Have your iPad read out loud to you

http://lifehacker.com/kindle-for-ios-can-make-siri-read-your-books-aloud-sor-486241369

Have you ever been traveling by car, and wished that you could get your iPad (or iPhone) to read books aloud to you? I was in that situation the other day, and came across this useful article on a "life hack" to do just that. But it's not the article that provided the key information, it was a comment below the article!

Here's the steps (in case you can't/don't want to click on the link):

It's this simple.

1. Go to "Settings", and in the "General" tab, scroll down to "Accessibility" and select it.
2. Scroll to the bottom of that page and find the section that says "Triple-click". Press it, and select "VoiceOver" from the list of options.
3. Now, all you have to do in order to have a page read aloud to you is to triple-click on your home button, and VoiceOver is turned on.
4. In order to have an entire page read aloud, you must simply swipe down with two fingers.
5. Ta-da! You can now hear your ebook read aloud! You can tweak the rate of speech, among other options, in that same settings menu that you were at when you did the Triple-click thing.

Next, go to Kindle or iBooks, open one of your ebooks, triple-click the home button, swipe down with two fingers, and you are good to go! To turn off VoiceOver, simply triple-click the home button again.

I am going to be listening to a textbook as I drive 3.5 hours each way to teach! Shameless plug, here's the blog for the class: http://LGBTQsocialwork.blogspot.com.

Cheers!

Papership - An iPad app for Mendeley

http://www.papershipapp.com/

Okay, so just as soon as I said I wouldn't provide support to iPhone users, I bought an iPad mini. So, never say never, I guess :) .

Anyway, many of you have told me that your favorite resource that you learned about from my blog is Mendeley. Well, Mendeley does have their own iPad app, but it crashes and is relatively useless. But thankfully, another developer picked up on the need for such an app, and here it is! Papership is a free app that allows you to download and sync all of your Mendeley library back and forth from your iPad to your computer (and other devices).

Papership logo

This free app allows you to open, re-organize, and highlight files for your references. And it keeps your files in the folders that you have them in your library, or you can re-organize them to your liking.

Read your PDF's using the in-app viewer!

You can pay for additional annotation tools such as notes and drawings (they offer the tools separately for different price points, or as a package for $9.99). And the best part is, the annotations are compliant with the PDF standard, so you should be able to view them in other places as well! I haven't downloaded these yet, so I can't give you a report on whether or not they were compliant for my documents.

Additional annotation tools are available for purchase through the in-app store.

I should note that this app is also available for the iPhone. Click here to go to the App Store and download it today!

StudyDroid - Flashcards on your Android phone

www.StudyDroid.com

Its about time I published a post about a smartphone app. I just so happen to be studying for comprehensive exams for my program. I have never been one to use flash cards, but I'm going to try it out for this exam. Anyway, I didn't want to bother with keeping up with a set of index cards, so I decided to try out an app for my Android phone. I looked at a few apps, namely StudyDroid, FREE Flashcards Helper, and AnkiDroid Flashcards.

I first tried AnkiDroid, but it would freeze on my phone. I liked its features, especially the way that it is responsive to what cards you need to study more or less. You can rate each card as you answer them, and decide whether you know that card, need to see it more, or less. It also has a desktop interface, so entering new cards seems relatively painless. The problem with the app, as I said above, is that it kept freezing on my phone (Android version 2.3.7), so I moved on.

I tried this app but it kept freezing on my phone.

I looked at the FREE Flashcards Helper, but it didn't have the same cool features, and the design seemed a bit too simple for what I wanted.

Then I tried StudyDroid. It works great on my phone, has a simple to use interface, but still has the kinds of features I was looking for.

StudyDroid - Screen shots

It has a browser based account, so you can create cards from your computer and sync them with your phone. Also, you can upload a CSV file (aka, an Excel file) to create your flashcards. This app also has the feature to mark whether or not you know a card. It doesn't have as many options as AnkiDroid, but still gives you the option to mark "known" so it puts that card at the back of the pile. You can also shuffle your cards, or turn them all over. I downloaded the free version, but might buy the paid version because it offers a quiz feature.

This is the app I decided to keep.

So, if you are studying for comprehensive exams, or just need an easy to use flashcards app, I suggest this one! If you are an iPhone user, sorry I can't offer any advice!