Monthly Archives: January 2013

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Beam Apps From The Web To Your iPhone

Crosswalk

If you have an iPhone or iPad, Crosswa.lk is one of the coolest applications I’ve seen in awhile. It’s like an “application for apps.” What it does is allow you to bypass the cumbersome App Store and send new apps to your iPhone or iPad from the web.Say what? You need to try it to believe it, but it works like a charm. Just search for an app at Crosswa.lk, click an installation button, enter your App Store credentials and voilà, in seconds the app will download to your device. It’s a whole lot easier than clicking, searching and typing on an iPhone and it works super fast. Plus, if you do run across an app you want while using your laptop, now you have a way to get it without launching the App Store!

Crosswalk

For app developers, they can now add a download button on their websites. I predict we’ll start seeing this button all over the place this year!

Cost: Free

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Keep Your Shared Information Updated With MyPermissions

MyPermissions 

MyPermissions is a way to clean up and secure which sites have access to your information online.

With the explosion in social networking sites the past few years, we have all started giving “permissions” to lots of sites in order to enjoy their services. That means giving up our email address and a few pieces of identity to services like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others. But this sharing comes with some big potential problems: these services information permissions pages are protected by complicated and well hidden settings pages at best. As a result of those settings pages, you can end up sharing your photos, documents, locations, contacts, emails, work history, political and religious affiliations— information that you never planned to—with complete strangers.

MyPermissions

MyPermissions is an addition to the Chrome browser that will help you quickly see all the sites you have given “permissions” to and clean them up easily. You can also get alerts when new apps gain access to your private information.

MyPermissions

Cost: $4.99/month or you can rack up free months by sharing the site on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter

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Corral Your Expenses With Expensify

Expensify is an outstanding and inexpensive service for keeping track of all your business and/or personal expenses.
There are three main ways to use Expensify:
1. Upload receipts from your computer
Upload a receipt in any of these formats: JPEG, JPG, GIF, PNG, DOC, HTML, TXT, RTF or PDF
2. Upload from your mobile phone
Install a mobile app for your iPhone/iPad, Android, BlackBerry (does anyone still use these?) or WebOS phone and add pictures of receipts directly to your account.
3. Forward an email to receipts@expensify.com
Forward flight, hotel and any other purchase confirmations or attachments (JPEG, JPG, GIF, PNG, DOC, HTML, TXT, RTF and PDFs) to add those receipts to your account.
You can also connect your credit cards and airline accounts for eReceipt imports. There are lots of other advanced syncing and reporting features available.
Cost: Free (up 10 scanned receipts per month, then .20/receipt after that)
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Watch Your Word Use Blossom With Visual Thesaurus

If you love words, you will become enamored with Visual Thesaurus. It is simply one of the best online tools for wordsmiths. I have paid for a subscription to this for years. (Quick side note: there seems to be a debate over the use of “enamored with” vs. “enamored of”….but I digress.)

Visual Thesaurus is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus that creates word maps that blossom with meanings and branch to related words. It features an innovative display that encourages exploration and learning. Every time you look up a word, you will start to understand language in a powerful new way.

Visual Thesaurus

Say you have a meaning in mind, like “empathy” (a favorite topic of mine). Visual Thesaurus helps you find related words, from “compassion” to “commiseration.” Unlike your dog-eared copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, Visual Thesaurus works like your brain to help you delve deeper into word associations and relationships. It encourages you to explore derivations to discover synonyms, antonyms and new meanings.

Visual Thesaurus
It’s a great resource for finding the right word for your blog post, tweet or book passage. Whenever I’m stuck for a word choice, I can always count on Visual Thesaurus to save the day. Often times, I’ll start there with just an idea or two, and in short order it will help me flesh out an entire post that is chock full of wonderful words. This is also fantastic for SEO purposes.

Visual Thesaurus has over 145,000 English words and 115,000 meanings. If you have children, they will also benefit from using Visual Thesaurus with their writing assignments.

Visual Thesaurus

Additional features allow you to:

  • Email word maps to friends or make some swag out of your favorite words
  • Save your lists for reference
  • See how words are used in different parts of speech
  • Roll over a meaning to see its definition and example sentences that express that meaning.
  • Improve your grammar. Meanings are color-coded to indicate parts of speech.
  • Explore 39,000 proper nouns. Historical figures, phrases and trademarks are included.
  • Hear words pronounced correctly. Visual Thesaurus offers both American and British pronunciations (Cheerio!).
  • Right-click on any word to launch an Internet search for images or information
Cost: Free trial version then $2.95/month or $19.95/year