If there’s a business task to be done, there’s an app that can help you quickly access to your essentials and be more productive and efficient. The folks at Desk.com recently created the awesome Infographic that highlights some useful mobile apps and puts financial management, communication and collaboration at the heart of your phone.

It’s by no means a comprehensive list – there are many smart tools and hidden gems that can make your business operations more effective. So let us add a few mobile apps for small businesses owners that we developed for our clients – check them out:

• Simply Declare, a Travel App for iOS
  
• Event Planning App
  
• A Note-Taking Application for iPad
  

Here’s a list of featured apps from the infographic:

Money Management

• Quickbooks http://quickbooks.intuit.com/
• Mint.com https://www.mint.com/
• OfficeTime http://www.officetime.net/

File Storage

• Box https://www.box.com/
• Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/

Document Editing

• Evernote https://evernote.com/
• Documents To Go http://www.dataviz.com/DTG_home.html

Communication

• Skype http://www.skype.com/
• WebEx http://www.webex.com/

Customer Support

• Desk.com http://www.desk.com/ By the way, we use it for our Help System on Pikaba: http://help.pikaba.com/
• Get Satisfaction Mobile https://getsatisfaction.com/

Monetary Transactions

• Google Wallet http://www.google.com/wallet/
• Square https://squareup.com

What to know how we design mobile apps for SMB? See related posts:  

• Mobile, You Make the Tech World Go Round
  
• Smart Technologies for Your Next Mobile App
  
• Our Mobile Application Development Process
  

“DB Best helped us develop three apps called “Junk Food Quiz”, “Liquor Quiz”, and “The Fast Food Quiz”. Join the crowd and play our poppin’ fun quiz games – you’ll feel like eating your iPhone. We guarantee the most fun you’ll ever have.” ~ Min and Jyan

All three apps are quiz games that provide a casual fun way to spend 10-15 minutes at a time. For “Junk Food Quiz” and “The Fast Food Quiz” there will likely be an element of nostalgia. For “Liquor Quiz” it will be a challenge for adults to identify some of their favorite alcohol brands.

The Tools Our Mobile Team Used for Developing the Apps

• RevMob – possibly the best mobile ad network for both advertisers and publishers.
• iOS SDK
• Facebook API
• Twitter API

Let’s dive in!

1. Junk Food Quiz

If you love chocolate, cookies, and chips, and dread eating carrots and cabbage, you will savor Junk Food Quiz, the only app that tests your knowledge of junk food. Yes, nine out of ten dentists disapprove of Junk Food Quiz, but you’ll give it two thumbs up.

http://youtu.be/MlcdmeqqwoQ

Junk Food Quiz shows you pictures of junk food items and asks you to identify the maker of the item and the name of the item. It contains 240 questions with 12 levels of increasing difficulty (easy, medium, hard, and crazy hard). You can compete for the title of “biggest sweet tooth” by sharing the game and your scores with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.

2. Liquor Quiz

If you spend more time in bars than in bed and recognize what’s on the shelves of BevMo by sight, you will drink up Liquor Quiz, a new app by Bubblewrapps and the only app in the universe that tests your knowledge of hard liquor and allows you to achieve a buzz with no hangover!

http://youtu.be/8o6GonvJxPE

Liquor Quiz shows you pictures of liquor bottles asks you to identify the brand of the bottle and the name of the liquor. It contains 240 questions with 12 levels of increasing difficulty (easy, medium, hard and crazy hard). You can share the game and your scores with your friends on Facebook or Twitter and compete for the title of “mightiest mixologist.

3. The Fast Food Quiz

If you love French fries and fried chicken more than fine dining, you will savor The Fast Food Quiz, the best app around that tests your knowledge of fine dining fast food. This game will completely undermine any diet you’re on, so make sure you aren’t a short drive away from your nearest drive-thru before you play it.

http://youtu.be/2SxcdG4mIXE

The Fast Food Quiz shows you pictures of fast food items and asks you to identify which restaurant makes the item and what the name of the item is. It contains 240 questions with 12 levels of increasing difficulty (easy, medium, hard and crazy hard). You can compete for the title of “first-rate fast foodie” by sharing the game and your scores with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.

