He outlines how using Contacts Cleaner is one of the simplest experiences one could ever have with a BlackBerry app and that it is a must-have appliation for anyone who has duplicate contacts. He contacted us and told us that Contacts Cleaner is so valuable that he would have paid $10.00 for the app as opposed to the listed 99 cents.  It is really rewarding to receive this type of feedback from a well-respected individual in the industry!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_bc_nav?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200122950

The forum has no Amazon folks in sight:

http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=31&start=0

Some of the older APIs that have been abandoned clearly state that fact in the forum.   For example, the Amazon Inventory Management (AIM) API is superseded by MWS:

http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=30

I think this API has been abandoned without such a post.  This API seems to be supported by folks from Seller Ceneteral and not AWS.  Maybe this is a relic of a internal power struggle with ENS getting the short end of the stick.

In any case, a java SDK can be downloaded as an eclipse project from here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200125000

The main issue with getting the project to compile is that the required jars are not included.  Here is a ivy dependency list that worked for me:

The one other issue is that the source code refeers to:

javax.xml.bind.annotation.AccessorType

in a few places.  Change this to:

javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlAccessorType

and you should be off to the races.

He is basing his short list based on reviews and his own experience. The other apps that we share the spotlight with include: Personal Assistant Premium, Conservative Survival Pocket Guide, BuzzOff.

You can read more on InfoMov’s site.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/blackberry-apps-for-maintenance-tasks.html

Contacts Cleaner was also mentioned in a forum post on how to remove duplicates from your address book:

http://www.blackberryforums.com/general-9700-series-discussion-bold-2/244173-my-contacts-appears-3-times-each-how-can-i-fix-problem.html

The final piece of news is that we have a new and improved online help and support center for Contacts Cleaner:

http://beavercreekconsulting.com/contacts-cleaner/help-and-support.html

I wanted to talk a little bit about the technology I used.  I picked grails since time is money, I’m a JEE developer and I like Perl.  Okay, so I use groovy now instead of Perl so grails seemed like a nice choice.

Grails rocks.  I built a mid-sized domain model with about 20 tables (Items, Skus, Orders, Inventory, Customers, etc) and let grails generate the rest of the application. The default CRUD web application solved 90% of the customer’s needs.

The biggest challenge was integrating with Amazon’s  Market Place Web Service and FBA Web Service interfaces.  I used the Amazon Java client which seemed to be a straight forward web service binding.

Other parts of the tools set  included the SpringSource Tool Suite and a several grails plugins such as quartz for batch job scheduling  and for the spring security core for user management.

The one bump in the tool chain was a database version tracking.  Next time I’ll use the grails liquibase plugin.

Brilliant Blackberry Apps - Contacts Cleaner

Contacts Cleaner received a section and sits along-side of prestigious apps such as LinkedIn, Weatherbug, Skymall, Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated, CNN Money, Bank of America Mobile,Google Maps and Paypal.

This book is on sale at Amazon or on the Wiley site for $18.99.  You can, also, download this onto your Kindle.  Overall, this book is great resource that lists the all of the best apps for a BlackBerry user to try out and make the most of his/her SmartPhone and we’re excited to have a section that outlines our Contacts Cleaner App!

The client needed to list a lot of products on Amazon, i.e. a couple thousand products at a time.  We wrote a web-based application where the client could upload an inventory file.  The file described each product with a UPC or ASIN a SKU, price, quantity, etc.  Our application then creates the listing on Amazon for each product.

Our application automates the steps an Amazon merchant goes through at seller central to upload an inventory file.  Our solution makes uploading inventory an easy process and will scale up to thousands of products.  This helps the merchant to avoid the pain of using the clunky Amazon interface which is time consuming and manual.  Also, we can create a custom adapter that pulls the products from your database or whatever back-end system  you use.

Our client was also using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).   As part of the same system we automated  the assignment of Amazon fulfillment network identifiers (FN SKU), notification to FBA of inbound shipments and checking for shipment receipt at the Amazon FBA warehouse.

