This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 70% of all jobs are found through networking. It’s no surprise, then, that so many businesspeople are on the lookout for tools to improve their networking skills. With the growing collection of business apps in the App Store, the iPhone is becoming a portable toolkit for business professionals everywhere. However, with thousands of business apps out there, sorting through the options can be a bit of a task. Below is a list of five useful iPhone apps that will help you become a better business networker. The first step in networking is making connections. So, get out there and meet people! Happening ($1.99) allows you to find nearby events and RSVP from the comfort of your iPhone. You can Read More

It's a little bit odd that there's no official iPhone app for Yahoo's Upcoming service. With community-contributed event listings sorted and searchable by location, there's a natural fit between Upcoming and the iPhone -- yet there's nothing from the big Y! in the App Store for this service. (Not to say they're asleep at the wheel -- the Yahoo! Entertainment app for iPad is a delight.) Good thing, then, that there's Nik Fletcher. The UK-based developer (and former TUAW blogger) has released the US$1.99 Happening app, which delivers all of the Upcoming events for your locale in an easy and manageable app. You can search for events by name or by venue, and if you sign in to your Upcoming account, you can RSVP for events or keep track of which friends are attending the same shindig. Venues are displayed with in-app map support, and you can jump out to the Read More

by This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s hosting solutions here. Mobile devices like the iPhone and the iPad have been a real springboard for designers and developers. Because we can now literally have our computers in our pockets, our favorite applications and websites and services can now come with us. However, when designing for mobile devices, it’s important to focus on the size and resolution of the device’s screen, as well as how the user interacts with the device. You can make a really beautiful looking application that ultimately fails because it is difficult for the user to use and isn’t optimized for a touch screen. Sometimes the best way to get started thinking about application design is to look at what others have already produced. For your inspiration, here are 10 iPhone and iPad apps that have both beautiful and Read More

Yahoo has built a number of applications for the iPhone (and even a custom one for the iPad already), but with all the buzz about location-aware services they haven’t yet felt the urge to optimize its own Upcoming service for the mobile platform. Enter developer Nik Fletcher, who has spent about a year developing one dubbed Happening to “scratch his own itch”. Version 1.2 is available in the App Store right now (iTunes link). It’s essentially the Upcoming app Yahoo should have built – and at the very least they should have made it easier for the man to develop it for them. With the tagline ‘Nearby Events in your Pocket’, it’s easy to guess what the app is all about: it accesses the wide range of events listed on Upcoming, and lets you look up events nearby based on your location or simply by searching the database. Once you authorize Read More

Upcoming, the venerable social events calendar that was founded in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, has undoubtedly seen better days. There are other places to post events and invite friends now -- notably, Facebook -- and Upcoming has dwindled in popularity. There's still a goldmine of great events on the site, though, especially if you live in a big city. Happening, a new Upcoming client for the iPhone, makes those events fun and easy to explore. I had my doubts about the usefulness of Upcoming, but Happening's use of geolocation made it easy to find events near me. It turns out that pub quiz hosts love Upcoming with a passion, and I happen to love pub quizzes. Result: one test run of Happening revealed something to do on every night of the week. Location is what really takes Happening above and beyond the Upcoming web interface. When you're out Read More

Happening is an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that taps into the Yahoo Upcoming service to bring local events straight to your mobile device. Users can browse nearby events easily or decide to search for a specific event by keyword. The app makes it ridiculously easy to find public events being offered in the future. The app also syncs with the user's Upcoming account to bring their friend list and saved events right into the app. This was a nice feature but it also happens to be where my first complaint comes in. The app requires the user to drop out and open safari in order to link their account. It opens a webpage that is not optimized for the iPhone and took me over 7 tries to link my Upcoming account. The app also will plot the events onto an embedded Google Maps inside the app itself. This Read More

Agile Web Solutions, das Team hinter 1Password (5.99 €; App Store-Link), zeigt im Firmen-Weblog erste Gehversuche ihrer Software auf dem iPad. Zubehör-Lieferant Scosche Industries verpackt mit dem FlipSync ein komplettes iPhone USB-Ladekabel in die Größe eines modernen Autoschlüssels. Für $20 US-Dollar kann vorbestellt werden; die Lieferung soll im Frühling erfolgen. Opera kündigte in der letzten Woche eine iPhone-Version ihres ‘Mini’-Webbrowsers an. Diese Bekanntmachung stieß auf sehr ambivalente Reaktionen und wurde von mir aufgrund der Vorgeschichte (vielleicht zu vorschnell) als ‘substanzlose Werbemaßnahme’ abgetan. Macworld.com beschäftigte sich mit der Frage, ob Apple den Opera Mini-Browser zulassen würde, falls dieser zu Überprüfung vorgelegt wird. Dabei konzentriert sich der Artikel mit ‘duplicates existing functionality’ und ‘no downloading and execution of code’ auf zwei Analyse-Aspekte der Entwicklerbedingungen und schließt mit einem positiven Fazit: Einerseits existieren bereits andere (WebKit-basierte) Browser im App Store, andererseits ist der Opera Mini ‘nur’ eine schicke Benutzeroberfläche, die hauptsächlich auf reichlich Server-Kompression Read More

...@TUAW: New $1.99 iPhone client for Yahoo's Upcoming event service, from our pal @nikf http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/happening/id346486345?mt=8... Read More

...$1.99 iPhone client for Yahoo's Upcoming event service, from our pal @nikf http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/happening/id346486345?mt=8... Read More

...@TUAW: New $1.99 iPhone client for Yahoo's Upcoming event service, from our pal @nikf http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/happening/id346486345?mt=8... Read More

...friend @nikf just released a very useful iPhone app for Upcoming called Happening: see nearby events, etc. http://bit.ly/dkm43o... Read More