Thing 11

The first thing I did for Thing 11 was take a look at the ELM site. I'm using an iPad, so I can't speak for smartphone users, but I liked the overall look and presentation, it's not too much different from the PC/web version. I didn't delve into it much, though I encourage others, especially reference staff that haven't, to do so. It's a great resource for all and has sections dedicated to professionals and the public. I suppose a lot of the info and databases on ELM's site can be found on one's library site, but I do like having another option and even something just different than what I'm used to.

I looked at HCL's mobile app since it is the app of my local system in addition to that of my employer. Outside of work, I rarely use any other system...I think I've been to Anoka and that's really it. 

Long story short, HCL mobile seems optimized for phones. Not that it can't be used on a tablet, but personally, I just go to the "regular" site via Safari on my home iPad. I've been using photo examples for a while...so why stop. Here's how the mobile app home looks on an iPad 

 And here's Hclib.org on Safari on an iPad

Since I can gesture to zoom, etc. I prefer using the regular site. There are some instances where the mobile app is superior; one instance is BookLook, which uses your device camera as a scanner and allows you to scan the ISBN code on a book and after it's identified, you can get a short summary of the item and see if any HCL branches own it. I had a tough time using it with an iPad, but I was successful, eventually. It is pretty nifty, but probably makes more sense on a phone than a tablet...say I'm at a bookstore, see something awesome...then I see the price. I can go to BookLook via HCLmobile and see if we have it anywhere for checkout. Or if I'm on the bus, plane, etc and I see something cool the person next to me is reading, I can scan the ISBN and see if we have it in HCL...with said person's permission I suppose.

The mobile app works with our ebook section a little (key word is little) better. It's just a slightly different process with a different interface. It's smoother,  but sometimes it's nice to get all the info you'd get via the web version of our ebook catalog. I tried downloading both via our mobile app and the web...and I was successful and I will say I still prefer the web version.

Another strong point of our mobile app is if you're in a hurry or like going through less steps, taping the sections (ie catalog) is a little more seamless. 

My final thought though is that HCL mobile is more for a smartphone user and while it offers all the basics (account info, catalog, IM, locations, etc) in a easy to use interface, I like the web version more since it is more in-depth and it is useable with a tablet.

Onto Thing 11, "part 2"

HCL has an entire section dedicated to mobile apps, see below

Personally, I use Zinio since I like it for magazine browsing; including the ebooks I downloaded for this thing, I have now used OverDrive all of 3 times. I do like ebooks and enjoy them on my iPad, it's just that since my iPad rarely leaves home and since it is shared by 3 people, I don't use it much for ebooks since I won't have time to read the books before the app automatically returns them.  I wouldn't say my system promotes ematerial over physical, but we are seeing increased ematerial downloads and checkouts and staff is starting to field more questions. 

Once in a while Zinio can be handy for us as a tool to show the public since they can access a magazine our location doesn't have, but one we subscribe to, etc. To reiterate, I like to use it since I just "flip" through the mags at my leisure then remove them when I'm done.

I've used Freegal to download free, legal (get it) music, but I'm not the biggest fan of it on mobile since it saves the songs to its own app rather than iTunes/music and they can't be moved (I've tried and according to Freegal, it can't be done). If you don't mind having a second or third app for music, by all means, check it out. Of course, you can find Freegal in our databases on hclib.org and download to a PC or Mac and then synch it over to your device.

The biggest complaints I hear about ematerial use is all the log in and log out and passwords, etc. The most annoying (to me) is the adobe account with OverDrive...but once you get the initial resistance out of the way, it's hardly noticeable.

Thing 10

For thing 10, I decided to try out Snapchat. What drew me to Snapchat is that it is privacy friendly and allows you to select receipients. 

Personally, I usually go with Facebook for photo sharing. As I stated in a previous blog, I wholeheartedly welcome alternatives since I hate Facebook's Orwellain ideals and how once something is on Facebook, it's there forever...the downside of using Snapchat and/or Instagram is that I don't have as many friends/followers/fans,etc and wouldn't reach as much of an audience. From a professional standpoint, that doesn't matter too much since photo taking, editing and distribution aren't really a facet of my job. My system has PR professionals for that, though I suppose if there were a display I helped a librarian with or something of that nature, it wouldn't hurt to add it to some sort of professional portfolio.

