Where do you want to go? You probably know, but do you know how to get there? The CoPilot Live app can help in ways that you’d need other apps to assist. A route that’s optimized for time. One that suggests places to eat or gas up along the way. An interface that lets you stay inside the app while you take advantage of Wikipedia place entries or Facebook Places. Even traffic updates, for just a little extra each month. Like under a buck.

But the thing that sets this nav app apart is that you’re not buying maps to use it. There are no in-app $49 purchases for North American roads. CoPilot is sold with maps included and free updates How’s that possible? Well for one thing, they do their own maps, instead of paying a third party. Then there’s the company background: they sell truck fleet software and have for 25 years. You don’t have to care about how CoPilot does its business but you’ll want them to keep up with those free maps. Nav apps can get expensive in several ways

But before we look at that, let’s do a discount dance. Until the end of this week the CoPilot app is $9.95, the iPad version $14.95. Discounts a-plenty here in Macworld week. Even at the regular prices this app looks like it can lead you to better value for nav.

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On the Macworld upper deck the creators of Liquidspace have set up a quiet and unique workspace for editors and attendees here. It’s a demonstration of the power of the company’s iPhone and iPad app and database; the database tracks availability of more than 250 meeting places around the US. The space pictured is in Sacramento, and you can book it for a fee that Liquidspace collects via credit card. Some meeting spaces are fee-free, such as local libraries participating in the meeting space network.

Most small business providers have had a constant need for a meeting space away from the office. Especially when that business office is a home office. Starbucks or Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf are the obvious options. These are, of course, poor places to Skype into a meeting, given the noise or the lack of privacy. if you’re on the road and away from a hotel, Liquidspace has a solution. But for $50 or more for the hour, if the budget allows, you can reserve a private space including amenities such as wifi, presentation gear, or even enough room to host a group of 15 colleagues or prospects.

The Liquidspace app is free and becoming a member lets you book spaces and get check in passports for exclusive use of a space — or just a $4 seat at a spot like the quiet workspace next to the Caltrain station in San Francisco. Of the 250 spots available now, 150 are in the Bay Area where Liquidspace is growing up.

Dragon Dictate is available for a special Cyber Monday price today, just $99 for the combination of dictation software and the company’s training video. It’s marked down $130 for today. That’s a discount off the boxed version, which includes a nice one-ear USB headset.

After having evaluated the obvious parts of the 2.5 version, it’s easy to see why a training video would be a big bonus. In addition to supporting Office 2011 and tapping wireless mics, the software has a voice recognition mode that is worth every minute you’ll put into it. Not that Dictate is useless without the training, but a video that outlines the education process will be a lot smoother than the extensive-but-exhaustive product manual.

If you’ve never used an online dictation product before, there’s no better time to start — considering that the technology is a quantum leap in front of anything during the previous decade.

There’s something about the conversational tone in writing that attracts us. Especially when we want to persuade or sell either an idea or a product. In testing, our writing got simpler and more direct while we dictated.

The new 2.5 version of the product lets you use an iPhone or an iPad to control the software, treating the phone as a wireless mic. You can also make a quick post directly to Facebook or Twitter. It’s as simple as saying “post to Twitter,” although you’ll want to be able to find a way to manage the 140-character limit for Twitter.

Mail checks get easier

Apple’s Steve Jobs waltzed around onstage for more than 90 minutes this morning, much of it showing off the soon-to-be-shipping iPhone 4 at the Apple WorldWide Developers’ Conference. While the new phone is 24 percent thinner than the current iPhones, the most impressive business feature comes from the new iPhone OS. Apple has renamed this operating environment iOS, because it runs the iPods, iPads, and the phone.

iOS 4 makes a distinct difference to Apple’s Mail program on the iPhone and the iPad and Touch iPod. Instead of breaking down your mail checking into multiple tries, Mail now consolidates your different accounts into a single “All Inboxes” menu item.

