Apps – Page 4 – IT Connect

Using RSS Readers to Keep Track of Your Favorite Blogs

By Amber Clark

Back in the dark ages, before Twitter and Tumblr, there were blogs. Individuals tired of going from one blog to another to read all their news, jokes and view cute pictures of cats, created a centralized place where one could read all their blogs while only going to one website, or RSS Reader. Blog engines such as Blogger, and later WordPress, provided authors with a way to distribute their blogs in Rich Site Summary (RSS) to be integrated into an RSS Reader

The gold standard of RSS readers (and my personal favorite) was Google Reader. There I could add blogs’ RSS feeds as I found them and categorize them for later when I was looking for specific information.

As with all things on the Internet, good things don’t last. After the advent of Twitter and the growing popularity of microblogging, Google announced it was decommissioning Google Reader. Many devoted users were upset and signed petitions, others saw an opening in the marketplace and started building their own, many with the ability to integrate not just RSS feeds but also Twitter and Tumblr.

There are now numerous RSS or Blog Readers. Here are a few you might want to give a try:

Bloglovin- Is a place where you can read all your blogs in one place. You can categorize the blogs you add and integrate social media including Facebook. Bloglovin will also make suggestions for other sites based off websites you have added. In addition to integrated apps for phones and tablets, there is also a Bloglovin button you can add to your browser toolbar to make it that much easier to add sites to Bloglovin.

Newsblur- is another news and rss reader with its own social media components. It also has apps for iOS and Android.

Google Chrome RSS Feed Reader plugin- Google Chrome has an RSS Feed Reader broswer plugin that allows you to access and manage your RSS feeds from Google Chrome. It also has a feature to alert you when a website you are visiting has RSS feeds.

Photo © SplitShire | www.splitshire.com. Used with permission.

Adobe Makes Lightroom Available for Android

“This is not just a way to get photos from place to place. It lets you maintain your workflow on the mobile device. It can be a tremendous time saver and productivity tool for making edits on the go.”

-Shared Mangalick, senior product manager for photography at Adobe

According to TechNewsWorld, Adobe is expanding their market by now offering a mobile version of Lightroom for Android devices. Last year they released the app for iOS mobile devices. It does not provide the full functionality of the desktop version; however, it allows users to save changes to their photos and sync them back to their desktop.

For more information Lightroom for mobile devices, visit Adobe’s website.

After finals it’s time to catch up on some sleep!

By Kristina Harris

Have you pulled a few all nighters trying to cram for exams? Now that the semester is winding down you can use this app to track your sleeping patterns and see if you’re using your time off from school wisely.

Enjoy the summer break!

f.lux: Sleep and Screen Color

By Moez Janmohammad

If you’re a college student, chances are you’ve stayed up late to finish an assignment, but have you ever paused to think about your eyes? The bright and blueish lights emitted from most LCD displays mimic bright sunlight and cause a disruption to normal sleep patterns (because we all have normal sleep patterns in college) and inhibit the amount of melatonin, a chemical our bodies produce that causes drowsiness. f.lux seeks to solve this problem by changing the screen temperature of your display to have it emit more red light after sunset. At sunset, f.lux automatically adjusts your display, making whites appear reddish or salmon, matching natural light cycles and our body’s Circadian rhythm.

f.lux is available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. It is only available on jailbroken iOS devices, and an Android version is in the works. To get it go to www.justgetflux.com.

Cam Scanner: Scan on the Go

By: Rajat Shetty

Most offices are well equipped with high definition scanners, printers, copiers, etc. However, there are instances when people need to scan documents on the go, and a scanner is not readily available. The Cam-Scanner app makes scanning in almost any location possible.

While this application is not suitable for high definition scans, you can surely use it for urgent and basic scans of a two or three page document. I scanned my homework with this application, and it worked just fine!

The free version for Cam-Scanner is available in the Apple-App store and the Google Play store (For Android devices). This easy to use app scans documents with your cellphone camera.

To scan a document, follow these steps:

Download the Cam-Scanner application from your App store and install it on your smartphone.
Place the document you wish to scan in a well-lit area.
Capture the image by pressing the center button on the screen.
Make sure that the entire document is selected, and the edges are not cropped.
Once the image is locked, you will be able to crop the image you clicked as well as adjust the brightness, contrast, and other parameters.
Once you have done this, you can click next, and the scanned image will be generated.
You can convert this image into PDF format and email it immediately, or you can save it on your phone for future use.

Here is a screenshot of scanned document from my Android phone:

The drawbacks associated with this particular application are that you need the latest cell phone which has a high resolution camera (Probably 8 mega pixel onward). Also it’s not suitable, if you are looking to scan large set of documents or books. For a fully functional Cam-Scanner, you can buy the full version called “Cam Scanner Pro”. This is available on App-stores for both Apple and Android phones. However, the free version works fine for small sets of documents. The best part is you can scan, edit, and email the scanned document from your phone, within a matter of minutes.