Apps and Services That I Actually Use! (Part 2)

A while ago I posted a list of apps and services that I regularly use, and I feel help me stay motivated and productive. Here is part two:

Let's get physical! These three apps combined have helped me lose weight, get fitter, as well as feed the need for stats and figures:

• Fitbit - Record your steps, and exercise. I use this together with a Fitbit tracker. You don't necessarily need a dedicated tracker though as your smartphone would work just as well. The app is free though you can pay for more services.

• MyFitnessPal - I track my food intake (calories and other important stats) with this free app as Fitbit only has a U.S. food database. Using this app is easy and fast, especially if you use the barcode scanner. The U.K. food database for this app is huge, and I challenge you to find a food item it doesn't have. Taking the step data from Fitbit you can easily see where you're at in terms of calories consumed and burned.

• Sync Solver - This app isn't free, but if you want your Health app on your iPhone to talk to your Fitbit app you'll need it as Fitbit has yet to enter the Apple Health fold. Sure, you may hardly glance at your health app, but there's something slightly reassuring knowing you can and your health data will be there!

Grammarly - All of us, no matter how good we are, will miss a mistake or two when writing an article, blog or other written endeavour. A double word will slip in here, a spelling mistake there. Even so, most good spell checkers will help you catch these before your masterpiece is given to the world. Grammarly, however, seeks to solve all these problems and more, the clue is in the name. Not only will it help you with your spelling it will also spot any overuse of a word and offer alternative suggestions. It will very cleverly check to see if your sentence is overlong and whether you could have written in a more concise way. These are but a few of its algorithmic suggestions and I guarantee if you use it, you will write more intelligently and clearly. There are apps and browser plug-ins aplenty and so everyone should find some way of fitting this service into your writing life. It is free though there are paid options available.

Over / InstaQuote - You know all those clever looking pictures you see on Instagram and the like with inspiring words overlaid on them? They look like they were made by a pro and well... they look so cool! Most of them, in truth, were probably done on apps like these, especially those of us who don't have design budgets. Download these apps, experiment and you'll be producing this same cool stuff to share on Instagram (and other social media sites) in no time! The apps are free with in-app purchases which are mostly worth the small cost.

Pocket Drive+ - Here's an interesting little app that makes use of any spare megabytes you've got left in your iDevice and turns in into a virtual USB thumb drive, albeit one with a few more bells and whistles. By cleverly making use of the Wi-Fi connection of your device and computer you can transfer files easily and quickly with little to no set-up. You get access to a few megabytes of space to try this app out for free and if you like it you can pay for various levels of access (depending of course what memory you have to spare on your device). You may think you wouldn't use it, I tried it cause it sounded cool and then found I was using much more than I expected. Simple and fast and easy to use, what every productivity app should aspire to be.

Blogsy - I couldn't have put it better than this quote - "If you’re a blogger with an iPad, then I would highly recommend picking up Blogsy. It finally makes your iPad a worthy blogging tool." If you blog and your iPad is your main tool, all your Christmases have come at once. 'Nuff said, just download it and use it!

Daily from Buffer - I've talked about Buffer before and you can find my review on this blog so I won't go into it further here. Buffer created Daily a while ago now as an easy way of giving you content, useful, inspiring and interesting content, for you to post to all your favourite social media sites. Buffer says this is a "Your daily source of inspiration and knowledge, seamlessly added to your Buffer queue." I couldn't agree more, gone are your 'nothing worth sharing' excuses.

I hope these are of interest and that you give them a go. These aren't just apps that sit on my iPad or iPhone gathering virtual dust, but apps that truly turn my iDevices into productivity tools. 

If you have any suggestions for useful apps, please let me know so I can have a play!

Get Into 2-Factor Not The X-Factor!

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

2-factor authentication may not win you a cash-prize or a stunning record contract, but the next time passwords and usernames are stolen from that popular internet site you use regularly, you'll be glad you entered into this arrangement! 

There have been a number of high profile online security issues over the last few months with the most significant being the so called 'Heart-bleed bug' (www.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed) which struck at the heart of internet security.

Chances are however that unless you're into this kind of thing you've probably never heard of it. Put simply, the security of a lot of internet sites wasn't watertight and information about you and your log-in were 'leaking' and if someone chose to take advantage, with the correct knowledge and skill, they could steal usernames, passwords and other information you'd rather they didn't have.