The current state of affairs is frustrating if you use more than one mail account, which is the case for so many small businesspeople. Your personal email goes to a separate account — or at least a separate email address. The new iOS 4 understands that you’ve got multiple personalities for mail.

The iOS 4 will be available to the iPhone and iPod Touch users later this month. The new environment brings things like a $4.99 iMovie, a choice of search engines including Microsoft’s Bing (take that, Google) and a PDF viewer that’s going to make long documents easier to read on Apple’s mobile devices. The Reader will be worked right into the iBooks application.

Oh yeah, and there’s that multitasking thing in the new iOS4, too. Palm hammered Apple on it all of last year until the Palmsters had to sell themselves off to HP. It was not a big enough deal to save the Pre, but Apple’s got the feature now. It’s probably best used with the newest Apple mobile devices, though — for reasons below.

Using iOS 4, there are now folders to organize that mess of apps so many of us have on our Apple mobile devices. But perhaps the best news of all for business phone users involves battery life. The new Apple chip just made things last a lot longer. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple’s mail program, Mail, is gaining a regular place for our business. One of the best things about this software is its ability to travel. We’ve learned to use it on our iPhones to keep up with e-mail while we’re out of the office. The 3G capability is what makes this possible, but you can check mail while mobile over a WiFi connection on other Apple devices.

That includes the iPad as well as the iPod Touch. Take Control Books, edited by Mac veteran Adam Engst, has a new PDF book title out to maximize your use of Mail while mobile. Take Control of Mail on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. Written and edited by Joe Kissell and Dan Frakes, the 96-page book promises to make Mail more useful on these devices.

This new ebook takes a practical look at using the Mail app on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. It explains various email account options, helps you develop a real-world mobile email strategy that integrates with your Mac, explains the mechanics of sending and receiving mobile email, and provides essential troubleshooting advice.

Mail is one of the most useful things on the iPad, in part because you can create something in it — an aspect of the iPad that’s still gaining credibility. Even over a WiFi link, it’s become a ready tool in my business belt. Take Control has other Mail training aids as well, if your exposure to Mail is limited to your desktop. Read the rest of this entry »

Apple pointed to the sales of the iPhone as the primary factor in its $13.4 billion Q2 report this week. The device, which Apple sold more than 8.7 million units of, is becoming the equivalent of the inkjet cartridge at HP. High volume, high profit, and a very different product than the company has been known for. You might argue that the iPhone has little to do with the mission of the Mac. But you won’t be throwing away an iPhone every month, like those HP ink cartridges. Using an iPhone in conjunction with a Mac makes the mobile device act like an extension of the computer.

What works in Apple’s favor it that the iPhone has plenty of competition, but no direct knock-offs. It’s the Apple product most likely to introduce the company’s computer solutions to a first-time customer. The second most likely product? The Mac itself. Apple said about 300,000 Macs sold at the Apple retail stores during Q2 went to customers who had never owned a Mac before.

Apple cites a “stronger product mix” including more iPhone sales while explaining how it beat analyst estimates by more than 2 percent for margins. Then there’s the $47 billion in cash the company reported for the period ending March 31: A lot of clams to toss at whatever research and development opportunities emerge.

Apple pointed at its “first mover” opportunity with the iPad as one place where it intends to exploit its advantages with fresh investment. Apple expects to release iPad units in 9 overseas countries by the end of May and ship the 3G versions by the first week of May.

One analyst said the iPad has a chance to become “the Mac of the masses.” In the 1980s Apple called the Mac “the computer for the rest of us.” Many analyst questions during the Q2 conference Q&A covered the iPad. As of this week, one tracking site estimates more than 1 million iPads in use: An introductory rate that outstrips the adoption of the iPhone in its first quarter of sales. Perhaps what the iPhone has done for Apple is a sign of what the iPad might add in several years.

