Categories
Do It Yourself

Three Steps This Spring For A Beautiful Summer Lawn

Winter is releasing its chilling grip across the U.S., and your thoughts are likely turning to springtime flowers and a beautiful, lush, green lawn.

Home and Lawn

You want a nice green, weed-free lawn, right? §

There are three things you need to be doing this spring to help that lawn start growing.

1. Apply Crabgrass Preventer

If you lawn was infested with crabgrass last summer and you don’t want a repeat occurrence, then your first task is to apply crabgrass preventer.

The timing of this step is important. Crabgrass preventer discourages the crabgrass from germinating, but only works for about a 10 week timeframe. If you do it too early, the effectiveness will wear out before germination. Too late, and the seeds will germinate before the crabgrass preventer can take effect.

The exact time varies each year depending on the weather. However, the general rule of thumb is to apply crabgrass preventer when the forsythia bushes in your area are almost done blooming.

Categories
App Reviews

App Review – Avoid Data Overages with DataMan Pro

Are you on a capped data plan?

Do you worry each month about data overages?

If you have an iPhone or iPad, then DataMan Pro may be your answer.

When I upgraded to the iPhone 5S, I switched from an unlimited data plan to a capped data plan. After a few weeks, I also discovered that I was using significantly more data than with the iPhone 4. I was close to exceeding my new cap and didn’t want to pay any data overage charges, so I needed a way to track my data use.

My carrier provides text alerts at set usage intervals, like 50%, 75%, and 100%. I enabled those first. After a couple weeks, I decided that I wanted more details and even thought that some type of data use forecasting would allow me to proactively adjust my data use rather than be reactive when I receive a text message from my carrier.

I read several reviews for data tracking apps and settled on DataMan Pro. The price was $4.99, but that is less than just one data overage charge, so I decided to give it a try. After several months of use, DataMan Pro is everything I expected, and more.

Inital Setup

After a brief setup where you identify the start and end days of your billing cycle, the size of your data cap, and how much data has been used in the current cycle, DataMan Pro begins tracking your mobile and wifi data use. It runs in the background utilizing the background refresh feature in iOS 7.

DataMan Pro Features

DataMan Pro features settings for notifications at four adjustable levels. I matched my notifications to my carrier’s notifications to test accuracy. Unsurprisingly, the data tracking accuracy is excellent. I receive my carrier sourced text messages at nearly the same time as my DataMan Pro notifications.

Users are also able to customize the display of the main DataMan Pro screen and can choose the level of detail, background color, and font.

DataMan Pro
DataMan Pro with Detailed Display
Categories
Productivity Technology

Become More Productive and Eliminate Notification Overload

Ding! A new mail notification appears.

Chirp! A friend just mentioned you on twitter.

Bleep! Someone just liked your facebook post.

Many of us are bombarded every day by the various sounds, message boxes, and vibrations made by our desktop computers, phones, and tablets when a new notification arrives.

iPad and iPhone
Photo by Noel Schäfer

Many years ago when I first started using a desktop email application, I changed the settings to check the server for new mail in the shortest interval possible, I think it was every minute. I wanted read that new mail the instant I received it.

Later, I clearly recall being in awe of the notification options available to me when I bought my first smartphone. Suddenly, I could receive notifications about text messages, news, weather alerts, sports scores, social network interactions, and more. Nearly every app on my phone provided some kind of notification.

Within a year, I was experiencing notification overload and decided I needed to eliminate as much of the notification distractions from my life as possible. If anything, just to get my some sanity back in my life.

There were two things I did to get the notifications under control and reduce the distractions.