Save it for Later

There are so many great articles to read online these days but sometimes you need to save it for later. There are apps that help you save these articles in a format that makes them easier to read by stripping the article from the website and downloading it into the app. The two apps that I will review both are multiplatform which means they work on every type of device so you can find an article on your desktop computer, save it using a browser extension, and then read it on your phone later. Both companies have great how to videos on their websites. I decided not to include the links to all the app stores but those links can be found on each company’s website. I think that each app has its strong points and for users it will ultimately be about style. I really like Pocket because of the interface design, tags, and recommendations but dislike that it has ads.

I was inspired to write this week’s review based on a recent episode of Android App Arena https://twit.tv/shows/android-app-arena/episodes/120 and the fact that Instapaper this week announced that all of their premium features are now free http://blog.instapaper.com/post/152600596211

Instapaper (Free) Android, iOS, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Amazon – After signing up for an account Instapaper sends an e-mail to walk new users through the process of using the app and browser extension. Users can customize their reading experience by changing font, spacing, background color, and brightness. There is a really interesting speed reading feature that shows you one word at a time quickly. The menu also has a video category so you can also curate YouTube videos or the ones embedded in an article. A lot of users like the newspaper like layout. There is a nice "Notes" section that users can save highlighted text and notes about what they've read. The app suggests articles based on your reading preferences and ones that are popular with other Instapaper users.

Website: https://www.instapaper.com/

The picture below shows the Chrome extension in action:

The pictures below are some screenshots of the app:

Pocket (Free with premium features) Android, iOS, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Android – Easy to use with a bright and friendly interface. Users can customize font type, font size, switch to the web view, and change background color. Saving articles is a breeze by either using a browser extension or e-mailing it to your pocket account. Unfortunately, other customization options are a part of the premium package. The app can read the article to users. Users can put tags on articles so that they can quickly find what they are looking for in their saved list. The app has ads that can be removed if you purchase the premium package. Where the Pocket app was superior was in article recommendations. Users can get article recommendations from the Pocket community, their contacts, social media connections, writers, and influencers. The app’s premium features: dark mode, eliminate ads, further customization, and unlimited archival storage that saves an article even if the website version goes away, cost $4.99 a month or $44.99 a year.

Website: https://getpocket.com

The picture below is the Chrome extension in action:

The pictures below are screenshots of the app:

Most Notable Apps of 2015

So I have decided for the sake of brevity and my sanity to not try and give a long discussion of what makes an app "best" or what would make it on to a "best list" instead I decided to point out notable apps. For each of these apps to simply say what it does or why it is notable.  Most, if not all of these apps, are available for both iOS (Apple) and Android. They are all free unless I list a price. I did not include games because that is an entirely different animal. They are listed in no particular order.

Circle of 6 - A safety app that sends friends or family a pre-written emergency message if you are in trouble to up to six people it includes your current GPS coordinates.

Facebook - The king of all social media, if you are into that kind of thing.

Youtube - Watch videos of all kinds: instructional, music, clips from TV or movie, classics, independent movies, video game play, and so much more.

Facebook Messenger - Also one of the most popular / used apps, you can message people that you don't have a phone number for. You can video or voice call and there are lots of cute stickers / GIFs.

Google Hangouts - Video chat with up to 12 people at once or use it as a messenger that is accessible by computer and phone.

Hootsuite or UberSocial - For Twitter power-users or people managing multiple social media accounts.

Signal - send encrypted text messages and make encrypted VOIP (voice over internet protocol) calls has some other hand privacy features.

Wickr - encrypt messages and files and set a deletion date to any file, picture, message that you send.

Periscope - Twitter posted videos, most of the time they are live, comedians and musicians have posted some great stuff.

Bandcamp - find some really interesting independent musicians and purchase directly from the artist

DeaD BeeF Player (Android only) - for audiophiles or people that take their music very seriously, extremely customizable and tons of features.

