Cell Phone Apps & Accessories
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Oct 2011
I'm looking for any recommendations for good quality reading
or math iPhone apps for my daughter who is in preschool.
Ones that she will want to use and will learn from. There
is so much out there I don't know where to start. Help!
heather
My daughter once got a big 'reward' for being a super kid -
it was $10 for iPhone apps - here is how she spent it
(she was 4 at the time):
- Jirbo Match (simple matching game)
- Signing Time (video demonstrations of ASL with video songs
and a quiz game)
- Be Big (Clifford the Big Red Dog reading game)
- Super Why (both fun general games and specific reading
games)
- TeamUmi (from Umi Zoomi - the games are focused on shapes
and simple math)
- Letter Tracer - you use your finger for upper and lower
case letters, and numbers 0 through 9. Shake to erase -
very fun. There's also an option to hear a voice read the
letter/number if she's just at the place for letter/number
recognition, not writing.
iPhones can be educational
We had the same exact issue, and apparently so did some
local moms -- there's a new site Mind Leap
(www.mindleaptech.com) that I have found to be super
helpful. It has reviews of *only* educational apps,
categorized by grade level and subject. The apps are
reviewed for their educational value, so the site tells you
what and how your child will learn from it. Alison
March 2010
What iPhone app would you recommend for time management (organizing and
tracking projects, tasks, etc.) I'd like one that has a Mac desktop counterpart.
Would appreciate knowing why you like this one.
Also, anyone successfully used Parallels to run Quicken on their Mac?? (I've seen
too many dreadful reviews of the 2010 Quicken Essentials for Mac.)
Thanks a bunch,
~lk
Howdy, lk,
re time management:
I'm happy with Basecamp for project management, and for
tracking the time I spend on each task associated with each
project. For my needs, it strikes just the right balance
of power and simplicity. It's not perfect, but it has
quickly become essential to my work. In classic Berkeley
yuppie fashion, I've even started to use it to keep track of
tasks related to the birth of our first child (any day now!)
Basecamp is a hosted service that you can use via the web
(for all of its functionality), via email (for some of its
functionality), and/or via an iPhone app (for most of its
functionality).
Basecamp is a product of a very small Chicago company named
37signals. They're really good at what they do, and have
some very interesting podcasts, books, and blog posts, all
of which makes me forgive them for being a bit arrogant.
(You might say they exhibit stereotypical Chicago rudeness
at times.) I'm much happier giving them my money for
Basecamp than giving money to Microsoft for MS Project.
My most significant complaint with Basecamp so far is the
fact that their export-all-data (=backup) function doesn't
export Writeboards or Files, both of which I use fairly
regularly. Worse yet, it doesn't tell you that it excludes
these data - you have to dive in to the backup (or know to
search their support forums) to find this out. So, don't
use the Writeboards or Files features for anything you can't
lose.
For iPhone access to Basecamp, I spent a fair amount of time
researching the various third-party apps before settling on
Insight (formerly Encamp). Insight requires internet
access to work well, and it doesn't deal well with slow
connections, but overall it does the job of letting me keep
up on my task- and time- tracking without having to open my
laptop nearly as often. It costs $10/onetime, which proved
worth it to me on the first day of use.
The cost of the Basecamp service varies depending on what
you need. There's a fairly limited (but still capable) free
plan, and the paid plans range from $25/mo to $150/mo, each
with a 30-day free trial.
Free plan:
https://signup.37signals.com/basecamp/Free/signup/new?referrer=GRAHAMFREEMAN
Other plans:
http://basecamphq.com/signup?referrer=GRAHAMFREEMAN
Tour:
http://basecamphq.com/tour?referrer=GRAHAMFREEMAN
You may have noticed that those URLs include referral links.
The referral won't cost you any extra nor preclude you
from getting any deals, but if you sign up I'll get a
referral bonus. If this makes you uncomfortable, just
remove the ''&referrer=GRAHAMFREEMAN'' bit or search for
''Basecamp''.
Billing for that tracked time:
If you not only track but also bill for your time, you might
want to consider Freshbooks. It's like Basecamp, but for
billing and payment processing instead of project/task
tracking. It also has an optional tie-in to Basecamp,
wherein when you bill a client you can click on a button to
import time tracking data from Basecamp into your Freshbooks
invoice. It's a great fit for my workflow.
Freshbooks is a very small company in Toronto who are not
quite as innovative as 37signals, but they exhibit a much
better attitude in their dealings with the public. You
might say they exhibit stereotypical Canadian friendliness.
Like Basecamp, it has an iPhone app that works for most (but
not all) of the Freshbooks functionality. That app,
Minibooks, costs $15/onetime last I checked.
Sign-up (including free options):
https://cernio.freshbooks.com/signup/
Second only to prioritizing my family over my work,
switching to Freshbooks from Quickbooks Online was the best
business decision I've made in recent years. Doing my
billing is no longer a chore that I avoid.
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