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.

Thing 8: Social Media Management Tools

Thing 8 is Social Media Management Tools. I have both Facebook and Twitter apps, but use Facebook more often than Twitter. I am not a big tweeter anymore, but used to use it quite frequently. I also manage the social media streams for my library, so have to keep up with any changes to both of these platforms for work.

I use the Facebook app multiple times daily. I don't often post to Facebook (try to limit my posting to once per day or even less frequently than that), but I do like to see what others post and what's trending. The only things I don't like about the app are that the in-app browser for following web links is kind of annoying in that it won't let you go back in the same way a normal browser does, and I also don't like all the posts about Game of Thrones (oh, wait, that might not be a problem with the app...).

In order to make Twitter more useful for me personally, I need to unfollow a bunch of stuff I first followed back in 2008/2009 when I joined Twitter. The main problem I see with all social media is that it's only as good as who you follow. I have to spend time curating the people I follow so that I get posts and updates I really care about, otherwise it becomes a vast wasteland of useless or annoying posts.

Thing 7: Content Saving & Sharing

Thing 7 is Content Saving & Sharing. I have been using Pinterest since 2012, and recently downloaded bitly.

Pinterest is probably one of my most-used apps. I have been keeping track of books I've read each year (2012, 2013, 2014) by pinning the book covers, and find my recipes board really helpful when I'm struggling with what to eat or buy at the grocery store. I also have lots of outfit ideas pinned, because my goal was to stop buying lots of new clothes and just figure out how to wear the stuff I already own in a new ways. I keep a wish list of things I'd like for gifts, as well as a secret board with gift ideas for others.

Bitly could become very useful, so it's one of the few apps that I'll probably not delete. I like the idea of saving links from work or home and being able to access them anywhere via the app.

Thing 6: Creating & Editing Docs

Thing 6 is creating and editing docs. I downloaded CloudOn, Quickoffice, and SignNow. I didn't find CloudOn or Quickoffice any easier to use or more intuitive than the Google Drive app I already use for editing documents. I could see potentially using SignNow in limited situations, but don't regularly need to sign electronic documents.

One semi-related note: when downloading new apps, I find it annoying that I must make a login for each app. Very fews apps I've downloaded DON'T require some kind of login or username creation. Sometimes I am forced to connect these apps with my Facebook or Twitter, or make an independent login. The independent login is usually the selection I make, because I don't like apps even having the option to post to Facebook or Twitter for me (even though I am careful not to select this option, I've had it happen anyway with rogue apps), but it's always the most cumbersome option to create a new login just for a simple app. It seems that many of the apps also make you 'confirm' that you want to use your e-mail to login, so you must go into your e-mail and confirm before you can do anything with the app.

Thing 5: Notetaking

Thing 5 is notetaking. I didn't really find any of the apps all that helpful. I use my phone's built-in 'Reminders' app, which syncs with my work task list and has the ability to set reminder alarms (even via Siri, which is helpful. "Siri, set a reminder for 3:30pm to take out the trash").

I also use an app called AnyList for my shopping/to do lists that I need to keep track of, and really like that app. I had tried Remember the Milk before, but didn't really like it any better than the built-in app for reminders. I have never once used the actual Notes app on my phone. I guess I don't take notes on my phone, probably because the only time I take notes, I take them by hand (during work meetings or trainings, mainly). The Springpad recipe feature could be nice, but I already have a Pinterest board of favorite recipes, and they more recently introduced the feature of putting the ingredients/recipe instructions direct on Pinterest, so I think a separate app isn't necessary for me.

Thing 4: Keeping Up

I struggled a bit with this Thing (#4: Keeping Up). I downloaded both Flipboard and Zite for my iPhone, and also got the new Facebook app, Paper. I knew what RSS was and used to use Bloglines for an RSS reader to keep up with various blogs, but was, quite frankly, somewhat relieved when Bloglines bit the dust and I stopped having all of these RSS feeds that I felt like I should be reading, but wasn't really all that interested in anymore, and it was too much work to go through and delete probably 50+ feeds I was no longer enjoying.

To be honest, that's how Flipboard and Zite feel to me. Overwhelming. Too much information. If I am looking for information on news, I go to Google News or the NewsMap, or see what's trending on Twitter or Facebook within those apps. I guess if I were a bigger newshound or looking for content, these apps would be good for me.