Dropbox

Dropbox is by far one of my favourite tools these days. It is easy to use offers cloud storage and is perfect for sharing on projects with friends. David Pogue wrote an excellent article on this recently that shows how it dropbox can be used for writing a book. Check it out on http://www.dropbox.com

Upgrade Your Browser Today - Its Free!

I notice more and more these days that there are more and more browser versions now spread across the market.  From the dreaded IE6 to the latest Chrome or Firefox.  this means that you may see different things depending on what version you have.  It is a simple task to keep your browser up to date.  I tend to stay one version behind the latest one available to allow me be up to date but not with a browser that may show times that others may not see.

I am a firm believer that browsers should expire like bad food.  If you had a car for 10 years it would be on its last legs but there are many people out there with browsers of that age that should now be long gone.  

Upgrade today - it costs nothing and you will be amazed if you are a few versions behind at the feature set available.

Switch Off Friday

Today is switch off Friday.  Resolve to move away from any technical device. phone or laptop.  Put it down.  Avoid the TV.  Grab a book put your feet up and develop the powers of concentration that tech can often take away from yo.  I was reading about the Pomodoro technique recently and its premise is to do 25 minutes tasks without interruption.  I think it is great and even find this hard to keep with.  I have terrible focus in the past number of years and I firmly blame spending too much time in front of a computer.

I Alt-Tab, flick from pager to page, pound out a quick blog and forget where I was.  I wrongly call it multi tasking but in the end it isn't it is just doing a lot of things poorly.  There was a lot to be said about VT100s where you had one screen and had to tap away and changing focus took a lot of time to do as it involved many combinations.  

Take a break and look at http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/  for information on this fun and valuable method of concentration.

iPads Galore

I know now for sure that the tablet is here for sure.  I was in line to board a plane last night and I was third in line.  All three of us had iPads.  First person was watching a movie.  Second person was playing Sudoku and I was reading a book.  Not an Excel spreadsheet in site.  There is now endless opportunities for companies to develop apps and tools for such devices and this area is exploding.  Banks funnily enough are the furthest behind and must be rushing to catch up.  Mobile payment methods for in store are also galloping along and soon (as in the next 6 months) we will see a plethora of apps for smartphones that will allow you to use a code to pay and it will be billed like a debit card to your account and a proper receipt sent to you via email like in the Apple stores in the US at the moment.

Now off to open my App book.

Open Office May Be for You

A friend of mine was asking me the other day if I could get here a copy of MS Office.  I pointed her to Open Office which at version 3 is well worth downloading if you do not have desktop application for editing.  Plus its free!!

Useful Links

• Download Open Office
• Youtube Overview

Bon Iver - When No Tips Go With The Music

iOS 5 Problems

All around the world all you can hear is the busy download of people downloading iOS5 and Blackberry users retrying their servers.  Such a sweet sound for Android owners.

500 Mhz

I was speaking to a friend last night and he told me that his laptop had 500 Mb of memory and he was very happy with it.  He explained further.

He did not

- Download anything
- Surf the net too much
- Wrote assignments on it
- Used it for light email
- Didn't engage in social media so didn't have any of the apps or other bloatware

And finally he said that it worked nice and fast for what he used it for.  He didn't need any techy tips to improve his PC Speed as basically he treated His machine as an island.

However for the most of us this isn't the case and even for the most cautious you can quickly bloat you memory usage and disk space in a very short time.  I have started using external memory to try and overcome this and I have a self imposed ban on downloading the next great application.  I have also migrated a lot of my work to the web using Google Docs and where possible do not save items locally but put it on the above external storage.

The more naïve user however can go on download sprees and this is to be avoided.  Think first what REAL use you can make of the tool or download before using .  Admittedly there are a lot of useful download but they are hugely outnumbered by a lot of useless crap.  So beware and go to the island.

Best App In A While

I use several Apple devices and have been frustrated for some time by the lack of a decent App for Facebook.  This is now corrected as of Oct 10th and the new app is really well designed and a huge step forward.  Good apps encourage you to use them and this one will have me on Facebook a lot more than in the past with its clean interface.  What amazes me is what took them so long.  Facebook is like a virus these days it is growing so fast and love it or hate it looks like it will continue to dominate for some time to come.

The End of Printing As We Know It?

Soon there will be mass migration of love to the new iPhone 4S and with it people will discover that in their hands now they have a very powerful device that is also a pretty powerful camera and video recorder.  If you look back even 5 years (an age in Internet and technology time) most entry level cameras and smartphones didn't even posses a fraction of this power.  As a result even more photos and video will now be taken and the knock on will be the online sharing through social media and online free and paid storage site like Flickr and  YouTube.

