MissAdventures

Favorite iPhone Apps of a Freelancing, Gadget Geek Mom

I’ve been meaning to write about my favorite overall iPhone apps ever since writing about the Best iPhone Apps for the Italophile on my Italy travel blog. But as a freelance writer and stay-at-home mom, I don’t have a whole lot of time to devote to writing on my personal blog.

Enter BestKidsApps.com, a genius website that I wish I would have started. They are holding a contest for blogging moms right now and the winner could win an iPad. How could I not answer their link love call to write about iPhone apps for kids, especially when I no longer have a Kindle? I want that iPad!

It is not an exaggeration when I say that the iPhone has changed my life, and I have a feeling that an iPad could very well do the same. My iPhone is my lifeline for freelancing, which includes not only writing (WordPress) and marketing (HootSuite) but also getting paid (Paypal). It is also the best tool in my arsenal for keeping my son occupied while we’re doing important errands, like running to the grocery store, post office, or doctor’s appointment. In fact, I, like a lot of parents I know, have to use my iPhone as a sort of reward for my 3 year old if he is on good behavior and/or if I need him to “settle down for a few minutes while mommy gets this post written.” Yep. He’s playing with my phone now.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my son has PDD-NOS, also known as mild autism. He may also have Asperger’s Syndrome, though that has not been officially diagnosed. While electronic gadgets are not necessarily recommended for kids that have autism as there’s a fear that they will “stim out” (get overstimulated) on them, I have found several apps that I like that are both educational and provide tens of minutes of entertainment to a child who is easily distracted.

Voice Toddler Cards (Talking Flashcards) – This is the very first kid-specific app I downloaded. It cost $.99 but has provided hours of fun for my 3.5 year old as well as for my almost 18m old. The app provides flash cards in a number of different categories – animals, colors, shapes, numbers, etc. – and you can set the language in either English or Spanish. The feature that my kids like the best on here is recording your own voice for the flashcards. It helps my son improve his speech and it’s also fun for me to hear his little voice recorded on the app.

Math Cards - These are in the same vain as the flashcards above. My son is obsessed with numbers, so I figured why not give him the opportunity to learn addition, subtraction, and the rest of it? At 3.5 years old, he doesn’t really do much beyond the addition category. But I’ve got this card in my pocket should his interests change.

PBS Kids Photo Factory - This is just a super fun app that lets you add your favorite PBS Kids cartoon characters to pictures on your iPhone. Add Curious George, Super Why, Elmo, and any other character to your child’s photo and upload it to Facebook to share with friends and family. I like that PBS made it so you can only add one of each character so you don’t end up with a photo of a 1,000 Elmos and I also like that you can adjust the size of the character so it fits into your photo. You’re supposed to be able to arrange the character to the front or back of your photo, but I haven’t gotten that to work yet. Nevertheless, a cute little app. And it’s free.

Going Places by Model Me Kids - I recently downloaded this app by Model Me Kids, which is a company that produces “social stories.” If you don’t have a kid on the spectrum, this will look like a pretty boring app on the face of it. In fact, it’s a lightweight app that teaches your kid how to act in different social environments by showing you visuals of proper behavior. Some of the social situations that are shown here are the restaurant, the hairdresser, and playground. It’s really helpful to have these visual cues for my son. He can relate to the kids shown in the photos on the app and the stories also act as reinforcements for behaviors we have taught him. It’s a free app and takes up very little space.

On a side note, there are several apps out there that are geared toward the spectrum set or kids who are having trouble transitioning into bigger kid behavior (like potty training). I am especially impressed by the Grace App and the First Then Visual Scheduler, which both use PECS, a teaching system which helps kids avoid tantrums by understanding how their day will progress. I’ve considered downloading the latter, but despite its good ratings I’m reluctant to download it because of its $9.99 price tag. I think I’d me a little more apt to buy this app if I could have it on an iPad which ostensibly has more memory and permanence.

Musée du Louvre – This was a surprise to me, but my son loves this app. I came to download this app because I was browsing through my Genius recommendations and saw that the Louvre app was free (not sure if that will always be the case). At any rate, my son loves scanning through the photos and playing the videos, even though they are in French. He especially loves to watch the Venus de Milo video. And given that he has a tendency to remember long scripts, I fully expect him to be talking about art history in French any day now. By the way, when he wants to play with this app, he says “more art.” Cute.

