Design nerds were excited this week to find that Muji mobile apps are now featured on the landing page of their website. Personally, I’m very excited to see what the minimalist Japanese store has come up with.

The apps are clean and stylish, living up to Muji’s reputation as a leader in minimalist aesthetic. For those not familiar with the brand, the name Muji is derived from the first part of Mujirushi Ryōhin, translated as No Brand Quality Goods.  Muji’s mission is to achieve simplicity, but a simplicity gained through a complexity of thought and design.

The apps available are Muji Calendar, Muji Notebook and Muji to Go.  The Calendar app definitely looks great, but Notebook is my favorite.  Muji Notebook provides a simple outlet for creativity with handwriting recognition, sketch tools, and four different page types (ruled, gridded, quadrant, and plain).  You can even import photos and PDF files to the app which can be resized and laid out on the pages for editing.  The main feature of Notebook above other sketching apps (and the reason that I’m a fan) is its minimalism of design while still offering a bevy of features- it’s deceptively streamlined and yet feature-rich.

Muji Calendar is a fully featured calendar, and makes sense as an extension of Muji’s line of stationery. It includes the option to sync with Google Calendars, but this isn’t necessary if you aren’t a Google Calendar user. It uses familiar gestures like pinch-to-zoom, and organization is presented in rich, muted reds and grays consistent with Muji’s overall brand aesthetic.

Muji To Go might be handy for travelers. It’s basically just a collection of useful tools including world clocks, Forex currency converters, weather reports and a calculator.

There’s a fourth app (also free), but it’s basically a glorified catalog for their clothing line.  Interesting to look at, but not a lot of application there.

At the San Francisco PayPal developer’s conference last week,  PayPal released an apps platform with a fully integrated set of small business buyer, and seller tools embedded right onto the PayPal site.

PayPal Apps will now allow developers to ship SaaS applications directly to the PayPal website, which will enhance PayPal’s services. It’s similar in theory to eBay’s apps for Sellers, or the newcomer and rival for market share storebrain. The new platform, which launched with a number of pilot partners last week, will be publicly released next year.

Shipping and order management startup, Shipwire Anywhere, has partnered with PayPal for this launch.  Shipwire Anywhere will  give developers a complete suite of shipping tools and multi-channel order management to manage their shipping without ever  leaving the PayPal site.  Other initial apps partners like Bill.com, CreditKarma, Expensify, Freshbooks, and Zuora are already building apps into PayPal.com.

The San Jose company also announced a new product: PayPal Business payments. This allows businesses to receive any payment, matter how large, for a low 50 cent fee. Launch partners using this product include Bill.com, Expensify, Freshbooks, Harvest, Plastic Jungle, and Zoho.

With Ebay apps for sellers already out there in the market,  great new products from established companies like PayPal, and creative and hungry upstarts like storebrain, it is clear that the future of e-commerce is now.  It is an exciting time that we live in where we can leverage tools like these to take care of business logistics and spend more time focused on the bottom line.

Android users can have very different mobile experiences depending on their platform version. Many people haven’t been able to use Android 2.2 (also known as Froyo), since some Android devices don’t support it, or the company that makes their handset doesn’t offer it yet. If you think it’s not important to have the latest and greatest, or that what you have works fine for you, check out this list of new features included with the Froyo upgrade and see if this is the type of thing that you might be interested in.

First, the Bluetooth voice dialing feature.  It’s straightforward- just press the button on your Bluetooth earpiece and say the name that you want to call. Reports indicate that Froyo’s Bluetooth dialing has more consistent recognition accuracy than a similar feature on the iPhone.

The cloud-to-device messaging allows you to send applications, video, messages and other files directly to other Android phones. Look for this capability in your business apps, allowing quick sharing of info, in the very near future.

Flash is still not installed by default, but you can go to the Android Market and install Flash from there. Once installed, Flash content performs well in the default browser.

If you’re like me, your phone doesn’t have enough space for all of the applications that you want. Android 2.2 solves this problem by allowing you to install applications directly onto a SD card, which is upgradable and often swappable. Note: not all applications are compatible with these install options, but newer apps increasingly implement this capability.

The search bar has also been given an upgrade. With Froyo, there is now a drop-down that allows you to search from a customized list of dynamic sources.  Once configured, you can search for content on Google, in your tweets, in your email or calendar, or practically anywhere else on your phone from one single search box.

“Update All”  is a new feature that allows you to update all applications (if there is an update available) at once.  This is similar to the popular updating functionality of the iPhone.

Finally, Wi-Fi tethering is built into 2.2. –  making your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot. Not all carriers allow this feature, but it is super cool to be able to have your own network in your pocket in a pinch.

