With literally hundreds of thousands of apps, there is quite simply almost an app for everything, from apps that can teach you how to do marathon training, to apps that can give you bus timetables; there is something for everyone. There are even apps that can help you manage your career and your business. The problem is that there are so many out there that it can be a huge challenge figuring out which ones will work best for you. There is always going to be some trial and error, but these are some of the top apps for managing careers and businesses, and so are a good place for anyone to start.

1. BeKnown is an app that facilitates professional networking on the social media platform, Facebook. This is an excellent app for managing and developing your career. It is common knowledge that the best way to grow your career is through networking, and social media has really come to the fore in this area. The only problem is that it can be difficult to keep personal and professional social media profiles separate, which can lead to embarrassment. That being said, BeKnown permits you to apply for jobs on Facebook, but maintain the privacy of your Facebook information. Look through social media for job opportunities, look at companies you are interested in and apply for positions – this app allows you to do all of this. In a similar way to Facebook, Beknown links you or matches you with positions that might be of interest to you. You can also invite your contacts from other social media networks. Clearly this is a good tool for managing your career.

2. Asana is an app that is designed to facilitate your career and your day to day life in the work place by acting as a kind of project manager. Much of the tedious and difficult times in a work day are when there is miscommunication and difficulty on a project. Asana allows you to create an account for your working group – it enables you do delegate tasks, keep an eye on the progress and know who is working on what at any given time. This means that you don’t have to spend your working day relaying emails and conversations because they all happen in one place.

3. An app that can work hand-in-hand with Asana is CamScammer, which allows you to digitalise paper documents, whiteboard writing and presentations by just taking a picture of it. Once you have the image you can edit it to make it more user friendly and make a PDF of it. This amazing app then permits you to share this document as you would any other PDF, all without having to retype or rewrite what you want to share. It saves paper, but it also saves time, and can significantly increase efficiency.

4. There is even an app that can help you remember people’s names, it’s called Contacts Journal. This app allows you collate and organise all of your contacts and relationships in one place, taking notes on interactions you have and keeping an up to date record of meetings. Basically it makes sure that you manage the network that you are building to help your career.

5. Finally there is an app called Personal Capital and this app is basically a dashboard that allows you to keep all of your financial details in one place, with moment-to-moments access to all of your accounts.

Richard McMunn, is the founder and director of the leading career website How2become.com. His aim is to help as many people as possible pass the recruitment process they are applying for to secure the job they really want. The website offers a wide range of books, dvds and courses for those who want to ensure they have every stage of the process covered. You can also connect with Richard and How2become on YouTube

If you live in New York  and like making applications for the Android, things are looking good for you in 2012. Tracking iPhone and Android developer job listings on Indeed year over year, we see an 11% drop (3,464 vs 3,094) in monthly iPhone developer job listings in New York. Looking at Android developer job listings, we see a significant 24% jump (4,516 to 5,596).

Who makes more money, an iPhone or Android Developer?

Can you imagine having a vibrating magnetic tattoo inked on your arm that one day may be used to alert mobile phone users to phone calls and text messages? I guess you won’t be able to use that excuse – “I didn’t hear my phone ring” anymore.

A Finnish company describes the technology as stamping or spraying “ferromagnetic” material onto a user’s skin and then pairing it with a mobile device. When a call or text comes in, the magnetic field could cause vibration of one short pulse, multiple short pulses, few long pulses… strong pulses, weak pulses, so on and so on..

I am sure this is something that the younger generation will explore and utilize. How far and rapidly we have come since the rotary phone.

Ready to assist Korean mobile app developers, ComboApp has now opened their first marketing branch focused solely on providing marketing solutions to the Korean marketing community.ComboApp’s Korean marketing division is fully staffed with native Korean speaking marketing professionals hand picked for their unique understanding of the mobile development industry. Their team provides Korean developers with a perfect opportunity to introduce their products to the English speaking marketplace, increase their prospects, and grow their business on a global scale.

About ComboApp: Founded in Chicago, ComboApp is a mobile marketing agency specializing in providing marketing solutions to developers which are as flexible and scalable as they are effective.

