Your Nerdy Best Friend

I’m excited to announce that my friends at Xobni have made one of my favorite tools even better. Originally an amazing tool for Microsoft Outlook, now Xobni organizes your contacts and more on your smartphones and in Gmail. Here’s an update the company sent me last week:

Not only can you use Xobni with Outlook, but you can also use Xobni with your iPhone, Android or BlackBerry.  Smartr Contacts by Xobni enables you to access all your contacts from any Xobni or Smartr App, when you’re on the go!

With these apps on your phone, you’ll never need to manage your address book again.  Smartr Contacts pulls in all the existing contacts on your phone AND it pulls in information from your email, calendar and social networks. Each contact is not just a name on your phone, but Smartr Contacts imports photos, and recent updates from social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Most importantly, it pulls all the information for a person into one contact–you’ll no longer have six entries for the same person and all these contacts are ranked contacts by those you interact with the most. Each contact profile is complete with all the email addresses and phone numbers for that person and a history of the most recent interactions and emails, and even a list of contacts you share in common.

Lifehacker named Smartr Contacts “The Best Address Book Apps” for both iPhone and Android. 

Click here to get started right away with Smartr Contacts:
Smartr Contacts for iPhone
Smartr Contacts for Android
Smartr Contacts for BlackBerry

Here are some videos if you’d like to see the apps in action:
Smartr Contacts for iPhone

Smartr Contacts for Android

Xobni | Your smarter address book is waiting.

Think of Zaarly as a very organized, moderately safer Craigslist. It allows your neighbors to offer and request goods and services with the benefit of a moderated platform and a rating system. Need your house cleaned while you work at home? Post a free request, and within hours you’ll hear from a local provider who can help. Then pay via credit card through the site and get on with the real work at hand.

Not yet available in all US cities.

Platforms:

•  Online
• Apple iOS
• Android

Sites like Zaarly:

·         TaskRabbit:  Find household and office help in your area from providers who have gone through background checks.

Ever feel like your project is lost in a sea of emails and missed deadlines? Check out the excerpt from the book “Upgrade to Free: The Best Free and Low-Cost Online Tools and Apps” for an overview of some of the best project management tools, free and paid.

If you’re like me, chances are you have a pile of grocery, pharmacy and other loyalty cards in your wallet, and a couple of peeling, pathetic ones on your key ring. These are the cards you need to scan to receive store discounts and garner loyalty points.

At a recent conference, a fellow app-a-holic turned me on to Key Ring, a handy smartphone app that allows you to enter all your loyalty programs into your phone so you don’t have to carry the physical cards anymore. To enter your cards, just snap a picture of the card’s barcode, and your card is permanently and instantly cataloged in your app.

In addition, the loyalty programs frequently offer other discounts and specials through the app and makes it easier for you to sign up for new cards as well.

Key Ring

Here’s an easy, fast way to share a file. Just upload a file, and within seconds you have a link to the online version to share with colleagues. Seconds, I tell you. I just uploaded the latest version of the Quick Reference Guide… feel free to download and share!

Ever have to transcribe handwritten notes from a meeting then spend half an hour sending them out to everyone? What a pain.

Minutes.io lets you quickly and easily take live notes of a meeting then distribute them to a group of people with a click of a button.

I love that they don’t make you register for the site even though you have access to the archive.

Oh, and I also love that it’s completely free.

Watch my full review here: YouTube – Minutes.io.

Hi-LARIOUS! I can’t tell you how many times I run around the house looking for my cell phone. Frequently I pick up my husband’s phone and give myself a ring.

This clever, funny, easy tool solves that problem in a flash. Just go to www.icantfindmyphone.com and enter your number. Ring ring! The call comes within seconds, and a friendly robot woman says, “Looks like you found your phone!”

Love it.

I Can’t Find My Phone

My husband and I often lose our battle to keep the dining room table clean because of the dozens and dozens of business cards that pile up. We know we need to put them somewhere, but they have no real home and they end up cluttering up our living areas.

Sure, you can buy an iPhone app that scans the card, but you have to double check everything, and it ends up being a pain. And there are several card-scanning businesses out there that will input your business cards, but it’ll cost you $10 and up a month.

But the other day I discovered an amazing free tool that will bring order back to our home. Like other iPhone card management apps, CardMunch lets you take a picture of the card. But the difference is that the picture is transmitted to an actual person who checks the data and sends accurate contact information back to your phone.

It’s free thanks to LinkedIn, who bought the service and did away with the pricing. Thus, it has a one-button system to allow you to request a LinkedIn connection, plus other features let you send emails, download your entire contact list and integrate your contacts with your iPhone address book.

CardMunch

I attend a lot of conferences, and inevitably I end up talking to an interesting person who says, “Here, let me give you my card…. oh dear! I seem to have left them in my….”

Contxts solves this problem in an instant. In about 2 minutes, you can set up an account for a virtual business card. Then all you need to do is give your new friend a code to text to 50500, and she instantly has your information. Or you can get her mobile number and send your card to her. It’s easy!

Try it out! Text “AskBethZ” (without the quotations) to 50500!

contxts – mobile sms business cards.

The web is now full of helpful reminder systems. I like Task.fm because you can write the way you speak and it converts your note into a smart reminder, such as if you tell it to remind you about “my meeting with Scott Thursday at noon.” You can set reminders to come to you via text, email, twitter or a phone call.

The basic level is free, and the deluxe is less than $4 a month.

Want another reminder system? Try my old favorite, Jott.

Task.fm – Free SMS and Email Reminders.