Enjoy the apps by playing them nonstop.

You can also check out http://www.bubblewrapps.com for more information on the apps.

“We’re part of the problem, and we also are part of the solution.”
~ GMA Deputy CEO, Super Size Me (2004)

At DB Best we’ve helped many customers across the globe with their mobile apps. Want to learn more? Check out our related posts:

• iOS-based Food Truck Tracker and Locator
• Android App For Restaurant Savings
• Entertainment App for iPhone
• Mobile-Friendly Pissing Contests

We’re in the process of revamping our YouTube channel where one of the major changes will be the look and feel that allows branding works across multiple devices. Over the coming weeks, you will be able to see the new design.

The changes make perfect sense as, according to our Analytics reports, more and more users are using Mobile for watching our video content:

People watch our channel everywhere, on their couches, at their desks, on the bus.

Anyway, YouTube “forces” channel owners, to get the new design, co-called YouTube One Channel.

As for now, now you can explore a range of DB Best videos including mobile development tips, interviews with our CEO and database migration experts, how to move your app to the cloud and the story of our history.

Navigating through our current channel, you’ll find we have split up our 160 videos into seven playlists:

• Company – presents our company’s background, products, services for our clients and visitors.
• Modernization – whether you are trying to solve efficiency and availability problems, simplify and consolidate data silos, or looking for ways to minimize licensing and maintenance costs, these videos show how DB Best can help.
• Data Management – see how our team can help you reduce your overall IT budget, while achieving greater service availability, compliance, and security across your entire data landscape.
• Database Products – for DBAs and everyone who would like to buy our Database Compare Suite or T-SQL Analyzer, as well as the rest of our database products, with these videos it is much easier to make an informed purchase decision or find support.
• Mobile Development Portfolio – if mobile is your cup of tea, this playlist is showcasing all new projects from our mobile development pipeline.
• Mobile & Web Development FAQ – find out what we are up to and what to lookout for your next mobile or web development project with us.
• Web Development Portfolio – if you want to know how we create websites and web applications, check out this playlist.

Visit our YouTube channel now and see what is going on in DBBest world! And stay tuned for more changes in the near future.

Add your ratings and your comments to every restaurant listed – you decide their popularity!

The app allows finding your next favorite place by specific location, price or cuisine. See it in action:

Make the most of your visits in Ireland. Get personalized recommendations on your iPhone: http://youtu.be/V4RInEBO5O0

Tools We Used for Creating the App

• iOS SDK
• ASP.NET
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Related location-based mobile applications:

• iOS-based Food Truck Tracker and Locator
• Android App For Restaurant Savings
• Local Commerce App (Android)

New DBBest.com: Our Objectives

The general look of the company website (http://www.dbbest.com/) has been updated back in 2011 and was in desperate need of a facelift and revitalization.

As our team started working on the new look-and-feel, we already had several primary goals in mind that had to be implemented in the new design.

First and foremost, we wanted to provide clear answers to what people are looking for when they visit our website. To understand what customers want, we heavily relied on Google Analytics, our internal analytics systems, and feedback from our support and sales teams across the globe.

We also wanted as few distractions as possible around our key services and offerings – Data Management, Modernization, Custom Development (Web, Mobile, Software), Database Products.

New Elements and Modules We Introduced with the Re-launch

• Responsive web design: flexible layouts and visual aesthetics
• New website copy (with conversion in mind) and content organization: easy to navigate page payout with elegant combination of text, calls to action, graphics, and video
• Landing page module that allows our marketing crew to create and promote new pages
• On-site SEO best practices
• Ecommerce module for our database products
• Newsletters modules integrated with contact forms

WordPress Plugins We Used for the New Site

• WP e-Commerce – a Shopping Cart Plugin that lets customers buy products, services and digital downloads online, using PayPal Payments, Google Checkout, Authorize.net and other payment gateways.
• WordPress SEO – possible the best SEO plugin on the market.
• Breadcrumb NavXT – adds breadcrumb navigation showing the visitor’s path to their current location.
• Better WordPress reCAPTCHA – the plugin utilizes reCAPTCHA (with support for Akismet) to help your blog stay clear of spams.
• WP Video Lightbox – displays YouTube and Vimeo videos in an elegant lightbox overlay.

