Almost every store I go to has some sort of “loyalty” club. If it’s one I go to often, I keep the card on my keys rather than fumbling through my wallet. Often, I will make a special trip to a store that has a specialty item, but sometimes I forget my “loyalty” card. So, either I end up not using it, so I don’t inconvenience the other loyal customers or I inconvenience the loyal customers while the friendly attendant assists me in looking it up by one of my e-mail addresses or old telephone numbers.
LogMeIn is a nifty little tool that I use to access my home computer from anywhere that I can logon to the internet. I use it to access my files when I am away from my desktop, to look at computer problems on my parent’s home computers, and even as a communication tool to talk to my wife when she is on her laptop. It is available for free and as a subscription from their website.
To use LogMeIn, you create an account by following a few simple steps on their site. After that, you can add computers by selecting “add computer” while on your machine. As long as the machine is connected to the internet, you can access it from anywhere through the LogMeIn website.
One of the features I really like about it is its cross-platform functionality. It works on both OS X and Windows based computers. You can even add a log me app to your iPad and connect to your machines through that.
As far as security goes, you can feel safe using LogMeIn. It uses SSL/TLS encryption and is set up by default to send an alert email every time somebody tries to log into your account and fails. Also, even after logging in to your account, you will need to provide the local credentials to the machine. I highly recommend this tool to anybody who needs remote access to their computer.
The Android phone has recently overtaken the iPhone in popularity and has many useful, as well as useless, apps. One of Android’s major flaws is that it doesn’t automatically close apps for you. When you hit the back button, it will remove the app from view, but it will continue to run in the background.
You need a way to terminate these apps because they can and will affect your phone’s performance. One example is when my phone gets low on memory, it will no longer show what is being typed while writing a text message.
We got it as a Christmas gift. When I unwrapped it, I had no idea what it was. Clearly, it was the box of an Apple product—plain, white, basically just an Apple logo and a picture of a black, square-ish box. The person who gave it to us said, “It’s an Apple TV. It’s amazing.” I was skeptical, but it turns out he was right. It is amazing.
It’s not often that I am impressed with mainstream consumer technology. Like everyone else, I have a bunch of stuff plugged into my outlets with features that I find neat or useful or occasionally both. Unfortunately, there is usually some offset, like complicated configuration or functionality that you can’t count on working every time. The latest release of Apple TV has caught my attention.
There are a few different schools of thought on when to introduce your child to computers. I knew from the time we were expecting our first daughter that I wanted to start early on, at about 3 or 4 years old. If you are in my camp, and you have a child in preschool or kindergarten but aren't sure how to approach this, I strongly recommend PoissonRouge.
Poisson Rouge (means goldfish in French) is a donation-based, labor of love constantly updated by a collective of teachers, web designers and musicians.The site lets your child experiment with letters, numbers and even some simple problem solving in a gentle and fun way. In the meantime, with a little help from you, they'll learn some basic mouse skills (clicking, highlighting, dragging items) and be introduced to the concept of menus and navigation.
What I’m about to admit is going to make me sound like an old lady…so have a good laugh at my expense, I don’t mind.
If you’re like me, you have a growing number of prescriptions to manage and always seem to be running out of one of your daily medications. The phone call to the pharmacy to order a refill is such a drag. It’s automated, easy and fairly quick, but for some reason, I still think it’s a pain in the neck.
Many of us, at one point or another, have experienced the heartache of losing an important electronic file due to a hardware crash or accidental deletion. Clearly, backing up one’s files and data is very important to avoid such losses. Backing up your files to external hard drives is a great idea and, for the most part, is enough. However, an external hard drive is hardware as well and can break or crash just like an internal hard drive. This is where online backup services can be helpful in keeping your files and data safe.
When it comes to cameras, many people assume that more mega-pixels mean better pictures. Actually, the truth can quite often be exactly the opposite, and it's getting worse.
It seems that all digital camera manufacturers are feeding into the "Mega-pixel Fever" because every manufacturer knows it's hard to sell an 8MP camera when your competitor's shiny new 14MP model is on the shelf for not much more money. Consumers don't know much about physical image sensor size, but they can do basic mega-pixel arithmetic and get caught up in the hype. A 6MP image will produce an 8" x 10" print without loss of quality on digital zoom.
There are few times in my life when I have felt truly helpless and none worse than when my home desktop hard drive stopped working. Being the office manager at INTRUST, I know my way around a computer, but a broken hard drive is beyond my expertise.
In this instance, it is important to note that in my spare time, I work as a writer. Consequently, I had all of my unpublished work, both finished and unfinished, on that drive. Then, in the click of a keystroke, everything was gone. This is the story of how I learned the importance of backing up my hard drive.
We’ve all traveled for a conference, to a meeting with clients, or to do repair work at a remote office. Then, when the day is done, we are back in our hotel room and bored out of our minds. WE are stuck watching the local sports teams of the city we are in. (Who, outside of Baltimore, cares about the Orioles anyway?) We don’t get the same cable channels we do at home (Great! Let’s watch people have a contest over who makes prettier cupcakes.) What if there was a way to log into your home TV and watch your own channels, your own sports teams, and even programs you have DVR’d?
