Sleep App Test & Eggplants

I failed miserably trying to use the sleep app over the last couple of days. I promise to start again tonight.

I made vegan eggplant rollatini over the weekend and I want to share that with you.

Expect that soon!

Insomnia: Is there really an app for that?

I have always had trouble sleeping. Part of it is related to my anxiety disorder. Perhaps, all of it is. Last year in the midst of another battle, I wondered if there were sleep apps. Sure enough, when I searched the Android Market, I came across a few.

There weren't that many and I downloaded the free version of Sleep ZZZ. It played various white noises. You could set it to determine how long it took you to fall asleep by constantly touching the phone if you weren't asleep yet. I didn't like that. I'm sure it would have been helpful to know just how long it took me to fall asleep and it would be helpful if I wanted to sleep for a specific number of hours. However, needing to touch my phone kept me awake! I like to get comfortable, wrap myself up in a tight cocoon and not move. Touching the phone constantly just wouldn't work for me.

Another feature was the Power Nap feature. You could set it to alarm before you fell into deep sleep so that you wouldn't feel groggy after a quick power nap. Sounds pretty useful but I didn't use it much. I'm not big on power napping.

I did however use the white noises. At this point, I can't tell you if this app really helped me to fall asleep. It's possible that whenever I finally decided to use the app to help me to fall asleep, I was already at the point where I would have passed out anyway. I kept it for a while then deleted it. Nothing against the app, there was a lull in my insomnia and I needed space on my phone.

The past few weeks have been sleepless and pretty brutal on my productivity. Once again, I looked to an app. I was desperate. I decided to try something new and went with Brainwave Tuner Lite. The app claims to play binaural tones and gave a fancy explanation about why these tones would help you to sleep. Additionally, the app has other settings to help you to mediate or to concentrate and be more alert. I chose the Sleep Induction option. This option plays a sound that sounds similar to someone breathing heavily while sleeping plus the tones. Soon, I fell asleep.

Did the binaural tones work? It's hard to tell. Once again, I chose to use the app after hours of being unable to sleep and feeling pretty exhausted. In lieu of a full experiment on the matter, I think I will definitely try to put this app to the test. Lately I haven't been able to fall asleep before 6:30 AM no matter how tired I am. Tomorrow I want to be up and at it by 8AM the latest (I have some baking to do - more on that tomorrow!). I think I will try to fall asleep around 2AM using the app. Let's see how well it works. I will keep trying this for the next week and then report my results.

Here's to sleeping before the sun rises!

Revisiting Grocery Tracker

A month ago I mentioned that I was trying to find a grocery app. I was using (and loving) Grocery IQ but it was much too big. I have a Droid Eris and if anyone else out there has one, you know that we do not have much storage space. Droid Eris owners live for apps that can be stored on the SD card or, in my case, rotate apps.

I mentioned in that post that I had downloaded Grocery Tracker but I just couldn't "get it." I was determined to understand that app and spent several hours that Friday night playing with the features. After about 3 hours, I gave up and uninstalled. I then went searching for other apps. None of the other apps even came close to measuring up to Grocery Tracker or Grocery IQ. I sheepishly reinstalled Grocery Tracker and tried again. I also contacted the developer who was very very helpful. (Thanks again, Mike). He quickly responded to my questions and told me about features he was working on for a later release.

Yesterday I finally uninstalled Grocery IQ. Yup, I got rid of my beloved. I am still not completely sold on Grocery Tracker. There are some features that I am still trying to understand and others that I am tailoring to suit my needs. However, I realise that this is the strength and weakness of the application - several features. So far, things are going well. I haven't been shopping much in the last couple of weeks so I haven't used it recently but the few times that I have, I did like it.

I must honestly say that the reason it beat out by beloved Grocery IQ is its ability to save prices from different stores. I am a huge comparison shopper and when shopping for several items, I have often found myself making excel spreadsheets to determine which store has the best prices and where I will buy the majority of my items. I can easily do that with Grocery Tracker. With a few clicks, I can have my shopping list showing me only the prices of a particular store. I can also quickly glance at my list and see all the prices of the different stores I have saved.

