Apps for the Amateur

Apps we liked this year: ( I use an iPhone and iPad, but probably most of these have Android apps too.)

FingerDraw: free, you can draw on photos you have taken. I used this app in a post I made a few weeks ago to illustrate a point about memos. It was easy to take a picture with the iPad, then doodle on the picture with FingerDraw, then upload that saved picture to the blog, using the Blogger app, never leaving my iPad the whole time! 

Using FingerDraw app

Notice old technology: clipboards should never be underestimated for how official they make something seem.

Using PhotoCollage app for the Blog

PhotoCollage: free, you can turn a bunch of your photos into a collage, more is better than one.

Evernote: do you keep thinking you could be organized if only you found a good system? Evernote is the ultimate Getting Things Done (GTD) and Getting Organized app. There is a free version and a fee version. The free version has so many options, I have not used them all yet. You can make Notebooks into which you can place virtual clippings from the web, you can keep lists and notes, you can share your stuff with other people. I use one notebook to file research articles on a topic I am following so I can refer to them easily. This works better than just bookmarking the articles in a browser as it keeps them all in one file.

WhatsApp: for texting on your phone from outside the U.S. I am told by my traveling daughter that this app only works in wifi so that you won't get charged huge out of country fees by your phone service.

Social media like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Wordpress and, yes, our very own Blogger here (This blog is on Blogger), have apps so you can use them on your phone or tablet. The library is on many of these social media platforms and we use the apps on an iPad and also the desktop versions. Take a look at our homepage http://www.bhplnj.org/ and click on the app logos to see the library's posts on FB, Twitter and Pinterest. We are not on Instagram.

Chatbooks is a photo book making app that promises to be fast and to make design decisions easy. I used this over the holidays and sure enough, it was so simple, I actually made three photobooks in time to be shipped for Christmas. Usually I get so hung up in all the choices and styles of the other photo book apps that I have unfinished books littered around cyberspace, I think. There are lots of good photo book apps out there, but for the cheap and indecisive, this was the one for me. I could even connect it to my Facebook account and Instagram account, but let's not get too ambitious here.

Finally, many of the Berkeley Heights Public Library's databases and downloadable services have apps: go to our All Things E page to try  our FREE downloadable and streaming apps.
Rosetta Stone languages
Hoopla - streaming TV, movies, books and music
eLibraryNJ (Overdrive) - ebooks and audiobooks
Flipster - magazines
OneClickDigital and Zinio and Atomic Training all from RB Digital which is coming out with a new app this spring.

P.S: the library has its own app which we made using Boopsie.

-Anne
Related posts on this blog about apps:
There's an app for that
the library app
more apps

The article that clued me into making fast photo books, from USA Today, (I read actual newsprint papers, enjoying them while they still exist, but here is the digital article) Make photo books faster on a phone app