Tech Speak For The Creek
What’s A Selfie?
During the Academy Awards, Ellen DeGeneres’ photo with Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper and others was retweeted 1.3 million times. It “broke” Twitter, which wasn’t able to handle the amount of tweets. The next day, my mom had to ask me, “What’s a selfie?” After I stopped laughing, I had to describe a selfie. There’s a conversation I never thought I would have with my parents. I noticed a number of my selfies had the same pose. My arm was always extended in the photo. There must be a better way to take these photos. Of course, someone came up with an app to make selfies easier, Selfie Cam. The traditional way to take a selfie is to extend your arm and take a few pictures with the hope that there is one decent image. With Selfie Cam, the camera will snap based on a timer, when everyone smiles or when someone winks. This allows you to place the camera down without holding it. The images can be saved to your device or uploaded to any of the social networks.
The amount of artwork that Toddler App comes home with from school is pretty amazing. He comes home with at least 2-3 pieces each day. Toddler App isn’t Picasso, sorry buddy, but there are a few pieces of art that I’d like to keep. Here’s the challenge, I keep everything! Using Artkive, an art storing app, we can take an image of the artwork and upload the art to the app. The app keeps a history of where, when and Toddler App’s age by piece. At some point, we can weed through the best images and create an art book. No, we don’t throw everything away, but the box of artwork has dwindled down.
Now that Baby App has arrived, we’re managing medicine, doctor visits, nursing, bottles and taking Toddler App to and from school. It got busy real quick. We’re using BabyConnect to manage our activities. When Mrs. App nurses, I receive an alert on my device. When I give him a bottle, an alert is sent to her device. Using our device, we were able to show our doctor a dashboard displaying the number of feedings, diaper changes, interval between feedings and total time Baby App has fed. Additionally, we are able to track weight, height (they’re both guaranteed to be vertically challenged, welcome to the Zabroski family), head size, doctor visit notes, vaccines and medicine times. Yes, it has become busy, but this app is seriously making it easier.
Target is happy to hear about Baby App. We’re there way too much for diapers and supplies. Using Cartwheel, a Target coupon app, we are able to pick coupons without clipping them. The coupons are compiled on the app, which then generates a bar code. During checkout, the checker will scan the bar code from the device and apply the savings against the balance. The balance is always a $100 (I can’t be the only one), but the app makes coupon clipping easy.
I’m such a do it yourself guy, except everything I seem to do myself, I don’t do really well. My iPhone battery was horrible. It would die at 37%, and then would magically be at 70% as soon as it was plugged in. It became completely unreliable. The Apple Store told me to replace the battery because it has lost its charge. I can hear the Android users chuckling right now since they have external batteries. Rather than let the pros handle the battery replacement for $190, I opted to purchase a battery replacement kit from iFixit. For $40, I received a new battery and tools. The site has brief, easy to follow videos. I was successful in replacing the battery, but damaged the screen in the process. The site is helpful in offering information and supplies to fix devices. Suffice to say, I upgraded to the iPhone5S. Anyone looking for a broken iPhone5 with a great, new battery?
Do you have a favorite app you’d like to share? Contact Brian at brian@brianzabro ski.com, on Twitter @BrianZab or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/brianzab.
Brian has focused on helping technology companies grow their businesses for nearly 20 years. He currently serves as the Director of Channel Management for a cloud-based software business, which specializes in network monitoring, phone system usage analytics and mobile device analytics. Simply put, if your business’ network, phone system and corporate cell phones are slow, have issues and are expensive, then his software reduces and eliminates these challenges. The software is resold through an international channel of technology partners. He travels across North America educating technology companies how they can increase their business value nearly five-fold through his hybrid managed service selling technique.
