Review: If You Work by the Clock, InerTrak Keeps Track of the Hours and the Dollars
InerTrak and the iPhone were made for each other.
InerTrak lets you easily keep track of the time you spend on different projects throughout the day simply by clicking to start and stop the app’s timer. And what better tool to do that with than the one that’s always at your side — your iPhone.
InerTrak works with only two levels of classification: Client and Project. It does not allow you to further break down a Project into sub-projects or tasks.
Likewise, InerTrak keeps things simple with respect to time. It keeps track of the total time that you spend on any Project on each day but it doesn’t track the individual times that you start and stop the timer throughout the day.
If InerTrak’s feature-set and focus fits your work needs, you’ll find that this app works very well.
If you need help, InerTrak has excellent in-app documentation.
With InerTrak you can create multiple clients, each with an optional hourly rate, and associate multiple projects with any of the clients (a project’s hourly rate can either be set automatically from the client’s rate, or set individually).
You can add a note or comment to any date — useful to remind yourself about the details of a particular day’s work or to include that information in an invoice.
On the subject of invoices, you can send an email message containing your InerTrak data in CSV format and then, on your computer, copy and paste the data into Excel or any program that understands CSV format.
Alternatively, you can use InerTrak on your iPhone to keep track of time worked in the field or when away from your desk. and then copy that data to the desktop version of InerTrak and take advantage of its advanced reporting capabilities, print timecards or invoices, and perform other tasks (if you don’t have the desktop InerTrak, you can try it free for 30 days by visiting the developer’s website; see link below).
Aside from InerTrak’s well-focused feature set, what makes the app both useful and impressive is that it’s a subset of a mature desktop program and works equally well with or without it.
$4.99
App Store link
Developer’s website
Review: Puma Index — Titillating Stock Ticker But 200MB May Be Too High a Price to Pay
The PUMA Index is a fun stock ticker that features the video presence of an attractive young woman and an attractive young man who disrobe as the Dow heads south and who put it back on as the index becomes more bullish.
In case you’re waiting for either of the two lithe avatars to make a full disclosure, the closest they come is their PUMA Bodywear.
You can switch between the male and female model either as a default or on a whim by shaking your iPhone.
While this is a fun app, the fact that it only displays the Dow index and that it gobbles 200MB of your iPhone’s memory may make the fun short-lived — or at least not much later than Nov 8, 2009 when showing your Index at a U.S. PUMA store will earn you a 20% discount.
Free
App Store link
Developer’s website
Review: Mercedes-Benz App Let’s You Make Car Payments in Style
Mercedes-Benz Financial is a simple yet elegant app that let’s you do four things and, to the best of our knowledge, it does them all well.
With this app you can find the Mercedes-Benz dealer nearest you, locate them on Google Maps and call them, if you wish.
The app, which is free, also lets you read snippets of news about programs and perks related to the luxury vehicle.
Additionally, the app provides contact information for several customer service departments within the company.
However, despite the usefulness of all of the foregoing, what makes the app most useful is that it lets you access your password-protected Mercedes-Benz account and make payments on your vehicle by a variety of means.
Regrettably, we don’t currently own a Mercedes so we couldn’t test this feature of the app — and we’d really like to. So, if a Mercedes-Benz rep would like to put a loaner in our driveway, we will complete this review … in style.
Free
App Store link
Developer’s website
Review: MockApp — iPhone App Prototyping for the Rest of Us
MockApp is a simple yet clever and quite efficient way to quickly create a mockup of an iPhone app using either Keynote on Macs or PowerPoint on PCs.
MockApp, which is free, consists of three files you download:
- Templates of iPhone screens
- An extensive library of just about every element you’ll likely need to communicate the idea for your app
- A sample of a complete, working mockup
You create your mockup by selecting items from the Elements file — it contains panes, headers, menus, buttons, icons, keyboards, messages and an iPhone Safari browser screen — and copying and pasting them onto the iPhone screen templates. Most of the elements have text you can edit.
You can also add any of your own artwork to the mockup and include it along with the elements you’ve used to give your creation the look and feel of a living, breathing iPhone app.
When you view your mockup in presentation mode your app comes to life — well, for the most part it does. As the developer Dotan Saguy acknowledges on his website, you can only define one transition per slide, which is fine if you’re moving through your prototype sequentially but not so good if you have various links that transition in different ways. This is a small limitation, however, compared to the speedy way MockApp lets you put an idea together with a minimum of fuss and then share it with others — co-workers, programmers, investors.
The beauty of MockApp is that it can be used by anyone. No programming or design skills are necessary (although a design sensibility would be useful). All you need is an idea, Keynote or Powerpoint, and MockApp and you’re on your way.
Review: Google FastFlip for the iPhone, Nothing to Flip Over
In its never-ending quest to present information in ever-new ways — and so create ever-increasing opportunities to embed its omnipresent ads in web pages — Google has come up with FastFlip.
Google FastFlip, which is currently a Google Labs project and therefore in beta- or even alpha-stage testing, lets you click through screenshots of publication pages much as you would flip through the pages of a magazine.
You can use one of the provided search options, such as current headlines, politics, business and so on, or you can type in your own custom search.
But here’s the rub: Google FastFlip currently uses only 39 sources for its information. While these range from BBC News, Billboard and Business Week through Us Magazine, Veranda, and Washington Post, this eclectic mix can lead to some anemic results if your search is beyond a “general interest” range.
For example, searching for “iPhone” yields the best information, naturally enough, form the likes of TechCrunch, BusinessWeek and the New York Times, but while these are good sources there are a number of other better ones that iPhonesAtWork checks every day that aren’t included.
It’s possible that Google will add more sources to FastFlip but even then I question its usefulness. What it seems that it’s trying to do — and this is giving Google the benefit of the doubt that it isn’t just trying to sell more ads in whatever way it can — is create a form of visual RSS, the popular headline syndication protocol.
But I don’t see the need for it. RSS works, requires less overhead — it’s usually just text — and can cover as many sources as I want it to.
Google has created an iPhone-friendly web access point for FastFlip (just type http://fastflip.googlelabs.com into the iPhone’s Safari browser and you’ll reach it). It provides 30 screens for each search option that you can flip through with your finger.
When you tap on a screen, a box pops up and gives you details about the story and the option to zoom in on the page or go to the full article.
As I flipped through the iPhone screens, I could picture myself flipping through magazine pages in a doctor’s waiting room. If you want a relaxed and modestly-useful way to research and gather information, Google FastFlip is worth a try. Otherwise, RSS isn’t broke and doesn’t need fixing.
