App lets apps fill your life

I've always had a bit of resistance to modern technology in my heart. Every time I look at a variety of banner ads and marketing tools, I can immediately associate the rapid rise of the robot in the market; then if you pass me a pair of Google High-tech glasses, I may believe that the mechanical warfare police This film is a real documentary.

19th century witnessed the invention of radar, the emergence of assembly-line, but also the rise of optical fiber technology and plastic production. And now, 21st century? The app we invented, smart apps, can tell us who's in the neighborhood.

People like me who often email and use social media are reluctant to be stuck with technology for the rest of their lives, and I have to admit that my quality of life has improved dramatically since I can play Scrabble on the iphone. In the coming years, I will miss the time when I look back on the subway or when I play Scrabble before the plane takes off.

So if Scrabble brings me so much fun, is it possible that other apps are just as magical? Market research firm Forrester Studies predicted in 2011 that the annual revenue from the app market would exceed $38 billion trillion by 2015. This amazing number makes me curious about people who have a very bad technology.

So for the past three weeks I've been trying to use apps to improve my life. First I analyzed myself and decided that I needed help in three ways: I might need to lose weight, some of my home chores were still unresolved, and I might need some new clothes in my closet. Then I looked up at Google to help my app.

The first is my weight loss plan. My plans to go swimming and walking after the cold weather have been neglected; the flab on both sides of the tower makes my belly look like a revolving disk of an old-fashioned dial phone. So I spent 2.99 dollars on a app called Meal snap: taking a picture of every meal, Meal snap automatically calculates the total calorie content of the food in the picture.

I was beginning to think that this app might be a little bit of a Shong to me. After all, I had to take all the snacks I had for the afternoon and the pictures of my late night snack, which might make me feel like I was committing war crimes the next time I ate chocolate pie.

My plan probably only worked for a day or two. Every night on the couch watching TV, even want to eat a small cashew also have to spend strength to find a cell phone to take pictures first, this is to suppress some of my appetite. But gradually I realized that it would be too sad to have to use photos to monitor my weight loss plan. It was like Andy Warhol's obsession with his taxi invoices, or Hughes's morbid collection of his own urine.

Productivity applications
At the same time, I naively thought that my afternoon "angels", all kinds of bakers and pie makers, would stop me from taking pictures of their food and adding momentum to my weight-loss program. But on the contrary, they love meal snap.

"Yo, this app is good!" I bought a muffin cake at the lower reaches of Broadway, and the guy who sold the cake kept praising me for taking pictures. Union Square farmers ' Market where the owner of the bread alone branch also grabbed my phone and took a picture of himself, saying he had a better angle. There was a thin but energetic man in Houston and Broadway, pushing a car to sell coffee and doughnuts, and he was very active in encouraging me to take more pictures. He always joked: "Today's technology is so advanced." I believe that one day, in the near future, robots will be able to direct our brains, go left and go right. ”

I couldn't help but ask him, "Is this your ideal future?" His answer was somewhat helpless: "I do not know." All I know is that the pictures from the donut are nice. ”

One day at a supermarket in Houston Street, my friend Ryan asked me if I'd tried to take my snack from some unusual angles, which would reduce the number of calories the app calculated. I was startled to put an apple muffin cake on the floor of the supermarket, and my mobile phone showed 0 calories. I couldn't help laughing, we found the bug in the app.

The other two apps I downloaded to oversee my workout were more comfortable. There is a teaching how to dance hip-hop, I probably followed the study of three episodes. In the video, a coach called Professor Locke, who looks like an actor Samuel, is leading everyone to dance. He often mumbled his mantra: "There's no doubt about it!" Or "You're going to make your clothes wet like a bathing suit!"

The first few introductory lessons include "Follow the Beat" and "shoulder movements." Then slowly the more difficult course came, like "mechanical Dance" or "Swing step". Then the difficulty of the next class to ascend, from "Cat Daddy", "Smurf Dance" has been jumping to "SpongeBob" and "The Dance of the Watergate". Although I was standing in my rented office in my gym suit, I did my best to follow the video. I look like an animated character. Bert is trying to fit into a trendy nightclub.