Over the next few years, banks, startups, mobile carriers, and tech titans will compete to make your mobile phone a mobile reality. Any of these companies could theoretically control the multitrillion-dollar U.S. payments industry. Here are the players and how they are positioned now.

Banks – have millions of customers, existing merchant relationships, and of course, most of our money.

Prediction – “They’re risk-averse, and they tend to be technology laggards. I can’t see them innovating here,” says Nick Holland, a mobile tech analyst.

Merchants – To lure consumers, some merchants have launched their own mobile-money platforms. A Starbucks app, for example, lets users load cash onto their mobile phones.

Prediction – Merchants are too self-involved to lead the general charge; it’s more efficient for them to partner with a bigger player, like Google Wallet, says Mark Beccue, a mobile-commerce analyst at ABI Research.

Hear about all the latest Mobile Developer Jobs at FoneGigs.com

Startups – free from the confines of bureaucracy, they are sparking the best new ideas in the mobile-payments space.

Prediction – They will get snapped up by the big guys. For example, Punchd and Zong now play for Google and eBay, respectively.

Credit-card companies – Merchants already have thousands of Visa payWave and MasterCard PayPass terminals, which give the credit-card companies lots of leverage if tap-to-pay  becomes the mobile-payments standard.

Prediction – Credit card giants don’t interact with customers directly – so they are partnering with bigger players to do that. For example, Visa licenses its payWave tech to Google.

Mobile carriers – experts at processing payments. Recently, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon all joined forces to create Isis, a forth-coming mobile payments network that now touts support from the big four credit-card companies. Sprint linked up with Google Wallet.

Prediction – mobile carriers are not known for major innovation. They have also been mum on the specific of Isis. “Just because there are partnerships does not necessarily mean theres’ anything real there” says David Evans, founder of the tech consultancy Market Platform Dynamics.

Paypal – The leading digital-payments platform boasts 100 million users; $3 billion worth of mobile transactions; a robust suite of fun, useful smartphone apps, and PayPal Access, a Facebook connect feature that aims to streamline the entire virtual – payments process. It is also working on a cloud-based NFC alternative that would allow customers to pay for products by using their phones to scan bar codes for by entering their mobile numbers and a PIN at existing payment terminals.

Prediction – For all of these ambitions to come alive, strong relationships with physical retailers are needed, which has not been a priority for PayPal.

Tech Titans – Amazon and Facebook could easily  make plays for the mobile-payments pie. But so far, Google and Apple are leading the way. They’ve got assets aplenty: great relationships with consumers, more pull with physical retailers than PayPal, an active culture of innovation, and, because they both outfit market-leading smartpones, control over when NFC chips could become standard. Most analysts agree that Google Wallet – with its sleek interface, ad-based business model, and rising adoption rate – is a big, bold step in the right direction.

Original article, Mobile Melee, by Philip Butta, appeared in Fast Company, December 2011.

Want to work for a young and exciting San Francisco-based company specializing in a revolutionary mobile payment service? This company is the first of its kind offering a true “lifestyle commerce” experience that simplifies everyday transactions for all users. They are looking for strong talent to seize the market opportunity!

Send your resume to Eric at Eric(at)FoneGigs.com or 832-590-0478.

Hear about the latest Mobile Developer gigs at FoneGigs.com

Here are the following jobs available:

Senior Frontend Engineer – As the senior frontend engineer, you will translate rough design concepts into innovative working solutions, establish consistency, and optimize user experience. We want someone that gets excited from building a site users love.

See the full job description at http://www.box.com/s/r9pgtyk5o8pf8yjx9bmd

Senior Backend Engineer – As the senior backend engineer, you will design and implement extremely high-volume, fault-tolerant, scalable server systems. You will work closely with the team to design, implement and iterate features quickly.

See the full job description at http://www.box.com/s/r9pgtyk5o8pf8yjx9bmd

Blackberry Developer - You will be responsible helping build the BlackBerry application for a revolutionary mobile payment service. This is a full time position in San Francisco, California. You will have good product sense, an understanding of the mobile app ecosystem and strong personal initiative.

