I travel a lot and I'm a photographer so I'm always shooting everywhere I travel too. As I'm going through the airport and shops I sometimes take time to look at the postcards on display to get ideas of things I might want to shoot while I'm there. It's rare that I'll actually buy a postcard with the intent to fill it out and mail it. I have done it in the past and in most cases I usually beat the postcard home and could simply mail the person a photo or send them one via email.
HazelMail take the pain out of sending postcards
However, if there were an App that let me choose one of my own photos, lay it out, compose a message and upload it and that card would be physically printed and mailed, well I'm all over that! That's exactly what HazelMail allows you to do. My colleague Jill was telling me about it and at first as she started I assumed it was a simple upload/email service, but when she said a "physical" postcard gets mailed she got my attention. So I downloaded it on the spot. The way it works is that the App is FREE. You're paying for the actual cards you (they) send out for you. The photos can either be photos you've taken with your iPhone or ones in your library. You'll get to compose your message using a variety of fonts. The cost of sending a single card (front and back) is $1.50. You fund your account with a credit card or PayPal. As an added plus you can enter your Delta Skymiles account number in your profile and earn bonus miles for every postcard you send (it's the circle of life or travel)
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all the rage today in website design and development. No matter what your website focuses on chances are there are hundreds if not thousands of other sites that focus on the same thing and those sites are competing for eyeballs and views just like yours. So one of the things you can do is to make sure that you're site is optimized to be cataloged by the various search engines out there. The more your site comes up on search engines and the higher it ranks means that you'll likely get more views than the next guy.
Pear Analytics Website Analyzer Can Check Your Site and Report On It
I have a few websites and web traffic is important to me. This is my hobby, so I want to make sure that my sites are being seen. I've been looking for a good way to tell if my sites are optimized and I ran across an App for that. Pear Analytics is a FREE app that can analyze your site and give you an instant report right on your iPhone or iPod touch and then email you a more detailed report. The report lists the problem areas and gives you suggestions on how to correct them. I'm glad that I got this App because all of my sites can use some work!
I don't know of any guy that hasn't sat in his office and at one point or another balled up a piece of paper and toss it across the room in an attempt to make a basket. There's just something about this ritual that becomes an office tradition around the world. I've even seen people take the time to move a waste basket further away from their desk to make it more challenging to make that basket.
Paper Toss now gives you a way to take this experience with you everywhere you go
I had resisted this game for months now. When a friend first showed it to me I knew right then and there that I would spend hours playing with it. Luckily I'm very busy with work at the moment so I don't have a lot of time for games in general. However, I could see this thing sucking several minutes a day out of my life 
The concept is simple. You're sitting at your desk and you use your finger to flick the paper towards the waste basket. However, to make it more challenging with each turn there is a desk fan blowing your paper. So you have to compensate the angle of the toss so that the fan blows the paper into the basket. There's even an Airport mode for us frequent travelers to simulate the time we waste waiting for our flights.
Tracking time on a daily basis? In my work as a web designer, tracking time that I spend on projects, traveling for clients as well keeping together all financial items in a project, is vital. On the Mac, I have long been a user of Billings, by Marketcircle. They have made an iPhone version of the app available, that also syncs with the Mac version.
Interface Design
Marketcircle specializes in productivity apps on the Mac with iPhone versions of the same ones. Billings is one of their big apps (with productivity suite, Daylite, being the other) and they have definitely taken to the iPhone platform and understood the function of good user interface design.
Tracking your expenses can benefit your financial planning, however it is hard to remember to save receipts for the smaller purchases you make where you perhaps do not use a card to pay. Pennies is an app that aims to help you track your expenses.
Money Meter
In Pennies, you have a main “money meter” as the base of the app. You set a standard monthly budget and then as you get expenses, enter these into the app (more on that later). A meter, that looks just like a gas meter in a car, clearly shows you how much you have left, in a graphical fashion. Above it is shown the actual amount. A very nice graphical touch!
Let me start out with a word of caution: buying this App does nothing for you if you don't have a SIP based VoIP account! The App by itself does nothing without a compatible account. WeePhone is a SIP compatible app that allows you to make/receive VoIP calls over WiFi and Now 3G networks. I had been waiting (and still am) for Vonage (my VoIP provider at home) come out with an App that let me use my existing account(s) to make calls while on the go from my iPhone. While Vonage did come out with an App, their App requires you to set up a NEW account to use it with and then fund it. I already have two Vonage lines in my home office and Vonage Softphone account. The Softphone account is a SIP based account that allows you to make calls from your computer. However, with WeePhone I can use that same account to make/receive calls on my iPhone!
