by: Robert Wang Better thank your lucky stars. On October 5th, Adobe announced a workaround to the iPhone's complete incompatibility to Flash. The company showcased a handful of apps, developed in Flash and directly converted to a fully functional iPhone compatible form, in front of a live audience at the annual Adobe Max event in San Francisco. In enabling the channels of conversion, Adobe has opened the floodgates for ever greater volumes of 3rd party applications. Now it’s anyone’s game—provided you can make it past Apple’s heavy-handed censors. By using Flash Pro CS5 (slated for public beta later this year), aspiring developers might finally get their very own piece of the much-sought-after Apple pie. The iPhone/Flash incompatibility has long served as a source of annoyance for many a user: causing anything from minor style disruption to the total catastrophic failure of entire websites. Over the past decade, Flash has grown from amusing novelty to one of the primary mediums of content delivery on the internet. Flash is used to power everything from animated ads, to video players (the likes of which have granted YouTube and Hulu their runaway success), to full on media platforms from which complex applications can be run—all on a lightweight, easy-to-install standalone program. So why hasn’t Apple included Flash functionality on the iPhone? Due to the nature of the Flash player, it would, to be blunt, cut into Apple’s profits. Apple is currently maintaining something of a totalitarian regime over the software and hardware rights to its creations. Users can only gain additional content by purchasing it through the Apple regulated iTunes store…and Apple aims to keep it that way. So will you ever be able to stream that new trailer off MovieFone? Don’t bank on it. The Flash player actually violates the Apple Terms of Service, in fact any sort of plug-in to the Safari Browser would represent a breech in contract. But it’s a start, and with greater pressure to ease up on content restrictions arising from competition like the Google Android, it’s only a matter of time before Apple is forced to reconsider its policies. However, with html 5 in full swing, the need for dynamic content plug-ins like Flash and SilverLight is significantly reduced—potentially to the point of obsolescence. Html 5’s design means that the potential and power behind web apps freshly created on its platform will be unparalleled: faster, more immersive, and ever closer to being indistinguishable from their offline brethren. To date, Apple, Google, Mozilla, and even Microsoft are doing their best to promote it. With the lines already drawn, it’s going to be a tough, uphill battle for Adobe. Is it time to ditch your Flash books in the closest dumpster and move on? Has Flash become so prevalent that it’s now an irreplaceable Internet staple? Look for Barefoot Solutions to weigh in on the debate soon. In the meantime, let the games begin.

Saving is a skill a third of America lacks, with one out of three Americans living without a penny in a retirement account. This isn’t surprising in a culture where money is spent on credit and university education is paid for with borrowed dollars. Given the pressures to live a luxurious lifestyle beyond your means, it can be a challenge to get ahead financially.  Fortunately not all systems in modern western culture result in the reddening of your credit. Specifically, money saving apps.   Mint  Mint is a well known app that even our parents’ parents use. The established credibility and no brainer UI make this app a simple solution for getting all things finance on track. The app takes a look at your overall financial blueprint, including your debts, income, investments and savings. It can be a little terrifying putting all of this confidential information in one place, but perhaps more frightening is that first time you see your overall net worth. However once you get past those hurdles, Mint is an excellent solution for seeing your overall spending and saving. From there, you can set goals such as overall savings for the year or saving in specific areas of your life. One such department could include your affinity for chinese takeout...how it’s possible to spend so much per year on chinese takeout can be pretty impressive when you see your aggregate spending. But with Mint you can get those spending habits at least a little bit more in control, without entirely abandoning chow mein.   Gas Buddy  Gas prices have lately been a bit kinder to us than other times in the recent decade, but petroleum is still a place we’d rather save as many pennies as possible. Gas Buddy is the convenient app to help you locate the best gas prices in your area, and guide you to the gas stations you trust. This is especially great for the travelling salesperson unfamiliar with new towns as you travel throughout your region or state. Then, while saving money is a fun game in and of itself, Gas Buddy includes gamification features such as points for saved gas and clever car icons when you report new gas prices. Take or leave the gamification of it, the best part of this app is keeping a few more cents in your pocket that can better be spent on Italian footwear. We mean savings, savings account is where those extra pennies will go…   BillTracker  There are certainly plenty of bills that you can set to pay all by themselves with auto-payment features. Yet it’s important to keep an eye on when those payments are coming out and maintaining focus on how much you really are spending on your phone bill each month. BillTracker is the simple app that allows you to do just that. This is also helpful for those payments that can’t be set to auto-pay, making absolutely sure you don’t waste a single stupid dollar on an unnecessary late payment.   RetailMeNot  Coupon clipping is still a pain and we’re not going to sit here and say it’s a fun and cool way to spend a Friday night. But that’s why us app developers are looking out for you, and come up with apps like RetailMeNot. This is a fantastic little app for the person who loathes the concept of bargain hunting but still enjoys keeping more of his/her hard earned dollars in their fat wallet. The way we use this app is whenever we’re about to hit “Checkout” on any of your online shopping carts, we always check RetailMeNot to see if there’s a new valid coupon for your particular purchase. We can’t explain how many times we’d laugh at the idea of our bizarre purchases like a 6 pack of Mike Tyson shaped whoopie cushions having a coupon available...only to realize RetailMeNot absolutely has one and it’s 50% off. Do yourself a favor and just download it and start saving.   Digit Digit is sort of like that 4-eyed accountant that takes a look at your spending habits and tells you how much you’re capable of saving over a given period of time. That’s because it is, as the smart app that can help you strictly with reducing your spending habits to help you beef up your savings account. Once you link Digit with your bank account, it studies your income and spending habits and crunches these numbers into an algorithm to help you start the savings process without really thinking about it. Then every two to three days, the tool transfers small amounts of cash, typically between $1 - $150 dollars, from your checking account and funnels it to an FDIC-insured savings account. You are notified of these transfers via text message, kind of like the happy “clink clink” sound you heard as a child when you dropped quarters into your piggy bank.   Are there other money saving apps you use and love to stay on track? Let us know your favorites in the comments below.  

Barefoot Solutions is excited to announce the launch of a new iOS weight loss app called It’s A Cinch. It’s A Cinch was created by Jessica Talbi, a woman with a passion for fitness and health. Jessica has been an avid user of calorie counting apps, but as her fitness level began to change, she noticed her apps were not evolving with her. Based on her first-hand experience of that problem, Jessica created It's A Cinch to provide a more accurate way to teach users how to successfully count calories. Most importantly, Jessica aims to enable users to make healthy decisions by providing custom meals that fit individuals' specific calorie and dietary needs. Though the development  behind the app was rather complex, the app itself is very user friendly and easy to navigate. Not to mention, It’s A Cinch helps you with every aspect of losing weight from eating well to exercise and calorie counting. The app even adapts to your individual food preferences and weight loss goals. It's A Cinch is able to do all of this because it's a database-drive app, connected flawlessly to calorie, exercise, and food databases like FatSecret, which contains over 3,000,000 foods. The app allows you to then enter your meals and snacks, which the app converts into the amount of calories you've consumed. Add your physical activities for the day, and It's A Cinch provides your net calorie consumption for the day. The app includes a weight tracker, which shows if you're getting off track or really starting to make some progress. The app even allows you to store daily pictures, so you can see your before and after pictures and results in real time. This feature was important to include, as your weight on the scale says less about your health than the way you look in the mirror and the way your clothes fit. It's A Cinch always keeps your connected, allowing you to share your struggles and successes with other users through various social media platforms. This iOS app  even connects you to recipes, food suggestions, and healthy tips to keep you motivated and to make reaching your goals as simple as possible.