Thing 10 Sharing Photos

As I mentioned in the previous post, I already have Instagram and Snapchat.

So, I will just state my opinions of these two applications.

Instagram:

• Good for instant posts
• Fun for Throwback Thursdays (posts of old photos from last week to 10 years ago)
• Increasingly commerical
• Can discover and creep on literally thousands of people
• Celebrity accounts can be fun to look at
• The fashion accounts are interesting to me
• I keep my followers private
• searching hastags (#) can be informative and time wasting and amusing all in one

Snapchat:

• perfect for sending quick pics to close family and friends
• very limited to no advertisments
• not for a broad audience unless you add many people you don't know
• smaller amount of users than Instagram
• longer video uploads than Instagram
• short term appeal vs Instagram that keeps your photos

OVERALL

I prefer each app for it's own merit. I like looking at random Instagram accounts for fashion and decorating ideas, and seeing friends' photos of their personal lives.
I prefer Snapchat for fun, sassy photos that I see for a couple seconds and then forget about.

I see Instagram as being the photosharing tool that would be applicable for a professional library setting.
However, if we had a savvy media department that could get Snapchatters to add the library, it would be pretty neat. I doubt that would happen anytime soon though! People like having only their 'real' friends on Snapchat. Snapchat feels like a more intimate app than Instagram.

Taking and Editing Photos

I was looking forward to this Thing, and I was not disappointed.

First off, I had no idea that Photoshop offered a free app version of their product. I have always admired people who have Photoshop skills, as it makes EVERYTHING look better.

I was stoked to download the app for my own phone.

I also decided for this Thing that I would show a practical example of what I learned with it.

I present to you...

A photo of my lovely, beautiful co-worker at the Walnut Grove library: BEFORE and AFTER PS.

BEFORE

AFTER

 

Fun!!

The one thing I couldn't figure out was how to reduce glare, but I think that only comes with the "Premium" version of Photoshop, which you must pay for.

I can see myself using this app both professionally and personally.

On a side note: I looked into the Face app, and now I see how all the celebrities do it! My goodness how addicting that would be.


Alright alright alright.
I caved.
Got the Facetune app.

Social Media Management Tools

Let me start off with saying, I'm pretty familiar with social media.

I have (or had at some point in my life) accounts with:

1. MySpace
2. Facebook
3. Google Plus
4. Instagram
5. Twitter
6. Pinterest
7. Blogspot
8. YouTube
9. Flickr

Therefore, I am pretty compentent with social media. I also learned a whole lot this past year as I did an extensive project for one of MLIS classes, specifically about social media and their privacy policies. After learning about what these organizations can do with your information, it's a little concerning.

Hence why I deleted my Twitter account, and updated the privacy settings of my other accounts. I think once I become a "real" librarian and have more of a public face, I might go about making my accounts even more private than they currently are. Additionally, I'm not a regular poster on my social media accounts. Once in a while I upload a pic to Instagram and Facebook but other than that (oh and Pinterest I go crazy sometimes) I'm more of a consumer of social media than a 'poster'.

For this Thing, I decided to download Hootsuite, even though I have little intention of using it.
I chose this mainly because I have a friend who used to work for Hootsuite and it made me curious what this was all about.

After going through the app I came to this conclusion: excellent app for a buisness or professional. Also, if you have many social media accounts and you are prolific poster, then again, a huge time saver. It's user friendly, quick and efficient. All very good things in the age of immediacy.

I would definitely consider using it if I was in charge of social media as a Community Librarian where that was required. I like how your message or photo is automatically distributed.

Overall, neat app to look into, but not necessarily applicable to my life currently. I prefer to be private.

Thing 7: Content Saving and Sharing

Ok so this one proved to be something new for me, even though I thought I had a handle on all things "cloud" related.

I already have Pinterest and use it pretty frequently (ok, a bit TOO freqently). I decided to pass on looking into this app more.

Instead, I decided to research other options for saving info as I wasn't sure which app would be best for that type of thing besides Pinterest. I read several blogs and decided to try Bitly out.

I downloaded it and was playing around with it and then realized, "gosh" it takes a long time to organize all my favourite links and pages.

I went back to one of the blogs I was reading and it said this: "I can save way more time by simply Googling whatever favourite thing I want instead of opening 7 folders, all subdivided, with the link to that one article about surfing in Hawaii".

I agree. Although I am a huge fan of using categorization and organization of your favourite articles and websites, etc., Google is a wizard. A mega fast wizard. And this wizard remembers everything you've ever searched before on your device and can get it up double time if you've searched it previously.

So there. No content saving and sharing app for me, besides my beloved Pinterest.

P.S. After posting this "Thing" I Googled myself and found my Pinterest account publicly available, with a plethora of pins and boards I'd made. Not too sure how I feel with my name and image (albeit it's the back of my head) being publicly available. Might make it private shortly.

Editing and Creating, Post # 6

When I first started this 23 Mobile Things project, I honestly did not have a lot of faith in how practical and useful it would be.

I'm already mistaken!

I downloaded the Microsoft Word Mobile App and was immediately blown away by the functionality. On my iPhone Plus, it is almost like having a full version of Word accessible, anywhere, on the go.

