Thing 21: Free-for-all

Thing 21 is a free-for-all to share our favorite apps, and I have a few I'd like to highlight.

I'm big into tracking my money, because I hate debt and want to retire someday, and my favorite app/website for this is Mint.com or the app version of the site. I know some people have a hard time trusting all of their financial info. to this app, but I never had qualms about this (no money can be moved around within the app or on the website, it's only a way to view account balances and see progress toward goals) and so I am a superfan of this app and will recommend it to everyone. I love that I can know at any given moment how much I've spent in the various categories each month, if I'm on-track to my savings goals, and more. I actually think I'm more likely to know about fraudulent activity on any of my many accounts (brokerage, savings, 401k, IRA accounts, etc.) and be more aware of any fees I'm being charged than I would be if I just logged into my main banking accounts. This makes it very easy to see an account balance multiple times a day.

Second favorite is the Fitbit app that goes along with my Fitbit Flex activity monitor, which I got for my birthday at the end of April. At around $100, the Fitbit Flex isn't the cheapest activity monitor, but I like the bracelet style and the feedback it gives me (plus the silent alarm feature has been helpful). This app has definitely helped make health and exercise more fun, as I can see how many steps I take each day, how many calories I burn, how much sleep I got, and it's helped me to lose those pesky extra pounds of winter weight.

And, last but not least, my favorite game for my phone is definitely Dots. It's such an elegantly simple game, and each round of the timed mode is only 60 seconds, so it's something you can play during a commercial break or just a few rounds while in a waiting room. You simply connect the matching colored dots (in lines and--for more points--squares), they disappear, making it easier to connect more dots of other colors, and then you get a score based on how many dots you cleared. The purple dots in the upper left corner are just calling out to be connected in a square:

The more dots you connect, the higher your score, and the more Time Stops, Expanders, and Shrinkers you can 'buy' to make the game easier and get a higher score.  Clear those green dots, and more dots will take their place...

They've also recently added challenges so you can go up against your friends or random players. My last high score and my all time high score are below--do you think you can beat me?

Also this week, they released a new game, TwoDots, that I've been playing. It's the same general idea of connecting dots, but instead of timed mode, your goal is to connect whichever color in as many moves as you're given. So far, I'm really enjoying it.

Happy Friday!

Thing 20: Games

Thing 20 requires us to play! I downloaded Minion Rush, but wasn't able to actually play it since it needed to download additional data, and then I'd be told the servers were busy. Bummer, since I really like the Despicable Me films. Someday I want to have a dog and name him Kevin. At least the attempt was humorous, with the messages on the wait screens:

 

So instead, I'll highlight a few of my favorite games. The first is Battleline. I got the actual board game Battle Line for my husband a few years ago, since I was on the hunt for games which can be played by two people and involve strategy, without having too many rules to learn, similar to Lost Cities, which also has an app version. Battle Line fit the bill perfectly, and I later discovered its availability as an app for our iPad. When I got my iPhone, it asked if I wanted to download the game there, as well. It can be played against the computer in single player mode, but I have to admit it's much easier to win against the computer than it is against a real human, so I prefer the two player mode. You basically try to make better sets of cards than your opponent in order to claim more flags. Five flags total or three next to each other, and you win. I won this game pretty easily:

The next two are games I got for free via those handy Starbucks cards, and I haven't mastered either of them, but they Mr. Crab and Duet. They both involve having good timing, which I haven't, but I still think they are both very well-designed games.

I'm going to save my VERY FAVORITE game for the next Thing. Stay tuned...

Thing 19: Hobbies

Thing 19 apps are all related to hobbies. Since music is one of my main loves in life, I downloaded the Spotify app. I don't have a premium Spotify account, but do occasionally use it while at work or home to have music playing. I've used it to figure out if I want to buy an album by an artist, or see their concert. I previewed the London Grammar album in this way before seeing them at the Varsity Theatre in Minneapolis with my sister. I also listened to pieces by composer Eric Whitacre before seeing him conduct the Minnesota Orchestra and Minnesota Chorale.

