Nothing Good Happens after 2 AM….Except Ninite.com

How annoying is it when you buy a new laptop or reformat your old one and you have to go through the process of installing all the standard applications.

Seriously, everyone knows that the only thing IE is good for is downloading Google Chrome. (Which is no longer true if you’ve taken a look at IE 11’s debugging tools. Oh my god, Microsoft, way to step up your game! But I’ll save that for another post.)

Anyways, so there are those apps that should essentially come preinstalled in this generation, like Google Chrome or Firefox, Skype or Google’s Voice/Video plugin, Dropbox, and even Eclipse (for all those developers out there in the world). And yet, they don’t. So when you get a new laptop, you constantly have to go through that annoying process of going to each of their websites, downloading those setup-google-chrome.exe files and repeating the mindless task of pressing Next’ and waiting.

Guess what. Not anymore!

That’s the sole purpose of Ninite.com. Seriously, go to their site. They have a list (which is constantly expanding, mind you) of applications that you would want to install when you set-up your environment and you just check off the ones you want, install just ONE exe and you’re ready to go.

That one all-powerful exe will take care of all the ‘I Accept’s and all the ‘Next’ buttons of all those apps. So next time you have to setup your computer…say goodnight, because ninite will take care of you and keep your computer ready to go when you wake up the next morning J

 

Start your days with Sunrise

First things first: I hope everyone had a splendid holiday season and new year J Sorry for the neglect that this blog has been getting. Things have been so crazy recently with people visiting me during the holidays, me spending more time (and by more time, I mean time.) at the gym, and me just getting lazy and not searching for things to write about! But we’ll see how long I can keep this up lol.

The app I want to show you today is called Sunrise. I stumbled upon it couple days ago in the app store, and it’s a beautiful calendar app. So, if you’re one of those people that uses Calendar for everything, I think it’s time for you to make the switch. And since I don’t expect you to just blindly follow me, I’ll give you a list of reasons this app is cool.

Amazingly smooth design

I don’t know if it’s the iOS 7 influence or just the general progression of where everything is going, but I love how simplistic and concise people are making apps now.

When you open the app and get past all the average setup stuff, you see your main screen.

As you can see below, it shows all your events, connecting them to locations and people. And, it shows you the weather for today and tomorrow.

I’m especially a fan of the two-week overview on the top. That way when you ask if someone’s free next Wednesday for dinner, and they’re like—I think so…what’s the date? You can take a quick glance and tell them it’s the 22^nd.

The Day View

Did anyone else look at the top row of buttons and question what that button with the three vertical lines was?

It’s the day view! Well, I call it the day view; I guess technically it should be the three-day view or something.

I guess it’s just a preference as to which way you want. Personally I like the other view. But I’m pretty sure that’s because I really like the little icons.

The Cutest Little Icons

When you add a new event, it looks at keywords that you’re typing and puts little icons next to the event.

I love this, especially since I’m still figuring out which keywords cause the icon to change. So far, there’s the standard group: all meals of the day, and the rest listed below…

…and then there’s: TV, game, meeting, party, happy hour/drinks, concert, workout, and I’m still figuring them out as I go!

In addition to the icon (which I probably spent more time talking about than I should have or than anyone else cares to read lol), there’re also other standard things you can associate with an event, like location and/or people.

Quick Add

As a bonus, there’s a quick add that you can access if you press and hold the plus sign button on the top right.

And, as the example text says, you just type out your event sentence, and it’ll create the event.

The Connections

No app can be successful without integration. It’s such an expectation in this generation, and as expected, this app delivers.

There are people connections. It accesses and searches through your contacts when inviting people

And inviting them automatically sends an invite to their calendar.

Also, once you connect a person to an event, you can link them to their Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter account. Once you connect them, you can access that information simply through your event.

There’s also connection to maps, when you add locations. The part that I liked was that in settings it asks you which map app you want to use. So, obviously I picked Google Maps.

Hopefully, I’ve convinced you of the awesomeness that this calendar app is, maybe even enough for you to download it.

Since it’s free and what not, guess you don’t have much to lose! Unfortunately, for now, it’s only available on iPhone, but if you want to get it, you can get it here (http://www.sunrise.am/).

Have fun with this app!! (And let me know if you learn of any more keywords that create cute icons!) 😀