I'm Officially Addicted To...Pinterest!

Yes, that's right folks; I made a vow not to become addicted to more than Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately this blog post is my public confession that I have failed. Its official my new addiction is Pinterest. I’m a late bloomer I know but trust me when I say that I’m making up for lost times. If you are not on Pinterest it is not too late considering I just joined a couple of weeks ago. I have already pinned enough recipes and DIY projects to keep me busy for the rest of the year! I’m serious friends; I think I’m close to needing an intervention. If I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep I go to my Pinterest app on my phone and just pin more of my interest until I feel like I can go back to sleep. I hope that isn’t too weird.

Anyway, the point of this post is to spread the word to anyone that has not jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon to c’mon its not too late! How do you know if Pinterest is for you or not? It is easy. Are you the type of person that clips pictures or prints them out from magazines? Do you clip or print recipes? Do you have notebooks full of instructions for a DIY project? Do you write down website urls to items you like and want to purchase? If you do any of these things at minimum you should definitely sign up for Pinterest! It puts all your favorite things in one place in folders that you name so that you have an easy go to spot for everything! Go there now:  http://www.pinterest.com

Is Your Phone On Silent?

Picture courtesy of Verizon's Facebook page but the point is well taken.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/verizon

10 Great Smartphone Applications!!

I know a lot of you have smart phones like androids, and blackberrys and iphones. I have compiled a list of my favorite apps for these devices. Most of these are available at least on both android and iphone. Some you may know about and some you may wonder why you didn’t already know about. Either way I hope you enjoy the list and that at least some of you find something you didn’t know you needed.

1. Groupon

This app allows you to not only search through and purchase available offers on the groupon service. You can also use the app to present the deal to the establishment rather than printing anything out. This is one of my favorites because it makes using the groupon service that much easier.

2. Shazam

This app will id any song playing when you run it and tell it to “listen”. Great for when that mystery song comes on the radio or at the bar!

3. Dropbox

Many are familiar with the dropbox service for your computer. This allows your phone to share in the action of allowing you to access documents as well as put them in the dropbox for future access

4. Remote For iTunes

This app allows your android phone to control your itunes playback using your home wifi to communicate. With both the computer and the phone connected to the same network (and itunes running as well) you can select what song or playlist to play, and control volume and other settings. If you’re nerdy like me and have multiple pc’s yes you can program the app to control itunes on all of them. You’ll just have to make sure the correct pc is selected to control.

5. Tango

This is your standard video call application. It ties to your phone number so once you sign up you can see which of your friends have signed up and tied their numbers to tango. I’ve used other similar programs but I like this one a little better for some reason.

6. Waze

This app is part GPS part social networking. Of course you can use it for directions since it’s a GPS app. However, built into this app is a way of passing along traffic sightings to anyone who wishes to join the Waze community. You can report anything from stalled cars on the road to police car sightings to standstill traffic jams. When you sign up for the app you will find different groups for your area based most of the time on where people are driving to and from to get to work and back. You can start a group that’s more fitting for your own commute or join one that fits your needs. When people report things they get the opportunity to report to specific groups.

You can also program your favorite destinations into the app for easy access. There are some goofy parts of it such as picking your car icon, setting your mood, and picking up these little point pellets – which most of the time are not on your direct route as though you’re going to forget you’re going somewhere and go “pacmanning” all around the streets of your city. Most recently in an update they have added a gas price feature. Overall a handy app to know when there are traffic jams ahead that you should avoid.

7. Moe's

This is for the Moe’s fan on the go. I love Moe’s but going there at certain times of the day sucks because of the long line just to get to start the process of going down the line to order bit by bit. This app removes that part of your Moe’s experience. You order on the app and pay with a credit card. When you go to the store you just walk directly to the register and pick up your already paid for order. For me this app is Heaven sent since I only have a half hour for lunch. The only thing to watch out for is if you open it in a quiet area if your media volume is up it yells “Welcome to Moe’s!!!” 

8. Team viewer

This app is one of my favorites. I already have this on my pc’s and use it to access one from the other. This app allows you to sign in and access any of your account pc’s from your phone.

This is very helpful if you need a file or just remote access to your pc. I’ve even used it to remote in and shut down my pc when I wasn’t home and saw it was about to storm really badly.

9. Ibiker

Unlike every other app on here this is an exclusively iphone/ipod app. I use this for when I go out riding my bike. The GPS allows it to track my path, speed, calories burned, and other statistics about my rides. It stores all of these so you can look back on your results. The app will even notify you when you break previous records – such as longest distance ridden, longest time riding, and most calories burned. Don’t let the title fool you it also can be used for running, walking, hiking and other activities.

