Add Fun to Your To-Do List With These Food Apps

Weekends are great for crossing off to-do’s, but you can’t forget to add fun and relaxation to the list.  Going out for a date night or hitting happy hour with your co-workers are fun ways to unwind from a stressful week. Here are some (free) dining and drinking apps to try out:

                                                             

                                                       Drinking Apps

Untappd: If beer is your go-to drink, this is a great app. Not only will it give you a list of the most popular local bars but you get to share and read beer reviews. Whenever you try a new beer, snap a photo with your phone, upload it, and review it. The app keeps track of all the brews you’ve tried and gives you suggestions.  You can also follow friends to see what they are drinking and you can earn badges for your beer tasting!

Screen shot 2014-04-24 at 5.44.52 PM

Read more

Get Motivated With A Productivity Playlist

By now you’ve probably heard about the Coachella festival. I can’t avoid it — it seems like all my favorite celebs (like Giada) are there soaking up the sun and listening to some amazing tunes.

Coachella is an awesome annual music and arts festival that has been going on since 1999. This year’s festival inspired me to make up my own productivity playlist.  Listening to music can get you pumped up to get the mundane everyday to-do’s done, while having fun!

ListProducer Productivity Playlist

1. Happy – Pharrell Williams
2. Crazy in Love – Beyonce
3. Feelin Alright – Joe Cocker
4. Only the Good Die Young – Billy Joel
5. Burn – Ellie Goulding
6. Everyday — Dave Matthews Band

7.White Noise – SimplyNoise.com (Sometimes all you need is to drown out everything around you!) Read more

Make Scheduling Appointments Easier

calendar year (12-30-08)

calendar year (12-30-08) (Photo credit: sun dazed)

Scheduling appointments and meetings can get confusing when there are multiple people involved. There’s always a few people who can’t meet the same time or day, and it can take multiple emails and phone calls to finally decide the best time.

With the help of technology, it comes as no surprise that there are tools out there that can help make scheduling important meeting and events a lot easier.

Doodle: This website is so simple and is perfect for scheduling anything from a hang out with the girls, to a business meeting. With the FREE version you select “time proposals,” which are just a few dates along with times for people to choose from. The site creates a poll, which you can email to your friends or colleagues to see what works for their schedule. The results will end up with a meeting time that everyone can make. You can also sync these to your calendar automatically. Doodle also has a premium account that will send automatic reminders, see who is missing from meetings, and more! (Basic plan = free. Premium = $39 a year. Free trial for 30 days)

Read more

Business Card Organization

English: Photo of two free business cards

English: Photo of two free business cards (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am constantly meeting new people, which means I have stacks and stacks of business cards, possibly from fantastic business card providers similar to Metal Kards Business Cards, stuffed in my desk drawer. I’m sure most of you know the feeling. Also, when you’ve got networking events to go to and you know that you forgot your business cards, at that moment, it feels like the worst thing ever! You had one job, but when you think about it, it’s not the end of the world.

CardMunch: This is a free iPhone app that turns your business cards into contacts. All you have to do is take a photo of the business card and it uploads all the info automatically. My favorite part is it also connects you to the person’s Linkedin profile.

Evernote Hello: Whenever you meet someone you can input their info manually or scan their business card in this app. There is also a “hello connect” feature that can connect you to a group of people instantly. Once you do this, the app will bring in any other related info from your calendar, Evernote account, and social media and build a profile. The app also builds a history of all your meet and greets, so you will never forget anyone! You can download this to your computer or your smartphone.

ScanBizCards: Take a photo and scan in any business card, add in notes, forward contacts to colleagues, and assign and create groups. This app can also remind you to follow-up with people and will connect you to Linkedin. You are also able to sync all this info to your other devices! ($1.99)

Time to scan away! How do you keep your contacts organized?

Spring Clean Your Digital Life

Spring

Spring (Photo credit: Charalampos Konstantinidis)

It’s finally here! It is officially Spring! Usually when this day rolls around I am packing up my sweaters and bringing out the tank tops – – but with the chilly weather still here in NYC (UGH) I thought I would get into the mood by spring cleaning my digital life instead.

It seems like a daunting task to go through the TONS of files and folders that have been clogging up your hard drive but never fear I’ve got you covered. Here is a list (of course) of ways to help refresh your desktop, emails, and your social media accounts! Your computer will thank you for the fresh start 😉

Untweep: Get rid of those lingering twitter accounts that you follow with Untweep. This will go through and pick out accounts that haven’t tweeted in x amount of days (you decide, can be 1 day of not tweeting or a whole month) and unfollow them for you. This is a great way to clean out your account!

Unfriending binge: Not a bad a idea to go through Facebook and unfriend people you don’t interact with! You come to realize you may not even know some of the people on your friend list or you just may be sick of seeing those old acquaintances status updates you skim over anyway! This way — you won’t miss the good stuff.

Unroll.me*: We all sign up for newsletter after newsletter to get promotional deals but all they end up doing is clogging up our inboxes. I was subscribed to almost 300 without even realizing it! Unroll.me will handle this messy problem for you. This site will go through your email account and locate each and every newsletter you’re signed up to receive and unsubscribe for you. (Except for the ListProducer.com email updates — I know you want those. Sign up here!) No need to go to each site and do it yourself- such a time saver! See more about it here!

Clean out your Browser: I bookmark things all the time that I find on the web like recipes, fun articles, or sites that I want to go back to and explore. Because it’s hidden away it builds up quickly. Go through and delete unwanted items. It’s also smart to go back and delete cookies and your browser history – tidy everything up nicely!

Backup your data: It’s smart to keep files safe and back them up! Sites like Dropbox are perfect for this. You can store as many files as you want including pictures and images. This allows you to make sure nothing gets lost in case a coffee spill on your laptop happens and it opens up some room on your hard drive! I’d also suggest going through your Dropbox account and clearing that out too. Any old photos or documents that you’re not going to use anymore should go. Do not forget Evernote either! The same goes for your work data too. Backup as much as you can. No one likes to think too much about losing their data or crucial work documents, but you can never be too safe.

Clear out the apps: We download so many apps with the intent to “try them out,” but usually never do! This happens to me all the time and I now have two full screens of random apps that I never use. I cleared them all out and now I have much more space on my phone – more room to try even more apps now 😉 Test out a few of my faves here.

I hope these tips help with the start of your digital spring cleaning! What other ways do you organize your cyber life?

Happy spring everyone!

*Unroll.Me makes money by learning what people stay subscribed to and what they unsubscribe from – that data is valuable and helps corporations learn what people want and what they don’t want. Your email address is NOT sold. If you’d like to keep your subscription list private you’ll need to unsubscribe manually from individual email subscriptions. If you appreciate the swiftness that you can unsubscribe from multiple sources while helping brands service customers better then Unroll.Me is for you!