If you wanted to check your bank balance, Netflix queue, and eBay purchases from your BlackBerry or iPhone, which would you start with first? If you answered "all three," take a look at Pageonce, which we've spotlighted in this First Look video.
After logging in on your phone, you'll be able to view what is essentially a stylized RSS feed of your financial, social-networking, travel, and shopping accounts, the details of which are secured from prying eyes in a number of ways. Pageonce for iPhone comes in a free, ad-supported version and in a pro version that costs about $10. Pageonce for BlackBerry costs $10 for the same features as the iPhone pro version.
(Credit:
Pageonce)
If you're already using Pageonce on your BlackBerry, get ready for version 2.0.
On Wednesday, the Silicon Valley company is releasing an upgrade to its productivity application.
Instead of getting a fresh lick of paint or a slew of new features, Pageonce 2.0--which lets you view status feeds for your social networks, e-mail, flights, and finances from a centralized app--will simply, importantly, give you full managerial control over the app's basic functions. Starting Wednesday, you'll be able to register, add accounts, and delete them from the phone.
While the new functionality is more a win for first-time users than for those who have been around since the early beta, being able to join up and build your feed from the phone is critical if Pageonce is to virally succeed. It also seems prudent, I should add, to let people delete accounts on a mobile application with your bank balance, stock portfolio, and credit card charges.
We'll post Pageonce 2.0 for BlackBerry here when it goes live Wednesday. It will also be available over the air at m.pageonce.com for many BlackBerry phones, including the touch-screen Storm.
Mint.com released a new and free iPhone application early Monday. Similar to PageOnce's mobile efforts, Mint's lets you monitor your credit card and bank accounts from your phone. It also throws in things like your monthly budget, incoming cash flow and expenses, along with any investment accounts you have synced up to Mint.com.
For security, Mint seems to have taken a page from PageOnce in letting you enable or disable mobile access from Mint.com. If your phone gets lost or stolen, you can simply cut off its access to your account, keeping any would-be identity thieves from taking a look at past purchases, or getting an idea of your net worth. It doesn't show any of your account numbers, or even let you add new accounts from your mobile device (which PageOnce does), but can be a treasure trove of information in the wrong hands.
Another thing worth noting about security is that if you don't have your iPhone passlock-protected, anyone can fire up the application and see the dollar value of each of your accounts. I'm a little surprised Mint hasn't placed its own special passcode security system for those first using this app, or even provided the option to require a password between sessions. The best you can do is simply log off in between use, but that's not a good long-term solution.
Security issues aside, it's a good first start for Mint, and for regular Mint users this is yet another way to get at things like your budget and accounts without having to rely on your bank offering a site that can be accessed on mobile devices. The alerts are also very handy and can tell you if a credit card bill is close to being due, if you're spending more than usual, or if there have been large deposits or withdrawals into your various accounts. For those things alone, it's worth downloading the app, just be sure to flip on your iPhone's built-in security lock feature.
Mint's iPhone app lets you check out bank accounts, credit cards and monthly budgets.
(Credit: Mint.com)
With the economy in continuing decline, keeping tight control over your money is no longer just for obsessives. These financial apps for Google Android help you count every penny.
Personal Budget Droid is a simple budget- and bills-tracker that lets you create multiple monthly budgets for groceries, housing costs, and so on. You enter every budget name and transaction by hand, but the app keeps a transaction history and calculates how much you have left for each category.
The more sophisticated FireWallet works with budgets inside various accounts and protects your information behind a four-digit pin you change from the all-zero default. It's a bit trickier to navigate, but also shoehorns in more options. In addition to a more refined interface, FireWallet has graphs and charts to help visualize your spending, and a rudimentary tool to alert you of upcoming bills. Both it and Personal Budget Droid are missing templates and more powerful features to optionally suck in real-time data from your checking, savings, and stock portfolios. Time for a mobile version of Mint?
Flick to either side for a calc that rounds up; up or down gets you a breakdown of numbers to pass around.
(Credit: TouchTip)TouchTip is our current favorite tip calculator for Google Android. Flick a finger left or right to slide between a simple tip calculator that rounds up to the nearest dollar or ten dollars, and one featuring a ten-digit keypad. Both views use the bill total, tax, and number of diners to calculate your total payment. Flicking up or down produces a breakdown of what you owe that you can pass around the table to friends.
