#ios apps

Hello everyone! After thinking it over, I’ve decided to add iOS support to my budget and to-do list!

I was initially planning on avoiding the apple store thanks to the $99 developer fee that they charge, but since I have decided to kickstart this game, I figured, why not shoot for the moon? So, I’ll be adding this into my budget and hoping that my game can reach an even larger audience!

A few months ago, I did a set of Q&A sessions at a local high school about what it’s like to work in the technology industry.

The students were understandably most interested in the perks, such as free food, unlimited vacation, and all of those other little things that make the tech industry sometimes feel more like play than like work.

But at one point, the conversation turned to the impact that technology will have on the lives of everyone, and especially the lives of younger folks, like, for instance, a class of sophomores at Galileo High School.

To exemplify this impact, I asked the class the following question:

What is one thing that your phone can’t do that you wish it could?

The first answer: “make me a hamburger”. To this, I replied that there have been recent advances in 3D printing technology, and that 3D printing food could very well be just a few years away. It wouldn’t be crazy to imagine the 3D food printer replacing the microwave as the staple dorm-room kitchen accessory in the next decade– perhaps even before these students graduate from University.

The second answer: “do my homework”. Of course. Who wouldn’t get excited at the prospect of a magical phone application that can take one look at that ridiculous math problem and spit out the answer, as well as all of the requisite steps to get there? But wait. There’s already an app for that. But math has a small advantage when it comes to homework problems, since they’re defined, they’re all (except the ever-loving ‘word problem’) expressed in a universal, camera-readable format, and systems capable of solving them, such as Wolfram Alpha, have existed for some time now.

What about that chemistry problem? Or social studies? What about an app to write an essay on the use of symbolism in To Kill a Mockingbird for you? That’s a bit tougher. But not impossible.

Snapsolve allows students to take a picture of their homework problem, and send it along to a tutor who is somewhat of an expert in their field, who can help the student figure out the solution in realtime. What’s great about this service is that it doesn’t limit itself to some structured type of problems. It’s actually just a tutoring app that centers the relationship between student and teacher around a specific problem, and turns it into a simple transaction.

Though I’m sure some teachers may dismay at the alarming acceleration of tech-powered homework-solving tools, I embrace this sort of technology. In the modern age, base knowledge (i.e. anything that can be figured out with a single Google search) is no longer of high value. Anyone with an iPhone can figure out how many planets exist in the solar system, or whether or not this sentence is grammatically correct. So while knowing certain facts might be important for certain professions (such as the number of planets in the solar system for, say, an astronaut), it’s not necessary to spend valuable brain space holding a fact that is a few keystrokes away.

The world is changing. Things are moving faster and faster everyday. And yes: your phone can do your homework.

Apple CareKit is live in the Glow NurtureandGlow Babyapps!

Recall that in March, Glow Nurture and Glow Baby were chosen as two of four launch partner apps for Apple CareKit. We were so thrilled, we ate apple pie. And less than a month later, both the Glow Nurture and Glow Baby apps are already leveraging CareKit’s amazing Connect module.

CareKit’s Connect module enables fast, easy sharing of health information among family members, medical professionals, and caregivers of all kinds. 

The Glow Nurture and Glow Baby apps now use smart notifications to indicate when health updates might be important enough to share with others. For example, if a Glow Baby user logs a high fever, she will receive a notification directing her to the Care Team page where she can easily alert doctors and other caregivers. For Glow Nurture, Care Team notifications will surface when a user indicates that she feels sick and when important prenatal appointments are coming up.

Our mission of empowering women with information about health continues to drive everything we do at Glow, including our CareKit integration. Better and easier sharing of information with all caretakers—doctors, nurses, partners, parents, babysitters—is yet another important way to take control of one’s health. And that’s what we’re all about.

Every day at Glow, we feel like proud mamas and papas. Our apps support women from period to parenting—they’ve helped millions of women better understand their bodies, and over two hundred thousand women get pregnant!

Today, we are especially proud: Glow has been chosen as one of five organizations to integrate with Apple’s new CareKit! As Apple’s early launch partner, we’ll be incorporating CareKit into not one, but TWO apps in the coming weeks. The Glow NurtureandGlow Baby apps are in for a first-class fabulous time.

Pushing the boundaries of health via technology is in our DNA: We were the first women’s health app to focus on male fertility, postpartum support, and the interdependence of period tracking and sexual health. Now we’re in the very first batch of organizations integrating with Apple CareKit. Tracking your health and the health of your loved ones is about to be even more intuitive in our apps! Just you wait and see, moms and moms-to-be :)