App Smart: Apps to Keep Bill Due Dates From Sneaking Up on You

Apps to Keep Bill Due Dates From Sneaking Up on You

Bills, bills, bills. They always seem to be multiplying, and adding digital devices like smartphones and tablets to our lives only makes the pile bigger. Thankfully, those same smartphones and tablets can also help track and manage all of the bills in one place.

Bill Tracker is available for free on iOS devices, but $2 will get users an ad-free version that can sync across devices.

Bills Reminder, a free Android app.

BillMinder, a $2 iOS app.

On Apple mobile devices, a simple and useful bill payment reminder app is Bill Tracker. The app’s main interface lists your bills in the order they are due, showing the date, amount owed and other data. It is great for telling you at a glance what you need to pay, and its interface is clean and unfussy.

Adding a new bill to the system is as easy as tapping on the “+” button, selecting an account description or creating a new one â€" like “utilities” â€" and tapping in the details, labeling it as “electricity” or “gas” and so on. Once you’ve entered this information, you can identify it as a recurring bill, add any notes that you may need to prompt your memory and then save the entry.

The app has a calendar view, and you can also itemize bills and track spending by category. Due date reminders are easy to set and can be programmed to go off several times before a payment is due. When you make a payment on time, you can update the relevant entry and include information like a confirmation number.

The process of entering bill data doesn’t eat up much of your time, thanks to the app’s clean design. A version of the app with ads is free. A $2 version removes the ads and lets you sync your data among multiple devices.

A similar free app on Android is Bills Reminder from Handy Apps. It also has an unfussy design and simple controls so entering data isn’t too laborious. The app lists bills in the order they are due, annotated with the relevant payment details. Recurring bills have a blue icon, and bills with a special note have an orange icon. This feature makes it easy to spot important or one-off bills among more regular ones.

BillMinder, a $2 iOS app, has many of the same features but its interface has more detailed graphics, including prettier lists and reports of paid bills. BillMinder works much as its rivals do, so it also requires a lot of typing from you, but you may prefer its snazzier look and the detailed way it reports on your past payments.

A popular and more full-featured bill payment reminder app is Manilla. It is available free on both iOS and Android. The app feels a little like Bill Tracker thanks to its straightforward interfaces and graphics, but it has more powerful options.

Where Manilla stands out from the crowd is in its ability to connect with many popular American companies and download bill information automatically. And it is easy to use. To start the process with your Verizon cellphone bill, for example, you just enter your login information for Verizon’s Web site. The app will download your bill data from the company â€" saving you the trouble of typing in a coming bill manually.

To ease concerns about entering sensitive data into the app, which could be seen by someone who gets into your phone, the app is pass code-protected.

For such a nicely designed app, there are some curious weak points, like the limited options for customizing alerts and reminders in the way that even some of the simpler apps allow.

The popular Check app from Pageonce is similar to Manilla, but it includes additional features, like the ability to keep track of your credit cards. While it still acts as a simple bill payment, reminder and organizer app, it can also let you pay bills through your bank account or credit cards.

The app is well designed with a great-looking user interface, but it is very complex. The app does a great job of pulling all your bank and bill data into one place, but if you’re the type of person who likes to keep hands-on control over your finances and bills, it may not suit you. Check is free on iOS and Android.

Quick Call Readdle has just overhauled its popular calendar app for iOS devices into a new version, Calendar 5. It now has iPad support and its graphics are in keeping with Apple’s new iOS 7 design. The app is powerful and an improvement over Apple’s stock Calendar. It’s available for $7.

Firm That Sent 42 Million Texts Settles in Spam Case

John Gress for The New York Times

C. Steven Baker, left, of the F.T.C. says complaints have gone down since a crackdown this year on fraudulent text messages.

WASHINGTON â€" The Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday that it had settled charges against a Florida company and its two top executives for sending more than 42 million unwanted and deceptive text messages to consumers.

Messages sent by the company had promised free gift cards worth up to $1,000, the commission said, but when consumers tried to visit a Web site to collect the prize, they were instead connected to a site that asked for personal information, like Social Security numbers and credit card numbers. It also required them to pay for additional services to receive a gift card.

