Considered using smartphone apps to make your job search easier… Here’s a list of six job-related apps to take your job search mobile:

1.  Business Card Reader:  Take a picture of a business card with your phone’s camera, and the app will import the contact information directly to your address book. 

2.  Documents To Go: This app is available in a few different versions, depending on your platform. Based on the version you download, you’ll be able to view and/or create and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. The premium version offers viewing, editing and syncing of cloud files, along with the ability to view PDF, iWork, Text and .RTF files.

3.  Good Job: With the Good Job app, you can track and save tasks, events, follow ups, interviews, jobs and contacts related to your job search.

4.  Jobs by CareerBuilder: The CareerBuilder app allows you to search its database of nearly 2 million jobs by keyword, location, company and employment type, among others.

5.  LunchMeet: This recently introduced app is like “It’s Just Lunch” for networking. By signing in via your LinkedIn account, you tell the app when and where you’re available to meet someone for networking. Then it’ll match you up with other networkers in your area, and from there you can invite them to meet for lunch, drinks or whatever suits your networking fancy.

6.  Resume App: If you’re on-the-go and need to quickly apply for a job, this app will come in handy. With Resume App, you can build, design and generate a customizable PDF résumé. Once created, you can distribute it directly from your phone.

Here are three key ways smartphones and tablets can help companies transform business processes:

Improves Productivity & Customer Service—If you have to make frequent business travels, it is wise to synchronize your smartphone with your desktop. This will enable you to retrieve the required documents, task lists, and calendars. Linking your smartphone with your database will enable you to manage your customers better too. For example, there are many apps that help you link calls, manage emails and keep in constant contact with your customers on the go!

Mobile Apps make it Easy to Process Payments—For those without traditional storefronts, smartphones make it easy to process credit cards and manage bills and invoices. It’s easy to process credit card payments directly from mobile devices and send a receipt to the client.

Improves Employee Productivity & Tracking– Reporting can be easily done with the help of mobile applications. Instead of using email or spreadsheets, one can immediately report to their respective senior through mobile applications.

All you have to do is enter a current photo of yourself creatively and actively demonstrating use of our Credit Card Machine app. As a small business that can accept credit cards using our mobile app, you can probably come up with some creative recent photos. Pick the best one and enter our contest on Facebook.

Fill out the entry form and submit your photo by Thursday, April 26. We will post it in our Facebook photo gallery. Invite your friends, acquaintances, co-workers, employees, family members and neighbors to visit our Facebook page and “like” your photo entry.

A winner will be chosen from all valid entries and announced on Monday, April 30. All contest rules must be followed. Read our official rules at http://paynetsystems.com/spring-contest/ for details.

If you have a mobile and wireless business and you haven’t downloaded our Credit Card Machine app yet, this might be a good time to try it out. The mobile device app is more than a way to accept credit cards on your Smartphone. It can help you calculate sales tax on your customers’ purchases, track inventory, store client contact information and more. If you judge how good an app is by how many people have downloaded it, consider the fact that Credit Card Machine has surpassed 200,000 downloads. It is now available on a variety of platforms, including Windows, Blackberry, Android and Apple.

Credit Card Machine is an app from Paynet Systems that lets merchants accept credit cards from a mobile device. That means that retail sales staff can complete a sale on the floor without having to turn the customer over to a checkout clerk. In businesses where commissions are an important incentive, some salespeople might risk losing their recognition for sales when the customer checks out. They also might lose a sale if the cashier’s line is too long or no one is standing attentively at the register. The Credit Card Machine app makes it easier for retail staff on the selling floor to close and complete the sale right on the spot. The employee will need a mobile device used for the merchant’s Paynet Systems credit card acceptance account. This makes tracking sales and commissions easier. Using the air print feature, the salesperson can ring up the sale, charge the customer’s credit card of choice and complete the sales experience by walking the customer up to the checkout counter to pick up the receipt.

The Credit Card Machine app is available on most app website stores, and has a number of other helpful features for retail salespeople and merchants.

 [1] 4G LTE

The new iPad is Apple’s first device to support 4G LTE connectivity. The tech giant is now expected to bring the upgraded feature to its other devices.

  [2] Better Display

Apple fans can expect a higher resolution display on the iPhone 5. According to the recent reports, the iPhone 5 will feature a 4-inch edge-to-edge screen with 1280×720 pixels resolution.

  [3] Better Battery life

The battery life of the iPhone 5, is supposed to be improved (up to 8 hours of talk time on 3G and 14 hours on 2G).

  [4] Enhanced Camera

The iPhone 4S includes an 8megapixel iSight camera. It packs the all-new optics feature, which allows the images to look sharper and brighter.
According to the latest rumors, the iPhone 5 could come up with an incredible camera of 13-megapixels with a CMOS sensor.

 [5] iOS 6

The current iPhone runs on the iOS 5 operating system. iOS 5.1 was released at the time of the new iPad’s debut. Hence, Apple is expected to release iOS 6 at the time of iPhone 5’s launch, a feature, which could make the iPhone 5, a more powerful device.

 [6] Siri 2

The iPhone 4S includes Siri technology, which is in its beta version. Apple could come up with an improved Siri, which could be a better assistant to its users.

[7] Face Recognition

Face Recognition, in its improved form, has made its debut in the new iPad. Naturally, the iPhone 5 is likely to include the feature, which will highlight multiple faces when the photos are being taken.

Is your website friendly to mobile shopping? Consider these 5 tips to increase customer service and satisfaction.

1. Load Time – If your mobile site takes a long time to load, you’re losing customers. Try it on your own mobile device, and ask a friend or employee to try it on theirs. If you grow impatient waiting for the site to load, you’re losing customers.

