Thing 10: Sharing Photos

I have heard so much about Instagram, I decided to check it out. My husband is the family photographer, taking at least 1000 pictures during a 2 week trip. I thought it might be good for him to have a place to store photos where others could have access.

It turns out that Instagram is less a personal album and more a picture search. Somewhat like Pinterest, pictures can be searched and posters can be followed. In Instagram, posters who want to share photos with others are encouraged to label them with hashtags.

I tried topic searches several times for cities in Germany, where we will travel in May. It delivered many pictures, even for obscure, tiny towns. But, the pictures were quite random: what caught the eye of someone, with little consistency of intent. Was it to highlight architecture, catch the crowds, the fog, concentrating on tourist venues, food, businesses? Captions in most cases did not help to define the picture and on my iPad mini I had to scroll down to see the comments - really annoying.

Another feature is that the poster can place pictures on a map. How cool. In practice, though, when I looked for Munich, as I zoomed in on the map, many pictures would open at once and covered the map, so I could only get a vague idea of where a picture was taken. Plus, in this feature, there were no captions.

My conclusion is that Instagram is useful for casual pictures. It would not help organize travel pictures. It would not make a good fit for an album of pictures for a class project.

After this disappointment, I searched for a different photo storage app and found Adobe Revel. It looked like it might work well and it was Adobe! What a disappointment it was to discover after trying a few features that the app was free for 31 days, and then would cost $5.99/month or $59.99/year.

Not much luck in this category.

Thing 9: Taking & Editing Photos

Since I do my photo editing with Photoshop, I didn't want to duplicate that format. Therefore, I tried Color Splurge. It is as easy as the creator on the video said. I took a picture of trees in my back yard and then highlighted the sky, which was bright blue. I was pleased with the effect - and I did it with my finger.

The effect is quick and easy. This could be used for library promotional materials. Highlight one color on a book jacket or the title or the author.

Thing 8: Social Media Management Tools

Well, my husband is addicted to Twitter, especially to Wild hockey and headline news. Watching him sit and scroll through Twitter for hours at a time made me not want to even look at the app. On the other hand, I just couldn't dismiss something that has allowed dissidents demonstrating for freedom connect. So, I set up Twitter.

I tried to find people to follow and came up with a couple of authors. But I would be able to get a lot more information from an author's web site.

I am sorry to say that having other people feed me their spontaneous thoughts doesn't interest me. I want to focus my inquiries to save time, just like I use an advanced search in ELM so I don't get more than ten or so results.

So, Twitter is not for me.

Thing 7: Content Saving & Sharing

Pinterest and I became acquainted with the help of a couple of high school girls. Some younger friends had shown me their boards, which looked very cool. So I sat down on my own to figure it out. Did not work! I have most often been able to just play and figure out programs. I was embarrassed, so gave up.

One night when I was visiting the girls' family, they were showing their mom their Pinterest pages. I asked a couple of questions and they promptly sat me down for a "flashbulb" lesson. I got the basics and there has been no going back.

Right now, I am setting up a board for my next family trip to Germany. And away we go....

I can see this used to promote books and/or authors, link to activities, make a series of activity links on a topic such as The Flapper Era or Romantic Poetry or Ibsen's Dramas. We are visual learners and Pinterest would be a new way to grab the interest of students.

Thing 6: Creating & Editing Docs

I tried both CloudOn and Quickoffice. The reviews for Quickoffice were dreadful. Google bought it and gutted it, according to most of the reviewers.

First I checked out the presentation piece in CloudOn. It was slow, had minimal help, and just seemed too hard to use. What was particularly annoying was that the program wanted you to upgrade and pay monthly or yearly fees to use almost any but the most basic features.

In Quickoffice, I was looking for a way to take the minutes for an organization I belong to. It was simple and looked just like Word. It responded quickly and gave me all the options I needed. I still don't like typing on the iPad keyboard, but when taking minutes I just get down the essentials and finish them at home on my iMac.

I have been using Textedit to take the minutes on my husband's laptop. This did not work well, but was, I thought, my only option. The iPad hopefully will work better and be easier to take to my meetings.

If your school does not invest in Word, Quickoffice might be enough for notes. I would not want to write an essay or composition using the one-finger keyboard. I didn't check to see if you can use the microphone instead of typing. That would be cool.

Thing 5: Notetaking

I was sure that Remember the Milk would be just the thing for me. I make lists for everything and carry them around, hand them out to others, circle urgent tasks, check off completed ones, and usually have four or five going at once. I also misplace them and lose them.

I downloaded the app on my iPhone, iPad, and iPad mini, added tasks and even a grocery list. So easy!

Then I went to the web site to see why the iPhone showed a syncing bar that wasn't moving. The free version only syncs once in 24 hours and on the forum there seemed to be quite a few problems with syncing. I decided to wait until tomorrow to see if this will really happen, because if it doesn't, the app won't help me much. It will be like any of my misplaced or lost lists.

Then I learned about Smart Lists, which have to be created on the web version of the program. Before making Smart Lists out of the long weekly or daily list of tasks, you will want to assign labels, priorities, tags and other types of definition to each task.

So on my Personal list, I assigned tags for house, project, call, etc. On my Work list, I used the titles of the different activities I am involved in. In the advanced search, I chose the list and tag, then saved the list created by the search. Hopefully these will show up in the apps on my devices tomorrow. 

Simple became a lot more complicated, but may be worth it in the long run. Or not.

If I was still in the library, this would be more valuable to keep track of multiple projects and collaborations with staff members, plus staff development, and community activities. If you are a list maker, beware. This could become a compulsion. Making lists and more deliciously, checking things off.

Thing 4: Keeping Up

I updated my Flipboard and Tumblr accounts, reducing the number of blogs and news feeds I follow. These resources are interesting, but my priorities for learning change often and Pinterest is an easier way to visually organize information I want at hand. It is good to try different apps but I am always ready to eliminate those that no longer make my life easier.

I tried to find focused sites and blogs to choose, but the resources I found were much too broad with too much information. They are an almost irresistible temptation to spend the day just browsing around. Not what I want.