Thing 8 of the 23 mobile things

Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare

I have been a regular user of Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare for several years and have had periods where I am focused on staying connected to people and local activities through all three, but I find those periods are hard to maintain and the time spent managing all three is often more that I can afford to spend away from the real world.

Facebook has been a great way to reconnect with people from my distant past, stay connected with people from my recent past and develop sometimes surprising connections with people I might have only chatted with briefly in person. I am a bit of a lurker, meaning I read and like items but rarely post my own news. I think I forget that the people who I feel are right at my fingertips might not even realize I'm out there. I have been known to stop the feed of someone who over-shares or who has vastly, sometimes offensively, different opinions about life that I do, but I have a hard time un-friending anyone.

Foursquare was fun when I first discovered it. I really enjoyed checking in at places and seeing if I knew anyone else who was there. As a person highly motivated by awards and stickers I liked the point system and the badges that they offered. After about six months of checking in at every restaurant, shop and event I attended, my family went to the MN State Fair and I attempted to Foursquare my way through the day. A few hours and more that a dozen check-ins later I realized I was feeling so much pressure to get my points that I wasn't enjoying the day at all. I pretty much gave up on the app after that. I now limit myself to the occasional check-in at someplace unusual or if I suspect that they may have a discount available by checking in. I do frequently use Foursquare to find shops or restaurants in areas I'm unfamiliar with and have found that the recommendations are really spot on and the hidden tips rarely fail to meet expectations.

Twitter is my least favorite "thing" in the list of suggestions. I have always found the interface cluttered and the tweet itself fails to keep my attention. In an attempt to find greater value in the format, I thought about what information I would want quick bites of, or ways I could use it to point me to bigger stories. I decided to get rid of a lot of the celebrity tweets I was following and instead added news outlets. This seems to be the best use of Twitter I've found so far. I don't have time to read every article or watch every clip but I can get a relatively balanced take on a topic by compiling the sources and reading further when needed. I realize that the apps in thing 4 do the same and I think that they probably do it better, but I can't find another way that I would regularly use Twitter.

I have dabbled a bit with HootSuite but by no means feel like I have a strong handle on it. I like that it puts the most used social media apps in one place and allows the user to manage all of them at once. Posting to all of the apps, managing views and feedback would be very useful in an organization where a consistent message across platforms is desired. The ability to see stats would be helpful to see how successful postings are from site to site and how far the postings spread. As an individual, and one who infrequently posts to any of the sites I doubt that I will regularly use it.

Thing 7 of the 23 mobile things

Pinterest

Oh Pinterest you great time thief. I have been using this for a little over a year and when I have time to kill and have used all of my lives on Candy Crush Saga, I have been know to dabble in the land of Pinterest. What I particularly like about the app is that you are able to find images for almost anything you are wondering about. I wanted to know what Suffrage jewelry looked like and boom there it was. I wanted a photo of the market in Helsinki, success. It feels like a better resource for quality images than Google images because what you find are usually images posted by people who love what they are posting and have edited out the ads and just plain bad photos. The nature of the format, people choosing to pin what they find interesting, lends to better examples of a topic and the best, most re-pinned tend to be the first that you see. You can also get a good sense of someone's style and interests by looking at their pages. I have learned a lot about my friends and family in a way that I didn't from their Facebook profile or frankly from spending time with them. This format would lend itself to an organization with multiple locations or topics that they wanted to communicate. If a system created a general account and then created boards for each building, it could be a quick easy way to share programs, readers advisory, building updates, displays. The potential for communicating in a visual medium is very inviting. Where Twitter fails to hold my interest with its jumble of letters and symbols I feel like Pinterest invites me to explore in a format which feels much more natural to me.

Thing 6 of the 23 mobile things

SignNow and Quickoffice

Oh how I wish I had SignNow when I was buying my house. The first time we bought a house was 12 years ago and everything was done via fax or in person. Both methods of communication were inconvenient and time consuming. When we purchased our last house in 2012 we handled almost everything with texts and emailed or scanned PDFs on my laptop and phone. This allowed us to negotiate more smoothly and to generally move the process along at a quicker clip. The one piece we didn't have was an option for electronic signatures, the computer we had didn't have a touch screen and frankly I didn't know there was an app for that. This would have been a great time saver. I can see where this would be a great piece of technology in so many places and must be a tremendous help in business. Where people questioned faxed signatures when they first came on the scene, I can see where people could doubt the validity of this. It seems an obvious next step in conducting business from a distance and would be a great resource for outreach. I look forward to watching this develop.

