Top 10 Financial Apps That Are Actually Worth Using

Steven Finch — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:24:00 +0000

There are so many financial applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch already, but how do you know which ones are actually worth using? Mint has put together a great list of the top 10 Financial applications everyone should use, so I thought I would post our top 5 and then let you head over to Mint to see the rest.

Bloomberg Mobile (Free)

Bloomberg

Wall Street Traders swear by the Bloomberg Terminal to analyze real-time financial market data, place trades, and get news and price quotes. Bloomberg Mobile isn’t quite the same thing but it is a beautifully designed app that provides up-to-the-minute news, stock quotes, company descriptions, and price chart and market trend analysis. The My Stocks feature is a more detailed replacement for Apple’s stock Stocks app. And Bloomberg Mobile takes full advantage of the iPhone’s position sensor by providing larger charts when you rotate the phone to a horizontal position.

Mobile Banking (Free)

Bank of America

Bank of America’s iPhone app, Mobile Banking is little more than a wrapper around its existing mobile site (which isn’t optimized for the iPhone) but if this is your bank you’ll still find it useful. You can use it to check available balances, pay bills, and transfer funds on-the-go 24/7. Its best feature is its ability to find the nearest ATM and Banking Center locations using the GPS in the iPhone, something that isn’t possible with the mobile site. BofA’s Online Banking Guarantee is its assurance that you won’t be responsible for any unauthorized transactions and it uses advanced encryption technology to prevent unauthorized access to your accounts and to protect your online identity.

PayPal (Free)

PayPal

In Japan many have thrown away their wallets in favor of paying for everything from train tickets to beer from a vending machine with their mobile phones. We’re not quite there yet but the PayPal app provides a tantalizing glimpse at this future. It provides complete access to your PayPal account allowing you to check your balances and send money to your friends and family, all from your iPhone. It supports 16 currencies and is secured by your existing PIN or password. It’s a good start but I’d like to see it go further. Missing is any way of displaying your transaction history and I’d also like to see it use the notification indicator on the app icon to show when money has arrived in your account.

Loan Shark ($4.99)

FoggyNoggin Software

Designed to help you navigate the often treacherous waters of financial lending, Loan Shark provides a number of features that let you calculate and compare loans from different vendors. You can calculate any component of a loan, including payment, interest rate or loan amount, see the full Amortization Table for the loan’s lifespan and play with “what-if” scenarios that let you determine the effect of making extra, higher, or lower payments. Loan Shark can help you determine how long it will take to pay off that credit card, determine how close you are to paying off your mortgage, and compare the cost of different loans, among many other uses. Kudos to FoggyNoggin Software for an easy-to-use and good looking interface that works well on a mobile device.

Bonus feature: Lets you locate nearby banks using the iPhone’s location-awareness

Tipulator (99 cents)

Tap Tap Tap

Tipulator stands out in a crowded field of tip calculators (it’s often said that the true test of how successful a new platform will be is how quickly a tip calculator appears for it) by marrying cute graphics with easy-to-use number dials. You can probably split the check without it but you won’t have as much fun doing it. And for 1/3 the price of your last latte, you owe it to yourself to at least try it.

Palm Pre Helps Palm Inc Raise More Funds

Steven Finch — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:00:11 +0000

Palm actually wants to get back into the smartphone race. Today the shares of Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ:PALM) rose about 15%. The company increased the size of their secondary offering and raised $83.9 million as part of the process. The company sold 23.13 million shares as part of the secondary offering taking place between now and March 31.

Palm was initially expecting to sell 18.5 million shares being held by investor Elevation Partners. Palm added the extra 4.63 million shares at a price of $6 per share. Through the offering, Elevation Partners made about $49 million. Palm plans to use the capital raised to push the hype of the Pre in the smartphone market.

So far the Pre is looking great but is this one product really going to put Palm back on the map?