by Lori Cunningham

Thank you to who?Comics for sponsoring this post and encouraging my child to read biographies in comic book form! Please click here to learn more about the app. And follow who? Comics on Twitter for updates.

While at a great Clever Girls Collective event, during BlogHer ’11 in August, I met with some folks from Podotree.  Podotree told me about a new app they were launching soon called Who?Comics.  Who? Comics is an iPad app that showcases biographies various influential leaders of today and yesterday but they do it in a unique way.  To capture kids’ interest, they wrote all of the content in cartoon form.  As a child reads the speech bubbles from various characters in the biography, they can better visualize and understand the personality and emotions of the people involved.

I knew this would be a perfect app for my 8-year-old daughter, who LOVES learning about famous people. Recently, when I was given the opportunity to review Who? Comics and I jumped at it.  I was pleased to see the biographies they have already compiled, namely:

Oprah Winfrey

Bill Gates

Hillary Clinton

Steven Spielberg

J.K. Rowling

Barack Obama

Warren Buffett

Stephen Hawking

Nelson Mandela

Jane Goodall

Louis Braille

Martin Luther King

Walt Disney

Nelson Mandela

and 14 more!

Here’s a brief video that gives you a glimpse on what the biographies look like and how they work:

I couldn’t wait to start reading some of the biographies with my daughter.  We learned that Bill Gates’ mind was a sponge and as an elementary student and he read his entire encyclopedia set.  He could memorize verses from the bible, after reading them only once!  He had an appetite for learning.  When his parents transferred him to a new school he was like a fish out of water.  He didn’t fit the mold of the popular kids.  But he found like-minded kids who were fascinated by computers.  It was at this school that Bill met Paul Allen.  Together they embarked on an adventure to learn all they could about computers and programming.  Both Bill and Paul would stay up all night coding games to play on the computer and learning how to code.  Bill envisioned that one day they would start-up a software company together.  And they did.

I have to say, seeing the funny cartoon expressions on the characters’ faces and how they react to things really adds to the story.  I think back to the many other biographies we’ve read with no pictures and how dry they can get sometimes.

 

Two days later we read the J.K. Rowling biography.  My daughter is a BIG fan of Harry Potter, in fact, we all are.  She has read the first three books…two times!  To our surprise, we learned that Rowling loved to spend time in the nearby church cemetery.  It was quiet there and she found the names on the tombstones so fascinating, some of which made it into her Harry Potter series. J.K. Rowling’s mom passed her love for books onto her daughters.  J.K. Rowling couldn’t get enough of her books and she loved to write her own stories.  Her creative imagination was the impetus of many fun games she would invent for her sister and friends.  Rowling tried to take a traditional job route after school, but she’d often get distracted and begin writing stories.  She never lasted long at her jobs.  When she finally gave herself permission to write down her encompassing  thoughts about a wizard name Harry, she began to live.  Though her manuscript was turned down by numerous publishing companies, it only took one to say yes for her to realize her dream.

What I loved best about both biographies is that they taught my daughter that often our life-long passions are discovered during childhood and it reminded me to really

encourage my childrens’ interest and support them early on.  I also liked how that the life dream that Bill Gates and J.K. Rowling had as a child came true as they grew into adulthood.  These stories are teaching important lessons to my children…and to me.

The who? Comics app is available in the iTunes Store for $9.99 and includes two free biography comics – Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates.  Each additional book is $4.99 but you can buy collections (Activists, Politicians, Artists in sets of 6) for $9.99 each set.

Right now Podotree is offering the opportunity to buy the 29 book comic series for only $29.99, which is a fantastic deal since buying each of these books separately would equal $149.99.

 

 

 

 

Thank you again to who? Comics for sponsoring my post. Please click here to learn more about the app. Visit who? Comics for updates.

