Thing 4

I thought I would be ambitious and try out both Flipboard and Zite on my device. Admittedly, I was very skeptical of the idea of a personal magazine. After playing around with the format and content, I wouldn't describe either one as a magazine. I did quite a bit of blogging and reading during graduate school. To keep up I used an RSS Feed (the newly departed Google Reader, R.I.P.). To me Flipboard and Zite remind me of a more engaging RSS Feed. That being said, I think I would have done a lot more reading of classmates blogs if I had either of these apps in those days.

Now, I haven't done a lot of streamlining of the articles coming to me on these apps, but I could really see the value of reading/discovering articles on public librarianship in that way. Does anyone have a tip on retrieving those types of articles? I know of one really good discovery tool for library-related news, Library Link of the Day.

Thing 3

I had already downloaded quite a few of the suggested apps, so I gave a new one a try. iHome Sleep is the one I chose. It's pretty cool, but unfortunately there isn't a tutorial on how to use the app. It's fairly intuitive but there are a few things that were not. It often refers to a Menu button, but nothing is labeled "Menu" or looks like a menu. I found this tricksy button hidden next to the Android OS menu button in the very corner and indicated by three tiny dots...

The final test will be to see how much I like it in the morning when it tries to wake me up. All I can say is good luck iHome Sleep!

Thing 2

I have two smart phones. A personal iPhone and a work Moto X running Android. I've had the iPhone for a few years now and seem to know most of the fun little quirks. Though I'm not ashamed to admit that I only recently figured out how to see when a text message was sent (it really wasn't that intuitive to me!). The Android OS is completely new to me so I watched this video tutorial to learn some of those tricks. If you don't have this exact phone, this blog post is going to be boring to you so I'll just give a bulleted list of what I learned (it mostly involves the camera).
I learned how to:

• get to the photo gallery from the camera
• delete photos quickly from the gallery
• take panoramic photos
• take video and take pictures while recording video.
• unlock my phone using an NFC sticker or Skip device
• change audio effects.

One thing I did learn about my iPhone is how to use the compass as a level. I tested it in my kitchen and was surprised to find out how level most of the surfaces were. I always thought the kitchen was a little lopsided. 

The First Step...

...is to post something on here. So here we go. I consider myself to be fairly tech savvy. I've had an iPhone for a few years now. I just finished graduate school and my program stressed the importance of staying up to date on technology. My goal through this program is to learn new ways to use my existing technology knowledge and to pick up a few new tricks. I look forward to seeing how we all learn together!