2. Security – Make sure your mobile site is secure from hackers and SPAM. Display a recognizable secure site icon for your customers to see that you accept credit cards and that their online shopping information is safe.

3. Product Information and Availability – Be consistent in the pricing and availability of your products. If it’s on mobile, it should definitely be on your Internet site. Consider that people may want to browse now and shop later.

4. Credit Card Processing – Your mobile customers may be browsing, but if they see something they want, make it easily available for purchase on your mobile site. Make sure your customers can complete their transactions through mobile credit card processing with a quick and hassle-free experience.

5.  Mobile Friendly – Make your site easy to navigate. This will encourage mobile visitors to browse, shop and come again.

Speak your punctuation

Siri understands a slew of punctuation and typographic terms, like ‘new paragraph,’ ‘semicolon,’ and even ‘smiley face.’

Unless you frequently dictate messages, reciting your punctuation aloud doesn’t feel quite natural. But without it, any time Siri transcribes what you say, your text will resemble a run-on (and on) sentence. Thus, when Siri asks you what you’d like your new email to say, speak like this:

“Dear Jason comma new paragraph I’m working on that Siri story we discussed comma and I expect it will be ready soon exclamation point”

Name your friends

So as long as you use real words, you can tell Siri about important people in your life in fun ways. You probably already know you can tell Siri about connections like John Smith is my husband. But you can also add fancier connections like “Father-in-law,” “best friend,” and “nemesis.”
Take advantage of reading messages hands-free.  

Say you’re driving down the road and an email or text comes in.  You want to read it but don’t want to take your eyes off the road.  You can ask Siri to read you the new message (which she does a pretty good job of).  And you can reply to the message using the voice-to-text feature built in.

Here are some advanced instructions that Siri handles:

• What day of the week was November 28, 1980?
• Remind me to order iTunes gift cards two days before Hannukah.
• How many days until New Year’s?
• Make an appointment named ‘Post Holiday Call’ for three days after Christmas at 10am with Jason Snell.
• Reschedule my meeting with Jason Snell to January 8 at 2 p.m.
• When is my next meeting?
• What time is it in Jerusalem?
• What time is sunset in Tucson, Arizona?
• Mail my wife about Dinner tonight and say “would you like me to bring home Chinese”
• Remind me to pick up milk when I leave here.
• What’s the current outside temperature?
• What did the market do today?

For online businesses, it’s vital to make your customers happy so they’ll keep coming back. There are many ways to do this. Here are 4 simple tips to ensure customer satisfaction for e-commerce.

1. Make it simple. Display all of your available products on your e-commerce website in a way that’s easy to navigate. Make sure there is some sort of description of what the products are, what they do and what is available in styles and color features. Give customers an option to buy your products on every page.

2. Make it fast. Accept credit cards. Use virtual terminal credit card processing to make it quick. Give simple instructions on how to make a purchase. Include a phone number or online link for help or more information if needed. Use a credit card processing system that accepts payments online and allows you to issue refunds and credits to customers as needed.

3. Make it secure. Use secure online credit card processing. Keep all customer account information in a safe, secure database and don’t share that information with anyone.

4. Make it successful. Ensure that your customers are getting what they want when they want it. A report recently released by the American Customer Satisfaction Index shows that customer satisfaction with e-commerce website has increased to 80.1 from last year, up by 1 percent. Have a process in place that checks each customer’s order before it’s shipped. This is often as simple as having the person that closes and seals the box double-check the order. If the order is correct, your customer has a better chance of being satisfied.

If you’re in e-commerce, take the time to ensure customer satisfaction. As the trend of buying online grows, your business can grow, too.

For brick-and-mortar businesses, accepting credit cards may open up new doors of opportunity. When someone walks into your establishment, you are relying on what they have in their pocket at the time to provide payment. For merchants displaying their wares online, the stakes are even higher, since you require the customer to either come to you with payment or send payment through another means before they can get what they want. For plan-ahead purchases, this might not be a problem. However,  according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, about 40 percent of consumer spending is impulse buying. In other words, almost half of all purchases are unplanned. If you accept credit cards, your business is giving your customers another option to exercise their impulse to buy. If your business relies on foot traffic, passersby may be looking for a sign that says you accept credit cards before they ever walk in the door. If you display your products online, this is an opportunity to capture their impulse and increase sales.

While it used to be an expensive hassle for smaller business to obtain credit card processing services, times have changed. The merchant application for credit card transaction processing is now a quick process that can be done online or even through your mobile device. The transaction fees and monthly service fees are now very affordable. If you are interested in trying it out, you can sign up and apply for an account through Paynet Systems. Read more about our six-month low-cost starter program so that you can accept credit cards and increase your business or contact our staff for more information.

The interest rate you’ll pay for the money you borrow will be determined, in large part, by this three-digit number that’s generated from the information in your credit report.

Most lenders have carved-in-stone rules about handing out the best terms, and those rules almost always place a major emphasis on your credit score. If their best rates are offered to borrowers with a score of 700 or higher and yours is a 698, those two points could cost you thousands of dollars.

Here are some tips to improve your credit score:

Pay your bills on time. Delinquent payments can have a major negative impact on your score and the longer you pay your bills on time, the better your score.

Keep balances low on credit cards. High outstanding debt can affect your score. Maxing out your credit cards could lower your average score by as much as 70 points.

Don’t open a number of new credit cards that you don’t need. New accounts will lower your average account age.

Have credit cards – but manage them responsibly. In general, having credit cards and installment loans (and making timely payments) will raise your score. Someone with no credit cards, for example, tends to be higher risk than someone who has managed credit cards responsibly.

Closing an account doesn’t make it go away. A closed account will still show up on your credit report and may be factored into the score.