Tuesday, February 11, 2014

23 Things: Thing 4

This "thing" wasn't very impressive. I make it a point to leave work at work and home at home. When I am at home I make it a point to not be on any device unless I'm playing a game with my kids.

I do follow a few blogs through the RSS feed which is really nice. I like having new ideas and posts e-mailed to me. The blogs I follow are professional and I look at them during my work day. That's where it ends.  I did download the Flipboard App but it seems it would work better if I connected it to my Facebook account which I would never do. The professional blogs that I follow are blogs posted by other Children's librarians and I didn't feel the need to figure out how to search for them in Flipboard. I already have them in one place and I figure that is good enough. When I went into a certain field such as the news field I then had to search through a bunch of news that I didn't care about. I would rather just google something if I'm interested in finding something out.

For people who are constantly looking at news sites I can definitely see a benefit to an app like this, but for me I have no use.

Monday, February 3, 2014

Thing 3

HELLO BETTER ATTITUDE!!!

I had a feeling it was going to take me past the get to know your device stage before I discovered some interesting things. I loved the apps featured in this "Thing".

RedLaser is just plain cool. I've known about it for awhile but I've never actually downloaded it and put it to use. This was finally my excuse. Several times I have ended up at one store to pick up an item and then go to another store to see if it would be cheaper. I have officially eliminated that step. I'm pretty excited about this one.

iHome+sleep is interesting. I've forced myself to use it over the weekend. It's one thing to review an app that I've looked at vs. one that I've actually used. iHome is easier to operate, for lack of a better term" than I would have thought. At night I typically read on my phone so when I am ready to quit reading and go to bed I just pull up another app. I don't have to do anything extra. Typically when either of my kids wake up in the middle of the night I'm back to reading because I can't fall asleep right away. It's not a big hassle to wake up and sleep again. I love that I can also set a bedtime timer. It comes in handy when I am with my kids. A typical night is me setting the kitchen timer for 5 minutes and then Emily goes down. Elizabeth gets another 5 minutes and then it's her time to go to bed. Elizabeth and I get 10 minutes of cuddling time and then it's lights out and she's on her own. If she's still awake in 30 minutes then she gets to cuddle some more. Every time I have to get up and set the kitchen times. This is nice that I can just set all these reminders and snoozes and I don't have to keep getting up and down every time I need to.
My husband is also a horrible sleeper. He has PTSD pretty bad and I've been trying to get him to download this app to track his sleep schedule. It would be interesting to keep track how many times he wakes up during the night.

StandApp is also really neat. I don't use it at work since I'm up and down and all around. I do use it at home. It's awesome especially on the weekends when my kids and I like to veg out and watch a movie or play with our devices. Here every 30 minutes we all stand up and we move around and do the exercises (even my 21 mo. old) and then we can go back to watching our movie. It's hard to stay active with such nasty weather and this app is just what we needed.

Overall I was really excited about these apps and am looking forward, yes I said looking forward, to the next "thing" and see what else I can learn. :)