I often wax evangelical about how much I love the internet and my phone. It’s amazing how much access and power we now carry wherever we go and I’m appreciative every day of how these little pocket rockets make our lives easier. While I have more installed than I’ll probably ever use, here are five apps that I use every day.
This handy app easily lets you clip and keep stuff you find online and pop it in your pocket for later. It’s simple to use and the tagging feature makes it easy to sort and find things later on. Plus the desktop web version looks lovely. I’m sure I could use Evernote for this too, but I like to slip things into my Pocket instead!
Feedly
In the interests of managing email overwhelm, I’ve been hitting ‘unsubscribe’ a lot lately. I’ve moved a lot of my subscriptions (and added a bunch of new stuff) to Feedly instead, which works much better for me. I’ve also set up a couple of feeds with articles relevant to my clients. Now when I have a few minutes I’ll jump in there and scan all the headlines. What interests me I read and/or share, what doesn’t gets marked as read. Sa-moooooth.
Evernote
The keeper of all of the things!! (Including this post, in draft form). I know I’m severely under-utilising Evernote and I’m working on becoming an Evernote ninja. It’s a great tool to capture anything you could imagine: memos, lists, emails, photos, receipts, web clippings — you name it, Evernote helps you manage it. Huge fan!
Google Analytics
One of the early lessons for bloggers is get analytics on your site! And everyone swears by Google Analytics, for good reason: it tells me how many people came to visit, where they came from, if they’ve been here before, how long they were hanging out, which pages they liked best — all sorts of really interesting and useful information (and don’t worry, it’s all anonymous). It’s information that helps me to make sure this is a space where you want to be, so that’s priceless.
WordPress
Because this is a WordPress site, it makes sense to have the app. I primarily use it to read and respond to comments when I’m on the go but it also has a reader function so you can follow WordPress blogs and find new ones too. Whatever platform your site is on, there’s probably an app for it — get on it!
Honourable mention to Gmail too — while I’m always working to not be a slave to my inbox I do love the convenience of being able to pop in when I have a minute, even if it’s to clear out all the deletables so that when I get to a computer I only have important email to deal with.
For me, aside from the obvious social media apps (facebook, snapchat, insta etc) my #1 most used would probably be Shazam.
Being able to click a button and find out the name and artist of whatever track is playing has introduced me to a number of great bands/singers that I otherwise may never have heard of.
Good one!
That’s a great little list. You’re a lady after my own heart – I love to do what I can to make life easier and more fun. Pocket sounds like a great one – I’ll check it out. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Michelle 🙂 Got any favourites that I’ve missed?