23 Mobile Things 2014 #20 Games

Another Fun Thing!

I have TONS of games on my Kindle Fire, downloaded by my teenagers. My daughter is addicted to CandyCrush Saga. It reminds me of my old favorite, Tetris. My son is addicted to Battle Friends and Temple Run. My husband likes Plants vs. Zombies. Since we share the Kindle, I don't get much time to play games. However, I like "Flow Free" where you must connect pipes without crossing them. I hate Flappy Bird and can't get further than the second level.

23 Mobile Things #19 Hobbies

This is my favorite Thing so far! I discovered Spotify
a few months ago and it became my favorite music site (farewell Pandora.)
I am #86 on the library waitlist for Katy Perry's new album "Prism,"
but I can stream the entire album for free any time I want on Spotify.
I wonder if it will stay viable, as it seems too good to be true, and I've
heard that some artists are disgruntled at the low royalties they receive
from Spotify. CDs still circulate at the library (but not as well as a few years ago),
and our library offers free music downloads on Freegal, however music streaming
seems to be the next step that will eventually make them obsolete (free instant
access to any music, or adless with paid subscription, and no files to download
and take up memory storage on your device.) I still like the independence and
permanence of owning music on CD, however.

I tried Wine Secretary for Kindle (similar to Vivino wine scanner) and the collector/librarian in me enjoyed creating a "catalog" database of favorite wines. (I had a notebook with wine bottle labels and ratings to input.) It was easy to search Wine Secretary's database of hundreds of thousands of wines and add to my list of "favorites." I can dictate comments via the microphone.

I've been considering a library Geocaching activity / program. There was not one for the Kindle, one wouldn't have access to Wifi in the "wild." iPad offers Travel Compass Lite Geocaching GPS Location Finder for free, and there were others, but I think an iPhone or Android smart phone would be ideal.

23 Mobile Things 2014 #18 Education

Duolingo is a fun app that uses short games or mini-tests to teach a language. Variety keeps it from becoming boring. I used it to brush up on my German. You can even speak sentences using the Kindle's microphone (found on the "keyboard"). I can see why this app has won many awards. (note to self: schn23 p2 ymail)

iTranslate also allows you to type or speak a phrase with the keypad microphone, and then translate it to another language, both textually and audio! The accents seem authentic (not robotic). I will try to use this when having trouble communicating with a patron who doesn't speak English.

I've tried Khan Academy on desktop computer in the past. I wasn't able to access it on the Kindle Fire.

I looked at math game apps. There are a lot, and there are a lot of "best math apps" lists, so it is hard to choose. (app star ratings are helpful). Parents.com has a list that looks promising. DragonBox 12+ seems to be a top app, but it was $9.99 and who knows if my jr. high algebra student will use it? HCL is developing lists of apps for Early Literacy.

23 Mobile Things 2014 #17 Community

I accessed Minneapolis Star Tribune's "Going Out". It lists events and schedules in the Twin Cities. I was able to bookmark some venues, such as the Guthrie Theater and Park Tavern Bowling schedules. It doesn't have much detail, but often includes links to the venue's website. I wanted to add the MN511 traffic site, but it wasn't available for Kindle (I searched and couldn't find any Minnesota traffic apps for Kindle.)

23 Mobile Things 2014 #16 Audio

SoundCloud is a handy app that turns your device into a tape recorder. I recorded messages on my Kindle Fire. I was going to actually try to post something to Twitter or Facebook, but the policies wanted me to agree that SoundCloud could read my Tweets and other things I wasn't totally comfortable with, so I didn't create an account. You can also listen to other audio (podcasts, songs, etc.) from people, famous or not. The British Library had a collection of bird songs.

23 Mobile Things 2014 #15 Infographics

InfoGraphics Hub is fun for finding visual representations of data on a wide array of subjects.

i Visual Info Touch Lite on the iPad was unimpressive. It was a basic copy of PowerPoint and I doubt it could create any of the sophisticated InfoGraphics seen in InfoGraphics Hub. Maybe the paid version has the "large objects library" described in the 23 Things description? The demo video shows various shapes (did not see in my version), but  only used circles and text. I didn't even see a way to add my own photos. I would just use PowerPoint to create an InfoGraphic.

I did not find any infoGraphics for Kindle Fire in the Amazon app store.

23 Mobile Things 2014 #14 Video

Magisto is a fun app for creating short videos of video clips or jpg pictures. I created a video of pictures, taken on the iPad, of our library used book sale. It added "motion" with interesting picture fade effects and music. I tried to take a video of our guinea pigs on the Kindle Fire, but with a front facing camera it was hard to aim. Luckily Magisto "edited" it by eliminating much of the dead air footage. One "style" was black and white (blah) so a chose another style that was more colorful and interesting.

I tried to get Socialcam for the Kindle Fire, but the Amazon app store offered "Keek" which did not work ("failed to connect to camera.")

Again, I like the control of using a real video camera and video editing software.