Our Redesign Methodology

“The big point is to keep iterating, keep working on it in the “live” environment as best as you can.” ~ Chris Brogan.

When it comes to redesigning a website, we use our iterative approach to changing things, right in sync with our Web Development Best Practices. DBBest.com is a WordPress website which means it’s super fun and easy for our web developers and designers to re-launch the entire ecosystem making all the changes in incremental steps.

The Process

1. The entire redesign process started with website structure and sitemap creation:

2. Our focus on providing fast answers helped us create a clean and simple primary navigation:

3. We came up with a new design of our homepage with a road-map to our products and services:

DBBEST.com’s new home page: before and after 

4. We also wanted to brighten up the website using lighter color theme and vivid images that highlight what we do and how we do it:

5. With the new website structure, we have significantly increased the number of pages. Our marketing and technical writers created the whole new content that ideally fits the new layout and graphics:

Such professionally written content is great for search engines and helpful for people:

6. While wireframing on a napkin, we thought it might be a good idea to tell stories about our team, products and services and make the website more interactive. And sometimes putting only words is not enough to tell people what we do best. So we decided to spice up our new page layouts with videos from our popular YouTube channel:

7. Another great idea was to place our full Custom Development Portfolio under one umbrella making the Portfolio section more usable for all types of website visitors:

Moreover, from now on, every project in our portfolio comes with a more detailed description and several media files: screenshots and a video overview.

8. For DBAs and everyone who would like to buy our Database Compare Suite or T-SQL Analyzer, as well as the rest of our database products it became much easier to make a purchase with the “new and improved” checkout process in one convenient place.

9. To create the new online presence, from designing a responsive WordPress theme to working on on-page SEO, we set up a website testing environment. Upon the completion of all the steps , as well as throughout the development process, our Quality Assurance team have rigorously tested the website performance, every new plugin, design and code elements, page speed, and even every new chunk of text.

10. Once we all were satisfied with the results, we released it to the live “production” server: dbbest.com – check it out!

Take the Next Step

Customers often ask, “what would it take to redesign a website?” From our experience it’s a combination of several factors: clear vision as to what you would like to change and why, a professional and well-coordinated team of developers, and a flexible CMS or framework. Luckily, we had it all.

So what do all of you think about our new look? Love the new design? Or hate it? Let us know by leaving your comments below, sharing or liking the post.

PS We agree: Code is Poetry

Why Work with Us

DB Best is a Seattle-based company that develops WordPress website since 2008. From custom theme design and promotional websites, to mobile and ecommerce development, DB Best can transform your vision into an online presence powered by WordPress.

DB Best is run by real people who live, breathe and eat WordPress. We do WordPress development for high-profile clients delivering complex ecommerce solution and, at the same time, offer packaged WordPress sites with turn-key designs for customers who need a 3-10 page site on the next week. We’re experts in WordPress SEO, custom theme development, especially in the responsive design aspect of it.

Why We Prefer WordPress

We at DB Best prefer WordPress because we want to offer the best Content Management System to our clients who can update and manage their own websites easily.

Why use WordPress to create and manage your website? What makes it so remarkable? Today WordPress is not just for personal blogs as it started 2003. It’s a complete content management solution and the largest professional blogging platform in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day. You can use WordPress for anything from your mobile app’s promotional site to a Fortune 500 web presence without paying anyone a license fee.

Here are ten reasons why we love WordPress:

• State of the art code
• Flexible design architecture
• Secure online platform
• Fast loading time
• Search engine optimized
• Google Authorship and Schema.org support
• Mobile support, HTML5 and CSS3
• Unlimited integration options (newsletters, customer management system, analytics, community) – thousands of plugins available.
• Easy to update and manage content
• Multiple website management

WordPress is an open source project, with thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes – all social and mobile ready. Beyond developer features, WordPress offers amazing theme customization and design options. Most of all, it makes it super easy for our clients to create and update new content (pages, posts and media).

