The iPhone Mom

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

Milk Monitor is designed to help you record and track your baby’s feedings. It also has the ability to record information on sleep, diapers and medications. The “Monitor” part of the app is very easy to use. The default is set to breastfeeding and to begin timing a feeding you simply tap on the L (for left) or R (for right) on the screen. This begins a timer and when you are done tap on the letter again to stop the timer. Once you’ve stopped the timer this feeding is automatically entered into a log. More about that in a moment. The monitor screen can also record bottle feedings but you’ll need to tap on “bottle” at the top of the screen to make the switch. This pulls up a graphic illustrating a baby bottle. You can adjust a slider on the baby bottle to mark how many ounces your baby drank. The bottle goes from .6 to 12.3 oz or from 10 to 350 mL. You can switch between the two measurements. Once you’ve marked the appropriate amount you tap “ok” and this feeding is also added to the log. The final thing that you can add in the Monitor section is notes. This button is also found at the top of the screen and it brings up a screen where you can type in your own notes. You can also use a wheel to mark if the notes are about sleep, diapers, medicine or miscellaneous. In order to add a note to the log you’ve got to tap in the text box – even if you don’t type anything. I found that if I didn’t do this the “ok” button wouldn’t show up. Once you’ve tapped “ok” the note is added to the log.

The “Log” button at the bottom of the screen brings up the log that I’ve been mentioning. It’s where you can view the feedings and notes you’ve recorded for baby. Tapping on a log entry brings up a screen with additional information. You can manually add in log items or delete them from this section. There is also a “Baby” button at the bottom of the screen. This is where you add in your baby’s name, sex, birthday and any likes that you want to record. You can also add a picture. Here you can also add in additional baby’s to keep track of. Once you’ve done that you can switch between them on the Monitor screen. Finally, you can tweet your last log event or email out the last seven days worth on the “More” screen.

Milk Monitor has a cute feel to it and is a simple way to keep track of basic baby information.

Price when Reviewed: $2.99

Seller: Milo Creative

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

When I had my first daughter almost eleven years ago (seems like yesterday) I had a genuine baby book where I recorded her growth and all of her firsts. When I had my second daughter three years later I used a calendar to jot things down. My son came next and I think I kept notes on scraps of paper but I can’t remember exactly. Somehow all of his important details made it into the scrapbook so I must have been somewhat on top of things. And now we come to baby number four and I’ve been keeping track of her on my computer’s notepad. If it’s a good month I’ll go in at the end of the month and write down what happened that month. If it’s a normal month then I’ll probably forget and have to go back and write down the dates to the best of my recollection. I figure at least I’m getting photos of her so she won’t be able to say we totally forgot about her! And for the record, that is anything but the case…truth is she’s been such a high maintenance baby (thank you protein intolerance and acid reflux and her incredible amount of spitting up) that her first birthday party will be also be my survivor party. You’d think that the mom who reviews iPhone apps would have wised up and used one to keep better track of Baby J’s growth but I haven’t. As I mentioned before it’s been all about survival this year.

Now with that out of the way let me introduce you to Gwiggle, a baby book meets iPhone app. It has five different sections and I’ll let you know about each.

Day 1 – Here you will enter in your baby’s name and all of their important birth details. Date and time of birth, weight and length, etc. At the bottom of this section there are three buttons. The “Doctor” button takes you to a screen where you can enter in up to five different doctors. Each doctor has their own screen where you can type in their phone number, email and address. You can also enter in appointment dates and descriptions. The next button is “Vaccinations” and it can be turned on or off. If you’ve turned it on then the button will also show up on the Doctor screen. There you can tap it and enter in the dates your baby received the different vaccinations. I liked that the vaccinations were already listed so you don’t have to remember all the abbreviations and spellings. The last button is “Baby Brother/Sister” and with this button you can add in siblings and then enter in their birth information, doctors and vaccinations.

Dr. Gwiggle – This section shows the doctor information that you entered in on the Day 1 screens. If you didn’t enter it in there then you can enter it in here. You can also deal with the vaccinations here too.

Photo – If you’d like to use Gwiggle to store photos of your baby you can. You have the option of choosing a frame before you take a photo. From what I saw you can’t bring in a photo from  your camera roll. The app’s description says you can take video with the app as well. My iPhone doesn’t do video so I wasn’t able to test that feature.

Bubbles – Bubbles is a section where you can type in notes about your baby as things happen. The app will time and date stamp your comment and then it appears on the screen in a bubble. It looks like a text message conversation once you have several comments entered.

