toggl.com - Time tracking without taking up time to track it

www.toggl.com

Have you ever looked back on your day, having so many items on your to-do list still not completed, and wondered where all your time went? Or do you feel that you might be giving more time to a project than it needs? Or do you have a job where you want to easily complete your timesheet and export it to your boss or client? Then Toggl might just be the tool you need!

Toggl helps you keep track of your time with a simple click of a button. You can access your account across platforms (e.g., on your computer desktop, on your mobile phone, on your tablet, on any browser with an internet connection). It's available for Android, iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Windows.

You can export your tracked time in a spreadsheet format, or you can have it e-mailed. You can even e-mail it to yourself once a week!

How much does this cost? Nothing! You can even make your account via your Google account. There is an option to get more features for $5/month. You can even track your time as "billable" or "non-billable".

Finally, be sure to watch these two videos, which are about 1 minute long each, to get the hang of how to use it.
http://youtu.be/xc_Z19pWllQ
http://youtu.be/8hdCOnW6oH0

Then, download it on your devices, and get ready to open the black box containing the information about where all your time went! For instance, I just spent about 5 minutes researching and downloading Toggl, then about 10 minutes writing this blog post. Easy as pie!

Coffitivity - Just the right sounds to spark your creativity

http://www.coffitivity.com

This is an innovative - and scientifically supported - app/website that gives you just enough ambient sound to spark your creativity! It is a steady stream of just the right volume and type of sound to replicate a coffee shop atmosphere. The science behind it suggests that creative, abstract processing occurs most often in a moderate sound atmosphere (around 70 decibels) versus low (50 db) or high (85 db).

You can download the app for Mac, iPad, or iPhone, or just stream it right from their website. The iPhone/iPad app is $1.99, but the stream from their website is free.

Here's the link to the journal article that supports their product: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048

So if you can't make it to your favorite coffee shop, or you just want the right amount of sound to ease you into some productive working time, check it out!

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!

CloudOn - The best app for Microsoft Office on iPad

http://site.cloudon.com/

It seems that my technology time has been mostly spent fiddling with my new iPad mini. Of course, with that comes the need to open, edit, and save Microsoft Office documents. So, here's another app - and it is a cross-platform app, meaning that you can use it whether you have Android or iOS. As a newbie iPad user, I figured that the Apple developers would surely be able to make a decent Microsoft Office app with decent compatibility with the Windows Microsoft Office. So I opened and edited a document using the "Pages" app. Much to my chagrin, the compatibility was horrible, and it ruined the formatting on a table I was editing. This caused me to have to re-write the entire document, because of course it saved over my original, unscathed document.

Unsatisfied with all of the "top 10 apps for Microsoft Office on iPad" lists, I decided to go for the more direct approach. Through a lucky search, I found an app called CloudOn. It is WONDERFUL and I will tell you why. First, I was able to open, edit, and save that same document mentioned previously, but this time with NO compatibility issues. And it was effortless to save back to my DropBox account, unlike the Pages app which required a few un-intuitive, manual steps.

One of the best things about the CloudOn app is that it looks and feels just like Microsoft Word. Here's a screen shot to prove it:

As you can see, it has the familiar "ribbon" navigation at the top. Plus, it improves your keyboard selections to include alternate keys such as CTR, ALT, and all the F-keys!

Also, CloudOn automatically saves your file as you modify it, and you can see an ongoing list of when you made revisions. Plus, you can "track changes" and make in-document annotations, just like you would in Microsoft Office on Windows.

On the left, you see the ongoing list of revisions and annotations. On the right, you see where you can annotate and track changes using the "Review" ribbon.

Also, you can easily access any file in your cloud storage, including popular ones like DropBox and Google Drive.

A screen shot of what it would look like if you were browsing your DropBox through the CloudOn app. No need to hit "save", as CloudOn automatically saves and syncs back to your cloud!

Last, but certainly not least, a great thing about this app is that it is FREE! It does have additional features available if you buy the Pro version. I've only used the app once, so I can't say whether the Pro upgrade is necessary, but I had no problems opening and editing my document in the free version.

This post is just about the Microsoft Office option in the app because that's all that I've used so far. But it was so good that it inspired me to hop on here and write you a blog post about it! It also works with Microsoft Excel and Powerpoint, plus other document types like PDF's. If the rest of the document types are anything like Word, then I guarantee that you will not need any other app for your Microsoft Office document management needs!!

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!

Evernote - There's an app to keep your brain together

Evernote.com - "Remember everything!"

Let me tell you a story of a first-year doctoral student who, when researching for papers and presentations, would go to the library for 1 book and come back with 12. You know how it is, when a title grabs your attention, and you're craving new knowledge, you want as many sources as possible! So, this book collecting started to get overwhelming. Plus, that student didn't have enough time to read all the books that she grabbed. She wanted to keep track of the books that caught her attention so that she could go back to them later. But, her arms were full whenever she went to the library, or perhaps all she had with her was her smartphone, so it was hard to create a reliable list of these books of interest. Enter: the app called Evernote! She began using Evernote to keep track of the books that caught her eye but wasn't yet ready to pick up. She could take a picture of the book and the table of contents so she could remember what interested her, then save the picture in a note in her Evernote notebook called "Books to Read". She could even tag the note with its relevant topic. The organization of this new method was wonderful! It was life-changing, because a new doctoral student has a lot of things to keep track of, and new sources of information is important but sometimes unwieldy. This method of organization was great because no matter if she had her hands full or if she just had her phone with her, she could still keep track of what was important.

A photo I captured of a book I found interesting but was not yet ready to check-out from the library.

My on-going list of sources to look into in the future.

Once I started using Evernote for this type of organization, I started seeing other uses for it. I could take notes in class and attach relevant documents as I typed. I could easily access those notes later no matter if I had my own computer with me, or if I was just using my phone, or at a hotel conference using a public computer.

Ta-da!

The best way to keep track of all your random notes to yourself, notes from meetings/classes, to-do lists, and more, is to use Evernote. It is a web-based platform that allows you to create notes, organize them into notebooks and stacks of notebooks, and share them with other people. Not only can you save notes that you write, but you can also attach documents, images, and links, too.

Evernote also has a desktop program that runs just like its web-based platform does, except you can use it when you are offline, and it will sync back to your online account when you're back on the internet.

Desktop version.

Evernote also has an app for smartphones (Android and iPhone) and tablets (Android and iPad). You can do everything in that app that you can in the web-based platform and the desktop software.

Screen-shots from the mobile version.

All-in-all, whether you are a student or a professor or a clinician, this app can be a life-saver for your organizational woes. It is free to use, but you can also pay for the premium version which gives you full access to all your notes when you are offline.

Evernote has tons of other cool add-ons, such as a foodie app:

Screen-shots from the mobile version of Evernote Food.

It also has a web-browser add-on that I use a lot, called Web clipper. It "clips" information from websites and stores that information in an easy to read format in your notebook. I use it whenever I want to remember a website, but not just the URL - I also want to remember why I wanted to remember that website, so I include content as well. It's also helpful to clip user guides or tutorials so you can have them on-hand later without having to navigate back to the same page over and over again.

Screen-shot of the webclipper add-on.

So, the final word on this Evernote thing is that its free, its easy to use, and it has so many useful applications that you can't go wrong to at least try it out.