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Tech Review: Mobile Apps

Spotify

Features: Offline Streaming, Social Media Sharing, Data Saving, Lyric Options, Student Discounts, & Music Preference

Spotify is an online audio streaming app that provides listeners with direct access to their favorite artists and songs. Its features involve offline streaming, which can save our mobile data and enables the listeners to download their favorite song or album. Lyrics are also a viable option if ever one decides to sing along to a certain song or to memorize it entirely. The good thing about it is also the fact that it gives us the option of muting songs or artists that we don’t like. Users can personalize their playlist and stay updated with the latest music. Most importantly, student users are given discounts for the app’s premium version. This, for me, is the best feature.

Google Play Games

Features: Achievements, Leaderboards, Game Saves, & Publishing API Services

To start off, the reason why I use Google Play Games is because I am well-acquainted with its mother company, Google. And given Google’s track record, Google Play Games already has an edge to the user’s preference for a gaming app. Some of key features are mainly strategized to hook its players with the appeal of relaxation, ego boosts, and encouragement. The achievement and leaderboard features would list down all your accomplishments and rankings to encourage you to play more in order to achieve more or rank higher to make you feel better or release yourself from stress. Personally, I gravitate more on the Game Saving feature since I am the type to change games often. Google Play Games saves me from the risk of a progress loss in these games whenever I delete a previous game to install a new one. Likewise, I can reinstall an old game and not have to redo the entire game all over again. This proves beneficial as well for those who are forced to uninstall their games to preserve the phone’s optimal performance which might slow down due to an app’s heavy memory load. The app’s Publishing API services are also beneficial, however, that still depends if you need to utilize games consoles for a game. This one would be my least liked option for the app since I can’t fully appreciate it as compared to those who use consoles and the like for gaming.

Flo (Period Tracker) App

Features: AI-powered period related symptoms tracker & related advice

For women, monthly visits are an occasional thing. This lifestyle is both inevitable and necessary since it can tell a lot about us and our overall health. A regular cycle is composed of 28 days (or 30), and unless you have an irregular cycle, a prolonged inconsistency may indicate an underlying issue. In order to ensure our menstrual health, it is suggested for us to track these and Flo, in my opinion, is the best app for this. Most period apps are the same, asking for your previous cycles and predicting future cycles. What makes it different (and most favorable) though, is the fact that Flo can adjust to your delays and track every inconsistency. Identifying each symptom you experience leading up to your cycle is also a highlighted feature, in addition to the different trivia and facts they share regularly.

Public Charging Stations: Are Warning Signs Necessary?

Several cases of identity theft has led to the people’s vigilance towards safeguarding their information. The responsibility pertaining to the extent of information that is revealed via technological means rests highly upon the awareness and knowledge of the people involved.

When in public, we often find ourselves immediately focusing on one thing: safety. This action is basically done upon instinct, and is something that we most often apply in almost everything that we do daily. In technology, this comes in the form of data privacy.

Having said this, personally, I am not keen on the idea of making the stores post warning signs on their charging stations. I say this because, as a customer, I won’t be too encouraged to charge my phone using that charging station since it means that the store’s overall security service is lacking, giving possible hackers or thieves the opportunity to tamper with their equipment and steal information through it. Posting such warnings may even exaggerate things, making the customers worry more than what is necessary, and the store would have to face the risk of basically having it’s customers’ lose confidence with their management. I also say this in hopes that the customers themselves know not to keep confidential or important information in a device that can easily be stolen or misplaced.

I personally don’t charge my phone through public charging stations because I have a habit of making sure that my phone is always fully charged before leaving home. This, and the fact that I have a power bank with me. This means that unless I really need to make important calls or transactions immediately, and I don’t have these options at my disposal, I won’t be using public charging stations for my phone. However, I might change my mind if I were to regularly go to the store and not hear any issues regarding the said risks.

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Technology on a Daily Basis

A loud noise rang in my ear, startling me awake as my alarm goes off. A frustrated sigh escapes from my mouth as I yet again forgot to take my earphones off after listening to a podcast entitled “Welcome to Night Vale“.

College life can be tough for someone when he/she is not close to home. As a child, I grew up having to share a room with my parents and siblings, which means that I’m not used to sleeping alone. Add the fact that I’m a nervous wreck. Because of this, I turned to listening to podcasts to distract me from my thoughts of anxiety.

As a millenial, technology seems to be involved in everything I do. And while it is true that technology makes things easier for us, this results to our dependency on it. Technology is present everyday and I use it for many purposes, like when I need to do some research work for school, or when I want to entertain myself during my leisure.

To summarize, technology entails with it a number of advantages. For one, it helps us communicate with our loved ones; it gives us access to useful applications which we can use for a variety of things; and is an overall multi-purpose gadget/medium that makes it easier for us to carry out our given tasks. Technology has given me a lot of help but there is one thing right now that makes me glad for its discovery.

Technology has aided me in one of things I find most important for me right now: distraction. Distraction from my loneliness, fears, all my negative emotions. Technology has been a great help so far. First off, I would of course, contact my parents and update them about my status in school, and whatnot. And for a while, I momentarily forget that you’re far. Well, at least for a little bit, but enough to get renewed strength to continue studying.

And so, I’d have this routine for almost everyday. I’d start off with the alarms, then open my messenger for updates. School would start and I’d find myself googling my way through Math 50 since I most probably won’t understand a huge chunk of my assignment and meet with my good old Indian friend on YouTube to teach me how to convert repeating decimals to fractions. And of course, my gallery would have a lot more notes from all the powerpoint presentation slides I’ve obtained from my class subjects.

Same old, same old. After going home from school, I’d check how many homeworks I’ve got and procrastinate for a while as I listen to criminal documentaries on YouTube and listen to the songs from musicals or listen to Cecil’s voice during the podcast, until I eventually fall asleep again (after praying) and wake up to the torturous sounds of my blaring alarm.

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

  • Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
  • Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

  • Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
  • What topics do you think you’ll write about?
  • Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
  • If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.