A must have for international travelers
If you travel internationally roaming can be very expensive. Even with my corporate discount and having an international plan on my iPhone, it costs 99¢ a minute to use my iPhone abroad. Even though my company is paying the bill, that's too much money to call home to shoot the breeze and catch up. So I rely on VoIP solutions to make calls that are either FREE or very very very low cost. With my Vonage Softphone account I get a dedicated number with 500 minutes/month ($9.95/month 3.9¢/minute over 500 minutes) and I can call home/the US from ANYWHERE that I have an internet connection at no additional cost. Yes, I'm sure you can even beat those prices nowadays, but the Vonage service has worked well for me over the years and yes I use Skype too Of course Vonage isn't the only VoIP service using the SIP protocol. There are tons of them out there. Here's a list I found within 2 seconds on Google.com. WeePhone allows me to use this account from my iPhone with ease. Just fire up the App and start making calls. You can access your iPhone's Contact list too for easy dialing. One thing that I really love about WeePhone is that it also works with my Jawbone ICON bluetooth headset. Having Bluetooth headset support is icing on the cake.
One app developer, CJApps is launching today a promotional contest for their, Finger Maniac 1.1 app. In the latest added update to the game, everyone can try their hands on the 1 Million point challenge where to goal is to type as many 10-letter words as possible within 90 seconds. Between March 1st and May 1st, you can take part and the first to reach the million points, will win a brand new Apple iPad.
There are more prizes available as well, including iPods and iTunes gift certificates and in order to enter, you will have to use the paid version of the app, which is currently available for $0.99.
As a photographer when I travel to a place that I've never been to before the first question that comes to my mind is "are there any cool places that I should shoot while I'm here." Often I'm traveling on business and don't have a lot of free time, so I need to go to the best places in the short amount of time that I have. Flickr.com is a great photo and social networking site that photographers can not only upload their shots to, but they can also geotag or map them so that others will know where the shot was taken.
Foto Brisko delivers shot suggestions in a slick and easy to use interface
The mission of Foto Brisko is to show you possible shots based on your current location or by searching a location that you're headed to. It then populates that area of the map with a minimum of 20 shots (provided that many exist) that you might want to capture while you're there. See a thumbnail you like and just click on it to see the shot larger in the App. If you really like that shot you can immediately add it to YOUR shot list as well as share it on Twitter or Email it.
We've all seen the ads in the past with the guy or gal sitting on the beach, sipping a tall drink and casually pounding away on their laptop. Back then those ads seemed more like fantasy than reality. However, we now live in a world where you can work just about anywhere. Not sure whether that's a good thing or not, but it's cool that we have fewer limits than we've ever had before. With the economy being in the state that it is and has been, there are more and more people cutting back on travel and meeting virtually as often as possible. Adobe has several different solutions to help with that under the brand of Acrobat Connect. There's even a FREE version of the service called ConnectNow and you learn more about that at Acrobat.com. However, if you go with the Pro version you'll not only have more options in the service itself, but you'll be able to take advantage of this NEW FREE App Called Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro Mobile.
Acrobat Connect Pro Mobile lets you participate in online meetings from just about anywhere
I've actually been beta testing this App for a while now and I'm thrilled that's now available to everyone. I can remember when we used to actually make jokes about how cool it would be to attend "that meeting" from some far away tropical place. Well now it's possible. No laptop required! Acrobat Connect Pro Mobile is a FREE companion to the Acrobat Connect Pro Service offered by Adobe Systems, Inc. I attend several Connect meetings a week and now it's cool that I don't always have to be in front of my computer to do so. The app brings all of the important features right to the palm of your hand including seeing the presenter's desktop via screen sharing, seeing their webcam and hearing their audio over VoIP. You can even see and participate in the text chat all at the same time. Now of course the experience is going to only be as good as your web connection and of course the size of your display, however as we get closer to the shipping of the iPad, I'm even more excited about the possibilities that this App will give us.
Times have certainly changed since I was a kid. I can remember growing up in a major city as a kid and going off to play with my friends for hours at a time. Roaming the streets and quite frankly my parents would have no idea where I was or how far I had gone. I knew to be home by the time the street lights came on and life was good! Those days are long gone. We have to be ever so careful now with our kids and our loved ones. Your neighbors can seem like the nicest most honest folks on the block, however what you might not know is that they may be registered sex offenders.
Sex Offenders Search solves the mystery of "is that guy a creep?"
Unfortunately, there is an App for that. It's actually not unfortunate that the App exists, it's unfortunate that we need it. Luckily convicted Sex Offenders are required to register and this App allows you to find them based on your Location. You can see their picture, their address and even the crimes that they were charged with and to be very honest with you, it was pretty disturbing to see the number of pin points appear on the map in my area. If you have kids, a wife, sister, mother, cousin or girlfriend, you need this App!
