Mother’s little helper is now a smartphone

Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Sleeper envisioned high-tech futures in which our main helpers would be robots.

But that was so 2001.

In today’s world, our real helpers are smaller, cheaper, and hyper-connected: I’m talking about smartphones, and we parents love them.

As a mom with a 10-year-old daughter whose life I have to oversee, my smartphone has become like a fifth limb that rarely lets me down. Cellphone-wise, I’ve always been an Apple devotee. The beauty and user friendliness of Apple’s design has always appealed to the creative in me. I owned the first-generation iPhone and have now just upgraded to the new iPhone 5.

But, I realized, you can’t maximize a state-of-the-art handset like an iPhone 5 without a good mobile internet plan.

The best way to stay connected, I’ve found, is Globe PowerSurf, a Megabyte  (MB) plan that allows you complete control of your data usage. A plan like PowerSurf 499, for instance, gives you 1GB or 1,024 MB of data, which is essential when you want to send emails, upload photos, stream videos, download apps, or post on social networking sites.

As a busy working mom who’s constantly pressed for time, it would be great to have a personal assistant I could delegate to, but since I don’t have the budget or the patience for a real human being, my PA, helper and robot-in-one is my iPhone 5. Not only can I call, text and surf with Wi-Fi, today’s raft of apps can help me manage my time better while ensuring that I don’t drop any of the many balls I have to constantly juggle. I can be supermom and have fun. Gasp — what a truly futuristic idea. Here are some of my favorite apps:

WebMD. Having just come from the beach, my daughter Isobel suffered a mild case of sunburn, and WebMD’s first aid information offered tips on how to relieve her discomfort (with just a few swipes of my finger, I had an array of creative solutions available). The app also offers a Symptom Checker (point to a virtual body part and it will list possible ailments), an alphabetized list of conditions, and medical information on common Drugs & Treatments. This amazing app is like having a personal doctor in your pocket. Looking up each symptom and treatment only consumes .1 MB on PowerSurf 499 — that’s over 9000 symptoms and treatments I can look up in a month.

Evernote Any To Do. Divides your to-do list into “Business” and “Personal.” Tap on either category and it further subdivides your tasks into four quadrants: at a glance you can see what’s urgent and important, or Not Urgent and Not Important. It’s like my very own personal administrative assistant. As with the iPhone’s Calendar and Reminders, you can ask the app to remind you on certain days and times. At only .2 MB per reminder, you can set up to 4000 reminders on PowerSurf 499 a month — perfect if you’re really forgetful and absent-minded. Makes to-do lists and chores almost fun to do.

Viddy. Like Instagram for videos. Isobel was recently awarded for academic excellence, and as her proud mom, I took a video of the proceedings. Viddy let me add an instant dose of hip by providing a range of filters, and here’s the capper: it also provides songs so I could add happy music to my home vid, before I share it over Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr. Viddy will make you want to share every memorable moment, and your followers will love watching them. To edit, record, and upload my 30-second video only took 3 MB! My PowerSurf 499 allows me up to 333 30-second video uploads a month.

Spending Tracker. As its name implies, this app lets me keep track of my household expenses. I input my income and transactions and Spending Tracker automatically balances my virtual bank book. When I tip my iPhone to the side it displays a pie or cash-flow chart that shows me exactly how much of my salary is going into which category, like Shopping, Fuel, or that gift we got for Isobel as a reward for all her hard work. This almost makes accounting fun, and so easy to manage. I was able to track all my expenses while in line for some lunch.

Kids Recipes by iFood TV. My daughter is a picky eater, but our struggle with getting her to eat is a thing of the past with this fun app geared towards kids’ palates. Find a dish by course, cuisine, the ingredients you have on hand, the occasion, or a recipe from a show like 2 Kids Cooking. During a recent movie night at home, Isobel requested “premium snacks,” so we actually whipped up popcorn on the stovetop. The recipes even have health indexes, from “healthy” to “just have fun.” Using Globe PowerSurf 499, you can search up to 4,000 recipes a month!

ZipList. A valuable adjunct to Kids Recipes, ZipList actually creates a grocery list for me from the recipes I have on file, and classifies them according to which aisle of the supermarket I might find the ingredients in (for example, Baking or Canned Foods). I can also share my list with my husband if I want him to buy an item I may have forgotten. Genius.

SoundHound. At an age where she’s started to take an interest in music, my daughter will sing something she heard on the radio and ask if I can download the song for her. Identifying the song used to be near-impossible until SoundHound: now we just sing or hum the tune into my iPhone and the app provides the likely song title, artist and even lyrics.

With such a smorgasbord of apps, you can imagine I’m always online using them. Thanks to Globe PowerSurf I stay connected for as long as I want while only being charged based on the kind of activities I do and which sites I go to.

Since I don’t want to worry about high charges and bill shock, I subscribe to Globe PowerSurf 499, which gives me full control over my mobile browsing, apps, the time I spend online, and most importantly, keep me within my mobile browsing budget. I can stay connected with my family, manage my time and never miss a milestone moment in my daughter’s life.

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To subscribe to a Globe PowerSurf MB plan, text “PowerSurf” to 8888 or dial *143# for free. Learn more about Globe PowerSurf MB plans by visiting http://surf.globe.com.ph.