With advances in technology and smart phones, it is now easier to run a business than it has ever been before. Whether the business is small or large, there are great smart phone apps available that can improve your company. Many of the business apps available allow for the company to save time and money; the goal of every business. While there are a lot of great business apps available, here are 5 top apps that can be downloaded from your mobile phone’s network or wi-fi offered by your internet service providers.

Expensify

Expensify allows someone to expense a business trip. Most businesses will not repay the employee for something on a business trip unless they can provide a receipt. This means that they have to try to hold on to every receipt which can sometimes be tricky! Expensify allows you to log each expense and then take a picture of the receipt. All of this information is stored in the app, so there is no need to try to save everything.

Tripit

Tripit is an application that helps with business trips. It can be hard to keep track of all of your flights and hotel reservations on an extended business trip, but the Tripit app will now do all of that for you. After all of the travel information is entered into the app, Tripit will then make an easy to follow itinerary.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a great business app that businesses of all sizes can use. To use the Dropbox app, the business must first download Dropbox onto their computers. Dropbox allows for anything to be safely saved and stored on their systems. Anything saved in Dropbox can then be accessed from any computer or smart phone. This allows for everyone in the business to have all of their important information with them at all times on their smart phone. This eliminates the need to have to print out reports and give them to everyone; they can now have them electronically on their phone.

Square

Square is a great application for small businesses. Square allows any business to be able to process credit card payments with a smart phone. There is no need to buy all the expensive credit card machines when you can download Square. Once the credit card information is entered into Square, it is instantly transferred to the company’s bank and customer’s credit card company.

WebEx Meeting Center

This app allows for a business to conduct conference calls and meeting through their smart phone. Documents and presentations can be viewed on the phone’s screen while still being able to talk to each other.

Guest article by Ruben Corbo, a writer for the website www.broadbandexpert.com

Phones, smartphones and tablets allow you to have the world at your fingertips, even from your car. But always be sure to consider safety first; here are some of the best apps to make your car journeys safer and more convenient.

Carrr Matey! – Android

Carrr Matey! is a parking app that allows you to log where you parked your car, making it easier to find again. The app also has a timer so you can get to your car before your parking ticket expires. If you’ve parked in a multi-storey car park, activate Harbour Mode to note the exact location of the car. Best of all, everything in the app is themed around pirates for a bit of fun.

DriveCarefully – Android, Blackberry, iPhone

Reading your texts or emails while driving is not only extremely dangerous, it’s also illegal. The DriveCarefully app takes away the temptation to take your eyes off the road by automatically reading aloud any text messages or emails you receive. You can also set an auto response to let people know that you’ve received their message, but that you are driving. This app could be a step towards reducing accidents caused by texting and driving. You can also avoid a potential £30-60 penalty and 3 points on your license from driving whilst using a mobile phone.

Road Trip Lite – iPhone

Road Trip Lite enables you to keep track of your miles per gallon and fuel economy for your car. Using this app will give you a good idea of what you are spending on fuel for your car compared with how much you use it, and will make you rethink how to get the best out of your car. Team this app up with a petrol price calculator and you can quickly assess how much your motor is costing you each week.

c:geo – Android

Geocaching is essentially a game of high-tech hide and seek. You use the c:geo app to pinpoint your location as well as a number of ‘caches’ (hidden containers that often contain some form of trinket as a reward). There are hundreds of caches to be found, and using the geocaching app to locate them can turn a normal car journey into an exciting treasure hunt.

RAC Traffic – Android, iPhone

Sitting in traffic can cause even the mildest mannered motorist to become enraged, so use this app to avoid it. Luckily, this app follows your progress and alerts you of any nasty jams that may delay your journey. The map updates in real time and lets you know if there are any new incidents.

 Thanks to Jamie Gibbs from  www.confused.com

The new Sky Go App brings together online and mobile TV in a single, simple service for Sky TV customers. You can now get flexible access to Sky content across iPad, iPhone and iPod touch and it is now available in the App Store.

Sky Go lets you watch live channels (in line with your subscription) while on the move in the UK and Ireland. On iOS devices, Sky TV customers can access all five Sky Sports channels, ESPN and Sky News, with further channels to be added over time. This means that Sky Sports customers will be able to watch a top line-up of live sports on the move for free and a  selection of Sky Movies.

Sky Go brings together two existing services, Sky Player, Sky’s online TV service and Sky Mobile TV, the UK’s largest mobile TV service – the services now rebranded as Sky Go.

The Sky Go App is now available for free from the App Store on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore.

As you might guess from the name, ShopStyle is a shopping app. It’s available on the iPad and iPhone and Nikki blogged about it when it first came out. ShopStyle is one of my favourite apps, here’s why…

ShopStyle has access to a great range of different clothing (and shoes! and accessories!) brands from economical basics to designer extravaganza. Starting from A some of the brands available are: Alexander McQueen, Alexander Wang, Agent Provocateur, All Saints, American Apparel – hopefully you get the picture.

The products, diverse in the extreme in terms of price and quality, appear side by side in the app by default, which is slightly surreal. To tailor the view to suit your personality (and budget) you can filter by Brand, Store, Size, Colour, Price, Sale and custom Keywords.

The app is in the classic iPad design and features a short description, price and lovely pictures for each item. The layout, speed of search and quantity of items make this a much nicer experience than using the shops’ own websites.

To purchase an item you are taken to the shops’ own site, meaning you have to set up several accounts and can’t make cross-shop purchases in one go. However, although this is irritating, as an IT professional I understand why they have structured the site this way – they’re reusing the existing stock systems that the shops have already invested in. If ShopStyle had decided to track each store’s inventory directly, this would have taken so much effort for each shop that the app would never have got off the ground.

There is also a small bonus for iPad users, as the current system means that ShopStyle must therefore have checked that the websites work with Safari on iPad (unlike some other big brand sites!).

ShopStyle is an absolute life saver for me and means that I actually have some clothes, when I wouldn’t have time to go shopping otherwise!

If you haven’t tried it, please do give it a go. Even if you don’t buy anything, you can now window shop from the luxury of your own home/iPad/iPhone whatever your gadget of choice is!

www.shopstyle.co.uk

We all love Cosmo for keeping us *on top* of the best sexual position like the passion pretzel but now you can have all this sexy info at your fingetips with the new ’Cosmopolitan Sex Position of the Day’ app. You get detailed instructions on how to perform each position, told how tricky it may be do to and last but not least some tasteful pics to show you how it’s done. I think whoever downloads this should then post their comments on, well, how good a position it was! You can get this app on either Android or your iPhone for $3.