Oh the precious commodity that is time. If you’re active on social networks then you know what a time suck they can be. App developers are savvy to this and are creating amazing productivity tools to make our online lives more, well, productive.
Here are three apps I can’t live without.
Launch Center – Tap. Tap. Go!
Everybody tap your hands! Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Launch is on my front page. It reduces the number of taps it takes to perform commonly used tasks on my iPhone. It’s like speed dial, but for more than just phone calls. Launch apps and trigger actions from a quick, easy to use app. Call a friend, send a text, jump right to Instagram’s camera, automatically search “coffee” in Yelp, launch Facebook into Messaging, post a Tweet, turn on a flashlight — yah it does all that. It costs $.99 but it’s been well worth the investment.
Can we all agree that searching contacts on your iPhone is a BIG hassle? Even if you store your favorites, you still have to manually add people when you want to do a group text. It takes time and who has a lot of that laying around? That’s why I use Buzz. With Buzz, your favorite contacts are organized into groups (e.g., “Family”) in an easy-to-manage “grid view.” With only one tap you can perform calls, messaging (SMS), email, or FaceTime. Buzz also includes“status taps,” which provides you with the ability to send frequently used phrases like, “On my way home.” or “What are you up to?” to an individual contact or any number of contacts in a group. Honestly, I would have paid more than $.99 they charge. This saves me A LOT of time.
Finally, a freebie for you. This is one of the most brilliant apps I’ve come across. If you use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc… then you see A LOT of pictures. You probably also miss a lot of pictures. Pixable is like an inbox for your email. It creates a manageable feed of all your friends’ photos and lets you easily “like” or share them on other networks. It even ranks them so you can see what photos are most popular among your networks. It eliminates the amount of time you spend moving from network to network. Whenever you comment or like a photo on Pixable the same automatically happens on Facebook. Streamlined! Share, reply, and retweet directly through Pixable.
What apps save you a ton of time? Let me know for future FAVES post.
photo credit: Βethan via photopin cc
