by Mark Smiley | Mar 13, 2014 | Feature Story Middle Left
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.
by Mark Smiley | Dec 5, 2013 | Feature Story Middle Left
by Brian Zabroski
January is one of my favorite months. It is my birthday month so I tend to stretch the celebration beyond the customary single day. It is also a great month to reset and reflect. The holidays seem to put us in a time management tailspin. Our time is consumed with parties, family visits, travel, end of the year business activities, and of course, the countless hours our kids were out of school.
There were a number of holiday networking events, which resulted in the typical pile of business cards. Is your business card approach similar to mine? I place all of the business cards in a pile, and then they sit there. After a bit, I’ll wrap them with a rubber band, and then they sit there. Evernote Hello is a creative way to scan the cards. Take a photo of the card with your smartphone, and it will search social media sites for the contact. Once the contact is found, you can link to them with a single click. The app performs an accurate capture of the contact information. This was always one of my pet peeves with other apps. Maybe the cards can become useful this year rather than take up valuable desk space.
In my previous life, I was an Excel guru. Well, I thought I was a guru until I worked for a large company that hired Excel gurus. Regardless, I have always been able to build workbooks with formulas, such as “If this happens, then enter this cell.” For some reason, my brain works that way. Now I am using IFTTT, which is an app called, If This Then That. It turns your smartphone into an auto messenger. The app uses my GPS location to recognize I am entering or exiting the address of Toddler App’s school. At each instance, it will send Mrs. App a text so she knows Toddler App is being picked up or dropped off. The tool is versatile and allows you to customize your own alerts. It can send an email every time a photo is taken; post a Tweet based upon a setting; and, generate LinkedIn invites for each new contact as they are created. Did you create a cool IFTTT? If so, share it with me!
I would love to know how many readers have converted to reading the news via their Twitter feed? I am on Twitter all day. I may not Tweet, but I am watching my feed for news. It is also becoming a marketing tool. There are marketing studies that state which days and times are best for delivering tweets and emails. So why are we sending information when someone may not be looking at their social media streams? If you would like to maximize the number of eyes on your posts, then use Buffer. It creates a schedule for your updates. This can help maximize your update effectiveness. The number of productivity tools is mind boggling. I always believe, keep it simple. I try to reduce the amount of items on my office white board. Instead of listing the items on the board, I’ll list them on Any.do. It is a task list for your smartphone. There is always a sense of accomplishment when the items are crossed off. Some people dance around. Others use different color markers to check off an item. I say, dance around and check off the items from your app. It’ll probably make your co-workers worry about you, but it’ll be fun! I also like iDoneThis. It’s obvious the app’s creator was not very good at English, but who cares. He is a millionaire. Our business has a daily huddle via video conference. We share our daily action items and success stories. Each night, iDoneThis reminds you to complete the action items for tomorrow and wins for today. Once the action is complete, it sends the update to our CEO. The morning huddles are more efficient and quicker than in the past.
Remember to get to the gym early this month. Lots of newcomers are working off their cookies and eggnog. Please, only one candle on my cake this year.
Do you have a favorite productivity tool? Contact Brian at brian@brianzabroski.com, on Twitter @BrianZab or LinkedIn at www. linkedin.com/brianzab. Brian has focused on helping technology companies grow their businesses for over 15 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
