Use the Shopkick App to Earn Gift Cards and Discounts

A friend introduced me to Shopkick a few months back. It's an app that allows you to collect kicks (like points) to use toward gift cards to stores like Target, Starbucks, Best Buy, Macy's, Lowe's, Chili's and iTunes. At the same time, you can find discounts for stores that are nearby. I didn't use Shopkick at first because I was confused about how it works, so here's the skinny...


There are several ways that you can collect kicks:

1. Collect instant surprises while you are riding in the car or sitting on the couch everyday. (These are marked with a green star.)
2. Collect kicks for walking in a store.
3. Collect kicks for buying certain items or for spending a certain amount of money at the store.
4. Collect kicks for scanning items in the store.

Tips:

Watch the banner at the top of the Nearby tab for special events.

Don't use Shopkick while you drive! Only if you are the copilot, collect kicks while you're on your regular route around town. If one of your children loves using your phone, teach them how to use Shopkick and enlist them to collect kicks for you while you drive.

Available on iPhone and Android.

Join Shopkick today!  (affiliate link)

iPhone and iPad App: Bible

One of my favorite apps on my iPhone and iPad is the Bible. I love its simple, clean design for reading that still contains all of the features that I want behind the scenes.

Features in the Bible app

• Change background color to black or white. This is particularly helpful when I am in church and want to minimize the amount of light shining from my phone.
• Share verses with others. I haven't used this feature much, but I do like that it's there.
• Read different translations and in different languages. Fluency in the Spanish language is a lifelong goal for me, so I love that it only takes a couple taps to switch between English and Spanish versions of the Bible as I am reading.  (Check here for a list of versions that are currently available.)
• Reading plans. YouVersion, the maker of the app, has several different Bible reading plans that range from a few days of reading to the whole Bible. This is my new favorite feature in the app. Each evening as I am winding down, I read from one of the reading plans that I have chosen. Right now, it's one on generosity. If I fall behind, the app even has a feature to "catch myself up."
• Download versions. Some versions are available for download through the app. This means that you can access the entire text without an Internet connection. (That's especially important if you're on an iPad without a data plan.) Those versions are marked with a green icon.
• Audio versions. Some versions also have audio available. The version is marked with a speaker icon and works just as you might expect. 

For the iPhone...

 

 

For the iPad...

Thanks to YouVersion for providing an invaluable app for free! Find the app in iTunes, in the App Store, or look here.

HomeWhatNot Part 1: Trulia

My husband and I are in the middle of buying a home, moving, unpacking, and renovating, so I would like to share some of my wisdom and good finds from the Internet in a little home series called HomeWhatNot. 

I first found Trulia (a real estate search website and mobile app) through a coworker who was addicted. The app allows you find houses for sale and rent nearby based on conditions that you set (example: 3+ bedrooms, 2+ baths, $150-200k) using the GPS in your phone. You can also enter a different address and find houses in that area. The app pulls pictures from the real estate listing so that you can quickly see the inside of the house, selling price, recent price reductions, upcoming dates for open houses, all of the basic facts about the house that you would expect to see in a real estate listing.

Now that we have purchased our home, I use the Trulia app to look at homes in the area and in other parts of the country to get decorating ideas.

Trulia is available as a standard and mobile website and currently has an iPhone app. You can create an account with the website for more advanced features like saved searches and favorites, but an account is not necessary. I have found other websites with similar features, but as an iPhone app, I think Trulia stands above the rest.

Have fun home hunting or just looking!

http://www.trulia.com/

Go straight to voice mail when calling mobile phones with Slydial

I recently found a service called Slydial that forces your calls to bypass the chance of talking to a person and goes straight to their voice mail! This service works like a charm, does not require registration and is free! Here are a few situations when the service might be useful. 

How to Get Started: Add the Slydial phone number (267-SLYDIAL or 267-759-3425) to your contacts on your phone. Call the number, and when prompted, enter the mobile number that you would like to slydial. Wait for a bit, and you are connected straight to voice mail. That's it!