See the full job description at http://www.box.com/s/r9pgtyk5o8pf8yjx9bmd

iOS Developer- You will be responsible helping build the iOS application for a revolutionary mobile payment service. This is a full time position in San Francisco, California. You will have good product sense, an understanding of the mobile app ecosystem and strong personal initiative.

See the full job description at http://www.box.com/s/r9pgtyk5o8pf8yjx9bmd

Sr. Android Engineer – You will be responsible building the Android application for a revolutionary mobile payment service. This is a full time position in San Francisco, California.

See the full job description at http://www.box.com/s/r9pgtyk5o8pf8yjx9bmd

If interested, send your resume immediately to Eric Melchor at Eric(at)FoneGigs.com.

Very similar to PC Web, there are some simple things you can do to help improve the visibility of your app in the App store. Here are 10 things you can do to improve your ranking:

1. Use keywords in the app title and developer name. For example, a user searching for “fun” sees a number of apps with “fun” in the title in the top search rankings.

2. Use numbers or the letter ‘A’ in the app title – Using a blank or listing your app with a number at the beginning of the name ensures that the app will be featured near the top of the results in the “sort by name” view under a specific category.

3. Encourage reviews – Only about 0.5% of users leave a review, but one element to the Apple store search algorithm appears to be the number of reviews. Write your own reviews, encourage friends and family, as well as users.

4. Use price drops – a quick way to move up the charts is to reduce the price of your app. For example, one game experimented by cutting the price to 99 cents from $4.99 for four days. Previous to the price drop, the app had been ranked at around 60 in top paid apps. Afterwards, it shot up to second place within 24 hours.

5. Make you app icon active – This is a visual trick that can be very powerful as it catches the users eye.

6. Make the most of your screenshots – make sure the screenshots you display are as attractive a possible and draw people in to want to use the app.

7. List your app in directories – List your app in third party directories and aggregators. Each listing links to your iPhone app store page from within a relevant category to help drive users, downloads and reviews.

Original story by Mjelly

Looking for new and creative ways to reach your audience via mobile? Check out Millennial Media’s new suite of mobile advertising tools that allow advertisers to deliver cutting-edge mobile ads on their platform. Here are a few of their offerings:

• Mobile Circular: Advertises up to 20 products within a single creative. In market for more than a year, Millennial Media’s Mobile Circular allows brands to replicate a traditional free standing insert.
• 360° View: Enables consumers to interact with an object and rotate it 360° in any direction, highlighting a product’s features in a rotating, customizable format.
• “Smash It”: Interactive game unit that prompts users to tap certain objects on the screen to gain points, while avoiding other images that will cause them to lose the game. Players can easily post scores to social media sites, driving viral interest in the ad.
• The Cube: Supports up to six images—one on each “side” of the cube. The cube is navigated by four arrows that rotate the cube in the guided direction to give the appearance of a 3D view.
• Media Gallery: Enables advertisers to display a series of different images that progress from left to right. Image progression can be user initiated through swipes or taps from the consumer, or the images can load automatically.

Original story featured in Mobile Marketing Watch ”Millennial Media Takes Mobile Creative Tools to The Next Level for Brands and Agencies.

Next time you use Google Maps or Google Earth, check to see if there is a QR code on top of the building you are looking at. Sounds strange, but that is exactly what Phillips & Company has done with the top of its roof. People can use their qr code scanner to learn more about the business. Whether or not it will prove to be an effective marketing initiative, the idea itself is interesting.

Original article from Mobi Ad News – QR Codes from Space

Something you may have guessed already, there are more Android Developer job postings compared to iPhone job postings. How much more? About 33% more – according to the data taken from US job board Indeed.com.

Hear about the latest mobile developer gigs at FoneGigs.com

Looking at the number of job postings nationwide in the last three months, on average there are a third more job postings for Android developers versus iPhone developers. Overall, the good news is that the trend for developer job listings in general is going up. Hopefully it will continue to go up despite the bad economy.