This week I played with some interesting online gadget and apps that could assist in work and personal activities.
The first gadget I will review is the calendar app at Zoho. I have been looking for a calendar app that will assist me in streamlining my schedule. I have an extremely busy 6 months or so coming up with a variety of deadlines. I also need to coordinate this schedule with different people. Everyone does not need to know every appointment and every deadline but there is some overlap. This is actually the situation that has finally caused me to accept the fact that I must truly begin to integrate the technology available into my everyday life. Otherwise I will be printing off dozens of pieces of paper, creating too many files to track, and generally have more difficulty organizing and maintaining my busy schedule.
This calendar app will generally fit the bill for my needs. It allows me to easily create events over multiple months. It synced with the ical app on my laptop and all calendars are exportable (if that's a word) to others with the use of the url. It has many features and other Zoho apps coordinate with it. These apps include both personal and business uses. I did find the site a little difficult to navigate and had to back track several times to create the calendar and look I wanted. I did not see the ability to search in the help section or anywhere for that matter. This would be an extremely helpful item for me.
The second gadget I played with was Fotoflexer. This seems to be a really fun app. It offers many options for editing photos, many more than any standard picture program I have worked with at least. Options available include:
Basic - just what it says - cropping, basic color editing...
Effects - includes retro, blur edges, cartoon, film grain...probably over 20 different options
Decorate - includes stickers, text, borders, grab color (this was a super nifty option that takes the color from the photo and allows you to use it elsewhere)
Animations - adding in animated stars, lovies, and stickers
Beautify - fix blemishes and smooth wrinkles! Yes I gave my Facebook picture a facelift just to see - was quite fun!
Distort - includes twirl, bulge, stretch
Layers - includes opacity, duplicate
Geek - I would have to spend some time to understand these options - smart scissors, smart color...
I would definitely use this site again. I can see uses for personal - making cards, invitations, announcements; as well as work - creating visual aids, making programs, reports and presentations.
All in all a good assignment. I'm looking forward to working with these tools!
