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  • Trello Can Keep You Organized

    For several years now I have been using Trello to help coordinate, collaborate and stay organized between different staff members and departments. I have even used this for keeping things organized for personal tasks as well. What I love most about this application is that you can access it via your computer, iPad or iPhone and it’s free. You do get some added features if you pay for the upgraded service, which I have also used as well depending on the scope of my organizational needs.

    What sets Trello apart from so many other systems is that it takes a real-world approach to managing bits of information. Imagine a whiteboard, with columns drawn on it to indicate different stages of a process and sticky notes that represent tasks. You can write on the sticky notes and move them between columns on the whiteboard, so you can always see at a glance where things stand in the overall project. Trello translates that basic concept into the digital world, with “boards” that are like a whiteboard, “lists” that mimic the hand-drawn columns, and “cards” that are like sticky notes on steroids.

    You can have as many Trello boards as you like, and you can share each board with any number of people. Each board can have lots of lists, and each list can contain as many cards as you want. Don’t go nuts making too many lists or cards—just as with a physical whiteboard, that could make things just as overwhelming.

    Cards are where the magic happens. Each card has a title and an optional description, and its own comment thread for people to discuss the card’s topic. You can add checklists to a card, upload attachments, and even assign a due date. People can be connected to a card so they receive notifications of new comments or attachments via email and via iOS notifications. Labels help you categorize cards in ways beyond putting them in a list. And perhaps best of all, an Activity section tracks everything that anyone does on a card, so you always know what has happened. Additionally, you can specify who has access to each board.

    Imagine a Trello board for tracking job applicants through a hiring funnel. It could have a list for each part of the process, starting with receiving an application and going through each interview to the eventual decision. Each applicant would get a card containing their contact information, with the person’s resumé attached and checklists for mandatory questions. Labels might identify applicants for different jobs. After an interview, the interviewer would add a comment with notes about how it went, and move the card on to the next person. At all times, the hiring manager could see where any applicant was in the process and access all pertinent information.

    Many Trello boards end up being process-oriented, where each list maps to a particular part of a process, and users move cards from list to list as the process goes along. But that doesn’t have to be the case; for example, you could create a collaborative calendar where each list maps to a week, or you could build a board that tracks client leads with a list for each person in a sales group.

    In fact, the possibilities are endless. Whether you use Trello to track your family to do’s, your employees and their tasks or just helping to organize an event, I encourage you to give Trello a try.

  • Dear Friends,

    I got out on the golf course to play with some old (and I mean OLD ;)) friends this week. We were playing in an event for a great organization, the Central Vermont Home, Health and Hospice. I sank a 40-foot put on the first hole and that was the highlight of the day for me. It was a beautiful summer day in Vermont and we had a great time laughing and hitting a little ball.

    I promised myself that I would not upgrade to the new betas of the operating systems until the third beta was released, but when I got notice of the 2nd one, I was sorely tempted. Do you know what operating system you are running on your devices? This week we show you how to figure that out.

    Grace is planning our annual 4th of July party which we have been doing for like 40 years and she broke down and called it a tradition. But, hey, 40 years, that would be a tradition!

    This week’s”** Kibbles & Bytes exclusive is a gold MacBook 12-inch.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900003299/kibbles-bytes-exclusive-macbook-bundle? This CTO MacBook has the 1.3GHz m7 processor, 8GB of ram and a 512GB SSD drive. We are bundling it with AppleCare + this week. We have only two of these available so clearly first come first served! Regularly this bundle is $1898 but this week for Kibbles & Bytes readers you can get the configure-to-order gold MacBook with AppleCare+ for only $1589!

  • We have had some coolish weather over the past week but this weekend looks like some sunshine so that might help the gardens grow a bit. It also means that I might get out on the Indian for a little ride!

    Here is a little soapbox, I am not going to be quiet about this. Americans do not separate children from their parents and lock them up in old Walmarts. But that is exactly what is being done in your and my name. It is outrageous and there is simply no excuse or valid explanation for the personal horror that is happening right now. Speak up and help to make it an unacceptable practice!

    Okay, off the soapbox and back to work — thank you so much for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    Don & Emily

  • Find My Friends

    Last week my oldest daughter went on a school trip to Boston, and, on the second day of the trip, I got a frantic call from her. She was in tears and in fear she had lost her cell phone. Between her sobs and hysteria she was pleading with me to track her phone. After calming her down and assuring her that I would not get angry if the phone was really lost, I went to my find my iPhone app and gave her the location of her phone, and, a sigh of relief was felt when we determined it appeared to simply be left in the hotel room. Crisis averted and she was back to enjoying her trip.

