Jot Thought

We just created a branded product page on Facebook, using their Page Manager application.‚ Check us out at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Esomnie-Software/9913611301.

One thing that struck me as being partifularly interesting is the potential use of Pages as a CRM (customer relationship management) tool. By inviting one’s customers to become “fans”, Facebook makes it drop dead simple to communicate with them, including opt-in inbox delivery of updates. Whether you’re a small business, an aspiring musician, or a large enterprise, it’s an interesting solution to‚ a traditionally thorny problem.

Kudos to whoever came up with this at Facebook - very clever.

QuickenMobile , a cool little app we built for Intuit, was launched at MacWorld this week. It sends you text messages with balances and recent transactions for your bank and credit card accounts. We built it in JRuby on Rails to interface with Intuit’s java-based aggregation web service and deploy within their java stack. Here’s the beta sign up screen.

In addition to the transaction aggregation and sms capabilities, one of Intuit’s own, Zach “Money” Moneypenny built an iPhone interface for the application. He was working the show when we stopped by - here he was bringing it up on his iPhone.

Have to say, it was cool seeing something we built being demoed at MacWorld. We even heard that a senior member of the Google mobile team found it to be pretty cool. It was also very nice to see the other apps the Quicken team were showing off. In addition to QuickenOnline, which also just launched, they were demonsrating the coming version of Quicken for the Mac. What I found particularly interesting is that the entire program is being re-written from the ground up using Cocoa. From what I saw, it looks great. They’re about to go into Beta and both Ben and I signed up. Here’s a pic of what I like to call Cocoa Quicken…

We didn’t spend a ton of time at the expo, but while we were there it was pretty crowded. The logistics of getting in were terrible - our passes didn’t have promo codes, which the registration software required, there were tons of different lines with the exact same signs above them, and the badging process was a hilarious cluster. I’d be curious to know the results of a process excellence evaluation of IDG’s logistical approach. But I shouldn’t complain - I wouldn’t want to solve that issue for a living.

We did stop by the MacBook Air, though it took some effort to actually get your hands on one. It was kind of funny that everyone one wanted to pick them up and play with them, but you had to keep them over the counter. Made for an interesting dynamic (see pic below:)

Our final stop before heading out was to chat with the folks at NeatReceipts, who were showing off their receipt scanning solution for the Mac. We’re talking to them about integration with Paybackable and our “kinda secret” forthcoming app. Stay tuned for more on that.

We released an update to Paybackable.com this morning that adds mileage expense tracking. It uses up-to-date IRS rates (now 50.5 cents per mile for 2008) to calculate how much you can get reimbursed for those business miles. Just enter the date of travel, a description (purpose of trip, destination, who you saw, etc.) and the miles driven and Paybackable will calculate the correct amount.

One other interesting note about this feature: it actually solves a gap in QuickBooks. Their vehicle mileage tracking feature doesn’t support reimbursing employees for their miles. To quote their support site: “You cannot use vehicle mileage tracking to reimburse your employees for mileage.” Their suggested solution is to create a bill payable to the employee (or vendor) with line items for the trips. This is precisely what Paybackable does, which is nice.

Check it out at www.paybackable.com