Pretty Weather

You know how a pretty notepad makes writing the grocery list a little bit less of a chore? Or how a bunch of $3 grocery store daffodils can make a cold apartment seem warmer? This weather app is like that. It's called good weather, and it gives you your weather with a dose of pretty (plus a little game to play!) Pretty weather is a welcomed little something when the temperature dips from nearly-spring 50s to back-to-winter 30s. Plus, you can find out what the weather is like in Oz and Neverland :)

Happy Friday, folks! I hope your weather is pretty.

via Katie Evans

Light and Sleep

It's pretty much a no-brainer that light effects how we sleep. How many of us could fall asleep in a brightly lit room? When I'm winding down for the night I usually switch to dim lighting, but I never really thought about the light coming from my computer. It turns out, the blue light that emanates from our computers and phones is not very helpful when you're trying to fall asleep.

Lately I've been using this great app called f.lux, which changes the light your computer produces based on the time of day and where you live. Writing this post in the wee hours of the morning, my screen is casting a soft, orange glow on my hands instead of an intense blue-white light. It's really nice and calming.

photos by Sofia Ajram

Instagram Books

Even though I'm currently a Droid user, I'm totally jealous of the iPhone camera (it takes way better pictures than my Droid) and the Instagram app. And now, another reason to be jealous/another reason to buy an iPhone: Blurb is making Instragram books!



It looks like a fun, inexpensive way to get all those images off your phone without having to delete them. Or, you could make them into a pretty, graphic photo wall like this.

Top Instagram photo via my iPhone-owning pal Kate.

The Night Sky

This past weekend, when I retreated to New Jersey, I found myself doing the thing city dwellers can't seem to help but do when we leave our metropolis—craning my neck up to the night sky, commenting on how many stars there were to be seen. One night by the campfire, we could see one particularly bright star and debate began over whether it was a star or a planet.



I remembered hearing about the Google Sky Map app during a work assignment awhile back (at the time, I couldn't figure out why people would use it), so I downloaded it to see if it could end the planet vs. star debate. It turned out to be so much (nerdy) fun! You just point your phone at the sky and it tells you the constellations (and more) that you're seeing. It even has a "time machine" feature that lets you see what the sky will look like the next day, what it looked like the night before, and even the night of Apollo 11. Of course, we all laughed that the app was making us look at my phone instead of up at the pretty stars :)

Oh, and in the planet vs. star argument, it turned out the planet camp was correct. It was Jupiter!

Images via weheartit and lifehacker. This is not a sponsored post, I just really liked the app.