AndrewRMinion http://minionsformissions.com a web & print design agency Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:00:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 A Few of My Favorite (iOS) Apps http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/07/a-few-of-my-favorite-apps/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-few-of-my-favorite-apps http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/07/a-few-of-my-favorite-apps/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:54:46 +0000 Andrew Minion http://minionsformissions.com/?p=71 A bit of background: I was asked to recommend some iOS apps for somebody recently, so here’s a list of a few of my favorites and how I use them. I have an iPhone 3GS with no contract, so it’s basically a glorified iPod with a camera. And I’m a cheapskate, so I use the free ad-supported version of many apps when I can, and have loads of free apps to do what I need.

Productivity

Dropbox

What it is: Dropbox is a free service that syncs your documents on one device to all the other devices on your account. You can get a free 2GB account here. If you sign up using this link, you’ll get an extra 250MB for free!

How I use it: all my school files, a number of books, study notes, work files, and much more are in my Dropbox folder. I can access them all from my iPhone, and can mark them as favorites so I can see them even if I’m offline!

Price: free!

Evernote

What it is: Evernote is a free service that syncs notes from one device to others. There is a free app for Mac and Windows computers, iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, and much more. All your notes are searchable, and it even recognizes text in pictures that you upload!

How I use it: I keep a devotional journal in Evernote, as well as my collection of articles on many different topics. Info about our car, work projects, phone conversations, and a whole lot more.

Price: free!

Simplenote

What it is: Simplenote is a note-syncing tool. You ask, “Why? Don’t you use Evernote for that?” Yes, I do. Simplenote is faster, lighter, and generally more responsive than Evernote.

How I use it: sermon notes—that’s all. I also have a dashboard widget, and can access them at simple-note.appspot.com as well.

Price: free!

Communication

TweetDeck

What it is: TweetDeck is a service and app that takes several social media streams and combines them so you can keep up with the social world in one place.

How I use it: I much prefer TweetDeck to the official Twitter app on the iPhone.

Price: free!

Skype

What it is: Skype is a communication program that lets you IM chat, call, and videochat with your friends.

How I use it: I honestly don’t use the iPhone app much—it drains my battery life very quickly. But I use the desktop program nearly every day.

Price: free!

Reading

Read It Later

What it is: Read It Later is a service that takes a website, removes the ads and keeps just the main content, and saves it in a list for easy reading. It does a great job at making websites more readable on the iPhone’s small screen especially, and gives a nice consistent look to articles you read.

How I use it: if I run across an article I want to read…later…I use my handy ChromeItLater extension to send it right to Read It Later.

Price: on sale for $2.99 on the iTunes app store at the moment; there is a free version also available, limited to 10 articles.

OliveTree Bible+

What it is: a Bible app with loads of add-on modules and books. I just recently began using it, but it quickly became my favorite app for just reading the Bible.

How I use it: reading the Bible—in English. If I want to look up the Greek or Hebrew text, I use Accordance, since I have a decent library there already.

Price: free!

Stanza

What it is: Stanza is an ebook reader that can open nearly any format of ebook out there, can download them from a URL, or even from an email.

How I use it: reading everything that’s not in Kindle.

Price: free!

Kindle

What it is: Kindle is the free reading app from Amazon. You can buy paid or free books on Amazon.com and send them to your iPhone to read.

How I use it: I read some textbooks and loads of free books in the Kindle app.

Price: free!

Miscellaneous

Mocha VNC Lite

What it is: Mocha VNC Lite is a VNC client for iOS, allowing you to see and control a computer that has a VNC server installed.

How I use it: at work, controlling my computer, TV display computer, etc.

Price: free! (There is a paid version as well.)

Hippo Lite

What it is: Hippo Lite is a wireless keyboard and mouse for your computer. (It requires that your Mac computer have screen sharing turned on, or your Windows computer is running a VNC server.)

How I use it: at work, I use it to control a Mac mini running a TV display, other computers running slideshows, and many other places.

Price: free!

A few other ideas

A couple of other random recommendations that work well for me.

