Monday, March 24, 2014

Thing 8-Social Media Management

Hello, hello!  We're back again with social media management tools!  The idea with these tools is that you can input all your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on) and it will allow you to manage (post, view updates, etc.) all of them simultaneously as opposed to having to log into each social media site separately. 

For this app I chose to use Cloze, as I liked its concept most and it seemed most relevant to me.  One of their slogans is “With Cloze people come first, everything else is secondary.” That said, their main feature is that the app prowls through your email and social media accounts to find out who you interact with most.  It assigns your friends and contacts a closeness score, and puts those with the higher scores at the top of the pile.  That means that when you log into Cloze, your contacts with high scores will have their posts, pictures, emails etc. visible to you first, as opposed to a date/time order. 

It sounded good, but didn't pan out so well in reality.  The app did have an in-app walk through that came up the first time I signed in, but it was very brief and after it was over I still had no clue what to do or what was what!  I found some more information online, and evenutally got used to playing with Cloze.  However, as it turns out, I'm really not a fan of the main concept of the app. 

The "key people" only feeds were just sort of repetitive, and not really that targeted to me.  For example, a "key person's" friend has a birthday and they wish them a happy birthday on Facebook.  That post wishing them a happy birthday then shows up in my feed, even though I am not mutual friends with the birthday boy/girl.  Such a post as that one is not really relevant to me, and a waste of screen space.  Plus, I realized I like seeing the random posts/tweets/whatever from people I vaguely know, as well as from my loved ones!  I'd rather just scroll all the way through my Facebook feed, and my email, and my Tweets and see everything

Beyond my general dislike of the concept (which sounded good on paper but just didn't work out for me), the app also has some strange quirks.  For instance-I frequently send myself email reminders-links to check up on later, a reminder to get a piece of mail out in the morning, etc.  So, I popped up as an important person on my Cloze news feed, meaning I saw all my own tweets, posts, emails, updates, and the like on my feed.  This was redundant and a waste of feed space, and I couldn't figure out a way to completely delete myself as a "key person" (perhaps it can be done, but not intuitively). 

Overall, I'm just not a fan of this one.  Its a good concept, and would probably work very well for some people, but just not for me!  You win some, you lose some! 

Friday, March 21, 2014

Thing #7-Content Saving & Sharing

Back again, this time with content saving and sharing!  The idea behind this Thing is getting easy access to things we find and want to save on the internet.  This things hits close to home-I used to have a beautiful collection of bookmarks, organized into folders, on my browser on my main personal computer.  I had bookmarks for professional information, hobbies, sites I frequented in grad school, you name it.  Then my laptop died a horrible death, had to be completely wiped and restored to factory settings.  And I lost Every. Single. One. Of. My. Beautiful. Bookmarks.  And what's worse is that since I had them bookmarked I didn't really even pay attention to what the actual web address was, so I haven't been able to recover most of them.  *sigh*

The content saving and sharing tools we looked at in this section (Pinterest and Bitly) could have saved me from losing my bookmarks, as they store your content on the cloud, so to speak, making it accessible from pretty much any internet connected device.  I chose to create a Pinterest account because just a few weeks ago a coworker had told me she keeps both a personal and professional Pinterest account and has found it to be a great professional tool.  She works in a public library with adults, young adults, and children and uses her Pinterest for everything from ideas for story-time and crafts to book clubs and collection development.

I decided to follow my coworker's lead and create a Pinterest for work-related ideas and information.  I'm part time academic reference librarian and part time public library substitute, so I love having the ability to create an unlimited number of boards for various aspects of public vs. academic librarianship.  The app is very user friendly and it is easy to search for, pin, and organize things.  It was also easy to transition back and forth between web and mobile versions of Pinterest, though I suppose one would expect that from such a popular entity.  I can also see how collaborative and social this app could be-I ran into the pins of several professionals I know from around the country while perusing the pins! Overall, I'd have to say I'm really enjoying using Pinterest.  I've pinned books I'd like to read, statistics, cool library spaces, and much more.  Its been a fun and new (to me) way to engage in the professional field. 

I'm going to end by sharing another cloud bookmarking tool called Delicious that I learned about in grad school (delicious.com, also available as an app for Apple and Android) (and yes, I do realize that had I adopted it back then I would not have lost all my bookmarks on my recent computer crash. Hindsight...always 20/20).  You can bookmark online resources and add your own tags to them to help you describe, organize, and find them (what librarian wouldn't love that?!).  Similar to Pinterest, Delicious lets you ‘follow’ other users and the user’s public resources and tags become viewable by their followers.  Another plus-you can choose to make resources and tags private, which can be tricky to do on other services like Pinterest.  It would another great tool for workplace collaboration. Cheers!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Thing 6-Creating and Editing Docs!

