Tips: OS X Mountain Lion

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Apple’s recently released operating system, Mountain Lion, has gotten a lot of positive press. A typical statement about it is that it’s very easy to use and powerful*. But as outlined by an article written by Mark Crump of for GigaOM, you may not be utilizing it to its full potential. The tips below are a few helpful ones that Crump highlighted. Hopefully they will help you enhance your productivity if you are working in Mountain Lion.

Managing Mail

Crump sensibly tackles email in his story. This makes sense. Many of us are constantly overwhelmed by the quantity of email that clutters our inbox. If you’re like most computer users, the volume of your email that truly matters is relatively small. That’s where Mountain Lion’s Notification Center comes in. As Crump writes, the notification center allows you to create banner alerts when email messages come into your inbox. You can set the center to alert you, though, only when messages from senders that you’ve already deemed as important come in. This prevents messages from Groupon, Google News, and other less important senders from triggering a banner alert and distracting you from more essential work.

The Power of Reminders

If we get too wrapped up in one project, the little things can slip our mind, like calling a client or running an errand after work. OS X Mountain Lion solves this by letting you set reminders for yourself. It is a very simple app to use and it even permits you to check tasks off once they are complete.

Relying on Notes for Important Codes

Another prevalent problem most people experience is forgetting passwords and pass codes. Mountain Lion has a feature to help with this as well. You can use the notes feature to give you quick access to your passwords. This is particularly convenient if you have a long pass code you need to use for a conference call. You may set a reminder about your call and use the note feature in order to save the pass code. In addition, it syncs with iOS Notes so you can have access to it wherever you are.

*We love Microsoft but as IT people we are admirers of well-designed technology, regardless of the label.

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Looking For an E-reader: 3 Top Devices

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Have you been looking for an e-book reader? They are extremely popular these days and there are many products to choose from. This can make it difficult to determine which one has the features you need. Most of the e-readers in the marketplace are high quality items, so, no matter which one you choose, you’ll likely be pleased. We’ve outlined three below that are some of the best.

Nook Color: Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color e-reader is both affordable and well designed. Today, you can buy the Nook Color for about $150. That’s not a bad bargain. And maybe because of its association with the country’s largest bookseller, the Nook Color provides a outstanding reading experience. The Nook Color is adept at both prose and graphic display. This will make reading children’s books and graphic novels a pleasure. There’s also several user capabilities that are a joy to use. For example, if you don’t know the meaning of a word in that Mark Twain novel you’re reading, just press it. A definition will appear.

The Nook Color has some built-in applications, like the popular music-streaming site, Pandora. And it’s simple to download more applications from the apps store. However, the one complaint most people have is that a number of the newer apps are not available for the Nook Color.

Kindle Fire: The Kindle Fire is among the most popular e-readers available. The display is very clear and easy to read. It also comes with an email client and a web browser, and the price tag is reasonable. It goes for about $200.

The one negative thing people have found with the Kindle Fire is that to modify the volume you have to touch the screen to access the controls.

Kobo e-Reader: The Kobo e-Reader Touch does not have the name recognition of either the Nook Color or the Kindle Fire. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a worthy competitor. In fact, you would not go wrong by spending your e-reader dollars on this nifty device if reading is your primary goal. Users rave about the reading experience on the Kobo. Images and words are sharp and easy to read. In fact, the Kobo offers seven unique font styles and 17 different font sizes for readers to choose from. Others rave about the device’s soft, quilted back. Don’t laugh; this back makes holding a Kobo feel much more like holding an actual book. That’s a feature the Nook Color or Amazon Kindle can’t boast.

You can download e-books from the Kobo store in many different formats. This is ideal for graphics-heavy books. Also, the battery life of the Kobo blows other e-readers out of the water. When the Wi-Fi feature is turned off, the battery can last as long as a month.

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Helper Robots

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Here’s what we dreamed of as kids: jetpacks, entire meals that came in pill form, time travel, and, of course, helper robots. That last concept was especially intriguing: What humans wouldn’t desire a robot to make their bed for them in the morning, go to work for them when they didn’t feel like making the trip, or vacuum the living room rug when they’d rather put up their feet and watch television? Unfortunately, this promised day of robot butlers, maids, and workers hasn’t dawned. Sure, we have little robots that vacuum our rugs, but they are always bumping into things. Can we do better than vacuum-bots?

This amusing video called “Thanks a lot, robot friend” highlights the issue with helper robots in a few seconds. The task the robot in the video is attempting to perform is to pour a beer into a glass while holding something in the other arm. Upon attempting to execute this task, the robot pours beer everywhere and then it’s arm falls off. It may be ridiculous, but it demonstrates robots have a ways to go before they are able to perform even simple household tasks.

Washing Your Hair the Robotic Way

Panasonic, however, is stepping up. The business last year introduced its Hair-Washing Robot. Really. This robot can wet, shampoo, rinse, and condition your hair. It will also give you a spot massage. Obviously, you can do all of this yourself, without the assistance of a robot. To be fair, the robot is designed for elderly residents who might need the help.