I have an iPad and now use it exclusively for showing everyone my photos online or occasionally on the local storage and haven't printed a phot in an age.  I think it makes solid sense to set up both a Flickr and a YouTube account for your media as it is free and always on.  I envisage with the iPhone 4S that I will take much more photos and share them much more.  The quality of my iPhone 3 is terrible and I literally have hundreds of sub standard photos.  

I have seen the quality of the existing iPhone 4 and with the new 8 megapixel camera I think that it will attract the 3X crowd.  I am now sure why someone with an existing iPhone 4 would want to make this upgrade and sign up for a plan that would tie to them to a contract with a possible iPhone 5 in 8-12 months then coming out.

What are you going to do?

iOS5 Impact on Bandwidth

There is a lof buzz now going around the upcoming iOS5 and the hlevel of interest in it.  These servers are bound to be completly overloaded once it becomes available and lifehacker are even showing how you can get hold of an early update of iOS5

iOS5 will change a lot of online behavior with regard to music and photos at a minimum and will pose question marks around a lot of poor broadband download capability as people share more and upload and download to different devices.

Expect lots of complaints as people who may not have uploaded significant file sizes in the past encounter poor bandwidth and download speeds.

Empire Avenue Badge

Blogger Can Be Good For You

I have revisited blogger more and more over the past weeks a its new interfaced is so much easier to use and I now use email to post to it as well.

When I first started to use it over 4-5 years ago I wasn't really a fan bu Google have made it more attractive a place to post and it is now a far more flexible place to post content.  It is much lighter than Wordpress.com and though I do have several self hosted Wordpress blogs this is more a fun place to dump tips like this on technical items.

One of the new games / online tools that I have been using over the past weeks is Empire Avenue and is huge fun and it has invigorated my interest in many other social networks again.  One its main scoring features is online activity and I have revisited several of my social networks as a result of playing with this tool.

It has also opened me up to meeting many more interesting online people and expanding my knowledge of the power of social and using my network presence.

RIP Steve Jobs

I was awake at 2AM this morning doing some work as I couldn't sleep when I read the news online about Steve Jobs.  I was genuinely sad to hear it.  I like many millions of people became an a full Apple fan when the iPod came along and now I own the full iPxxxx range and all my kids have iPod touches.

I recalled when I was 12 a friend of mine had an Apple II as he had broken his leg and we spent the whole summer programming and playing games on it.  It was the age of tiny RAM and HUGE diskettes.  We thought we were kings of tech.  Since then I have worked with many operating systems and seen the evolution of Mac and PC and I have worked with many of the multinationals that came about as a result of the ideas of Jobs and Gates.

If it wasn't for that summer with the Apple it may never have happened.  I never met you nor would I ever had but goodbye Steve it is fair to say that there will never be someone like you again on this earth.

Steve Jobs - RIP

Tekky Tips Says goodbye to Steve.  RIP

So Much Social

 

Social is the name of the game these days and spreading the word is hard to do when you have multiple accounts.  But Tweetdeck allows you to post to Facebook and Linekedin with one Tweet reducing the amount of time you have to spend while distributing your message   Tweetdeck are now owned by Twitter so it is a stable and reliable platform and will get more features as Twitter expands.

to Download Tweetdeck go here http://www.tweetdeck.com

Browsers IE Losing the Race

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I was never a fan of Internet Explorer and the statistics that W3 show that IE is now falling behind Firefox and Chrome.  5-6 years ago the people in Redmond must never have thought this would happen and the shift in such a short period of time must drive them mental.  I use Chrome nearly exclusively and apart from a tendency to not like Flash it is a really light easy to use browser.  Prior to this I used to use Firefox but it has suffered from a bit of bloat and I admit I loaded up too many extra features that dragged its performance down.  However I a mreluctant to move back to it.

What browser do you use?

Google Docs - New Version

If you haven't used Google Docs in the past or just want to check out the new features then the YouTube is worth vieweing and encourage you to use it.

Don't Have an iPad - Don't Worry You Will Soon

I bought my iPad about 14 months ago and when I first got it was quite a novel item here in Ireland as  I had purchased mine in the US and it was cheaper than here at the time.  In the past 12 months the use of iPads and tablet PCs has exploded.  On a plane or in an aircraft lounge the iPad is taking over from the laptop and actually proves that people weren't actually doing any real work on them anyway.On a recent flight the person next to me had a Kindle and next to him was playing Scrabble on the iPad.  I was reading Game of Thrones on my iPad.  This trifecta of devices shows that we are now at the beginning of new device revolution.  The options are limitless.  Imagine this as an example scenario which is happening right now.