Moving right along to thing number 6!  This time around we are looking at apps you can use to create and edit documents.  This is something I'd never really done on my iPhone, aside from within the notes applications.  That said, I decided to give Quickoffice a try. 

Quickoffice is an app available for both Apple and Android that lets you create and edit Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations and can, if you have a Google account, save your work in Google Drive (note-you also need to download the Google Drive app on your device, if you do not already have it for full functionality).  Of course if you'd like to work on documents on multiple devices you'll have to save them in Google Drive as opposed to a thumb drive or something of that nature and remember to always save them on Google Drive.  I'm traditionally a thumb drive kind of gal myself (there are literally five different thumb drives in my work bag) so that took getting used to. 

Like most apps these days there is a bit of a walk-through to acquaint users with the app and how to best use it after you create your account.  Its a pretty good guide, and gives enough information to get you started but not so much as to bore or overwhelm. 

I did a few things for my trial.  First, I accessed a folder of recipes that have been shared with me by a friend.  I edited one and added a comment and it worked beautifully.  I also like that I now have easy access to the folder-I would much rather use my iPhone (as opposed to a laptop) when I'm trying out a new recipe in the kitchen. 

I also created a trial document.  It was easy to create a new document, and the various features of the app are pretty easy to use.  One grudge-every time I wanted to change a setting (alter font, indent, bullet points, you name it) it took several keystrokes (screen taps?)-one to hit "done" so the keyboard would go away, which then revealed the settings menu, then a few more to get to the proper setting.  Not a big deal, but it slows the process down a bit compared to using a traditional laptop.  This problem may be resolved on larger devices with more screen space.  Another thing I noticed is that when I had to delete something the app lagged quite a bit.  More than once I deleted way more than I needed to because there was a substantial delay between pressing the backspace button on my keypad and something actually being deleted on screen.  Not a major issue, but a small annoyance.  Overall creating and saving a document, and making various layout/font changes was quite easy.  When I opened my document in Word on a regular computer it looked great. 

All in all, I will say that, for my taste, the iPhone is just too small to do in-depth work on a document.  Don't get me wrong, the app is user friendly and easy to navigate, I just don't like doing such detailed work on such a small screen!  I could see myself using this app very frequently if I got an iPad.

I'm definitely going to keep this app as it could be a lifesaver in a pinch.  I also like the collaborative features and the ability to make and track changes amongst multiple users (so long as everyone uses Google Drive).  I was somewhat surprised to see advanced features like that one in the app, but pleasantly so! 

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Thing 5-Notetaking

Hello again! 

Today I'm posting on Thing 5-Notetaking! In the past, it never really occurred to me that there were apps dedicated to notetaking. iPhones come standard with a 'Notes' app, so I've always just used that for my notes. I've got recipes, goals, to-do lists, movies and TV shows I'd like to watch, and so on.  However, all the notetaking apps seem to have many advantages over the traditional Apple 'Notes' app in that they are much more flexible and you can do much more with them.

I chose to use Springpad, available for Apple and Android, because it seemed to be one of the most versatile apps. Indeed, upon setup I saw there are 8 templates for different types of notes that you can use within the app: recipes, for later, tasks, work project, quick notes, books, movies, and home improvement. 

Unfortunately, the app wasn't as flexible as I'd have wanted. For example, I took several years of American Sign Language while in college, and recently I've been considering making it a goal to practice at least two hours each week, just to keep the rust off. I thought the "Tasks" portion of the app would be perfect for this goal-I could go in and check it off as I get my two hours done each week. Well, there was no way to create on-going tasks or add elements such as time requirements.  I'd have to add a new task for practicing ASL manually each and every week, for each hour I intended to practice. Not worth the time investment, in my opinion.

I have, in the week or so that I've had the app, used it several times to take quick notes-a trial code for a new website, things of that nature. I already track recipes in another app, so I haven't used that feature. Another feature I've not used, but see great potential for (especially in the library) is the ability to collaborate. You can, for example, create a task-list of things that need competing for a project, then multiple users can access it and check things off as it gets done.  This could be extremely useful when working on projects with coworkers at the library. Rather than a long chain of emails, a physical checklist, or any other alternative means of tracking progress, the app would allow easy access for multiple users to check off, and keep track of tasks! I love this idea and will definitely keep the app in mind in the future!

On a related note-another way I frequently "take notes" with my phone is by simply taking a picture of something. Imagine seeing a flyer for an upcoming event at the library-instead of copying all the information down in a notetaking app, why not just snap a picture?  It takes much less time, and then you have your own copy of the original thing! And, if you snap a photo rather than taking a copy of a flier, you're reducing waste. Then, once the event or whatever it may be is over, you simply delete the photo. I actually have shared this tip with a few patrons before, and their reaction is typically something along the lines of, "Why didn't I think of that?!" In a world where we always have our phones with us, and they all come with pretty darn good cameras, it makes sense!