Smart Phone and Tablet Key Reference Apps and Reference Categories 2020: Make Your Phone Smarter!

All right. Hi everybody, uh, Randy Dean here, the Email Sanity Expert. And today I want to do something sort of fun. I've been wanting to build this video for a little while. This is a video about my favorite reference apps for smartphones and tablets. And I think that you're going to really find this potentially a useful video because it might sort of change the way you think about how you use your smartphone and tablet devices. And it's part of the actual full-length course that I teach on smartphone success and terrific tablets. And one of the interesting things about that course is that, you know, one of the things I always share right at the beginning is, is this: phones, by their design, distract you. And potentially, you know, I read a statistic, 13% of smartphone users are addicted to their devices. They're constantly interrupting you, they're always trying to grab your attention. You know, there's some things you can do to reduce the distraction, clearly, but, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be like this. I'll probably discuss distraction management with your devices in a different video at some point, but, um, you know, they can actually make you smarter. These things can really make you smarter. So let's talk about ways they can make you smarter, uh, and, and I will share with you that it is more than just, "OK Google," or, um, "Siri, find me this." You know, I know a lot of people, that's the way they default on their devices. But one of the things that I want to share with you is that you can actually build an entire suite or catalog of really powerful smartphone apps that can literally put nearly all of human knowledge that has ever been created at your fingertips. So let's talk about some of the tools that you can set up and use to, to make this work better. Um, obviously I would recommend strongly the Wikipedia app, uh, and there's several other encyclopedia apps that are out there, including even things like Encyclopedia Britannica. Remember when you used to have the wall of encyclopedias when you were a kid? Well, all of that stuff now fits on one of these. And then the other thing that's interesting is that when I was doing the research for this video, I went out to my app store and I typed in encyclopedia. And the thing that surprised me is that there are specific encyclopedia and deep reference apps in all of these different areas. You know, outer space and astronomy, dinosaurs, no kidding, computer management, zoology, botany, you know, history, religion, a lot more. So one of the things that I would recommend is that if you've got specific areas of study that you're interested in, jump in. Now, related to that, uh, I've been featuring this app for several years in my program. It's called Wolfram|Alpha, and what I used to say is every mathematical or physical calculation that has ever been created or solved is in this app. But to prepare for this video, I went out and did a little research, and oh my gosh, it's going to be my featured app in my e-newsletter this month. Because of what they've done to it. You know, in the description that's here on my Google Play for the app, it says, "Remember the Star Trek computer and how it basically was the arbiter of all knowledge?" Those of you that are Trekkies, you know, "Okay, computer," if you remember that. Well, what they did is they started this, Stephen Wolfram, who was the developer of this, basically started this as instant expert knowledge and computation. And it started out, like I said, with mathematics and physics, but I wanna share with you what it's covering now. Not only is it covering almost all of the mathematical areas, including elementary math, algebra, matrices, calculus, geometry, trigonometry, uh, number theory, et cetera. It also is now covering statistics and data analysis, including statistical distributions and probability, physics, uh, including nuclear physics, quantum physics, particle physics, and astrophysics. It covers chemistry, including elements, compounds, solutions, reactions, and even thermodynamics. Materials in terms of alloys, minerals, crystallography, uh, plastics. Engineering, acoustics, uh, aeronautics, um, fluid mechanics. Astronomy with including star charts, space weather, star clusters. Earth science, life sciences, you get the picture. Computational sciences, and there's More. I, I could keep talking this whole video just on all the things that Wolfram|Alpha can do. And what I wanted to share is, okay, so all of this is available at your fingertips for a grand total of $2.99. And then you go look, there's tools out there like Khan Academy that you can get, uh, on your phone and on your computer that basically that's free, and you can study a whole bunch of stuff. It's not just for your kids, they've got courses out there for adults too. Um, of course there's calculators apps, and it's not just the basic calculator. You can go in and search and find, uh, specific calculators for specific types of mathematical computation and work. There's unit converters, you know, how do you take something from, you know, pounds and switch it over to metric, etc. There's a whole slew of dictionary apps, many of which are free and many of which have ratings over 4.5. On the different app stores. Now, that's an interesting point. When I'm talking about some of these areas, the encyclopedia apps, the dictionary apps, the thesaurus apps, I'm not giving specific names because what I want you to do is go out to your app store and type in dictionary, and then I want you to see what comes up. Now, it's going to give you a mix of paid apps, and it's going to give you some free apps, but look at the number of users and the program rating. Because what you might find is that what you need is already available, and honestly, it's a free resource with a very high rating. Test it out, give it a test drive.