There are also some other updates in this release, including updated camera features and an updated Gmail app.  For a full rundown, check out the press release from Android at their developer site .

On Tuesday Microsoft announced the debut of Office 365, which will be a combination of the online versions of Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync.  The Redmond giant has launched a beta release of the cloud-based Office suite in 13 countries. They’re branding this new product as the “next generation in cloud productivity”.

What does this mean for mobile business? It means the same functionality that has made Microsoft Office the gold standard of business computing without being tethered to our PCs. It’s Office when you are out of the office.  New collaboration features allow groups to work on projects in a simple and secure way.

Kurt DelBene, president of the Office Division at Microsoft said:

“Office 365 is the best of everything we know about productivity, all in a single cloud service. With Office 365, your local bakery can get enterprise-caliber software and services for the first time, while a multinational pharmaceutical company can reduce costs and more easily stay current with the latest innovations. People can focus on their business, while we and our partners take care of the technology.”

The Office 365 site went live earlier this week.  Those interested can use the site to register to participate in the beta program. Microsoft has not announced the date of the public release of Office 365, although they have said that the suite would be widely available in 40 countries by next year. Full press release here.

Sitting in a meeting today, pen and pad in front of me, I was taking notes as usual.  As the meeting wrapped up a co-worker asked, ‘“can someone send out notes from this meeting?”  I volunteered, but before I could say the words another co-worker announced “done”.  I honestly thought he’d been texting or checking his emails, but apparently he had been taking meeting notes on his iPhone with Evernote.

I went back to my desk and immediately downloaded the app to my phone, and it seemed to work pretty well overall. There are versions for the desktop, mobiles phone and web browser. However, a notable difference exists in the app from platform to platform; the functionality is basically the same cross-platform, but the look-and-feel is different depending on the device used.

While taking notes with Evernote, you can use  your phone to automatically upload your snapshots to the app’s server. The most innovative feature is “OCR” (Optical Character Recognition), which allows you to search archived pics by searching for text appearing in the photos. This is great for folks like me that like to write on a whiteboard during meetings, since you can easily snap a picture of the whiteboard and file it away for later use.  This feature could also be handy when taking pictures of products or ads for later research.  You could even use it to take pictures of people with name tags at conferences. The idea is that it can really easy to ‘remember everything’ (as their slogan goes).

Projects on your phone, computer, or tablet are synchronized automatically to your Evernote web account. Since it synchronizes regularly, reinstalling the application or losing data because of a crash isn’t as big a tragedy as it could be.

For Android: Evernote is offering a preview at the 2.0 release of their Android capture client, and it looks promising. According to their release announcement virtually all aspects of the app have been improved. There’s a more intuitive search function, and capturing new notes is smoother.  Read the announcement for the full list of new features and improvements.

As previously rumored, Cisco has now announced its new telepresence product, called “Umi”. Although it has great specs and some interesting features, the price point seems a bit high when compared to other new options on the market.

Umi has high definition output and its 1080p HD camera boasts the latest bells and whistles.  Videos made with Umi can be shared on Facebook, YouTube and through e-mail.  However, these features come with a hefty price tag- $600 for the hardware and a $25 per-month or $275 annual service plan, which makes it slightly more costly than our initial speculations.

In other tech news, Google has announced their intent to move into your other home screen with the debut of Google TV.  Partnered with this was Logitech’s announcement of their Revue device, which will be a complete media box (including Google TV capability).  The set top box retails for only $300, and DISH Network customers can get the Revue at a discounted $180.

Logitech will sell an optional camera for $150 that enables HD video calls and has similar features to Cisco’s Umi. Logitech’s camera can be hooked into the Revue (or any Google TV device) to enable a full telepresence suite for your home system.
So for $450 (or $330 if you have DISH Network) and with no monthly cost, it’s possible to get HD telepresence, GoogleTV, and a lot of really cool entertainment features for your home media setup- a no-brainer, really.

About GoogleTV:
Logitech will also launch Revue with several apps:
Vid HD for video calls
Netflix to watch streaming movies (unlimited membership required)
Pandora  and Napster to stream personal music stations/libraries
Twitter to post or read tweets while watching TV
CNBC app designed specifically to show real-time stock information and customized watch lists, as well as “exclusive” video content
Logitech Media to browse photos, music, and video from a computer networked to the device
Logitech Alert Camera Viewer to see your security cameras on TV
The Revue includes the follow ports:
Logitech unifying technology to connect up to 6 Logitech accessories
HDMI in and out ports
Two IR blasters
Two USB inputs
Ethernet cord
SPDIF to connect digital optical cable.

Using Revue will require an HDTV with HDMI, Ethernet or WiFi, and a Cable or Satellite set top box with HDMI out.