Following on from our recent lightning talk, Jamie Davies-Morgan, has shared his top gadgets and productivity apps to make 2015 that little bit easier for time thirsty individuals. Click the titles if you want to see the links..
The days of paying thousands to have websites and apps designed are gone. Como has developed a do-it-yourself, mobile-app authoring platform, which lets anyone build their own professional app, without having to hire coders, programmers, or anyone else.
“If This Then That” (ifttt.com) is a web service that combines many other web apps into one place which can then perform actions given a certain set of criteria. Here are just a few examples:
- Automatically tweet your favourite blog updates;
- Get a Text alert when you receive an email from someone important; or
- Automatically post a tweet asking your wife to get beer, if the temperature goes above X Degrees.
The website has a never ending list of recipes you can use to put the internet to work for you - and best of all no need for coding!
This is essentially a high quality surveillance camera that can be accessed via a smart phone app, useful to keep an eye on your pet or perhaps a second home! They can be set to record continuously, notify you when there is movement inside a property, or just as a live stream for you to check as a when you want. They also provide two way audio, so you can hear what’s going on, and your voice can be heard from the camera’s speaker too.
If you need to do surveys , or ask for feedback after an event, think about Care to tell. This uses a digital data collection method- so no more incorrect email addresses and phone numbers with digits missing! This is thanks to the data validation that’s built in at the point of collection. It even collects analytics like how long each person took to complete the survey, their location at the time, and free insight tools.
There are countless uses for this sort of application, and the fact that a whole team can collate all their data into one repository really increases productivity and efficiency.
Socialmention.com is a social media search engine. It enables you to search all social platforms for keywords on your brand to give a comprehensive overview of what is being said online. It provides you with a ratio of positive/negative sentiment, the number of ‘mentions’ of your business, how many unique authors there were and what keywords are associated with your search term, plus loads more!
I can't really put it better than the company have themselves so in their own words:
‘Buffer is a new and smarter way to share what you want to share on Social Media. What it does is simple. You add updates to your Buffer queue and it will be posted for you well spaced out over the day - and at the best times.
It’s like your magic box you can use anytime to fill with great Tweets, Facebook stories or LinkedIn updates. Just drop them in and you don't have to ever worry about when it will be posted, it’s all taken care of by Buffer for you.’
You've all seen the advert, (and probably got the song stuck in your head now!), but there are some really cool features with this device. Hive Active Heating lets you control your heating anywhere and anytime from your mobile, tablet and or the web. It allows you to turn your heating on and off, set your heating schedule and adjust the temperature. Download the Hive app for free and it lets you set your schedule and temperature alerts. If you don't have a smart phone you can use text messages to control your heating.
Hopefully these apps have inspired you to think smarter about how you carry out everyday tasks in your work and home life.
They have undoubtedly helped me.