Category: Small Biz Go Mobile

Steve Jobs—Visionary and Hero, Rest in Peace

by Shy Mukerjee

What an awful week. You’d think between the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet and the iPhone 4S announcement yesterday we’d have a ton to celebrate here on the site. Unfortunately, not only did one of our team members lose a family member this week but I’m deeply saddened to report that yet another of my personal heroes just passed away.

I’m sure I’m not unlike many of my colleagues here in the tech world when I say that if it weren’t for Steve Jobs and Apple, the company he founded with the ‘other Steve’ Wozniak, I wouldn’t be in the tech world today. In the second grade I learned how to write programs in LOGO on an Apple II, and in middle school I moved on to Apple BASIC. As an adult I’ve owned Powerbooks, iMacs, Macbook Pros, Mac Minis, iPhones, iPads… need I go on?

I didn’t believe it myself until the Wall Street Journal reported that Steve Jobs had passed away, but it’s official—the front page of Apple.com is the image you see above. Being frank, without Steve our industry wouldn’t exist. Steve Jobs sold the public on smaller, more powerful devices. I just got off the phone with Mario, and both of us had literally nothing to say, so I won’t drag this post on any longer than it needs to be. Steve, you’ll be terribly missed. Condolances may be emailed to rememberingsteve@apple.com.

iPhone 4S has some nice camera upgrades

by Justin Alcon

For some of us, the most compelling new feature of the iPhone 4S isn’t the debut of iOS 5 or the faster A5 processor. No, what I’m most excited about (and I know I’m not the only one) is the new, beefier camera. We’ve come a long way; ten years ago phone cameras were a joke, and now they’re the most popular camera on flickr.  The iPhone 4S’s camera upgrade shows us why.

First, the size: 8 megapixels. This is the most marketing-friendly upgrade, but in my opinion it’s the least important. Plenty of devices have high pixel counts, and the fact is you don’t need a high pixel count to take a quality photo. High pixel counts are really only necessary for very large photos with very large sensors, like DSLR-type cameras. Having a lot of pixels in a small space only helps the quality of shots that are blown up very large, which isn’t a common use of a phone snapshot. So what is important? Read More

Evernote is iOS 5 Ready, Offers Additional updates

by BrothaTech

Since the Small Biz Go Mobile team loves Evernote, the nice folks over there sent me an email letting me know that the latest update brings the note-taking, web clipping, “remember everything” app up to iOS 5 code.

But that’s not all that was included in the update. Evernote now makes it easier to edit text as well. Better simplified text and font handling are just some of the text editing features in the latest update. Evernote also brings the ability to edit content in notebooks that other Evernote users have shared with you. This only works if you’re a premium user, but this gives you the ability to edit a note and all user’s get your latest updates across all their devices. Read More

iPhone 4S Gets Official – Reveals Several Productivity Features

by BrothaTech

If you’ve been living under a rock, then you don’t know that the iPhone 4S has been announced finally giving the tech industry a reason to talk about something else… that is until iPhone 5 rumors start to resurface again. That’s right, Apple only announced one device that looks identical to the current iPhone 4 but with a plethora of new features and enhancements under the hood.

If you’re debating whether or not to upgrade to the new iPhone 4S or keep the iPhone 4, here is a look at the new features that will certainly give your mobile productivity a boost. Read More

OfficeDrop Offers Document Scanning on the iPad

by BrothaTech

OfficeDrop puts its hat in the ring of iPad apps that let you scan documents to the cloud. If you’re not familiar with OfficeDrop, it started out as a way to convert your physical papers into digital copies in the cloud using your current office printer/scanner. Now OfficeDrop lets you scan documents by snapping a picture using your iPad to automatically upload the document to your OfficeDrop online account.

You can create individual PDF documents or snap multiple images and create one PDF that once uploaded are immediately searchable in your account. In other words, multiple physical documents related to one meeting or event can be one PDF in the cloud. Read More

Better (and cheaper) Than Expected: The Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet is Here

by Nick Muntean

The day has finally come; the tablet market has been upended.  As I argued back in early August, the tablet PC market was due for a shake-up; other manufacturers simply couldn’t hope to move significant quantities of iPad-like tablets at Apple’s price points, and, as I suggested in late July, Amazon was the one company with the resources and will to bring an iPad-killer to market.  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos vindicated my soothsaying at a highly publicized press conference, where he introduced his company’s hotly anticipated Kindle Fire Android-based tablet, which will retail for a door-busting price of just $199.  In addition to the Fire, Bezos also unveiled a new base-model Kindle, which will sell for $79, as well as the touchscreen-enabled e-ink Kindle Touch, which will come in at two price points; $99 for the ad-sponsored model, and $149 for the ad-free, 3G enabled Touch model.

While the $79 Kindle and Kindle Touch models are certainly newsworthy products, the real story here is the Kindle Fire, which eschews 3G data service, onboard cameras and microphones, and copious storage space (the onboard memory is only 8GB) to bring a bare-bones, high-performance tablet within reach of nearly every gainfully employed American consumer.  Technically, the Kindle Fire is powered by Android, but you wouldn’t know it from using the device, as Amazon clearly spent some time and money customizing the UI, and the snappy, sleek interface bears almost no resemblance to its Honeycomb tablet brethren.  As one would expect, the UI foregrounds Amazon’s various digital offerings—e-books, digital music, and streaming film/video—but what’s unexpected is that the Fire will also come pre-loaded with Amazon’s just-announced, bespoke “Silk” web browser, which utilizes Amazon’s extensive “Elastic Compute Cloud” infrastructure to intelligently pre-load browser content to a user’s device, a strategy that should make for some lightning-fast web browsing. Read More

Get Rid of Your Wallet, The Future of Money is Here: Mobile Payments from Mastercard

by Shy Mukerjee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njjREhucsLE

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to attend MasterCard’s Media Day event in NYC. The invitation was rather vague as to what to expect, though I did know that it concerned mobile payments. What shocked me was that this wasn’t some test demo of a future technology—MasterCard has teamed with Google’s Wallet software, Citi credit cards, and Sprint’s phone network to put together live shopping experiences that we can expect to actually be using in a few weeks. This holiday season, most of us will be pulling out wallets stuffed to the brim with receipts, coupons, wish lists and more. But if you’ve got a supported phone with NFC technology on Sprint, then you could be tapping your cell phone all over the place, making everyone else look distinctly 20th century. Read More

Interested in MasterCard, Google Wallet, and Using Your Phone as Your Credit Card? Then Check This Out.

by Shy Mukerjee

Mario Armstrong is on television and radio all day today bringing people information about MasterCard, Google Wallet, Citibank and Sprint teaming up to create an easy and safe way for people to start ditching their wallets and using their phones as their credit cards! We’re going to be bringing you tons of information about this partnership and what it means to you over the next few weeks, but if you’re coming to the site today and wondering how you can learn more about what’s going on, check out this post about what new services MasterCard is launching, check out Mario’s blog for his take on Google’s Wallet software, and stay tuned for more info!