A small break from the music journalism, I hope you'll indulge me in this tangents from time to time.

In my time here, I've started to appreciate a crop of tools in order to help me write, engage with my audience and interests, and generally get a picture of what is going on with my account. And yes. That is a guy I spotted on a train with a full iMac setup on the table.

Steemify

iOS Store Link

This app is courtesy of witness team @blockbrothers, and I picked it up in particular through one of @exyle's daily posts. In essence, it is an iOS app that provides notifications. Simple as that. If you've ever wondered why I can have an uncanny knack of appearing 3 seconds after you post, this is why. Steemit is not fantastic at letting know about your interactions - leafing through a list of unorganised replies or checking out who has been upvoting you isn't that productive. This rectifies that. You can see when someone posts, replies to you, upvotes to you, mentions in comments and posts (VERY handy), plus a whole host of really useful granular options. There are a few glitches, but it has really turned around the community side of this place for me.

Steem Supply

Find it by: http://www.steem.supply/@[yourusername]

Sometimes you want to know when your rewards are going to hit and what exactly the makeup of these rewards are going to be. The $ on your post doesn't quite give the full picture and @dragosroua's app helps break things down. Inside here, you know when rewards will hit and what the actual rewards will be in terms of Steem/SBD splits and equivalent USD amounts. I'm an "after 30 minute" voter, so it's nice to see what's left after the post participants have their cut. If you're baffled by the reward calculation, this post will give you an understanding.

Steem Now

Find it by: https://steemnow.com/@[yourusername]

Steem Now is essentially my measure of what my vote is worth and how long until I'm at full power. I absolutely ran my voting power ragged last week, so it is nice to see that I'm almost back at full power and being able to give people more than $0.03! This app is courtesty of @penguinpablo.

Busy.org

Find it here, unsurprising link alert!

Don't typo this one and head off to busty.org. This is basically an alternative front end for Steemit. I've only just cottoned onto it, but I'll be giving it a workout over the next few days. It looks the part though, evoking a Twitter-like experience. The UI is really clean and just needs a few more features to be the complete package - namely integrating some of the headline features from above such as notifications, reward pipeline and current picture. A little disclaimer - I've only just started using this, so those features may very well be under the hood. You can find @busy.org at that @ name.

Hopefully this little crop of tools will make your life here better, help you become part of the community better and assist you in realising your content goals.