The 15-app hitlist for Kindle Fire

I’ve now had my Kindle Fire forever for enough days to figure out what’s great and what’s not. Here’s my run-down of the apps I consider must-have.

1. WiFi Analyzer: Locate the strongest network connections around you, then you can go into your Settings panel to connect to an open network.
2. HootSuite: Update Twitter and Facebook from the same place (even multiple profiles if you have em), and you can set it up to give you notifications of mentions!
3. Wikidroid: Wikipedia, formatted perfectly for mobile. Help kids answer those tricky homework questions, like when was the First Sino-Japanese War, What was the Soyuz TMA-22, and why Demi Moore leave Ashton Kucher?
4. SketchBook: Release your inner artist!
5. Angry Birds: Need I say more?
6. iStoryBooks: Full color picture books, with a rotating selection in both fiction and non-fiction, and it will read them to your kids. Out loud.
7. Grocery iQ: Create and save grocery lists for different stores, it sorts your lists by section (produce, dry goods, dairy). Check things off as you find them so you can easily see what you missed. Email lists to hubbs, create lists online… It’s awesome.
8. Evernote: I’ve been told that once I get used to it I won’t be able to live without it. Maybe I’m just not that sophisticated. It is handy for keeping track of notes, lists, and such. And you can sync it with an online account.
9. ES File Explorer: Want to be able to see your files (documents, pictures, other downloads) in a PC-like folder format instead of the Fire’s bookshelf? Use this.
10. Hulu+: You’ll need the subscription from Hulu+ to be able to use it, but the app itself is free. And it works. Watch streaming video of your favorite shows. They say you can watch movies on it too, but I double dare you to find a decent movie on the system.
11. Netflix: Again, if you have the subscription, you’ll be able to use the free app. Now this does have good movies, but only the ones that are available to Watch Instantly (very limited selection). And you’ll need to be on a strong network, since the content is streaming.
12. The Weather Channel: I think this comes already loaded. But, click on the hourly forecast and you’ll know exactly when the rains are coming.
13. AllReciples.com Dinner Spinner: Tell it some basic info, and it’ll find suggestions for what to cook based on your input. Don’t be fooled – it isn’t just dinner. We’re talking beverages, desserts, breads – the whole shabang.
14. ESV Bible: Who needs to lug around a giant Bible when you can have it instantly on your phone? For free. The app lets you highlight, bookmark, and make notes. If you’re looking for a different language, or different version than ESV, try YouVersion – most of the same functionality, and with tons of options. I’ve tried their Romanian, Russian, and English Bibles.
15. Pulse: It’s one of the apps that comes on your Fire pre-loaded. But make sure you customize it. Get rid of the stuff you don’t use and add the things you’ll read. Great place to find all your news in one spot.

Kindle Fire review from a mom’s point of view

Birthday is next week, but hubbs couldn’t wait to give me my gift. As soon as he saw the box, he said I needed to open it. Which I did. And oh, is it beautiful! There were 2 boxes, to be fair. One was the Kindle Fire, and then other was the Marware pink case.

I spent much of the evening playing with it, and it distracted me a little today from other things, so I’ll tell you what I found!

Size: It’s perfect. It fits nicely in my purse, which something like an iPad wouldn’t. It’s big enough to read and type comfortably, but not so big that it’s inconvenient. However it does not fit in my pocket, and I was quite sad that I had to leave it at home today when I walked down to the kids’ bus stop. Didn’t have enough hands for coffee, Kindle, and helping little hands with heavy bags. Maybe I could engineer myself a pocket big enough…

Screen: I have to admit, I really like the regular Kindle’s paper-like screen. That makes reading on an e-reader really comfortable, but the Fire has a regular smart-phone type (LCD) screen, complete with glare. Can’t really expect anything else to get the quality color display though. It attracts fingerprints like a magnet, just like any smart phone (or tablet) screen would. It doesn’t really impede reading, unless you were going to try to read Anna Karenina in one sitting or with funky lighting. Setting the screen to sepia helps.

