AUBURN — If things go according to plan Monday night, the Auburn Public Library’s Wi-Fi bandwidth will be full of people downloading apps to their smartphones and swapping stories about what works.
“We’re hoping people bring their devices and then share what they have,” said Martin Gagnon, adult services manager at the library.” We hope they tell each other ‘You ought to check this one out’ and ‘I have this one, and this is what it does.'”
Gagnon and the library are hosting the city’s first ever Appy Hour from 6 to 7 p.m. Monday.
It’s a chance for people with Apple and Android smartphones, media players and tablets to talk about the thousands of varieties of smartphone software that are available and recommend the ones they’ve used and fallen in love with.
“Then they can sign on to our Wi-Fi and start downloading apps right away,” he said. “If they have questions, there are people right there to help them out.”
Appy Hour will continue on the fourth Monday of every month for the rest of the summer. It could change days in the fall.
Gagnon hopes that people will come hear his tips about smartphone apps, but he hopes it doesn’t stop there.
“We’ll probably do a half hour about apps we’ve found, but then we hope we get people talking about their own suggestions,” Gagnon said. “We hope it turns into an opportunity for everyone to get together and talk about what they like and what they use and recommend things to each other.”
Gagnon said he and assistant Jim Allred have already picked out a handful of flashlight, scanner and music apps to discuss Monday. He expects they’ll pick a theme each month after Monday.
“We’re talking about travel, cooking, health and fitness,” he said. “As we get nearer to the holidays, there are those kinds of apps we can talk about. We want to stay away from apps dedicated to work. We want to focus on kind of fun, at this stage.”
Most of the apps they are talking about are free or cost less than $1 and work on either Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android platforms.
“You can almost always find a similar app for almost any device,” he said. “They may be slightly different. But that’s why we hope everybody brings in their own recommendations.”
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