If you are finding yourself fighting with a large number of products and your IT system is not up to the task of maintaining your Amazon listing, contact us for a free evaluation.

For our most recent project we automated the business processes of a mid-sized book wholesaler.  The wholesaler’s biggest challenge was that inventory tended to spend too many days in the warehouse.   This had a direct impact on the bottom line as space utilization and turnover rates are key metrics for the business.

Some of the delays were due to a complex re-packaging and labeling process.  The majority of the delays were in communication and coordinating with external parties involved in the transaction.

In conjunction with the wholesaler we analyzed and re-engineered the business process.  The net result was an 80% improvement in utilization and turnover rate.

The key features our system provides are automated listings on the Amazon market place and seamless integration with Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA).  We have a solution that automates communication with third parties and provides bar code labeling for shipments.  Our integration services can help Amazon sellers to have seamless back office processes which, fundamentally, will impact their bottom line!

They are using a software system that allows for instant communication with their third party vendors.  It, also, provides for immediate labeling which allows a book wholesaler to ship to an Amazon shipment service.   The particular software, that accomplishes this task, works behind the scenes in order to compete with other vendors in terms of pricing and positioning.  Groovy Corner seems to be one of the few vendors that has this service right now, but I’m sure that other retailers will begin to compete very quickly.  Inevitably, the end result will be cheaper products delivered to us which is what the smart shopper continues to seek.

I have become a loyal buyer of Groovy Corner only because it seems as though they are at the top of any category of items that they sell within Amazon in terms of quality, price and ratings.  The benefits of automated software keep getting better and better for an end user like me and I wanted to share this tip while it’s current!

2010 has been a phenomenal year for Beaver Creek Consulting and we are happy that we have created a product that is in high demand. It is our desire that this new forum will benefit our customers and that it answers your needs.

We invite you to share your ideas and thoughts with other community members at beavercreekconsulting.com/forums.

Version 2.6 features full support for the BlackBerry Torch and BlackBerry OS 6.

Contacts Cleaner features lights-out processing of your address book.  We have many users who have used Contacts Cleaner to fix address books with 5,000 or 10,000 contacts and four copies of each contact.

We use one-pass processing without prompting you on how to merge the duplicates.  If you have only a few duplicates which you want to merge in a very specific way (you choose which phone numbers to keep), then the best solution is to manually clean up your address book.

On the other hand, if your address book gets totally messed up by a synchronization gone bad and you now have 5 copies of each and every contact, then Contacts Cleaner is a perfect solution for you.

Contact Cleaner does not stop and ask you what to do with each contact.  The App finds duplicates by matching on contact name and then does the right thing to merge all of the duplicates down to one contact.

We have had many users suggest that we stop and ask how to handle each duplicate.  That will not work for address books with 5,000 contacts.  Few people will want to stop and consider each of several thousand contacts.

Our goal for Contacts Cleaner is to do  pretty good job without bothering you about how to get the job done.  We want to make your life a little better by quickly and efficiently reducing the chaos in your address book.

Given how people use their Blackberry phones, a short list of the must-have apps was selected.  These all entail apps that make the busy consumer’s life easier.  The Business Card Reader app is a great example of an app that allows people to streamline their lives by scanning in business cards.

The BuzzOff App gets a great recommendation from AOL as well.  This App allows users to block individual phone numbers so that you can reduce the amount of annoying sales calls and free up your busy schedule.

The Contacts Cleaner App made this list to round out making your day more efficient.  This app, as we have mentioned before, reduces the clutter in your address book.  By merging the fields with the duplicate entries, you can finally scale down an over-sized address book to a list of addresses which is easy to manage.

See the rest of AOL’s fave Blackberry Apps:  http://smallbusiness.aol.com/2010/10/28/what-are-the-best-blackberry-apps/

Within this list of the best Apps is Contacts Cleaner.  They mention that the time saved by using this  App is worth at least three bucks since after its use you can easily scroll through your address book without the annoying duplicates.  I, personally, downloaded this app earlier this year and have recommended it to everyone that I know who has a Blackberry.  Another favorite App that made this Best  Dozen list is Dilbert.  For the first time, you can have immediate access to the daily Dilbert cartoon.