Reading: The touch screen controls are easy to use, but maybe too easy. I found myself accidentally tapping the screen while holding it, and then it would turn the page for me – when I wasn’t ready to turn. I suppose that will just take some getting used to. And from people with other e-readers, I’ve heard that many people really like the audible page turns. The Fire doesn’t seem to have that (unless it’s a setting I haven’t found yet). I love that when I’m reading I can double-click a word and it references the dictionary for me. Super handy. We already know that Amazon Kindles don’t let you use non-Kindle ebooks, and the Fire is no different. All in all, it’s comfortable, but if my primary goal was purely to read, I’d rather have a regular e-reader. But since I needed something for all the apps, the Fire is perfect for me.

Apps: And speaking of apps, let’s get to those. It’s built on the Android platform, but Amazon directs you to their app store instead of the full Google Andoid app store – Amazon currently allows about 10,000 of the 200,000 android apps. My hope is that they’ll increase their offerings or open up regular Google apps to the Fire. Some of the apps I’ve downloaded and used are: HootSuite, Evernote, GroceryIQ, Angry Birds (essential, don’t you know?), Hulu plus, ESV Bible, and Netflix. There’s no geo-location so location based apps like FourSquare aren’t really an option. And there’s no camera, so forget about QR code readers, barcode scanners, or Instagram. That said, the only app I’ve looked for and not found is Pinterest. And how can a girl survive without Pinterest? Oh, yeah. They have a website I can access on the Safari browser. I suppose I’ll live (but Amazon peeps, hint hint: we want pinterest!) The touch screen is really responsive and makes everything work like ‘butta’. Hubbs synced my email, so I can pretty much do all my work on the Kindle (as long as I have Wi-Fi).

Kid stuff: As I mentioned, the touch screen is really easy to use, and there are plenty of game and learning apps available. My kids can’t wait to get their grimy fingers on Angry Birds. That said, the purpose of the Fire is for my work, and I don’t anticipate putting it in their hands. Call me scrooge, but that’s just the way it is. Now, were things different and I needed them to be entertained, I actually think this machine is way better than an iPad. It’s smaller for their little hands and little laps – easier for them to manage. The investment is smaller (i.e., it’s less painful when they scratch or otherwise maim it). They can watch movies or videos on it, and it has plenty of fun apps. Fewer buttons and moving parts than other tablets also means fewer things to break.

Other techie stuff: Hubbs tells me that the battery is “only” 8 hours. So far, I’ve had no issues with battery power, and I can’t imagine that I’d need it for 8 hours straight without a power outlet. As far as speed, downloads and operating speed have been mostly great. Every now and then there’s a little lag, but I don’t know if that’s my wireless network or the Fire. The seamless integration between the device and the cloud really is super-quick.  Speakers. It has them – two, to be exact. They work just fine, and you can get audio up to a decent level, but this machine wasn’t built for top of the line stereo listen-like-you’re-there sound. Finally, there’s one big drawback – only one, but it’s relatively big. There’s no 3G. That means I need to have WiFi to use most of the apps – at least the ones I use for work. Some tablets have a workaround where you can set up your phone as a WiFi hotspot, and the Fire doesn’t do that. So there’s really no 3G. Now, most of the places I would want to use it will have WiFi. But it looks like in the places that don’t I’ll have to pull out my teeny-tiny smartphone. Oh, what a rough life I live…

Summary: The controls are intuitive, it’s easy to use, and very comfortable. There’s no camera, geo-location, or 3G – so if that’s important look elsewhere. But if you’re looking for a cross between an e-reader and a tablet minus the extras, this is a great little machine.  I’d have to say that it’s more tablet than e-reader, and probably for that reason exactly it suits my needs perfectly.

Update: Check out this post of my 15 favorite Kindle Fire apps.

Last minute homemade gifts

This post was meant to be posted about a year ago… Oops. Anyhow, I found myself at Christmas needing to make gifts for my brother and his wife. My budget was low, time was low, but I had little hands to help. So we made these:

They’re wine glass charms. I went to the local beading shop and told the lady what I wanted to do. She set me up with the wire and showed me how to bend it, then I collected different colored beads from around the store. I think I ended up spending about $12 and made a dozen charms. Well, scratch that. My kids made a dozen charms. I mostly delegated and coached…

Customer Service Feedback

Dear folks in the service department at Billy Howell Ford (Cumming, Georgia):

It was so nice to receive your check in the mail today for $124.42. It would have been even nicer had it come with an apology for the initial swindle. See, we were skeptical from the start when you quoted us over $1900 for a repair that any legitimate shop would have done for $1300. I suppose we didn’t get off to a good start.

But then, when we told you not to do the repair – just fix the brakes to make the car driveable to the next service shop – you charged us for parts that you never installed in our car. When we called to inform you of the discrepancy, you failed to feign the slightest bit of surprise – cluing us in to the likelihood that this wasn’t an isolated incident. I imagine you do this often. Nor did you offer an apology. Who knows? Maybe your car sales aren’t doing so well in this economy so you need to develop other revenue channels. I sympathize. Really, I do. I just don’t think lying, cheating, and stealing are good business practices.

You can be double-dog sure that you’ll never see me again.

To the decent, honest mechanics and car-people in the world:

I know you exist. But where are you hiding? Curious minds want to know.

To everyone in the north Atlanta vicinity:

Avoid the service shop at Billy Howell Ford. They’ll eat you for breakfast if you give ‘em the chance.

How $1.10 saved my sanity

On a whim on Saturday I took the whole family to a garage sale. It isn’t something we normally do – I can’t handle the chaos of a garage sale with hubbs in the background rolling his skeptical eyes, Bruiser doing his best to break everything, and Little Man and Bean playing the “I want that!” game. But Saturday I gave in. There were a couple tweens waving signs and I was hooked.

I walked away from the garage sale with a spiderman costume that Little Man has hardly taken off since Saturday, and a plastic dinosaur with moving parts – I think it’s a t-rex. And this.

Watch how Bean pushes Bruiser ever so gently on the swing.

See why I love it? Bean comes home from Kindergarten and takes her books out to the swingset. She reads them on the swing on or on the little picnic bench on the side. The kids love, love, love it. I don’t know how I survived without it.

And I can’t believe they just let me drive up, dissemble it, and take it away – for free. It was a great garage sale, and I’m so happy with my $1.10 expense.

Free shoes? I’m in!

Everyday Mommy is hosting an Easy Spirit shoe giveaway! They’re super cute wedge clogs, so go check them out. She’s giving away not one pair, but two!

Best of luck to Mudlark all of you!

Minivan-mom-to-be

Our family is expanding. Quickly. In a few weeks my in-laws will be moving in with us, and in the spring baby #3 is due. So it looks like we’re about to switch from the cool-mom-crossover-SUV to minivan days. We were at a an unnamed dealership looking at an unnamed minivan when the sales guy tried to ‘woo’ me with chrome wheels – because apparently those will make any minivan look sexy. Something like lipstick on a pig.

So in terms of the feel of the car (remember, I drive the coolest SUV on the road), I think I’m leaning toward a Toyota Sienna. I like the way it drives, and I want all those cool features like dual sliding doors and power liftgate. I was thinking about a Quest, but do you know that Nissan is one of those evil companies that makes you pay more for safety features? It just makes me angry. It tells the consumer that the privileged deserve to be safer than the disadvantaged. All safety features available should come standard. All the time.

Okay, getting off my soapbox now, any minivan owners out there have stellar advice to give me? We’ll probably be looking at a 2006-ish with as many bells and whistles as we can afford. Motherproof is my favorie car review source, but even that has left me confused.

