Monday, June 24, 2013

What daily apps and devices do you use to help you daily?

For me, my day consists of a daily run, a time of scripture reading and prayer, eating breakfast, getting out the door and to work, and then the normal work day events, and then head back home.


For various steps in the events of the day, I use my Garmin watch, iPod Shuffle, fitbit, desktop computer, and smartphone. With these devices I use apps for the weather, spiritual and physical health, basic communications, and traffic for my daily commute. Here are the day’s events with the devices and the apps that are used.


Wake up:
  • Digital clock for the alarm and my smartphone in bedside mode for the time.


Morning Run:
  • Garmin watch to track time and pace
  • fitbit pedometer to track number of steps
  • Desktop computer, with Ubuntu 12.04 as the operating system, looking at weather.com and runkeeper.com to map and store the day’s run stats
  • Ipod Shuffle with iTunes to download and organize the theology based podcasts and music that I listen too


Reading of scripture and prayer time
  • Desktop computer, smartphone, or Kindle Fire looking my personal prayer app built with Ruby on Rails and housed on heroku.com


Morning communications
  • Desktop computer, smartphone, or Kindle Fire using gmail, Google calendar, facebook, and twitter


Breakfast
  • Record nutrition intake with fitbit.com that has already uploaded the calories burned from the earlier run.


Morning commute to work
  • Desktop computer, smartphone, or Kindle Fire using ohgo.com to see the current status of the traffic on I75 and I471 North bound. From there I determine which is the best route.


Work
  • Desktop PC for software development
  • Smartphone for personal communications
  • Fitbit in which I note time to time the number of steps taken during the day


Lunch
  • Record nutrition intake with fitbit.com.


Evening commute to work
  • Desktop computer or smartphone using ohgo.com to see the current status of the traffic on I75 and I471 South bound. From there I determine which is the best route.


Evening
  • Desktop computer, smartphone, or Kindle Fire using weather.com to note the evening and next morning’s forecast.
  • Fitbit from which the day’s step count is uploaded and the amount of calories burned is compared to the day’s nutrition intake.
  • Desktop computer, smartphone, or Kindle Fire using gmail, Google calendar, facebook, and twitter
  • Roku streaming player, a cloud based video streaming device that interfaces with content providers such as Netflix and/or Amazon Prime, to watch great TV series and movies such as Dr. Who, Star Trek, The Goonies, Shaun the Sheep, etc.

Of course this list does not include other devices and personal tools such as the automobile or other home based appliances that rely on silicon-based technology to function. The pattern that I see is that my day is better organized and runs smoother as the result of the use of these devices/apps. Moreover, I am better informed off my health as well as keeping better track of appointments and obligations.

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