Monday Productivity Pointers

- [Voiceover] If you work with international business partners or if you travel, either for business or vacation, you'll need to make a lot of conversions like language and currency conversions. This is one of those things that smart phones are perfect for. In this week's Monday Productivity Pointers, I want to share some apps that I use when travelling to translate languages, money, distance, temperature, and lots of other measurements. So there are lots of apps out there. So let me show you what I use, which will give you an idea of some of the options.

So the go to for quick language translations is Google Translate. Google Translate, of course, is available on the web or as an app for both Android and iOS phones and tablets. This certainly does not take the place of really speaking a language, but it's incredibly helpful for quick translations. The basic functions work like this. Up at the very top, I see two languages listed. Right now I have it set for Italian and English. The language on the left is my originating language.

And I can tap on that and I could choose any language from this list. I actually want to stick with Italian, so I'm gonna tap on that. I could, of course, change the other language on the right by tapping on that, but I'm gonna stick with English. And then there's a field here. It says touch to type. So I can just tap on that and I could type in a word or a phrase or even a full sentence or a paragraph. So let's say one of your clients or business partners has put some text in an email that you don't recognize. Well, you could plug it in here and see what it means.

So let me put in a phrase here. Okay, so that means too expensive. So probably in the email, my business partner is saying that something's too expensive. So this is really helpful for translating quick bits of text like this. Of course, I can always hit the X in the text field to clear that and I could type in something else. And I could very easily swap the two languages that are currently set by hitting this double arrow button in the middle. So now I could translate English to Italian. But let me go back.

Okay, so now I'm set back to Italian to English. So it's really just that easy. For full sentences and phrases, sometimes the grammar doesn't translate very well. But this is great for small translations or to help you when you're learning a new language. Now there's another feature in this app where you can actually translate printed text using your phone's camera. This is really great for translating signs or other printed text when you're in a foreign country. Now to see how that works, I've printed some Italian text on a sheet of paper.

This is not a real sign, but it'll show you how it works. So just to see what this sign looks like, I'm going to leave the Google Translate app for just a moment and I'm gonna open up the regular camera app on my phone. And you can see my desktop here. So this is just some text that I printed out on a regular white sheet of paper. And this is the sort of text that you might see on a sign if you were in a train station in Italy. So let's see what this translates to. All I need to do is go back to the Google Translate app.

I'm going to clear this text translation. And right below where it says touch to type, I see a little camera icon on the left. I'm gonna tap that. It's gonna open up my camera. And I'm looking at that same sheet of paper on my desk. In fact, when I go over the keyboard, you can see what's happening there. It's translating or trying to translate words based on what it sees. So it sees that text that I printed in Italian, and basically this means do not enter. So you're gonna have to look at this rough translation and probably make some guesses of what it actually means, but this is a very literal translation and I found this to be very helpful when I'm travelling.

So of course, I can hit the back button in the top left to go back to the regular interface. I could always change my languages if I wanted to. And I could go back into that camera button and I could translate other signs. So that's just a quick look at Google Translate. I think you'll agree this is a pretty indispensable tool for travel. Now for currency conversions, I like to use an app called XE Currency, which is available for both iOS and Android. I've got that here as well, so I'm gonna tap to launch that. So I have four currencies listed here.

US dollar, which is the originating currency at the moment, then Euro, British pounds, and Swiss francs. I set this up for a trip that I went on where I was going into these different regions. So since US dollars is at the top of this list, there's a quick little shortcut on each of the other currencies listed telling me the equivalent of one US dollar. That's pretty handy. But I can tap on any of these currencies and that will switch it to the originating currency. So now everything is being translated in relation to British pounds.

So let's say I was in Switzerland and then I see something that costs 50 Swiss francs. Well, I can tap on Swiss francs to make that the originating currency, then I can tap on this text field. I'm gonna hit the delete key in the top right to clear that. I'll type in 50 and then I'll hit the equals button and now I can can see what that translates to in all the other currencies on my list. Now depending on where you travel or who you do business with, you're gonna want to build your own list of currencies here.

So if I want to remove something, let's say I just want to remove the British pounds, I can just tap and hold on it, drag it up to the top to this yellow line, let go, and it's been removed from that list. And to add something new, I just hit this green plus button and let's say I want Japanese yen. I'll choose that. I'll hit the back arrow in the top left and now I have yen on my list. And since conversion values constantly change, this app will update with current values every minute, as long as you're connected to the internet.

Okay, so that's what I use for money. But there are lots of other things you may want to convert. You should be able to find an app to calculate distance and one for temperature and one for weight and so on. But on iOS, I recommend an app called App Box, which is one app that contains several other mini apps. So I'm gonna launch that here. I've got it on my home screen. When you launch this app, it opens to the most recent tool that you were using. In my case, I'm looking at the length converter.

I have it set up to convert centimeters to a bunch of other units. We'll come back to this in just a minute, but for the moment, I want to back out to the main screen on this app. So I'm just gonna hit the back button in the top left and then I'll hit the button in the top left that says apps. So you can see all the tools that are bundled in this one app. Now, I tend to go straight to this section for converters and calculators. But there are lots of other tools here you might want to browse through.

But for now, let's just stick with the unit converters. So here, under the category of converters, I'm gonna tap on unit converter. And then I've got a few categories. Now, down at the bottom, I have some common ones like angle, area, bits, and cooking. Cooking is really great if you're trying to convert, you know, how many ounces are in a cup, something like that. Now if I tap on the more button down on the bottom, you see I go back to that list we were on just a moment ago. And you can see basically any conversion you might want from density down to weight.

Now, let's go back to length which is where we were a moment ago. So, I can see my originating value at the top and then I have a bunch of conversions below it. If I want to change any of these, I just tap on the little arrow on the far right of any of these lines. So let's change our originating value. I'll tap on the arrow on that line. And let's say I want to convert millimeters, not centimeters. So I'm gonna find that here on the list. I'll tap it. And now millimeters is my originating value. Then I could tap on that field and let's say I have a part that measures 91 millimeters.

I'll hit return. I can see that that's about 3.6 inches. So App Box is a really useful tool to have for pretty much any conversion you may need to make. But there's a bigger point that I want to make here. You don't necessarily need to use this particular app. Both the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store on Android are full of great, small, free apps that will help you convert and translate pretty much anything. My smart phone is about the size of the pocket calculator I had in high school.

But I can access so many more preset calculations in addition to the thousands of other things my phone does. When you're travelling or doing business internationally, be sure to take a minute to get familiar with one of your most valuable tools. And that's it for this week's Monday Productivity Pointers. We'll see you again next week for more productivity tips and tricks.