Free TaxACT App

TaxACT 2012 Free Federal Edition is now available as an app for iPad® and Android™ tablets. The tablet app gives all taxpayers another convenient way to do their federal taxes free, securely and accurately–anytime, anywhere.                

TaxACT is the first to offer a mobile tax preparation app allowing users secure access to returns through the tablet app and a browser via TaxACT Online® with the same username and password. Unlike tablet and smartphone tax preparation apps for 2011 returns, TaxACT users can create a return through either the tablet app or online at www.taxact.com, and then use both locations interchangeably.

Tablet owners don't have to download the app to use TaxACT. All TaxACT Online products are optimized for tablet browsers.

An updated version of the app with 2012 IRS forms will be released in early January, along with final versions of TaxACT Online and download 2012 federal and state products. E-file will also be available in January.

Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM A1 lens

We saw this announcement this week and it sounds wonderful:

Sigma today has confirmed that in addition to being available in the Sigma, Nikon, and Canon mounts, the new Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM A1 lens will also be coming for Sony and Pentax!  This is a full-frame lens that's part of Sigma's new "Art" lens series for professionals.

This lens will be a fine addition to the Pentax K-mount lens lineup, as Pentax themselves offer no such lens (the SMC Pentax-M 35mm F1.4 prototype never ended up being mass-produced).  The current non-macro Pentax 35mm lens is a comsumer-grade DA 35mm F2.4; the previous full-frame FA 35mm F2 is being phased out.

Through this lens, Sigma promises to deliver the highest in image quality and durability.  All components used to make this lens will be extra-durable and resistant to changes in ambient temperature (thanks to Sigma's Thermally Stable Composites) in order to allow for prolonged and daily use.  The lens has 9 rounded aperture blades for smooth bokeh and has 13 optical elements in 11 groups.

The full specifications for this lens are now available in our lens database.  The new 35mm F1.4 is expected to ship on December 15th (together with the Pentax 560mm, by chance) at an MSRP of $899.

We're back

We're finally back from our long trip overseas and we're going through all of the news we need to pass on to our readers. Watch this blog every day and we'll try to catch up soon.

New Blog Posts

To all of our dedicated followers: This blog is not dead or on hiatus, we're just on the road with little or no internet access!!

Please be patient, we'll get back to our regular daily posts very soon.

iFruit iPad mini

The iFruit company continues their onslaught of new products with the big announcement of new iPads and improved Macs on October 23rd. All of the new products are smaller, lighter, and faster than their predecessors and competitors products. Oh yeah, and they are still very expensive.

We have reviewed a half dozen different tablets that are the same size as the new 7.9” iPad with mixed results, some were good and some were bad. They were also all much less expensive than the iPad mini!!!

We heard a lot of rumors about what the iFruit company would charge for the mini, with most prognosticators predicting prices around $200-250. Hah!! Were they wrong! $329 is the cheapest version and that’s important to the iFruit bottom line. You can bank on paying a premium price for any product they make. Even if you can get more for less elsewhere.

NeatScan Scanning Service

We just found out about this service and it sounds like a great solution for a small business.

The way small businesses deal with paper is an important matter.  Some keep what they need handy and store all their hard copy files at an offsite storage center, making the files very cumbersome to get to.  In addition this adds another monthly expense for the small business. Others spend a ton of money on data entry so that the information they may need is somewhere on their hard drive.  Eventually that can add to another expensive storage problem.

As more and more small businesses get smarter they are turning to cloud based environments to host all their important paper documents in one place that can be easily accessed.

The Neat Company recently introduced one of these options.  NeatScan®, a mail-in, bulk scanning service, scans paper documents for Neat users and sends digitized versions directly into their NeatCloud® account.  The service utilizes Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Neat’s patented parsing technology to make every document fully searchable and automatically extracts data from receipts and business cards in a way that it can be activated for expense reports, tax preparation and export to other commonly used systems.

Here is how it works:

· Sign up for a NeatCloud plan

· Order pre-paid NeatScan envelopes and boxes and ship all your paper documents to the Neat Company via mail

· Specify how you want your documents scanned and organized

· Neat will scan the documents as you requested and place them in your digital folders

· In just a few days, you will see the documents added to your NeatCloud account

The documents will then be available everywhere users have access to Neat (web, mobile, desktop).  From there, items can be safely stored, and easily organized, accessed and shared.

Customers can request that their original paper documents be returned to them or safely shredded.

November ePub issue is out

The November issue of our monthly ePub was emailed out this morning. As usual, it’s full of interesting columns and reviews and should be a must read for everyone.

If you’re not a subscriber yet, just email us and we’ll add you to the list of subscribers.