It is Wednesday, so it is my day to announce my App of the Week, but you will have to read on to find out what it is. Why. Because I am still debating what to feature even as I write this. So you will get a mini-tour of some of the stuff I’m using and downloading, and why, as I work my way toward the proposal.
GAMES
Stupid. I know. Waste of time. I know. But as a person who is living a pretty good life with serious depression, I want to encourage people to play and have fun. Play is fun. Games can give you positive reinforcement, presuming you find ones that you like and from which you can get what you want or need. I love Words with Friends, Spider solitaire, and Hidden Chronicles on Facebook. If it feels good, do it.
Today, Greedy Bankers vs. the World, for iPad is FREE, Greedy Bankers Bailout is also free today. Same link. I love beating the Greedy Bankers. This isn’t App of the Week, but it is fun, and reminds you who the bad guys are while you are goofing off!
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
I just started using the Stumble Upon app for Social Bookmarking. I like the iPad version. I never got into delicious, digg was/is so decidedly anti-woman in its burying of topics submitted by women that I will not even provide a link to it, though it stopped the bury function. Once misogynist, always misogynist. No reprieve.
Don’t know what social bookmarking is? Well, if you discover something you may want to find again, using a social bookmarking tool will allow you to add it to your “stumbles,” in the case of Stumble Upon, And you can discover things that others have added to their collections. You can also find your likes for things you didn’t personally add but like, and presumably if you like it you may want to find it again.
Still don’t get it? Try it out. It is free.
I know several bloggers swear that most of their traffic comes from being stumbled.
AGGREGATION IS US
For your news reading pleasure… aggregation “can’t be beat.” You do use an aggregator don’t you? I use several because they each have different strengths and weaknesses. I’m using direct RSS feeds into my reader less than I once did. They still work well for keeping up with my bloggedista friends, but for news feeds I think of them as semi-smart (as in learn what you like) services rather than pages, or newspapers. I used to use Feedly for my RSS reader, but I now find myself using Zite, Trapit, and Feedly… but I have just heard about UnDrip and want to try it out and if it really is social bookmarking and aggregation all rolled into one, well, I will be in heaven, but I’m not there yet and it seems like a “newspaper” app.
Writing Offline
Nothing new here, but if you write offline, you will need something to replace your old standby, MS Word, cause it still “ain’t there” if you know what I mean. So I have downloaded and am testing out EverNote and Google Docs/Drive… because both are free and say I can work offline. We’ll see. I am going to be offline for few days next month and will test both out thoroughly. Gasp… I know. I can’t believe it either! But in the meanwhile I am using Pages.
PAGES
Yes, my App of the Week is Pages. With the iCloud it updates to all other devices too. But I have found that I am able to really write serious stuff, make it pretty, but not as pretty as I can on my desktop. This post’s featured mage is part of a proposal I did on my iPad. It is only $10 and for a major brand’s product, that isn’t too bad. I haven’t had the need for the other components of iWork, so I can’t speak to those, but Evernote and/or Google Docs will have to be pretty good to tear me away from familiarity. Moving to using the using the iPad like a laptop over the last year plus has been both traumatic and wonderful. My logitech keyboard paired with my iPad makes writing possible, and using basically all new software has been the biggest learning curve. So why is Pages my App of the Week? It is a comfortable old friend on my iPad. I like that. It works too.