Price: FREE  Score: 10/10  By M. Schusterman

In exploring this app, I discovered I know nothing about iPhone app pricing. Because how something this amazing is free is beyond my comprehension.

Fuze Meeting, designed by CallWave, allows you hold and attend online meetings in high resolution, including sharing media and documents. Again: for free.

To test it out, I held a meeting with myself. I set up my free account under one email address on the app, then started a meeting. Then I invited myself by sending an invitation to my other email address from the app (you can also invite others through chat or by phone via the app) and joined my meeting on my MacBook on the Fuze Meeting website.

Sounds confusing, but basically I was holding a meeting from my iPhone and acting as an attendee on my laptop, allowing me to explore both sides of Fuze Meeting. And I have to say, it’s pretty incredible.

The features seem endless, but the best part about the app is how incredibly easy it is to use right off the bat. When I opened it for the first time, the only information I had was “online meetings.” It took just a few minutes for me to start a meeting, invite a guest and share documents and pictures.

From my iPhone, I had the ability to change my “guest’s” role to Presenter, allowing her (well, me) to add media and documents to the meeting as well. I had a short chat with myself, and shared a few photos from my iPhone photo library. The share feature is particularly worth taking a closer look at.

On my laptop as a guest, I viewed and edited photos I shared from my iPhone as facilitator. I also shared a document from my laptop in the meeting. Once you upload the material you want to share in Fuze Meeting, you can edit and make notes directly on the documents on the website.

As a meeting facilitator, it’s remarkably easy to control the meeting from your iPhone. The format is brilliant, allowing you to move easily between chatting, sharing, viewing and inviting others. You can also schedule future meetings, include info about the meeting and make a list of attendees.

And in case I didn’t make this clear – it’s free. Fuze Meeting is definitely one of those apps that makes it obvious just how much the iPhone is changing the way business is done.

Fuze Meeting requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. A small fee was paid by the developer to expedite the publication of this review.

Price: $4.99    Score: 9/10    By Michael Essany

We finally inhabit an era where we no longer need to lug around bulky, expensive, and altogether unwieldy equipment in order to thrive as professionals on the go. And while the business of mobile office equipment is booming, the greatest of convenience results from new features and services provided by the devices we already have with us.

In this regard, the iPhone Document Scanner app from Zirak S.R.L. is the latest must-have application for the most mobile of mobile professionals.

The $4.99 app, appropriately titled “Document Scanner,” enables you to take pictures, enhance them, combine them into multipage PDF documents, and transfer them over Wi-Fi, e-mail or Internet. To understand how well the app works, its imperative to understand how well the iPhone works as a camera. In proper lighting, the camera works sufficiently well enough to make this app very purposeful. In less than ideal settings, however, like a poorly lit library or office, it may be difficult to secure the best scan possible.

But, truth be told, the image correction and enhancement components of the application are among the best available through any application.

The app itself, though, works seamlessly and includes all the attributes you would expect and demand of a scanner – but all for an unbeatable price.

Other notable features of Document Scanner include:

• Combine pictures into multipage PDF documents
• Store any number of pictures and PDF documents
• Protect PDF documents with a password
• Send pictures and documents via e-mail
• Pictures can also be exported to iPhone’s camera roll or copied to the clipboard

If you’re wondering, Document Scanner only requires an Internet connection for sharing scanned images via e-mail or Google Docs.

Overall, its an outstanding application that will leave many wishing they had been privy to such an app much, much earlier in their professional lives.

Document Scanner requires iPhone OS 3.1 or later and is compatible with both iPhone and iPod Touch.

Price: $2.99    Score: 9/10    By Michelle Schusterman

This app is just like its name – straight to the point.

Finance Study Guide, designed by Good Mark’s Study Guides, is aimed at students and business professionals who want a quick resource for basic financial information.

I say “basic”, but take that with a grain of salt. I’m no financial expert, and a lot of the material this app provides is new stuff for me. However, the language is clear, without any confusing jargon, and within the first few minutes I learned quite a bit of new information.

What I do understand is what makes a good educational app – a user-friendly format and clear purpose. And Finance Study Guide gets an A on both. There are five menus to choose from at the bottom; Study Guide, Questions, Exercises, Formulas, and Definitions. The Study Guide is split into several categories, a few of which have their own sub-categories. The definitions, graphs and formulas provided are easy to understand and perfect as a study aid right before an exam.