The Robot Bed

Panasonic also announced a robotic bed that transforms into an electric wheelchair. You can see how the elderly or disabled would find this invaluable. So, there are some helper bots out there made for people who actually need them, as opposed to those of us who would like to be lazy and not do house work. Regardless, it seems like we are well on our way to having the world of 1950s science fiction come into reality.

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Communicate More Easily With These Translation Apps

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Have you ever traveled overseas and been struggling to speak the language? Constantly struggling with a dictionary is not ideal. Instead, how about next time you employ your smartphone. There are lots of apps on the market that were created for this purpose. We have outlined three below that we think are worth your time and money.

Jibbigo

Jibbigo costs $4.99, this app is available for both the iPhone and Android. It has such an massive dictionary you would be hard pressed to find a language this app can’t translate. To use it, users speak right into their smartphone and Jibbigo will give you a translation via text or voice. This app can be very useful to people traveling to remote locations as it does not require a network connection.

Dean Foster’s Culture Guides

These guides are a bit more advanced than Jibbigo. As Burke writes, the guides are available for 12 countries so far. The apps provide users with an overview of these countries, maps, weather reports, and currency exchange rates. Of course, it also provides solid translation services.

Word Lens

If you need to translate the written word, Word Lens is a great app. It utilizes your smartphones camera. You take a picture of a sign, menu, book, etc. and the app will translate it for you. You will see how this might be practical. The only languages this app currently works with are Spanish, French, Italian, and English. The basic app is free, but if you would like to buy any of the languages it will cost you $4.99 per language.

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Use Two-Factor Authentication To Protect Your Accounts

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Many people are nervous nowadays about hackers. Slate.com ran a story recently discussing Matt Honan’s, a writer for Wired Magazine, experiences with being hacked. In August, Honan’s Apple account was hacked, and all of the data on his iPhone, iPad, and Macbook was erased. In addition, the hacker deleted his Google account and hijacked his Twitter account, using it to post racist and obscene comments. Something this story puts into sharp focus is the fact that everyone can get hacked.

However, the story also provided some good news: There are steps that consumers might take to make it much less likely that they’ll suffer Honan’s fate. And it all starts with two-factor authentication.

Two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication is a way to protect your accounts by requiring you to enter in a code after you enter the password for your accounts. This might seem unnecessary, but if you only have one password safeguarding your accounts, this is not enough to deter hackers today. Two-factor authentication can be the difference between your accounts being hacked and keeping your accounts secure.

How it works

Two-factor authentication has been enabled for all Google accounts. You are able to download the app for your smartphone or mobile device. Then when you log into your account you will type both your password and the code that Google has given you.

Don’t own a smartphone? You may use the two-factor authentication system with your PC or Mac as well. Just log into your Google accounts and Google will text or call you to supply you with your personal code.

Not widely used

While this is a good way to protect your accounts, not a lot of people are using it as it can be a bit of a hassle. People don’t want an extra step when logging into their personal accounts. But neither do hackers. So if you needed to make the choice between being hacked or dealing with an extra step, you will almost certainly choose to take that extra step to safeguard yourself.

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Two Tips To Fight Screen ADD

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Do you suffer from computer-screen attention deficit disorder? Here are some indicators: You have five Internet Explorer tabs open at once. You’re working on three Word documents simultaneously, and you are messing with two open spreadsheets, too. Quite simply, you are juggling so many on-screen tasks at the same time, you’re struggling to finish any one of them.

Computer-screen ADD could make you less productive because when we focus on many tasks at once, we run the risk of not completing any of them. It can also become difficult to prioritize tasks when you are lost in a sea of responsibilities.

This can utterly wreck your productivity. Luckily, there are a couple things you can do to battle this. Learn about them below.

Resist the minimization urge

When we focus on many tasks at once, big and small, we can get in the habit of minimizing windows. We do this to set a task aside, but in so doing we are putting it off. By breaking this habit we force ourselves to focus on a task at hand until it is finished rather than putting it off.

Email filters

Create filters for your email messages. This is pretty simple but powerful, too: You may set your filters so that only email messages from a particular number of important contacts are sent to your inbox. Email messages from all other senders are sent alternatively to secondary folders to be dealt with later. But those messages that make it to your inbox? These are the important ones, the ones that you have to deal with now. Again, this practice might seem odd at first. You might worry that you will miss important email messages. Nevertheless, you might be surprised at how few of your email contacts regularly send you messages that you need to handle immediately.

How To Successful Deploy Windows 7

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Windows 8 will almost certainly hit the market later this year, but a surprising number of businesses have not even implemented Windows 7 yet. This may be a crucial thing for businesses to do because as of April 2014, Microsoft will no longer support for Windows XP. So companies will have to upgrade to Windows 7, at least, if they still want to receive formal support from Microsoft. Before rolling out a new operating system across the board it’s essential that companies make sure their computers are ready to make the change.

Analyze hardware and compatibility

Business IT departments or Manage Service Providers will first have to evaluate the hardware’s capability to run Windows 7. One way businesses can do this is by using the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 7.0 to complete an assessment of their current equipment. Manage Service Providers will need to decide if a company’s applications will work with Windows 7.