Quickoffice, which I was hoping to tryout on the Kindle was, like far too many things, not available for the Kindle. I explored other app options and the presentations felt really amateurish and across the board they had terrible reviews. I opted to skip this portion of this thing since I don't feel like I would use this on my phone and it seems like a waste of memory to have just in case. I would like to see a Kindle option since I'm sure I would use it in this format but until then I will have to drag out the old laptop to use Office.

Thing 5 of the 23 mobile things

Springpad

I chose Springpad as the app to try for this thing. I have enjoyed playing with it, but I can’t help comparing it with Goodreads, Recipe.com, Foursquare, etc. I like the idea of having the notebooks all in one app and with a little practice I think I would become comfortable with the format for quickly noting a movie or book I want to try. I already use the other above mentioned apps regularly and just the thought of moving everything I had already have noted or collected over to Springpad is daunting. I like that the most popular titles for books and movies are already offered as suggestions and I think I could start to use it as a to do list rather that an already done list which I use the other apps for. I liked the Pinterest feel of the layout and I’m a list maker. I think that of the apps that I have tried so far this will probably be the one I am most likely to keep playing with.

Thing 4 of the 23 mobile things

Flipboard and Zite

This is the point in this project that I realize that I just don't have time to take full advantage of each of these apps. I recognize the benefits of what I've learned so far and I still look forward to learning more but if all ever added was the two apps recommended in this thing I would never come out of the internet vortex. I prefer Flipboard to Zite if only for the more inviting interface. Zite seemed cluttered and I had a hard time filtering it to give me material that I really wanted to read. Flipboard seemed easier to, well flip through. I preferred the preset topics I could choose from on Flipboard. I think that if I had more time to spend with it I could tailor it to be a really useful time saving tool. If I'm reading on my phone, which seems to be the direction this project is leaning, I only have a few minutes and the material I found with Flipboard was more digestible in small bites. I also found that Zite seemed to cause both my phone and the Kindle to act up. I ultimately uninstalled Zite and will keep Flipboard for moments I have time to flip.

Thing 3 of the 23 Mobile things

  

Google search, Google Goggles, iHome Sleep   

Feeling pretty fancy, I already had a few these things.

The Google app is on the phone and I use it regularly. Though I've had the technology for several years now I still can't believe that we are able to walk around with that kind of access to the internet in our hands.

When I first bought the phone I installed a barcode/QR reader, vital for Goodreads and Cartwheel. Love the barcode scanner. I'm thrilled by the beeps and pings in makes, the information just popping into the phone.

I have little need to be reminded to stand so I've skipped StandApp and gone with Google Goggles and the iHome Sleep.

My results with Google Goggles are iffy at best. I scanned an Oreo and got no recognizable matches beyond black and white images. An Oreo seemed pretty recognizable. I like the text scan but again it has to be really clear and specific to get a good result. Scanning the word Starbucks suggested the Starbucks website, but scanning the image logo suggested several Starbucks mugs on sale at ebay.

iHome Sleep. I installed this but have yet to want to try it. The reviews mention that it is a huge battery drain, which is already an issue, and since some of the phones never go to sleep while the app is open the image of the screen you leave it on can burn into the screen. I currently use the alarm that came with the phone when I'm away from home and have been very happy with the results. It allows snooze, has a variety of alerts to awake to has never failed to go off when I set it, which seems to ultimately be the goal.

As you will find if you click on the YouTube link from the previous post I have figure out how to load an additional browser on the Kindle. Dolphin seemed to be fairly reliable and received really good reviews when I was looking for a browser that would let me install Flash. I generally use Dolphin for web things outside of what Amazon wants you to do and the preset Silk for everything else.




 

Thing 2 of the 23 mobile things

Tools and tricks

When learning to use a new device I tend to poke at buttons and slide screens until I make it do what I want it to. YouTube has been a help more than once. In most cases this works for me and I suspect I could remain happy with what I can figure out on my own. For this “thing” I searched the web to find tips on how to use both of my devices and discovered several tools I didn’t even realize I was doing without. How did my Kindle not have a calculator pre-installed? Why have I never wanted to take a picture with it? A screen shot? After exploring Amazon and these sites... 

http://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2012/09/17/40-tips-and-tricks-for-kindle-fire-hd/ 

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/kindle-fire-hd-helpful-tips-tricks-secrets/

http://www.lovemyfire.com/kindle-tricks-and-tips.html

I have a few more tricks up my sleeve. Hey, I may never need these tools or utilities, I’ve gotten this far without them, but now I have some more resources to look at if something comes up.