As someone who attends a lot of trade shows each year, I\r\nhave found that my smartphone is an invaluable tool for helping me to function\r\nefficiently while on site. Here are five of my favorite smartphone apps to use\r\nwhile attending a trade show.
Note: This gallery is also available as an article.
One of the great things about attending trade shows is that\r\nif you play your cards right, you can make a lot of contacts. Of course the\r\nflip side to that is that you might be inundated with business cards, which can\r\nall start looking alike after a while. Not only that, Murphy’s Law specifically\r\nstates that the only business card you will misplace is the one that you needed\r\nthe most.
CamCard is a free app that allows you to take pictures of business cards and save\r\nthe contents to your phone.
Upon photographing a card, CamCard uses optical character\r\nrecognition to recognize the card data, but you can edit the data if necessary.\r\nCamCard also enables you to add custom fields and to add reference notes to the\r\ncard information.
CamCard is available for Windows Phone, iOS, and\r\nAndroid.
Track My Budget allows you to set up custom categories, such as flights and\r\nhotels, and then categorize your transactions. You can enter your total travel\r\nbudget as Income and the app will show you how much you have spent and how much\r\nmoney remains in your budget. Best of all, the app allows you to enter certain\r\nexpenses (such as parking at the airport or your morning coffee) as recurring\r\nso that you don’t have to enter the expense manually each day.
Track My Budget is available for Android and\r\nWindows Phone. There is also an iOS version that is designed to link to your\r\nGoogle calendar.
Dude, Where’s My Car is simple but effective. It allows you to create a named\r\nlocation for where you parked. When it is time to locate your car, the app uses\r\nmapping to show you how to get back to it. On my phone, the mapping software\r\ndefaults to walking mode, but since I am in Houston at the moment and my car is\r\nin Charlotte, I have the option of getting driving directions to my car.
Dude, Where’s My Car is available for iOS, Android,\r\nand Windows Phone.
Expensify lets you photograph your receipts and then uses optical\r\ncharacter recognition to extract data from them. You also have the option of\r\nentering data manually. Once the data has been entered, you can compile a collection\r\nof receipts into an expense report.
Expensify is available for iOS, Android, and\r\nWindows Phone.
* 1988 - Started teaching myself about computers \ * 1992 - Mainframe programmer for an insurance company \ * 1993 - Network Administrator for a different insurance company \ * 1996 - Author for The Cobb Group \ * 1998 - Network Administrator for Fort Knox \ * 1999 - CIO for chain of hospitals \ * 2000 - Gave up the corporate rat race to work out of my home. I have been a full time technical author ever since. Visit my Web sites at http://www.brienposey.com and http://www.relevanttechnologies.com \
