I have been using the Byline Google Reader from Phantom Fish for the past six months and over the last few months I come to realize just how much I rely on this exceptional tool. Google Reader is my RSS tool of choice and I monitor a wide assortment of blogs and sites dealing with Learning, Educational Technology, Web 2.0, Social Media and much more. So my primary criteria in selecting an iPhone reader is that is must sync seamlessly with my Google Reader–and Byline does that and much more.

Having access to my RSS feeds on my iPhone means I can use spare moments anytime and anywhere to keep up with my reading. Whether I am in a doctors or dentist office waiting room or waiting to pick up my kids from an activity I can take those spare moments and keep up to date.

Byline Start Screen

The Byline interface is elegantly simple and effective. I get a list of my RSS categories that I have created in Google Reader and a number indicating how many new entries there are.

Byline Headlines

A single touch of the folder gives me a list of headlines and the site or blog title where they are from.

Byline Content

One more touch of the headline gives me access to the full article or post. If it something that I want to refer to later I can simply click on the star at the bottom of the screen and I can check my starred items either in Byline or in Google Reader when I am back at my laptop. I used the star functionality often because I prefer to add notes or explore a topic further when I have access to my full system. As much as I like the iPhone typing on any device this small is simply not as convenient as it is on a full keyboard.

Byline is not free but at $4.99 it can hardly be considered expensive and 5 bucks is a very small price to pay for the mobility and flexibility that this tool provides.

Education Applications

While I would be hard pressed to use Byline itself in the classroom or in an online course this tool and RSS readers in general are extremely valuable to instructors who are continually required to stay up to date on their area of expertise.

Resizing images can be a pain especially if you don’t have the appropriate hardware and more importantly software like Photoshop. I have found a few free (sometimes limited) tools that resize images quickly, easily, and you are even able to correct colors or add special effects.

Here they are:

Picresize:
http://www.picresize.com/
Pros-extremely easy to use and allows you to resize (shrink only), crop, add effects and even change the type of file. No-account required!
Cons- slow to download resized image if you use the percentages resize. So if you use the manual sizing it works great.

Reshader:
http://reshade.com/online-image-resizer/add-image
Pros- resize both ways, preset sizes to choose from, add effects. No-account required!
Cons- all limitations are exclusive to the free version, limited to only 3 images per day, limited resolution size that you can upload (4000 x 4000).

Pixenate:
http://pixenate.com/
Pros- most options for editing the photo (resize, rotate, brighten, redeye, crop, drawing etc), still fairly easy to use, live preview of changes, upload directly to flickr. No-account required!
Cons-

Photoshop online:
https://www.photoshop.com/
By far the most powerful of all but by far the hardest to use. If you have experience in photo editors or want to get some then this is the one for you. to save any edits you make you also need to have an account.

How can these apps be used in education?

• Resizing photos and image for their course
• Make your file size smaller so its faster
• Add captions to mundane images
• Have students make their file sizes smaller to ease your inbox

Thats what I have now I would like to hear what you have.