Steps – This part of the app has five different sub sections and was my favorite section. First is “Tooth Fairy”. With this the screen is filled by a giant smiley face with a mouth full of teeth. The idea is to tap on a tooth and then enter the date your baby got a new tooth or lost one. Once you’ve entered the date a star will show up on the tooth. I love the concept of this screen but I wasn’t a big fan of the smiley face. It just didn’t fit with the feel of the rest of the app. Next comes “Growth Chart” and it’s exactly what it says it is, a way of tracking your baby’s growth. “Countdown Calendar” gave me a smile. Based on your baby’s birth date it will tell you how many years, months and days are left until they become a teenage, leave the nest and more. “Firsts” is a list of first events and you’ll want to tap on them to enter the date that the first happened. It makes it easy to keep track of such things. “My Family” let’s you put family member’s names onto the petals of a flower. The baby is the center of the flower and then you can tap on the other petals and type in the names of brothers, sisters, grandmas, grandpas, etc.

Gwiggle seemed like a pretty thorough baby book to me and a good way to keep on top of life with kids. Take a lesson from what I haven’t done myself and use an app to keep track of all the things that will be over before you know it.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: EdElder

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

Do you have kids in Spring sports? We currently have two in soccer and baseball season is set to start next week. Busy times! My kids are getting to the age where they’re beginning to care about how many goals they score and times they strike out at bat. I do my best to keep track but I’m usually distracted by Baby J and not always paying as much attention as I should be. Game Trac was designed for keeping track and remembering how your children are doing in their different sports.

You’ll begin by adding in your players. Right now you can only add in a player who is from your contact’s list. I’ve heard that this will be changing in an update and you’ll be able to type in the names of players that aren’t in your contacts. I think this will be a welcome change. Once you’ve added in your player you can select the sports they participate in. Each different sport has a page that’s unique to that sport. For example, the hockey screen would have spaces for your to enter in goals, attempts, assists and penalty minutes – along with other things too.  The soccer screen lets you track similar things plus yellow cards and red cards. Screens also come with a timer that you can use to track the time your child is playing.  Once you’ve entered in information you can view the player stats and see how things have been going overall.

I like how Game Trac’s game screens are customized for the different sports. It saves on set up time and you can begin tracking games right away. If your sport isn’t already on Game Trac’s list you can add that in too. Overall, the app is very thorough, detailed and does what it says.

Price when Reviewed: $4.99

Seller: KB Productions

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

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.

Bdays has a very slick look about it. If you’ve entered birthdays into your iPhone’s contacts then the app will pull them in and you’ll have the information in an easy to view format. The app displays the birthdays over four screens – today, tomorrow, next 5 days and this month. Your contact’s photo is displayed, along with their birthday. If you’ve included your a birth year in the information then the app also calculates the age they will be turning. I liked  this feature.

I like the look of Bdays but I kept having a big technical difficulty whenever I used it. You’re supposed to be able to send an email or call your birthday celebrating friend directly from the app. But every time I tap on a friend’s name the app shuts down. Until that’s fixed the app is good for only keeping track of birthdays.

Price when Reviewed: FREE

Seller: xeleh software

Diaper Bag List was developed by a Dad with experience packing a diaper bag…and forgetting things too. It’s simply a list of things that you’d want for an outing. All you need to do is tap on the item and it will be checked off. When you’re done there’s an “Uncheck All” button  that will clear the list for the next time. The edit button allows you to delete items off the list and add in your own items.

Diaper Bag List is a simple list with no frills and no extra features. It’s designed for when you’re in a hurry and don’t have time to mess with a bunch of different screens, swipes and taps. If you’ve been making paper lists or forgetting things like diapers then this app could help. For us, we’re on our fourth baby and at this point if it doesn’t make it in the diaper bag then we’ll just have to live. Plus, the improvisation that’s required in emergency diaper changes (when you have no diapers) makes for a good story that we can use to embarrass our kids later on in life.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: Foundeo, Inc

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

TaskAttention is an app for keeping track of your to do list, including tasks and projects. My life has been all about Task Inattention lately. It seems the longer my to do list grows the more I avoid it and so it grows even longer. It’s an understatement to say that my tasks need attention and I wondered if this app could help me get my act together.

You create projects and then add tasks within the projects. You name them and mark your progress, the task’s priority and due date. Assign the task to a project and add tags if you want. It’s easy to input all of the  details and only takes a few taps here and there. The only thing that felt awkward to me was setting up the due date. By default the due date is turned off and you have to tap that button, then turn the due date on and set it up. For me it would make more sense to have the due date already turned on so all you had to do was set the date.

