Zoho Debuts Pay What You Want Contact Manager App for Small Businesses

 Apps, Products  Comments Off on Zoho Debuts Pay What You Want Contact Manager App for Small Businesses
Sep 252013
 

 forZoho ContactManager for Small BusinessesIIT Madras alumnus Sridhar Vembu’s business apps company Zoho has launched a new online contact manager with an unusual pricing model.

Zoho says for a limited time it’ll let users pay what they want for its new online ContactManager application after the initial free 30-day trial.

Small Business App

Targeted at small businesses, ContactManager lets users keep all their interactions with clients, suppliers, and partners in a centralized address book.

Zoho has designed the new app to provide a unified view of all interactions by keeping key information like tasks, meeting notes, history and important e-mail conversations with contacts right inside a contact’s page.

A free companion app is available for iOS and Android phones to let users access their contact’s phone number, e-mail address, notes and other details via the native app for iPhone and Android phones.

ContactManager works with Zoho’s Card Scanner app for iPhone to import contact information.

Another useful feature is ContactManager’s integration with Google Apps.

Pricing Gimmick?

Here’s what Zoho had to say about its novel pricing scheme: Continue reading »

Parallels Access Debuts to Positive Reviews

 Apple, Products  Comments Off on Parallels Access Debuts to Positive Reviews
Aug 282013
 

Parallels Access to Access Mac or PC from iPadFor $80 a year, you can access all the programs on your Mac or PC remotely from your iPad with the new Parallels Access service.

Parallels Access has received favorable reviews from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The $80 annual fee is a sticking point though with reviewers from both publications.

Parallels Access is said to be easier to use than competing offerings like VNC Viewer and Screens.

Parallels Access for the Mac is already out while the PC version is in beta.

Three caveats – First, your Mac or PC cannot be used while the iPad is connected to it; Second, the service requires a high speed connection for the iPad (apparently, 3G barely makes the cut); The Mac or PC should be on and awake (the computer can’t go to sleep) for the iPad to be able to connect to it..

Visit the Parallels Access page to know more about the service.

Hangouts Goes HD

 General, Products  Comments Off on Hangouts Goes HD
Aug 282013
 

Google’s Hangouts video chat service has started letting users chat with friends and family in HD (high-definition).

HD is being rolled out to the live streaming Hangouts on Air service initially.

Google intends to extend HD to all desktop Hangouts video calls in the coming weeks.

Google is ditching the H.264 video codec in Hangouts standard definition for its own open VP8 codec to enable Hangouts in HD.

Before you can enjoy HD Hangouts, ensure that you have a HD webcam, good bandwidth speed and a fast computer with lots of processing power.

You can download the Hangouts app at Google Play and iTunes App Store for Android and iOS mobile devices respectively or install a plugin for the Chrome browser on the PC.

Scared Americans Boost Dropcam’s Prospects

 Cloud Computing, Products  Comments Off on Scared Americans Boost Dropcam’s Prospects
Jul 312013
 

By global standards, crime is low in America.

After all, we have the highest incarceration rate in the wold with over a million criminals behind bars.

Yet Americans are a scared lot who rush to buy home monitoring cameras and services.

Dropcam HD Costs $149

Dropcam Funding

Benefiting from the unusual fear of Americans are startups like Dropcam that offer low-cost home monitoring WiFi video cameras and related services like cloud recording and storage.

This morning the San Francisco company announced it had raised $30 million in Series C funding taking its total financing to $47.8 million. Continue reading »

iTwin Connect VPN Comes to Mac

 Apple, Products  Comments Off on iTwin Connect VPN Comes to Mac
Jun 052013
 

Singapore startup iTwin has added Mac support to its USB-based iTwin Connect Virtual Private Network (VPN) device.

The $199 USB device previously supported only Windows.

The folks behind iTwin Connect have now added support for the following versions of Mac OS X – Mountain Lion, Lion and Snow Leopard.

The Mac support is a long overdue step in my opinion.

iTwin Connect Supports Mac OS X

What is iTwin Connect?

iTwin Connect provides Private VPN and Public VPN services for users desiring high degree of security and privacy to remotely access their data on a home/office network or to anonymously browse the Internet.

The device is a useful tool in an Internet universe swarming with malicious actors waiting to prey upon online users.

Besides the new support for Mac OS X, iTwin Connect works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 PCs and both USB 2 and USB 3 ports.

The iTwin software self-installs the first time the device is plugged in.

Why Private VPN

A Private VPN service is useful to remotely access files on a home or office network securely.

iTwin makes it easy to create a Private VPN.

Plug the device with both its halves joined together into a USB port on any computer in the home/office network to initialize the device.

Next, detach one half of the device and plug it into your Internet-connected laptop.

Voila, a secure VPN tunnel is instantly created to the home/office computer. Continue reading »

Since God Erred, You Must Download Pocket

 Android, Apple, Products  Comments Off on Since God Erred, You Must Download Pocket
Mar 252013
 

If you believe God erred by slotting a mere 24-hours into a day, then the free Pocket (previously known as Read It Later) app is for you.

With so many interesting articles to read at any single moment and multiple tasks screaming for your attention, you definitely can’t read all the things online when you want to.

With long articles, the problem gets worse. So you tend to put it off, bookmark it or just let it go.

And if you’re like me, you already have a gazillion bookmarks in a quadrillion folders.

So what’s a harried gal like you to do?

Pocket - Save Once, Read on Many Devices

Pocket It

Get Pocket pronto.

Pocket makes it convenient for the harried 21st century worker bee to stay on top of the must-read stuff.

At the click of a mouse on your browser, Pocket lets you save an article for later reading and easy retrieval.

By the way, in addition to web pages the app supports videos and images as well.

Besides the browser, Pocket is said to work with popular news aggregation apps like Zite, Pulse and Flipboard and via e-mail as well.

Getting an extension for the browser is the best way to use Pocket on the desktop.

Pocket has extensions for Firefox, Safari and Chrome.

I tested Pocket running on Firefox browser on both Mac and Windows Vista and there were no issues.

Pocket is a Browser Addon Read It Later Service

Pocket is also available as a free app on the Mac Appstore.

I saved a YouTube video of Boogie Wonderland on the browser and viewed it on the Mac app. Worked perfectly!

Pocket’s competitors include Readability and Instapaper. In the coming weeks, I shall download them as well and see how they stack up vis-a-vis Pocket.

Supports Multiple Platforms

I first downloaded Pocket about two years back, when it used to be known as Read It Later, on the iPhone and iPad.

The other day I logged on to the Mac Appstore and downloaded it to the iMac as well.

The beauty of Pocket is that when you save an article on one device, it gets automatically saved on the other devices as well if you’re logged in.

So save an article on the desktop at the office and on the evening subway trip home you can read it on your iPad, iPhone or Android devices.

Pocket supports tags and lets you filter content by type – articles, videos and images.

Some Issues?

When I saved an article on my iPad from within the Zite app to Pocket, it got saved to the Pocket apps on my iPhone and  iMac immediately.

But it did not show up in my Firefox browser on the Mac until I refreshed it.

So if you don’t see an article on a device that’s been sent to Pocket from another device, just hit the refresh button. Voila, you should find it there now.

Where to Download Pocket

You can download Pocket from Apple’s Appstore as well as the Google Play store.

For the desktop or notebook computer, get an extension for your Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Opera browser.

Pocket is a nifty app that I’d gladly pay $0.99-$1.99.

Alas, it is free! 😉

I enthusiastically recommend Pocket.