While all of the above apps have proved their worth or utility, I do have to admit that my son’s favorite apps aren’t in the app store at all. They are the apps that come with the iPhone, especially YouTube and the iPod. Thanks to these two apps my son can watch either his favorite advertisement (that Kia commercial with Muno and the Sock Monkey in Vegas) or a full episode of Yo Gabba Gabba.

Well…lunchtime is over and my iPhone battery is running low. So I don’t have time to provide a long list of my favorite non-kid apps. But I will tell you that two apps I could not live without are the Public Radio Player app and Cardstar, a fantastic app that stores the bar codes for all those store discount cards you’ve got in your wallet or on your keychain. I swear that every time I bust the latter one out at a store people go “ooh” and “aah.” As a mom constantly questioning whether I’m losing touch with what’s current, the Cardstar app always makes me look like a star – even when all I’m doing is buying diapers. *sigh*

(Ha! Just as I was finishing this post up comes this article that two-thirds of all apps in the iPhone app store are for kids!)

Photo © BestKidsApps.com

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Five Reasons Why I’m Returning My Kindle

On Christmas morning, I was one of the thousands of people who awoke to find a Kindle, Amazon’s e-book reader and the company’s “most gifted” product ever, under the tree. As my family’s gadget geek, I was definitely excited to test out the holiday season’s most talked about toy, even though I hardly have time these days to read traditional paper books, much less digital ones.

But now that I’ve had a couple weeks to play, I can definitely make a case as to why I should return my Kindle.

1. No Backlight
I shudder to think of life before my iPhone. I can use the iPhone anytime, anywhere. Often, this means catching up on tweets or the latest headlines under the covers while my husband thinks I’m sleeping. My midnight rendez-vous with the iPhone would not be possible without its backlight. In fact, the phone’s incessant glow has become so ubiquitous as to inspire a New Yorker cover.

To my knowledge, the Kindle does not have a backlight (though I understand that the Sony Reader has an LED that you can switch on or off). Kindle uses EPD (electronic paper display) technology for its e-books. This technology is said to reduce the glare on the Kindle screen and “provide the contrast and resolution of traditional ink on paper.” (Computer World article) That’s great if you want to read your Kindle in the bright sunlight. But I want to read in bed and it sure would be nice not to have to turn on a separate light to do so.

2. “Experimental” Features
If you click on Kindle’s “menu” button – one of several buttons on the ergonomic, yet slightly cumbersome device – you’ll see a list item titled “experimental,” whose name already suggests to me that my Kindle 2 will soon be obsolete. The experimental features in question are a web browser, an MP3 player, and a text-to-speech component. In theory, these are excellent additions to the device. In practice, however, they leave much to be desired.

For starters, the web browser is a mess. If I go to a site that is not retro-fitted for text-only viewing, it feels like I’m surfing the web using Netscape circa 1993. The layout is disjointed and all the eye-catching graphics I’ve come to expect from my favorite sites are non-existent. What’s more, typing in a URL using the Kindle keyboard feels less like texting and more like using a scientific calculator.

Likewise, the MP3 player is a good concept, as it allows me to play Amazon MP3 purchases in the background while I’m reading. Unfortunately, I can’t add these items to Kindle using its wireless “WhisperSynch” technology. Rather, I must upload the MP3s by connecting my Kindle via USB to my computer. That seems so antiquated, especially in light of the fact that most smart phones – gadgets that the Amazon Kindle no doubt wants to emulate – allow wireless uploads via wifi or 3G networks.

I’ll admit that I haven’t tried the text-to-speech yet. But judging from the other two components, I am sure that I wouldn’t be impressed.

3. Amazon as Gatekeeper to Your Reading Material
The whole reason Amazon invented the Kindle was to create a market where there was none. Indeed, when all those Kindle giftees opened up their new toys on Christmas morning, they began downloading e-books from Amazon, the only store that sells digital books in the Kindle (.AZW) format. To be fair, many of these books sell for a fraction of their hardback versions. For example, the hardcover edition of the Edward Kennedy memoir True Compass retails new for $21.00 on Amazon, but costs only $9.99 on the Kindle. Amazon also offers a lot of Classics, such as Gulliver’s Travels and Machiavelli’s The Prince for $0.99 or free, and also allows you to download short samples of any of its digital books.

Still, at a price of $259, you’d think that Amazon could throw in a few free books. Better yet, why not allow users to download the digital versions of books they’ve already purchased through Amazon? Having the option to download and read, say, five of the books I already own would be not only a generous gesture on the part of Amazon, but an incentive to get me to buy more books.

