By Gretchen Glasscock

One has to do no more than look down at your iphone or pull up Itunes app store to see where the web is headed.  Whether on a Blackberry, Nokia or Iphone, mobile usage has surged 600% in the past year, according to mobile analytics specialist, Bango. This coincides with the spread of Wi-Fi hot spots and possibly the fact that it is becoming ever more acceptable to discretely be checking your smartphone during business and social meetings.

In fact, financial services firm Morgan Stanley, predicted  in April that the mobile Internet would outstrip the desktop by 2015. This is due, in part, to the fact that there are a lot more mobile device users than PC owners. Even in the U.S., particularly in pockets of inner city areas, there are many families without a computer in their homes but rarely will you find a living, breathing person, however dire their straits, without a mobile phone.

Consider this from wikinvest.com: “Penetration rates for the U.S. cell phone market are greater than 75%, and in Western Europe, Japan and Hong Kong penetration has already exceeded 100 %(multiple cell phones per subscriber). Although there is still significant growth to be found in these markets, much of this growth will take the form of selling increasingly sophisticated services (e.g. video, GPS) to existing customers rather than growing the overall number of subscribers. Meanwhile developing countries/regions (who’ve not fully built out their  telephone infrastructure ) such as Brazil, India, China, Africa and Latin America have demonstrated blistering cell phone growth in recent years”.

So here we have a powerful trend showing explosive growth with no end in sight.  But every market has a sweet spot. And for those who recall the Gold Rush to the Net in 1995, and subsequent crash in 2001, if you didn’t catch the gold ring then, now’s your chance again.  The Gold Rush in mobile business app development is definitely on.  And the good news is you don’t have to be a monster success like Facebook, or a global game changer like Google to profit from it.  All you need is a little tech savvy, a good idea and a fresh and attractive user interface.  ( Want to know more? The folks over at 37 Signals, who designed Basecamp and Backpack and other great software, offer a free online book “Getting Real”at http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php which lays out a “ smaller, faster, better way to build simple, focused software.” Just reading the Table of Contents tells you  a lot.

Fortunately, a collateral business has sprung up with DIY, do it yourself, app development tools for the rest of us: Google’s App Inventor for Android apps, web based Iphone app maker AppMakr, SwebApps, BuildAn App and the very hot new star, Appcelerator’s Titanium which is free and opensource for cross platform development. Scott Schwarzhoff, Appcelerator’s VP of Marketing says most users can build their first app in about six weeks and cut that down considerably when they tackle future apps.

That leaves one with the question: “What kind of app should I build?”  As Appcelerator says: “If you can dream it, you can build it.”  But let’s get a little more specific.  Another surging trend is integrating your mobile device into your internal business operations so you can actually run your business from your cell phone, without being tethered to a desk.  Good idea, right?

Here are 10 Ways to Use Mobile Devices to Run Your Business To expand on that, here’s a directory of web apps for small business, : everything from analytics to sales lead generation and version control. Many of these providers have peeked out of their silos and presented their apps as working with complementary apps to create a smoother, more effective experience for the customer.  Business Week says “The Small Business Web represents a fundamentally different way of doing business.”  For example:

• “Send the business cards you’ve collected to Shoeboxed
• Shoeboxed will create a digital file from those cards
• Save your Shoeboxed list directly into your BatchBook, social CRM account
• Or export to Jigsaw, sales lead provider
• Use your shoebox for your rock collection!”

How’s that for ditching the grunt work?

What you want to do is identify “points of pain” in the business process, then come up with a solution.  That will be your business model.

Take a close look at the list of web apps and see if there’s something you don’t see there. And that might be your opportunity.  Go to Itunes and see if you can find an app for that; an app that doesn’t suck.

The question is “What is it that hasn’t been done, or done well” to help people with their work?

When you’ve identified the answer to that question, you’re ready to begin.

(Be sure to write in and let me know all the “points of pain” you’ve found and the apps you are making…we’ll write about them here.)

Related articles

• Mobile Commerce Gets Easy With Appcelerator and PayPal (programmableweb.com)
• Appcelerator and PayPal Team up to Make Cross-Platform Mobile Commerce Easy for PayPal Merchants (eon.businesswire.com)
• Irkafirka iPhone App Built With AppMakr Is The Independent’s Top Picks (prweb.com)

I owe this to @charbrown from Twitter.  Still trying to learn and make my use of TweetDeck more effective. Charles said to group your favorite Tweeters…. ones who were consistently interesting and you might want to retweet….in one group or column on TweetDeck.  That allows you to clear out some of the noise and focus, for the most part, on only quality Tweets.

