Money management apps aren’t new to the iPhone. But there’s a big dog checking out the yard — and this dog isn’t new to the world of personal finance: Quicken. (Intuit makes Quicken, Turbo Tax and QuickBooks.)

We took the iPhone app for a test drive.

Quicken Online Mobile (Free)

What it is: A money manager on the go.

What sizzles: If you’re anything like me, you’re better at spending money than keeping track of what you’ve got. This app’s very first screen once you log in tells you what’s left — really left, as in, once bills are paid — until your next payday.

The setup is fairly easy. On the Quicken Online site, once you have an account, you type in the name of your bank and log in, and it pulls in 90 days of your activity and assesses and categorizes the information. You can set goals on the site. Mint.com (and its iPhone app) also does sorting, categorizing and assessing.

But then, from the outlook page, like the one at right, you can turn the phone to the horizontal landscape mode to get a graph of your financial landscape — upcoming bills show up as red dots that show the date, payee and amount when you touch them. The lavender across the bottom is the money you have left, and a purple bar should indicate your next paycheck. (My next paycheck isn’t showing up in this screen grab, which I hope is not an indication of whether one is coming.)

Under “activity,” it lists all of your specific transactions and categorizes them. If you want to label transactions that are uncategorized or adjust the ones that are, you can do that manually.

One really cool feature that also uses iPhone strengths, whether 2G or 3G, is the ATM finder. Using GPS and what it knows about your banking preferences, it locates the nearest banks with green dots on the ones that won’t cost you additional fees to use. (Or instead of using GPS, you can type in a ZIP code.) Directions are available from the Google map.

Among the minor features: Auto log-in and password protection. If someone managed to get into the app, the worst they could probably do is rearrange your categories. No account numbers are included, and money can’t be transacted.

What fizzles: Of course, the data reside on Quicken servers. Some folks aren’t wild about giving over their personal banking details no matter how secure servers are.

In later incarnations, it’d be great to see the ability to use the iPhone camera to snap photos of relevant items, say, receipts you might need later for tax purposes, or items you buy to associate with the transaction.

Bottom line: Quicken offers a seamless, user-friendly app to track your money and to stay on track.

Although Quicken is looking toward providing applications for other smartphones, the company said it found the iPhone to be a more straightforward platform to focus on for now. Its mobile site is available to all Web-accessing mobile platforms.
Have you tried it out? Share your thoughts on this app or other money management apps you like in the comments below.

– Michelle Maltais

[via LATimes.com]

Whether or not Windows 7 does launch in October as previously suggested , those who have (or plan to get) Release Candidate will be happy to hear that Microsoft won’t be pulling the plug until June 1, 2010, well over a year from now and 11 months after its initial expiration date . After that, you’re gonna have to fork over the Benjamins for one of the retail SKUs if you wanna keep 7 alive. As for those still living in Redmond’s past, the company’s also extended the life of XP, at least for OEMs. Companies using the older OS will still be able to install it on netbooks for up to one year after 7’s official shape date.

See original here: 
Windows 7 RC and XP given extensions on life well into 2010

That’s right, Windows 7 RC has been given an expiration date far ahead in the mists of time: June 1st, 2010, to be exact.

Here is the original post:
Windows 7 Release Candidate Won’t Expire for More Than a Year [Windows 7]

In the melting ice, amidst the thawing dog crap, Whitehorse, Yukon resident Andrew noticed an oddly-familiar rectangular item: An iPod classic . He brought it home and found, to his surprise, that it was fully functional.

More here:
iPod Classic Survives Deep Freeze in the Yukon [Durability]

It looks like Europe is just as taken with the Pirate Party as we at Giz are, because a recent electoral poll shows them with enough votes to secure a seat in the E.U.

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Swedish Pirate Party Expected to Win (Not Plunder) a Seat in E.U. Parliament [Piracy]

By far the two companies I’ve written about the most recently are Apple and Twitter. This is to the delight of some people, and the absolute horror of others. And now I’ve got something that will really whip up the fanboys and enrage the haters: Me writing about Apple writing about Twitter.

Yes, Apple has a new business profile of the micro-messaging service that it put up today on its site. The headline may just say it all, “Twitter. Triumph of humanity.” But it’s actually a fairly in-depth look at how Twitter uses Apple products to conduct their business. “Pretty much everyone here at Twitter uses a Mac,” says Alex Payne, Twitter’s API lead, in the video that accompanies the profile.

Specifically, the profile is pretty much like a series of talking points about why the Mac is great for business (as you might expect in such a profile). The profile delves into OS X and how it offers just about everything Twitter needs from TextMate to Keynote. And if Twitter team members really need to boot Windows for testing purposes, they just use VMware. Also brought up is the idea that Macs are more secure than PCs. And that MacBook Airs and iPhones has given employees a new state of mind about working on the go.

“Historically, people thought about the Mac as something for entertainment or graphics, but now they see the value of the Mac as a serious business tool. The same is true of Twitter,” the profile says at one point.

But there are a few interesting tidbits. One is that the profile claims Twitter gets “heavy use” out of Numbers and Pages — two pieces of software in the iWork suite that are much less popular than their Microsoft Office counterparts, Excel and Word. Another talks about the synergy between Twitter and Apple — how the keynote address at MacWorld was a big moment in early Twitter usage history. And how Twitter is now driving a lot of development for both the Mac and iPhone with third-party clients.

The profile also claims that many of the team’s software engineers “were attracted to Twitter as an employer because of its bent for the Mac.” And that one of the reasons the office space is littered with Macs is because they are more environmentally friendly than their PC counterparts — a message Apple has been pushing heavily recently.

A quote from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wraps up the profile, “Twitter is a minimalist communication tool that is very powerful. The Mac is the same way. It offers beautiful design, simple elegance, and a system that’s incredibly flexible and powerful to use.”

I can hear it now. The fanboys will let out a collective, “Awwww” — while the haters scream, “Get a room.”

[via Daring Fireball]

[photos via Apple]

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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Fanboys Unite: Apple Profiles Twitter

According to GoDaddy, you should maybe stop buying .tv domains because Tuvalu, who owns all such domain names , is currently sinking underwater. Once Tuvalu no longer exists as a nation, the domains will also disappear. Sure, the island nation is slowly falling underwater, but all hope may not be lost yet. Valleywag points us to a USA Today article from 2004, which says there are exceptons—.su domains from the old Soviet Union are still active

Go here to see the original:
GoDaddy Tells Us Not to Buy .TV Domains Because Tuvalu Is Sinking? [Internet]

Today was a bad day. Unrelated, gadgets were misbehaving. Someone had to pay for it. I was rushing off to meet with Owen from Valleywag, and I was late. I forgot that a surfboard on my roof was not tied down on my roof rack and as I stopped for a stop sign at the bottom of a steep hill, it just slid off and jammed itself under a car.

See original here:
Today, The Gadgets Will Know My Fury [Designmodo]

This year marks the 20th Anniversary of the B-2 Stealth Bomber’s first flight. To celebrate, Northrop Grumman’s has unveiled the B-2 Stealth Bike , which unfortunately doesn’t fly and it’s not invisible. It looks…

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Stealth Bike Celebrates 20th Anniversary of B-2 Stealth Bomber’s First Flight [Airplanes]

You don’t need to spend a fortune building a drivable F-35 and Batman Tumbler, just the right tools along with immense talent in fabrication. Continue reading to see more.

Originally posted here:
Unique Homemade Vehicles That You Can Actually Drive