Mobile phone apps and security

People love their smartphones these days… and with good reason. They can be amazing tools for business and fun distractions from the mundane parts of life – like standing in line at the post office or waiting to be picked up from the airport. There’s a problem though. Those fun and handy apps can be setting you up for embarrassment, failure or good ol’ fashioned identity theft. If you saw the movie “Live Free or Die Hard”, you’ll recall the premise that one bad guy who sold software …

Social marketing and the small business…

It’s been a good five years since “social marketing” really took off in a big way. Big, no HUGE corporations use it in one way or another. It likely doesn’t help their bottom line, but Coca-Cola, Microsoft, NASA, General Electric and even Yahoo and Google use Facebook. So WHY don’t small businesses who actually NEED the help? The simple answer is: knowledge. Most (not all) small business owners are intelligent go-getters who want to succeed in their chosen area of commerce. Those in the retail sector should be …

A Password Safe for All

Everything now has a password. I may have started when the first answering machines came out that let you call home and get your messages remotely. You would call your number and when the message came on you could hit a key which would prompt you for your passcode then listen to the messages people left for you. Since then passwords have gone crazy. Every website needs not just a password, but also a username. Some people have tricks to remember what their login info is, but most …

GPS lessons

GPS devices are more popular than ever – whether it’s the GPS driven map in your mobile phone or the one built in to your dashboard or the one suction-cupped to your windshield. The good thing about GPS units is that it makes it quick and easy to get just about anywhere. The bad thing is we’re becoming more and more dependent on them and in a short time, most people won’t know how to read a map or give good directions. In any case, GPS units are …

System Restore – use it.

When "System Restore" was added to Windows XP, it changed the life of a lot of computer geeks – and their clients. The ability to ‘roll-back’ a computer to a point in time prior to a virus/malware or just a bad install of a piece of software made for a MUCH easier and quicker solution than reformatting a hard drive. System Restore works 98% of the time. The other 2% is left to those really nasty viruses that have figured out how to corrupt or remove the restore …

Photo search

I collect FAR too many photos from the web… stuff I find interesting or of my favorites topics like Bodie, Walt Disney’s apartment, the Disneyland Railroad, history or movie and TV filming locations. Sometimes I get an email or see a photo that has no description or information, which used to make it nearly impossible to figure out what the photo is, or where it was taken. Well, Google has done it again. Their "Search by image" feature lets you find that image, or similar ones, without having …

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