Sharon Jones, iphone Envy and Menstrual Cycles

There is a saying that if you’re thinking about it then someone else is doing  it…or perhaps I just made that up.  It couldn’t be more true in the case of the two apps I am about to recommend here.

I was sitting with my itunes open listening to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings when it occured to me to check her website to see if she had any upcoming tour dates.

http://sharonjonesandthedapkings.com/

I discovered that I missed her London concert by one week!  I was so pissed off about it.  After ranting to my cats, who were only a modicum more sympathetic to my calamity than my husband and children were, I suddenly thought “why can’t there be an app that goes through my itunes and sends me email alerts for concerts of my favourite artists performing near me?”  For the thirty seconds that it took me to Google it and find out that it’s already been done, I thought I’d had an original idea, but alas ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ (and that is a real saying).

The app is called Songkick and it’s awesome!  It takes only a few minutes to set up while it goes through your itunes and before you know it you’re getting emails for upcoming concerts near you.  I will never miss another concert again. Check it out: http://www.songkick.com/

This next one is for girls only:

The other day I was regretting not keeping track of my periods when I suddenly had the idea for an iphone app that tells you about your menstrual cycle.  How easy would it be to simply enter the first and last days of your menstrual cycle each month and keep track of the length of your periods, ovulation days etc.  Well, don’t be too surprised girls but the app already exists, it’s called Period Calendar Deluxe for BlackBerry and costs $3.99 USD.  The app was released in November of 2009 and uses 370kb.  In 197 reviews it scored an average of 3.5/5 stars. As you can see from the screen shots below it predicts the date of your next cycle, tracks past cycles, as well as basal body temperature, period flow level, cervical fluid and daily mood.  It also has features for adding notes and exporting your data into a spreadsheet.

For the iphone there is Period+ and copious others.

One last app that I just want to mention…I recently downloaded CrunchSMS for my BlackBerry as I’ve always envied the iphone texting layout compared to the BlackBerry layout which looks like this:

The superior iphone SMS layout uses little white and green speech balloons which I really fancy for some reason. CrunchSMS allows BlackBerry users to feel like their texting on a iphone…iphone envy you say?  Perhaps just a little.

Now here’s a video of a baby preacher: