Apps and More

I have really gotten attached to my IPAD.  It has some really neat apps and I thought I would share a few before I get back to chatting about Excel.

If you are buying the IPAD as a reader, I have to tell you that in my opinion, ibooks is terrible. The book selection is poor. The good news is that you can download for free the Kindle App. You can buy your books from Amazon and with a click it downloads it to your IPAD. Amazon as I am sure everyone knows has a broad spectrum of EBooks.

If you are looking for news- there is tons of stuff. NPR News, CNBC, CNN, NYTimes, Teh New Yorker and the WSJ  all have apps so you can read their material when you are in a wifi area.

Flipboard is an absoutely cool app as it set up in  a magazine format and you can flip through the news, facebook updates, magazines that it allows you to select from. You can mix your social media, images and news all in one place. And it is FREE.

I am not a huge game player but a couple of the word games have me hooked. These are all free by the way.
My absolute favorite is Iassociate.
iAssociate is a word association game, where the goal of the game is to guess which words, or phrases, are associated to the other words in the game. Every word is associated to at least two other words, and the associations are meant to be things that you come to think of upon hearing the word. The first level is easy and fun and then it just gets harder and more frustrating as the levels go up but I am hooked- I have made it through almost all of the free levels and have actually bought the next level. This is totally addicting!

Fling is an absolutely cool game that my daughter introduced me to awhile back and I used to play on my ipod touch. You fling colored fur balls around the screen. You have to get them off the screen by bouncing them off one another. The first level or two is a yawn and then it gets interesting.  You really have to strategize.

Three more traditional games are:
Whirly World presents you with a a wheel containing 6 letters. It is your job to come up with as many word combinations as possible in a minute. 

Scrambe CE is similar to boggle. You have 16 letters and you have to drag or tap the letters to form words. You can play it solo or online.

Words with Friends is playing scrabble with  a friend. You can play with someone you know or pick someone randomly that is online searching for a partner. This game can be frustrating as you have to wait sometimes for a couple of hours or a day to finish a game depending on how quick your opponent is. This game requires wi-fi to play.

Now you know what I do with my free time!

There are a lot of games and other apps out there so check them out if you have an IPAD or Iphone. They can be particularly handy if you sitting in an airport as they all work offline -except for Words with Friends.
These are just my opinions but since everything is free - it is easy to check them out for yourselves.
Have a great Labor Day and next next week I will get back to blogging about Excel.

Patricia

IPAD Tip- Organizing Your Apps

Hi All
I was at the Maroon 5 &Train concert last night. It took place at Conseco Fieldhouse instead of at the State Fair grounds due to the Fair stage collapse earlier this week. It was an absolutely  fantastic show but what was truly impressive was the  fact that every single thing was donated- the FieldHouse, the band's performances and most impressive - all the workers. Every person working there including the ushers, stage hands and concession workers donated their time so that all funds could go to the Indiana State Fair Remembrance Fund. Hoosiers are a truly phenomal group of people.

If you are like me and have screen after screen of IPAD apps, consider organizing them. It is very easy-simply select an app
(press on it until it starts to shimmy)and then drag it on top of another app and the IPAD will create and put the apps in a box that you can name. Then just keep dragging apps into it. (To get it to stop shimmying- press the Power button once).
I now have a nice box of  Card Games and another nice box of Word Strategy Games.  Next week I will share 2 or 3 of my favorite game apps that you might want to consider downloading for your "free time" and then I will get back to Excel tips.
I hope that you have all had time to check out my new site Excel-Diva.com. We will be adding more materials to it and hopefully a few more videos shortly.

Have a great Friday and an even better weekend.

Introducing Our New Sister Site- Excel-Diva.Com

Check out our new site at Excel-Diva.com.

We had quite a few requests from Non-CPA business people for the same high quality Excel EBooks that we were selling on CPASelfstudy.com so we decided to create a site for them.

The quality of the Excel EBook sand the step by step instructions  are the same; however, since these courses do not need review questions, exams, certificates and state accountancy board approvals etc, we can offer them a  significantly lower price.