Hulu - There is some free content but subscription necessary for most things. Great television show coverage and movie selection getting better.

Netflix - Subscription necessary, known for movies but have created some great original content.

Sling TV - Watch 65 cable channels for $20 a month on all your devices.

Slacker Radio - Music streaming, curated by a combination of computer algorithm and human selection.

Spotify - Subscribers get almost any song they can think of and even an offline mode. The free route requires you listen to playlists, artists, albums, etc in shuffle mode and commercials every 30 minutes.

Songkick Concerts - Import your favorite artists from other music apps, then find out when they are playing near you, buy tickets in-app, and even see what time musicians are playing at a festival.

Google Play Music - Allows you to play all music you have purchased (with Google or elsewhere) in a cloud playing account, access user and algorithm generated radio stations. If you subscribe access to most songs  and You Tube Red a new service that gets rid of commercials and allows music to play in background so that you do not have to keep the app open.

Aviary or Snapseed - A photo editor that allows for some interesting effects.

VSCO or Effects Studio - for people who really want to get their photos just right, users can do a lot with this photo editing app and can share their creations with other photography fans, hobbyists, and professionals.

Flickr - It has photo taking / editing but it is most useful for cloud storage / photo sharing.

Instagram - Picture based social media platform.

Instacollage - Make a quick collage out of pictures to share with others or for personal projects.

Vine - Fascinating, funny, weird, eight second videos.

My Fitness Pal - Track your calories, exercise, and weight, connect with friends that can cheer you on to a healthier you.

SleepBot / Sleep Cycle - These apps tracks how well you sleep and will wake you around a certain time based on how lightly you're sleeping. There are premium features that can cost $2.99 - $4.99.

Nike Running - Track your running, see how many miles your friends have run, track the mileage on your shoes, integrate your music into your running, set and break personal records, and more.

Run Keeper - There are two running apps that are used by runners, this is the other and it does all the same stuff.

Yummly - A cooking and recipe that has a really slick layout and some nice features.

Untapped - If you like beer this helps keep track of what you've had, reviews of ones you're considering, and it has some cool social features.

Yelp - Look at reviews for everything from book stores to water parks. Best known for restaurant reviews you can check out reviews for service providers and other business types.

Duolingo - An amazing app that helps you learn any of 26 languages through games. The app will remind you to practice.

Google Maps - one of the best map apps allows users to find pedestrian, bicycle, mass transit, routes in addition to driving directions. It also shows a good amount of location information: hours, pictures, reviews, and more.

Waze - find the best route; get information about accidents, obstacles, speed traps, closed roads, etc. Users can find the best price of gas and location information.

Google Translate - Take a picture of a sign or page from a book and it will translate it. Two way voice translation. Type translation for 90 languages!

Pinterest - A social media platform where users  create boards that have pictures of items that represent websites with more information. Good for finding ideas, recipes, art, and so much more.

Shop Advisor / Red Laser- These shopping apps help you find the best price and the best time to shop and get the best deal.

Calibre Companion (3.99) The best eBook / eReading app, you can organize and customize more than any other app of its kind.

Comics - The go to app for reading digital comic books.

Flipboard - Find great news stories about topics that you are interested in and curate categories for further reading or for others to browse / follow.

Pocket - Save webpages and articles for future reading, including offline.

OverDrive - The first and best library eBooks and electronic audiobooks app.

Axis360 - Library eBooks and digital audiobooks, it is very good at digital picture books.

Stitcher / Pocket Casts ($3.99) Both are for listening to podcasts, and Pocket Casts is the best and it has some really great features including the ability to listen on multiple platform where you left off but for those people that do not want to have to pay Stitcher works really well and has some cross platform support.

Firefox - One of the best mobile browsers, it supports extensions and has helpful privacy tools.     

Chrome - What I really like about Chrome is the ability to have bookmarks and historical look ups available on my laptop, desktop, phone, or tablet.

