MiFi | At Home with Tech

At Home with Tech – The Year in Review

How about 50 Tech Tips for my 50th post to kick off the New Year? Let’s begin!

We’ve covered a lot of ground this year!
And what have we learned in our quest to keep our digital gears spinning at home?
The trek is never over.
But the journey doesn’t have to be so confusing.

That said, it’s time for my year in review!
Here are my 50 tech tips to take with you into the New Year:

50 At Home with Tech Tips

What’s Your Backup Plan?
#1 – Technology is a Tool That Will Eventually Turn on You
That T-800 with your name is never far away.
So don’t get complacent.

It Got Cloudy
#2 – Happily, There’s Life After MobileMe
If you want to share your photos online, use Flickr.
For your home videos, use YouTube or Vimeo.
If you need to share some files, then go with Dropbox.

Date Night and the 42” Plasma
#3 – Without Planning, You Can’t Guarantee a Good Date Night Movie at Home
(Even with full access to Cable TV, Netflix DVDs/Streaming, Apple TV, Roku, and Blockbuster!)

My Mission for the Perfect Picture
#4 – Taking an Amazing Photo Is Often Just an Accident
Embrace your accidents! And keep taking lots of pictures. It’s free.
Statistics are in your favor.

The IT Guy is in the Doghouse
#5 – Don’t Try to Win the Battle with Older Tech
Your tech is only as strong as its weakest link.
Enough said.

Your Shoebox Vs. the Cloud
#6 – Print an Annual Photo Book of Your Life
Otherwise, your best photos will get lost in the quagmire of your photo glut.
Time is your enemy.

I Am a Road Warrior
#7 – When a Tech Door Closes, Look for a Window to Open
My cable company locked down its box, which shut off my mobile media viewing on my portable DVD player. Then, streaming cable content on my iPhone became available through services like HGO Go.
Go figure.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
#8 – Just Because You Know How to Make Someone Younger in a Photo Doesn’t Mean You Should
My digital moral code says don’t mess with someone’s CDI.
(The Core Digital Integrity of a person’s image).

Please Rate This Product…or Else
#9 – No Product Ever Gets a Perfect Score Online
You’ve got no choice but to rely on Tech Group Think.

Is it Time to Stockpile Light Bulbs?
#10 – New Tech Light Bulbs Cost $50!
Thank The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
It says incandescent bulbs aren’t cutting it anymore and need to be 25% more efficient or else.
The solution? Pricey LED Bulbs.
The new darling ‘A Bulb’ by Philips launched with a steep $50 price tag.
Ouch!

The Art of Inaction, Part 1
#11 – The Tao of Total Tech Caution Says Don’t Upgrade Unless You Absolutely Have To
That also means never buy the first of anything.

The Art of Inaction, Part 2
#12 – Remember the Software Update Button
When you finally upgrade to a new operating system months after the rest of the world, don’t forget to immediately check Software Update.
Otherwise, gremlins will show up!

Parental Omniscience for only $24.95
#13 – You Can Have X-ray Vision Through Your Smart Phone
An Eye-Fi wireless memory card + a Flickr Pro account, + Flickr’s iPhone app = The power to almost instantly see photos of my lad’s adventures wherever I am.

Loving the Loser Light Bulb
#14 – Don’t Spend $50 on the Lexus of New LED Bulbs
Go with the runner up bulb for $15- Philips’ AmbientLED!

Joe and the End of Your World
#15 – If Your Coffee Mug Spills Near Your Computer, Game Over
Buy the HotJo Stoneware Wide Base Travel Mug.
(It’s pear-shaped!)

Living in the Amazon and Loving It
#16 – Amazon Prime Is the Best $79 You Will Ever Spend
Amazon to the rescue…
Every day!

Taming the Evil Work BlackBerry
#17 – It’s Okay to Turn Into a Pumpkin
Choose a time to stop responding to work emails on nights and weekends.
Everyone is supposed to catch some Z’s at some point.

Cancel the Cable TV Mutiny
#18 – 50,000 Free Hot Spots Coast to Coast
The cable industry announced it will share metro Wi-Fi services throughout the nation.
Now we’re talking!

Saying “Sleep Tight from 5,000 Miles Away
#19 – When Traveling Internationally, Keep Your Smartphone Connected on the Cheap with Skype
Buy a Skype Online Number plus a $2.99/month Unlimited US and Canada plan.