Once you’ve entered in a few tasks and projects you can sort them by project name or due date. You can perform a search for words found in the task or project titles. You can also add filters, name them and set the keywords that will apply to the filter. My understanding of the filter feature is that you apply one and then everything that fits within that filter is separated out into a list of it’s own.

TaskAttention was very easy to set up and begin using. There’s not a lot of extra garbage to sort through within the app and no learning curve before you’re actually able to use it. It’s a straightforward, clean looking, organized to do list. I didn’t have any trouble putting my to do list together within the app but I found myself forgetting it was there. I think it would help if there was a number badge that showed up on the app’s icon. Maybe seeing a bright red number telling me how many things I was ignoring would help me wake up and get my act together.

Price when Reviewed: $3.99

Seller: Himalaya Computing Corporation

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

Siri Assistant is billed as your new personal assistant, who just happens to be an iPhone app. It combines a smorgasbord of different information into one app that is also very easy to use. You can ask Siri to do all sorts of things for you. Find a restaurant, check the weather, book a taxi, find an ATM and more. It pulls in search information from bing, yelp, Yahoo, Citysearch and movietickets.com just to name a few places. You can type in what you’re looking for or say it out loud to the app. Siri uses dictation software from Nuance and it worked like a charm for me. It even deciphered what my 5 year old was asking for and we can’t even do that much of the time. Tonight I was looking for an alternative to cooking dinner so I told Siri I wanted to find a take out restaurant nearby. It used my location to pull up a list of choices along with their addresses and phone numbers. Some restaurants even had reviews that were pulled from the web. If you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for then you can let Siri “guide” you. The main screen provides a list of things that it can help you with. Restaurants, movies, events, local businesses, taxis and weather. You can tap on one of these and then continue to make selections that will narrow down your search results.

Siri keeps a running list of what you’ve used it for. This way you can scroll up and down the screen to look things over again. This list disappears when you shut down the app but the next time you open it the searches will be available via the “Recents” button at the bottom of the screen. Siri also has the ability to send you email reminders about anything you like. You simply set it up, choose when (and how often) you’d like to be reminded and the next thing you know you’ll have a friendly reminder in your inbox.

It didn’t take me much time to learn how to use Siri but I’m still discovering all the things it can do.  I’m impressed with how quickly it pulls up information and how relevant that information is. There’s no need to visit Safari and click through search results anymore. Throw in the app’s solid dictation ability and I’m sold.

Price when Reviewed: Free

Seller: Siri

My Town provides a way for moms to store and sort contacts that are useful in their everyday mom life. The app comes with a list of categories that are ready for you to enter in contacts. Some of the categories are doctors, emergency room, library, police and fire departments, vet, schools, neighbors and relatives. There are quite a few more including “court house”. I hope that I never need to call that one on a regular basis but I guess you never know what life’s going to bring. Entering in the contacts is easy and the app has a nice, straightforward feel to it. You choose a category  and then enter in the name, phone number, address, email, website, etc. You can also add a photo.

There are a few things that I found tricky with this app. When you are entering in a phone number the app doesn’t automatically enter in the dashes between numbers. For example, you enter in 5551234 for the number 555-1234. This felt a little odd to me at first. After you enter in the information you have to restart the app before the contact shows up in your list. Once you’ve done that you’ll see a “My Town Call List” that shows the numbers you’ve entered. From here you can just tap on the name and it will automatically dial the phone number. This is great but I couldn’t find a way to see all of the other information I had entered in on this list. To see find that I had to look up the contact again in the edit screen. I know that the one tap dialing feature is nice and efficient but it might be worth one more tap so you could easily view the other information too. A suggestion that I’d like to make is to add the ability to import contacts into My Town from the iPhone’s contact list. This would be a huge help for me because it would eliminate the need to reenter information I’ve already got on my phone.

My Town has a nice feel to it and I like the idea of having the ability to keep all my momcentric contacts in a single location. The way my iPhone is setup my contacts from Gmail automatically show up on my iPhone. So I get contacts that I only email occasionally mixed in with those that I call on a daily basis. There are times when this no longer bothers me and times when it irritates me like crazy.  However, it’d be nice to have another option for seeing my most important contacts, in one place and grouped into categories that pertained to my life.

Price when Reviewed: $.99

Seller: tapunited

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