The app allows you to listen in a few different modes. You can listen to your playlists, or have it choose songs for you based on a theme or mood.

 

The only thing I don't like is that the app won't allow you to listen to a specific song or album in the original order, only on shuffle. I guess this makes it an incentive to subscribe to their premium service, or just buy the album for yourself on CD or mp3 to play however you like.

Thing 18: Education

Thing 18 is educational apps, and I downloaded a lot of them. I'll do brief reviews of each. All in all, mobile devices seem to make learning a lot more interesting and fun.

The 3D Brain app is cool, and would be helpful for those studying the brain for a class or needing a refresher. My sister is a speech-language pathologist, so I searched 'auditory' in the search box and came up with the image of the portion of the brain that controls our auditory perceptions. Pretty cool stuff.

Next, I played around with the Bill Nye app. I grew up watching the Science Guy, so I was hesitant about this app, but found it fun and was pleasantly surprised. I especially liked that it featured actual science experiments.

Then, I re-launched DuoLingo, which I've been using since December to refresh my French before a summer trip to Paris, and found some nice recent updates. I'd fallen behind on practicing, but I jumped right back into it. I really like this app for language acquisition and reinforcement.

I played around with the LittleLearners app, but it seems like it might be better if I were familiar with the books, or be about 1-3 years old. I liked that some of the language was also represented in text, so it gives kids some print experience.

I watched author Elizabeth Gilbert's newest TED Talk with that app, and liked that it was searchable very easily.

The Wikipedia app also made using that site a bit easier. I often 'go down a rabbit hole' on Wikipedia when I start following interesting links, and this app would make doing that much easier than the browser on my phone.

 

And last, the National Archives Document of the Day app is a cool way to highlight all the various and items in the archives, and learn something new about history every day.

Thing 17: Connecting to community

Thing 17 is a call to use locally-focused apps to connect to your community. I downloaded the St. Cloud State University app, as well as the MN Museums and MPR News and Radio apps.

I like the idea of the SCSU app more than the actual app. I could see how the Campus Map would be helpful and the 360 panoramas are interesting and helpful if you aren't familiar with campus or haven't been there in a while (I graduated in 2003 but my husband attends grad school at SCSU now so we are both very familiar with campus). I don't really care about sports, so that feature wasn't important to me, but the news feed has not been updated since 2012, which was strange. Perhaps a glitch?

The MN Museums app could come in very handy. You can browse by looking at a map, which is useful for museum-dense areas like the twin cities, and also nice to see what museums might be nearby if you're traveling somewhere. You can also browse by categories, so if you're especially interested in, for example, science, you can find out the locations of the Bakken Library and Museum, Headwaters Science Center, MN Discovery Center, etc. all in one place. I'd really like to visit the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis and some of the historic homes on the list.

I really like the MPR News app, makes it very easy to find shows and recent news item quickly. The MPR Radio app is also good to have. I'll be keeping both of these on my phone.

Thing 16: Audio

Thing 16 is audio, and since I'm a very into music, I checked out the app for SoundCloud. I was pretty impressed. I wasn't expecting to find so many of my favorite artists posting their own music, but I was pleasantly surprised. I recently saw Tokyo Police Club in Minneapolis, and was very pleased to find their series of cover songs available on SoundCloud.

For your enjoyment, I put together a list of 23 songs by artists I'm enjoying lately. I can highly recommend London Grammar, The 1975, and Gotye, as I've also been to their concerts.

The 1975 at First Avenue, May 2, 2014

Thing 15: Infographics

Thing 15 has us explore infographics. I downloaded the info.Graphics app, and took a look at a few of the infographics there. My problem with some of them was that they were unreadable, which was unfortunate. I do, however, have a couple favorite infographics to share.

http://obizmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-True-Cost-Of-Commuting-830x3371.jpg

http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/36/bf/94/36bf94a25400507f6847d82917265961.jpg

I could see recommending one of these apps to someone searching for infographics, or presenting the idea of using an infographic to someone creating a presentation or website on a specific topic that could be better illustrated using an infographic.

