Straight A Back-to-School Apps from iGame Mom

Today’s post is from one of my favorites, iGameMomwho keeps up with the latest in electronic learning for the height-challened, super tech generation.  If you are a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle, of a kid up to grade 12, check out these apps and her blog.

It is hard to believe the school is starting soon.  Are you ready for the kids going back to school?  Are the kids ready?   I hope these back-to-school apps will help the kids to achieve straight A’s and stay happy!

First, here are some apps that will help the kids transition into the learning mood from a relaxed summer:

Brain Quest (free): curriculum based trivia games for grade1 to 5.  Each grade has 80 questions.  With In-App purchase ($2.99 for each grade), you can buy the whole pack, which has over 600 questions for each grade.  Kids learn while playing games.

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Social Media Savvy

So, your business is on a tight marketing budget and you want to leverage Social Media.  Know going in that it is comparable to entering the bear cave with a club and flashlight.  Neither will help, you need better tools.

Where to start?  Well, that actually depends on your goals and strategy.  Techsnoop is here to tell you where not to start.  Don’t buy Twitter followers or Facebook Likes.  These are bogus accounts set up by spammers with automated tools and they do not give you credibility.  The entire point of social media is to establish yourself as reliable and trustworthy in your field.  Having spammers on your accounts opens up your followers and fans to spammers as they now can access them.

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Galaxy Note 10.1 Gets It Right

In the ever more crowded tablet market, Samsung has shoved another offering, the Galaxy Note 10.1.  Why, you may ask is this news?  Because they have added a split screen app to view content and take notes at the same time.  It also has an option to watch video and use apps at once.

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Techsnoop Has a New Home!

Techsnoop has moved!

Find all the new Techsnoop’s Helper news, tutorials, reviews and Freebies at www.techsnoopshelper.com.  Don’t miss out, go now and bookmark the site and sign up to get the updates.  Users will be redirected to the new site after next week.  In the meantime, check out the latest post below.

If you are a freelance designer or small business, time is premium and you may not have time to make every little detail of your web site or social media pages.  Techsnoop is here to help with a list of free icon downloads that will spice up your pages with a professional look with no extra effort on your part.   Read More…

Adaptive Design and Liquid Layout Great InDesign Tools

There is no argument that Adobe stepped up their game with CS6 release of design tools.  InDesign, in particular has received some great updates and tweaks.  With Liquid Layout, you can quickly change the size of a current design to fit a new device or layout type.

Adaptive Design helps you link content and create alternate layouts from the start of a design.  It allows the designer to adapt for any contingency up front and save design time later.  Both of these tools can save pain and time when working to meet publishing deadlines in the graphic design world.  And working quickly and painlessly is one of Techsnoop’s favorite things.

Grab a Coke or coffee cup and take a quick look.

Designer Help

Happy Thursday!  Techsnoop doesn’t want you to get rusty so we have gathered up some great tutorials to help you in moving to responsive site building and creating mobile apps.  And, if you need an extra hand, here is a great tutorial on creating a clone of yourself!

Making Responsive CSS for your sites.

Creating Mobile Apps with Adobe CS6

Make Your Own Clone

Leap into the Future with Leap Motion

If you watched Avengers, you had to notice all the cool tech available to Tony Stark and SHIELD.  Glass slab computers and holographic interfaces responding to gestures were all over the place.

Now technology brings us one step closer to this being a reality with David Holz, creator of Leap Motion a motion sensing controller for all PCs and Macs.  Business Week’s profile describes Mr. Holz as a genius level inventor with impressive credentials for someone only According to CNET, the device will retail for about $70.

Let me know what you think.  See you in the Future!

More Premiere Pro Tutorials

Several options for importing files in Adobe Premier Pro CS5

Working with Green Screens.  This is for more advanced users.

This video on making a rough cut is on the Adobe TV site and shows how to efficiently create a rough of your video.

Premiere Pro rough cut tutorial

For more in depth instructions, use the resources at Adobe Support and Adobe TV.

Please post links to your work in the comments if these resources help you.  And keep learning!

Frightmare Friday

Alert! A new virus is out which can circumvent your anti-virus program.  It comes from phishing websites urls and can take over your computer.  If you get a message to update Adobe Flash player and cannot shut it down, you have been infected.  Another symptom is clicking on links on websites and being given a download message instead of going to the link action.  Also, if you cannot open folders on your hard drive, you may be infected.  I was infected visiting a site I have gone to in the past.  It was not infected then, but is now a victim of phishing.  This can happen to anyone.

If you suspect you have this virus, seek help immediately.  It can be cleaned off by going to a system restore point that is known to be clear of the virus.  If you are not setting system restore points and backing up your files on a regular basis, DO IT NOW.

FYI, I have a superior anti-virus program which is updated twice a day.  My computer is scanned every day.  When I scanned my computer, the program did not recognize the virus so it may be a keylogger.  If you are infected, change all of your passwords, uninstall Flash player and Java and reinstall them from the developer sites.  I have taken all of these steps and it was a pain.  But it would have been much worse if I had not had my files backed up and my system restore points.  Have a happy Holiday season and enjoy shopping online safely.

4G Madness from Sprint

As posted here previously, I love my HTC EVO.  This is arguably one of the 5 best phones ever released.  However, I am quite exhausted with the sporadic service from Sprint.

For the past two months or so, many services I use have had a high “fail out” rate. Sometimes they work fine, sometimes they work poorly, and sometimes they didn’t work at all.

I at first thought my phone might be having problems.  But after talking to some other Sprint users, I found there was a high incidence of issues from call dropping to non-working features.  So, I contacted Sprint customer service to see what could be done.  The rep was very nice and had me run some firmware updates on my phone.  She then began to explain that some of the services I was trying to use were only available for 4G.  I then told her I had been using these services on 3G just fine until recently.  She was unable to explain this and referred me to go into a repair center.

Prior to going to the repair center, I did some digging around and found out that Sprint is currently converting some cell towers in the area from 3G to 4G.  The work is causing some connectivity issues and bandwith narrowing.  It should be resolved within the month.

Now, I’m all for updating equipment, especially since it will provide me with a feature I have been paying for nearly a year without having the actual feature.  However, why couldn’t Sprint simply announced the coming changes and apologized in advance for any inconveniences?  A little upfront transparency can go a long way in customer satisfaction.

Instead, like so many companies, Sprint choose the ostrich method.  Stick your head in the sand and hope most people won’t notice the issues.

Come on, Sprint, don’t go back to your previous last place in customer satisfaction.  Your customer policies are what put you behind your competition. After all, your phones and packages are very highly rated.  Make the 4G leap of customer care and put yourself ahead of the pack.