The Price of Staying Connected
#20 – Skype Video Can Work on 3G (4G) If the Signal Is Strong Enough
Bonus!

At Home without Tech
#21 – The Digital Sisyphus Always Looms
Do you fear being at home without tech?
Fear is a great motivator. And so is a deadline.
Do your Apple software upgrades or suffer the consequences.

Laptop Time Machine
#22 – Your Laptop Really Is a Time Portal!
The tether of your social media connections remains long after you’ve moved on.
Today’s younger generation will never experience completely losing touch with old friends for decades.

Remembering MobileMe
#23 – Life Isn’t Easy. Why Should Your Virtual Existence Be Any Different?
The marketing gurus say moving your email to iCloud is so easy even a child can do it.
I say you’d better have a child around to show you how.

I Sold My Soul to the Digital Devil
#24 – Final Cut Pro X Claims to End the Era of Pesky Transcoding
Yes, FCP X will grudgingly edit your camera’s native H.264 MOV files without you first having to transcode them.

High Tide at Grand Central
#25 – My Favorite New York Minute of the Day!

Singing the Blu-ray Blues
#26 – It’s Painful, but Stick with Blu-ray Disks
Here are five reasons:
-The downloadable copy
-The extras come with extra extras
-DVD Player, Say hello to VHS Player in the attic
-3D
-Owning atoms instead of bytes

The Joy of Shopping at Midnight in your Underwear
#27 – Unless You’re Out of Toilet Paper,
Online Shopping Is the Way to Go!
Who’s got time to waste traveling to the mall, hoping they’ll have what you need and then waiting in a long line?

GPS Jane
#28 – Garmin Nuvi Loses to My iPhone During Their GPS Smackdown
(Probably still holds true even after Apple’s ‘Map-Gate’ debacle)

Going Batty Buying Movie Music
#29 – It’s Almost Impossible to Purchase the Complete Soundtrack for
“The Dark Knight Rises”
I found at least five bonus tracks available across two sales channels.
Holy Complex Marketing Scam, Batman!

Five Tips to Rescue your Best Summer Family Photos
#30 – Brutally Choose Your Best Photos and Leave the Rest Behind
The more vacation pictures you bring home to clog up your computer, the smaller the odds are you’ll actually share any of your best photos with family and friends.
Your only chance is to quickly find the few gems and forget the rest.

My iPad Doesn’t Brake for Flash
#31 – Apple’s Mobile Devices Don’t Use Adobe Flash Player
Now, Adobe has removed its Flash Player from the Google Play store, which is the beginning of the end for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook owners.

My New Area Code Twists My Tech-Dentity
#32 – Skype Online Numbers Let You Choose Your Area Code!
Now, you too can be a New Yorker without moving out of the ‘burbs…

My Laptop Battery Got Pregnant
#33 – Don’t be Surprised If the Lithium-Ion Battery In Your Old Apple Laptop Turns Into the Hulk
Mine did. After some research in the X-Files, I realized I was not alone.

I Don’t Know How to Install my Wireless IP Camera, Part 1
#34 – This Journey Can Break Anyone’s Tech Zen
I had no choice but to continue on and risk ‘tech-tastrophe.’

I Don’t Know How to Install my Wireless IP Camera, Part 2
#35 – My Winning Tech Death Match Against the Foscam
Wireless IP Camera
(model FI8910W)

Ode to iPhone 5
#36 – My 4S Contract Says It’s Not Yet Time to Upgrade
Instead, write a poem!

Epson Multifunction Printer Vs. Multi-Talented Toddler
#37 – In the Hands of Baby McGyver, the Evil Power of the Penny Will Destroy Your Printer
Time to look for a new one on sale.

All I Want is to Have my Peace of Mind and Cloud Storage
#38 – You Need a Backup Cloud Solution
For total peace of mind you should create a copy of your precious home media offsite.
I went with the CrashPlan+ Unlimited one-year plan.

How to Rescue your iPhone Voicemail
#39 – Use an Old Analog Mini Audio Plug and Audacity Software
Rerecord your messages and save your visual voicemail onto your computer as AIFF audio files.

My Cable Box Blurred my Political View
#40 – Don’t Press the “#” on Your Cablevision DVR Remote Control. Ever.
Don’t lean on it. Don’t point at it. Don’t look at it.
You’re welcome.