Problem was I didn’t know exactly how to do that.  @charbrown to the rescue!  Here’s what he direct messaged me, with admirable brevity:

“At the top of the screen you should see several buttons.  the 6th one from the right has a couple of heads, click that ….

continued) … and it will open up a window you can name your new group, it will also allow you to add selected followers

charles brown / charbrown”

Thanks, Charles.  It’s even easier than that, since a list of people you are following pops up and all you have to do is check their name and save.  Now you’ve also just saved yourself a lot of time sorting through tweets and made your whole Twitter experience more effective.  Thanks again, Charles

Related articles by Zemanta

• Review: Tweetdeck (netnewsdaily.com)
• TweetDeck Vs Twhirl Review (taragana.com)

Dan Frommer in Look Out, Amazon: iPhone Gets Real E-Books (AAPL) says: “While

Amazon’s sold-out Kindle is missing in action this Christmas, Apple’s iPhone is becoming a more attractive e-book reader: NYC-based ScrollMotion has just started selling the first of many e-books it’ll sell via the iPhone app store, including big-name books like Philip Pullman’s “The Golden Compass.”

While there’s plenty of e-books for the iPhone already, ScrollMotion has two advantages over its rivals: A gorgeous, feature-filled e-reader app called Iceberg and deals with several major publishers, including Random House, Simon and Schuster, Houghton Mifflin, Penguin, and Hachette.”

Frommer thinks Kindle is still in the running because of the Iphone’s smaller screen size and limited battery life.  But there are always pocket sized, portable battery battery chargers and you’re already carrying the iPhone with you.  With a Kindle you’d have even more electronic gear to carry with you.  Now that’s the kind of problem I would like to have.  Wouldn’t you?

Related articles by Zemanta

• ScrollMotion Partners With Major Publishers To Turn Popular Books Into iPhone Apps
• Paolini, Pullman with books coming to iPhones
• As holiday season closes in, e-books exploding in popularity

I recently wrote a post about ebooks, mentioning it’s a good idea to start a collection of them.  I also mentioned the Kindle ebook reader, although I don’t have one yet and am waiting for the 2009 version.  Now I may not have to get one at all.

Tim Berry advises:

“The iPhone now has an application that they say (read the article at HuffingtonPost) is cooler than the Kindle for reading ebooks. And I bought the iPhone. But I also bought the Kindle. Gulp.

Oh dear … now my iPhone is cannibalizing my Kindle. It’s bad enough to be a gadget lover/early adapter adopter and all, but now the one is making the other obsolete. That’s bad for my rationalizations when I get the latest and greatest. Say it isn’t so!”

Thanks to Tim, now I will put the elegant eReader app on my iPhone and I may be able to forget dreaming of the Kindle.  Will test it out and let you know in a subsequent post.

If you’ve experience both the iPhone and the Kindle, please write in and share your views with the rest of us.

Thanks!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Waiting on the iKindle
• Amazon Readies the New Kindle
• Kindle 2

Getting Online Business Start Up

• Fail As Fast As You Can and Other Contrarian Business Secrets
• Business Planning Series (Worksheets, guides and checklists)
• 20 Small Business Ideas for Small Towns covers seven ways to generate your own ideas, so you can dream up the small biz idea that best fits you.

Getting Online – Starting Your Blog

How to Develop Money Making Niche Web Sites With WordPress

Social Media For Marketing

Social Media For Marketing Social Media for Small Business by Duct Tape Marketing is also giving away their own ebook on using social media for marketing.

• The Impact of Social Media on Innovation – Josh Bernoff
• The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008
• The Essential Guide to Social Media

Internet Marketing and Traffic

• 30 Ways to Promote Your Website on a Shoestring Budget
• Adsense Guide
• Web Marketing Success

Marketing

• How to Market Your Small Business
• How to Make Big Profits from a Small Mailing List
• Small Business Marketing Bible

Working from Home

• Become a Global Homebusiness Pro [zip]
• Work from Home: A Complete Guide to Developing a Successful Internet Business from Home

For those who love their iphones:

More than 550 iPhone apps currently populate the iPhone store, and the number is constantly growing. The challenge lies not in acquiring apps, but in finding the ones relevant to your needs.

Here’s a quick-n-dirty list of some key iPhone apps for small business owners, corporate employees, and everyone in between (In no particular order. Go here for detailed reviews).

Includes such must haves as:

Feed Reader

This RSS feed reader comes equipped with autoscrolling to make getting your daily information fix easily and quickly.

Worldwatchr

Allows you to view webcams of your choice directly on your iPhone. Handy for traffic and weather info.

Salesforce Mobile for the iPhone

Instant customer information on Salesforce.com’s mobile platform. What more could you ask for?

QuickVoice Voice Recorder

A cost-effective, quality voice recorder that Gizmodo loves for its pause feature.

Oracle Business Indicators

Business performance info at the touch of an iPhone screen, including a range of analytics. No more need to pop open the laptop before that big meeting.