Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Mobile Things 3

I haven't necessarily been procrastinating about working through the Things, but have been putting off blogging about them, because I wanted to keep everything positive.  It is now officially Lenten season and for many years I've given up negativity for Lent ;-) and I didn't want to be expressing negativity about Thing 3 - Utilities.  After meeting with Ann and Morgan (members of our Panera Royalty), I found out I'm not the only one feeling this way about the Utility apps in Thing 3 and feel free to complete the blog entry.

I installed three of the apps: Google Search, iHome Sleep and Wi-Fi Finder and will soon be deleting them from my iPad.  I had high hopes for Google Search because I regularly use multiple stand-alone Google apps, so I thought they'd be integrated into this one.  But what I found was that I was basically sent back out to the apps that I already had installed.  I think personally I would be more inclined to simply create a Google folder and house my Maps, Hangouts, Drive, etc. apps for one tap access.
iHome Sleep, didn't seem to have any exciting/relevant functions that I'd been missing from the standard Clock app, and while Wi-Fi Finder also seemed promising, it's one of those apps that you need to think far enough ahead to conduct your search while in a wi-fi area and I rarely determine where I go based on a need for wi-fi.  I like to think that I still require enough human contact to meet people in settings where I'm digitally unconnected.

Ann, Morgan and I instead talked about some the Utility apps we currently use and like.  My votes were for Skitch (great for marking where I left off on knitting patterns I've downloaded!), Chirp (which is fun in theory and practice, but requires others to also have devices available and app open) and Pocket (which allows me to tag RSS posts from Feedly for later organization/reference...a feature that I greatly miss from Google Reader).

I do now feel a great desire to "spring clean" my iPad though.  Why am I allowing apps that I've never used or tried and didn't like to take up space?