Limitations: This service only works with mobile numbers. You do have to listen to an advertisement while you wait for your call to connect, but it didn't bother me. I have used it three times so far, and two of the three times, it worked. I am guessing that the third person I tried to call did not have voice mail turned on on their mobile phone. Even with the limitations listed above, I am going to continue using the service.

Premium Service: Slydial does have a premium service that removes advertising from the calls and offers several other features. The service is $2.95 per month or $29.95 per year. Or, you can per single use at $.10 per slydial.

Mobile Apps: There is an iPhone app for Slydial, but it received bad reviews in its current version, so I'm going to pass on that for now. There are also apps for Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile, but I don't have any knowledge of how well they work.

Use SlyDial to go straight to voice mail when you are calling mobile numbers. Let me know if it works for you.

Google Translate on the web and on your smart phone

Online translation tools have come a long way in the last several years.  Though they still aren't perfect, they do a much better job than in the past.  My favorite tool for translation is Google Translate and is available online so it can be used on several different platforms...PC, Mac, smart phone, inside email, etc.

Google Translate does a great job of translating for you as you type on their site, and it remembers the last languages you used for translating, in case you frequently translate between the same two languages.

Google suggests downloading their own browser Google Chrome for automatic translation, but I haven't used it yet.  I do use Gmail for my personal email and love the integration of translation into email.  If I open an email that was written in Spanish, Google automatically translates the email to English for me.  And I can switch back and forth between English and Spanish with one button click. 

Google highlights words in both languages as you roll over them with your mouse to better understand which words coordinate in both languages.

Google will even read your translated text to you with a "Listen" link!


Try out Google's free translation tool and let me know what you think, or let me know if you use another online translation tool that I have missed.

http://translate.google.com/

Update: Google Translate now has its own iPhone app.

8 Ways to Use Evernote

Evernote is best friend, technologically speaking.  Each week, I find another way to use Evernote to remember something, keep a list, track items, and so on. Once you start using Evernote, you will most certainly wonder how you ever remembered anything without it!

8 Ways to Use Evernote:

1. Grocery list: I keep my grocery list in Evernote and update it regularly.  I usually have my phone in my pocket, so I can add items while I'm cooking in the kitchen and find that we are out of a certain item.  (I also make lists of items that I want for other places like the library, my Netflix queue, and the hardware store.)
2. Blood pressure stats: High blood pressure runs in my family, so I keep an eye on my blood pressure by checking it occasionally in the pharmacy. I keep a list of my stats including date and time I took my BP.  The complete list is ready to show my doctor at my next checkup.
3. Recipes: I keep all of my favorite recipes in Evernote, so they are always at hand.  If I'm at the grocery store and decide to make my Dad's Chicken Stew, I can quickly pull up the recipe to see if I need to buy any extra items for the stew.  If I'm at a party and a friend asks me for Dad's recipe, I can email it to her with one click right from my phone.
4. Bits of Information: I can't find a better way to explain those little things that you always want to remember when you are out and about. It might be the name of a store I'd like to visit or a TV show that a friend recommended while we were having lunch.  It could be a website that I saw on a billboard or a reminder to myself to check the smoke detectors when I get home.  I have a catch-all list that I update throughout the day then act on the items when I'm in front of the computer later in the day.
5. Pictures of Items: I take pictures with my phone all the time and import them straight into Evernote for quick access later.  Items like...an idea for a birthday present for my nephew, a price tag for a food processor that I'm considering buying this month, the odd-shaped light bulb for my lamp that just burned out, and a book that a friend brought to lunch that I would like to find at the library next week.
6. Journal: I use Evernote to keep my daily journal. Because I type much faster than I write, I can quickly reflect on the day using my computer or my phone.  For a journal to work for me, it needs to be easily accessible, and nothing is easier for me than Evernote!
7. New Year's Resolutions:  This one couldn't be more timely!  I keep my resolutions for the new year on Evernote, so I always have them to look over.  On a monthly basis, I refer again to my resolutions and reflect on my progress so far.
8. Bucket List: My FAVORITE note in Evernote is my personal bucket list -- things I would like to do before I die. I love reading over the list, considering how I might accomplish those items, and on a rare occasion, actually marking an item on the list as "Complete!"