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by Lori Cunningham

While at the Consumer Electronics Show last January, I ran across a company that makes a 8 1/2″ x 1″ portable scanner.  I was intrigued because the thought of taking a scanner on the road with me never entered my mind.  I began thinking about how I would use it.  I could use it to scan in sales materials from tradeshows so I wouldn’t have to lug them back.  Cool.  I could scan in business cards so I wouldn’t lose them in travel or in a drawer at home.  Nice.  But the question was, would I be able to find them on my computer when I needed them?

Enter Neat Receipts.  Neat Receipts is a company that makes scanners JUST for organizing.  They go one step further than scanning– they also use Optimal Character Resolution (OCR) to read the words on scanned documents so you can search for keywords easily later.  Brilliant!

What You Can Scan In:

For Business

• receipts
• invoices
• business cards
• sales documents
• collateral
• meeting minutes
• napkin ideas/drawings from that late dinner
• contracts
• reports

Features

• All scanned items are searchable
• You can create expense reports and print them out complete with copies of receipts
• Helps you to track your expenses for budgets and for tax time
• Data can be exported to PDF, Excel®, Quicken®, QuickBooks®, TurboTax®
• Business card information can be exported to Outlook, Plaxo, or Mac Address book
• You can scan documents into PDF’s

How I’m Organizing

NeatReceipts mobile scanner MRSP is $199 but can be found at Amazon.com for $175.23.

A Mom’s Perspective

There are two types of way people organize their papers:

1.  Pile Style – where you have piles all over your desk

2.  File Style – all of your papers are filed away, neat in their files

I am a Pile Styler and my husband is a Filer Styler.  Needless to say, he can find important information ALOT faster than I.  But, that’s about to change.  No longer will I have piles of business cards to file away.  No longer will I have a mess of a file drawer.  Now in 2012, I will be scanning in all of my business cards and receipts.  It doesn’t take long to do so and it will make it SO much easier to retrieve information within minutes – even seconds – when I need it.

I have piles of things for the kids on my desk – upcoming after school classes, party details, projects, classroom rules,  grade level expectations, the list goes on!  I keep the piles handy so I can get to them when I need them.  NO LONGER.  I will scan the info. into my computer and file under a certain month folder, say “February”, or file under my child’s name – probably in a more detailed folder like “Classroom Activities.”

I’m very excited to start of clean in the New Year with a much more organized, more searchable, more travelable, less visible-data rich office environment.  How about you?  How do you plan to organize your desk in this New Year?

 

* I was provided with a NeatReceipts mobile scanner in exchange for my honest review.  All opinions are my own.  I am using Neat Receipts on a weekly basis.

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by Jamie Wiersma

If you’re like me, it is easy to take pictures with your digital camera, download them onto your computer and then forget about them. A printed picture placed into the family album seems to be a thing of the past. If you are looking for an easy, user-friendly way to preserve precious family memories,Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder Deluxe is a great investment.

I had the opportunity to try the Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder Deluxe* out and was very surprised at how easy it was to quickly create a slideshow DVD from my photos and videos. Once your pictures and videos are loaded, you are able to add transitions, audio, music, captions, and clipart.

My boys had a great time watching the pictures and audibly record their memories to go along with the pictures. Everything is in a drag and drop format making it very easy to organize.

Once you have a finished product, you have a lot of different options. You can:

• burn the video to a DVD
• save it to your computer, apple or mobile device
• share it on YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and Myspace.

I downloaded my video to YouTube and was amazed at how easy it was.
My job at a church requires me to occasionally put together slideshows of pictures for our Sunday services. I am looking forward to using Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder the next time rather than POWERPOINT like I have in the past. It will save me a ton of time putting slideshows together and will look better than ever!

Priced at $59.95, Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder Deluxe is well worth it.

Wondershare also has several other products – Video Converter Ultimate, PDF Converter Pro, PC Tuneup and many others. I personally checked out the PDF Converter which takes PDF documents and converts them to WORD, EXCEL,POWERPOINT and other types of documents. It is easy to use, extremely practical and a great tool for any office. Based on the quality of the products that I had the opportunity to try out, I would highly recommend checking out more of Wondershare’s products.

*  I was provided a copy of Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder and the PDF Converter is exchange for my honest review.  All opinions are my own.

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