Grocery List Apps

I like having my grocery list on my phone. I can update my list on the go and don't have to wait until I get home to add to a paper list at home. I started using Springpad's list function but it just wasn't giving me what I wanted. I downloaded a few apps and then settled on Grocery IQ.

I love Grocery IQ. I can create my list online and sync with my phone. I can use the barcode scanner; I can save items in favourites; It gives a running total of my shopping cart. I love it. The problem? The application takes up a lot of space on my tiny tiny Droid Eris. I've held on stubbornly but I knew that I needed to find something else.

Last night I downloaded Grocery Tracker. Grocery Tracker is feature heavy. It can do all the things that Grocery IQ does plus keep track of your inventory and a host of other functions. It's small and can be saved on the SD card. I really really really want to love Grocery Tracker. I really do. So why am I not head over heels? I just can't seem to "get it." There's just so much that it is ruining the experience for me. It took me forever last night to get the automatic reorder function to work. But I'm not writing this one off just yet. It does some things that I would really love from Grocery IQ - e.g. tracking price of items at multiples stores. If I can tweak things and get it running perfectly, it could replace my Grocery IQ. But for now, Grocery IQ is winning.

Today I downloaded Out of Milk. But it doesn't have a "by store" option. I guess I could create separate lists. It also doesn't allow me to put items in categories. It's just too bare for me. It does have the Pantry option. You can keep track of what's in your pantry but it's really not wow-ing me. I decided to just uninstall it.

Mobile Blogging

I have a smartphone. I pay tons of money each month for a data plan. I want my smartphone to do everything including make me dinner and give me a massage each day. For some reason, I can’t seem to find an app for that. But I’m searching. On Saturday night I decided to try mobile blogging. I followed the instructions and linked my blog to my phone. In a few minutes I was easily publishing posts from my email. You can also publish using MMS or SMS.

However, I wanted more. I could add images. But the images were placed at the top of post. What if I wanted them at the end? What if I wanted them in the middle? What about formatting my text? Bold? Italics? Underline? And tags? And links? I really wanted to add links. I decided to check the Android Market for an application.

First up was Blogger’s official app – Blogger.

There’s honestly not much I can say about this application. I never got it to work. It opened; I connected my blog and it immediately forced closed. I tried several more times and it crashed HTC. I uninstalled and tried again and the same thing happened so I uninstalled and moved on.

Next I tried Blogger-Droid.

It’s pretty simple. I can add tags. I can add images. If I wanted to format text or add html links I could. However, I would need to type the html tags. That easily done for formatting text but I’m not sure that I want to type the html tags for URLs. I can add images but the images can only be placed at the beginning of the post. I can view and edit previous blog posts. I can also easily share posts via whatever media I chose – facebook, Twitter, text, email or even Springpad. I can publish a post as a draft and I can also schedule the time and date of the post. The view of my posts is my blog layout so I can see exactly how a post/image looks on my background. Pretty good. But I still wanted to test others.

Bloggeroid.

Bloggeroid’s interface is also simple and straightforward. I can format text using html tags with extra “<<” or I can use **bold** or __italic__. I like those options - much faster than typing tags. I can add multiple images and I can choose where in a post the images appear – win! However, I can’t view the pics when I pull up a post. I simply see an aqua box – fail! I can save posts to my SD card or I can publish them as drafts. There’s no option to schedule a post for a later date. Links could be added using html tags. You cannot share posts from Bloggeroid

Blogaway

Blogaway has a toolbar that allows you to format your text. I had a little trouble using this but I think it may be easier than I think. You select the text and then choose to make it bold, italicized, underlined or in a different colour. You can save drafts to your phone or to your blog. However, you cannot edit drafts that have been saved to your blog - #fail. You can only edit drafts that have been saved to phone. You can add images but only one image – another fail. However, you can easily add links – win! You can also easily share your posts.

