An App a Day

If you are like me, you spend way too much time on your smart phone.  Really.  But sometimes, dare I even say, often smart phones can be helpful to achieving goals and happiness and all the wonderful things in life.  Or at least helpful.


Here are my three top iPhone apps I use for productivity and general well-being!


1.  Epic Win  - $2.99

 

I'm not much of a gamer in a video game sense but I grew up playing board games with my highly competitive dad.  Nowadays I don't play much since my husband is completely nice and non-competitive (ie: In Scrabble: "HaHA! Look at that amazing word I got!" "That's great, baby." "HaHA! Look at the points!" "You're very smart, baby."  "HaH... oh nevermind."  Alas.).
BUT
This is such a great app for us game people.  You set up your to-do list and assign points to each item.  Once you reach a certain  number of points, you get different treasures and move up levels.  Fun!


2.  Simple Mind - Free

I have only recently discovered this app but I've been using it a lot!  I use it to help me plan out things like how I'm arranging my next album and what type of blog posts I want to do.  If you are a visual person, this would probably be even more helpful!


3.  Relax Melodies - Free

My only sadness about this app is that I didn't know about it when my baby was a newborn because, boy, could I have used it!  It allows you to mix and match various relaxing sounds, even controlling the volume of each element.   I get too distracted by music when I'm working so having a way to mute some of the noises of home with by ocean waves or raindrops or BOTH (yeah, that's right.  Both) is awesome.

How to Save a (battery) Life

Image from here

This next post will change your life.

Well, only if you are an iPhone user and don't already know this trick.  

But if you're an iPhone user who doesn't know the following trick, this next post will CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

I had been having issues with my darling, dear iPhone's battery dying at a faster and faster (and faster) rate and I had done all that stuff that people say on blogs and stuff - make it not check for mail, turn down the brightness, turn off location services for things that don't really need it, etc., etc. - and it was STILL bad.  Very bad. 

But then a very clever person (also known as my husband) asked me to double click the home button (the round guy on the bottom of the front of the phone) and a bunch of apps' icons showed up all in a neat little row.  I had always thought those were just my most recent apps, but it turns out, they're the apps that are currently open!  WHAT?  It's true.  When I then pressed and held one of the apps, they all started bouncing and had a little minus sign in the upper left hand corner.  So I shut down all of them (it turns out Pandora had been on, kindly streaming away while on pause) and, lo and behold, my battery life is back to its healthy, vibrant self.

What do you think? Did this post just change your life?  Or at least your iPhone's battery life?

The Photographers Will Snap Us...

Amongst other recent addictions (Winnie the Pooh, flavored coffee, naps), I've gotten hooked on Instagram.  I come from a family of really excellent photographers so I was always intimidated when holding a camera.


But... then I got an iPhone.  And a baby.  But the iPhone first.  Both things had me start snapping up pictures at an alarming rate - so much so that I recently wasn't able to backup my phone to my computer I had so many photos!  So when I saw the February challenge (s), I jumped in with enthusiasm!  Yay!


Above are the two challenges I'm working on and below are some of the pics I've done so far.  

What do you think?  Did a smartphone make you into an amateur photographer too?

A Summer Night's Blog Entry

Although it's tough to leave the comfort of your home air-conditioning in this weather, I urge you to make your way down (across? up? over?) to Virgin Megastore (1494 E Buena Vista Dr.  Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830) on Thursday, July 24 (Christmas-in-July-Eve, of course).  

For those of you getting the brand-new iPhone, or any new phone, or those who just have an old cell phone and can download ringtones from iTunes, most of my songs are downloadable as ringtones now!  How exciting!  I'm not exactly sure why only some of my songs are downloadable but Mr. Jobs isn't answering my calls.  Alas.

Also, my sister designed some t-shirts on www.zazzle.com/iamemma with her favorite Emma quotes on them.  Check them out! 

And, I have one last fanvid on YouTube. This one, appropriate to the sultry season, features scenes from "A Midsummer Night's Dream."  So, enjoy!  And be sure to have a great summer!