My goodness why did I not think to download this earlier?! I am in the middle of my MLIS degree and have often worked on assignments frantically as I am commuting in on the skytrain and bus to class. If I had known that I could open my Word documents and edit them straight there, instead of working on them in Google Docs and emailing them to me so I can finish in the computer lab at UBC I could have saved precious time! I was also working on stuff on my Windows Surface and then uploading them to One Drive - this way my saved versions are already complete by the time I get to school and have to print out a copy to hand in.

Well good thing I discovered this now, instead of at the end of my program. :)

PS I love the templates in this app - I already opened up one for resumes, and played around with it. It's quite user friendly. Having templates is a perfect option for creating professional looking documents - clean, organized and easy to navigate. I see this being very handy for when I become a real librarian with documents that I will have to create on a regular basis.

Image from: here

Notetaking #5

Thing #5! I'm really rolling along here.

This one wasn't too hard as I was somewhat familiar with it already - Dragon Dictation that is.

I used to have this app on my old iPhone 4 (that tiny old thing!) and I remember using it a couple times, and then deleting it because I found it frustrating.

Turns out, same thing this time around! Surprise, surprise.

I downloaded it and started off with some pretty simple phrases. I was shortly reminded of how poor it performs compared to Siri.

I spoke about 6 sentences and it got about 4 of them, all without puncuation. In Siri, she rarely gets it wrong. I guess the difference with this notetaking platform is that it is not personalized to your own voice. Yes, while it is kind of handy to use for your stream of thoughts while driving or without a pen - overall I would give this one a pass.

I would stick with Evernote. Evernote has so many more functions with a userface that is just more friendly and inviting.

I understand how Dragon Dictation could be very useful for someone with visual impairments but until the day I can no longer see, I prefer Evernote. And Siri. Because she's so darn cool. (PS Siri knows who is my Mom).

Zine Thing # 4

So for this "Thing", I looked through the options of the RSS feeds and decided that Zine would be most applicable to my needs as I have a select few favourite websites - think DailyMail.co.uk/Buzzfeed/Wimp.com/People.com and I wanted to see how Zine would suggest alternative sites based on my constantly updating few favs.

My first impression of Zine was terrible to be honest.

It loaded in what appears to be Chinese symbols, with one "suggested" article that seems to be a photo of a dandelion with only Chinese symbols.

I then tried to find the option for English and was unsuccessful. While playing around, I opened the dictation option, and pressed the microphone. I spoke, and pressed "Done". Only thing - nothing happened. I tried variations of this several times, hitting the microphone twice, double tapping quickly, and nothing. As far as I can tell, it never captured my voice in any format.

After about 5 minutes of fiddling, I figured I was done. Apps need to be easy to navigate and function intuitively or I'm out within a couple minutes.

I deleted it and will look into another one shortly. I'll let you know what happens.

Below is an approximate image of my facial response while trying to figure out Zine.

Task 3: Utility Apps

As I already have most of the apps loaded onto my mobile that were suggested, I decided to look into other apps I could use.

Doing a quick Google search of best apps for iPhone 6 plus, the first hit was a blog featuring numerous apps, with descriptions.

I looked through some of them and found Evernote - which seems absolutely perfect for me!

I downloaded it and was amazed at how the functions are very practical and productive and appealing to me. The regular "Notes" app in Apple is quite dry and boring.

Evernote's highlights include:
1)Lists
2)Dictation capabilities
3) Image insertion
4) Synching ability with other devices

I think this app is perfect both for professional use (hopefully when I am a librarian soon) and for my own personal use. Grocery shopping lists, notes to remind myself about things I need to buy for Christmas, all sorts of personal tidbits of information that I keep in random order in my Notes app.
This is a way of categorizing information and I'm all about simplifying lately!

The main question after this learning experience is: Why didn't I have this app sooner??

Tips and Tricks on my fancy iPhone 6 Plus

Since getting the massive and beautiful iPhone 6 Plus, I've realized that I really could know more about it. So I went straight to the main source - Apple's own website.

After perusing the information, some of the highlights of what I learned are as follows:

1. By double tapping the home button, it brings all the info displayed on the screen down to where you can reach it with the same hand. (This is an issue as the new Plus is so big). Handy for me with particularly small hands!

2. You can adjust the amount of light on photos by touching on the image and dragging it up and down.

3. You can take photos with the volume adjustment buttons on your earphones!

4. You can swipe down when you get a notification of a text message or iMessage, and reply instantly without closing the app you were in.

5. You can tell Siri who someone is in your contact list and they will know from then on - which is insane and actually really useful. So you tell Siri - "Maureen is my Mom" so henceforth when you tell Siri, "Call my Mom" Siri will know. Cool feature!

6. Lastly, with the GPS on, Siri can give you reminders depending on where you are located - home, work, school, etc.


Overall, super neat stuff! Glad I looked at it.


The Source for my learning

Joining the fun!

I was talking with a co-worker this afteroon about how I would like to be more tech-savvy and decided this was my day to start the 23 Mobile Things project.

I have already created a blog through this platform back in 2010 and found it to be an easy experience, and therefore am excited to learn more options this time around.

I know any technology skills I learn will be useful both in my professional and personal life so I am glad I am finally joining in on the fun!

Image from Freedigitalphotos.com