How to Fix Your Broken Email
#41 – Use Connection Doctor
It will tell you if you’ve got the right incoming and outgoing mail server settings.
Then listen for the happy ‘Whoosh’ or ‘Ping!’

Fighting the Digital Darkness after Hurricane Sandy
#42 – MiFi Can Repair Your Broken Tech Bubble
If your smartphone has a signal, and you’ve got some power at home,
a MiFi mobile hotspot generator will get the rest of your tech back in business.

How to Lose Your Email while Upgrading from Entourage to Outlook
#43 – Moving to Outlook for Mac 2011 Shouldn’t Be Hands-Off
After loading it, you’ve then got to copy all your email over from Entourage!
And if you’re not careful, you’ll create unwanted duplicates from your mail server and then accidentally purge your entire email archive. (like me)
Check the settings first!

I Got Lost While on Safari 6.0.2
#44 – Safari Has Received Some Significant ‘Upgrades’
Get used to the Google URL OMNIBAR.

Best Digital Cameras to Capture Your Speedy Toddler
#45 – Buy Last Year’s Canon PowerShot S100 at a Great Discount
I also got the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens to upgrade my old Canon T1i DSLR.

The Beginner’s Guide to Editing Your Camera’s Video Clips
#46 – There’s Nothing Like a Deadline to Push Your Video to Completion!
Shoot some video. Edit it. And distribute the magic. All in one day!
I took the challenge and quickly created a little finished flick from my father-and-son outing to Stepping Stones Museum.

Holiday Gift Guide for Home Tech
#47 – Nine Winning Tech Gifts for Anytime of Year!

Blinded by the UltraViolet Promise in Your New Blu-ray Movie
#48 – UltraViolet Streaming Has Replaced Free iTunes Downloads on
Blu-ray Disks
This bait-and-switch has only further destabilized my commitment to physical discs.

What Photomosaic Software is Best?
#49 – Download cf/x Photo Mosaic v 2.0 for $29.99 From the Mac App Store
Become the new family Picasso!

#50 – Keep Blog Posts Short.
(I’m working on it!)

Happy New Year!
(And I wish you much ‘Tech Clarity’ in 2013!)

Fighting the Digital Darkness after Hurricane Sandy

I was powerless in the days after stormy Sandy. But an army of flashlights wasn’t my only available weapon against the resulting digital darkness.

Hurricane Sandy has brought great pain to millions along the East Coast.
But I was one of the lucky ones.

Living in Connecticut, I consider myself fortunate that the only real inconvenience was the loss of electricity.
The power snapped off at 5:30pm on Monday and my house remained dark until Saturday morning.

Still, my ‘Dark Week’ did create two significant challenges for me.

Meeting Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Survival is the foundation of Maslow’s famous pyramid of human needs.
At 5:31pm, this meant finding a way to keep my family warm.

Throughout the week, the nighttime temperature eventually dropped into the forties. And even though our house sufficiently held onto its ambient heat for the first couple of nights, it was clearly going to get pretty nippy as the week wore on.
I wasn’t sure how my toddler would handle these conditions.

Yes, we do have a fireplace, and I had firewood ready to go.
But when faced with uncertain estimates for power restoration, I began to lose my Grizzly Adams’ nerve.

Fortunately, on Halloween night (Dark Night #3), another family we know with a portable generator invited us to stay over at their self-sufficient abode.
(What a treat!)

They are really generous friends, and we spent the remaining Dark Nights with them in toasty conditions. Plus my son had a great multi-day sleep over with their almost three-year-old son. It ended up being their best extended play date ever…!

So the bottom line was… we didn’t suffer… at all.
(I won’t mention the gourmet dinners our hosts cooked up for us.)

That said…

Can I Borrow a Cup of Electrons, Please?
The second challenge Sandy left behind was figuring out how to stay connected with the outside world without electricity at home.

My home telephone line was, of course, dead.
(powered my now very-dark cable modem)

Internet access on my battery driven laptop – Negative.
(See dark cable modem.)

Keeping my portable devices alive meant being able to keep them charged.
And that became an immediate exercise in creativity.

Sure, all the emails came out later in the week from a variety of businesses (ranging from AT&T stores to the local health club) inviting me to come on down and charge up.

But twenty-four hours into the power void, it was clear I would need to quickly find my own battery recharging solutions or go totally dark.

This dilemma preoccupied me during Dark Night #2 as I ate dinner in a local Greek restaurant with my family.