However, after all, this app is a system to learn hip-hop, for me more appropriate is a compact and professional fitness system teaching, that I use another app,johnson&johnson seven minutes fitness. These seven minutes, a lot of push-ups, open and close jump and endless exercise mode to ensure that your heart rate accelerated, sweating, but with a short period of training (about 60 seconds) and rest interval, the training process has become more interesting.

The app will encourage you to do three seven-minute training cycles, but I can't help but point out the paradox, after all, it's "21 minutes training" instead of "seven minutes training." This kind of advertising that attracts everyone is like finding every publication that has a "war and peace" and then taking the words off the front and leaving only the word "peace."

Then it was my turn to have a housework problem. One of the most urgent problems at the moment is that my door hinges are broken and my family's condition is at sixes and sevens. In the process of solving this problem, I found one of my favorite apps at the moment, called TaskRabbit. This is a platform for home users to introduce various home service and family activity assistants.

I entered on the phone I need to complete the housework, the location and date of my home, TaskRabbit on the display of 12 relevant technical personnel of the Mini page, the hourly rate is about 38 dollars to 250 U.S. dollars. One named Andy is the second cheapest for everyone, but the page shows a lot of positive comments, so I chose him.

Application of enterprise-level communication writing
Andy was a tall, enthusiastic lad with a big box of tools on his side. The magic is that he may have been in my boyfriend's house or the most handsome man in my family. As soon as he arrived, I was embarrassed to remember the decoration request I filled out on the page said that my bathtub faucet was constantly spraying water outside. Andy quickly repaired my four-door chain and a broken drawer within one hours. He's still an actress (he's just been to the front of an ad audition called the Irish Spring brand).

He told me frankly that he didn't know how to fix the faucet handle or how to dispose of the loose tiles in our bathroom. But the next day when I wrote a comment on the TaskRabbit, I boasted that Andy was a real convenience to our family. Then TaskRabbit asked me to give him a rating, so I ordered nine stars. App asked me why I rated nine stars, I wrote: "He helped me solve a lot of trouble, and really is a handsome man." I lost 15 dollars for my first service. ”

A week later, Greg and I hired another Andy to get him to fix the loose springs in our dining room chairs. I was annoyed to find that I was secretly expecting to see him again, so he scrubbed the whole apartment before he came. One hours later I told Andy: "I saw your Twitter account and said you were a Christian actor." Christian and Craftsman: it must be a lot of pressure. Andy replied, "I am not the almighty Christ." ”

I asked again, "Would you consider, like Christ, to keep your hair longer and often make a face in pain?" Andy was so annoyed by my mockery that he could not help Sheng: "How do you want to torment me?"

About 2.5 hours later, Andy and I lamented that it was great to have someone who could help with these odd chores. In my ideal world, Andy is probably the Kato Kaelin, the famous talk show host, who lives in our backyard. He suddenly shouted with a strange accent, "We broke your stuff!" Then he smiled awkwardly and confessed, "I don't know why I used a Southern accent." ”

We picked it up the first time. Was it really our luck? A few days later, I hired another janitor through TaskRabbit, 25 dollars an hour to clean books and carpets. When Tannelle appeared, I found him a humorous and friendly young man from Haiti. I joked to him, "I'm going to tell you one of the dirtiest, most secretive secrets I've been hiding for years." Tannelle eyes are wide open: "Are you sure?" Then he helped me and my boyfriend move our wooden bed about three meters away, and I managed to clean up the mess under the bed: 18 years of accumulated cat hair piled together, and countless old shoes. The next day I was on the page to Tannelle a praise: "Tannelle great!"

Another chore that bothered me was cooking. The main course of my dinner is about 15 choices Upside-down, I need some new changes. So I subscribed to a weekly service called plated, and the package that was sent will contain the ingredients and detailed recipes for the dishes, and the main course price is about 12 dollars per course. The first time I tried, I was in the 10 of dishes that sounded very delicious between the two, and finally set up with roasted European radish beef braised spaghetti, and carrot and vanilla soup with roasted chickpeas.

