Last week I spoke to 70 members of local women’s group about how they could potentially use iPhone’s and iPad’s in useful ways in their lives as retirees. As I made a list of apps and use cases for my presentation I thought about how much I’d miss my iPhone if I were forced to give it up, and remembered a story that my father used to tell about a Yankee Clock Peddler. The story goes like this…
The Yankee Clock Peddler and his travelling companion start out on a sales tip in a rural area, and they stop for the night at a farmer’s house. In the morning before leaving to make sales call in neighbouring communities, the clock peddler asks the farmer if he’d store a clock for him for a couple of weeks, and that he’ll pick the clock up on his way back home. The farmer agreed to this, so the Peddler wound up the clock and placed it on the farmer’s wall before leaving (the farmer does not yet own a clock). When out of ear shot, the traveling companion asks the clock peddler why he left the clock at the house. Didn’t he want to sell the clock on the trip? To this the Yankee Clock Peddler replied, “don’t worry, by the time I come back in a couple of weeks, the clock will be sold… the farmer will happily buy it from me.”
The moral of the story is: “We can do without any article of luxury we have never had, but when once obtained, it is not in human nature to surrender it voluntarily.”
Being the father of five children under the age of 16 years old, with a home that has three computers, four iPhones and three iPod Touches, I’ve been experimenting with software over the past few years to trying to reduce the likelihood of porn inadvertently showing up on their screens. After trying some commercial software for content filtering a couple of years ago, that ended up slowing down our old computer, I have found something that doesn’t kill our computer, and as an added bonus is FREE – OpenDNS.
OpenDNS allows you to filter web content and block adult websites on the internet by simply changing the DNS servers that your computer or router uses. While not full proof (no solution is), it quite works well. After you’ve setup an account, you can specify the kinds of web sites you want to block or allow. You can also specifically allow web sites that may be grouped in a category you have blocked. You have all the control that you could ask for. If you want you can install on one computer in your home to let OpenDNS know if your IP address changes, so that it can continue to filter based on the criteria you’ve set in their control panel.
If you want, you can also enable logging so that you can keep track of the websites computers in your house are visiting. This all happens transparently, without having to install any software on your computers, iPods or iPads.
The easiest way to protect all the computers and internet devices in hour home is to manually change the DNS servers that your internet router uses to the two OpenDNS servers. If you want to change your DNS settings now just use the following:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
If you need help figuring out where to change the DNS settings for your router, OpenDNS has a great tutorial that shows you how on their website.
OpenDNS along with Dropbox and two services that every home should seriously consider using. OpenDNS is completely free, and Dropbox is free up to 2GB of data backed up. Enjoy!
You can’t put a hyper-link on a poster, sheet of paper or bookmark, but you can put on a QR Code. It is a much easier and more accurate way to link to a web page than to type a URL into your smart phone.
How can I use QR Codes?
Using a QR Code reader on your smart phone (like the Google App on an iPhone or Android phone) you simply take a picture of the QR Code and the reader redirects you to a mobile web page or some other resource on theinternet. Depending on what you download, you’ll be able to:
Read a web page with text and pictures
Watch a video
Listen to an audio file
Download an app
Register for an event or buy tickets
QR Codes are commonly used on posters, in print ads, on bookmarks, on business cards and even on web pages.
My current favourite QR code reader for the iPhone is the Scan by QR Code City (search for “Scan” in the App store). For all other smart phones, I’d suggest trying the free Neo Reader.
Enjoy!
P.S. Here is handout with QR Code information. Here is a bookmark sheet to go along with the handout.
Creating and using good passwords is the digital equivalent of flossing our teeth. We all know we should do it, but it’s time consuming and not easy to do. The good news is that it’s possible to create strong, but easy to remember passwords.
So, which of the following two passwords is stronger and more difficult to crack? Which is more difficult to Remember?
