The Daring Librarian

It’s Time to Clean Up Your App Life Unused apps on your phone can do more harm than simply taking up space. We’re using our personal devices like our phones and our tablets more than ever during distance learning. But did you know that unused apps are not only slowing you down but may also be a serious security risk? Inspired by an article in Popular Science , I’ve cleaned up and cleared off nearly 2GB of stuff I really didn’t need.  Bye bye Flappy Bird! “A report last year found that the average person launches roughly 9 apps per day and interacts with roughly 30 apps over the course of a month.” If you have an iPhone: Go to settings > General > iPhone Storage and it will give you an option called “Offload Unused Apps,” which automatically deletes apps you don’t use regularly. It will also show you Apps you have NEVER used. If you can’t remember what an App does, why not just delete it? It was pretty easy to do and only took about 5 minutes to save a lot of space & secu...

This One iPhone Trick Has Transformed My Life OK, that's a kind of a big statement. You may have heard of this, but I found this out right before Christmas and started this blog then...but, you know. Holidays. So....just in case you haven't heard about this, here it is. The Space Bar Cursor Trick on the iPhone / iPad in iOS 12 is a great time saver for every iPhone or Apple user.  You can press and hold (long press) the space bar on an iPhone / iPad to control the cursor as mouse pointer. You can easily move over to the exact spot where you want to edit the text. How did I go years and years without knowing this iPhone keyboard trick? (I'm so tired the overused word of hack) Apparently, it's not exactly new but little known.  If you've ever felt the frustration of trying to move the cursor exactly where you want it when correcting (my increasingly less accurate -what's with that, too?) voice to text results tapping here and tapping there, when...

Hey gang! So, because of the snow we had this year, we're going all the way until June 19th! DOH! I mean, super! And if you're out of school already....well, I will try not to be salty about it, but I'm jealous baby! I'm looking at you Tiffany Whitehead ! LOL (Baton Rouge, LA gets out EARLY!) Around Memorial Day is when we start trying to get books back. Not from our active readers, but from those kiddos who have had books out for a long time. I'll share the back story below but the mobile suggestion right up front. This way, you don't have to read me blather on (unless you want to!) to get this cool idea.  My lovely & wonderful Media Assistant Ms. Kathi Bell, came up with this, with a recommendation from her son (and good friend of our library) John Bell. It's Alarming! If a kid owes you a book, ask if they have their cell phone on them. My examples are for the Apple phones (because that's what I have) but I'm sure a similar tech...

There's a new tablet & smart phone browser in town, it's for both Apple & Android, it's wicked fast, and it's FREE! (But honestly, I paid for it, keep reading to find out why!)  Puffin is a Beta cloud accelerated web browser for mobile devices.  With the free version you get the FLASH cloud enabled player for 14 days only....UNLESS you use this link and you gotta enter this secret code jembifpahhkka then you get DOUBLE! Or you could scan this QR code! It's Worth the Money, Honey! But I went ahead and splurged and bought the $2.99 version (search the App store for Puffin Browser) so I'll have cloud enabled FLASH  all the time and Nom nom is it ever SWEET! If you don't believe me, download the FREE version first, use my secret code to get double the days of FLASH, and try it for yourself. Then let me know what you think via Twitter or comments below: I think you'll like it, too! How Fast is Wicked Fast? The promotional verbage for thi...

Brøderbund's Living Books Are Back for  the iPad & iPhone Thanks to Wanderful Books ! On Friday I was looking pensively at my boxed sets of the Living Books CD-ROM collection in my school library. I have resisted for YEARS (ok, like 10+) to weed them knowing how AMAZING & special these interactive stories can be for ESOL or special ed kiddos but alas - the sad weeding day has finally come.  Year after year when weeding time came around my sainted and patient assistant Robin Black (this is our 21st year together!) would take them off the shelf & and add them to the weeding book cart.  I then would go behind her with a furtive grin & and put them back on the shelf. But this year I tested them and they do NOT work on ANY of my computers. Not any of our iBooks, MacBook Pros, eMacs (2003), or brand spanking new iMacs.  We run an OSX school & these old CD-ROM's only run on classic. Noooooo! [shakes fist in air in mock fury] So, sniffing ...