You are in an airport waiting for your flight and you see the new John Grisham on the bookshelf.  You don't want the paperback as you do all your reading on-line so you buy it right there and then on the internet.  Lets expand that a bit.  You are travelling to a place that you have not visited before and would like an easily digestible book on the area you are visiting.  As it is a business trip you want to know the good places to eat and if there is any good night life for music or events.  You don't want to surf through lots of meaningless pages and would gladly pay for a mini guide just for a 4 block radius of where you are as you will only be there for one night. This is where hyper local information comes to play and there will be applications and websites springing up for that in the near future that will help this type of traveller.  Download as an ebook and keep to hand as you move around with maps. numbers, menus and tips to show.  YouTube videos of the events and sample tracks.

Are you working on ti yet?  Let me know.

Notes - Evernote

If you have met within 20 minutes of speaking with me I mention or use Evernote.  It is my go to tool for nearly every scrap of information about me work and pleasure.  I have little or no paper on my desk and my filing cabinet is bare as a result of it.  I am now a compulsive scanner so little by little the paper has gone. When surfing the web I cut and paste into it furiously as I research projects and even if I see a piece of news that I want to read when I have more time bang in it goes.

I am certain it makes me more productive.  the most recent )as in ten seconds ago= was I get a phone call at my desk and someone leaves me some details like phone number and address.  I do not use post its I type them into Evernote and they are on my iPhone, iPad and laptop.  And it is FREE.

With the new release of iOS5 it comes with some more enhancements that make it even more feature rich.  What I also like about it is although there is a premium edition they do not bug you to upgrade like in some programs.

Read more on the Evernote Blog about Evernote iOS5 features

iPhone 6 Release Date

Yesterday was the date when the new iPhone was released,  Note I did not used the phrase iPhone 5 which is now depreciated greatly as people file away scratching their heads wondering about the benefits and differences of the new iPhone 4S.  Really it can be summaries in the Apple web page http://www.apple.com/iphone/compare-iphones/  which clearly and quickly summarises the differences between the different models.  In even shorter summary if you were an iPhone 4 user there isn't a great incentive to move to the new model but if you are a 3GS user or lower then upgrading is attractive in terms of camera and video.

I am a 3GS user and I had hoped for most of the features mentioned and if it had been badged as 5 I would have upgraded anyway so I am now  looking and waiting for upgrade for the offers that will soon come available in my local network.  However the blogosphere is awash with commentary on the whole affair and how the launch reflects a beginning of the differences now that Jobs has stepped aside and Cook is now head of the show.

the only real measure other than listening to the hundreds of thousands of blogs on the topic is to look at the share price which as I post this blog is down $2 which isn't a great drop but is still a change.   It is still a strong buy recommendation from the analysts but it will be interesting to look at it over the coming days and see the demand for the new product as the iPhone and iPad are now the flagship products tor the company.

The fact that they did not live stream the event also shows a cautiousness not shown in the past and indicates that there will be a new product next year with the desired "5" badge.  

Android Products

I confess to not having a huge knowledge of the Android market but it now seems that the Android market now has a chance to make significant gains on Apple as they now have many products as good if not better than the iPhone and a window to exploit these features and even release a product that at price and technology will challenge the non-existent iPhone 5.  I think the earliest will we will now see an iPhone 5 is early next 2012 so expect to see a lot of Android noise in the meantime as their technical and marketing teams move into a high gear in advance of Christmas.

Apple Advertising

The Apple adverts have always been quirky eclectic and fun but with the new iPhone 4S they will face a challenged to show how it is different.- you can only bang the improved video and photo drum so hard and they may have to think up an advertising strategy that looks at the 3G/3GS market in their adverts.  The one complaint that I hear and see about the iPhone 4 has been its shape and the look is important to users of Apple products.  Lets face it people like to show that their phone is different.

Price Will Win

For me as a buyer the price is what will influence me in my change.  I am entitled to a free upgrade but if I do upgrade I will be willing to pay a small premium for more memory as if the camera is better I will take more photos and video.  If it is competitive then I will think of making the leap.

iPhone 6

No sooner of course does the furore about the 5 finish than we will see cries for the iPhone 6.  Anyone have an idea?