Contacts

My contacts are synced through Google; Address Book on my Mac and my iPhone are in sync, so I can add or modify somebody’s information in one place and have it in the other place. Look here for more information.

Calendars

I also sync my calendars through Google Calendar so iCal on my Mac and the Calendar app on my iPhone have the same events, due dates, etc. More information is available here.

iPad-specific apps

My wife has an iPad and loves it, but I hardly ever use it. She did have a few apps to recommend, but you’ll have to go and look them up yourself for more information about them. iHome Sleep for tracking how much you sleep, and waking you up on time; BigOven for recipes; Flipboard for keeping up with news feeds in Google Reader or other RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter, and much more (highly recommended); and The Weather Channel Max for weather.

Can I get away without mentioning Angry Birds??

Let me know if you have any other suggestions to add to this list!

]]> http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/07/a-few-of-my-favorite-apps/feed/ 0 Editable/Printable Invoice, Version 3 http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/06/editable-printable-invoice-v3/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=editable-printable-invoice-v3 http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/06/editable-printable-invoice-v3/#comments Tue, 07 Jun 2011 12:20:30 +0000 Andrew Minion http://minionsformissions.com/?p=52 Chris Coyier created this wonderful editable, printable invoice a while ago, along with work by Vinh Pham. I needed an invoice system for my business, so I began using his template. I made some tweaks to include my logo and contact information so I didn’t have to add it every time, and tweaked the title to include the date (I’m a nerd and like to file things by year-month-day). I also added a Discount field for those times when I feel like I should give someone a discount, the ability to remove it when they don’t.

I plan on adding a database or some other type of storage function to store post invoices/receipts—that should make it much more useful for a small business or sole proprietorship.

View a demo here, or get the source files on GitHub.

]]> http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/06/editable-printable-invoice-v3/feed/ 0 Don’t Complain! http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/06/don%e2%80%99t-complain/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=don%25e2%2580%2599t-complain http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/06/don%e2%80%99t-complain/#comments Sun, 05 Jun 2011 02:14:07 +0000 Andrew Minion http://minionsformissions.com/?p=48 When I complain, “I’m telling the world that God is a pathetic, disorganized deity who can’t seem to get my life straight. I’m telling a lie about God.”

from page 106 of The Greener Grass Conspiracy: Finding Contentment on Your Side of the Fence by Stephen Altrogge.

]]> http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/06/don%e2%80%99t-complain/feed/ 0 A Work in Progress http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/05/a-work-in-progress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-work-in-progress http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/05/a-work-in-progress/#comments Tue, 31 May 2011 00:30:13 +0000 Andrew Minion http://minionsformissions.com/?p=31 In case you haven’t noticed, this site is a work in progress. I ditched the old theme and started basically from scratch with the Toolbox theme from Automattic. Much of the visual look was inspired by a Tumblr theme called “Catching Elephant.”

I hope you like the new look. If you have any problems or see something that doesn’t seem quite right, please send me a screenshot and let me know.

Keep watching for more updates…

]]> http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/05/a-work-in-progress/feed/ 1 Site Redesign http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/05/site-redesign/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=site-redesign http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/05/site-redesign/#comments Sat, 28 May 2011 19:43:13 +0000 Andrew Minion http://minionsformissions.com/?p=14

I’m not quite happy with this design—it’s the generic default WordPress theme, and it’s too generic, too boring. You may notice small (or large) changes over the next few days and weeks. I’ll be working on it off and on to improve the look of the site overall, as well as adding a few more pages and other stuff.

]]> http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/05/site-redesign/feed/ 0 Hello world! http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/05/hello-world/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hello-world http://minionsformissions.com/blog/2011/05/hello-world/#comments Fri, 13 May 2011 08:06:58 +0000 Andrew Minion http://minionsformissions.com/minion/?p=1 I’ve been gone for a bit, rethinking and working on this site. There’s a lot of tweaking left to do on it, but it’s back now.

I’m shifting the focus of this site to showing work and services that I provide and have done in the past—a portfolio and advertising.

Stay tuned for more updates soon!

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