The Daily App Show on Xmas $trak
“an intelligent way to track spending by category and as a percentage of annual income.” Reviewer Jerad Hill calls it a “very cool application, indeed. I love this angle.” Click to watch the video review here.
Spending Habits Revealed by Xmas $trak app
New York NY – 11/27/10 – Consumers rely on Xmas $trak to record their holiday purchases but they also gain a heightened awareness of how much time and money they actually spend. The iphone/ipod/ipad app captures spending by category, date, and as a percentage of annual income. Consumers see red flags when they realize, for example, holiday entertaining accounts for 10% of their annual income. Categories are presented in a pie chart to visually emphasize how money is spent.
Xmas $trak is a digital version of the Xmas Spending Worksheet in Dissing Xmas (splash’em LLC, ISBN 978-0-615-32892-8, $16.95) by New York attorney and former international banker Brenda L. Barnes. The book urges consumers to get a fundamental grasp of what is feasible for holiday spending before making plans for the holidays and holiday shopping. “If you don’t know what you spend you don’t know where to edit,” says Barnes.
Personal finance is a serious matter in 2010 and Xmas $trak is designed to assist consumers in treating holiday spending as such. Categories include gifts, decorations, entertainment (groceries, beverages, and music), clothes (don’t forget those children’s pageant costumes), greetings (include postage), travel, and more. Barnes notes “it’s the cumulative amount that is staggering to shoppers. They may think they are making wise choices per item and they probably are, but when all categories are totaled it can be a surprisingly large amount.”
Black Friday results are in and may or may not be up or down from 2009. What is certain is that online shopping has replaced much in-store purchasing. That gets recorded in Xmas $trak, too. Consumers also may recognize how much time they spend shopping by looking at dates of purchases. When online shopping is included they may find that they shop daily for two weeks. That is a wake-up call as well. Time and money are limited commodities. Xmas $trak helps consumers stay aware of both.
Xmas $trak was developed by MEA Mobile Ltd.
Family Medical Information iphone app introduced at AARP’s Orlando @50+
Attendees at AARP’s annual expo and event Orlando@50+ in late August will be the first to access the iphone app mihealth stats™ that stores patient information for every family member. “This is an invaluable tool for geographically dispersed families,” says New York attorney and developer of the app Brenda L. Barnes. “It allows a son in New York to quickly access the name of his mother’s door in Florida or a daughter in Los Angeles to email a list of all of her father’s medications to ER staff in Chicago.”
Other accessible information includes diagnosed conditions, medical history, health alerts, and past surgeries. Using iphone existing features, families can include a recent photo of each patient, get directions to hospitals, dial emergency contacts, and update data. It’s password-protected to keep private medical information away from snoopers.
The app is based on the mihealth stats™ worksheet in Barnes’ book Esther Has a Living Will and Other Fairy Tales for Adult Children (splash’em LLC, ISBN 978-0-9826123-0-9, $35.00). The book provides current information as to the role of the adult child in health care delivery for aging parents and highlights new federally-mandated resources and staff a medical facility must provide. “Hospitalization is a scary topic, but hospitalization without preparation is scarier,” cautions Barnes.
Introducing mihealth stats™ now is timely because this is the year that AARP’s national event goes digital. Orlando@50+ draws 25,000 people to Orlando and the AARP Digital Experience, a virtual event, expands the reach of the three-day extravaganza. Many of the information sessions, celebrity speakers, and expert presentations will be streamed live or on-demand for six months for virtual attendees.
The iphone app mihealth stats™ was designed by MacFarlane Engel & Associates, New Haven CT.
Neighborhood Boys in The New York Times
The New York Times Spotlights Jack Rosenblatt
New York Times talks about Neighborhood Boys Who Ran by Jack Rosenblatt, June 20, 2010
Click the image for the full story.
