Color Efex Pro 4 for Image Professionals

Images are an increasingly important part of today’s hyper-connected world.  Apps like livestream make image sharing simple and effortless, streaming images from events almost instantly.  Because of this, it’s important to ensure that any image associated with your brand broadcasts a professional look-and-feel.  For example, my company always hires an event photographer to snap party pictures that our marketing team can use.  Sure, we also use the candids taken by the party-goers; but blip.tv understands that a professional marketing strategy requires a professional image.

With that said, your photographer will need to have the best and most modern tools on the market to be truly effective.  Enter Color Efex Pro 4 from Nik Software, the latest version of its popular digital photo filters used for retouching and creative enhancements.  This software takes the features that we love in their iPad app Snapspeed to the next level. Read More

TripIt Travel Organizer for Android gets Facelift

TripIt is my go-to mobile app for organizing all my travel info. It works like this – Once I get a confirmation email for my travel plans (airline, hotel, car rental, etc.), I can forward the email to Plans@TripIt.com and the service will organize my plans in a neat and easy to read itinerary for me to view online or via mobile app. I can also manually add travel info like conferences, meetings, etc. to TripIt for even more travel detail. Read More

Quisitive Saves You Embarrassment, Lawyer Fees

Shakespeare wrote “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”.  Nothing could be further from the truth in business.  Naming and slogans are some of the most important aspects of branding.  People do not ask for a facial tissue, they ask for a Kleenex, rather than an adhesive bandage one might ask for a Band-Aid.  When companies want to distance themselves from a product that has tanked, they change the name, when they want to be associated with something great they adopt it’s name or naming convention.  Take for instance the letter ‘i’ in front of a product name, mimicking the iPod, accessories for the device often are named with an ‘i’, for example iDock or iClock.  Recently at the company where I work, we did some market research and found that some small changes to our name would greatly improve how our product was received by our potential customers.

Before now when the time came to name or rename a brand the only way to make sure that you were not using a name that was already associated with another brand or product was to pour over thousands of pages of patent records, or even worse, pay an expensive attorney to do so.  Why pay a lawyer to do what your iPad can do for five bucks with Quisitive?  Thіѕ awesome app allows users tο screen аnd search аll οf thе trademark аnd patent filings іn thе United States, аll frοm thеir iOS device.  Fοr thе entrepreneur or marketing professional οn thе gο, thіѕ is a critical tool tο add tο your kit.  If you think that this would be useful to you give іt a download аnd lеt υѕ know what you think іn thе comments.

Taskforce Gmail app Goes Mobile-Friendly

If you’re not familiar with Taskforce, it’s a simple web app (Chrome, Safari, Firefox) that enables you to convert emails into tasks that you can check-off when you have either responded to the email or completed a task that originated from the email itself. After you have converted an email to a task, you can then safely archive or file the email away and just work within your new task. If you wanted to work on your tasks, you had to be in front of your computer. Not any more, as the latest update brings a mobile-friendly site that’s optimized for Android and iOS that lets you take your tasks with you. Read More

Offline Google Mail Service: Get to your Emails Sans an Internet Connection

If you’re a mobile warrior and have been known to set up shop at your local coffee shop to get some things done, you are at the mercy of that businesses Wifi to connect to the outside world. If for whatever reason, you can’t get a decent signal or no signal at all, you may have to relocate. If you use Gmail (or Google Apps) to send and receive emails and prefer the Google Chrome browser, you may just be able to read emails and do serveral additional functions by downloading the Offline Google Mail app from the Chrome Web Store. Read More

Adobe Releases PDF Creator for iPhone and iPad

If you don’t already know by now, PDF is the ideal file format for sending and receiving a professional document. Adobe created the format, so it makes sense that a product from Adobe would be used more than any other application that can do the same. Most of us use Adobe Acrobat on our desktop/laptop computers to create PDF’s from Word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images and illustrations and more. But what do you do when you’re not sitting in front of your computer/laptop and you need to create and send a PDF? Adobe has got you covered with the Adobe CreatePDF app for iOS devices that lets you create high quality PDF documents from your mobile device. Read More

TweetBook for BlackBerry PlayBook – A Native Twitter Feel

Twitter hasn’t released a native app for the BlackBerry PlayBook. They have recently improved the mobile-friendly web app that looks…good. But for those of us who want a native app that can deliver more features and customization while we surf Twitter, TweetBook might just be what you’re looking for. Read More

The Risk Is Too Great: HP Terminates Its PC and Consumer Electronics Business

HP’s Q3 earnings call last week was, in a word, a doozy.  CEO Leo Apotheker announced that HP–the largest PC manufacturer in the world–would essentially exit the PC and consumer electronics markets, and focus its efforts on high-margin data analytics services (an announcement that’s more than vaguely reminiscent of IBM’s 2004 decision to sell off its PC division).   Specifically, HP plans on divesting itself of its PC division within the next 12-18 months, and has announced plans to acquire datacenter analytics firm Autonomy Corporation for $11 billion.  While HP’s Personal Systems Group (the company’s internal name for its PC and CE operations) will live on in some form or another, it appears that HP’s WebOS experiment has officially drawn to a close, as Apotheker explains that they “have decided to shut down operations around webOS devices and [will] be exploring strategic alternatives to optimize the value of the software platform and development capability.” Read More

Square Mobile Payment System Adds Key New Features

In my opinion, the easiest way for a small business owner to accept credit card transactions is via the Square service/credit card reader. Their is no merchant account needed, the transaction fees are very competitive, and you can easily swipe credit cards using the Square credit card reader that attaches to your iPhone or Android device via the headphone jack.

Square has stepped up its game and now makes the actual credit card experience better by making the transaction process faster. It has improved the transaction speed by eliminating a number of screens that slowed the process down. According to Square, an entire transaction can now be done in approximately four seconds. Read More

LiveShare Condenses pictures from your event into a sharable stream

We’re always throwing events at my job.  We have parties to promote new product launches, new partnerships, good sales quarters and the mandatory “holiday season” shindigs.  Parties are great branding opportunities, because they put a human face on your company and because everyone loves free food and drinks.  After you throw a party, make sure that you get some good press out of it; parties are expensive and you’ll want something concrete to show ROI. Read More