Take the Next Step

Ready to take your online presence to the next level? Need a redesign? Contact us today!

It also allows finding all of your favorite food truck vendors and delicious street eats on a single map, say closest to work or gym.

Just because a café or restaurant is on wheels doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be on a map.

Let’s dig a little bit deeper into this app with our video test-drive:

http://youtu.be/XcJ9Yt8ELKM

Tools We Used for Designing the App

• MapKit framework – uses the Google Mobile Maps (GMM) service to provide map data.
• CFNetwork framework – provides a library of abstractions for network protocols.
• CoreLocation framework – lets you determine the current location or heading associated with a device.
• QuarzCore framework – supports image processing and video image manipulation.
• iOS SDK

Related mobile applications:

• Android App for Car GPS Tracking
• Android App For Restaurant Savings
• Local Commerce App (Android)

The iPad app we created for our client is a collaborative art project dedicated to focusing on the past, present, and future of randomly selected city blocks.

Our crew and the client are very excited about the app’s sleek design, user interface, ease of use, and overall speed. But don’t take our work for it – watch the app in action in the video below:

“WHAT IF… Some great writers were paired with awesome photographers” http://youtu.be/-3SeEgJlA34

Tools We Used for Designing the App

• iOS SDK
• Audio Toolbox Framework – provides interfaces for recording, playback, and stream parsing. In iOS, the framework provides additional interfaces for managing audio sessions.
• Quartz 2D – a two-dimensional drawing engine accessible in the iOS environment and from all Mac OS X application environments outside of the kernel.

Take the Next Step

If you want to launch an iOS or Android app for your art project or event, why don’t you contact our mobile development team to discuss your needs? We have tons of ideas for you.

Related posts:

• Smart Technologies for Your Next Mobile App
• Our Mobile Application Development Process from Concept to Release

Our mobile development team recently solved the problem by creating a smart iOS app for one of our clients. The app features a neat download manager with multiple types of sharing options.

Now let’s watch this video that demonstrates all the bells and whistles of the application:

Download files using the Safari browser on your iPhone: http://youtu.be/Dc4_F7JZLOo

Tools, Frameworks and Technologies We Used for Designing the App

• iOS SDK – a range of resources for developing, designing and distributing applications for iOS
• iCloud – designed for storing contacts, calendars, photos, music, books, apps and more in the cloud and accessing them on all your devices
• iTunes Sharing
• In-App Purchase – allows selling items within your iOS apps and Mac apps, like premium content, virtual goods, and subscriptions
• JavaScript
• AFNetworking

Take the Next Step

You have an idea for a mobile application but don’t know how to choose the right development team? See why more organizations choose DB Best to bring their mobile applications to life!

 Related iOS app development projects:

• A Note-Taking Application for iPad http://dbbest.com/blog/note-taking-app/
• Event Planning App http://dbbest.com/blog/countdown-ios-app/
• Custom Developed iOS Graphics Library http://dbbest.com/blog/ios-graphics-library/
• Coloring App for iPad http://dbbest.com/blog/coloring-app-for-ipad/

Building live video experiences with lifelike face-to-face emotion is easy with OpenTok

Our team of mobile experts used OpenTok – a technology that makes it extremely easy to weave live, group video chat into any application. See how your users can have an actual conversation with someone by chatting face to face over video.

Share a free video call with anyone via Flash player: http://youtu.be/TbyJI2kmuvQ

Frameworks and Technologies

• Web technologies: HTML5, jQuery, ASP.NET MVC 4.0, NHibernate, MS SQL Server 2008 R2
• OpenTok helped us create live video experiences with the world’s most dynamic API
• Facebook SDK
• PayPal APl  (Mobile PayPal Payments) enables merchants and partners to offer a streamlined checkout experience to customers using mobile devices
• AFNetworking, a  iOS and OS X networking framework
• Amazon S3 for hosting streaming videos

Take the Next Step

Want to learn more? Check out our Mobile Application Development Portfolio and see why we’re the best company for your next mobile project.

Related posts:

• Talkie Or A Skype-Like Аpp Based On SIP Protocol
• Android App for Car GPS Tracking
• Picture Transfer Application for iOS and Android