Complete instruction and training, but O'Reilly offers a better deal

An iPhone problem led me into my library of O’Reilly Missing Manuals, an ever-growing sheaf of pages that’s approaching one full foot of dandy advice and training. A Missing Manual for Apple products is often likely to have the crack advice of David Pogue among its authors, making them a pleasure to read and a complete resource. (Pogue created the Missing Manual series.)

But a Missing Manual book is also bound up by the Curse of the Index. Nobody can reference every entry for every word in a book made of paper. The index would run longer than the content. You can spend awhile searching a handful of entries in a paper book, and even if the advice is inside, locating it among 600-odd pages takes time. You might be at deadline on a project and wish there was a faster method to solving a problem — so you can avoid the line at the Apple Genius Bar at the retail stores (if that’s even an option.)

O’Reilly’s got a shortcut for your fixit dilemma. Today the solution is e-books, editions of these Manuals you download and read on a Mac, an iPhone, a Kindle or yes, even the new iPad. Today, all e-book purchases are half-off, in celebration of Earth Day.

I already had the iPhone Missing Manual in my library last weekend, when my iPhone refused to sync up and cough up its photos. I wanted to push a new album onto the phone to show some images to a client. The new iPad was in use elsewhere at Bites HQ. The solution to the iPhone problem was inside the Missing Manual. I might have found it faster if I owned an e-book version instead. Read the rest of this entry »

Inventory is among the business uses shown for the Bento iPad version

The new Bento for iPad screenshots are on display this morning, courtesy of media rep Kevin Mallon at Filemaker. In the set on Flickr are several shots that illustrate how this combination of the Apple tablet and Apple-subsidiary’s base-level database can drive a business’s data needs.

Filemaker has always benefited from business interest in its products. There’s only so much cataloging of the garage, the music and film collections, the stacks of books or model trains you can do with a database. Filemaker grew off the backs of small business needs. Bento is a tool robust enough to serve a small business, but with a plucked feature set to get average tasks done.

Databases need data entry devices desperately, so a keyboard has seemed essential to their success. Bento has an iPhone app that has won great reviews. But significant amounts of data entry require a keyboard. This is a lesson learned at commercial IT enterprises, like the sort I cover for the HP market. The mouse-click always fell far behind the productivity of fingers on keys. So this app will be one of the more severe tests of the iPad’s built-in soft keyboard.

Filemaker was being coy about the crossover pricing on iPad and iPhone versions of this app. (Some iPhone apps will be running at no extra charge on the iPad right away.) We’d expect about $9.95 on release, because Apple’s selling the iWork apps at that price.

More than anything else, more than news of IT asset tracking software or a tiny mic to power an iPhone’s recording of meetings, or the reports of the $6 spreadsheet-plus-word processor for iPhone or transcription software for the Mac, people wanted to know if Macworld was healthy after one day without Apple. It would appear the patient was too busy frolicking to stop and have his pulse checked.

In the vacuum of the month before the doors opened, nobody could tell how spry the old guy’s step was going to be yesterday. The conference organizers invited the right people, to be sure. They got an Emmy winner in David Pogue to kick off the opening day with a show so complete it even included a play about Steve Jobs, written as a parody of It’s a Wonderful Life. They got Levar Burton to play Steve Jobs, so the actor who created Geordi La Forge on Star Trek could swap adulation with Pogue. “I can’t believe I get to meet you,” they each said.

But it’s one thing to put on a good one-act and another to fill the seats. A few hundred yards away from the play, the bodies were thick in the center of a bustling Macworld 2010 Expo floor. “Steve Jobs isn’t here,” Pogue said to start his keynote. But the Apple faithful were, and probably will be even more by tomorrow, the first weekend day in decades for this conference.

You had to be patient, in the face of the Cool New Stuff all around, to squeeze through some aisles and into some sessions. Like Burton, though, people seemed to know that this meeting about the Mac has roots, deep enough to weather the chill Apple showed to the show.