So with this and other high profile hacks of late, what can you do to protect yourself better? Well here are three simple rules to help get you started:

Rule #1 - Don't use the same password or variations of it as your log-in for multiple sites and accounts. No seriously, don't, stop it! 

Rule #2 - If your password is too simple. make it complicated. If it's still PASSWORD or 1234 then you've got a real problem. 

Rule #3 - Change your passwords every year or even better every six months.

And now the magic of 2-factor authentication. Most large and popular websites have some kind of option to enable this feature and a quick search using their help button or a look on their forums should point you in the direction of how to set it up. Once it's done - it's done, so please don't panic if it seems complicated or a bit of a faff. If your online account gets compromised you'll be glad you sorted it.

2-factor authentication is an extra layer of security and peace of mind. When enabled it works this way: You log-in to your online account and then, beyond just entering your username and password, you will be asked for (generally) a 6-digit code. This code is unique and will be different every-time it is asked for. (This is pretty much the same way that a lot of bank log-ins work if they have sent you a little device that looks a bit like a calculator and generates a unique number to get you access to your account.)

You won't need a calculator looking device for every site and account you want to enable 2-factor authentication on - the ubiquitous smart phone can now function as this quite happily and if you don't have a smart phone the majority of websites also enable the same thing within a browser window. You also won't be asked for this again if the site recognises the browser and computer it is being used from, this is true of most websites and, unless you ask it to challenge every-time, will stop it being too intrusive.

This helpful website: www.twofactorauth.org, has a useful list of companies that have enabled 2-factor authentication (plus those that don't so you can badger them!) and links on how to set it up for each one.

Going back to those rules I listed above, the most common excuse to break them is simply that we all now have lots and lots of usernames and passwords to remember. Let me encourage you to add to your use of 2-factor authentication the use of a password manager which does all that remembering for you, all you have to do to is remember one password (which isn't 'PASSWORD', right?) to get access to all the others. As you won't use this password anywhere online, or write it down, unless someone can hack your brain it should be pretty safe.

Personally I have started using 1Password from a company called Agilebits (www.agilebits.com/onepassword). It comes strongly recommended from most folks in the tech world and I must say, since using it my online life feels a lot more secure. I've actually not got a clue what my online passwords are now as I rely solely on 1Password.

Please follow the link above for more information, but I'll quickly list some of it's key features:

• Password Generation. 1Password will generate the most complicated random passwords for you to then use with your online accounts and websites. It will generate passwords up to 30 digits long with a mix of letters, numbers and symbols.

• Cross Platform Support. Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and all the major browsers are supported. With helpful plug-ins you'll never be more than a few clicks away from autofilling the correct log-in information.

• Weak / Duplicate Passwords. As you gradually begin to work with 1Password it will let you know whether any passwords you presently use are weak or repeated and it will encourage you to change them.

• Time. It will keep a track on when you last changed your passwords, enabling you to keep on top of any needed changes.

• Warnings. It will warn you whether any websites you use have been subject to any attack where usernames and passwords have been leaked and will encourage you to change them. If you visit the 1Password website you'll also find regularly updated information concerning all the latest news to do with web security and vulnerable sites (for example it warned me which sites I used had the Heartbleed vulnerability and encouraged me to change my password etc).

There are number of other features (beyond just password managing) which make this a fantastic app to install and use. It isn't free and there are different price points depending on platform, but then how much do you value your online security?

I hope this post is helpful. If you have any questions or other recommendations please comment and add to this much needed discussion of how to protect our online lives better!

Apps and Services That I Actually Use! (Part 1)

I'm going to skip ahead of my blog with this post and simply list all the useful tech 'stuff' that I use in my (church) work life. In future posts I shall go into more detail about each one. 

There is a slight Mac bias here, but a number of them are certainly available cross-platform. Most of them are free with a charge for some. I list them in no particular order, but just as they come to mind as I write:

