Hear author Irene McDermott discuss websites and apps to help save money on travel on the Heart to Heart program on WNJC Radio Philadelphia. The program aired on June 12, 2012.
http://wnjc1360.com/featured-hosts/dr-susan-lorain/
Click below to play.
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Musicians, are you sick of lugging notebooks thick with sheet music to gigs, music that you must clamp to stands with clothes pins to keep it from fluttering away as you play? Here is your answer: get yourself an iPad and download the Gig Easy app ($3.99). You can now load thousands of pages of sheet music in .pdf format which you can then search and organize into set lists.
To hold your iPad in place as you play, be sure to pick up a Gig Easy iPad holder. (http://www.thegigeasy.com) Designed for musicians by musicians, the Gig Easy screws right onto existing music stands, so you don’t have to bring your own.
Gig Easy app
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/thegigeasy/id529154164?mt=8
Our friends with smart phones might enjoy the gift of a useful new app. But wait! There is no way to transfer or give away an app from the Android Market, the native app store run by Google: https://market.android.com. However, Android users can offer gift cards purchased from the rival Amazon Appstore.
Amazon Appstore Giftcards
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000619631
Amazon lets givers send money for Android apps via email, a printed card, or a post on a Facebook wall. Although Amazon’s offerings lack the variety of Google’s Android Market, still there are quite a few quality selections in the only app store for the Android platform with gift options.
Gifting Apps for iPhone
http://www.apple.com/iphone/apps-for-iphone/
Apple makes it easy to give money for its iPhone apps. Choose an app on this web site and then open the iTunes store. Instead of clicking the “Buy App” button, click on the pull-down arrow and select “Gift This App.” From there, just fill in the recipient’s email and add a message. Or, you can print out a certificate. Interestingly, apps can only be exchanged within the borders of a country.
Software art coordinator Jeremy Bishop uses his iPad as a backup GPS and weather station while flying his plane. “I’ve got several aviation apps loaded that allow me to reference my location on FAA maps, check airport and weather conditions en route and look up important info as needed. Then when I reach my destination, I can find the nearest good lunch spot!” Here are the iPad apps that keep him on course.
WingX Pro
http://www.hiltonsoftware.com
Jeremy uses this mobile aviation GPS app, which costs 99 cents to download iPad and $99 per year for access to current VFR sectionals, IFR low/high enroute charts and even fuel prices. Synthetic Vision, 3-D route-envisioning software, is available for an additional charge.
Actress/screenwriter Therese Lentz uses the iPad to prepare for auditions. “I don’t print sides anymore,” she says. “I just open the download in iBooks and I’m good to go.” Therese also uses her iPad to write. “I use Pages ($9.99, http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pages/id361309726?mt=8) for lesson planning and I have an app for scripts.
Scripts Pro
http://www.scriptsapp.com
Need to work on your screenplay on the go? Just download this $5.99 app and get started wherever you are. “It interfaces well with Final Draft (http://www.finaldraft.com),” screenwriting software for Mac, Therese says.
For musicians of any skill level, professional guitarist Brian Monroney recommends iReal b, a “fake book” app for the iPad ($7.99) and Android-based ($9.99) devices. “You can find the chord changes for thousands of standard jazz and pop tunes online and load them into this app. It allows you to transpose them on the fly, so if the singer calls ‘Body and Soul’ in the key of B, there’s not going to be a train wreck,” Brian says. iReal b will also generate piano, guitar, or bass and drums accompaniments for downloaded chord charts.
Typing on the iPad is a little tough. Mostly, it’s slow-go hunt and peck. In landscape orientation, the on-screen keypad can be used for touch typing in a cramped and awkward way. How much faster it would be to just talk into the thing and have it turn my words into a Facebook update or an email. Perhaps I could even dictate parts of an article.
Nuance Communications, which also makes Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the best voice recognition software on the market, offers a free app that translates speech into text easily, quickly, and accurately. It can recognize a variety of languages including French, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese.
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