What OS images to deploy

Businesses will have to evaluate if they must deploy just the Windows 7 operating system and install applications later, deploy the operating system and all apps at the same time, or take a combination technique, deploying the operating system and the most important applications that are necessary for all users. Those who take the latter approach may then deploy other applications in the future when needed. This is a recommend route as it is the quickest type of Windows 7 deployment.

Choosing the right image deployment tool

Once all of these things have been done, the final step in the process is for your MSP to decide on which tool they would like to use. There are numerous tools a company can use to deploy the Windows 7 image. A couple being: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 and System Center Configuration Manager 2007 or 2012. All of these tools have different advantages and disadvantages that ought to be taken into consideration.

Upgrading your business to a new OS is a process that has to be planned for. If you are intending on upgrading to Windows 7 or some other operating system, make certain you contact the right people who can help you through this process without too much stress.

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Military Developments That Have Real World Application

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The military is constantly working to develop new technologies. You might assume that these only have military applications but many of these military technologies have real-world uses. Below are a few technologies that have been recently developed that will change our life.

The laser gun

You probably never thought we would see the creation of the laser gun. It is the stuff of Star Wars and Star Trek, right? Wrong. The military has actually created a laser gun that works and they it is known as the Excalibur. They are currently working on one that is 10 times lighter than the Excalibur so it has more military application.

The doctor is in – your body

DARPA’s In Vivo Nanoplatforms program is developing nanoparticles that can sense and cure illness, disease, and infection all from inside the human body. Yes, that again feels like the stuff of science fiction, but DARPA is actually moving along rather quickly on this project. The nanoparticles sense certain molecules of biological interest. Researchers are currently focusing on a complete nanotech demonstration on a large animal.

Thermal imaging on the cheap

The U.S. military has long used thermal imaging technology but this technology is far from cheap. That’s why DARPA is now working on its Low Cost Thermal Imager manufacturing program. This program, as its name signifies, is attempting to dramatically lower the cost of thermal imaging technology. DARPA would like to one day see thermal imaging machinery in cell phones, eyeglasses, drones, helmets, and rifle sights.

Discovering Immortality May Be Right Around The Corner

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Does the idea of living forever sound good to you? Or do you worry that you would quickly run out of things to do? After all, how many superhero movies or walks to the park can you really stand? This might be a moot point. Ray Kurzweil, a famed scientist and author, anticipates that in just 20 years scientists may have discovered a way to let us live forever. Based on a story by Business Insider, this will involve nanobots that replace our blood cells.

Yes, that does seem like sci-fi. It sounds spooky, too, but Kurzweil is enthusiastic about this, and he boasts some very smart people as fans. According to Business Insider two famous and powerful Bills – Clinton and Gates – are big Kurzweil fans.

Rise of the nanobots?

Kurzweil’s ideas on immortality may not be quite so far-fetched. According to the scientist, in about 20 years scientists will have discovered ways to halt and reverse the aging process. Nanotechnology will then step in, he says. Specifically, nanobots will replace human’s blood cells. And, as Kurzweil puts it, they’ll carry out the work of these blood cells considerably more effectively.

Exponential technology

Kurzweil bases his predictions on the undeniable fact that technology is improving at an exponential rate. Taking this into account, immortality may be only a few more technological leaps away.

The bigger questions that arise from this discussion are: Should humans live forever? If we do, will the planet become overpopulated? Will this destroy our natural resources? Who will get to live forever? These are huge questions, which, if Kurzweil’s estimations come true, we will soon be facing.

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In an Emergency Turn to These Apps

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It may seem like there are a lot of useless and frivolous apps available. But there are some helpful apps, and there are some that could even help you in an emergency situation. Whether you need directions to the nearest hospital or an escape route to avoid a flash flood, these smartphone apps could save your skin.

AroundMe

AroundMe has existed for quite a while, but it remains to be a top locator app. With it, you can discover everything from the nearest gas station to the nearest bank. It’s easy to see how AroundMe might help in case of an emergency. Say your child is sick, you’re in a unfamiliar city, and you must find a hospital right away. Just go to the app, click the category that you need – in this case, “Hospital” – and find the closest medical provider to you. It’s little shock that many consumers consider AroundMe to be a must-have app.

CPR & Choking

What this app does is in its name. It provides you with lessons and advice on how to proceed if someone is choking in your vicinity (pro tip: familiarize yourself with the app BEFORE you need to use it). This is great for people who have never taken a CPR course or people who are fully trained in it. In desperate situations situation is difficult to keep a level head so this app is ideal for those who have never taken a CPR course or people who have been fully trained but have rusty skills. It is completely free, and was designed by the University of Washington and King County EMS.

Emergency Radio Free

This app gives you access to police, fire, weather, and other live emergency radio feeds all over the world. You can choose to only tune into the ones in your community so that you can stay up to date if there is a local emergency, a tornado, for instance, or an armed criminal on the loose.

Of course, no app, no matter how impressive, will be able to safeguard you completely from harm should danger arise. These apps, though, will give you the chance to be better prepared should an emergency strike.