App Essentials: Blogsy
As a mobile professional, and one who logged 50,000 miles of travel in the last year alone, I have a remarkable need to be able to work on the go. In all of my work, the only thing that is remarkably difficult from a mobile device was updating web content. The Wordpress App has such a terrible interface, that I found it hard to work for hours at a time on each post. What is strange about this situation is that I love using Diet Coda on the iPad – it is intuitive and a great HTML/Code editor.
Where Wordpress stumbles, Blogsy takes off at a sprint.
read moreApp Essentials: Evernote
It has taken a long time, but I have been converted to using Evernote for all of my online note-taking. I was first introduced to the program in 2012 at the ISTE Conference. I hated it. At that point in my life, I was an avid doodler, spending the majority of my page area on drawings. When I downloaded and started using the Evernote platform on my PC, it was lacking in the ability to integrate services and features that I wanted. Since my account was created in 2012, there have been some significant changes to the platform and my use of it. The biggest change in my use of note-taking services is my reliance on my iPad.
read moreApp Essentials: Buffer
If you are like me, you find social media to be a bit tiresome. It used to feel like I spent all of my time cross posting the same information to all of my social networks. “This blog is updated”, “Check out this thing”, and “Here is this new feature”, took hours to post across my personal and business accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. In previous years, I used Tweetdeck as my social media aggregator, but it has been somewhat lacking as of late. As an Integration Technologist, I love finding apps and services that integrate with what I already use. With the BufferApp, I found three great things: A native iOS App, a WebApp, and a Chrome Browser extension.
With BufferApp, I can cross post to all of my social networks in a single click. One of the first things that I did when I started using Buffer was install the Chrome Extension. As I am surfing the web and find the next best education article, I simply hit the Buffer Stack Icon in my extension tray, and I can compose and cross post a direct link to that site. Since some of my employers do not like me using Social Media during the work day, I can also set the Buffer to post at specific times of the day, rather than as I add them.
read moreApp Essentials: Dolphin Web Browser
Before I get started, I must admit: I am a chrome user when I plugin to my desktop. There are such a huge number of web-browsers out there, and I simply have removed myself from the browser update and review pipeline. Back when the iPhone first came out, I was pretty content with the just using Safari. As a Mac User at the time, it was easy for me to transition to the Safari browser on the iPhone. A few years went by, I tried Opera (and un-installed it), and then Chrome came to the iPhone and I almost cried.
Now I have reached a point where the iOS Chrome browser is being eclipsed by other third party software. I will always use Chrome on my Mac and PC computers, but when I am on the go with my iPad and iPhone, I find that both Safari and Chrome are lacking in functionality. As an avid Evernote User, and someone who is always looking for apps with Educational Connotations, I decided to try Dolphin, the Evernote integrated web-browser. It only took a few minutes for me to latch on to the Functionality that Dolphin has to offer.
When you factor in Desktop Chrome Extensions to sync Bookmarks, and send websites to your phone, you come away with a great productivity app. You can see those amazing features in the video review below.
read moreApp Essentials: Todoist (Tasks)
Over the past few months, I have been working hard to locate a Todo list app that works for my systems. It has been a long journey…
When I first started, I was recording all of my Tasks on either a sheet of paper (or sticky notes) and sometimes entering them on my iOS Reminders Application. The stock Reminders app does get the job done, but did not have the features I wanted. Above all things, I am a technology integrationist! My systems work because they interact with one another, not because I have found a single silver bullet. After looking at GNEO, Eisenhower, Trello, Toodledo, Things, and Wunderlist, I finally broke down and tried Todoist.
It has changed my world completely! I can quickly and easily manage a wide range of Todos and Projects within a single, integrated interface. I love todoist, and it has replaced all of the other applications on my iOS Devices.
read more