So, if you are a CPA and have been using our courses, you might want to consider these for some of your employees.  If you are in numbers oriented business position, you should also consider taking a look at these EBooks.  They offer step-by step instructions and most include exercise files to work through and answer files. Best of all, if you don't understand something you can email me with your questions or comments. If you are looking for a group rate, just email me at either patricia@excel-diva.com or patricia@cpaselfstudy.com


We will be adding additional EBooks and videos over the next couple of weeks.

More Useful Programs - DropBox and SnagIt

Below are two other programs that I have found very useful. Again, these are my personal opinions and I have no affiliation with either company and I am NOT receiving any referral fee etc. If you have found some other useful programs let me know. I would love to try them out. 

DropBox
Another program that I have been using for about a year is Dropbox.  You can use drop box a couple of different ways.  I can take files on my computer and put a copy in the Dropbox application on my computer. Once the file has been put in the DropBox on your computer - they are then available to you on the web.
How cool is that?   Dropbox also says that it works with mobile devices such as the Blackberry however I have not yet tried that.

You can also upload files to Dropbox.com and give share privileges so that others can access files.  This is a lot more useful than emailing multiple people a file or files. You can even upload a folder.
 People with share privileges can view the files, download the file or the entire folder. It is much easier to keep track of files this way - particularly if you are updating them all the time.  Also, if the files you are sending are too big to email this is an alternative. 
I really like this program because I was getting tired of sorting through my flashdrives to find a file- of course if you don't have an Internet connection then this would not be too helpful - I learned this the hard way when on my last vacation I ended up being without internet service for a few days (always have a Plan B!).
I tend to go the low cost way when looking for programs so dropbox met that criteria since it is free if you are storing 2G or less. Of course, if you want more storage than that, they have a monthly pricing structure. If this sounds interesting to you check out http://www.dropbox.com/

SnagIt
I have used SnagIt for years. It is a screen capture program. You can capture an entire window or just a piece of it. You can add text and arrows if you want.You can then save the image as a file or to the clipboard.   You can get a 30 day free trial but you have to buy it after that. I have tried other screen capture programs and have always come back to this one so even though it costs about $50, I personally think it is worth it if you doing a lot of screen captures. http://www.techsmith.com/snagit/features/win/

Useful Software Programs

Do you like the new design of the blog? If you didn't notice, don't feel bad- it is not that different.
I have been working away on my new Excel Site called Excel-Diva.com however it is not quite ready yet. I will tell you more about it later in the week when everything on the site is actually working. There is nothing more irritating then clicking on a button that takes you nowhere.

Right now, I want to talk to you about some different software programs that I have been using. These are my personal opinions. I have not accepted any fee etc for these recommendations.  Between traveling and getting an IPAD, I have been using a lot of different software and Apps so I just throught I would share a few with you that I have found useful.

These two software programs relate to sending/uploading files.

First, if you are sending a lot of files - particularly large ones consider a zip file. The person receiving the file will certainly appreciate it. Also, a lot of mail systems now will not send large files.
I have used WinZip for years and have never had any problems with it. Winzip compresses your files and you can send a group of files or even folders in a compressed .zip format. You can also turn the zip file into an executable file so that the receiver only has to double click on it and the files all extract. You can password protect the .zip file and .exe files. You can also extract or add files into a compressed file.
So, if you have not used a zip file check it out. They offer a 30 day free trial which is always nice.
http://www.winzip.com/win/en/index.htm

The downside to the .zip and .exe file is that some firewalls will not accept them. In those cases or in cases where my .zip files is still too big for my mail system, I use YouSendIt.
I just started using this program about 2 months ago and have been very pleased with it. They have a totally free subscription and then of course they have the enhanced versions. I started out with the free subscription but I did move up to a paid subscription simply because I wanted to send multiple files at one time. You can send files to people and see when they have downloaded the files. You can upload files and share them with others. If you are interested check them out. http://www.yousendit.com/compare-plans?incid=topNavPlansSignUp_txt


That's it for now. Later, I will tell you about some cool IPAD apps.