iPad arrival!

My iPad arrived today! I'm really looking forward to exploring it this weekend and taking it to work with me next week! Look for more Things next week!

Break!

I'm taking a break from 23 Things because I ordered an iPad! I'm so excited to try the rest of the Things plus review the ones I've already completed on my new iPad when it arrives on April 1. That's no joke!

Thing 6 - Creating & Editing Docs

I downloaded CloudOn and QuickOffice for my iPhone. I use GoogleDrive every day and have been able to do some minimal editing in my docs from GoogleDrive through my browser (and more recently through the Google Search app - see Thing 3). I was intrigued about CloudOn because it supposedly has your docs looking like you're on the computer. My iPhone clearly has too small of a screen for this to be useful for me, but I would expect this to be more efficient and useful using a tablet.

My screen is too small!!

This is in CloudOn - I like all the different ways my docs can be sorted. Other good parts of CloudOn: 

• Ability to INDENT! I miss the "tab" button on my phone :)
• Changing fonts and font sizes easily
• formulas in Excel actually work!

I already store my circ stats in my GoogleDrive, so I can definitely see myself at a meeting and sorting and resorting the stats from my phone to help me answer questions in real-time to the city council.

I also downloaded QuickOffice, but was discouraged immediately because it wouldn't let me edit within the app. I had to download the GoogleDrive app if I wanted to edit documents. I could view them as a pdf, but I couldn't edit them. And from what I can see, the GoogleDrive app allows minimal editing like when I use it in the browser. 

Thing 5 - Notetaking

I downloaded SpringPad, Remember the Milk, and Dragon dictation. I have been using Remember the Milk and SpringPad, but I feel uncomfortable talking out loud to my phone, so I haven't use Dragon dictation. Then I realized, I'm, I am, um, the point of a phone is to talk into it to communicate with somebody so why not use it to communicate with myself, right? So I have dictated this entire paragraph using Dragon dictation and frankly I'm very impressed! woo hoo! I will explore Dragon dictation more and then update this post.

Remember the Milk
I am one of those people who has pockets filled with scraps of paper with "to-do" lists written on them. I have to-read lists, grocery lists, to-watch lists, to-get-at-target lists, to-tell-my-husband lists, to-do-for-summer-reading lists. I'm a list person. One of my high school teachers actually told me I have a "paper brain" because I write everything down. My favorite part of having a "paper brain" is the moment when I finish something and am able to whip one of my lists and CROSS OFF THE COMPLETED TASK! The RTM app lets me mark items "completed" and that is my favorite feature! I do feel like the actual entry of the task is kind of clunky, but I have been using this app for the past two weeks. I have made a couple of grocery lists on it and also a list for things I needed to do before my son's baptism. I think I would use this more in my personal life than in my professional life because my professional lists often have lots of footnotes or sublists and I don't think that's easy to do with this app.

SpringPad
What a cool app! I love the ability to keep different types of content in one notebook - links, photos, text, videos, etc. I will say that I did go on the website to see the features there - after exploring and loving the app. I hope that isn't cheating - I see it more as going "above and beyond"! As I mentioned in a previous post, I am working on collecting readalikes, fan pages, book trailers, etc to share with the teens at the Battle of the Books competition in August. I made a notebook for the Battle authors and started putting ideas in it and I'm almost ready to "share" them with my colleagues. One of my questions about SpringPad is in regards to sharing. Do the people I share the notebook with have to have an account or can they click on a link and see the information? I guess I'll find out soon and update this post!

Thing 4 - Keeping Up

Everyone has that thing/person they secretly search for online almost every single day. Tom Cruise. Three-legged dogs. Art made with fruit. Who's in the county jail. That perfect bedspread. Cute babies making funny faces. (You're wondering what mine is, right? I'll tell you at the end of the post)

Anyway, that's what Flipboard is for. I think. I'm not sure because I am still figuring it out.

Subscribe to your go-to websites, Twitter users, Facebook pages.
Check Flipboard daily, hourly, whatever - to see the most recent updates.

Then you can even go a step further and add articles, tweets, images, videos, etc. to your own magazine within the app and have that magazine be private or public.

Of course you can have more than one "thing" you follow and it can be professional or personal or a combination of both. This is where I had trouble - I subscribed to everything and then realized I'm never going to read it all, so now I'm going back through my subscriptions and being more selective. I will definitely be using this app once I have the content I NEED (as opposed to WANT) and WILL read.

I will probably unlink my Twitter and Facebook and try to focus on the websites I visit frequently. I think the Facebook newsfeed tries to show me what I want to read like Flipboard has the potential to do, but Facebook doesn't always do a good job and I haven't figured out an efficient way to fix that.

I would like to work within Flipboard to create a magazine of items to add to our library's collection because I'm often reading about a new book or movie at home and then writing it down on a piece of paper and losing that paper in my bag. If I can create a personalized magazine of items for our library, that will be easier for me to keep track of. I peruse websites with book reviews, bestseller lists and movie picks all the time, so Flipboard should make my life easier.

Now for my "thing" - I look for squash recipes. I love squash! Also, I like to search for new books by Minnesota authors (memoirs, picture books, mystery, history, anything about Minnesota or by Minnesota)

Butternut and Spaghetti Squash from our garden

I haven't had a chance to explore Zite yet, but I do plan to, so hopefully I'll get to throw in an edit later.

Thing 3 - Utilities

In Thing 3 - Utilities, I downloaded all of the apps listed that were available for iPhone. I have had them on my phone for a little more than a week now and I've found that I was most drawn to use the Google Search app and the RedLaser app.

Thoughts on the RedLaser app

We are in the middle of planning a teen book competition for this summer (Battle of the Books) and we usually make readalike bookmarks for the teens. I had thought about using QR codes to link teens to lists of readalikes or other books by the authors, but I hadn't thought about using QR codes to book trailers and other media about the book. I really like that idea and am excited to continue working on gathering "extras" for the teens.

I also started using the RedLaser app at the grocery store. I am not in a place where looking for the best deal is feasible because it would cost me more in gas to drive to another grocery store, but I am more aware of the QR codes on the packaging of foods. I've scanned some of them and they take me to the company's website, a website with different recipe ideas, more detailed nutrition information, etc. I was really surprised to find so many QR codes when I actually started looking for them.

This summer's reading program theme is "Paws to Read" and I have some ideas about making QR codes for kids/families to find around town and link them back to the library and give them suggestions for materials to check out from the library. It is kind of like a scavenger hunt with an extra layer!

Thoughts on the Google Search app

I made a "23 Mobile Things" section of my phone where I put the apps I'm trying for this. I quickly found that I use the Google Search app almost as frequently as I check my email, so that app moved into a more prominent place on my phone.

In the past I have tried to link my Google calendars with Apple's calendar and that has been a major failure. Now I have a shortcut to my Google calendar on my phone but I have to log back in to Google almost every morning. I look at my calendar multiple times a day and haven't had to log back into it while I've been using the Google Search app. Thumbs up!!

I also can easily access my Google Drive. I store all of my personal and work documents in Google Drive. In the past, there has not been an easy way to "share" documents with other people using only my phone. When I use Google Search to take me to Google Drive, there's a great link that asks if I want to share the document via email and it makes a link for me in a new email message. LOVE IT!

I haven't gotten used to going to the Google Search app to actually "ask Google" something yet. The browser I use on my phone has a search bar and I have bookmarks in the browser, so that makes it easier for me at the moment.

Personally and professionally, Google Search will make me more efficient when I am using my phone.