time zone, and wondered if it was an okay time to call home? When you’re in a different-than-normal time zone, this card automatically appears.
  • Movies
  • And more – news stories, you name it

Using Cards

  • Cards can be found by swiping up from the google app
  • Individual cards can be removed by dragging it to the right or left.
  • Cards will adjust based on your habits.

Using Voice Search

  •  Voice search can be used to search for facts, movie showtimes, restaurants, directions, sports scores, etc.
  • If Now understands your query, it will pull up a card from which you can directly get reviews, time, weather, directions, or whatever you’re searching for.
  • If your search is for a function not available, it will perform a Google search of your query. For example, if you ask “Who is Will Smith married to?”, it won’t be able to answer on a card, so it will perform a standard Google search.
  • One very nice feature is that Google voice will dictate all of your results in addition to displaying them.

Enjoy!

Google Now Food iOS

Don’t Try sorting by rating. Google Now won’t do it. A 17/30 is certainly not the best in New York.

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Mailtab Pro for Gmail Review: Mac apps

March 7, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Apple’s mail is sufficient for answering and reading emails, but it can be a bit annoying with popups, notifications, and the like. When I went looking for an alternative mac email client, I came across Mailtab Pro for Gmail for mac, available from the Mac app store for $2, and I was thrilled with its’ simplicity and utility.

Design

Mmailtab pro menu barailtab Pro for Gmail is a menu bar application. It really doesn’t do much besides offering a convenient way to use Gmail, but it excels at that, and for only $2 it’s well worth it.

Good

The best thing about Mailtab is its’ convenience. It notifies of new emails, and has a count in the menu bar of messages (which even Apple’s mail doesn’t have) but it stays out of the way until you need it, while still providing data.

Accessing your Gmail is literally as easy as clicking on the little menu bar applet. My favorite part of the app is that it never opens a single window. I usually have around two dozen windows open, multiple browsers, photoshop, and word documents, so my computer is cluttered enough. Mailtab is there when I’m using it, and out of my way gone when I’m not. It’s literally the ultimate convenience.

Feature-wise , Mailtab is literally the same Gmail you access from Gmail.com, with the added convenience of the menu bar access. If you like Gmail.com, you’ll like the interface of Mailtab, and visa versa.

It’s also worth noting that in places where Gmail servers are blocked and traditional email clients don’t work, Mailtab has worked for me.

Bad

The only problem with Mailtab is that since it’s essentially just pulling up Gmail.com, there’s no offline access to email. No writing emails beforehand. No checking your mail on a non-wifi-equipped plane. You need the internet, and there’s no way around it.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for convenience and less clutter, this is a great app for you. Mailtab Pro may not have many features, but what it does for my organization is well worth the two dollars it cost me. Well done.

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How To Blog From a Mac: 10 Crucial Mac Blogging Apps

January 25, 2013 By

Blogging is a blast, and Macs are my favorite computers, but it’s a challenge finding good blogging software to get my daily post done from. A few apps are absolutely critical to my blogging, and I think the’d be helpful to you too, so I wanted to share them with you.

10 Best Mac Blogging Apps

  1. MarsEdit: MarsEdit isn’t cheap at $40 but it is hands-down the best mac blogging client available. It offers integration with nearlyever blogging CMS, including WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type, and Tumblr
  2. Photobulk: Best two bucks I ever spent. Photobulk makes it really easy to make and position watermarks, resize photos, and do it all in bulk. It’s very well designed, and serves its’ purpose very well. And at $2, it’s cheap.
  3. Adobe Photoshop CS6: This is a bit out of reach for some bloggers, so a good free solution is GIMP, an open source software which is comparable. Photoshop is another vital app of mine, great for creating unique graphics, and things that will last. I also frequently design secondary elements of my site, and buttons using photoshop. It’s a valuable tool, and very versatile. Also good for book covers.
  4. iBooks Author: If you want to easily lay out a great looking ebook, this is the best option there is. iBooks Author is 100% free, and offers a variety of free templates, and page layouts that make laying out and organizing your ebook a breeze. You can even export straight to the iBooks Store, or to a PDF format. Unfortunately it doesn’t offer Epub exporting, but PDFs can be converted to Epubs for free using converters like this one.
  5. Evernote: I use an odd mix of Evernote and Apple Notes to keep track of all of my ideas on the go, and thanks to the cloud they all nicely sync straight to my computer. The additional forms of post that can be added to Evernote ultimately give it the lead, and for the price of free it’s excellent.
  6. Wunderlist: Are you a mess? I am. Wunderlist is my taskmaster, and that beautiful, functional list design on the mad app keeps my tasks managed, and my posts somehow make it out on deadline. Thank you Wunderlist.
  7. Grandview: For the “grand” price of free, Grand View offers a brilliant distraction free interface that goes beyond the concept of a white page. You see only one sentence at a time which shrinks to fit the page as you type more text. The whole concept is stop you from constantly looking forward and back at what you’ve written. It’s great for getting good ideas down on paper, but not so great for spelling, which naturally suffers because you don’t see the full text until the end. Fantastic if you’re willing to proofread.
  8. Skype: Microsoft’s Skype is fantastic for making connections, conducting interviews, and saving time communicating with important people that can grow your blog. Video chatting truly is the way of the future.
  9. Pages: Apple’s pages is another valuable resource for creating white papers, ebooks, et cetera. You can export to .Doc, PDF, and even .Epub (the universal Ebook format) meaning that you can create a document and have it ready to be sold on Amazon in minutes. Pages also has a wide variety of nice templates that help to make for a nice layout for any document. Charts and graphs are easy to make, look great, and screenshots of them work well in blog posts. Everything is manipulable by drag and drop. It’s excellent, and it’s only $20 which is a small price to pay.
  10. Google Drive: I rest really easily knowing that any post I write, or image I save is backed safely up in the cloud, and Google drive is really good at that. It’s also nice to be able to edit a document from anywhere and have it up-to-date and ready to publish wherever you end up.

Also Read Our List of 34 Great Blogging Resources and Tools

There are a lot of good apps out there for blogging and writing, and I’d love to find out some other good ones from you. What do you use in your blogging? How many of the above do you use?

 

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Filed Under: app, app review, app store, apple, Blogging, help, how to, ibooks, Link Post, list, mac, new media, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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