The iPhone Mom

Paperless makes it very easy to create “To Do” lists on your iPhone. The first time you use the app you’ll find simple, easy to follow instructions that walk you through the app’s features. I found the tutorial to be extremely helpful and I loved the fact that it didn’t force me to read through how-to instructions. It was a practical, hands on tutorial. Paperless lets you create as many lists as you’d like and you can sort them alphabetically, create duplicate lists or email them out. When you create each list you can choose an icon to represent it on the main screen. The app also provides a search function where you can enter in a word and Paperless will pull up the lists that contain the word. Finally, the app’s icon (on your home screen) will display a red number which will tell you how many uncompleted items are on your lists. I’ve tried several different list apps and so far Paperless is my favorite. I liked it’s clean design and how easy it is to create and maintain different lists. For me simplicity is key and Paperless is effective and simple at the same time. Wonderful!

If you want to try Paperless for free you can try Paperless Lite. It limits you to 15 items on your lists but will give you an idea of what you can do with the app.

Price when Reviewed: $1.99

See the app in iTunes

Seller: Crush Apps

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

My husband and I use Google Calendar to keep track of our family schedule. Everyone in the family has an account that’s color coded so it’s easy to see who has what on the online calendar. When one of us adds in an event we can all see it and this has worked out great for our family. My husband has synced our iPhones to the Google account so the family calendar is what appears on my iPhone calendar. The information is all there but not the color coding so I’m always on the look out for an app that might give me a better view of things.

I recently tried out the app Calendars-Google calendar client and it has some features that I really liked. All I had to do was enter in my Google account and password and the app immediately synced with all of my calendar information. From then on it synced every time I opened the app. It worked beautifully and when I added events to the app they showed up right away on my online calendar. When looking at the month view of the calendar I like how it displays the names of the events on the different dates and they are color coded for our different children. But for events with long names they don’t all fit so I still have to tap on the date to see exactly what’s going on. When I’m in the month view I can tap on an event and drag it to a new date if I need to make a change. This is a very easy way to adjust things on the calendar. Adding an event is just a matter of tapping the plus sign and then typing in the information. It’s very much like entering the details directly into Google calendar. Another feature I liked is that you can add different types of reminders for your events. Reminders can be sent via alerts on your phone, emails or text messages. The Week and Day views also have the color coded information and it’s easier to see the complete names of events in these views. Here you can also drag and drop events from one date to another.

There is plenty that I like about Calendars-Google calendar client but there are a few additions I would love to see in the future. The first is to have a landscape view available, especially when you are looking at the calendar in the Month view. I think it would help to get more information on the screen that way. The next addition would be a way to change the font type and size for events. Again, I think that would help solve the problem of not being able to see all of the event name in Month view. Finally, the app is a bit on the pricey side.

Overall I’m pleased with how well Calendars integrates with Google Calendar. It’s a nice alternative to the iPhone calendar and it syncs flawlessly on my phone.

Price when Reviewed: $6.99

See the app in iTunes

Seller: Readdle

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Today we’re going to talk about “Honey Do” lists, a.k.a. husband chores. Much to my husband’s delight I am very good at making this type of list. Then they sit on the counter along with all of my other lists gathering dust. We need a better system, or in other words I need a better method of nagging.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to try out an app named Hunny Do. It’s designed to let you create lists which can be shared between iPhones. You have your Task Lists – Errands, Chores, Work and Reminders. Then you have your Grocery Lists and your Wish Lists. Within each category you can also add in your own lists too. You’ll want to tap on a list and then use the plus sign to add items to it. You can assign a due date and an owner for the items. If you choose a due date then the task shows up on the app’s calendar view as well as your list. Theres also the option to add things to a favorites list where you can get at them easily. When you are making grocery lists you can specify the item’s aisle and whether or not you have a coupon.

Hunny Do also features a Spending Map. This lets you mark your shopping location and the amount of money you spent there. After you’ve entered locations you’ll be able to see where you’re shopping and where all the money is going.

One last thing that I’ll mention is the section called “Connections”. Here you’ll be able to invite others to share Hunny Do with you. Once you’ve added them to your account you can start syncing and sharing lists. You have the ability to choose which lists are shared and who they are shared with. I tried all week to coordinate with my husband so we could test out Hunny Do’s syncing. It was a busy week with end of school activities and baseball games and things kept coming up. I pushed the review back and yet here we are still trying to coordinate. The irony? If we’d been sharing the Hunny Do app I could have shared a reminder with him. And another reminder and another and another.