• Buffer (bufferapp.com) - A great way to bring your social media life into line with free or pay monthly accounts.
• Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net/download) - Don't pay for an expensive audio editor when you can get an amazing one for free! For putting together podcasts this is ideal.
• iMovie (apple.com/uk/imovie) - Simple, easy, does the job of editing video really well with a few hidden surprises that can give your finished movie a professional look. Depending on platform and when you got your Apple device this app is free.
• Keynote (apple.com/uk/keynote) - Don't get stuck with a steep PowerPoint learning curve and wonderful transitions and effects that you'll probably never use. Get stuck into Keynote and begin preparing professional looking slides in seconds. (Just try and avoid using bullet points right... right?)
• Sermon.Net (sermon.net) - With various account packages which include a generous free account this is the easiest way to get your (Audacity) edited podcasts online. You've also got the option of releasing video podcasts into the wild also!
• Clipping Magic (clippingmagic.com) - Available for free, but only for use on the Chrome browser (google.com/chrome) this is an incredibly simple way to get rid of any pesky backgrounds from your images. You may not need to use it often, but when you do it's a time saver.
• Feedly (feedly.com) - Although you can pay for some extra features the free version of this news aggregator does the job for most folks. Access, share and save all your favourite websites, RSS feeds etc in one place.
• Pocket (getpocket.com) - Come across a website article, but haven't time to read it? Send it to Pocket. Find yourself skimming through stories using Feedly, but not really taking them in? Send the ones you're most interested in to Pocket. With offline access for all the stories and articles you save you'll find this is a real boredom buster, or something to help catch-up with the world when you've got that spare few minutes. Pocket is free.
• IFTTT (ifttt.com) - 'If This Then That' proclaims to "get the internet to work for you..." and it does, with aplomb. Hard to explain IFTTT in a few sentences, easier just to visit and experiment. You'll understand when you give it a go. IFTTT is free.
• Evernote (evernote.com) - Quite simply the best note taking tech out there. Available on pretty much any platform, and integrated into many other apps and services, this will (if you let it) quickly become your second brain! Choose the free account or pay yearly for more options.
• Fantastical (flexibits.com/fantastical) - This app quickly replaced my default calendar on all devices. It's not so much that it looks good and displays information well, it's more it's easy to input style of event and to-do list creation. Using natural language to input your information and syncing smoothly with your devices default calendar you'll never look back. Fantastical isn't free, but it's worth the cost.
• Blogger (blogger.com) - There are other good blog providers out there, but I found Blogger (from Google) to be the easiest to set-up with little fuss. Customisable to your unique tastes you'll be sharing your nuggets of wisdom with the world probably within 15 minutes. Best of all - it's free (okay, okay I know you've had to set-up a Google account and they want to advertise stuff to you so in a way you're the product, but... it's free!).
• Squarespace (squarespace.com) - Squarespace isn't free and at its heart it's a fancy blogging service, but the reality is that it's the easiest and simplest way to set up a modern (on-trend?) website with little or no coding needed! Their customer service is second to none and it will ensure you always have a neat, tidy and fresh looking website adaptable to all devices and platforms. Check out their two week trial offer and see what you think.

That's enough for now I think. In a few months I'll generate another list with more great apps and services!

Am I Buffered?

Let me assume that you are already familiar with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc and have a few active social media accounts. (If not I'll try and cover these in later posts.) The question I have is how do you manage all these networks? Not only may you have your own personal accounts, if you are the guy or gal that everyone is looking to sort out your church, charity or business online social presence you've maybe got one or two Facebook pages, a LinkedIn business presence, a Google+ page and possibly (hopefully) a Twitter account specific to that church, charity or business.

Wow! It all soon adds up, but the fact is, and I can't say this strongly enough, particularly if you are part of a church set-up, you need to have a presence in these virtual places. Not only do you need to be there, you need to be seen to be active: posting, asking questions, replying, promoting, but in the midst of all this being human.

At present, including my own personal accounts, I manage 10 different social media accounts (and I'm not even including Pinterest or Instagram) and the tool I've found best to help me handle all this is Buffer. There are other tools out there that do a similar thing like Hootsuite for example, but for ease of use and its clean, fussy free, interface I opted for Buffer.

So what is it and what does it do?

Simply put Buffer enables you to do exactly what it's called - buffer your posts so they get posted at spread-out intervals so as to do two things: Firstly it stops you clogging up other folks social media feeds and walls with a sudden influx of your thoughts, quotes and links that you felt so desperately to post all at once! Secondly, it also enables you to schedule when your amazing revelations will get posted by letting you specify the date and time. This is a relatively recent feature which explains why it's called Buffer and not the possibly less catchy title of - 'Schedule Stuff More Specifically To The Time And Date You Require' or 'ScHedule In Time' (something dodgy about this last acronym anyway).

Tools like Buffer are invaluable in helping us connect and stay active online. If you're asking yourself why does this matter? Well the answer is that 1 in 4 people AROUND THE WORLD use social media. In the next five years social media use is expected to grow to over 2.2 billion users. The church in particular needs to be online, needs to be connecting, needs to be ahead of the game, and any resources you can get hold of to help you connect effectively you need to grab with both hands!

