One of the things I love about my iPhone is the Kindle app. Today I learned that there were many holds ahead of me for the book "This book is overdue." Instead of waiting in line I searched and downloaded it on to my Kindle app in just a few seconds. Yes, I could have waited for the actual printed book version, but this meets my needs, and I don't have to carry around a heavy book. I'm not alone in this practice. Amazon reported that last year they sold more e-books than printed books. This has implications for libraries. I'm not saying that the demise of the book is upon us, but that there is a surge toward more online information easily accessed on a mobile device.
In addition to kindle, here is a list of the types of apps I have on my phone and how I've changed doing things:
- To Do - I can write & store notes with my finger
- Calendar - Syncs automatically my work Outlook calendar & my family Google calendar
- Twitterific for Twitter, which I use quite a bit for professional development
- Facebook, where I connect with my family much more now than before. They post photos of their kids, share links to videos, link to their blog posts, etc.
- Cleartune tuner instead of a separate device to tune my trumpet
- DrBelotte (metronome) instead of having a separate metronome
- Flycast, Pandora, iTalkLite, Public Radio - easy access to radio stations across the country, & I can create my own station with music I like
- Voice Memos - quick voice recorder for taking notes. I've even used it for quick practice session recordings
- iBone - This one is just for fun. You move the onscreen trombone slide to change pitches. One guy actually videotaped himself turning on a jazz tune on his phone's iPod, opening iBone and playing changes over the jazz tune. He uploaded the whole thing to You Tube.
- Visible Vote - I can easily see who has voted for what
- Take me to my car - for those of us who are directionally challenged
- Google voice recognition - I can speak search terms instead of typing them.
- CardStar - By inputting my library card # and type of barcode, I can now use my cell phone to check out books.
- RSS feed reader - When I find myself with a few minutes on my hands (like at the Dr's office) I open this and check out the latest postings. From here I can easily e-mail posts of interest
1 comment:
I'm on the Android platform. There I use the mobile Evernote in order to save web pages I find. Also I have an app called Book Mobile that allows me to scan in an ISBN or type it in manually. These books are saved in "My Library" which I use as a reading list. Bringing up a specific book allows me to connect to Google Books or LibraryThing.
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