Thing 14: Videos

Thing 14 is videos. The only app I downloaded for this 'thing' is Magisto, because I already use my phone's video feature to actually record clips, and I tend to use the Instagram video feature for cute little videos of the dachshunds which I can immediately post with very little processing time and some simple options for adding filters.

I made a basic video with Magisto. I was able to select video clips and photos from my phone's library, select a layout and some music, and make a cute 45 second video of Pippa. Here's a screen shot of the video:

 

I'll also mention the app Vyclone, which allows multiple people to take video of the same event and then it edits together your videos to create multi-camera videos. I think this is a really cool idea, and could come in handy in so many situations.

Thing 13: Presentations

Thing 13 is presentations, something I don't often do, but found these apps interesting nonetheless. I downloaded Deck and Haiku Deck..

I really liked the presentation options in Deck, and there are a lot of different options. I made a quick 3-point presentation in the Paper Plane theme and thought it was really cute.

I took a look at Haiku Deck, not realizing I couldn't create one on my phone (looks like only on a computer or iPad, but a phone can be used to help you present your Haiku Deck once it's completed). I looked at a couple of example presentations, and while they were okay, I wasn't as impressed with them as I was with the Deck presentation options.

Thing 12: Books, Books, & More Books

Thing 12 is all about books. I admitted in my last post that I'm not big on reading on my phone or iPad, but I did download three of the apps mentioned in this thing: Wattpad, iStoryBooks, and the YALSA Teen Book Finder.

I figured Wattpad could be good for getting some classics, and also wanted to see if there was much in terms of mysteries (my favorite genre). I liked that it prompted me to select my favorite genres right when I logged in:

I was also pleasantly surprised to find there are some Agatha Christie titles available--I love watching the television and movie adaptations of Poirot and Miss Marple stories, but have only read one of Agatha Christie's books, so I think this will be perfect summer reading fare:

I downloaded iStoryBooks because I am occasionally around small children who seem drawn to my phone like a moth to a flame and thought it could be good to have a few more apps for kids. Usually, I end up showing kids my photos and videos of the dachshunds which seems to keep them entertained for a few minutes, but I do have one app for kids on my phone, a game called Toca House which my friends' daughter loved and wanted to keep playing until she was ushered off to bed. iStoryBooks reminds me a lot of a service my library offers, TumbleBooks, except that I think TumbleBooks requires a constant internet connection. The one thing I'd suggest for iStoryBooks is to add a suggested age level or reading level for each story. I viewed one titled 'Food From the Sun' which I found to be a bit more technical than standard 'storybook' reading level. It was cute, though, and the illustrations and narration were well done:

 

Lastly, I used the YALSA app to find a few new titles to read. It could be a handy app for staff in a teen area to have to help teens find their next book, or for creating displays based on awards or genres:

Thing 11: Library & Reference

Thing 11 is Library & Reference apps. I tried out the ELM site on my iPhone, and was pleased that it was responsive to my screen size and all of the major access points for finding information were immediately accessible.

My library (Great River Regional) does not have its own app, but I did download BookMyne, which is for libraries using the Horizon ILS. We don't promote this app for our users because I've heard it can be glitchy, but I'm going to give it another try and see if I have any issues with it. The interface is easier to read than the library's website when it's really tiny on my phone browser. This is my items checked out on BookMyne:

And this is my items checked out on the library's site in my phone's browser:

My library also offers downloadable books via OverDrive, and I have used that app many times to access the digital library. Except that I don't really like reading books on my phone or iPad, because I prefer the sensation of sitting down with an actual paper book. I'm probably going to download a few eBooks this summer and try again so I don't have to carry books on my trip to Europe, but as tech savvy as I am, I guess I'm still one of those readers that just really prefers a book to a device.

