Tag Archives: iPhone
Soapbox: My technology pet peeve
Posted on 20. Dec, 2011 by Kenny.
There’s probably no way I can write this post without coming across as a little bit of a jerk… so I apologize and the front end. This isn’t directed to any particular person… but just multiple encounters I seem to have on a weekly basis.
It seems that almost everyone has a smart phone today. That’s probably thanks to the iPhone where a very friendly mobile internet is available to all. With our phones, we have access to almost anything and everything. It’s an amazing time in which we live.
My pet peeve comes from when people with these amazing tools to access almost infinite knowledge ask me questions that no longer seem necessary any more. Obviously, if its something I should know that you don’t know, then ask me. But if it’s one of those things that very few people would know… then for goodness sake, look it up. Google it. Map it.
I know some people with a smart phone that rarely if ever have opened up google maps on their phone. Sometimes they ask me for directions and my response is almost always the same. Don’t you have google maps on that phone of yours? I get asked how to spell stuff all the time. I’m a horrible speller. I think people don’t realize how easy it is to look up a word, even on google. You could probably get the correct spelling faster than asking me, even if I was a good speller. Nine times out of ten, when someone asks me a question like this, I end up looking it up on google. Why? Because I have a smart phone with access to the internet.
Oh, so do you. You’re paying $30-40 a month to have google in your pocket… look it up.
Actually, my wife has gotten very good at this. We talk about all kinds of random topics every day. There was a time when the answer to 6 out of 10 questions she would ask me was “Google it.”
Now we’ll be talking about something random, like who won the oscar in 2003 for best actor and we’ll both reach for our phones at the same time and I’ll say, “Am I looking it up or are you?”
Sorry for being a jerk. If we’re going to talk, let’s talk. But if you just need answers to simple little questions, go talk to Google. 
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App of the Week: Noah’s Memory Match
Posted on 04. Dec, 2011 by Kenny.
Last week I got an email requesting me to review a game for my iPhone/iPad. That’s a first for me. I was sent a free sample of the game and I LOVE IT! Let me tell you about it.
Noah’s Memory Match:
The story of Noah’s ark will be brought to life in your child’s imagination in Noah’s Memory Match. With five levels of difficulty and two games modes your child want to play again and again.
In addition to building memory skills, Noah’s Animal Match builds language skills with the ability to play in both English and Spanish. With high quality voice acting through the entire game, your child will learn the names of animals in both languages.
Features
- Play in English& Spanish
- 5 Levels of Difficulty
- 2 Game Modes (Classic& Time)
- Randomized Gameplay with 15 Animals
- Learn Animal Names in English& Spanish
- Voice Acting Through The Entire Game
This was a first class game developed by Playpen Games, a group of dads who make family friendly games for iOS, Android and Nook Color. If you have a preschooler and one of these devices, you need to download the game. It’s only $.99 which is a fair price for this quality of a game. Titus and I played it at bedtime the day I downloaded it and he LOVED it and laughed and giggled the whole time at all the animals and noises.
Click here to get this game for your iOS device. Click here to visit Playpen Games and see their other games.
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Your ministry needs an app!
Posted on 29. Nov, 2011 by Kenny.
My friend Matt McKee just announced something incredible. It’s called 1000 apps for Christmas. His company, ROAR, is offering 1000 free apps in the next 30 days. That means if you want an app for your ministry, they’ll build it for you for free. All you’ll pay for is the hosting. This is an incredible deal. I’ve seen places where you can get apps for cheap, but in most cases, you get what you pay for. ROAR is different. They build quality apps that are fast, stable and current technology. So, if you’ve been thinking about getting an app for that ministry or program… now’s the time!
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App of the week: Square
Posted on 23. Jan, 2011 by Kenny.
Not everyone is going to need this app, but I must say it is one of the coolest new apps I’ve seen. I was first introduced to it when hearing Bro. Jim and Sam Luce talking about it at an Infuse retreat this summer. It sounded intriguing, but I never checked it out. However, two weeks ago when I was with these two guys again, I saw it in action. Sam Luce paid Bro. Jim $20 by swiping his credit card through a card reader plugged into the earphone connector on his iPhone. What? That was kinda cool.
