Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Mobile Thing #2, Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Even though I thought I would use an iPad to do the Things, I realized my iPad is ancient and probably won't do all the cool things, so I am using my iPhone4, which unfortunately is also getting pretty ancient too.  I did download iOS 7 for it, so I decided to watch the video of tips & tricks for iOS 7.  Right away I learned I can't take advantage of Siri as I don't have the 4s.  Sigh ... maybe I will upgrade at the next opportunity, but I was still able to learn some things from the video.  I don't have dynamic wallpaper, but I do have a compass and looked at that briefly.  I learned my desk is not completely level as I couldn't get the display to read 0 and display green!  I also liked the discussion of how to disable apps from automatically updating in the background.  I can see how that would be very useful if you are trying to minimize the battery usage on your device, especially if say you are traveling and away from your charger.   There was a nod to us "oldsters" as we learned how to boldface the type under the app icons.  I could use that starting right now!

Thursday, January 16, 2014

I hope to get a number of things out of my participation in 23 Mobile Things - obviously I hope to learn about some new apps that I didn't know about, including those that will increase my productivity and efficiency in my day-to-day life and work.  Additionally I hope I can identify those that are good enough to tell others about, both my work colleagues and friends. 

On a higher level, I hope I can develop more skills in evaluation of mobile apps and which features, from a usability standpoint, are really good and which are not so good.   It should help my skills around learning new interfaces and functionality.  The more practice you get with different products, the quicker I think you can identify what works and what doesn't work. 

At some point, I would like to learn more about building an app myself.  I don't know that I will develop the skills to be able to do that in this self-learning program, but it may awaken my interest further and strengthen my confidence in attempting something like that.