MacNoob

When Amazon released the original Kindle in ‘07 I bought one for my wife the first day.  She is a voracious reader (as am I) and I really thought she would enjoy it.  The only problem is, the books she tends to read aren’t always available in the Kindle store.  She’s an executive for a Fortune 500 company and her reading taste gravitates towards management theory and work redesign.  Neither genre tends to show up on the NYT best-seller list.  She does find time to do some casual reading and really enjoys the instant gratification the Kindle store provides.  Our ten-year-old daughter, on the other hand, has no trouble finding titles for the Kindle and [thank God] her appetite for reading is every bit as large as her mother’s and mine.  Can you guess where I’m going with this?  Three avid readers + one Kindle = conflict.

When Jeff Bezos announced the Kindle 2 last month I immediately began conjuring a $359 justification.  I have no huge complaints about our original Kindle.  In fact, it has almost become my exclusive book reading format.  I just wanted the new Kindle because it is, well, new.  With no birthdays approaching and Christmas nearly ten months away, I needed a good story to present to the finance committee (my wife) for approval.  I thank God every day for that paradigm because without her to check my techno-lust, things would get out of control in a hurry.  That’s a topic for another day.

Enter the Kindle app for the iPhone.  When I first heard about it I couldn’t believe it.  I guess I’ve grown so accustomed to Apple’s way of doing things that the concept of a free application that effectively eliminates the need for another $359 piece of hardware has become completely foreign to me.  I still want a new Kindle, but nothing short of loss or complete failure of our existing model will facilitate that purchase now.  Anyway, I went straight to the App Store, downloaded and installed the new Kindle app on my iPhone and Pod Touch.  I must admit to being a little skeptical at first.

After all, my 52-year-old eyes need a slightly enlarged font on the Kindle.  The much smaller iPhone screen would have to be a much bigger challenge, right?  WRONG.  The iPhone screen more than makes up for the smaller font with infinitely better contrast.  In fact, I think the iPhone reading experience is every bit as good as that of the Kindle.  For certain, turning pages with a finger flick feels more natural than the Kindle’s button method and the much-ballyhooed  accidental page turn is almost impossible on the phone.  Amazon let me quickly download any of my purchased books I wanted and the “Whispersync” took me to the right spot when I opened my current read.  One thing missing from the iPhone app is the ability to browse or purchase books directly from the Kindle store.  For that you’ll need to use a computer or the Kindle.  It’s a minor inconvenience and I can’t help but think that feature will show up in a future release (if Apple & AT&T don’t object).  Aside from that, adding or navigating to bookmarks, changing the font size, synchronizing and getting back to the main menu is completely intuitive after simply tapping the screen.  In short, after installing the app I had all my books, was reading and felt completely comfortable with it within five minutes.  Also, no more squabbling over the only Kindle in the house.  The only down side, I’m going to need to get really creative if I ever want a Kindle 2!

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Joseph Kelley Software, iPhone iPhone app, Kindle

Before I begin, let me apologize for my long absence. The past two weeks have been quite busy for everyone in the MacNoob household. Between hurricane repair, Mrs. MacNoob business traveling twelve days and my day job, time to update the blog has been virtually non-existent. I promise to do better. (Yeah, right!)
The folks at BriteMac have made what has become an indispensable iPhone app for anyone who travels on an expense account.   JetSet has become the application worthy of elevation to my first home screen, right next to my calendar. I’ve been a business traveler for 25 years and tracking expenses has always been a challenge. My record-keeping (or lack thereof) has undoubtedly cost me hundreds of dollars over the years in lost reimbursements. Lost and/or forgotten receipts and other records have forced me to spend untold hours searching through luggage, calling hotels and writing creative, apologetic notes to accountants. All to often I wound up spending my own money on something my company should have paid for.
As of two months ago (when I purchased JetSet), my expense records are impeccable. I’ve taken three business trips in that time and [thanks to JetSet] each trip’s expense report was a simple 15-minute non-event. The only reason the reports take that long is because of my company’s nightmarish expense reporting form.  It is the result of some accountant acting out self-delusions of being a programmer while using Excel.  But that’s a subject for another day.
It is quite obvious someone at BriteMac has done as much business traveling as I have. JetSet couldn’t possibly be so complete otherwise. It is a well thought out, easy-to-use “Swiss army knife” for business travel. First, if you need to book your own trip, JetSet’s opening screen provides buttons for airlines, hotels and car rental contact information (both phone and web links).  I haven’t used this since my travel is almost always booked for me, but it is nice to know Avis’s phone number is just a couple of touches away.  There’s also a “+” button for creating a new expense report.  This is a bit of a misnomer because JetSet is really an expense tracking application.  Reporting consists only of a simple CSV file output, but I’ll get to that later.  Once you create a “report” JetSet begins to show its real strength, adding individual expenses.  Clicking the “+” while within a given expense report reveals a screen full of icons for 14 common expenses plus the ever-popular “Misc.” category.  Touching one of these takes you to a data entry screen where you can name and annotate an expense item and the really cool part, presents you with a camera icon for photographing a receipt.  This seemed a bit gimmicky at first, but when I started using JetSet I found it to be its strongest feature.  The reality of business travel doesn’t usually provide time for detailed record keeping of each expense at the time it is incurred.  The camera feature enables you to simply snap a photo of a receipt and postpone the detail data entry for later.  I found this particularly handy in restaurants, but it works well for hotel bills and cab receipts as well.  Basically, any time you’re in a hurry or don’t want to be bothered, just snap a photo and you’ve got a permanent record of your expense.  My accounting department even accepted a reprint of one of these photos on my last report.  Losing receipts is an all-to-common malady I suffer from, but it happens to even the most meticulous record-keepers now and then.

JetSet date stamps each expense record for you, but you can edit any portion of the expense at any time, including its date.  Can you say “creative accounting”?  Not that I encourage that sort of thing, but more to emphasize the fact that changes to records are not only possible, but easy.  An integrated calculator pops up whenever you need to enter expense amounts and it includes a button to store your resulting numbers.  This is a very nice feature, especially when you need to calculate some portion of a receipt that may include non-expense items, like hotel bills.  I usually have to subtract charges for movie rentals and the like.

Finally, JetSet includes the ability to transmit any expense report to a GoogleDocs spreadsheet in CSV format.  It’s not perfect, but clearly the lowest common denominator to work with virtually any reporting system.  Personally, I use Google for cutting and pasting expenses into my company’s report format and I retain the file with Google for archiving.

Clearly, it would be impossible to create an expense report application flexible enough to accommodate any company’s reporting structure without winding up with some unusable Rube-Goldberg P.O.S.  On the other hand, JetSet manages to incorporate every feature you need to easily track expenses when they occur and summarize them when its time to report.  This app is “three for three” in my experience and has become part of my normal workflow on every business trip.  I’m certain, given my past, that I’ve saved the $9.99 price of JetSet many times over by virtue of more accurate expense reporting.  Well worth the toll, and fun too!

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Joseph Kelley Software, iPhone iPhone app, JetSet