Questions is a great way to quiz yourself – read the question, guess the answer, then tap “next” to see if you were right. The Exercises sections is also helpful, providing real situations for you to analyze. For example: you are given a scenario with investment information, and asked to figure out what the company’s balance sheet would look like at the end of the first period.

Many of the categories in the Study Guide contain formulas, of course – this is finance, after all. The Formulas section lists each one, perfect for a last minute cram session or as a quick reference. And the Definitions section is set up alphabetically – tap “L” to see the definitions of terms like “Lead Manager” and “Leverage Effect.”

I’ve seen a few study guides in the past that supply great info, but it’s not nearly as easy to navigate as Finance Study Guide. The bottom line? If you’re taking a finance class, this $2.99 investment is one definitely worth making.

Finance Study Guide requires iPhone OS 3.1.2 or later and is compatible with the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Price: Free    Score: 9/10    By Steve Beaudry

Foocall by Ghost Telcom LTD lets you place international phone calls for as cheap as they come, and for an designed to make calls – it does pretty much exactly what you expect it to do. There’s a keypad for manual number entering, but Foocall will read your iPhone contacts and allows you to add your own international contacts. You can also choose a contact from your Foocall history. Foocall gets high marks for being easy and useful for those with people to call outside of their local area.

Foocall provides your iPhone with a local number that patches through to an international number, so you’re only using your local minutes while Foocall does all the legwork. From there, you pay Foocall some cheap rates per minute. You can pay as much as you want ahead of time to top up your balance before calling.

This app has been around for a while for other cell phones as well as for computers and landline phones but has only just been released for iPhone. It’s easy, cheap and free to sign up. If you have friends, family or business in other countries, there is no excuse not to have Foocall in one form or another.

Try it for yourself! When you download the app, it gives you 50 UK pence worth of free minutes (they are a UK based company) just so you can see how awesomely easy and useful it really is before you make any kind of commitment. As far as iPhone international calling goes, you can’t get much better than this.

FooCall requires iPhone OS 2.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone only.

Price: $1.99    Score: 9/10    By Steve Beaudry

Kid Point Tracking by Juicebox Software immediately impressed me as a point tracking system for children. It used to be that parents would award good behavior by posting gold stars under the child’s name on the refrigerator. Now, with the advent of shiny, new technology, the same parent can keep track of their kids’ good deeds on the very same device they use to conduct business or play video games: their iPhone.

Right off the bat, however, it’s easy to think that something is missing. What I would like to see is an immediate set-up process that asks for how many children you have and their names and ages. That said, the “setup” button is easy to see on the first page. Press it and it gives you exactly those options I mentioned plus the options to add actions with point values and categories of these actions. For example: “Eat breakfast” is an action and “Morning” is that action’s category.

Adding children to Kid Point Tracking is a snap. First it asks you how many children for which you’re tracking points. After that you come to an individual child’s setup screen on which you’ve got name, age and photo options. It’s just as easy as tapping, typing and sliding.

After you’ve added children, you can go back to the home page and start recording points. Now, it would have been easy to make this app with a pre-set list of actions that gain points, but what’s good about this app is that not only does it come with actions, but you can also add some of your own. For example, “Did Homework” is not on the list. Believe me, I looked. It’s just not there. An odd thing to leave out, I know, but I can easily add it:

In order to add “Did Homework” to our list of actions, you can go back to the home screen and press Setup again. Then “Actions and Point Value,” and there you find your pre-set actions. A drop-down menu displays the categories. But there’s really no category that fits “Did Homework,” so I’m going to backtrack a bit. On the last page there’s a Categories button. I press it and it shows me every category plus an “Add New Category” button. Press that and it’s as easy as typing “School” and then tapping “Add.” Back on the Actions screen select “School” from the drop-down menu and then press the + button to add “Did Homework,” which is pretty self-explanatory.

As you can see, there requires a bit of effort to work through the set-up process, but once that’s down, rewarding your children is just a couple of taps away. Kid Point Tracking loses a point for being a bit clumsy to begin with, but it’s otherwise a solid app. A must-have for the high-tech parent.

Kid Point Tracking requires iPhone OS 3.0 and is compatible with both iPhone and iPod Touch.