Tried Snapchat...all I have to say is, um...no one to share with. The picture is pretty boring anyway, no point in sharing.

So, I went to Instagram, logged in/registered via Facebook and oh my, did I find a lot of friends to follow. Funny thing though...they post the same pics to Facebook, which to me, seems a bit redundant...oh but what's this I've learned Facebook acquired Instagram about 18 months ago, so no wonder...I still took a little time to explore and found a few neat things. One, it took all of 5 minutes for a couple of my friends to follow me (apparently, I'm just that interesting...and popular wink wink nudge nudge) I see that Hennepin County Library (HCL), my library, has an Instagram account. I have nothing to share at this point on my Instagram, but if you'd like to search, eventually I might have something there.

In the end, I prefer Snapchat, I'm a self admitted social network junkie (80 tweets in 4 days btw) but I hate Facebook and by extension, Instagram's takes on privacy. Instagram has built in followers and since my library system already has a page there and since I have followers, this is what I think I will go with.

Thing 9

Editing and taking photos.

Honestly, I'm pretty comfortable with the plain camera included on the iPad, and it can do some simple editing. Heck my 3 year old daughter thinks the camera is just another game/app and plays with it all the time.

I'll give these apps a try, I'm not against trying something new. We certainly can use an app here at work to spruce up images and photos we take for publicity, etc and I may find one I would like to add to my personal iPad at home.

First up, Color Splurge. Sure, the examples they give in the tutorials are great...but that's like making your breakfast look like the ones on the cereal box...I vowed to try this app, and I did but I'm sorry to say that I'm not impressed. This app really does seem like something my child would use, almost like some funky real world coloring book. Here's my example

 I made a snowy winter day into some psychedelic spring dream...or something. I didn't spend too much time with it for the same reason I wouldn't watch a bad movie...just not impressed, not interested, disbelief not suspended. Moving on...

Time to try CamMe. Who doesn't like selfies? They're as American as store bought apple pie and NFL football (not that football they play in Canada with an extra guy...or the football the other 90% of the world plays).

After figuring out the learning curve, you can have lots of photogenic fun for instance

Ok, enough silliness. Honestly, CamMe seems a little more phone friendly than tablet friendly, which makes sense, since we usually take selfies with a phone, right?
 oh fine, one more

On to LINE Camera. I think I could spend days going through all the options and effects in LINE. There are options to have the app do the work and there are ways to do it yourself down to minute detail, here are a few examples

 Plain photo here

 Hey it's snowing...inside!

 Added some text, recolored it, etc.

I think I'll go with LINE Camera and we'll see if/how we can put it to use here, I might even put the app on my personal iPad.

Thing 8

Social Media...I'm part of the generation that has almost always used some sort of social media or e-communications. Back in the 1990s, I was on Prodigy (long defunct competitor to AOL, if you didn't know) using their bulletin boards and chat rooms. In the 2000s, I joined the old MySpace; once they became irrelevant, I moved to Facebook (FB). I've been using FB for 5 years and my personal iPad has the mobile FB app on it. I finally joined Twitter and I am becoming familiar with it. This project (and thing in particular) gave me an excuse to sign up and try out the mobile app. I'll continue to use both FB and Twitter since I have friends on one that aren't on the other, FB has features Twitter doesn't (or does better) and vice versa...and if I may interject a little bit of personal opinion...I may Tweet more now that I'm on there since I feel that FB has lost its way. When I joined FB, it really was a place to reconnect with old friends, or as they say "See photos and updates from friends in News Feed. Share what's new in your life on your Timeline." To me it seems like since FB went public a few years ago, it's been just another business (the business of social media!) and they've become a little Orwellian.

Luckily, I can use both FB and Twitter seamlessly as I see that there's ('re) an app(s) for that! Back to that soon.

I didn't realize it, but I'm familiar with GetGlue, which is now TvTag, which is part of i.TV, which I have an app for on my personal iPad. I use i.TV mostly for its listings, but I am aware of it's check-in feature and that you can list your favorite programs, etc.

