The launch of Apple's iPad on April 3, 2010 has focused attention on the world of apps and mobile devices. Both Using FileMaker Bento and Get Rich with Apps! are available through Kindle both on the original Kindle reader and the iPhone/Pad Kindle app. (They look terrific on iPad--but what doesn't?) And of course Bento (with it's iPhone and iPad apps) as well as the whole area of apps for iPhone, Facebook, and other platforms are key players in the world that has been changed with the introduction of iPad.

Updates to http://northcountryconsulting.com are continuing to add more iPad and mobile information to the site. In addition, comments and the results of our recent survey have shown interest in the use of apps and other technologies for community organizing. There's already some new information in those areas, and there will be more over the summer. Stop by ... and feel free to add comments or use the contact form for suggestions.

Now on to the new books.

Using FileMaker Bento

The Bento Book: Beauty and Simplicity in Digital Organization has been updated for Bento 3. It includes the new sharing, synchronization, and security features along with the many new elements of the Bento interface. Order Using FileMaker Bento now from Amazon.

This is one of the first books in the Using series from Sams. The book itself is available on paper and various electronic formats; it is linked to videos, podcasts, and additional material on the Web. 

From the Introduction:

As a personal database, Bento enables you to combine your information, be it in Bento itself, in Mail, Address Book, or iCal. That means all your data is in one place—on your Mac—and you can use it as you see fit. But Bento 3 does much more—it makes your data as mobile as you are! It is your data, and, with Bento 3, it is where you are. Bento 3 not only integrates your Address Book and iCal data, but it also can synchronize your data with your iPhone. The Bento iPhone app (downloadable from the iTunes App Store for $4.99) means that you can keep your Mac and iPhone data in sync, even allowing you to decide what data is synchronized and what is not. More about this topic can be found in Chapter 8, “Synchronizing with the Bento iPhone App.” 

You can share data even beyond your Mac and your iPhone by sharing your libraries over a local area network with up to five other Bento users (more on this in Chapter 9, “Sharing Data with Other Bento Users”). 

And there’s more if you use Apple’s MobileMe service, which enables you to synchronize iCal and Address Book data with other Macs across the Internet. If you synchronize data with a server such as Entourage, your data can find its way into other databases—subject, of course, to your security settings. 

For many people, their Bento libraries become the hub of their personal data; they use Bento as their primary interface to join the data together in whatever way is most convenient. You do not have to use all of these options. You can construct your own personal database from any of these tools: Bento (the hub), your iPhone, up to five Macs on your local area network, MobileMe and people to whom you have granted access, and also to Entourage. You can add or subtract components as you wish. And rest assured that if you simply want to use Bento on your Mac without any of these interfaces, you can do so and still have a remarkably powerful and customizable tool.

Get Rich with Apps!

In January 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that more than three billion apps had been downloaded from the company’s App Store by iPhone and iPod touch users worldwide, in an astonishing eighteen months. Millions of global Facebook users have access to nearly 60,000 third-party apps, with an eager audience hungry for more.  

The apps landscape is completely different than it was even five years ago. Apps are inexpensive, quick to construct, and regularly baked into business plans. The market for them continues to expand, and savvy developers, marketers, and business owners recognize their potential – but may not fully know their way around the rapidly changing landscape of the great app rush.

GET RICH WITH APPS! Your Guide to Reaching More Customers and Making Money NOW (McGraw-Hill Professional; Paperback, $19.95) helps businesses reach more customers, expand product offerings, and grow a new revenue stream through the huge and growing apps market. Using two distinct approaches – the structural differences new apps have from old-fashioned application programs, and strategies for using them to drive traffic back to your brick-and-mortar and website locations – author Jesse Feiler, who has extensive experience with Apple and Facebook technologies, takes the reader through the key points of construction and execution.

Providing detailed overviews of iPhone and Facebook apps, the book offers point-by-point details describing how apps function and are constructed; strategies for studying and entering the continually evolving apps market; how to develop and distribute new offerings; understanding specific business strategies, such as marrying iPhone and Facebook app features with your business and marketing needs; integrating them with other resources, such as databases and Web sites; accessing the best developer resources; and measuring the success of new and existing projects.

Rather than a technical manual, GET RICH WITH APPS! specifically addresses the lucrative aspects of the rapidly expanding apps market.  This is the book for businesses to get an in-depth overview of the full app story, where it can take your business, and how to get your app under way quickly and efficiently – while your competition is still moseying up to the gate.

Order Get Rich with Apps from Amazon now.

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