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iPhone for Business Use

The iPhone It all started a couple of months ago. My wife lost her phone and we had to get her a new one. She had been sitting on a $100.00 gift card from the Apple Store for a couple of years (We're PC Folk), and she had this idea that she should use it to get a new iPhone. Whether she really lost it or this was just a ploy, I'll probably never know. Bottom line, 15 minutes after we walked into the Apple Store, we walked out with her brand new iPhone.

I've long been resistant to the iPhone and all the hype surrounding it. Considering myself a "businessy type" I never really considered it as an option. I dismissed it by thinking of it as a whimsical gaming/entertainment device. "It's only for the kids." I thought. But now, having my wife's iphone in the house gave me a real opportunity to give it an honest look.

It's true, there are endless games for the iPhone, but beyond all the gagetry, I found it to be intuitive to use and highly adaptable and functional. One of the key things I appreciated was an unlimited data plan for only $30.00 a month, which was half of what AT&T charged me for unlimited internet on my other device. I don't think I really have to review the iPhone here. That's already been done a million times by people much more qualified than myself. Suffice it to say, I was won over.

I think my wife knew that I was smitten a bit. Often she would find her phone, after an extended search in my hands as I checked the market, my email, my blog comments etc. My glassy eyes and wide smile more than likely gave me away. I'd like to think it was her generosity that moved her to buy me a new iPhone for our anniversary (Awwww, isn't she nice?), but it could have been that she just wanted her phone back.

So I'm now a week into my iPhone adventure and it seems like the potential business uses for this device are endless. When I did google searches on the topic, it seemed most of what was available were only dry reviews of iPhone applications. Those reviews didn't really give me much practical information about the capacity of the application and it's practical everyday use. I think it would be great to create an indepth resource for iPhone users who are interested in business applications. It struck me as a good idea to make it a topic for an upcoming broadcast of TVPG Radio's Get More Business Show on BlogTalkRadio. So if you are an iPhone user and you want to share a unique or interesting way that you're using the device in your everyday business (and get some exposure for your business in the process) contact me and we'll talk about you being on the show!

Jason Sanders @ValuePagesGroup
Business Networking Specialist

Posted by Jason "Need more business?" Sanders - Business Networking Specialist on 09/16/2009 12:00 PM

Comments (14)

iPhone in the Technology and Tools Channel

iphone, business tools

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14 Comments on iPhone for Business Use

SEP

Jason,

Thanks for offering your take on this for for business use. I may getting one myself soon. :)

Steve

Steve - When you get one, I hope you like it. I love mine!

Jason,

I must say I use my iPhone all day for business. I can check and respond to email, review and adjust contracts, stay connected with all the social networks (FB, Twitter, LinkedIn - there are apps for all of them), an soo much more. Coldwell Banker, Trulia, and Zillow all have apps to locate homes for sale and the phone uses your current location. This is great b/c if you are driving in a neighborhood and see a sign in a yard, you can instantly pull up all of the listing info. I could go on and on....great phone.

Todd - Wow, great applications! Thanks for the tips and your comment.

I've had an iPhone since it first came out, just bought the latest model, as I needed a second phone and I still love it as much as I did the first day. And, I'm the guy who was saying that I didn't need email on my cell phone. Now I can read and respond to email, visually respond to voice messages, go online, listen to music...........oh wait......this was about work, right?!

I've been resisting the IPhone since it was first introduced but now so many real estate professional are using them successfully in their businesses that MY time has finally come. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Doug - You sound like me! Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

Tom - It's hard to ignore that type of innovation. Especially all the features that Todd mentioned in comment #3. I hope you like yours as much as I like mine.

SEP

What are some of your favorite apps, everyone? I really like "bump" - check it out!

Melissa - I downloaded "bump" too. Sounds cool, but I haven't ran into anyone to "bump" with yet.

These are the Applications I've downloaded so far:

Facebook

- This App is awesome. Everything I do on the computer I can now do through my iPhone. Best of all...it's FREE!

Twitterrific

- I paid for the premium version. The iPhone has a nice big screen, but the loss of real estate to advertisements was just too irritating. And it's awesome! I'll probably be writing a blog post about some of it's features soon.

PCOfficeV3

- I paid for this app as well. It's basically a 10 key calculator for the iPhone. I love seeing the list of numbers that I'm working with. My old phone had that feature so I had to replace it on the iPhone.

Bump

- Read comment #9

LinkedIn

- This app was FREE and its...ok. There's not a huge amount of functionality, but it does let me update my status easily and add people to my network. All in all, I'll probably use LinkedIn more because of this app and my ability to use it on the go, than I would if I had to log in on the computer.

MySpace

- I've never really really been into myspace. I have a profile there for my business. The app lets me accept friend requests, comment on things, send mail, etc. I wish the video function of myspace was represented on the app. I think the video's are one of the best attributed of myspace. For a FREE app, it's not too bad.

PicPosterous

- The point of this app is that you're supposed to be able to take pics through the application instead of the iPhone's interface and the pics that you take through the application automatically get uploaded to your posterous blog (skipping the step of having to upload them). The problem is that posterous allows you to have 3 blogs (one has to be primary) and the app doesn't give you the option of selecting which blog the media should be posted to (it automatically posts to your primary blog). For this reason I haven't used this app yet. I suspect the posterous people are working to fix this. When they do...I'll be using it - a lot. This one was FREE too.

ActiveRain

- I had to get the ActiveRain app, right? This one is an "eh" for me, though, honestly. The point (I think) is to have a listing of ActiveRain's presence on all the social media sites. Not much use to me. But on a positive note, ActiveRain works beautifully through the Safari Web Browser my iPhone is equipped with. This is a FREE app.

Y! Finance

- I get all my financial news from Yahoo, I admit it. It's what I'm used to. It's familiar. I find Yahoo to be fair and balanced and I love the way they present market information. I'm also a big fan of the Tech Ticker series. This app has it all! I love it! What do I hate about it? The Tech Ticker videos always seem to cut off before they're actually over with. I really really wish Yahoo would fix that. Otherwise, perfect! This is a FREE app.

WhitePages

- I use whitepages all the time on the computer and when I saw that they have an iPhone app, I had to have it. The ability to reverse search a phone number from my caller ID is an added bonus. This is a FREE app.

Skype

- I haven't used this app yet, but the purpose for it is that you can use your iPhone to make free calls to other Skype users as long as you're hooked up to a WiFi internet connection. Who could resist that kind of geeky cool gagetry? This is another FREE app.\

iFighter

- I had to get a game in, right? This one I paid for. The game has you flying a World War 2 era fighter. Your mission is to destroy Nazi weaponry. It's highly addictive. You control the plane my tilting the phone in the direction that you want it to go. It might sound sketchy, but it's highly intuitive and fun. I cruised through the first 4 levels the first night. The drawback? There's only 4 levels.

This was a lot of fun to write! And since ActiveRain doesn't aggregate comments for SEO, I think I'm going to copy this comment pretty much word for word into a blog post.

Melissa - Thanks for the idea!

SEP

You have to get the Google app. It allows you to just speak the business you are looking for and automatically pulls up the phone number/website. The voice recognition is great. I am also a fan of the Weather Channel app. It is much more detailed than the weather app that comes with the phone. You can get hour by hour, 7 day, and video forecasts. Both are free.

SEP

Todd - Great recommendations! Thanks for commenting a d sharing those.

NOV

Jason, I am about 10 days into my new iphone purchase. I honestly don't know how I lived and did business without it. I definitely won't ever use anything else again.

NOV

Tammie - It's amazing how much stuff it can do, right? Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

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