Google Goggles – Visual Search for Android smartphones (http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/) – I first downloaded this application a couple of months ago and never really looked at it. Now it is one of my favorite apps of the moment. Why you say? Well for starters I wanted an app that would allow me to point my smartphone camera at a business card and make it strip the text and create a Contact with the information. It does this pretty well. Not perfect, but way easier than having to enter all of the data from scratch. Google Goggles also does visual search by pointing the camera at something and pressing a button, it will check Google for anything that matches. For example, with my kids found a caterpillar in the yard so I got my phone, snapped a Google Goggle shot, and it told me what kind it was and all of the details of a Google search. Pretty amazing.
mint – Finance and budgeting tool (http://www.mint.com/) – No one likes to spend the time monitoring their home finance activity and managing a budget. This free web service may do the trick. It is fairly simple to setup and use, and it will even be proactive and let you know when you can save money, send out alerts, and even give advice on choosing a better option. I’m giving it a try and so far it works well.