Thing 10: Sharing Photos

Thing 10 is something I do all the time, sharing photos. I post photos frequently to Facebook and Instagram (and sometimes cross-post to both using that feature on Instagram, which I find very convenient), and love adding the filters on Instagram and editing photos slightly to make them more appealing. I also make liberal use of hashtags so that people can find my photos, and also so that I can find my own photos. And I not only know what Throwback Thursday is, I have posted some #tbt photos myself over the last month. Since I'm somewhat of an expert in this area, this blog post will be longer than most thus far.

I regularly post photos to Instagram of my parents' and sister's dogs, who are both long-haired standard dachshunds. They each have their own hashtag: #pippathedachshund and #nicothedachshund (this way, if other family or friends post pictures of the dogs, they can be located easily). I like that there's a really active community of dachshund fans who follow me and my photos of Pippa and Nico, so they get a lot of love from all over the world. And I love seeing other people's photos of their dachshunds, and actively 'heart' and comment on photos when I have the chance.

One trick I've learned is to always use the regular camera app on my iPhone and then use Instagram or another editing app to crop and adjust the photo for the square format of Instagram. Also, if I know I'll be posting to Instagram, I'll sometimes purposely frame the shot (typically vertically) so that I don't lose much of the photo when it's cropped.

I have two apps I like to use for editing for Instagram. They are Squaready and PhotoCollage (or PicJointer). Squaready allows you to take a photo and center it in a frame of color so that you don't lose any of the photo (it just ends up being a bit smaller). It's just like watching a movie in widescreen format on a non-widescreen television, where you end up with black bars at the top and bottom, but in this case, sometimes the 'bars' are on the sides for a vertical photo, and I usually use white since that's the standard background color of Instagram. I used Squaready on this original photo of Pippa:

 

I cropped a bit, centered her in the frame, applied a filter, and didn't 'lose' much of the photo by editing it for Instagram to this:

 

I like PhotoCollage or PicJointer because I can create a mini collage of photos to tell a story. This is a basic example with two images of a snow pile at the end of the library's parking lot, showing the progress of melting this spring:

I will add that I think one of the main keys to successful use of Instagram is to not just follow your friends, but to also follow people who post things you like. And how do you find those things? By appropriately using and searching for hashtags. Hashtags are a huge part of Instagram. Because I like dachshunds and post photos of them, I use the following hashtags (and also search for other photos with the same hashtags): #dachshund #dachshundsofinstagram #doxie #doxiesofinstagram #longhaireddachshund #standarddachshund - you get the idea. If I just posted the above photo of Pippa without any hashtags, there would be no way for someone to find that photo of her. But with the hashtags, I'm giving people an entry point to find that photo and, by way of that photo, my other photos of Pippa and Nico.

Lastly, I'll be honest and admit that I am really wary of Snapchat. When I first heard about it, I immediately thought that it would be used for sexting. I can see the utility of it, but if I want to send a photo to someone, I usually just send it in a message to them. I don't take photos that I wouldn't be comfortable with everyone seeing, and I never got into taking ugly selfies, so I will probably not ever download Snapchat (and Instagram recently added a private inbox for photos, so a similar thing can be accomplished with it).

Thing 9: Taking & Editing Photos

I take a lot of photos with my iPhone, so Thing 9, Taking & Editing Photos, really appealed to me. I played around with the same photo of one of my cousins, Marissa, who is about 20 months old and cute as a button. This is the original with no editing:

I downloaded Color Splurge but found it kind of tricky to use, and I've never been good with 'painting' on a computer/phone, so this did not go super well. I ended up just making the photo black & white and then painted the whole photo pale pink which makes it look kind of antique:

I'll probably try playing around with Color Splurge a bit more when I have a photo where it might work a little better. I also downloaded the Aviary camera. It has filters similar to Instagram, and other options for editing photos. I did a bit of editing on the photo to adjust the colors and softened it up a bit with Aviary:

I can see keeping both of these apps to be able to edit photos in more ways than the basic camera allows me to do.