Monday, March 31, 2014

Thing 7: Content Saving & Sharing

For this thing, I decided to try Bitly, since for whatever reason I have an aversion towards being a Pinterest user - I'm convinced other men aren't using it...  ;-)

I don't tend to share a lot of links on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever, but I when I do I can see the advantage of having the ability to shorten the link URL.  The whole aspect of having the links in the cloud that I can access from anywhere does appeal to me as well.  With my iCloud account, my Safari links are accessible from both my Mac at home and my iPhone.  But at work I use a PC, and I can't access my bookmarks on that computer from home, and vice versa.

The ability to track how often my links are getting clicked on is a feature I probably wouldn't pay much attention to, but I think it is interesting.  If I share a link on Twitter or Facebook, I guess I would be curious how many of my followers or friends actually click on it.

I see myself using this app for shortening URLs in things I post on social media sites.  I also see myself using it to collect temporary bookmarks of stories that I think I might share with friends, some of which will likely be library related. 

Friday, March 14, 2014

Thing 6: Creating & Editing Docs

For this thing, I decided to play around with Quickoffice.  I don't have a tablet, so I was relegated to exploring this app on my phone.  Using this app also gave me my first experience taking advantage of my GoogleDrive account.

I've not really used my iPhone to create any sizeable documents... only short notes like a shopping list or a reminder.  In my limited use of Quickoffice so far, I've been impressed with its ability to import and edit Microsoft Office documents.  The documents are easily navigated and the manipulation tools are substantial.  However, it just so difficult to add large amounts of text on small phone screen - at least it is for me.  I see it more as a nice way to access documents I might need, such as some speaking notes and slides for a presentation, but I just don't see myself creating a lot of documents inside the app.

Still, even just as a repository, I think the app does have some usefulness and I will likely keep it on my phone.