• Since Google started hyping up its home energy management tool, PowerMeter, people have started to get really excited about having the ability to personally control their energy consumption.  Even further, companies are developing ways in which consumers can manage their energy when they’re not even in their house.  Here are 6 iPhone energy management  apps in development or currently available that you should definitely check out.

1. Tendril Vantage Mobile:  Based out of Boulder, CO, the company’s already brought in $30 million in funding.  Although the app won’t be available until 2010, the company is promising to offer real-time consumption stats and the ability to remotely control your appliances and thermostat.
2. Energy UFO: Developed by Palo Alto based company, Visible Energy, the Energy UFO is already free on the app store.  Visible Energy produces energy management gadgets and power strips upon which the Energy UFO interfaces with.  Unfortunately, the app isn’t of much use yet considering their hardware won’t start shipping until Christmas this year.
3. Ecobee’s Smart Thermostat:  Ecobee, out of Toronto, already developed a thermostat that communicates through WiFi.  The company is planning to launch an iPhone app allowing consumers to remotely turn their thermostats up and down.
4. My House UI: Developed by digital home startup, Control4, the My House UI app allows users to control heat, lighting, and air conditioning.  The iPhone app, however, is useless unless you own Control4’s in-home devices.  The company’s already raised $17.3 million.
5. Meter Readings, MeterRead, and Wattulator : All three are $0.99 apps allowing consumers to manually enter electricity, water, and gas data.  Although they don’t directly communicate with your system at home, they’re good for finding out how much energy specific appliances in your home are using.

• Mint for the iPhone has just launched. Check balances on your checking, savings, credit card and loan accounts. Track expenses and budgets. Watch the dismal performance of your 401(k), brokerage and IRA accounts, etc. 
• Not available in the app store yet, but you can download it here

• BillShrink closed a Series B round for $8 million led by Trinity Venures and Bessemer Venture Partners.
• Prior A round led by Bessemer for $1 million.
• We wrote about BillShrink expanding their phone bill shrinking abilities to credit cards last month.
• Remains to be seen if their credit card suggestion feature will perform any better than Mint’s, which as been shown to make bad recommendations.

Anyone out there who’s used BillShrink? The phone bill service looks pointless for iPhone owners.

• Mint.com has launched its new offerings that have been in private bet
• Mint’s new features include tracking your investment portfolio including 401K
• From daily expenses all the way up to your stock portfolio, Mint offers an all encompassing personal finance service that seems to soar above the rest.

Are there any other personal finance sites you feel stand up to what Mint offers?

Mash

• Meet ExpenseTacker, an online expense tracking system that lets you record transactions by calling a phone number and saying a few words about your purchase.
• All of your recorded transactions are recorded in n online banking style format
• The service costs $15 a month ($10 if you buy six months at a time
• ExpenseTracker, meet Expensify and Mint
  • Expensify, a free service, sends you a proxy credit card that links to any bank account you would like. They show you your purchases in an easy to read online display and lets you send expense reports to whomever needs to see or reimburse your purchases (employers, family, perole officers, etc.)
  • Mint is a similar service to yourself with detailed expense analytics and a revenue model supported by service provider reccomendations.
• Also, here are 18 competitors .

Basically, i just don’t see how the dial in feature is enough to differentiate you, let alone help you at all. On top of that, you are charging for your service, where these services that require no phone calls have far superior technology, UI and are free. I just call it how I see it.

TC

• Wikinvest Wire takes high traffic financial blogs and syndicates their headlines across a network of related WikiInvest articles, other blog posts, and potentially mainstream media sites writing on similar topics.
• WikiInvest is the Wikipedia for financial news, giving readers an in depth look at topics and news not found in everyday mainstream financial sources.
• With their ‘blogwire’, they hope to help content creators come together on related topics to help investors make rash markket decisions in the bad weather.
• Two Questions:
  • By having relative links to other sites at the bottom of my blog, won’t I stand to lose readers?
  • Thanks for the potential traffic help, but will the traffic I send out to other blogs ever have a chance to be monetized?

I dont think it is relative info that everday investors need help with, its intelligent stock picks in this bad market. Places like Covestor need to become more mainstream (if their site was easier to use), so that we don’t have 2M viewers a day watching Mad Money. Its better to pay attention to multiple people’s portfolios who aren’t on television, because those are about as reliable as ESPN’s pick of the week.

TC

• Pin numbers, bank account info, credit card numbers, SSN and more can now be stored and protected on your phone.
• eWallet already runs on WM Software, Palm OS and as of today, iPhone.
• The price is $9.99, which is half the price of it’s offering on other mobiles.

Made tiny from: TechCrunch.com original post