The food I bought two days later was delivered to a cardboard box packed with ice packs. Then I found out they didn't send me beef spaghetti, but instead sent a bag of mustard chicken. I called plated, a friendly staff named Heather, who immediately emailed me a recipe for chicken, and the service cost US $24. Left toss right toss about 30 minutes later, I found that the company only sent a packet of chicken, and the recipe is written in two bags.

When I was writing to their company about a packet of chicken that was missing, my computer received an automatic response asking me what I thought of plated's customer service and I was going to freak out. I have to write in the reply, I like the food produced plated, but also very puzzled how the company will commit less to the wrong ingredients. "Oh, you really make me anxious." I'm always worried that you're winking at another client, or whispering to him, ' Look, give you one more chicken '. ”

A few hours later, Heather replied to me. I ordered a few more dishes later and decided not to renew my subscription. Heather knew I was quitting when she e-mailed me. She was sorry: "We value your participation, we do not only see the customer as a number on the delivery slip, I hope you do not think so." ”

Application
On the shopping side, I insist that buying pants and shoes on the internet is not reliable, because these things need to be tried on the spot. So as I tried all kinds of apps, I decided to buy a pair of wool trousers via app. I entered keywords in three fashion brand apps, which were Hugo Boss, shop it to me and gilt Groupe. Soon I set down six pairs of trousers, each of which could be returned.

So with a large number of cartons sent my trousers have arrived. I like two pairs of trousers that I buy from gilt: a incotex of wrinkled, slightly woolly cashmere blended trousers (129 dollars) and a pair of Michael Bastian flannel Flat trousers (129 dollars) with red stripes of white and wine. When I tried these two pairs of trousers that night, I told Greg, "tell me which one I should choose." Secretly remind you that the correct answer is, ' Maybe you can take both. Greg pretended to think, and said seriously, "maybe you can take both." ”

At the same time I returned all the other trousers. They either do not conform to the most standard of the global size, or because as a customer I can not feel the scene of the product material, so I choose the wrong. From the shop It to me bought trousers, there is a Brooks Brother herringbone pattern wool lightweight trousers (248 U.S. dollars), put on after found too tight. The same is true of the flat pants of Tiger of swerden (169 dollars). I evaluated on Gilt's website: "These trousers are as tight as the varicose tights." I might have to cut my pants off with scissors if I want to get out of it. ”

I happened to have something to do, just around the Hugo Boss store in Soho, so I gave two Hugo's trousers to an enthusiastic clerk named Jorge, who said he would send it back to me. I said to another beautiful shop assistant with a smile (Jorge's colleague, Lupitanion, who looks like an actor in a gray suit), "these trousers are either not wool enough or they make me feel weird." These pants seem to mean that it's the person who is in charge of changing the ink cartridge in the office, and I want to wear these pants to stunning everyone! Imagine me wearing a charming tights, and the men in the office are rushing to buy me a drink. "Lu Pita (I will call her this name is good) after listening to shout excitedly:" Ah I can imagine it! great! " Three minutes later, when I left the store, she said to me warmly, "honey, enjoy the free drinks that others have asked for." ”

Now this three-week app mania is behind me. My apartment's quality of life has improved a lot, but also learned that no matter where people are able to carry out the fitness program, but also harvested two very good wool pants, and finally there may be more than the phone is also a number of countless muffins cake photos. Every day my mail is bombarded by emails sent by apps I used. Now I see the "Winter Sweater Season specials" from fashion apps that are numb to the point of indifference.

Before the Pandora music software sent me a hint, asked me: "Have you been listening recently?" I was so angry that I didn't know where the software came from and gave me so much pressure. But nothing compares to the irritating tendency to squeeze in tights after 40.

It seems to me that I have taken two big strides forward, but I have stepped back. In general, I now have an open mind for any app that can help me connect to a trusted service or professional mechanic. But every time I receive an email from a commercial, I find it harder to restrain my irritation.

My story is a mixed blessing. I know I'm never going to be the man who sells doughnuts to people who walk by machines. But for now, as far as I know, technology does make it better to take pictures of doughnuts.

Source:nyt