10. Hey Tell

The best way I can describe Hey Tell is it is like an audio text message device. This allows you to send little audio clips back and forth and essentially have not necessarily real time voice conversations. I know lots of people hate texting. This could be the answer for them in certain situations. 

Privacy in 2011

Not too many years ago if you wanted to talk to someone you had no choice but to either pick up the phone – it was luxury if the phone wasn’t tethered to a wall by a super long tangled cord- or walk your behind over to their home. Most people didn’t have computers because even if they used them at work they still had little need for them at home. As a matter of fact I remember being a kid and overhearing a lady at the beauty shop saying that computers didn’t have much use at all except for holding her recipes. Wow! Even as a kid I knew she was dead wrong and simply had no idea of the true potential of computers. Ok so now that I think of that story I had to be a teenager seeing as how I drove myself to that appointment. In defense of my point, I could add that I was a bit clueless as a teenager.

Ok reeling it in. Nowadays when we want to contact someone we have a variety of mostly instant to at worst almost instantaneous ways to contact each other. We can text or call or email or skype or ….. I mean the list is endless. Every time I look up someone is trying to use another service to communicate with me. In a way it’s a little annoying like how many apps must I be asked to use? Can’t we all pick yahoo or google and be done with it?

So why is it people post their every thought on twitter and facebook (guilty!!), register for all these different online services to play with, apply for 30 credit cards in college to get a free T-shirt and then act surprised and appalled when grandma forwards them an email showing them 1 link where their information is all up on the internet?! The email of course contains some futile set of instructions on how to hide this information. Let me explain why this is a complete waste of time. For that one site grandma found out about there’s 40 more with the same info. The information is out there. As a society, we have to admit that we have traded privacy for convenience. We all love the convenience of things like having your prescription at every Walgreens instantly, getting our emails and other notifications on our phone wherever we are, and being able to sign into EVERYTHING with our facebook login. You all DO realize you’re simply passing around your information to anyone who wants it. Your facebook privacy settings matter so little it’s ridiculous.

If you don’t have it in your real name you can still be found. If you don’t believe me google yourself and see what you find. Even google the name your facebook is under. You might be surprised with what’s out there and how easy it is for anyone to find it. Something else to consider of course is that there are many people who share names. So what you find about this name or that name may or may not be the same person. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if what you’re reading is about your friend or one of their namesakes.

My point here is not that we should simply give up protecting ourselves. I mean we all know identity theft is real and it can really suck sometimes. We all should be more mindful of the things we post on these sites and how many and what type of sites are you giving your personal information to at the drop of a hat. We can, for instance, use paypal to cut down on how many sites we enter credit card information into. Also, stop giving your work email address out on every tom, dick and harry’s website. It’s free to start a yahoo, hotmail, heck I bet you history buffs could even get an excite account.

My point here is not to scare you. The internet is an incredibly powerful tool that while itself is fairly accessible to many throughout the world (I wont be ignorant enough to say most when I don’t know that for sure) it’s power is in the many resources that are now more easily accessible than we’d ever dreamed they could be. Like with any powerful tool it’s important to learn how to use it properly and protect ourselves.

Cell Phone and Water = Not A Good Combination

This post is to help anyone that may drop their cell phones in water. I am talking like a puddle, shower, or sink. I am not talking about if you drop it in the pool or anywhere that it is submerged for an extended period of time. Recently a friend and myself were having dinner when she said she had told a friend to put her cell phone in rice after she dropped it in water. Of course me being the silly person I am, I thought she was joking and began to laugh. She said, no I am serious. So of course I had to find out if it worked and yes, it did. So from that experience we now have a blog post. Hence, the reason this blog was created in the first place right?

Putting a wet phone into a sealed container of rice dries it out. This works because the dry grains will absorb moisture. It is best to get a sealable plastic ziploc bag or container. Fill the bag or container with enough rice to cover your phone and bury your phone in the rice. You will need to make sure you place the battery and other parts in the rice too. Once you have done this then you will need to wait for a minimum of  24 hours for the rice to absorb the water. It probably wouldn't hurt to wait 48 hours. My friend said her friend waited 24 hours and that was enough time for her phone to dry out. The good thing is that rice is rice so it doesn't matter if you use white or brown rice. Please note that you may get some pieces of rice in some small crevices of your phone but the alternative of having to file a insurance claim and pay a deductible is more of a headache in my opinion. Plus, who cares if you have to clean out a piece of rice or two, it is worth it to have your phone back!