Buffer is free to use with it's basic package and this gets you three linked accounts (so maybe Twitter, Facebook - personal or page and LinkedIn). Or, if you're like me and a bit overwhelmed, you may find the $10 p/m (around £6 p/m) is a worthwhile cost. There's no contract and you can cancel this anytime. They call it the 'Awesome plan' and it allows you to add up to 12 social profiles (any combination of Twitter, Facebook, Linked In etc), as well as varied schedules per day and unlimited posts in your 'buffer'.

Buffer has recently introduced suggested posts (links, quotes etc) for you to peruse while you are accessing your account in a browser (doesn't look like the app supports this feature at this time). You have the option to reject or add the suggestions to your accounts. This is a nice touch as you get to read interesting new stuff and it keeps your buffer topped up and in the process you keep your online presence active and fresh.

Like I wrote earlier there are other tools similar to Buffer out there and you may want to play around with these too. Hootsuite for example gives you a lot more connected accounts before you have to pay, but personally I just found it a bit busy, and a bit more 'complicated' than it need be, but let me stress this is a personal preference, you may very well love it.

As with every player in the online world there are dangers of passwords and usernames escaping into the wild and Buffer did have an 'accident' of this nature last year. Now that may sound worrying, but because of this they have certainly tightened up security and have introduced an optional 2-step verification system. This means that if anyone manages to obtain your username and password and they log-in from a new device, they won't get access to your account as they'll need to input a unique identification code. This will have been sent to your mobile phone via text message that, hopefully, only you have access to. With pretty much everyone owning and carrying a mobile phone with them everywhere this is a pretty good security set-up. In fact I would recommend that you investigate all your online accounts and see if they support 2-step verification in some form and get it activated ... today, don't wait, do it now!

I hope this post is helpful and if you have any further questions I'd love to try and answer them. Are there any other tools / services like this I should be aware of? Have you tried either Hootsuite or Buffer? Let me know what you think.

Take Note!

So onwards into our journey of useful stuff for you to try...

First up on this epic quest is the ubiquitous Evernote. Why ubiquitous? Because Evernote really is everywhere! However before I get into that I should briefly explain what it is and why you should use it.*

Evernote has been described by many as 'your second brain', a place to put stuff that you don't want clogging up your everyday brain. You know, the one that's reading this, though I'm hoping by the end of this piece you may very well place this blog post in Evernote too.

• Want to take a quick note? - Use Evernote.
• Want to jot down some thoughts and inspirational ideas but haven't got time to type? - Use your voice and record via Evernote.
• Want to take a quick picture to annotate later? - Use Evernote (and possibly Skitch - but more of that in a future post).
• Want to save an email with it's attachment? - You could use Evernote.

And so on and so on.

You see, coming back to the ubiquity of Evernote, you could access all the above and more regardless of device you're using or platform you're on. Smartphones, tablets, PC's - if you've got it Evernote is probably available on it. And the backbone to this is Evernote's ability to sync your saved information across all these devices and so access to your stuff that you've crammed into your 'second brain' is just a few taps or clicks away.

So how does it work?

You save your stuff on Evernote in virtual Notebooks, and you can place notebooks into other notebooks and create a 'stack' of notebooks. This is useful if you create many notebooks and they are related. For example: I have a stack of notebooks called 'City Church Leeds' and within this stack are all the notebooks I've created that contain City Church Leeds stuff. Notebooks with names like: Receipts, Preaching Notes, Media Inspiration, Ideas... and there's more, this particular notebook stack is large.

This is the key to Evernote in my opinion and why I like the 'second brain' analogy, because I use it to just dump stuff that I need a record of and want to access later. I'm not afraid to keep on making as many notebooks as I need to keep my many, many ideas, links, notes, pictures, PDF's and spreadsheets. Again the list goes on. My 'first' brain then can happily forget this stuff until the need arises that I need to remember (access) it again.

It would probably be best to run you through in a bit more detail how I use Evernote day to day. I use it as a way to store a digital copy of all the receipts that I need to also send onto our church accountant. I do this by either scanning the receipt with a dedicated scanner (in my case a slimline scanner from Doxie), or use a PDF 'scanner' on my iPhone. I use the Genius Scan app primarily - I take a picture of my receipt through the app and through magic Genius Scan trickery it converts it to a PDF and then from this I give it a more sensible name (scan009866722 just isn't cool!), tag it, send to Evernote (you can tell it which notebook to put it in) and at the same time send to our aforementioned accountant.