Price: $3.99    Score: 10/10    By Sarah Parker

Whether your electronic messages are professional or personal, people often need a more secure and private way to communicate with others. If you need to send private or sensitive information (such as credit card or banking info) electronically, it is best to encode your messages. With iCrypt, created by SIS Software, you can quickly and easily send messages that are cipher-text coded to keep your electronic missives safe from prying eyes.

iCrypt is a simple message encrypting tool that helps to maintain privacy and security with both e-mail and text messaging (encryption for text messaging only works with the iPhone). The user can switch encryption settings between e-mail and text (SMS) in the Instructions section.

The operation of iCrypt is very simple: the interface is very similar to an e-mail or text template. When encrypting an e-mail, enter the recipient’s address, the subject (which will not be encrypted), and a message. Once your message is composed, tap the Encrypt button, and the app will ask you to create a case-sensitive password. The password will be used by the message recipient for decryption, so you must let your recipient know what the password is ahead of time. The recipient of the encrypted message can choose to decrypt the message on their iPhone or on a web browser. If they choose to decrypt on a web browser, they do not need to have the iCrypt application. The recipient is prompted to put in the correct password, and the message is decrypted.

iCrypt is a very simple and easy to use encryption tool. There is really no need for instructions, but iCrypt does have a short tutorial if you find that you need it.  iCrypt and the decryption website worked perfectly and was very well designed. This is a great app for anyone who needs an easy way to add security to their messages.

iCrypt is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch; requires OS 3.0 or later

Price: $2.99    Score: 9/10    By Sarah Parker

An electronic time sheet is great for people who have to manually track their time and like to keep tabs on their projects and earnings. HoursTracker-Time Sheet is one such mobile solution for working people. Created by Carlos Ribas, HoursTracker not only helps you track hours worked, but you can also tally your earnings, your income tax rate, and paycheck deductions.

HoursTracker is a mobile time-sheet where users can record pertinent job information, such as time worked, hourly wages, pay periods, and earnings (gross and net). The “on the clock” feature is really nice; this allows you to clock in or out at the current time, and it keeps a running tally of hours and earnings accrued as time goes on. To access this feature, just tap on the job name on the main page. Tools contains an export feature, a help e-mail, the developer’s website connection, and a Facebook sharing option. It also has a feature wherein the user can remove entire periods of time worked. You can add Break Times to the hours you have worked, but at present, you can only add breaks to an existing work time. The developer is considering changing this, however, to allow people to enter breaks times at the same time as work times.

Once all your job, wage, and work time information has been put into HoursTracker, you can use the Review Hours function to see a summary of all your time worked. You can view your hours summarized by day, week, month, and by job. The Money feature also gives you a summary of the money you have earned for each job. Need to send your work time information to your boss? Use the Export Data feature to send a customizable e-mail to anyone detailing your job info, work times, and earnings.

HoursTracker- Time Sheet is a well designed app that is great for people who need a way to electronically track work times. I do think the developer should add instructions or an FAQ section to the app so first-timer users can learn to use the app properly (it took me a while to figure how to access the “on the clock” feature). Overall, HoursTracker is a great tool for organized time keepers.

HoursTracker is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch; requires OS 3.0 or later

Price: $2.99    Score:  8/10    By Sarah Parker

Do you need an easier way to track your work hours or assignments without trying to remember them off the top of your head? WorkTimes, by madeFM, is a mobile time tracking app that tracks and organizes your hours without pen and paper. Whether you work at home or at an office, this app can make time tracking easier.

The app WorkTimes is basically a time tracker that keeps tabs on the hours and projects that you’ve worked. The first step in using this app is to set up your default work hours in Settings under Work Time. Once the default is set, there are a couple of ways you can enter your details. First, you can choose the date and time you started and ended your shift. The second, and quicker, way to enter a work time is by pressing the “Now” button when you immediately begin your shift and immediately when you end your workday. The app will alert the user if there are any time conflicts or if projects overlap. All the work times that are entered are organized by week, giving you the week number and your hours for that week. If you want to delete an entry, simply swipe it and a delete option will appear.

WorkTimes also lets you categorize your work by creating and managing tags. Custom tags are created in Settings, and then work times are marked with the tags of your choice. The category Tagged Time then gives the user a synopsis of the hours worked under each tag. The Over Time function lets you track how much overtime you have accrued (based on your default settings). There is an instructional how-to in the FAQ section in Settings that gives ample instruction on how to make the app work for you.

