The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I will share 6 secret features in the iOS mail app that I have stumbled upon over years of using it! iOS Mail is a pretty basic app. Apple has added some functionality to it over the years, but it is still pretty bare bones. Even though I have tried out other mail apps, I keep coming back to iOS Mail — maybe because I like the integration with other iOS functions, maybe because I’m used to the way it works. Either way, I’m going to share some of the secrets that I’ve learned over the years.  Some you may know — some may be new!  First up 1 - Shake to Undo Okay — this is a basic iOS feature that works across all of its apps, but I feel like it is particularly important to know when working in Mail. If you accidentally delete a bunch of text, which I do ALL THE TIME, you can undo by shaking your device. This is a little less important since recently Apple added an undo button th...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video — I’m doing a quick public service announcement for all the iPhone 6 users who experienced a slow down after installing iOS 11.  I still have an iPhone 6.  iPhones are expensive and there had been really no reason to upgrade. EXCEPT that I downloaded iOS several months ago and my phone slowed to a crawl.  Did this happen to you?  My iPhone is not my primary device — I use my iPad much more, but I use it while I’m out and about to check texts, make appointments, and check my to do list. All of these activities became so slow that it was almost pointless to even use my phone for anything other than taking phone calls. Here are some real timing that I clocked: 19 seconds to open iMessage to view a text  22 seconds to open Google Calendar, even longer to actually edit or add an appointment  Up to 30 seconds to open a note in Evernote Incoming calls would ring o...

Hi, everybody! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel, and in today’s video I’ll share our new anniversary ritual – the annual state of the marriage OR our annual marriage performance review. My husband and I just celebrated our 20th year anniversary.  We are not big gift givers.  Nor are we people who have extensive rituals for anniversaries. March is a great getaway month, so we used to travel for anniversaries, but the arrival of children 16 years ago put an end to that. This year we tried something a little different than usual. But one that I think will become a part of our anniversary every year. We did a state of our union evaluation.  OK — I know this sounds a little clinical and therapeutic. But why is it that marriage is the one part of our lives where we don’t devote energy to regular review and fine-tuning?  After all, we take our cars into the shop for regular maintenance, we have annual performance reviews for our job performance, and...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll talk about the latest viral video game, Fortnite: Battle Royale, why it is so addictive, and as parents, what we can do about it.  My son just turned 16.  Around last Halloween, he scraped some money together and bought himself an early Xmas present — a PlayStation console.  That’s when he fell over the Fortnite addiction cliff. I didn’t quite understand the impact, until a couple of months later when every single one of his grades has fallen by at least a full letter grade and he was walking around with huge bags under his eyes. It’s highly addictive, way more fun than schoolwork, and tough on a high school sleep schedule.  We had to make some changes. But before we talk about that, let’s talk about Fortnite and why it is so addictive.  Game Concept First let’s just cover the Fortnite basics.  It’s loosely based on the Hunger Games premise. You and 99...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share three ways I use the iPad search function. I use my iPad A LOT.  I did an app purge this week and started out with 264 apps — I kid you not. I’m always looking for more efficient ways to get things done on my iPad, so let me show you 3 ways the iPad search function is indispensable to me.  First of all, here’s what I’m talking about when I refer to the Search function. You get here by swiping down on the home screen. So, the first way i use this is to 1 - Search for Apps As i said, i have too many apps to keep track of.  I organize some of them by folder — and my organizing logic makes total sense — or at least it did at one point, but i don’t always remember where I’ve put things.  I mean I had 264 apps, right?  As a result, I use this search bar to search for apps ALL THE TIME.  In fact, it’s so much faster than digging through folders or eve...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share my process for “spring cleaning” my iPad and iPhone.  I’ll show you how I determine which apps to keep and how I organize my screens. I try to do about 15 minutes of organizing every weekend just to stay on top of the chaos. This weekend I chose to do a little digital organizing. My iPhone and iPad were overflowing with apps that I don’t use and it was time to purge and organize my digital space. Unfortunately, for me this took MUCH longer than 15 minutes, but this may be a faster process for you.  Okay — before I reveal the embarrassing number of apps that I had on my iPad, let me just make a couple of excuses for myself 1) I DO constantly download new apps to try new systems and solve tech problems. I probably end up using something like 10% of the apps that I download.  And 2) by far the biggest issue is that in Settings I have Automatic Download turned on for...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll show you how I resurrected the Quick Add feature that Google Calendar killed off in their last interface release.  This allows you to schedule appointments using normal English syntax (rather than having to parse everything into database fields).  I'll also show you how I use this practically in my life.   I'm not sure exactly when Google Calendar did away with the Quick Add function, but I miss it.  Normally, when you put in an appointment, you have to parse your fields for subject, date, time, location, etc. like you are putting in a database entry.  The Quick Add feature used to let you type in a calendar entry using normal English grammar, Like  "Lunch with Sally on 2/28 12-2pm at Panera" and it would do the work of parsing that information into the database fields with reasonable accuracy.  Getting rid of this feature, frankly feels like tec...