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!) 😀

Take a bow, Google Now

It’s Techy Tuesday and I’m back on my schedule! Today, you get to meet Google Now!

I know I usually try writing about random apps that just do their thing in a little corner of the world, but today I’m taking a new approach.  Let’s talk about an app made by a company that doesn’t need advertising.  There are probably people in third-world countries that want electricity in their town so they can Google stuff. In fact, there are probably penguins in a fourth-world country (you know, Antarctica) that use their cute little flippers to Google how many feet of snow they’ll get today.

However, just because the world of people and penguins knows about Google doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone knows about the fun little features and apps that Google makes.  Maybe you’ve noticed recently (like within the past year, it’s not quite that recent), you can Google things like….”weather” and it’ll take your current location and return back the weather.  Or if you’re logged in to your Google account—the same email that you used to book a flight with United Airlines and they emailed you your confirmation itinerary—and you search “my flight.” A little card will pop up and tell you when your flight is and what the status is.  Those are the things that are integrated into the main Google website.  Google Now is like all of that, but personally for you on your phone.  It’s great.

When you first open the app, you sign in once and you’ll get this screen:

OK, Google

So it brings up just an average search screen with the weather of where you are right now.  Oh, I’m sorry. Did I say average?? Since when has anything Google done been categorized as “average.” I’m pretty sure they’re known for their simplistic and subtle ways of going above and beyond.  What is it that makes it above average, you ask? Alright try this: once you’re at that screen….say, “OK, Google…”

I KNOW. HOW COOL, RIGHT?!?! For those of you readers that weren’t following along with me (tisk tisk, way to be bad students!), when you say “OK, Google,” it automatically detects it and turns on voice command and you can tell Google whatever you want! Google seriously is on top of their game here.  I was just playing around with a bunch of commands, and here are a couple things you can ask Google:

• What does __ mean?
• How do you say __ in __?
• What’s the weather outside?
• Where am I?
• Take me to work/home.
• Who’s playing football tonight?

The list goes on forever. It’s pretty sweet.  I noticed that when I was comparing Google Now versus Siri, Siri will actually give responses to silly questions, but Google is very serious and work-minded.  I guess that means Siri gets the fun and friendly point.

Then again, Google seems to understand me more and give me straight up answers.  Like if I ask who Aubrey Plaza is, Google will take me directly to her Wikipedia page.  Siri sometimes tends to just return Google results and be like, I think this is what you meant, right?! Can you find it yourself?? Thanks, Siri…  So, Google gets the smart boy point. (Side note for any Bollywood fans reading this… “Kuch sunai toh nahin diya, lekin Smart Boy zaroor kaha hoga!”  Bonus points if you know what movie that’s from!)

One of the cooler voice command features I use often is the “Remind me” feature.  Just tell Google “Remind me to….” do whatever whenever, and it’ll add a little reminder card to your home screen and send you a push notification when you tell it to! 🙂

P.S. – I’m pretty sure Android’s new OS Kit Kat has this OK, Google thing on at all times…like you don’t have to have any app open at all; you just have to talk to your phone!  I’m totally jealous of anyone that has the new Nexus 5. I want it soooo bad (but thanks to Verizon and Google not being friends, I don’t see that happening anytime soon) 😦

Google Cards

In order to help you organize all the fun informational things Google is keeping for you, Google Now keeps everything in little “cards” at the bottom of the start screen.  If instead of going into voice command you decide to scroll down, you can access all the cards Google has saved for you!  This is where you’ll have things like: your reminders, a card for weather, new Google results about recent Google searches you’ve made, and things like concerts and stuff that are around you.  I also noticed it told me when the next Bones episode would be airing since apparently I googled David Boreanaz at some point…

My favorite card is the Go Home/Work card. When I’m away from home, then my top card is always Go Home.  And it’ll tell me how far I am, what the traffic is like, and I can just tap the card to open and start Google Maps directions to take me home!  Because after all, there’s no place like home ❤

….Notice the excitement is mainly for when it takes me home. Not when it takes me to work, even though technically that is also an option.

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There are tons of cards that Google shows.  If you want to see an entire list, actually check out their site at http://www.google.com/landing/now/#cards.

Google Apps

Google Now also gives you access to a good number of their commonly used apps: like shown below. There’s not much really to say about these, but it definitely is a lot more convenient and quicker than opening up Safari and typing in docs.google.com, then waiting for forever for it to load.

All-in-all, Google Now is definitely a great app. Especialllllllllly (NOTICE THE MAJOR EMPHASIS) for Android users that don’t have Siri! Get Google Now. It’s great. I like it just as much as Siri. (Probably more, because of my ingrained mental Google bias.)

Google’s done a great job with Google Now.  And after such a great performance, Google, take a bow for Google Now! 🙂

Available for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone! Click links to download.