Another cool feature I should mention is that you can email personal documents in the txt or PDF formats to a specially assigned Kindle email address. So, if you need to catch up with reading a brief for work or are a writer who wishes to peruse the latest draft of your article while you’re on the go, you can send it to yourusername@kindle.com. I love this idea, but I don’t love the price. Yes, Amazon charges U.S. customers $.15 per megabyte to use Kindle’s Personal Document Service via Whispernet ($.99 internationally). Or, you can go the free but more complicated route by emailing your document to yourusername@free.kindle.com, where Amazon will convert your docs to its Kindle-compatible format.

I think I’ll just stick to reading documents on my iPhone, either by emailing myself or using one its apps, such as Evernote.

4. Kindle for iPhone
Speaking of apps, I downloaded the Kindle for iPhone long before I had any inkling I would receive the real deal. The app is free – surprise, surprise! – and allows you to shop in the Kindle store just as you would if you had a Kindle. You can even synch your app with your device. So, if you forget your Kindle but have your iPhone, you can pick up in your book where you left off. Sadly, this only works for books: “Periodicals such as newspapers, magazines, and blogs, and personal documents cannot be viewed on the Kindle for iPhone.”

The real Kindle has the iPhone app beat when it comes to the on-screen appearance of books. On the other hand, when I’m reading on my Kindle, I have to unlearn that swipe-scroll motion that I’ve become accustomed to while using an iPhone touch screen. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Amazon roll out the Kindle 3 with a touch screen and built-in, on-screen keyboard.

5. Magazine Subscriptions
Finally, I’m dissatisfied with the Kindle’s magazine subscription service. Amazon currently stocks only 43 magazine titles, including PC Magazine, The Economist, and Shape. While I do like the idea of saving trees and getting my periodicals wirelessly, I don’t like the fact that I can’t synch up with subscriptions I currently have. For example, as part of my New Yorker subscription, I can read that magazine online. But if I want to read that magazine on my Kindle, I must sign up for a completely separate subscription. What’s more, “The Kindle Edition of The New Yorker will usually include all articles, fiction, and poetry found in the print edition and a selection of cartoons, but will not include other images at this time.” A New Yorker without images and minus some of its articles?? What kind of BS if that? I think both Amazon and magazine publishers would be well-served to come up with a solution to this.

The Kindle does allow users to sign up for a 14-day free trial of any of its magazines. Though, if you want to cancel that subscription within those two weeks, Amazon does not make it easy to do so. One has to manage his magazine subscriptions through his Amazon account online, and you can’t even use Kindle’s “experimental” web browser to see or update your account information. That to me is an epic fail.

Magazines aren’t particular cheaper on the Kindle, either. As one subscriber to Shape commented, “I like the Kindle, but I also like my money. I got 2 years of Shape delivered to my home for only $10…why so much on the Kindle?” I have to ask the same thing about Slate, for which Amazon charges $2.49 per month for the privilege of reading “most of the articles from the online edition.” I’d rather get my Slate with ads and all of its articles rather than a lesser – but more expensive – Kindle-ized version.

And A Sixth Reason…
Don’t get me wrong, the Kindle is a fine toy, especially if you are an voracious bookworm. But I still think much work needs to be done before this e-reader becomes essential. Besides, the one thing that Kindle doesn’t do for this mother of two boys under 4 is find more time to read. When the Kindle figures out how to do THAT, then I may reconsider.

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A Review of Phanfare’s Photosharing Site

I am getting ready – I’m very close – to purchasing a subscription to Phanfare, a photosharing and storage site I recently found thanks to my iPhone.

I had taken about 100 nice quality photos of my kids and wanted to be able to upload them/save them to another location before I lost them/accidentally deleted them, etc. So I started looking for an application on the iPhone that would help me do just that. I settled on Photon, Phanfare’s iPhone app. But before I did, it took a bit of trial and error.

The first thing I downloaded was Pixelpipe, an app and website that promises to upload all of your photos simultaneously to more than 90 photo services and social networking sites (Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, Bebo, and even a personal blog) that the user specifies. That sounded great! But after uploading the app and trying it out, it crashed on me. I deleted it and tried it again, but no luck. I was never able to upload any photos to any site using Pixelpipe – a shame really, because it had great reviews.