B!g1——————– TisHw4k.%sQxWE,rUbnD<Ww
Believe it or not, the first password is both stronger, and for most people easier to remember. It’s hard to see, but the first password is one character longer than the second, and because of the way hackers try to crack passwords, it is more secure than the second. The first tool that hackers use when trying to guess passwords is a dictionary attack. Because neither password is in a dictionary, that attack will fail. At that point a hacker will fall back to a brute force attack, where password length and character mix is important for making a password hard to crack.
So how should you choose your password?
Use a memorable word or phrase that has upper case, lower case, number(s), and symbol(s) in it.
Pad that with a character to make the password and then pad it with a random character so that the password length is about 25 characters long.
Another example of a strong password is: D0gsD!g………………..
For more information, and to check out how secure your password is from a brute force attack, check out this excellent resource from Steve Gibson at GRC.com which was the inspiration for this blog post. Passwordmeter.com is also another great resource that help you to know how strong your password really is. If you’re really interested, here’s a podcast Steve did where explains in detail why this sort of password is so effective.
This is one use for my iPad that I definitely did not for see when I purchased it last year: Navigating my sailboat with it! Compared to using a paper map, navigating with my iPad is a joy. I still take a paper map with me of course, just in case, but my iPad is my navigation tool of choice. Last week I participated in the Swiftsure Race, which typically take about 16 hours to complete. This year because of light winds and adverse currents we crossed the finish line almost 30 hours after we started.
I had my iPad running the Navionics charting software the whole time, and I was able to keep track of where we were for the whole race on a single charge. I turned the screen on and off as needed, but was still amazed at the battery life I saw during the race. The only problems I had with Navionics is that the program rebooted spontaneously three times during the voyage. I was able to quickly restart the program, but it typically “lost” some of the route that it had been tracking for me.
The water off Victoria where I sail as part of the Oak Bay Sailing Club, is very interesting and challenging (here is a day sail route from May 2011). Sometimes it can be difficult figuring out where you are given all the little islands and navigation buoys, but Navionics makes it much less stressful to navigate. There is also an iPhone version that I purchased. It works well, but the iPad’s larger screen is much nicer to view, and the battery life on the iPad is much better. I also purchased a water proof case to keep my iPad nice and dry.
If you want to use mapping software for sailing or driving, make sure you get the “3G” version of the iPad, as the wi-fi iPad does not come with a built in GPS. The price difference is about $100 between the two devices, but it is well worth the extra money if you end up using your iPad for navigation. The US & Canada version of Navionics for the iPad costs $50.
Pros: Easy to use. Relatively inexpensive. Excellent battery life. Great for day sails or longer cruises.
Cons: Software sometimes reboots after several hours of use. This is not a saftey concern, but did cause me to loose parts of the track from the 30 hour race I was in.
Spreadsheet of Data + Google Docs Pivot Tables = Reporting Jedi Master
Pivot tables are the quickest and easiest way to get useful information out of spreadsheets of data… especially large spreadsheets of data. Google Docs makes using pivot tables quite easy if you’re familiar with spreadsheets. Let’s say you have a spreadsheet of conference attendees with contact information along with the sessions they registered for, and the date that they registered. Using a pivot table you could quickly find out if there is a correlation between the people who registered for the “how to get organized” workshop, and how early people registered.
You could also quickly determine how many people attending the conference are out of Province (or State). I’ve just scratched the surface; it’s truly amazing the information you can glean for playing around with a pivot table and a data set. I first used pivot tables over 10 years ago while working at at Westech Building Products, a manufacturing company, and they were invaluable when analyzing production and sales data.
Take a look at the following 1.5 minute video for an excellent overview. Happy spreadsheeting!
How to sync and edit documents from my desktop computer on my iPad is a question that I’ve had ever since I purchased my iPad in April of 2010. The good new is that I finally have a good answer, and ironically the apps that facilitate the editing and syncing are ones that I’ve used for years now, one of which has just recently come to the iPad and iPhone… or at least recently came to my attention. Here’s the equation:
Dropbox + Documents To Go = iPad Document Nirvana!