So, I downloaded the app, verified my bank account and received the free card reader (that’s right, it’s free) and have tested it multiple times. It works on the iPhone, iPod, iPad and even Android devices. Best of all, it’s really simple and really cheap. If you want to receive money from people by card for business reasons or for personal reasons, it’s probably the easiest thing out there. Yeah, maybe even easier than PayPal. No merchant accounts to set up. No monthly fees. Just swipe and you’ll 15 cents for the swipe and 2.75% of the purchase for using Square. Don’t have the card reader with you? No worries… just type in the card number. It will cost you 15 cents and 3.5% of the purchase for using Square. That’s pretty handy.
- Garage sale? You can use Square (I just wouldn’t use it for those items you’re selling for $0.50)
- Piano lessons? Your students can pay using Square (my wife is thinking about this)
- Want to sell shirts or CD’s to kids, parents of volunteers? Set up a table and use Square (you’ll just need to set up Square with a church bank account)
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App of the week: TripIt
Posted on 16. Jan, 2011 by Kenny.
One of the apps I’ve been using pretty consistently for about 9 months has been TripIt. It’s a great little app to manage all your travel arrangements. Since having email on my phone, I would normally email myself my flight itinerary, rental agreements or hotel confirmation numbers just before my trip so that when I got to the airport, I could look up the email and have all the details. TripIt makes your life much easier than managing this stuff through email, or having to print everything out.
When I first started playing with TripIt, I’d just email my email confirmations from the airlines, hotels and rental agencies to plans@tripit.com. From there, it recognizes your email and puts all your travel information into an easy to use display. After seeing how great TripIt is, I just have TripTt scan my email taking out the extra step. This way, as soon as I book my travel, TripIt automatically builds my itenerary. I don’t even have to think about it. In fact, the last two or three trips I went on, I didn’t think about it. It wasn’t until I was getting ready to leave for the airport that I remembered. I just opened up TripIt for the first time in months and presto… it was already there. It really does work as perfectly as you can imagine.
Everything is in order as it happens. Your flight information appears first (because you’re normally heading to the airport first, right?). Then your rental is next followed by your hotel. Without even asking, TripIt will usually give you a map (connected through google maps) with driving directions from the rental car location to your hotel.
Here’s some additional features that make TripIt amazing. You can share your itinerary. So, if I’m traveling with others and they have accounts with TripIt, they’ll get all the same beautiful information. I also found another cool feature a few weeks ago on accident. I was meeting Sam Luce in Birmingham and I needed his flight information. He just emailed me his confirmation. Since it went to my email I have with TripIt, it pulled into my Birmingham itinerary. That’s an easy way to get people’s information into your itinerary who aren’t on TripIt.
So, whether you travel all the time or just a few times a year, check it out. Even if you don’t have a smartphone, you can let TripIt organize all the information in one place and you can print it all out for on the go. Get TripIt here.
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App of the week: Dropbox
Posted on 09. Jan, 2011 by Kenny.
Over a year ago, I wrote about dropbox for the first time. I started using it because my preferred file storage/sharing application (Live Sync) wasn’t playing nice with OS X Snow Leopard. One year later and I’m using dropbox for just about everything. Sorry Microsoft, you took a great application and messed it all up.
Although the app has been available for a long time, I recently just installed dropbox on my iPhone and iPad. Amazing! One of the more frustrating issues I face with my iPhone and iPad is file management. Its like there isn’t really any place to stick documents and things. Usually I resort to emailing them to myself and just opening it up as an attachment (if you know of another file management system for the iPhone/iPad, let me know). However, with the dropbox app, I have instant access to every document and file in my dropbox folder (as long as you have an internet connection). It’s genius really.
So, if you haven’t started using dropbox yet, you really should (click here to sign up) and if you don’t have the app, don’t wait as long as I did. Get it here!
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App of the week: Firefox Home
Posted on 20. Jul, 2010 by Kenny.
So I just found a killer new app. It’s called Firefox Home. I’m a pretty big fan of Firefox and it’s my default browser. I don’t know if any of you are like this, 
but I’ve got tab issues. I like to have lots and lots of tabs open at the same time. When I say lots of tabs, I really mean A LOT of tabs. It’s a problem I certainly need help with, but that’s a different blog post.
So, have you ever been on your iPhone and you can’t remember a site you need to go to that you even have bookmarked on your computer at home? Maybe that page is even open on your computer at the office right now. Wouldn’t it be great to actually easily pull up that page you were looking at yesterday on your home computer on your iPhone? Well, with Firefox Home, you can and it’s pretty impressive.