If you realize you need something that might be a bit more robust for your specific needs, then maybe you consider one of the paid app options, not just for dictionary thesaurus, maybe also for the encyclopedia apps that I've already mentioned. And so, you know, do some research on your own here in these areas. Don't look at this as specific application referrals and recommendations. Look at this instead as places for you to go study your app store to find the tools you need. Now, some of the other things that I found— zip code tools. What that basically is, is there's apps that you put in the address, it gives you the correct zip code. There's apps for getting the area codes and being able to find out where a phone number is calling in from. Um, but you can also find out what the area code is by putting in sort of the location.

Uh, some of the phones now have that function built in, by the way.

So I know that my, um, current Android device, when I get a phone call, if they're not in my contact database, it tells me what part of the country it's coming in from. Um, there's even reverse lookup, which means like you're getting phone calls from certain numbers, you can sort of hit the button and find out who it is that's trying to get a hold of you to see if it's like junk or spam. Although honestly, I've got the service from Verizon that scans every call coming in to tell me if it's likely junk, spam, or fraud. That's also a couple bucks a month, well worth the expense. Now you got tools obviously like Google Earth and Google Maps and MapQuest that's out there, but do you know that you've also got all these cool things like Starwalk and Skyview? What you can do is you can literally walk out, point your phone at the sky, and it will tell you what stars and planets you're looking at that are above you. There's even satellite trackers and flight trackers, so you can actually look to see when the International Space Station is going to be flying over your house and/or identify what airplane's flying over right now, if you so desire. Of course, there's all of the major news apps, and when I'm saying this is television, radio, newspaper, magazine. One thing that I would say is be careful here because this could be where a lot of your distraction comes in. We're going to talk about that more in a moment. But the interesting thing is that, um, you know, with all of these you could set up panels on your device. And so I mentioned some of the specific higher-level reference apps above this news app panel. I would make a panel with a lot of these items all on a single panel on your phone. You know how you can have several home screens, you know, few this way, few that way? Maybe you make one your reference panel and another one your news and social media panel so that you've got all of your apps on the same place. And maybe you even make groups depending if you'd like, you know, that's where you drop one app on top of another and it makes a little group. But the key point is, if you can get your stuff together and you're controlling, um, the landscape of your device, you give yourself an opportunity that you're going to be able to use it more strategically with a little bit less distraction. Now, the one caution on these news apps is a lot of them have built in what's called push notifications.

And what that means is that you download the app and it starts blinging all the time, telling you whenever there's a breaking news story, although the vast majority of them aren't really truly earth-shattering breaking news stories. And so if you see that any of these apps, when you download them, is starting to really sort of harass you, Go into your— what is it— Settings, Apps, Notifications. Turn off the notifications for the apps that you're bringing in that are going to cause you this problem. Now, one of the other things too is, you know, it's not just television, newspaper. My favorites right now, I really like CBSN, that's CBS News. And the reason I like it is it's got a 24/7, 365, you don't have to pay for it, online news channel, at least right now when I made this video. The other one that I really like, I like the Bloomberg free app for market knowledge and investing knowledge. It's got a lot of really good information if you're into investing, but there's a ton of apps in that area specifically that you could look up. Now, one thing that I wanna share, and I just really encourage everybody on planet Earth, please, Snopes. There's no app. However, it has an outstanding mobile site. Okay, here's what I want you to do. Please bookmark that site, and before you post that thing that your crazy uncle out 4 states away posted on Facebook, please Snopes it to make sure it's actually legitimate. The whole world needs to do that right now.

See, they can make you stupid if you believe the stupid.

Um, Also, you know, beyond that, I want you to think about weather apps, sports apps. I mean, a lot of people have weather.com. It's a solid app, but if you're a total weather geek, you're probably going to be looking at even more advanced ones. Um, you know, there's even police and fire scanner apps. You hear all the sirens going off, you can find out what's going on, whether you need to take cover. Um, the other thing that they have out there obviously are the language and translation apps. Of course, Google Translate is a big name in this. I've been actually doing some Duolingo study, which is a free app and basically gives you a chance to start learning a second language. But there's, um, free and paid things like Rosetta Stone and Babbel and more. Um, you know, and what's interesting is I want to share something with this. Those are language apps to help you learn a language. There's even apps out there to show you how to become a better cook. There's apps out there to show you how to learn to play an instrument. I mean, you could sort of pick something that you want to do in your life and utilize some of these training apps to let you build new skills and develop yourself. Um, you know, and then there's of course specific reference apps in all of these areas.

I'll probably be doing some following videos on some of these areas that are down here.

Uh, medical apps, you know, things like WebMD, uh, health and wellness. I've been actually using the Noom app, and it slim down a little bit. Yay!

Um, there's obviously travel, food, and drink apps, which might counteract the Noom app.

