How do you backup your important business documents, presentations, or digital photos? What would you do if your hard drive crashed or your laptop was stolen? Even if a tech could recover your hard drive are going to be happy to pay hundreds of dollars to do that?

EVERY HARD DRIVE IN THE WORLD WILL FAIL! So I’m going to say something a little different. FORGET ABOUT IT. Automate it once never think about it again! After you install Dropbox on your computer, it creates a new folder on your desktop. Any files or folders you add here will automatically upload to DropBox’s servers. Dropbox will check your files and if it recognizes any changes, it will automatically synch the new versions as well. It’s that simple.

PDFs, Presentations, Spreadsheets, all of your documents will be accessible no matter where you are since they’re doing a great job of making apps for mobile platforms. It’s available on the Android, iPhone, iPad, coming out for the BlackBerry soon, and your files are accessible through its website. It’s especially nice on the iPad since its can be a pain to move files back on forth through iTunes. The free service gives you 2 gigs of automated backup and storage.

Lifehacker has a list of additional creative uses of Dropbox:

• Store Encrypted Files with True Crypt
• Use it As An Out of the Box Network Drive to Share with Team
• Instant Mobile Jukebox

Download app (use this referral link and give yourself and us an extra 250 mb of space for free)

Available on: iPhone, Android, iPad, Mac, Windows, Web, Coming soon on BlackBerry

Cost: FREE up to 2 gigs

This week we are at the National Small Business Week. It’s an event that celebrates the impact that small business has to the U.S. economy. While at the luncheon I heard a startling stat that caught my attention. Cathy Martine, AT&T’s Executive Vice President said “More than 800 million apps downloaded since 2009″! That’s an incredible amount of apps and one of the precise reasons why this blog exists! There are soooo many apps out there but which apps are right for your business? Martine went on to say that “wireless communications in particular bolsters our economy to conduct business anywhere, anytime”. Mobility is absolutely key to small business success, these days you must have a smartphone, a broadband connected netbook or laptop this gives you the ability to take your office with you on the go! Bottom line if you aren’t mobile your losing business!

This weeks Happy Hour special is called Shopsavvy – it’s a free mobile application that runs on Android phones, iPhones & Nokia phones. The idea is to turn your phone into a barcode scanner. Simply point the phones camera at the UPC bar code of the product you are interested and in, wait about 3 seconds and the scan will complete and then serve up the name and product information BUT most importantly it will show you where you could purchase the product for less. It could be alot less online  or just a few bucks to a store around the corner or you might already be where the best price is. Most barcodes I scanned ended up working correctly, sometimes though the product can’t be recognized because it hadn’t yet been added to the database (at that point you could enter it in).

My bottom line: ShopSavvy is a great Happy Hour Friday FREE app that has already saved me a few bucks and also gave me time back because I wouldn’t have to drive around to multiple stores.

Download app: (free) http://www.biggu.com/
Available on: iPhone, Blackberry, Android phones
Cost: FREE

Paperwork! It’s the one thing we all pretty much have in common as small biz owners. But paperwork can really slow you down and be full of inaccuracies. That’s why digitizing your forms can be a major time saver and productivity booster. Arming your sales teams, inspectors, technicians, auditors etc….with the ability to fill out forms in the field on a device and sending those forms back to the office is a huge time saver. In addition to saving time, it can also improve accuracy. I don’t know about you but my handwriting is horrible and by using digitized forms you can minimize data input error by setting up the fields to only allow certain types of data. This week I took a look at ProntoForms which works on a variety of devices (see below list). I tried it out on the iPhone and on the Blackberry, I liked how easy it was to use their sample forms. I love the option of customizing your own forms using their web portal which means you don’t have to download anything. Need to update or create a new form just login and make the change. One upgrade I would like to see is the ability to receive some type of confirmation (text/email) after filling out and sending a form so I know it went through!

Download app: (free 30 day trial) http://www.prontoforms.com/pricing.html
Available on: Windows Mobile, iPhone, Blackberry
Cost: $25 per user/per month, no long-term contracts, pay month to month, 30 day free trial

Finding apps for your small business doesn’t have to be difficult. For the past few weeks, since starting this blog I have found different resources for different needs especially when looking for apps. One resource that has become handy is the Small Business Mobile App Recommender. This web tool helps you filter through a ton of mobile apps based on your specific business needs. You can search for apps based on categories (like sales to marketing), your industry or different types of phones – Windows Mobile, iPhone, Palm, Blackberry and Android. The Small Business Mobile App Recommender was built internally by AT&T developers (full disclosure, AT&T is a sponsor of this site)! Of course there are other ways to discover and buy apps. Many of the phone manufacturers now have there own app stores as well, there’s the Blackberry App World, The iPhone App Store, Microsofts’ Windows Marketplace for Mobile , the Android Market and Palm!

Every business needs CRM! CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and it can help you stay on top of the latest information and business intelligence you have on your clients and prospects! Imagine having your sales team out in the field with the most recent business information about their clients. A more knowledgeable sales rep absolutely wins more business. CRM apps are great at helping you track client interactions, business leads, store documents and forms and record sales activity while on the go. There are many CRM applications for computers and mobile devices out there to choose from. One that has been out for a few years is called Nice Office CRM. I have a call into them to see when they may have additional phone versions available! I’ll keep ya posted.

Download the app:
http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/2230
Which phones support it:
Nice Office can run on Blackberry phones
Cost:
Free or $9.95 per month for the Premium version

Are you leaving money on the table? Seriously, how do you keep track of all of your billable time? Hopefully not on scraps of paper! Take a look at the mobile app AirTime Manager-A4P for Blackberry, track all your billable time and watch your revenue increase!

Here’s how it works: After each call or email, you are prompted to bill the time. That’s right every call, every email! At first my biz partner Nicole was tired of the feature popping up til she saw how much time she SHOULD be billing for! A4P-Small Business remembers billing matters for each contact, making it possible to bill many events with a single click. The app is ideal for professional services companies like law firms, consultants and engineers and entrepreneurs. Being able to track your time and understand how much time you are spending on email and calls and on what clients will give you a great snapshot of your workflow and where you can also make adjustments that could increase your productivity, not to mention revenue!

Keep your eyes on these 3 areas to make sure you don’t miss out on money you’ve earned:

1. Forgot-yes when you’re busy you can be so caught up in the current activity that you simply forget to report the time.
2. Too small to catch – in other words those 20 minutes on the phone or 15 min here and there answering emails, well those little minutes ADD up!
3. Under reporting – when you don’t track your activity as it happens you have a higher likelihood of under-reporting.

App Link: AirTime Manager-A4P
App Cost: $19.95 per user/per month
Phone model: Blackberry