As I looked about the restaurant waiting for my Chicken Souvlaki special, my eyes settled on an inconspicuous power outlet near an empty table.

A light bulb went off!
(Battery backup was still working in my head.)

I jumped back into the car and quickly returned home.
By the time we finished off the baklava dessert, my portable tech was charged up and ready for another day.

AT&T Keeps It Together
I began writing this post on my iPad on the morning of Dark Night #3 after locating more electrical refuge at the public library down the street.
I was happily hunkered down in the magazine section while my iPhone and work BlackBerry were topping themselves off at a wall outlet under the Dewey Decimal System.

But being fully charged wasn’t particularly useful if my devices couldn’t connect to a working network.

Remarkably, AT&T’s wireless network had continued to operate in my area after Sandy’s punch and served as my digital tether to the outside world via my iPhone.

That digital lifeline allowed me to make personal calls/emails/texts to family and friends throughout the Dark Week.

T-Mobile Falls Down
Finding a healthy network for my work BlackBerry was another matter.
The T-Mobile network was down and remained mostly offline throughout the week.

How’s a guy in this digital age supposed to work under these conditions?

Of course I had no Wi-Fi network at home.
No Metro North trains to New York City.
No way to drive into the city without recruiting a small army to join me.
(Mayor Bloomberg mandated three passenger minimums on Dark Day #4.)

And I couldn’t send or receive work emails on my BlackBerry.

Time to get creative…

The Wandering Begins
Fortunately, the gas shortages haven’t extended up into Connecticut.
So I felt comfortable driving about in search of a Wi-Fi connection for my BlackBerry.

As I’ve mentioned, my first stop of the morning had been to the library.
I sat there, all cozy… but not truly sated, because their free Wi-Fi was down.
So there was little point to staying.

While I contemplated my next move, several displaced workers wandered in, gripping their laptops, only to be greeted with the disappointing Wi-Fi news at the main library desk.
They compared war stories before heading out again on their own Wi-Fi quests.
I eavesdropped in the corner.

The consensus pointed to a nearby Panera Bread restaurant as the only place in the area with working Wi-Fi
(Not Starbucks?!)
But its parking lot was impossibly jammed. So I didn’t attempt it.

Optimum WiFi Hotspots to the Rescue!
Then, I remembered Cablevision had made a hefty investment building public Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the area for Optimum customers. So I headed out to the main drag, where I knew there were several strong Optimum WiFi hotspots.
But like an old trail horse, my car directed me back to my now empty Metro North train station’s parking lot.
I successfully logged into the Optimum WiFi hotspot and rejoined the somewhat disjointed email fragments from my similarly affected work colleagues.

Mission accomplished!

But I couldn’t realistically hang out indefinitely in the parking lot or at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Route 1.
(You can only drink so much coffee.)

Oh My! It’s MiFi!!
As I mentioned earlier, our friends had rescued us on Dark Night #3.
And yes, their generator and hospitality had addressed all our needs.
Almost…

Their generator wasn’t solving my quest for Wi-Fi.
That’s okay, because my friend has never encountered a tech challenge he didn’t like.
(Remember he’s the one with the foresight to have a portable generator)

He had also previously purchased a little Wi-Fi mobile hotspot generator, called MiFi.
It‘s shaped like a little hockey puck, and connects to your cellular network, creating its own Wi-Fi bubble.

Bam!!

So I linked my lonely BlackBerry to his magical MiFi, and I was back in business!

Lessons from the Lost Week
I woke up on Dark Day #6 to the welcome news that my house had juice flowing again.

Dark Day, cancelled!

My family and I returned home, thankful that we had a home to return to.
And we resumed our lives, pretty much where we had left off a week earlier.

For me, it was mostly just a lost week. No harm done.
With a bit of perseverance and a little help from my friends, I had even managed to keep my digital life from skipping a beat.

But the experience was also a cautionary reminder of how fragile the normal pathways of our lives can be.

If you take a direct hit from the brutal force of a hurricane, lost digital communications will be the least of your problems.

I feel truly blessed that a little digital wandering is all I’ve had to gripe about during my Lost Week.

To Whom It May Concern:
Thank you.
Really.

At Home with Tech

Tag: MiFi

November 4, 2012

Fighting the Digital Darkness after Hurricane Sandy

At Home with Tech

Tag: MiFi

December 30, 2012

At Home with Tech – The Year in Review

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November 4, 2012

Fighting the Digital Darkness after Hurricane Sandy

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