Learning a new language

And it just happens to be the coolest language in the universe! Well, to be honest, it’s not a traditional language. See, I have a new Mac. I’ve always been a PC-kind of girl. Partial to Sonys in fact. Hubby became a traitor switched over to Macs a few months ago and I was resentful for a little while. I mean, how were we going to share files? How could a Mac exist in the house with my precious PC? But then I saw how cool it was. And denial set in.

In spite of the coolness factor, my PC was better. It might not have the functionality. It might not have a built-in camera or quick-release power chord. It might not have super cool slide shows built in and the ability to  run the entire planet from one machine. But it was a PC. And PCs are must more better. they just are. Just because. (Was he the only person in the universe who didn’t understand my rock solid logic?)

And now I’m a traitor too I’ve seen the light.  The graphic rendering and website rendering are out of this world, the ease of use is incredible (to install a program, I just click it and drag it to my Applications folder. done.), Macs are truly the best example of design genius ever created. In fact, they’re so good I think God has a preference for Mac users in his Kingdom. (Okay, stretching it a bit now). But the fact is, I’ve found the most perfect thing ever created. (other than, say, the heavens and the earth – God himself did a pretty good job there.)

Torture

Is there anything worse than shopping for a swimsuit? Wait. Let me rephrase. Is there anything worse than shopping for a swimsuit with 2 toddlers in tow? I’ve had the same (maternity) swimsuit since my first pregnancy. I’ve been wearing in and out of pregnancies. Nursing. And beyond. It’s one of those ‘swim dresses’ that’s great when you’re sunning but awful when it gets wet because there’s a plethora of fabric that takes eons to dry. Now that I’ve lost a considerable amount of weight (and am not pregnant) you could fit me and my oldest child into it together. Fitting, seeing as how I bought and wore it when I was pregnant with her.

Over the past 3 years I’ve eyed swimsuits at summer time. I’ve considered trying one on now and again. But I never had the guts to shed my clothes and squeeze myself into a skimpy non-maternity suit that would show off all the things I’d like to keep hidden. There have been a handful of times that I actually talked myself into trying some on and actually ‘shopping’ for a new suit. That usually lasts through the first suit I try on, then I give up, mortified, defeated, and shamed into returning home to my maternity swim dress.

Last month I found a swimsuit that was a good fit and, if nothing else, hid my tummy well and didn’t reveal baby-nursing cleavage to innocent bystanders. (We won’t talk about what my legs, tushie, and hips looked like though). But it was $78. And let’s face it. $80 for a garment that barely covers my unmentionables and makes me feel like a big brown Bessie is not my definition of a wise purchase. Well, I was at the mall today (which, by the way, if you haven’t read it, check out Mella’s recent post on that fine product of suburbia, the Mall) and I found that suit on sale for 50% off. So now, when I head down to visit my parents in Florida this weekend, I may look like big brown Bessie, but at least I didn’t break the bank for it! (And no, that’s not me in the picture. In fact, I look nothing like that in the suit.)

I’m sure the day will come when I’m not traumatized by swimsuit shopping. Either I’ll be svelte and tall and curvy in all the right places without any cottage-cheesey areas (oh, wait, I’m not tall… I guess that would be someone else), or I’ll just have learned that beauty is really on the inside and there’s no reason to worry about what’s on the outside. Yeah, right. Probably around my 80th birthday.

For the truly spoiled child…

Now, not only can you say that your baby was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but that he was born with a personalized silver spoon in his mouth.

Isn’t that just what the world needs? You can purchase your own at aptly named  Spoil The Baby.

May I just ask… when did spoiling become such a good thing?  Didn’t we get the term ‘spoiled brat’ somewhere? (Please do not take from this that I think every child with a personalized silver baby spoon is a spoiled brat. In fact I don’t know any children with a personalized silver baby spoon. Yours – if he has one – may be a perfectly sweet child…)  But seriously, when did “spoil” become a marketable selling word for retail use?