Image: Sean McAEntee via Flickr
Between GPS tractors, robotic milkers and apps that provide soil conditions at the tap of a finger…most of you are ahead of the game when it comes to technology. If you have an iPad, I’m sure you’ve appreciated how it allows you to stay more connected to people and important information that makes your job more efficient. There are so many helpful iPad tips and tricks that it’s hard to know where to get started, but here are my top five time-saving tips for farmers:
Easily share your photos
You just captured several photos of your fields or new farm equipment and need to share it with an employee. Don’t waste your time emailing each photo or putting the photos on a flash drive. You can quickly and easily share photos with one or more people at once using Apple’s photo stream share. As long as the person(s) you’re sharing with also have an iPad/iPhone it will work.
So how do you do this?
1. Click on your “Photos” App
2. At the bottom of the screen, select “Shared”
3. Select the “+” sign at the top left
4. Type in a name for your stream (Ex. New Farm Equipment)
5. Start typing in the email addresses OR phone numbers of those you want to be able to view the album. Once you invite them to join, the members can add their own photos.
6. Select “Create.” Each person you invited will receive an email.
Once you start using it you’ll find that it’s such an easy way to share photos and also collect photos from others in one place.
Never lose your notes again
Do you have several notes scattered between your office and truck? It’s time to make your notes digital with the Evernote app. With the Evernote app, you can take notes on your phone, iPad or computer and you’ll have the most recent version of your notes on you at all times. The best part? Your notes are easily searchable. No more digging through files to find a note that you made six months ago. If you made it in Evernote you can type in one word from the note and it will bring up your note from months ago in seconds. If you’re not a big fan of typing out your notes, there is also an app called Penultimate that lets you hand write on the iPad and transfers your notes to Evernote. Learn more about Evernote in Don Schindler’s blog. It’s an adjustment to start using this app, but once you begin the payoffs are huge!
Get all your news in one place
Do you like to keep up with Hoards Dairyman, Farm Journal and Dairy Business? It can be hard to keep up with each site on a daily basis. Guess what? There’s an app for that. Feedly is a reading app that collects all of your favorite news sites and online blogs into one place that’s frequently updated so you can get the latest news at any moment.
Once you have downloaded the app you can start searching for your favorite blogs and adding them to your reading list by selecting “Feedly +.”
You’ll never go searching for the news again!
Stay on task
If love the feeling of checking off a daily list. You’ll never forget to call someone back, pay an invoice or pick something up from the store again with the Wunderlist app. It’s an app to help you check off your daily to-dos. What’s the coolest part about it? It’s a sharable list so you can invite your family or others on the farm to join the list and get notifications when they’ve completed their chores. Maybe a good one for the kid’s chores.
Keep your iPad secure
We all know it happens. If you lose your iPad anyone can get into your pictures, apps, notes and more. There are a couple things you should do to prepare yourself for this situation:
1. Download the Find my iPhone app. Once your iPad goes missing you can log into Find My iPad to locate where you left it.
2. Make sure you have a passcode on your iPad. This means that each time you open your iPad you’ll use 4 numbers to access which will protect you in case it’s lost or stolen. Many iPads now have fingerprint touch ID sign-in, but you should always have a passcode back up. Create or change your passcode by going to the Settings App<Touch ID & Passcode.
Hope that you found some of those tips helpful. What are some of your favorite iPad tips and tricks?
Jamie Vander Molen 