Pushbullet | App Review

Download apps and extensions from:
 https://www.pushbullet.com/apps for free!

Pushbullet allows you to send files/links/photos/notes between devices and web browsers using apps and extensions. You can send them to yourself or to your friends if they also use Pushbullet.

Examples of using Pushbullet include:

• Finding a website you like on your phone and you want to view it on your computer.
• You think of a good idea when you’re out and you want to be reminded of it when you get back to your computer.
• You take a photo with your phone and want to edit it on your computer.
• You start working on a document on the train home and want to continue working on it on your computer.

And it’s not just about sending stuff from your phone to your computer as this video from Pushbullet shows: 

A useful feature of Pushbullet is that you can send SMS (text) messages from your computer via your phone. Your contacts list on your phone will appear in the ‘To’ box when you are about to send a message. Additionally, Pushbullet can ‘push’ notifications from your phone to your computer. You can disable this feature if you don’t like it or mute specific apps you don’t want to be notified about. If the notification is about a message you’ve received, you can reply to it using your computer by clicking ‘reply’ in the notification. Currently this works with WhatsApp, Telegram, Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, and Line. These features mean you can communicate using messages without having to change between your computer and your phone. Additionally, it means you can use the larger keyboard for your computer rather than a fiddly phone keyboard!

Pushbullet allows you to subscribe to a selection of channels. These allow you to stay up-to-date about something you are interested in. An example of this is updates from the Pushbullet blog.

The speed that Pushbullet operates is dependent on the speed of your internet connection. A slow connection will mean that you will need to wait a while for files to be uploaded and downloaded from the cloud.

Another thing to consider is you can only send one photo/file at a time between your phone and your computer. This means it could be time consuming if you wish to send many files as you’d have to select them all individually.

Contact

Website: pushbullet.com

Social Media Links:

• Twitter:@Pushbullet
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pushbullet 
• Google+:https://plus.google.com/+Pushbullet/videos

OneNote | App Review

Free Download, see onenote.com

OneNote is a free note-taking app which is available for many platforms. Having apps for multiple platforms and allowing access to notes from the website means you can view and edit your notes anywhere you can get an internet connection. Logging in with your Microsoft account means your notes will be synced with OneDrive, meaning all of your notes will be available on all of your devices (as long as you have and internet connection).

You can create multiple notebooks and within each notebook you can have several section each with numerous pages. This set-up replicates the way notes can be organised in real life. Even if you use this system to keep your notes well-organised, you may still need to use the search function sometimes! You have the choice of searching for a page that contains a specific term or you can search for a term on the page you are currently editing.

You can add text to the page and add a tag to it, for example ‘website to visit’ or add to-do tick boxes.

Alternatives to text include an audio note, video note or you could draw or handwrite on a page using your device’s touchscreen or by using your computer’s mouse. You can also change the background of the page. Having lines on a page can make it easier to write neatly.

The OneNote web clipper allows you to ‘clip’ webpages to your notebooks. Other ways to add notes are sending an e-mail to me@onenote.com or by using the ‘Send to OneNote’ tool.

OneNote can extract text from an image or just make the text in the image searchable.

OneNote offers some helpful options for taking notes. In the Windows version, you can set the window to be ‘always on top’ so that you can take notes from another window. Similarly, dock view puts OneNote on the side of your screen so you can take notes while, for example, reading a document in another window.

Contact

Website: www.onenote.com

Social Media Links:

• Twitter: @msonenote
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OneNote

XMind | App Review

Free download for Windows

Free download for Mac

Free download for Linux

Free Portable download (for use on USB drives)

• The paid for version adds more features.

When XMind loads, you are presented with a selection of templates and themes. The templates are really useful and range from a weight-loss plan to business tools such as a SWOT analysis. Alternatively, you can choose to start with a blank workbook. Adding subtopics are easy, either by using the button on the toolbar or by pressing the tab key on your keyboard.

To make your map more ‘visual’ you can add what XMind calls ‘markers’. These are icons which appear next to your topics. The selection of ‘markers’ includes task progress, faces and various symbols.

I've created a mindmap to the main features of XMind.

• Put a relationship between two topics – a line will link them
• Put a boundary around topics – a line will surround them
• Put a summary next to topics – brackets the topics into a group

• Add a note to a topic
• Insert a file (a document, a photo, another XMind file) to a topic
• Insert a hyperlink (to a website) to a topic

What I like about XMind is there’s lots of options to customise, such as a choice of different ‘structures’, a list of which is shown below:

Other customisation options include:

• Change the background colour or add a wallpaper from the selection or from one of your own files
• Change the shape for each topic, and the colour of the shape, and make it gradient-filled.
• Change the line colours which extent from the central topic to ‘multi’ and ‘tapered’.
• Add a ‘legend’ which explains the markers you’ve used.
• Change the font and font colour.

Personally, I use XMind to keep track of my to-do list for university and also to organise my lecture notes. I’m sure you’ll have lots of ideas of how you can make use of this great piece of software. For example, keeping track of the ideas you have floating around in your head to organising a holiday! Go on and give XMind a try!

Contact

Website: http://www.xmind.net/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/xmind.net

Twitter: @XMind

TouchMail | App Review

Free Download for Windows 8.1

TouchMail is a visual mail app which can be found in the productivity category and ‘Organise Your Life’ collection of the Windows Store. The graphical interface is much more attractive than traditional email applications. The most recent update added the ability to see how many unread messages you have in each email account at a glance as well as the ability to move messages into and between folders.

Messages can be viewed in a timeline or grouped by sender. The view can be zoomed in or out so you can read more of the message without opening it or see more messages. 

Filters allow you to view only messages which are unread, with attachments, from a specific sender or have been flagged. If using the filters doesn’t help you to find the specific message you are looking for, you can also search for a message by clicking on the search icon and entering your search term.

New messages are shown in toast notification (which appear at the side of the screen) and on the apps live tile on the start screen.

TouchMail supports gestures, for example, swiping upwards to delete. This is useful on Windows 8 tablets and touchscreen computers. Clicking on the message while it is deleting will cancel its deletion.

Deleting a message from the Inbox

When sending messages, you can add attachments either from local storage or OneDrive. You can import contact pictures which will be displayed on the messages received from that contact. If the messages is being received from a well-known company, for example, Facebook or eBay, their logo will be already set as the contact picture.

You can also give contacts a specific colour which all future messages received from that contact will be displayed in. More control over how contacts are dealt with would be beneficial, for example, an ‘address book’. Currently, no more than three email accounts can be used with TouchMail. In the future, the developers may want to consider increasing this.

Alternative: 

Mail – Made by Microsoft and includes the ‘Calendar’ and ‘People’ apps. I don’t find Mail’s interface as appealing as Touchmail’s.

Contact Details:

• Website: http://www.touchmail.co/ - You can sign up to the TouchMail newsletter there.

• Twitter: @TouchMail

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/gettouchmail