Find out who else made the list by going directly to Fidelity’s site.

https://news.fidelity.com/news/news.jhtml?articleid=201006300905STREETCMREALTIME_10795801&IMG=N&cat=default&ccsource=rss-default

The Health Reform Calculator App comes at a time when the country is asking questions as to how the changes will affect them based on factors such as their income, their state of residence and existing insurance plans. Instead of having people pour through websites or read through the entire bill, we wanted to provide answers that mean something to each and every person. It was designed to be intuitive. After users enter several factors regarding their personal situation, the results from the calculator will show how the bill will impact life. More specifically, it estimates what it could mean for health coverage and taxes based on income, current insurance status and location.

It’s exciting to see that the iTunes approved the App since their approval process goes through a series of strict standards. We are selling the Health Care Reform Calculator for 99 cents and look forward to receiving your feedback!

Berry Review summarized this top 9 list beautifully and it’s a huge honor that in their opening paragraph, the author states, “I have to wholeheartedly agree with their choice of Contacts Cleaner.”  The article highlights how RIM often puts together lists of the best Apps for a season. By using the theme of the spring season, Contacts Cleaner is a great choice for “spring cleaning”.

It’s been an exciting few months with our iPhone App making the list of best iPhone Apps just last month. Sharing that list with the likes of Digg and Bing really put that App on the map! Now, we have another reason to celebrate!

It’s in the spring cleaning category that Contacts Cleaner falls into.  By removing duplicates from your address book, you can start the season off right.  Berry Review highlighted this story and mentions that they ”wholeheartedly agree” with the Contacts Cleaner choice.

This is an exciting list!  I plan on downloading at least half of them!  I like the idea of picnic lunches during a hike and an App which can guide me through backyard grilling.  Happy Spring Everyone!!

Because Beaver Creek Consulting’s App made Business Indsider’s best iPhone App list along side of MicroSoft’s Bing and with the popular social bookmarking site, Digg, Mr. Petry reminds us about the power of the Internet. It’s been a great week for BCC!  The App seems to be making a splash; it will be fun to see people using their iPhone devices as scanners in grocery stores with the use of this App!

The Food Essentials App will scan bar codes and will provide people with not only nutritional information, but it will outline the additives and allergens that each item contains. This type of information cannot be ordinarily seen on nutrition labels.  People will be able to unleash their iPhone and use it as a regular scanner – a feature that most people don’t know that they’re carrying in their purse or pocket.

Pretty cool stuff!

We’ve , also, been seeing  bloggers embrace the Food Essentials Scanner App.  One blogger who calls herself, The iPhone Mom wrote a wonderful review of the App stating that it’s the best App that she’s seen for those who suffer from food allergies.  After reading her blog , you find out that she liked that ability to customize the App.   While we weren’t sure if this would be a hit, it’s nice to see that someone who has a small child finds this to be of use.  She turned on the ability to see dairy ingredients and was able to make appropriate choices.

We’ve seen great success with our Blackberry App products and it’s extremely rewarding to have such instant success with our first Apple App.

“We’re excited that we created an App which allows people to use their iPhone as a scanning device,” says Marty Kube, President and CEO of Beaver Creek Consulting. “By tying in iPhone’s capabilities with our software solutions, we have created one of the most compelling iPhone Apps that will provide the best user experience for a mobile device.”

The Food Essentials Scanner App can either scan bar codes on food products or can be used as a search tool where users type in product using keywords. With over 30,000 ingredients listed in the database, the App can easily be customized to solve an individual’s nutritional needs.

Beaver Creek Consulting released this App for $4.99. It must be compatible with the iPhone with an operating system of OS3.1 or later. It can be downloaded on the App Store under the Healthcare and Fitness category.

Beaver Creek Consulting is a software development and consulting firm which provides solutions in both the commercial and government sectors. Our experience in working with Fortune 500 companies has given us the breadth of knowledge that spans design, implementation and consulting services. To find out more, please visit http://beavercreekconsulting.com/