The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today’s video, I will do a comparison of two PDF readers — LiquidText and Goodreader. Just so you know a bit about my user profile — I am finishing up a graduate degree in social work and I work primarily on an early version of the iPad Pro.  I have been using Goodreader for some time, but I am pretty open to other apps if they would better suit my needs.  I use GoodReader for two reasons: to read and highlight PDFs and to manage PDF files. I use a different app, Notability, for handwriting/drawing, so I don’t need either of these apps to perform that function for me.  OK – let’s get started on this side by side comparison of GoodReader and LiquidText. First, Price - Goodreader is $6 in the App Store and you can download LiquidText for free.  Liquidtext has a pro version for $30, but most of those extra functions were outside of my basic needs.  I will happily throw down $6 for an app that ma...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today’s video, I will share my recent journey to make digital art a bigger part of my life using Procreate on the iPad. I’m doing this video to share how I used the last several months to get into digital art.  My hope is that some of the specifics that I figured out along the way may help others who are thinking about walking down this path.  I’m gonna talk through the following things: a little bit of background, the importance of daily practice, why I chose digital art over traditional art, the Procreate app,  my supplies, training, ideas for topics or projects, and building a supportive community. Let’s get started. Background Are used to draw a lot as a kid. The last time I did anything serious was probably when I took a couple of studio art classes in college. And apart from some creative signs and birthday cakes, I haven’t done much for the last several decades.   That said, I am from a fami...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel, and in today’s video I will review the Toshl personal finance and budget app.  This is part of a series where I give you my thoughts on a variety of budgeting apps. Toshl is a European app — it appears to be based in Slovenia.  It’s free version has limited the number of accounts and budget items that you can add. The pro version for two dollars a month has unlimited accounts and budget items, but does not include linked banking accounts. For five dollars per month, you can upgrade to the Medici level which allows for linked financial accounts. Toshl is available for iOS, android, and has a Web app. It syncs across all of the platforms by pulling data from the cloud. Linking accounts was quite easy. It even asked whether I wanted to import past transactions or for importing to start today. After having reviewed a number of these apps, I’m always interested in how the developers have chosen to set up the screens. T...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel, and in today’s video I will provide a review of the Saru Personal Finance and Budgeting App. This is part of a series where I review budget apps. The Saru app is a free budgeting system that is available on iOS, Android, and believe it or not, PC software. Based on the way this app looks, I’m guessing it started out as a Microsoft mobile app. There is extremely limited information about it online, so I don’t know the history, but that’s what the interface looks like to me. In addition, you can sync between devices through a Microsoft login (another giveaway).  It has some ads, which you can get rid of by paying a nominal one time fee. I think it’s around two dollars.  The ads are not really a big deal, but a couple times I got into situations where I could not get rid of the ad without killing the app. In addition to having a throwback interface, Saru embraces a more traditional budgeting philosophy than some...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I will review the Money Manager 365 budgeting app. This is part of a series where I give my thoughts on a variety of apps for financial budgeting.  Money Manager 365 is an app that is available both for iOS and Android platforms.  It does not have a website component, but you can sync multiple devices.  I should say at the outset that this app doesn’t not link with your bank or credit card accounts, so it is manual entry only. Perhaps because of this, Money Manager 365 offers most of its services for free — you can upgrade to a Pro (or VIP) account, which gives you the ability to sync more than 2 devices and get rid of ads for just less than $1 per month.  Everyone has their own way that works best for them for budgeting. I am partial to apps that automatically link to your accounts and pull in transactions as they occur. Otherwise, I think it is easy to miss things. However, I know ...

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today’s video I will do a quick review of the Emma finance and budgeting app. This is part of a series where I give my thoughts on a variety of budget systems. OK – Emma is a personal finance and budget tracker that comes out of the UK. It is available for iOS and android platforms – there is no web app.  They offer a free version which does allow you to automatically link your financial accounts, but upgrading to Emma Pro for $5 per month gives you a bunch of additional features including export, custom budget categories, split transactions, etc. Signing up for Emma allows you to use your Facebook, Apple ID, or your phone number. The set up process takes you directly into the screen to link an account. This is very easy and straightforward, and as I said before, is available even to free users.  It syncs between devices by storing your data up in a cloud account.  Emma protects your data by requiring y...

Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel, and in today’s video, I will review the Dollarbird personal finance calendar app. This is part of a series where I review apps for financial budgeting. What I have learned from reviewing a bunch of  budgeting apps is that people think about budgeting in lots of different ways. This app is not really a budgeting app as it turns out.  It SEEMS like a budgeting app.  You put in transactions, you categorize them, you produce some reporting. But the big difference is that with budgeting apps, you set a budget. That means that you determine how much you want to spend for a period — say a month and then you report on your actual spending against this plan. The Dollarbird app is a different animal. It is the most stripped down, simple app that I have reviewed so far. Normally in budgeting apps, there are accounts, within the accounts there are transactions, then there are Budget categories, and finally reports both o...