You have to enable the Firefox Add-On “Firefox Sync” and setup an account. With this Firefox Add-On, you can sync your tabs, history and bookmarks across computers. With the Firefox Home iPhone app, you can have access to all of that data right on your phone. It’s absolutely beautiful!
So, it’s really simple. One page is dedicated to search. Type in any term that may have been on a page you were viewing in the past few weeks and you’ll be quickly given open tabs, history and bookmarks that contain that term. Another page is dedicated to tabs. The tabs are in a list. See one that interests you and it opens up. One more page is dedicated to your bookmarks. I don’t really use bookmarks anymore (which I think is why I have so many tabs open), but they’re all there. The settings page will allow you to sign in and out of your sync account and give you an overview of how many tabs you have open, how many bookmarks you have or how many pages you have indexed in your history.
Just to clarify though. This is not Firefox on the iPhone. Any tab, bookmark or indexed page you click on will simply open that page in a Safari browser within the Firefox Home app. I guess it’s the next best thing to having Firefox on your iPhone.
So, if you use Firefox (and you should) and you have an iPhone, download this free app today.
BTW, I’m laying down another preemptive ban on Smart Alec comments from Jonathan Cliff on how many tabs I have open. This is starting to become a regular thing here.
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App of the week: Settlers of Catan on iPhone/iPad
Posted on 27. Jun, 2010 by Kenny.
I’m a huge fan of the game, “The Settlers of Catan.” Over a year ago Wired Magazine wrote an article about this game called Monopoly Killer that describes how this game and others like it are redefining the board game genre. I’ve been playing Settlers for 6-8 years and I LOVE it. So, I just found out this week that there is an iPhone app where you can play multi-player or just against the computer. I don’t get to play very often, so this app is great for scratching the itch.
I’ll be honest, it’s a little hard to play on the little screen that is my iPhone. However, I think the experience would be considerably different on the iPad. So, if you have an iPad and you’d like to check out a very unique but fun game, pick up the Catan app. The board game actually costs $40, so you might want to try out the digital version first to make sure you’re going to like it.
Check out more on this iPhone app right here.
Oh, but before I leave you though, I saw another bit of Catan goodness. A version of the game has been developed for the Microsoft Surface. We first learned about the Surface 3 years ago and over the years we’ve seen videos and bits of news about it, but nothing widespread. However, playing Catan on the Surface looks unread. Check it out!
If you feel you need to trust me that this is an awesome game, then buy it right here… the real board game version.
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Brand New Orange Leaders App
Posted on 28. Apr, 2010 by Kenny.
Last week I blogged about the new Orange Conference iPhone App. Although I was sworn to secrecy, I knew that another app was in the works that would take it to the next level. Now it’s here, the Orange Leaders App for iPhone and Android. It’s a killer app that goes beyond the conference and links you to all things Orange Leaders throughout the rest of the year. It’s going to be a great tool this year at the conference as it will better manage my schedule than the other app, but it is also socially connected and will allow me to connect with others attending the same breakouts as me.
I highly suggest you go to your phone’s app store and download the app today. Just search “Orange Leaders.” If you like this app and would be curious what an app like this would do for your ministry, check out the architect of this tool here.
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App of the week: Orange Conference App
Posted on 18. Apr, 2010 by Kenny.
How could I not feature this app? Only nine more days until the most anticipated conference for student and children’s ministry and now I have an app to get me even more excited. You can download the Orange Conference Countdown right here.
Have you ever been at a conference talking to someone and they ask you what breakout you’re in next, or you can’t remember what time the next session starts, so you begin digging through your SWAG bag for your official conference notebook with the schedule and the breakout information. Or maybe your conference has the schedule on your lanyard. Either way, you’re digging around through all your Jesus junk and scanning the 5 point font on the back of your lanyard trying to figure out where you were supposed to be like a conference nerd.
This app is your freedom from conference nerdiness!
Now you can know exactly where you’re supposed to be and what breakout is next while browsing this nifty little app. “Is he checking is mail? Is she checking facebook?” Nope, they’re trying to get a clue about what’s next at the Orange Conference. They look so cool, and you can too.
It’s a really simple app. It doesn’t do much more than give you standard information, but this is a huge improvement on anything else done in conference-land.
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