Too Many Apps!

What ever you need, someone has created an app to fulfill that need. If you’re like me you want to download apps for a variety of reasons, whether it actually fills a need for you, you have to have the newest thing, or if you’re like me you download it because it is new and try it out but then you never use it again. It gets to a point when you look at the apps on your phone and you have a lot of apps just taking up space. In this post I will discuss how to clean up your smart phone.

On lifehacker.com, a user wrote in describing this very issue. The site wrote back with some very useful steps-

1.     Wipeout all your apps. It will be easier to determine which apps you think are important as compared to which you can part with.

2.     Put your top 12 apps on the home page. They realize that your phone can probably fit more than 12 apps but, if you limit yourself to 12 apps then you will be able to navigate more easily.

3.     Make a secondary and final page. These apps on this page are ones you use but maybe not as often as others. You must limit your self to two pages.

4.     Create a holding bin. You can name it what ever you want, but if you have an app addiction but those “newest and coolest” apps in this bin. Next, on a weekly basis go in and clean that file of any apps you haven’t really used. 

The New York Times provides further guidelines in helping fight any app addiction.  First, use folders to group similar apps; this will help you navigate through all your apps. Second, respect the folder cap. Every folder can hold 12-16 apps determined whether you are using Apple or Android, the author of this article suggests a “one in one out” rule. This rule is simple, for every new app you put in a folder one has to go. Third, keep some apps separate. Examples would include those you use all the time, whether it be email or a bus schedule.

My thoughts? I am more likely to try the steps provided by lifehacker.com because its extreme but I think in the long term I would like the ease and efficiency it would provide. 

Viral Videos- from zero to 30 million views

Usually when I hear the word viral I have a negative connotation that gets tagged with it. Then all of a sudden people start talking about “viral videos” and how great it is. My first thought is, “But its viral? That’s bad.” I can say I am happy to be proven wrong.

Mashable gives a great definition of what makes a video a viral video. It is through the process of sharing a video electronically. Most common methods include sharing websites, social media, and email. So how do you diagnose a video as “viral”? How hast it spreads through out the web. The article describes that some viral videos get 30 million views in the first 30 days it was posted on YouTube  It definitely blows my mind how fast things travel. 

In an article on searchenginewatch.com, the author gives tips that can help your own video, whether for a business or personal use, become “viral”.

!) Arouse your viewer- positive and negative emotion linked to arousal will lead to one more likely to share a video.

2) Avoid sad emotion- when content evokes a sad response from viewers this is less arousal and will lead to a viewer being less likely to share the video.

3) Don’t worry be happy! The article does state the positive and negative extremes lead to video sharing but positive beats negative almost every time.  The study conducted by the site reinforces this tip; when deciding what emotion to go with, positive should be your default.

4)Negative can be positive. Yes in the last tip it says to default to positive every time but negative content can go viral too. Emotions include shock and anger among many others.

The author gives one final tidbit of information with regards to the results from the study mentioned. It says that content created by women went viral more often than content created by men. As a guy I want to disagree with this but, where women are men will follow.