two little tools to make your life a lot easier
by beth ziesenis
do you get a little hungry when you hear december 30 is national bacon day (not to be confused with international bacon day, the saturday before labor day #becausebacon)? fun, interesting, and downright weird holidays provide opportunities for great conversations and heightened awareness.
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for example, did you know august 5 was work like a dog day and that august 10 was national lazy day?
when you automate your tasks, you can stop working like a dog and get a little lazier because work is done for you.
without even realizing it, you probably do the same tasks over and over, such as checking the weather, saving attachments from emails or tweeting your latest blog post on twitter.
though it takes just a few minutes to complete each task, these little jobs add up fast, and you probably have better uses of your time in today’s crazy-busy lifestyle.
zapier and ifttt (which stands for “if this then that”) are two of the tools that will help you automate some of these little tasks so you don’t have to think about them. just connect your cloud-based services, social media accounts, phones and more, and create little recipes (“zaps” with zapier and “applets” in ifitt) that trigger under your rules.
they both work with several devices and gadgets, venturing into the world we know as “the internet of things.” you can automate tasks with smart thermostats, philips hue light bulbs and many fitness trackers. you can also create opportunities to use specific ios and android features, such as location tracking and selfies.
my favorite party trick: set up an ifitt applet to ring your phone with a touch of a button to get you out of a boring meeting.
professional speakers day
i’m a proud certified speaking professional with the national speakers association, so i recognize professional speakers day on august 7.
if you record videos to share, using a teleprompter can help you stay on track and sound more professional. the teleprompter mirror site has a phenomenal free online teleprompter. paste your text into the site, then choose whether the text automatically scrolls at an even pace or advances as you speak by listening through your microphone.
don’t forget to celebrate find your inner nerd day on august 23! we founded find your inner nerd day to inspire you to share what you love — your dog clothes knitting addiction, your star wars action figure collection, your bookmarked videos of the riff-offs from the “pitch perfect” movies. we chose august 23 as the recurring date because that’s the day twitter pioneer chris messina posted a simple tweet in 2007 and invented the hashtag. learn more and find out how you can celebrate find your inner nerd day.
about beth ziesenis
beth is an author and entertaining speaker looking for enthusiastic audiences who need practical tech tools for everyday computing. she filters through thousands of tech tools to help you save money, time and your sanity. she shares her best tech tips via books, presentations, coaching and social media. her specialties include speaking, writing and watching cat videos (for work).