I also use Evernote to save links and stories that I've found on the web that I know I'm going to want to keep for a while and refer to when writing a talk, blog or simply use as inspiration. This is incredibly easy to do when using all the mainstream browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Explorer as Evernote provide a 'plug-in' for these (a plug-in is essentially an app for your browser), and then it's just one click on the Evernote icon in your browser tool bar to save. The same functionality can be added to your smartphone browser, though due to the lockdown nature of Apple you need a few more steps to set it up on iOS initially, but once it's done, it's done. More info about that HERE.

Occasionally I use Evernote as a 'to do' list, record a meeting audibly as well as taking notes at the same time, and to send annotated pictures or drawing (though as I wrote earlier I use Skitch in conjunction with Evernote to do this). All notes are automatically saved into my primary notebook (which I named - '_MAIN' so it would appear at the top of my notebooks list) and when I have a spare few mins here and there I just work through '_MAIN' putting the different notes in their correct notebooks until '_MAIN' is empty. When it's empty there is a very satisfied feeling of accomplishment!

On another blog I will talk about an amazing tool you can use called: IFTTT (If This Then That), which enables you to create 'recipes' so if you do one thing online you can make another thing happen automatically. Actually it's a bit more than just that, but I'll write in detail another day, suffice I say I use it in conjunction with Evernote this way: If I tag myself at a place using Foursquare (again, another day - I have so much to share!), it will automatically (via IFTTT) send this information to Evernote, so in effect I have created digital time sheet of my location and activity should anyone ever be that interested to look and gives me a history of where I've been and who I've met.
This post could go on and on about different ways of using Evernote, but then it would get incredibly long and some of you, understandably, might start to click away. The best thing to do is to just get online, sign up and then also download the app to your smart devices. Just practice using it. However, here is a word of warning and I can't say this strongly enough - YOU NEED TO GET INTO THE HABIT OF USING IT OTHERWISE YOU WILL NOT FEEL THE BENEFIT. Create as many notebooks as you need and tag away. Evernote has a powerful search engine and you'll be able to find most things that you've filed away within seconds.

How much is Evernote? 

Well as with most things I'm going to write about... it's free! You can pay for a premium service, but for most folks the free version will be more than adequate, you can always upgrade. If you do pay for the premium service you'll get the following:

• Share notebooks and collaborate with other Evernote users. 
• Download notebooks for offline use.
• Passcode lock on mobile devices.
• Increased upload capacity per month and increased note upload size.
• Search within documents (such as PDF's) and related notes discovery. 

Premium is £4 per month or £35 per year, though at the mo (until October 2014) O2 customers can get this free for a year. Not bad eh?

As a footnote to this post, I'm not getting paid to promote Evernote above any other services, it's just the one I use and have become comfortable with. If you use other apps / services I'd love to hear from you after all the internet age is all about communication!

(*other note taking apps are out there so if you wish to look here are a few 'notable' others recommend by IT WORLD.)

Let's Talk About Tech Baby!

It's been a while since I last blogged. A million and one ideas have come and gone, some good, some (really) bad. Maybe one day soon I'll revisit the better ones.

As I read through my previous blog posts (on my other blog - Marked Out) it came to my attention that I quite like giving things a technical slant, if not a blatant focus! And through conversations with many people I have come to accept that I'm a bit of a tech evangelist when it comes to talking with other Christian believers. A lot of talk seems to always gravitate around sharing with others the importance of social media and encouraging them to connect with people through what is still a relatively new paradigm of communication.

I also find that with church leaders, or others that lead in para-church organisations, requests for help and advice regarding social media, web stuff, software (apps) and hardware come around more often than I've previously realised. Therefore I've come to the conclusion that part of my calling in life is to help others take a tech-step up, whether that be a large or small step.

Church has in recent history at the very best been slow to adapt to new ways and new technologies, or at worst failed to connect at all. There are exceptions to most observations of course and just off the top of my head Life Church in the U.S. has been amazing at taking advantage of technological development. You may very well have one of their apps on your smartphone right now as they are the force behind developers YouVersion who created the number one Bible app in most app stores simply and accurately called - 'Bible'. They have followed this up recently with an amazing Bible app for kids. If you've got kids give it a go, you probably won't be disappointed.

So my aim over the next number of blog posts is to give you tools to help you engage with others more effectively using social media as well as provide with ways in which your online/tech experienced can by enriched without leaving you feeling overloaded.

That's the aim ...

... I may get carried away though!

"So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31