App of the Week 4/20/12

 Zoolz is a service for sharing and accessing the files on your Windows PC from your Android devices and or from your iOS devices.  Zoolz allows you to sync folders on your Windows PC with mobile device. You can also sync files from your mobile device to your PC.

App of the Week 4/13/12

From David Byrne's Android for Schools:

"Whether we like it or not, students use SparkNotes.  SparkNotes for Android puts many of the same content guides found on SparkNotes.com available in a mobile-friendly format. The app makes content guides available online and offline through download options. You can search for content guides according to subject and topic.


SparkNotes for Android has a social check-in option that students can use to find people near them that are also using the app. SparkNotes suggests that students could use the check-in option to create study groups at the spur of the moment."

Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Can't wait to start reading this one!   It's received lots of good buzz...

Nineteen-year-old returning champion Sean Kendrick competes against Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to ride in the annual Scorpio Races, both trying to keep hold of their dangerous water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.

Hemingway's Boat: everything he loved in life, and lost, 1934-1961 by Paul Hendrickson

Examines the life of Ernest Hemingway from 1934 to 1961, focusing on his love for his boat, "Pilar," and the influence his sea travels aboard the ship had on his writing and discussing his relationships with his youngest son, his generosity towards others, and his personal struggles.

App of the Week 4/6/12

Studious is a free Android app for keeping track of important assignment due dates. You can set alarms to remind yourself of impending due dates. The app also gives you the option to take notes and pictures to save on your Android phone or Android tablet. And a nifty feature of Studious is that you can set it to automatically silence your phone at the start of a class.

Studious has the ability to silence your device during class time. 

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

 

In the remarkable, bizarre, and heart-wrenching summer before Cullen Witter's senior year of high school, everything he thinks he understands about his small and painfully dull Arkansas town vanishes. His cousin overdoses; his town becomes absurdly obsessed with the alleged reappearance of an extinct woodpecker; and most troubling of all, his sensitive, gifted fifteen-year-old brother, Gabriel, suddenly and inexplicably disappears. As Cullen navigates a summer of finding and losing love, holding his fragile family together, and muddling his way into adulthood, a young, disillusioned missionary in Africa searches for meaning wherever he can find it. Through masterful plotting, these two stories are brought face-to-face in a surprising and harrowing climax that is tinged with melancholy and regret, comedy and absurdity, and above all, hope. 

App of the Week 3/23/12

 Panorama is a free app. To capture a panorama just tap the camera icon and slowly move your phone from left to right. You can apply three different effects to the images or just use the image as-is. You can share your panoramas directly to Facebook or Twitter from the app. In my limited early testing of the app, no pop-up ads appeared.