Have any readers given Hunny Do a try?

Price when Reviewed: FREE

See the app in the App Store

Seller: Groopd

I have a love/hate relationship with the Family Fun magazine. On the one hand I love getting each issue and reading about all of the fun and colorful ideas they feature each month. There have been some ideas that I’ve taken from fellow readers  and they’ve been a big success at our house. But on the other hand…being brought face to face with so much pure Mom awesomeness has the tendency to leave me feeling pretty inadequate. I’d like to be the clever and fun mom they showcase but because of time restraints, budget issues, children’s ages (and maybe even behavior!) and just lack of patience on my part there’s no way I can compete. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t even really want to compete. I know I’m doing the best I can and I have different strengths, but that doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally want to be the mom who pulls off the perfect piratey party or family vacation.  Like I said, love/hate but so far my enjoyment of the magazine outweighs my mom insecurities.

One feature of the magazine that I always have success with is the crafts. There have been many times when I’ve turned to the Family Fun website to find a simple and doable craft and I usually find what I’m looking for. They provide simple instructions and crafts that are actually manageable with kids. Shortly after I got my iPad I saw this fantastic app, Craft Finder on iPad: Great Crafts from Disney FamilyFun, in the iPad App Store. I was intrigued and not let down.

Here are the app’s highlights -

*The craft directions are simple and easy to follow. Everything you need to know is on the screen. You might need to scroll up and down but you won’t need to click through several pages like you do on the Family Fun website.

*The craft instructions give you a description, an age range and the total time needed to complete the craft. All key things I look at when deciding to tackle a craft.

*Each craft shows a button that says “Add List”. If you tap this then the supplies needed to make the craft show up in a shopping list. You can shop directly from this list or email it to yourself.

*You have the ability to select “Save Craft” and add the craft to your craft box. This puts it on a list that you can access to save yourself from having to browse through oodles of crafts again. A note – when you choose “Add List” the supplies go to the shopping list and the craft is saved to the craft box.

*You can look through the apps in the “Featured” section. These are rotated and changed. At the bottom of this list you can follow a link to go directly to the crafts section on the Family Fun website.

*Another way to find crafts in the app is through a search with the “Craft Finder”. The Craft Finder uses three sliding bars, line those up where you’d like them and then tap “Show Matching Crafts” to get your results. The bars refer to the following. Age: Any Age, Toddler, Pre-School, School Age or Tween. Time: choose from Any Time, 30 Minutes, 1 Hour, 1+ Hours, 2 Hours and 2+ Hours. Occasion: You can choose from the major holidays plus seasons.

I really, really like this iPad app but there are a couple of things I’d like to see improved on.

*Add in “Birthday” to the occasions that you can choose from in the Craft Finder.

*The slider bars are a neat feature but I’d also like to be able to type in a keyword and then search for a craft based on that.

*Create a way to email the craft instructions to myself in case I need to print them out.

*Frequent updates to the crafts. This might already be happening, I’m not sure, but I think it’s key to keeping the app fresh.

*Add in a birthday cake/cupcake section or create a similar app that just focuses on those ideas. Family Fun is the go-to source for kid friendly cakes that moms can actually make. I’d love to have that resource on my iPad.

Overall – wow! There is a lot to love about the Craft Finder from Family Fun. I love being able to browse through the crafts without having to pull out my laptop. The navigation to the app is very easy and intuitive to navigate through. I know my girls (10 & 7) have already mastered it because I found a nice list of crafts in my craft box that I certainly didn’t add.

P.S. – I’ve not experienced any crashing of the app like what’s been described in the App Store reviews.

P.P.S. – The app is also available for the iPhone.

Price when Reviewed: FREE

See the App in iTunes Here.

Seller: Disney

Keith, the developer of GroceryList-The Fastest Way to Make Your Grocery List, has donated four promo codes for a giveaway. If you’d like to try out his recently updated app please leave me a comment. You can also read what he has to say about the updates here. I’ll randomly select four winners at the end of Friday, 4/30.

*Promo codes only work in the US App Store.

The app GroceryList has undergone an update and the developer has implemented some changes that make the app easier to use and personalize.

* “More Lists” – you can now create more than one list which means I can have a list for Costco that’s separate from my regular grocery lists. Each list allows you to edit and change the aisle order for the stores. I like this feature because I’m a creature of habit and I shop the store in the same pattern each time. If I vary the pattern, I get off track and am much less efficient. Sad, I know. I also like having my list displayed in the order of the aisles that I visit and now I can in this app.