Next, I thought I would look up Picasa- and Flickr-specific apps. Maybe trying to do a simultaneous upload was too much to ask. I couldn’t find any Picasa-specific apps (maybe Apple nixed the Google-owned offshoot’s app application just like they did recently with the Google Phone app). There were plenty for Flickr, though.

I’ve used Flickr off and on (in fact I keep a small Flickr stream of my photos on this blog). But I was never quite sure if I wanted to display personal photos to the world. Maybe no one would pay attention, but there are a lot of crazies out there (Hey…I’m talkin’ to you! Just kidding!)

I uploaded the app Flickit, which worked just fine. But I wanted more. I have a pretty large back catalog of photos on Kodak Gallery, so it made sense to keep my photos in one place. But I have also been getting away from Kodak as of late because it seemed kind of stale compared to the other sites like Picasa, Flickr, etc. Plus, Kodak focused more on photo printing, which is becoming less and less important to me.

What was becoming important to me was being able to always have a copy of the thousands of photos that I have taken. By “copy,” I mean an archived backup of all of my photos. My computer recently died and took with it several years’ worth of photos. I had the smarts to backup photos of my son’s first year about a month or so before the computer crash and I also had some of my very best pictures online with Kodak, Picasa, and Flickr. But there are some photos – and videos – that didn’t make it and I’m still debating whether I send my dead hard drive to a recovery lab for upwards of $400+.

So this is where Phanfare comes in. Phanfare’s Photon app allows me to upload my iPhone photos to its site and share them with my friends. In addition, here are some other great features you can use on Phanfare:

• Import photos from Kodak, Picasa, Shutterfly, SmugMug, and Snapfish
• Export photos (from your iPhone, at least) to Flickr and Facebook
• Use Phanfare plugins for Picasa, iPhoto, Aperture, and Adobe Lightroom 2
• Share your photos in a social networking style from a personalized website, e.g., http://yourname.phanfare.com
• Batch editing of photos (a feature that I’ve only been able to find on Flickr – am I missing something on Picasa and Kodak?)
• Simultaneous syncing of photos on web and phone – I can carry around thousands of pictures thanks to the Photon app!
• 5GB of online storage (with Premium subscription) and 20GB (with Pro sub.)
• Video storage – yeah…did I mention that before? You can store videos up to 10 minutes in length on Phanfare.  Perhaps, unlike Facebook, they won’t delete the video I did of Dante (with some familiar, copyrighted “Peanuts” music in the background)
• Printing, ostensibly from several sources (especially if you export photos, too)

If you want to see everything that Phanfare offers, check out these tech specs.

Unfortunately, Phanfare doesn’t come cheap – $49.99 for one year of the premium (5GB) subscription, $99.99 for the pro (20GB) subscription (and if you need more storage – a subscription I like to call super-pro – it’s $49.99 for each extra 20GB). It sounds like a lot to me, too. But, then again, photos of my boys – and the many places I have been – are priceless.

However, when I first downloaded Photon, I recall seeing that they were selling one year Premium subscriptions to Photon users for $27.47 – half off of the yearly price and about the same price as a Flickr Pro subscription. I’m not seeing that deal anymore, but I am going to check on it. In the meantime, if you decide to sign up, tell them you saw about this deal on Missadventures.com. Maybe they’ll help all of us out and we’ll return the favor by signing up with them!

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Web Style Guide

I’ve desperately been trying to think of how to redesign my personal web site and came across this helpful site. The Web Style Guide lays out the whole process, giving you tips on design, editorial style, and graphics.

Now if I can find a web site on overcoming procrastinating tendencies…

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Wireless at Last!

LA LA LA!

I’ve been trying to figure out how to get online wirelessly for MONTHS now, and no one has been able to help. But today I gave it another shot. Not sure what I did. Well, for one thing, I removed my wireless connection from the “bridge” that it was on. Otherwise…I’m not quite sure.

So, after doing a quick writing assignment, I’ve been zooming around on the net for a couple of hours now. I am starting to feel like Chandler and Joey on Friends when they suddenly get porn for free and are afraid they’ll lose it if they turn the channel or turn off the t.v.

I don’t know what’s more embarrassing – admitting that I (once a certified Webmaster) have not been able to figure out WiFi or referencing a Friends episode.

Well, I can’t stay at Starschmucks forever. Time to take my bounty home from this morning’s Farmer’s Market. I’ll tell you later about the delilcious zucchini fritters I made this morning.

Oh, Saint Isadore of Seville, please bless me with WiFi access tomorrow and the rest of my days. Amen.

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