Often times when we do repetitive tasks, such as checking our favorite social networks on a daily basis, things become mundane and sometimes we need to change things up. For those of you who have become comatose from the linear view of Facebook newsfeeds and Twitter streams, here’s an app that should breathe a little fresh air into your social experience – Flipboard, a social news magazine.
What I like about this app:
Every couple of months, we change the oil in our car. When we reach milestones, such as reaching 75,000 miles, we give our car a tune-up. By doing this, it helps to ensure that our vehicle will continue to perform at a high level. It also helps to ensure that we won’t experience any unwanted repairs in the near future.
While we spend time maintaining our vehicles, we often forget to give ourselves a tune-up.
Because we lead such busy lives, it can be easy to forget to give ourselves a regular tune-up. What happens when we fail to give ourselves a tune-up is that we could end up needing major repairs down the road.
Here’s why you should assess yourself and give yourself a tune-up regularly.
How many of you saw yesterdays eyetrack study on the new Facebook Timeline and where our eyes are immediately directed towards? You guessed it, the Facebook Timeline Cover photo area is the top place for drawing attention – and it rightfully should be, because it is significantly larger. Unfortunately, while there is a lot of clear evidence that suggests we should spend time creating compelling Facebook Timeline Cover photos, I have come across a lot of people who have yet to take advantage of this or they have produced work that isn’t up to par. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression – make it a lasting one, so let’s get started using the FREE Facebook Timeline cover photo app.
What I like about this app:
Continue reading App of the day: Facebook Timeline Cover Slicer
Have you ever stopped to think about what you get done throughout the course of a day? It’s actually pretty remarkable if you really think about it. Not only do you find time to make lunches, drop the kids off at school, go to work – and still make soccer practice as well as dinner, but somehow you are able to get all of this done in a normal eight hour day.
Whether you realize it or not, the reason you are able to accomplish so much is because you follow a routine. For a lot of people who are just starting out incorporating social media into their already long list of daily activities, having a routine should really be routine and here’s why.
Those of you who have seen my office know that I take a lot of notes – at one point, they were on my computer, on my iPad, on papers from conferences and strewn across my desk. That was until I decided to get organized with my notes. If there is one thing that I find helps keep me organized, it’s having a great notes app – especially considering that I take my iPad. For some time, I’ve kept a handful of apps around for doing the standard task – one for sketching out ideas, another for recording voice memos (not just where I parked, but new ideas I thought about, along with notes from conferences I have attended). Unfortunately, having too many apps to essentially do the same thing – take notes – means there’s a lot of maintenance involved and so I wanted to simplify things.
Enter Notability app for iPad.
What I like about this app:
Hopefully you’ve had a great week so far. For those of you who haven’t, don’t worry, it will get better – I promise! For some people, when the balancing act, called life, throws us a curveball, we get all our of whack. We can’t sleep, eat or function for that matter, and we feel the pressure in our social groups – because we want to fit in, so we keep things bottled up inside. This isn’t actually a good thing, nor is it healthy. In fact, why do we do these sorts of things anyway? We’re scared, that’s why – we want everything to go our way and when it doesn’t, we get all out of sync and forget how to function. When times like these happen though, I say don’t let them affect you – instead, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!
Sure, you may have lost your job, missed out on a promotion or had a bad day overall, but that really shouldn’t stop you, nor should the feeling that your friends might give you a hard time about your misfortunes. In fact, it should make you angry to the point that you want to do something about it because life goes on whether you choose to do something or not. If you stay mired in your current situation and let others (the company that just fired you, your friends), you’re only going to make things worse because you’re expending so much energy on the things that went wrong, not realizing that there’s another side to the coin – the things you can change. Here are just a few examples
For those of you who have followed the Apple iPhone and iPad since they first launched, although the products have gotten better (and insanely more popular), one thing that has remained is their lack of Adobe Flash support. What this means is that you can’t visit websites that are build entirely in flash (see here), play many of your favorite Facebook games, such as Farmville, or watch Hulu. Fortunately, there are a few alternatives, such as iSwifter (read my review); however that app only works for the iPad and it only works if you’re using a wireless network. For those of you who want the best app, I recommend Photon Flash Player (download). Not only does it give you all of the functionality for your iOS device, but it’s also very inexpensive, considering it’s the best flash player app on the market.
Quick, grab a piece of paper, don’t give this any thought, and write down the names of five people.
So what do these five people you’ve just selected represent? No, they aren’t your starting five on your first basketball team. In fact, they’re a lot more valuable than that… Now that you have selected five people, take a moment and look at how successful they are in their own lives – we’re not talking about money here.
Do they have a good family life, are they in good shape, how is their attitude, are they influencers or inhibitors in your personal life? Chance are, you’ll come to find out that the people you just named are people who are influential in your life in one way or another (your favorite five). Some might influence you financially, because you aspire to be where they are at. Others might be deeply rooted in family. Others might be holding you back from reaching your personal goals.
What’s the point?
Just as these five people influence your life in-person, these same principles hold true online as well on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, etc.
Who you spend your time with impacts your own life – whether it is having a physical conversation with them or commenting and liking their status update on Facebook.
Now that you know more about your favorite five, take a moment and think about the five people you listed. Are these people influencers or inhibitors? There’s nothing wrong with adding or removing from your favorite five. In fact, to be successful, I suggest surrounding yourself with people that will have a positive influence on your life – this can be someone who brightens your day or that somebody who really irritates you because they seem to have it all, yet they challenge you to get better.
Today’s app of the day doesn’t disappoint. In fact, it’s from a company we know very very well – Google. They have come up with an app for both Android and iOS users called Google Goggles, that let’s you use your voice to search the web! Now I know what you’re thinking, that’s it? Nope.
Google Goggles, in addition to offering voice search, this app also let’s you take a photo of something and it will search the web for that item – I know, it’s mind-blowing how it works!
For those of you who need to see this in action, I’ve included a short video below along with my thoughts on this app below.
As our lives only get more busy, eventually, we reach a point where it becomes a matter of cutting corners just so that we can save a few precious seconds. With that in mind, I wanted to share one of my favorite email apps for those of you who spend a good deal of time glued to their Apple iPhone or iPad. It’s called Mailshot Pro.