    Find my iPhone is a very useful app to find your own devices linked to your iCloud account, but what about your friends? What if you also wanted to maybe keep closer tabs on your child, especially as they become more independent. Find My Friends—has become significantly more useful. Although there are legitimate concerns about sharing your location willy-nilly, Find My Friends gives everyone full control over what they share, making it truly helpful for families and close friends. So if you’ve ever thought it would be useful to know when your child left their soccer game or wanted them to receive an automatic alert when you leave to pick them up, Find My Friends is the app for you. It’s also great for keeping track of aging parents or for housemates looking out for one another.

    Add and Remove Friends

    Although you can add friends in the Find My Friends app by tapping Add and selecting their contact card, it’s easier to work from Messages, assuming you want to share your location with someone with whom you regularly text anyway. In their conversation, tap the i button, tap Share My Location, and in the popover that appears, tap Share Indefinitely. (Share for One Hour and Share Until End of Day are useful for temporarily sharing your location while traveling, say, to visit colleagues with whom permanent sharing would be inappropriate.)

    However you initiate the sharing, the other person receives a notification and can accept and choose to share their location as well. (If they don’t do so right away, you can tap their name in your Find My Friends list and tap Ask to Follow.) That said, uni-directional sharing is all right, though in families and, particularly for children, b-idirectional sharing can be more helpful.

    Should you ever wish to stop sharing your location with someone, you can either swipe left on their entry in Find My Friends and tap the red Trash button, or go into their conversation details in Messages and tap Stop Sharing My Location.

    Work with Locations

    Once you have someone in the Find My Friends app, you’ll see their entry in the list and their location on the map. That may be all you need if, for example, your goal is to see where your spouse is on their way home so you can figure out when to start dinner. A tip: for a quick location check, ask Siri something like, “Where is Luke?”

    But Find My Friends has other features that make it even more useful. To access these features, tap a friend in the list or on the map to focus on them.

    Contact: Tap Contact to view your friend’s contact card. From it, you can start a Messages conversation, phone call, FaceTime call, email message, or money transfer via Apple Pay. You can also edit their details from here.

    Notify Me: With the Notify Me feature, Find My Friends can tell you when your friend leaves or arrives at a particular location. Two locations—their current location and your current location—are always available for quick selection. Or tap Other, and then either search for a location or press and hold on the map to drop a pin at that spot. You can even expand the orange dropped-pin circle to make the location less precise (and thus less likely to miss, if the person doesn’t quite go where you expect).

    Notify Friend: On the flip side, Notify Friend (tap More to access this feature) lets you tell your friend of your location right now, or when you leave or arrive at a location. A welcome addition here is a Repeat Every Time switch, so you could, for instance, have Find My Friends alert your mother in advance whenever you decide to stop over at the last minute.

    Get Directions: Also in the More screen is a car icon; tap it to display directions to your friend’s current location in Maps. It’s a great way to avoid those awkward conversations when you need to pick up your kid after a party and they can’t tell you precisely where they are.

    It’s easy to be cynical about the privacy implications of location sharing. Obviously, you want to share locations only with people you trust, especially when talking about children and even aging adults. However, this kind of technology can be not only convenient but also an incredible safety tool. Naturally, all of these features require good cell coverage and it won’t work everywhere. Regardless, it’s comforting and handy to know that whether it’s coming home from a school event, or trying to find someone in an unfamiliar city, our phones are amazing tools that can help reduce the stress of knowing where to find someone.

  • Dear Friends,

    Grace and I have been doing a purge of our Prickly Mountain home since we have it up for sale. That means selling or donating our collections of stuff. And I do mean collections; I have boxes of wind-up toys, thousands of CDs and DVDs, hundreds of hippo and chicken chotchskis, and a whole lot of winter clothes and get that we will never be using. It is a 45 year collection of collections so this might take some time.

    Have you checked out the Sonos “sets” sale? There are some great options for buying Sonos speakers as a set. We have found that many customers come in for a single Sonos speaker and, once they have used it for a few weeks, they come back in to buy more. Sorta like potato chips! This is a great way to get a set at a good discount. We only sell Sonos in our stores so drop on by and take a listen!

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive features the 10.5-inch iPad Pro with 256GB storage, Wi-Fi and Cellular. I have only two of these that are dented carton units that have been opened for inspection. The contents are new and have a 1-year Apple warranty. We will bundle these with AppleCare + so that you have 2-years of warranty coverage and technical support and accidental damage coverage, too! I have only two and I have priced them aggressively so it is first come, first served for the 10.5 Inch iPad Pro with AppleCare +. The regular price for this bundle is $1029 but for a couple lucky Kibbles & Bytes readers you can have the bundle for only $859!