The company, Rentbro, and its principals, Daniel Pessin and Jacob Engel, both of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., were required to turn over remaining assets and to repay up to $377,321, the amount the business had collected.

The settlement came as part of a sweeping crackdown on text message fraud that the commission announced in March. The agency filed eight cases in February and March against 29 companies and individuals around the country, accusing them of sending text messages with fake offers.

Those companies sent more than 180 million spam text messages, which typically offered gift cards to national chain stores like Best Buy and Walmart.

C. Steven Baker, director of the commission’s Midwest region, said that since the agency had filed the cases, it had received many fewer complaints about such offers.

The commission charged Rentbro and the two executives with unfair or deceptive acts, in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act. The parties agreed to the settlement but did not admit or deny wrongdoing.

Gregg E. Pessin, a lawyer in Coral Gables, Fla., who is listed in Rentbro’s corporate filings as the company’s registered agent and who said he was the father of Mr. Pessin, said the company and the two men would not comment on the case.

The Rentbro case was the second of the cases filed this year to be settled by the commission. In July, the agency assessed a penalty of $60,950 against Henry Nolan Kelly, who the commission said had sent more than 20 million unwanted text messages offering free iPads and iPhones to people who clicked on the Web link.

The financial judgment against Mr. Kelly was suspended because of his inability to pay. He agreed to cooperate with the commission in future investigations and to refrain from sending unwanted or deceptive text messages.

A version of this article appears in print on September 18, 2013, on page B2 of the New York edition with the headline: Firm That Sent 42 Million Texts Settles in Spam Case.

Bits Blog: Review Roundup: The iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C

A small number of technology journalists have had their hands on Apple’s new iPhones for about a week. And this time they had two phones to evaluate instead of one.

The consensus among reviewers was generally very positive. They agreed that even though the fancier phone, the iPhone 5S, looks almost exactly the same as its predecessor, it’s the insides that count: a smarter computing chip and a new button with a fingerprint scanner. They also liked the iPhone 5C, even though it is essentially an older iPhone repackaged in colorful plastic.

Following is a quick roundup of what some prominent technology writers had to say.

Walt Mossberg of AllThingsD called the iPhone 5S the best smartphone on the market. But he said it was a better upgrade for those who have an older iPhone, like the iPhone 4S, not last year’s iPhone 5:

I like it and can recommend it for anyone looking for a premium, advanced smartphone. If you are an iPhone fan with any model older than the iPhone 5, the new 5s will be a big step up. If you own an iPhone 5, there’s less of a case for upgrading, unless you want the fingerprint reader and improved camera. You can get the new OS free of charge.

Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech was impressed with the upgrades inside the iPhone 5S: the faster processor, improved camera and the fingerprint sensor for security:

As with all other S-upgrades, the biggest changes to the iPhone 5s are beneath the aluminum and glass exterior. The 5s’ flagship feature? Apple’s new A7 SoC. The A7 is the world’s first 64-bit smartphone SoC, and the first 64-bit mobile SoC shipping in a product (Intel’s Bay Trail is 64-bit but it won’t ship as such, and has yet to ship regardless).

Rich Jaroslovsky of Bloomberg News was jaded. He said that most of the improvements in the iPhone 5S were minor, and that the iPhone 5C was nothing to be excited about:

There’s nothing wrong with either phone. But there’s not much that’s pulse-quickening about them either.

Lauren Goode of AllThingsD said the cheaper iPhone 5C was a solid phone that is better than the older iPhone 5:

While the 5C looks and feels very familiar, it’s still a good phone and an improvement over the 5. But its improvements are evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Alex Kidman of ABC questioned who would buy an iPhone 5C when the iPhone 5S is so much better:

So who’s going to buy it? I’m honestly not sure outside of the heavy fashion crowd who, for one reason or another might just want color and not actual features.

David Pogue of The New York Times said both the iPhone 5S and 5C were great phones. And he said that even though the iPhone 5C is not all that innovative, it will probably still be a big seller:

It’s a terrific phone. The price is right. It will sell like hot cakes; the new iPhones go on sale Friday. But just sheathing last year’s phone in shiny plastic isn’t a stunning advance.