Evaluate 23 Mobile Things
I'm really glad I did this. I can't say it changed my life or anything, but I found some really useful apps and feel much more familiar with my smartphone now. I don't see myself using a huge number of the apps I tried, but there are certainly some. I'm saddened that Springpad is shutting down next month. I'm glad someone tweeted about it on the main 23 Mobile Things page, as I don't sign into Springpad all that often, and I would have hated to lose what I do have there. I really don't like Evernote nearly as well - it's not anywhere near as versatile as Springpad, but it'll hold the information until I don't need it anymore. Why does it always feel like the things I like are the ones that go away?
I think my main reason for not using many of these apps is the limits under which they operate. For example, QuickOffice is the palest shadow of the real thing. Since most of my Word, Excel and PowerPoint work is for work, I just do it with the full versions. Almost any other time I need to create documents, I'm home, and, again, use the full version. It's too hard on a phone - I might feel differently about a tablet. And I'm used to the full versions and feel these fall really flat in comparison. I wasn't all that wild about the photo editing software, either, but I must admit that may be user ineptitude.
I'm probably not the best audience for this kind of project, as I consciously choose to not be engaged online all the time. I'm online enough, and don't want all my free time sucked up by my phone. I'd far rather interact with real people. I don't have Facebook on my phone, even though I'm a reasonably active user. I'm going to own my phone, not the other way around. I also don't want all my social media apps connected to each other - I protect my privacy more than that.
That said, I probably will continue to use Flipboard, and I absolutely will use the app that locks my mail and messaging behind another layer of security. I'll continue to use my library app, and likely some of the connecting to community apps. I think this program has mostly expanded my knowledge of what my phone can really do! I feel more confident in trying things. But I remain cautious in what I download to my phone. There's too much dangerous stuff out there to download everything under the sun. I'd try something similar again. My recommendation would be to not get stuck on 23 things. I'm not sure why that number, but I think making yourselves stick to it is an artificial limit that can mean you include things not necessarily worth including, or not that different from other things.
My one sentence summary?
You'll never know what you can do until you try!
Thursday, June 5, 2014
23 Mobile Things: Thing 16
Audio
I gave ipadio a try. It took a while to figure it out, but it was fun. We have a librarian here who's having a baby soon, and we're throwing her a shower. We know it's a girl, and somehow everyone working here is female, so I'm going around to the staff and asking them to say something short and sweet about their favorite book growing up. I'm adding a picture of the book cover to each short audio track. We'll get her exposed to all kinds of stuff she may not have thought of.
I have a couple of quibbles. First, I had hoped to be able to add pictures to specific sections of audio, so I could change book cover images as the recording went along. While you can add multiple images to a clip, they're just all there. But at least I can do four at a time, instead of just one!
And even though the app says it supports jpeg files, I couldn't get those to work. Fortunately, it takes .png files, so it was fine.
I like that ipadio has fairly detailed instructions easily accessible on my phone. For too many of these apps, you have to go on the full web version, or search somewhere else for help. That kind of defeats the purpose.
This could be a quick way for teens to create quick and easy book reviews.
I gave ipadio a try. It took a while to figure it out, but it was fun. We have a librarian here who's having a baby soon, and we're throwing her a shower. We know it's a girl, and somehow everyone working here is female, so I'm going around to the staff and asking them to say something short and sweet about their favorite book growing up. I'm adding a picture of the book cover to each short audio track. We'll get her exposed to all kinds of stuff she may not have thought of.
I have a couple of quibbles. First, I had hoped to be able to add pictures to specific sections of audio, so I could change book cover images as the recording went along. While you can add multiple images to a clip, they're just all there. But at least I can do four at a time, instead of just one!
And even though the app says it supports jpeg files, I couldn't get those to work. Fortunately, it takes .png files, so it was fine.
I like that ipadio has fairly detailed instructions easily accessible on my phone. For too many of these apps, you have to go on the full web version, or search somewhere else for help. That kind of defeats the purpose.
This could be a quick way for teens to create quick and easy book reviews.
23 Mobile Things: Thing 14
Videos
I gave Viddy a try. I'm not a fan. In some places it says you get 30 seconds; in others, 15. It's 15. I was able to record without issue, but editing was another issue. You can add a few filtering effects, you can add some sound tracks, but I couldn't figure out how to do much of anything beyond that. Supposedly you can change the volume of the soundtrack vs. the recorded audio, but I never found the controls to do so. Just about all the instructions I saw were for iPhones, not Androids, and you can hardly tell the interfaces are for the same product.
I went to the website and looked at the help page to see how to delete a viddy. It said to go to my profile page. I tried that 3 times, and the app crashed every time. I never got there. That was the chief complaint I saw in the Google Play Store. Perhaps it's the age of my phone? I have the Galaxy SIII. At any rate, I uninstalled it, with my crummy little test videos still there, unable to do what I'd hoped to do.
Not only would I not recommend this app, I'd discourage people from using it.
I gave Viddy a try. I'm not a fan. In some places it says you get 30 seconds; in others, 15. It's 15. I was able to record without issue, but editing was another issue. You can add a few filtering effects, you can add some sound tracks, but I couldn't figure out how to do much of anything beyond that. Supposedly you can change the volume of the soundtrack vs. the recorded audio, but I never found the controls to do so. Just about all the instructions I saw were for iPhones, not Androids, and you can hardly tell the interfaces are for the same product.
I went to the website and looked at the help page to see how to delete a viddy. It said to go to my profile page. I tried that 3 times, and the app crashed every time. I never got there. That was the chief complaint I saw in the Google Play Store. Perhaps it's the age of my phone? I have the Galaxy SIII. At any rate, I uninstalled it, with my crummy little test videos still there, unable to do what I'd hoped to do.
Not only would I not recommend this app, I'd discourage people from using it.
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