	Format text	Images	Links	Share posts	Editing drafts	Publish Later	Save to Phone
Blogger-Droid	Html	Multiple images –one location	Write own tags	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Bloggeroid	Html	Multiple images – choose location	Write own tags	No	Yes	No	Yes
Blogaway	Toolbar	One image – one location	Add link option	Yes	Cannot edit drafts saved to blog	No	Yes

I think I may need to use a combination of applications until I find one that suits my needs or until I learn to develop my own.

There's an app for that

I spent too many hours on Sunday afternoon reviewing applications that I could use to publish to Blogger from my phone. This is my typical MO. I want something and then I compare all options for several hours or even days, weeks or months. I think it is time that I actually posted official reviews of the applications that I test. This will help me to remember what I liked and disliked about various apps.

So welcome to – “There’s an app for that.” I know – trés original.

Oooh

I think I figured out how to format text with Blogaway. And  I know how to add colour.

Buuuuut, it will only allow me one image per post. Sigh. I'm so not winning.

I need an app that allows me to format text, add multiple images, choose the location of the images and add links. Too much to ask?

More testing

OK. Now I'm trying Blogaway. It gives me the ability to format text. But there's a bit of a learning curve. Wasn't the easiest thing to do and I'm not sure if it actually worked.

This should be in  italics.

Color

This has the option to add links which I like. But the formatting hassles may not be worth it. Let's see where it inserts my images.

Booo

I edited my previous post in Bloggeroid and it messed up the pics. Boo. Definitely uninstalling. How can I not have the option to edit a word without screwing everything up?


Edit: I figured out how to fix the pics. Just need to fix the tags. They get messed up when I load them into the Bloggeroid editor. It seems that for now, I will be using Bloggeroid if I want to use multiple pics and want to insert them at specific places and also format text. I'll use Blogaway if I have several links and don't want to type all the html commands. I can use a combination of the two if I want all the above.

Still testing

OK. I tried Blogger's official app but it kept force closing so I had to uninstall.

&lt;a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgybPgwi_7J1_ARl6HADwyvuQbO84w-7lL2yzU7_HdipMLkCn5I-Ux1KU5K-GApiIHS75LwTk_HwBgegCfQoswjJyY0LE58zqpeQy5uhrcBNt7uoI5kkMl0JZbnCYgUcB53-2PZOQ-9T5o_/' onblur='try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}'&gt;&lt;img border='0' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgybPgwi_7J1_ARl6HADwyvuQbO84w-7lL2yzU7_HdipMLkCn5I-Ux1KU5K-GApiIHS75LwTk_HwBgegCfQoswjJyY0LE58zqpeQy5uhrcBNt7uoI5kkMl0JZbnCYgUcB53-2PZOQ-9T5o_/s288/1300038832804.jpeg' style='display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 192px; height: 288px;'/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;

Now I'm trying Bloggeroid. It gives me the option to format my fonts. But I can't view the images in my previous posts. That's not helpful if I want to check on how the image looks.

&lt;a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY9-28P3M0NB-9aCEAhtRLeAtn80z3b0MOP20MU127AdWl34dioMawOS7Wa9AAbAHskZOEhMWlrsIzPvXPXL9lGB7i4z6X9JKfQ2IehmZRH5JoZ-nZpnW56ee4lCnrHUo16R7EiDYYRvCd/' onblur='try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}'&gt;&lt;img border='0' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY9-28P3M0NB-9aCEAhtRLeAtn80z3b0MOP20MU127AdWl34dioMawOS7Wa9AAbAHskZOEhMWlrsIzPvXPXL9lGB7i4z6X9JKfQ2IehmZRH5JoZ-nZpnW56ee4lCnrHUo16R7EiDYYRvCd/s288/1300038809339.jpeg' style='display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 192px;'/&gt;&lt;/a&gt;

But it may give me the option of choosing where in a post an image appears.

testing

I'm testing blogging apps today. I posted yesterday's post via email. I liked it but I don't have the functionality in my email to format text. I hope to find an app that does. I also want to be able to add labels.
This is Blogger-Droid. It's simple. I think I can add tags. But I can't format text. Maybe that's available in the paid version? Edit: I can format text. Now I just need easy linking.

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