Samsung Galaxy Tablet

OMG you guys!! I just got this tablet and it is truly the ish!! For those who don’t know this thing is like a large Android cell phone. I say large but ladies it fits in your purse quite easily and I could even fit it in the back pocket of my jeans. That said the screen is big enough to comfortably read a book or watch a movie on.

When I got it the first thing I did was install all the same apps that I use on my android phone onto this device. Then I figured out some great apps that I never bothered with on the phone. The most obvious choices for these are the Amazon kindle and Barnes and Noble nook apps. I downloaded some samples of some books just to see how comfortable it was to read them on this device without committing to buying them in this format. I must say I’m impressed. To be honest it is bigger than if you got the paperback version of a book and not much smaller than if the book was in hard cover.

The thing about this device is that it is so much more than an e-reader ever dared to be. It’s much more portable than a laptop and more comparable to its functionality as far as the things you can do on it. Android phones are very popular now –partially thanks to brands like Samsung putting out many of these phones in the last year or so – so many people will already be familiar with how to use this device.

To be honest the possibilities of what you can do with this device are only as limited as what apps you can find for it, and there are tons out there.

Hardware and memory wise it boasts 2 gigs internal and a 16 gig micro SD card is included with the device. It runs the android OS 2.2 which allows you to run apps off the SD card as well. It has a front facing camera and a rear facing camera with a flash. I would definitely recommend this over any of the e-readers if you want something that does just a little bit more –or a lot more for that matter.

HTC Thunderbolt vs. HTC Evo

I’m sure there’s other techie ladies out there like myself. This blog entry is definitely for you. I love discussing this stuff so at the end if you have questions, comments, points for discussion speak up.

I was inspired to write this particular blog after switching from the Evo 4g to the Thunderbolt and of course their respective carriers. The main reason for the switch was the lack of reception in my house and other places I often go. Out of fairness to the carriers because no carrier works everywhere so that is taken into consideration in any comparisons I might make. However, I intend to really do more of a comparison of phone to phone.

Prior to switching I was simply doing it for the better reception in my house as I previously stated. Having read specs on the Thunderbolt and comparing it to the Evo I thought “ok cool, this is just an Evo on Verizon’s network with more storage.” I even ran my know-it-all mouth to a friend who, let’s just say knew better, and I’m sure wanted to say something but didn’t. Fast forward 4 days when I finally got this phone and started using it. Let me just say this is me publicly EATING MY WORDS. The Thunderbolt said I see your Evo and I will crush it in my hands!

The first thing one notices is the screen. Its color is so brilliant you realize what you haven’t been seeing on the Evo’s screen immediately. There is no need for side by side it’s very obvious. It’s slightly more responsive but the Evo did not have any response time problems.

Ok here’s where it is absolutely imperative to do a comparison of network to network on these phones. The main reason is the vast difference between the wimax 4g and the LTE 4g. Again same friend tried to tell me how much better LTE is. During the last few days that the Evo was activated I did some speed tests in different places and got results ranging from 1.10 down/1.47 up to 10.07 down/3.09 up. The average was about 5.93 Mbps over the course of 4 days. These are decent results especially from a cell phone. When I got the Thunderbolt and ran speed tests there I was blown away!! On the first speed test I ran I got 21Mbps down/35Mbps up. I ran other tests and would get results around 13-15Mbps down/20 – 30+ Mbps up. I’m sure that the first week that I had the Thunderbolt I ran so many speed tests they probably thought I was crazy! It paid off. One night around 3am I did a test and got my “high score” of 35Mbps down. Using the mobile hotspot app (free until May 15^th) I can tether my laptop at speeds comparable and in some cases faster than my home uverse internet.

There are a number of things that are the same on these phones. Both have an 8mp camera with dual LED flash and a 1.3 mp front camera. Both have a 1000 MHz snapdragon processor. However, the Thunder bolt boasts an updated version of the processor (MSM8650 vs. MSM8655). The performance of the phone’s screens and menus is noticeably faster and smoother than the Evo. They also improved upon the design of certain functions such as copy/cut/paste making them easier to use on the Thunderbolt.

The Thunderbolt also sports an upgraded kickstand from the Evo. The kickstand is wider yet not intrusively wide. The wider kickstand gives it more stability and allows it to be used to steady the phone in either orientation. The Evo’s kickstand only works in Landscape orientation (it’s too small *snicker*). The one thing the the Thunderbolt does not have is the hdmi out that the Evo did. It baffles me why they would remove this feature from the phone, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big of a deal. The Thunderbolt is also significantly lighter than the Evo. I had both in my hands and the Evo without a case was still heavier than the Thunderbolt with its hard case.

I personally really love the Thunderbolt and I’m glad I made the switch to this phone.