Spirit of Women magazine is a national publication presented to women by hospitals and their physicians. The magazine provides up-to-date, evidence-based healthcare information and promotes our hospitals as leaders in women's health excellence.
Issue link: https://spiritofwomen.epubxp.com/i/381814
2 1 w w w. s p i r i t o f w o m e n . c o m FA L L 2 014 S P I R I T O F W O M E N SHUTTERSTOCK memory, it's becoming nearly impossible to remember all those passwords for everything from online banking to the veterinarian who wants you to log in for Fido's appointment schedule. Let LastPass come to the rescue. It stores all your secu- rity passwords in an encrypted format and can be used with browsers on your PC as well as on your phone (iOS, Windows, Blackberry and Android). Both paid and free versions are available. Camera. Okay, so this app is already loaded on the smartphone and ready to go—isn't that the ultimate in efficient organization? Sure it's good for selfies, but there are some more practical applications too. For example, take a picture of the level on which you parked in the parking garage. You'll never forget where you parked again. Or snap photos of your pantry before you go to the grocery store. You won't double- buy all that pancake mix when it's on sale, just to find out you were already fully stocked. CardStar (http://www.cardstar.com). Of course you want all those reward points and 3 cents/gallon dis- counts and access to your digital library cards—but you don't want to carry around a stack of reward cards. CardStar is a free app that allows you to scan or enter your account numbers for your frequent shopper cards, library cards, gym membership ID and more. You can also receive coupons and deals from the stores you frequent most often. CardStar works with both Apple and Android phones. Key Ring (https://www.keyringapp.com) has similar functionality and works on both platforms as well. RedLaser (http://redlaser.com). No time for store-to- store (or even website-to-website) comparison shop- ping? Let the free RedLaser handle the footwork. Enter a product, and RedLaser will tell you where it is available less expensively, and whether it's in-store locally or needs to be ordered online. This free smart shopping app works on Apple, Windows and Android devices. Worldmate (https://www.worldmate.com). Instead of navigating between different airline and hotel apps, let Worldmate consolidate all of your itinerary information in one place. Held up by a flight delay? There's an app for that, and this one will help you find a new itin- erary and get hotel room deals, even telling you when your social media contacts are traveling where you are. Download it for free for use with Apple, Windows and Android smartphones. • Y ou're sitting in your car in the driveway, all buckled in, ready to leave on time for once—until you realize that it's going to take 10 minutes of thumbing through the iPhone screen to figure out where you stored the address of your destination. Such is the paradox of the smartphone. While it's an amazing piece of omniscient technology in the palm of your hand, its artificial intelligence is only as good as you are at accessing its wisdom. We've compiled a few tips that can help you tame the smartphone beast, including tricks for organizing the information on your phone and a list of apps to down- load for organizing the rest of your life. So get ready to start swiping away. Home screen organization. On an Apple/iOS device, such as an iPhone, you can easily drag and drop apps to put them in like categories. When you slide apps together, iOS automatically names the box for a shared characteristic such as "games" or "entertainment." You can edit the category names to something that better fits your personality, like "time wasters" or "apps my kids put on my phone." The Application Manager feature on an Android serves a similar function, moving apps into folders. After you've categorized your apps like this, you can (and should) rearrange them so the ones you use most often are front and center. Evernote (https://evernote.com). If you used to carry a pen and notebook for list-making before you got a smartphone, Evernote is the app for you. You can create shopping lists, packing lists, to do lists, whatever you need to remember in a searchable, digital form. Evernote syncs with calendars, e-mail programs and cameras so you can save web urls, photos (such as a shot of a business card from a new contact), pdfs and items other than just your grocery list. Spend the time to load your basics into Evernote, such as your grocery list with essentials and staples, and then each week you just have to update it. Keep regular items like milk and mac 'n' cheese on the list without rewriting them every time, and add outliers, like ingredients for a dinner party. There are both free and paid versions of Ever- note, and the app works on multiple platforms. LastPass (https://lastpass.com). One of your passwords needs eight digits with a combination of letters and numbers. Another just needs six digits, but with caps and lowercase letters. Unless you have a photographic