Weather Underground / Yahoo Weather - There are a lot of really good weather apps, these just happens to be my favorite.

Wikipedia - There is so much you can learn from Wikipedia and for basic fact checking they are really good. {Full disclosure: I donate money to the Wikimedia Foundation}

Astro File Manager (Android only) - Delete, move and organize files within your device or import items from other media on to your device.

Google Photos - Back-up an unlimited number of photos, and what is really cool is Google will create videos or edited versions from your photos using its "Assistant" feature.

Microsoft Office Lens / Cam Scanner - These scanning apps make it possible to send people PDF versions, make copies, and use the Optical character recognition (OCR) to edit or import text.

Swift Key Keyboard - Some people find it faster / easier so swipe type. If you do not like the stock keyboard on your device try this one.

Push Bullet -  Share files between devices or with friends easily.

Seconds - Create timers for exercise or projects, if you want the ability to save them for repeated or future use it costs $4.99 for that feature.

Charity Miles - If you are a cyclist, runner, or walker, this free app logs your miles and donates money to a charity of your choice.

Shopkick - If you shop, window shop, or have to go with your significant other this app gives you "kicks" for going into stores, scanning products, and/or making a purchase. The kicks are redeemable for gift cards.

iBotta - Get rebates for buying things at stores (most of the items are grocery store related).

Star Wars - There was a lot of great content for fans of the series on this app. If you have a Google Cardboard there were some amazing virtual reality videos.

Last Pass / One Password (subscription costs vary) - These apps provide users with the most secure ways to make passwords, store them, and have form fill capabilities.

Evernote - Users can type notes / documents, hand draw, record audio, take pictures, save content from websites, and so much more. The more you learn how to use it, the more you will love it.

Google Drive - Save your files and make them accessible to yourself or others on almost any platform. Users can set permission on files to limit what others can do with a file. Integrates with other Google products seamlessly.

Khan Academy - Learn art, business, economics, math, science, and much more with videos and interactive activities.

True Caller - shows you the name and information of people that are not on your contact list, shows you when numbers are from "spam callers", has some other helpful tools

So I have been thinking about what my predictions are for 2016 technology-wise, here is a list:

Virtual Reality will begin to become mainstream

Internet Speeds will start to drastically improve in major metros

Battery life / charging will become a focal point for smartphone innovation

Hybrid devices (think Surface Pro) will continue to be pushed more by tech companies

Gaming hardware makers will continue (maybe more so) to try to make money on backward compatibility

The wearables market will lose some device makers that just could not cut it

- So, this time next year we will look back and see how accurate I am.

Organize Your Life with Apps

Evernote (Free) iOS, Android, Web - Evernote is one of those apps that is hard to describe because it can do so much. It will take a while to truly appreciate all that Evernote can do. At its heart the app is a basic word processing app that you can use to take notes or create documents. Beyond that you are not limited to text, you can also save pictures and music as notes. It syncs your notes across all devices and can be accessed via the web or mobile app. Evernote's Pennultimate app is an iPad (or iPhone 6) app that allows you to sketch or take hand written notes and by pairing it with your Evernote account it automatically saves and syncs as a note in your Evernote account. Evernote Food allows you to find recipes and automatically save them in your Evernote account. The Evernote Scannable app allows you to take a picture and make it a scanned copy, which means the text can be searched within the Evernote app. Scanned items can be saved as notes in your Evernote account or sent to others. Last but not least, Evernote makes a Chrome extension called Evernote Web Clipper. It allows you to save web pages as an image or select text that you can import to read, edit, and use as you wish.

Sunrise (Free) iOS only - There are a lot of great calendar apps for iPhone but Sunset seems do to what matters best. It syncs calendars from Google, iCal, Facebook, and Outlook. If you use the Reminders app or set a reminder using Siri it will be added as a calendar item in the  app. Users can include people in the calendar item so that they get an invite to add it to their calendar. Through the use of the "Place" feature get directions through Google Maps. The app has a widget on iOS 8 that allows you to see scheduled items for the day at a glance. The reminder feature can be customized to remind users from 2 days before to 15 minutes before. The color coded calendar items alert users to what calendar the item comes from. The clean platform and easy to use interface make this a great calendar app.

