$59 for a tablet! Business People Rejoice!

It's time for the business community to rejoice.  Tablets have now reach the point of an easy expense.  A California company is now offering a reasonably powered tablet for only $59.  I will open your eyes by giving you an example of what the smart entrepreneur can do:

You have a small restaurant with 10 servers.  Pay $600 for each of them to have a tablet and place videos of each item on the menu on the tablet.  You cannot imagine the impression to a customer that you will be able to give off  when you show a sizzling steak on the 7 inch screen of this tablet.

This is just one idea, let your imagination tell you how you may incorporate them into your business.

Resources:

MatrixOne

Finance Management , the Mobile Way

To properly manage your business and take your hustle to next  level, aggressive money management has to be a priority. Money management is not sexy but can be made bearable by using the right tool to fit your needs.

The best place to start , is your financial institutions. All the big banks have a website and most have a Android app that you can do the main functions from the site.  I use Chase, here are some examples of options I have found useful from their mobile solutions.

1. Text notifications can be set for many thing that happen on your account .  Set it for daily balance updates and a text for each transaction.
2. The Android and iPhone app both allow you to scan checks and deposit them on the go.

Money Management Apps 

Mint.com is a feature rich program for managing personal finances.  It also has a Android app that syncs the information from the website to your device. This program can give you an overview of financial situation and provides graphs to

PageOnce is also a money management system with both a web an Android app.  The strength of the application is it's notification system that will let you know when bill due dates are coming up.   This application also allows you to pay bills within the app, making it a must have money management app.

Gain Total Control of Your Android Device

The biggest difference that you find with the Apple's iPhone and the Android Operating System is control. I always find it weird to call a device that has more power than my first desktop computer a phone.  Since these devices are so powerful , making sure that you are control and manage your device at a deep level, ensures that you can leverage that power to its greatest potential.

Here are some tools to help you gain a great level of control over your Android device (short of rooting your device, I will talk about that in a future post) :

SystemPanel - Your Android device is truly a computer ,so having a tool that will help you manage things like the device's temperature, system storage , system performance and much more is essential.  

ES File Explorer - Just as your computer uses Windows Explorer ES Explorer does the same thing for your Android device.

Plot out Your Empire with Mindmeister

People process information in many different ways.  For those that process information easiest by creating diagrams, Mindmeister can help you visualize your empire.  Mindmeister is a web application that has an Android component which allows you to do tree-like diagrams where one item braces to the next.  This is great for me when planning businesses, as it gives me a visual representations of how the business needs to be set up and the and the details that relate to it .

The service is free for a limited amount of diagrams.  The Android application is also free, and stays consistent with the look and feel of the web application.

Resources:

MindMeister Web App
MindMeister Android Application

Read all Your Favorite Sites Like a Magazine with Currents

If you are a person that is busy and money-minded , you will have websites that you frequent for your daily information.  Some are heavy into stocks so they hit cnbc.com , or you may have more underground sites that you use to guide your hustle (riseandgrind.com) .  Regardless of the site you can view them in a consistent magazine-like format using currents.  Currents is a rss feed reader just like Google Reader , but this brings a much more readable interface to the table.  It is a free app and needs to be experienced to understand how awesome this app is.  Get it now from the link below.

Currents on Google Play 

Education Moving Forward with Khan Academy

It is very easy to get too busy to make sure that the kids are studying. When you are consentrating on so many things, the kids get lost in the shuffle. Khan Academy is a great website that allows you to create a lesson plan that can be tracked.

I have found it very useful . My only problems are two things:  One you have to have a Google or Facebook account to join.  This was not a problem for my older kids but an issue for the seven year-olds.  My other issue is that the information tracking does not show up in the mobile application.  These small issues are small and I am sure they will be addressed with later updates to the site.  

I highly recommend that this site as it will give you a way to have study time over and above their school work.  

Check out this video where the one and only Bill Gates co-signs this site:

Resources:

Khan Academy