Here is what you need to turn your iPad into a document editing & syncing machine:
Step 1: If you don’t have a free Dropbox account already, then now is your excuse to finally download and install it on your desktop computer(s). Dropbox is a cloud service that synchronizes files between your computers, and keeps them up to date. It runs on Mac’s, Windows & Linux. For example, I have dropbox running on my Mac laptop and Windows desktop computer. So when I save a file to my Dropbox folder on my desktop computer, that file gets save to my account on the dropbox server on the internet. The next time I turn on my laptop, it checks to see if any files have changed, and then if they have, download the changed files to my laptop. It is a wonderful service if you use more than one computer (or computer & iPad/iPhone). The use of Dropbox is free for up to 2GB of data, and then $10 per month (for $99 per year) for 50GB of data. I personally subscribe to the 50GB plan because I store all my family photos there along with all my documents, but I digress.
Step 2: Install the free Dropbox app on your iPad (or iPhone, or Blackberry, or Android phone if you have one) via the Apple App store. Enter the same user name and password that you setup your Dro
pbox account with on your desktop computer.
Step 3: Again via the Apple App store, and install Documents To Go Premium – Office Suite. Make sure you get the “Premium” version for $16.99, as the basic version does not sync files with Dropbox (or Google Docs). Once you’ve installed the app, press the “Online” button on the bottom nav bar, and then the app will ask you what type of account you want to synchronize with. Select Dropbox, enter your account information, and you set.
That’s it! You’ve now turned your iPad into a legitimate business machine so that you can word process & spreadsheet on the go, and sync everything back to your desktop computer. Enjoy!
Can iPhones and iPod Touches be more than just a distraction for students, but actually help you with your home work and research? Below are some apps that can help turn your mobile device into a tool for better grades. I’ll start off with some serious apps, and move to a handful of less serious tools that show the potential of mobile apps in the future. Read the rest of this entry »
A colleague of mine asked me yesterday what tools I’d recommend for a group of a dozen or so scholars spread around the world to collaborate on a scholarly project. The good news is that there are lots of good tools available for people to use. The bad news is that there are lots of good tools to choose from. Depending on your group’s particular requirements and preferences, you may choose a different tool set than your colleagues down the hall.
That said, here are my primary and secondary recommendations for collaborative tools, along with some rational for my selections: Read the rest of this entry »
She said that she’s lost everything… I’ll never forget the afternoon I helped a law student configure her new laptop. Most students are excited as they setup a new computer, but not this one. I asked her if she was happy with the new laptop, and she said she was, but that earlier in the week a fire in her basement suite has destroyed her 2 year old laptop along with all her digital photographs, mp3 music files, class notes, term papers, including the one she had been working on, and that was due the following week. I gently asked if she had been backing up the data on her hard drive or not. She said that she had started backing up at the beginning of the school year, but that the backup was on an external hard drive, and the external drive had been destroyed in the fire as well. A very sad story.
So what did I recommend that she do to backup her new laptop? Follow the 3-2-1 Backup rule: Read the rest of this entry »
Last week I spoke to 70 members of local women’s group about how they could potentially use iPhone’s and iPad’s in useful ways in their lives as retirees. As I made a list of apps and use cases for my presentation I thought about how much I’d miss my iPhone if I were forced to give it up, and remembered a story that my father used to tell about a Yankee Clock Peddler. The story goes like this…
Pivot tables are the quickest and easiest way to get useful information out of spreadsheets of data… especially large spreadsheets of data. 
Step 2: Install the free 
She said that she’s lost everything… I’ll never forget the afternoon I helped a law student configure her new laptop. Most students are excited as they setup a new computer, but not this one. I asked her if she was happy with the new laptop, and she said she was, but that earlier in the week a fire in her basement suite has destroyed her 2 year old laptop along with all her digital photographs, mp3 music files, class notes, term papers, including the one she had been working on, and that was due the following week. I gently asked if she had been backing up the data on her hard drive or not. She said that she had started backing up at the beginning of the school year, but that the backup was on an external hard drive, and the external drive had been destroyed in the fire as well. A very sad story.