I've heard of LinkedIn and seen it used. If I were an actual professional rather than a para-professional at my library system or I needed to link up with colleagues world-wide, I'd probably join it. No reason to do so at this time.

Foursquare is fun, so I've heard. If I had a smartphone, I'd probably use it as something to kill time and see if I could become "Mayor" by checking in at a place I frequent. After looking at it a little more though, I do see that there serious uses like tidbits or short reviews of restaurants and businesses along with recommendations, things of that nature. Might be useful.

Alright, on to some new things...

Echofon looks nice, but it is Twitter only and looks to be optimized for smartphones. It can sync across devices but the only device I'd sync with would be a PC at this time...we'll I gave it a go anyway, just to be fair. I'm annoyed by the advertisements (though you can go ad free for $4.99) and honestly, I don't see much of a difference on a tablet. Judge for yourself by taking a look at the juxtaposed photos

It's nearly the same interface, though navigation is slightly easier on Echofan. It probably would be more sensible on a phone but honestly, I see little difference on a tablet. NEXT!

Tried FriendCaster...uh the Echofan for FB. I like the interface and the ease of navigation and push notifications (for now). I've heard unproven rumors that any FB compatible app is better than the actual FB app due to the fact it would be less of a memory and power hog...not sure about the power hog part but FBs "official" app uses 115 MBs which would be a lot if you were hurting for memory. I did a photo comparison of Twitter to Echofan, so I'll do the same for FB and FriendCaster

FriendCaster is the top photo, FB is the bottom. I guess one last thing to say is that Friendcaster would take a little getting used to, while I'm fully familiar with the official FB app.

As I said way back in this blog, I'd like something I could use on Twitter and FB and manage my tweets and posts, etc. For that I'm trying Buffer and then HootSuite.

Buffer has some neat tools. You can link to many accounts beyond FB and Twitter, you can schedule posts and it even has an analytical tool, you can see if people ate actually viewing, responding, etc. I do see some negatives though. Buffer seems pretty intrusive...you should see how many permissions you have to give it to use it on FB. It also comes with a learning curve. Buffer is just not for me.

Finally...onto HootSuite. It's kind of a jumbled interface and has a little bit of a learning curve, but I think it would be the app for me. I can choose to post to both Twitter and FB or even one and not the other. Its Twitter breakdown makes a little more sense IMO and makes it pretty user friendly. The FB one on the other hand...um...we'll see for yourself.

IDK, the FB part looks like FB on steroids...just too repetitive. Repetitive I say! I didn't include graphic examples but you can swipe to the left and see more...but mine were empty.

Whew! If you got here congratulations...this only took a week, but it was worth it. I'm on Twitter, I explored and learned about some social media apps and I found something that can be used for Twitter and FB. Mission accomplished!

 

Thing 7

Personally, I think I'll skip Pinterest since I am familiar with it thanks to the Mrs. It is a great way to share interests and tidbits from across the web in one place and if you wish, you can find the original source pretty easily. Since Pinterest can be endlessly categorized (I think) , you can break it down and it can be divided between fun things for your personal life and ideas to use professionally. 

Bitly I will try though. I have seen countless Bit.ly web addresses in other blogs and as shortened links in various websites so I think I'll discover it a little more in-depth. 

Bitly is not really difficult,the toughest part is copying a link out of Safari's browser (which must be darned hard on a phone). Once you've done that, you open the app, select that you'd like to add a bitmark and paste it...viola, here's a link.

It's pretty easy to go bananas and start adding stuff left and right. I limited myself to literally several bit marks and here is how that looks...I imagine it can get a little dicombobulated after time

Luckily you can bundle your links! I bundled mine by work, news and sports as you can see here

You can almost seamlessly use bitly with Facebook and I joined bitly with my Facebook account initially. You can also send links as a message (text?) and email it to someone. I'd try the message option, but my phone is old and not web- connected and no one I know is nearby to try it on. I did email myself a link and that's pretty simple. Just tap the address of the recipient in and they'll get a cute little message saying you'd like share a link with them.