Uh, you know, there's apps about music knowledge, finance and investing, like we talked about with Bloomberg above, uh, law and legal apps, um, entertainment apps, literature apps, uh, apps related specifically to business, apps that are good reference apps for your kids.

I mentioned Khan Academy, but there's There's some really cool, like, learning and knowledge apps depending on the ages of your kids that you might be able to get them to use so that they're not just wasting their time playing games or doing social media.

And then there's a ton of lifestyle apps and a whole bunch of different areas that you could take a look at. Now, I want to share one little thing that's interesting is, you know, I talked about, um, all of these apps and areas. One tip that you might want to consider— that's a lot of apps, and a lot of those apps are going to try to talk to you with the push notifications that I already mentioned. When I was doing this in one of my live, uh, program sessions, I had somebody in the room go, hey Randy, I can go even one better. And I go, what's your idea? And he goes, before you ever download one of these kind of informational apps— news, weather, sports you know, specific, maybe go check to see if they've got a really good solid mobile website. Because if they've got a really good mobile website, you could just bookmark the site instead of downloading the app. Then it's not going to talk to you because it's not going to be able to do the automated push notifications, and you've just saved space on your phone. Because rather than having a fully full program downloaded, you've just got a bookmark in your site that you can go and gather all the information. I mentioned Snopes, but A lot of these probably have really solid mobile websites that might be worth checking out. So, you know, look at that before you go full in and download all of these apps. But the ones you think you're going to use the most, those ones definitely you might want to consider using most. So keep that in mind. Now, um, I want to share with you one last thing down here on this is, you know, what are your areas of interest? Because, uh, if you've got personal interests like I mentioned— music or language or, you know, health and wellness— Maybe set up, you know, and look to see what apps you have there. I'd like to know what they are if you find good ones. What industry are you in? What's your personal profession? Are there specific reference and training apps in those specific areas? Once again, I might want to know. What did I forget? Are there, are there certain apps that I didn't bring in? Now, I put my email down here. I'm anticipating that many of you might be watching this video on my YouTube channel, although I'm going to also post this into the full-length training program I have on Smartphone Success and Terrific Tablets that's on my eLearning Academy. Just go out to my website, randaldean.com, and you can find more information if you'd like to really take your smartphone usage to a whole new level, including reducing distraction, extending battery life, and having a lot more reference capabilities. Even integration with Microsoft 365 and/or Google Suite. Little plug there. But, um, what I'd like you to do is that if you've got reference apps that you're actively currently using and you're watching this on YouTube, drop it in the comment below. Tell me what the app is and what it does. Okay, so if you think it's a really solid reference app that I have not mentioned here, or maybe I mentioned the category, but you have a specific app in the category, drop it in, tell us what it does in the comments. Now, if you happen to be watching this on my online e-learning academy, send me the email timelyman@gmail.com. And what I'm going to try to do is build a catalog of these apps that I'm going to post in that course on my e-learning academy to make sure that we've got everything here. So let me check my notes, make sure I've got everything else in here. Uh, yeah, I think I've covered everything, so let's go ahead and finish this thing up. By the way, if you're interested, I will once again post my Patreon page, and I will also tell you about my e-learning academy through my website randaldean.com. And with that, I'd like to thank you for your time. Uh, that's me when I'm actually dressed up nice. Uh, if you'd like to learn more about me and my programs, there's that website address again. If you enjoy this video and like to get more content like this, like the video, subscribe, maybe hit the notifications button., and, um, I got a whole series little bonus PDF tip sheets on things like time management, email management, smartphone tablet usage, hey, uh, Microsoft Outlook and 365, Gmail and Google Suite usage, better managing your meetings, a whole bunch of stuff. If you'd like to get little 2 to 4 page, uh, PDF electronic tip sheets on a lot of these topics, just send me an email randy@randaldean.com.

That's funny, I put my timelyman@gmail on the previous slide.

You can do it either way and just put put YouTube PDF in the subject line, and I will know what to get you, and we'll get you those bonus materials. So with that, I'd like to say thank you for your time and attention today. Uh, oh, one final little thought.

So I'm doing this program, and I start researching these programs.

Final little thought. And, and what I see, I'm reading this blog And, you know, doing what I do, I like to follow several tech blog leaders, and one of the blog authors, he posted this question to his readers, and he goes, if somebody from 30 years ago were to be suddenly transported to today's world, what would they find most shocking and different?

And I have to give credit, I believe it was a woman who responded, and she responded with this most brilliant of responses. She said, I have in my pocket this little device that within it has access, fingertip access, to virtually all knowledge ever known or created by humankind. And I use it to look at pictures of cats and argue with people I don't know. We're using them wrong. I hope you got a few ideas on how you can now use these things right and actually make yourself smarter, not less smart, using them.

So enjoy that, have fun, and, uh, you know, go, go check out your app stores.