*Checking things off the list is easier to do now, it’s just a simple tap and the items is removed from the list and put into the shopping cart. It’s a much simpler process.

You can read about what I liked in GroceryList here. Several of the things I didn’t like have now been updated which is great news!

Price when Reviewed: $4.99

Seller: Helium Foot Software

I’ve tried out eWallet on my iPhone and on my desktop. Now there is an iPad version of the app. I haven’t tried it out yet but according to the App Store description when you buy eWallet it will now work on either your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. From what I’ve seen of the screenshots it seems that the larger screen adds much to the app. Has anyone updated to the new version of eWallet and tried it out on an iPad?

TraxItAll is a flexible goal setting app that lets you customize exactly what you want to track. You can add in any goal that you want and then choose exactly how you’d like to mark your progress. Do you want to mark yes or no for finishing the goal? Do you want to keep a count instead? Or an average? Those are the ways you can track your goals. You can also set up the time frame that you’re tracking – once per day, three days a week, two weeks a month, etc.

When you’ve set up your goals you’ll see them listed on the app’s home screen, sorted by the categories you assigned them. Tap on the goal and with a few more taps you’ll be able to enter your progress. Once you’ve entered data into the app you can see a goal bar that shows you how your progress is going. Or not going as the case may be. If statistics are more your thing then you can view the progress in that form.

TraxItAll has quite a few layers to it and as I’ve been using it I keep discovering more of what it can do. It can be a little tricky navigating through the different screens and I did have issues with the app crashing. I restarted my phone and that issue was mostly resolved. In my opinion the strength of this app is it’s ability to let you track all sorts of things in several different ways. But I felt like it’s weakness was being able to get in and easily figure out how to do it. It took me a few references to the information screen and website FAQ to get the hang of the setup. I was able to figure it out (I think) but it took me  more steps than I would have liked.

*Update 4/17 – A “Getting Started” guide has been added to the TraxItAll website. It does a nice job walking you through the app and discovering all it can do. See the guide here.

Price when Reviewed: $4.99

Seller: TraxItAll

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

Build a Baby Bragbook now has company in the App Store, Scott Singer has just released Build a Birthday Bragbook. The concept is the same, you create a personalized story about your child only this time it’s about their birthday not their birth day. You can customize your text, add in your own photos and record your own narration. It all means more chances for my kids to look at themselves on my phone!

Price when Reviewed: $.99 (limited time sale price)

Seller: Scott Singer

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.

I reviewed Serving Sizer Recipe Converter back in November, 2009. It’s a great way to convert the amounts of recipe ingredients if you’re making the recipe larger, or smaller. Now comes Serving Sizer Pro and it takes the recipe conversion one step further. In this app you can enter in your own recipes, apply the conversion and convert all the amounts in your recipe at once. You don’t have to do it one ingredient at a time. Here’s what I like about this app.

-When you are entering in a recipe you can choose from a list of over 500 ingredients. Or if yours is somehow not listed you can type it in.

-When you’re setting the amount for the ingredient you use a sliding line to choose the amount and the type of measurement. For example, slide the line to choose 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, etc. Then slide the bottom line to choose teaspoons, cups, pints. I really liked this feature because it cuts down on typing.

-Once you’ve entered in all the ingredients you can view the recipe on a “recipe card” and use edit to add in the directions.

-You can email a recipe out from the app.

-When you need to make an adjustment to the recipe’s size all you need to do is tap the “serves” button on that recipe and then choose the new serving size. You can choose to halve, double, triple or create a custom conversion for the ingredients.

The only thing that I didn’t like about Serving Sizer Pro was the absence of a “done” button. After I’d enter in my amounts and ingredient names I’d look for that button and it wasn’t there on every screen. Force of habit perhaps, but I missed it. I also couldn’t find a way to convert stand alone ingredients the way you can in the original Serving Sizer but I might be missing something. This app is staying on my phone and when I find the time I’m going to enter in some of my most used recipes into the app. The ones that I come back to time and again for parties and big dinners but this time there’ll be no more scribbling fractions in my cookbook. I’m not going to show my 5th grader this app though because once she saw what it does she’d no longer listen to my talks about fractions being something I still use all the time. My credibility when it comes to math is already shaky enough.

Price when Reviewed: $2.99

Seller: Creative Algorithims

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this app for review purposes.