The last thing I found fun and impressive about Bitly is that it will tell you how trendy an article or link is (for instance, Super Bowl XLVII on Feb 3, 2014 or Sochi Olympics in Feb 2014) or isn't (My staff web page). 

Bitly impressed me. I could see this as something that could be useful in our profession since you can bundle and it can be a fun waste of personal time too and they can be separated. No need to scrounge around for links or bug a collegue, as long as the use Bitly. I like Bitly's simple interface and its ease of use, I recommend it.

Thing 6

The first app I wanted to try was SignNow, a program that records an electronic signature for you and archives it and makes adding this sig to PDFs, Docs and even photos pretty easy. Honestly, I have no use for this app at work or at home, but I could see it being used by someone at an administrative level that does a lot of paperwork. It looks like a great tool for small business and I suppose employes of big business as well because it's a one stop place for your signature that works on multiple devices and it will keep your hand from getting tired ;) Like I stated earlier, I'm not a big fan of electronic writing, though this time it doesn't look so bad...and e signatures are here to stay. I had a previous job in the shipping and receiving field and e signing is they way they were going, even back in 2008. It makes sense thoug, you can save paper, you can quickly retrieve a sig and email it or add it to a Proof of Delivary document. UPS and FedEx drivers have you e- sign for your packages, if you haven't already noticed. I suppose with time and technology, I will get better at it. For fun, I will include a couple of samples from SignNow to show a couple of its uses and how they turned out

The first image is a sample of the sample document you use when initially registering for SignNow.

The second is an autographed photo of me, save it! It may be worth something someday...you know, like a good chuckle...gosh I look fat there. Anyway...

On to my next choice, which was going to be QuickOffice, until it kept crashing after I would sign into my Google account. We finally updated the work iPad to iOS 7 so that may or may not be the problem...I would like to have tried it, it looked cool. Oh and ps to anyone that actually reads this...don't be mislead by the poo-poo one star reviews in the App Store since they are from people complaining about changes and not really about performance issues. If anyone can get the darn thing to work, I'd like to try it. I like the idea of being able to create Office files on an iPad, upload them to the cloud and the be able to access them via a PC, which I would love to do. Right now, I don't have much use for that capability professionally, but I do see some advantages in it...such as being able to bring work home or on the go. Why not do something productive while I wait for my oil change? At home this would be such an awesome tool since my wife and I were very PC based for several years and this would allow us to save, upload and download Office files we actually use often (receipes, household expenses spreadsheets, etc) and access them via our iPad. 

Since QuickOffice was a no-go, I tried CloudOn instead. Maybe the whole situation is a blessing in disguise! CloudOn allows you to create, edit, save and access files via multiple Cloud platforms. I used my Google drive since I have one. I was SO impressed; it's really like using a mini version of MS Office that was tinkered with for iOS. I can totally see using this at home and eventually at work. I think I will hype this app for my coworker since he needs some MS Office support that an iPad doesn't usually have. Long story short, we have more employees that computers (which is probably normal) but we don't have a workroom unit at my library and sometimes he needs to get away from the hustle and bustle while doing things.

In the end, I think both QuickOffice and CloudOn are very useful apps. They will (probably) never replace a PC or a Mac since cloud storage is only so many GBs right now while a hard drive on a laptop or desk top is much higher. I see these as a possible wave of the future since they will allow us to take our Office files on the go on our phones and tablets and they look almost exactly the same as their traditional counterparts. Not everyone will want to adapt to this method, but I could see myself doing so. It's nice to be able to take work and/ or personal files with you and be able to access them while you wait for an appointment. I'm sure some folks are concerned about the work-life balance and always being connected and/or in their own digital bubbles and while those are highly valid concerns, I'd rather address them elsewhere.

Below are the links to my Google Drive saved files I created using CloudOn, feel free to open them and take a look, if you can...These are on-the-fly notes and thoughts I had while using the app and making the files

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7ubhOdeWCmXQUtoM3VpMHhHYWM/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7ubhOdeWCmXS0N4RDFJX1FCWWM/edit?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7ubhOdeWCmXZmhZNkNfYW1nY0E/edit?usp=sharing