Jorte (Free) Android and web - This app considers it self more of a personal planner than a calendar app, but that's where its strength lies nonetheless. Extremely customizable calendars, users can color code their events, change background and fonts, and start their week on the day of their choosing. Event calendars include lunar, professional sports, weather forecast, news, and food recipes. Jorte will give you countdown clocks for events. Sync Yahoo!, Facebook, Google, Outlook, and many other calendars using Jorte Sync app. Jorte Cloud website allows for multi-device synchronization and cloud backup. The widget gives today's events at a glance. Users can import or export calendar contents using a CSV file. In addition to the calendar there is a diary that allows you to include photos and a to do list manager. There are in app purchases for special backgrounds and some advanced features.

IF (Free) iOS, Android, and web - One of the basic concepts in programming is that you create a condition if this happens then this happens. IFTTT means "if this then that" they shortened the phrase to an acronymn and then to just IF. Users can create "recipes" that allow for automated processes to occur such as if I post a photo on Instagram THEN share it on my Twitter account (or save to my Dropbox or Google Drive). If I favorite a tweet THEN copy it to my Evernote notebook of "Sweet Tweets". Users can automate Fitbit info into a Google Spreadsheet. There are hundreds if not thousands of possible recipes and the website now has categories of recipes to suggest for users recipes for: school,parents, photographers, social media users, news followers, road trips, and so many more. Take a look and you might be surprised at a recipe that can help make your life easier, keep track of something, or help you communicate better.

Any.do (Free) iOS, Android, Chrome, and web - Any.do is one of the most popular organizational apps available, users create projects / to-do lists that they can create tasks and subtasks that can be crossed off and have the ability to collaborate with others. The app allows for notification, automated messages, commenting, pictures, file attachments, recurring tasks, reminders, and subtasks, On top of all that it has a  planner. You get five lists / projects, limited file sizes, and limited collaboration unless you pay either $2.99/mo. per month or $2.50/mo. for a year commitment. With that premium payment you get several additional perks: color themes, support, and custom tasks. The app has a clean minimalist display, has some fun gestures, and a how-to walk through when you first use it.

Dropbox (Free) iOS, Android, Amazon, Windows, web. There a lot of cloud storage options available but Dropbox has its charms. Users can share folders with others which is great for collaboration or sharing resources with out the hassle of setting up a server and a network. Files are available on almost any device imaginable and there are numerous apps that integrate with Dropbox as the primary option of cloud storage. In many cases you can automatically backup files to Dropbox. There have been concerns about security but Dropbox states that no users' information has been accessed. By inviting others, sharing your experience, and other tasks Dropbox will increase your storage capacity.

LastPass (Free or $12/yr) iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry, and most web browsers. Creating secure passwords can be tough and then remembering them, changing them when there is a security breach, and all the related hassles. LastPass will remember your passwords for you and it will generate secure passwords. It will alert you if you are using duplicate passwords and give you an assessment of your password security vulnerability. Users can create form fill profiles that will fill out online forms when you prompt LastPass to fill them in. With secondary verification and sesame encryption if you desire it is extremely secure. LastPass for your web browser is free but to access it on your mobile device and use some of the advanced features require the $12 yearly fee.

Pocket (Free) iOS, Android, Amazon, Kobo, Blackberry, Chrome, Windows web. When you want to save a recipe, article, tweet, picture, or anything else you see online or in one of the 800 apps Pocket integrates with you can save it for offline (or online) reading across multiple devices. A premium account $4.99/ mo. or $44.99/yr. saves your items forever no storage maximum and even if it disappears from the web you have it, custom tags that can be selected with a tap, and a powerful search for all that stuff you're saving forever.