Tag Archive for: Technology

7 Travel Apps For a Fabulous Vacation

CroatiaIt’s one of the things that I love the most but do the least — I’m talking about travel. I’ve been to a lot of great places like Italy and France but I’ve still yet to explore some of the best cities in the US like San Francisco. Don’t worry — it’s on my list! When I’m out and about on a trip — I always have a few go-to apps that help make my trip run more smoothly.

TripAdvisor – When planning a vacation, the first stop is always TripAdvisor, and for good reason. The site has millions of reviews on almost every hotel/restaurant/beach villa out there. It’s a great way to narrow down your hotel choices, plus some of the reviews are unintentionally hilarious. Check out some of my reviews here.

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Is Evernote Really Everlasting?

Evernote for iOS icon

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Something happened this week that I honestly didn’t think would ever happen. Evernote crashed! My beloved “second brain” was down for several hours on Tuesday and had issues throughout the day. This was due to a DDoS attack – a cyber attack where criminals attempting to disable a business’s functionality, by sending an overwhelming amount of data to a company’s systems.

If you are a regular reader you know that basically my whole life is on Evernote; my blog posts, book chapters, favorite recipes, gift ideas… everything. So when Evernote when down I panicked. A rational part of me knew that it would all be working again in a few hours, but I still spent those hours worrying what I would do if Evernote were down for a few days, or worse, what if it never came back? Read more

Springpad Says Farewell

Springpad app will be shutting down on June 25 (Photo Credit: beginnerstech.co.uk)

Springpad app will be shutting down on June 25 (Photo Credit: beginnerstech.co.uk)

Unfortunately, it’s time to say goodbye to another one of my favorite apps.

Earlier this year, I introduced you guys to Springpad—an app designed to help you plan, organize and share information regarding anything from important lists to your favorite recipes through notebooks and “springs”.

And once again, Evernote is taking over!  I feel like I’ve had to do so many of these posts lately—it seems like Evernote is taking over all of my favorite apps! Luckily, I’m a big fan of Evernote too, so I believe that Springpad is in good hands!

Springpad is officially shutting down on June 25th. You have until then to export your data, either to Evernote or to HTML and JSON files. Fortunately, Springpad has released an export tool that gives you the option to export your data to all three, in just a few simple steps.

Here’s how to transfer your data to each of the following:

1.     Evernote: Begin transferring your data at springpad.com/savemystuff. This will allow all of your Springpad data to move into an existing Evernote account. Once you transfer your data, all of your notes and notebooks will be available at evernote.com and sync on all of the Evernote apps. Luckily, you’ll be able to continue capturing and organizing all of the things you want to remember! Read more

Read Faster with the Blinkist App

Blinkist app (Photo Credit: allmyfaves.com)

Blinkist app (Photo Credit: www.allmyfaves.com)

There are so many books on my reading list, that are sadly still waiting to be read. I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction lately like “How to Make Every Man Want You” by Marie Forleo and “Less Doing, More Living: Make Everything in Life Easier” by Ari Meisel. But between work and my day to day schedule, it’s hard to find the time to sit down and enjoy a book in it’s entirety.

However, I recently discovered a new solution to my problem– the app Blinkist!

Blinkist works the same way as sites like Cliff Notes by providing a quick and short synopsis of a book—this time on your iPhone or iPad! The app takes the full text of a non-fiction book and turns it into quick snippets of information. Rather than scrolling through pages and pages of text, Blinkist gives you the most important information from a text in just fifteen minutes! Here are some of the perks Blinkist has to offer:

1.     The books are put into categories, helping you to find what book you’re searching for easily. There’s even a productivity and self-help category! Read more

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!