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!

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.