Personal Tip Jar hails from the same developer as Personal Budget Droid, and shares a few visual characteristics, including a useless "news" tab. Yet Tip Jar is a great niche nod to those whose incomes are built substantially on tips. While a fuller budgeting app could easily accommodate gains from tipping, this application provides a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly summary at a glance.
Stock apps on Android are extremely mediocre, but the simply named Stock App is better than other skeletal tickers. This one opens with Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500, Yahoo, and Google presets. You can add your own by pressing the menu key, and can browse frequently traded stocks. Stock App displays the value and percentage change up front; double-tap an entry to see more stats. While it's functional, Android is sorely missing the completeness of a stock-tracker like Bloomberg for iPhone. Get to it, developers.
Buddi is a finance managing program that's poised with potential. Open source and free, it offers an extensible experience for both Windows and Mac users that's wrapped up in a simple tabbed interface. As they say in the money biz, it looks great on paper.
Buddi easily handles multiple accounts.
(Credit: Wyatt Olson)The application can create new accounts from four credit types--cash, checking, investment, and savings--and five debit types--credit card, liability, line of credit, loan, and prepaid account. Users can create their own account types, too, and take brief notes on an account. Strangely, the notes don't seem to surface anywhere besides the window where you enter them.
Under the My Budget tab, you can add transactions under different default categories such as Salary, Auto, and Miscellaneous Expenses, or again you can create your own. To enter a new transaction, double-click on the account or budget category under which it has occurred. From there, pre-existing accounts and transaction titles have automatically been added to the drop-down menus to accelerate the new transaction creation process. Buddi generates reports and pie charts on command by income, average income, expenses, and net worth. You can encrypt your data, too, although I couldn't find documentation on the encryption method used.
The notes feature only surfaces in one location--where you type it.
(Credit: Wyatt Olson)This is a good start in terms of features, but the execution leaves much room for improvement. There's no context menu support, no drag-and-drop support, and the forced need to jump between tabs to see how expenses and income relates to specific accounts feels antiquated compared with newer financial management programs and Web sites.
Plug-ins, as always, immeasurably extend the potential of a program, and Buddi is potentially no different. The plug-ins that I tested included QIF and CSV import, export, and skins, and generally worked well. There were issues with QIF file recognition--the plug-in would only see QIF files when All Files was selected, and even then, I sometimes had to move up a folder level and then back again to get them to appear. Once imported, though, there were no problems.
Although I don't think skinning is essential, I'd argue that being able to import your financial database from a previous program is a must, so I'd like to see the extension rolled into the program at some point. The most obvious feature-deficiency is that there's no account synchronization available. This means that you must enter all new transactions by hand, which can be an enormous time-waster. Even though there's a plug-in that lets you synchronize with the financial management Web site Perfitrak, it doesn't replace the benefit of having native syncing.
Buddi also generates charts based on multiple variables.
(Credit: Wyatt Olson)
Updated 10/20/08 with a product download link.
I just demoed the prerelease version of Pageonce for BlackBerry, an app that will help track your personal finance and other online accounts.
For those of you unfamiliar with the product of which I speak, Pageonce (covered here and here) is a one stop shop for accessing all your online accounts from your mobile phone (as of today that's just the iPhone).
You sign up for an account online and begin filing the details for any number of personal accounts. There are templates you can choose by category, such as airlines for travel, Netflix and Amazon for entertainment, and, of course, your banking and credit card accounts. If your account type isn't there, you can add it in by hand.
After the initial setup, which can take some time if there are a lot of accounts you'd like to track, you'll be able to sign in from the BlackBerry to view your transactions, credit limits, and balance statements chronologically or by individual account.
Keep tabs on your cumulative spending.
(Credit: Pageonce)If all this inputting of personal details sounds a little scary--after all, who would lightly enter their financial information anywhere?--keep in mind that Pageonce is shielded by 256-bit encryption and that Pageonce sends you e-mail alerts of suspicious activity if you or someone claiming to be you spends above your usual levels.
In the Advanced Security tab on BlackBerry, you'll also be able to lock Pageonce to your specific device. If anyone tries logging on from another device, your account will be deactivated to keep your information secure. If you're sharing financial information with someone else, however--a spouse, perhaps--Pageonce does support simultaneous sign-ins, so you can both track your cumulative spending, stock portfolio, and due dates for your next bill.