Burton came into the public’s eye the year before the Mac was born, the Reading Rainbow host who’s now in his 50s and producing. Pogue is 46, and neither fellow looked anything but genuine in his child-like ardor for Apple’s solutions. Out on the expo floor there were plenty more less famous acolytes and experts to testify to a shinier future, with evidence of their creations on display.

Macworld is so much bigger than just the Mac these days, and what’s been sloughed off of this event isn’t being missed. For every absent Adobe booth there was an expanded Crash Plan exhibit, where the back up company showed a product range wide enough to be free for The People or priced to help corporations protect untold acres of data. Crash Plan was giving out $60 licenses to everybody who visited its booth. Adobe might have been here before, but I never walked away from their booth holding a free tool that could keep my creations alive.

If I ran a company and wanted to save money on my utilities, I would look into the asset management software from Absolute Software. Tucked away into the Enterprise Desktop Alliance booth, the company showed the sort of product you would expect for corporate servers, tracking the use of Macs on a network to show when they could be put to sleep to reduce power consumption. The software scales from a handful of Macs to thousands, in one office or across an organization’s continental network.

The products sold through Dr. Bott include Blue Microphone’s Mikey, emerging in a new model tuned up to grab meeting notes as well as close-up note dictation. It swivels toward the subject of your video you’re taking with the iPhone. It’s got a line-in port to use for phone recording and three “volume” settings on the gadget that plugs into an iPhone or iPod Touch, new gain settings to help you get the sound onto a file headed for your Mac. Once it’s there, the new Scribe software from MacSpeech will help push those spoken words into text. The software was so new to production release that they were burning DVDs at the back of the booth to tuck into boxes. But it was also being sold at about a 40 percent discount.

That sums up the draw of Macworld, for the faithful who’ve come here for years. Something new, unveiled in the sparkle of a sea of the excited, sold at a steep deal and explained in a way the Web can never match. It was enough of a valentine to why we love Apple’s products to bring a tear to this old guy’s eye. Of course, it helped that the moment was echoing It’s a Wonderful Life‘s finale, when “Steve Jobs” learns that there wouldn’t have been the Web, or Wired Magazine, or popular computers, or Pixar, if he hadn’t invented the Mac.

And it helped if you were old enough to know and love the movie as well as the long haul away from that darkest year of 1998, as Pogue’s play pointed out, when Apple lost $1.7 billion and the last non-Jobs CEO was leading the Mac over a cliff. If a Mac’s life could imitate art, the ardor of the audience and attendees here showed a lively pulse for the products of tomorrow, showed today.

Apple’s new tablet is called the iPad. The breakthrough device is starting at $499, somehow — a price point nobody predicted, although larger memory capacities (up to 64GB) will be more. The base model is 16GB, still a lot of storage until you start downloading video. The pricing points kick up a lot for access to a 3G network-enabled version of the iPad. Add $130 to be able to access data — and that’s books, magazines, video and movies and TV, music — from anywhere you can get a 3G signal (ATT’s, although there’s no contract required.)

The iPad is supposed to start to ship by late April, one month earlier if you want the more less expensive Wi-Fi models without 3G. There’s no camera of any kind, still or video, something of a disappointment. No ability to video-Skype from an iPad, alas. And you won’t be able to do more than one thing at a time, which will keep the Apple notebooks a protected niche in the mobile product lineup. Cue the screaming from the world of multitasking fans. This is a bit of good news for Palm and its Pre — which employs a screen about one tenth the size of the iPad. Of course, that Pre’s a phone, too. The iPad has a built-in microphone, so it could be used for Skype-style calling.

The Apple.com site has extensive technical specs and a sassy sales video. A lot of what this tablet can do is best observed from Apple’s video. Significant strides have been made in display technology (for reading, and sharing the screen), enabled by Apple’s custom-built chip to drive the whole device.

Shots from today’s rollout showed the scale of the tablet as well as the interface:

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