WorkTimes is a good app for people who need to track their hours and projects, but there are some things that could be added to the app. There should be an option for paid breaks or the ability to default break times to zero (there is a minimum break time of 1 minute). Also, an e-mail or export option would be great for backing up work times to your computer. Working the app can be a little bit confusing at first, so I would recommend reading up on the instructions before you begin using it.

WorkTimes is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch; requires OS 3.0 or later

Price: $2.99    Score: 10/10    by Nancy Jones

Are you looking for an app that easily records notes at business meetings or captures classroom lectures?  One that provides you with push reminders?  If so, Audio Notes Recorder, developed by Petr Jankuj, is just what you are looking for. It’s a snap to capture your thoughts and set up reminders.

When you open Audio Notes Recorder you see a list of your current notes – with the most current note on top. You can play the notes, add a reminder or delete them. Or, you can tap “new” and instantly start recording. A large display appears and you can record your thoughts – or record a meeting. You simply tap “save” when you want it to stop.  You also have the option of setting the app to record when launched. I thought the audio quality was exceptional. The only difficulty, and this is true of all audio recorders, was that it picked up the noise I was making as well as the presentation I was recording.

You can also easily organize your notes. Audio Notes Recorder allows you to name the recordings, set the color of the sticky-note like icon beside the name and send yourself a push reminder. These push alerts come through whether you have the app on or not. Setting different colors for the icons helps you organize your messages – you can make all yellow messages personal and work ones red – or whatever scheme suits you.

To play a clip back you just tap the note. You can stop it by simply taping again or you can use the bar at the bottom to advance the recording, back-up, pause or restart.

Another valuable feature of Audio Notes Recorder is the ability to send the recordings to yourself or others. You simply tap the symbol in the bottom left corner and a bar appears that allows you to choose between email, FTP or WeScribeIt. The ability to quickly share your recordings could be really helpful in a business setting.  A few taps and you could send the audio notes to all participants or export a copy of the recording to your PC/Mac.

The user interface in Audio Notes Recorder is simple and easy to use, and with the great recording features this app offers I’ll definitely be incorporating it into my weekly routine.

Audio Notes Recorder is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch (2^nd generation) and requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later. This App supports English, German, French, Spanish, Norwegian, Czech, Italian and Hungarian.

Price: $0.99    Rating 10/10    by Nancy Jones

Collecting receipts for business trips can be a hassle. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just collect a few basic facts, take a picture of the receipt and forget it? Well, there’s good news – a new app, ShootReceipt, developed by Endeavour Software Technologies, P. Ltd, gives you all the expense tracking functionality that you could want and is very easy to use. ShootReceipt puts an end to searching through all your bags for receipts and then spending hours organizing the information for your accounting department.

The first thing you do is create an “Account.” This could be the name of your business trip or client. You enter a start date, end date, the currency you will be using (160+ are included) and you an option to add a note. The note is just free-form text; you can add anything you want. It could be a reminder to collect a certain type of receipt or a warning that some particular expense is not allowed.

Once you have your account set up, you click on it and start adding transactions. For each transaction you fill out a name (restaurant name, city, etc.) date, payment mode (cash, credit/debit card or check), amount, category (accommodations, air, meals, entertainment, etc.) and any notes you might want. Then you put your receipt on something flat and click photo receipt.  The camera opens up; you center the receipt and click to capture the photo. You have an opportunity to use the photo or retake it. I know this is going to be obvious, but pristine, non-wrinkled receipts are easier to capture.

Now, all that is impressive and the app would have been worth the money (maybe even more) without any extra features. The real WOW factor comes in when you email the information to yourself, or your accounting department.  You get images of each receipt and an Excel sheet that organizes your expenses by category. You will need either a Gmail or hotmail account to send the information.

ShootReceipt is designed for business use, but that’s not to say you couldn’t use it in your personal life. When I told some friends about this app, they immediately recognized the value from a business point of view, but suggested other uses like Christmas spending or keeping track of everyday personal expenses. How much money do you spend on coffee each month? Or, if you start a home improvement project, this would be an easy way to keep track of the expenses. I think that once you have this app you’ll think of more and more ways to simplify and organize your expense tracking.

ShootReceipt is compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch and requires iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later. Note: Since the iPod Touch does not have a camera, you will not be able to capture an image of the receipt and that feature will be disabled.