As you can see from the list above, using Evernote from my phone is a critical part of its success. When I'm at work and my phone is tucked away in my desk, I use the web version of Evernote to update my notes as necessary.  I love that everything syncs right after I hit save, so I know I always have the latest and greatest! 

And Evernote is fully searchable, so if I know that I wrote something about roasted vegetables a couple months ago, I can quickly for the terms and find all of my notes that mention "roasted vegetables" in a matter of seconds.

I hope that you will use Evernote to stay organized in the new year and stop by here to tell me about your success!

Evernote is available on PC, Mac, iOS, Android, and in your web browser for web clipping.  You don't have any excuse to get started!

http://www.evernote.com/

iPhone App: ESPN ScoreCenter

ESPN has a great FREE app available in the iTunes App Store that you will LOVE if you have any amount of love of professional sports.

You can view the Top Events happening in sports today.

You can see the top scores in a particular sport with your favorite team at the top.

And my favorite part...you get a message (like a text message pop-up) to your phone when any of your favorite teams plays or scores...or any other option you choose, for that matter.  Of course, you can turn off these messages if they start to annoy you.  But I love being updated on what's happening when I can't watch my favorite teams on TV.

Download ESPN ScoreCenter and customize it with your favorite teams today!

iPhone App: Pano

Pano does one thing and does it very well.  It quickly pieces together a panoramic shot from several pictures taken in succession on your iPhone.  The app has on-screen steps to guide you in creating a clean shot and even allows you to switch from landscape to portrait, depending on what you are shooting.

You can find it in the App Store on your iPhone for $2.99.

Read Kindle books without a Kindle

I love the idea of e-books, but I haven't always been so thrilled.  I was definitely a feel-the-pages-and-hold-the-book kinda girl until I was forced to make the switch.  My graduate program studies made use of electronic textbooks for our classes, so I had to either read electronically or pay double for print textbooks.  I decided it was time for me to make the ecologically and financially responsible choice, and it was tough...at first.  It took longer to read, and I fumbled through several different methods for taking notes, but that's another post.  Eventually, I came around!  It was like training myself in how to play a new sport or complete a new kind of a puzzle.  After some initial practice, I was ready for more!

For today, let's talk about personal, non-textbook reading.  I still enjoy reading print books, but I also like the portability of having a book with me at all times, as long as I have my phone.  That's right!  I don't need a Kindle device to read a Kindle book.

Amazon has developed several free apps that allow readers of Kindle e-books to read, even if they don't have a Kindle. There's a version for the PC, Mac, iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Blackberry, and more!

What's more, Amazon and others offer free books, mostly classics but a few are current, so that you can take the e-book reader for a free trial.  Download a reader app for your device, grab a classic novel for free, and you're set!  If you love the Kindle look and feel, you can purchase new releases for about $10.

One final great feature: if you are using two or more readers (like iPhone and iPad) among all of your devices, your books and page locations will all be synced automatically.

If you were thinking about trying out e-books but didn't want to invest in a Kindle, there's a way, and it's free!

iPhone App: Photoshop

The Adobe Photoshop app for the iPhone is a clean and easy way to jazz up your phone photos in a hurry.  If you don't have the time (or patience, for that matter) to upload your pictures to a full-size photo editor,  you will find that this app will do all the basics!

You can...

• Crop, Straighten, Rotate, Flip
• Adjust the Exposure, Saturation, Tint, Black & White, Contrast
• Switch to Sketch, Soft Focus, Sharpen
• Add Effects and Borders
• Undo and Redo your changes
• Save photos back to your phone
• Upload photos to Facebook and TwitPic (for Twitter)

Find Adobe Photoshop in the App Store on your phone for FREE!