Pageonce is a much prettier and more functional app on the iPhone, however it proves fast and easy to use on the BlackBerry. Pageonce is currently free of charge and free of advertisements, though CEO Guy Goldstein confirms that banner ads will soon premiere for both platforms. Goldstein is also toying with the idea of making Pageonce for BlackBerry a premium product in the future, so you'd best get to downloading while the downloading is good and free.
While I am personally slow to share my bank account numbers and other sensitive data, those with more expansive comfort zones will find Pageonce a useful tool, especially if you travel often and have limited opportunities to check your statements online.
You can download Pageonce for BlackBerry by pointing your mobile browser to www.m.pageonce.com.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
The world of finance is sober, serious business, ever more so in a struggling through economy. Bloomberg's freeware application for the iPhone and iPod Touch gives information-seekers a clear view of the moment with financial headlines, a ticker finder, and a fleshed-out index of world markets.
An appealing dark-themed application, Bloomberg contains a read-only newsfeed and statistics on various exchanges in global markets. Highs, lows, and a graph of yearlong performance are displayed for each exchange--further charts and tables are available for industry and stock movers.
To discover individual stock performance, users simply enter the company name into the stock finder, which also keeps a short-term history of your past queries. Even better, entering stocks and your share holdings into the My Stocks folder creates a personalized portfolio you can watch for daily fluctuation.
Windows Mobile users looking for a way to manage their personal finance from their phones ought to take a look at SplashMoney for Windows Mobile smartphones and PocketPCs, which just became available this week. The two-way app synchronizes with a desktop companion (included in the mobile download) to keep information current between the phone and computer, though SplashMoney also works as a standalone app on the phone as well as the Mac or PC.
Similar to most mobile money managers, SplashMoney lets you store and track financial data such as credit card details, account balances, budgets, and expenses. You'll also be able to download information from an online account and view data in chart and report form. There are, of course, customization options to assign icons to entries and to change colors.
Since you input the data into categories, the app requires some time investment up front, either on the device or on the computer companion app. Though SplashMoney is password-protected with 256-bit Blowfish encryption, we always recommend ramping up the security settings on any device containing sensitive personal or financial data, in case it gets stolen or tampered with.
Until now, SplashMoney has only been available for Palm OS. The 30-day trial is fully functional on Windows Mobile phones, including touch-screen models, and costs $29.95 to own.
Intuit will release the Web version of Quicken on January 8. I just got a demo and spent some hands-on time with the beta of the app. The answers to the two big questions about the app are: Yes, Mint should worry. And No, Quicken Online is not going to cannibalize Quicken's software sales. (See previous news story: Intuit building Quicken Online.)
Easier to use, but does less
Uh-oh.
Like Mint, Quicken Online is targeted at people with "simpler financial needs" than typical Quicken desktop users, Quicken product manager Jim Del Favro told me. By that he means younger users who haven't yet seen their financial picture complicated with mortgages, investment portfolios, and employee stock option plans, financial instruments that Quicken Online does not support. In contrast, Quicken desktop lets you cook your own books a hundred different ways. (See reviews: Mint; Quicken 2008.)
Like Mint, Quicken Online pings your financial institutions on your behalf and always shows you just what your banks and credit card holders know about your accounts. Quicken Online is based on a very strong cashflow management message. The home page is titled, "Am I living within my means?" It shows you, in three big boxes, the money you've earned in the last 30 days, what you've spent, and the difference. If the income is less than the outgo, the very stark third summary box tells you by how much, with the headline, "So, I overspent."
The product does not provide bill payment or presentment services. Rounding out the billing functionality is slated for future updates. However, Quicken Online does try to determine which of your expenses are bills, and it will remind you each month before it expects those bills to come due. It can even send reminders to your mobile phone.
A quick snapshot of your cashflow
(Credit: Intuit)For tax year 2008, Quicken Online will integrate with TurboTax Online (review), Del Favro told me. That's big.
In the beta I tried, setting up accounts was easier than it was in Mint's early days. The service knows about more than 5,000 banks and credit card issuers, and getting it to download your data is a simple matter of providing user IDs and passwords. As with Mint, you have to trust Intuit to keep your passwords safe. Intuit has the marketing advantage in this regard, since the company has been in the personal finance business for more than 20 years and has earned users' trust.
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