Ideas from Mark Stout

This is a big deal.  Evernote has reached two million users . Congratulations.  My only question is, why isn't everyone using it?

Today's Family Tech column is about organizing your technology for a better New Year . And my two pre-Christmas columns, published in the paper, are now also on-line.   Technology Gifts , and Gifts that can be delivered on-line (good year around when you almost forget someone's birthday). Links mentioned in columns are available here .

If you received a new computer for Christmas, here are a few tips on setting it up to be productive from a recent blog post.

A new version of the iPhone Evernote client was released yesterday.  The new version sports off line caching for all users, and offline notebooks for Premium Users and a host of other features.    Just a bit ago, Evernote released their Android client. Too bad I have neither, but joy to those of you that have one or the other.

I grew up east of Lake Erie, in a town that received awesome amounts of lake effect snow.  Awesome at least to a six year old when you struggle through chest high snow. The one place you could walk safely on recently snowed upon side walks was in front of one storefront down town.  Its sidewalks were at most wet, never icy, and never with snow.  And no one ever shoveled them. The storefront was the corporate headquarters for a small local Natural Gas company.  When you can pass your energy costs to your customers, you can afford to have hot water pipes right below your sidewalk.  The warm sidewalks melted snow on contact. So many years later, I'm living in an area forecasted to received as much as 24 inches of snow tomorrow.  Today I was in Lowe's and people were snagging up shovels, salt and snow blowers. Why do we have the same snow removal solutions in my son's teen years we had in mine?  Think about it.  He has access to communications...

   Evernote has released their client for Android phones.   TechCrunch in a post today first had the news.  It is available for download now . I so want an Android phone.  And Evernote's blog now has word of it.

Getting a new computer for Christmas or anytime, gift or not, is like buying a car with some assembly required. You really can't just fire it up, and take off.  There are a host of irritating little jobs you need to do before that new computer is truly useful About once a year it seems, someone here gets a new computer.  Since there are three of us, that's about right.  Rotating your computer every three to four years isn't extravagant, especially for the two here who carry laptops out into the world--that's rough on a machine. My son and wife truly want the power up and go experience from a new computer, so I've gotten rather used to prepping a new computer.  If you are giving a new computer as a gift, perhaps my little workflow can help you. Note : This is going to assume a Windows 7 laptop with wi-fi as an example PC. Take Notes Before you even take it out of the box, open up either a paper notebook, or if you have another computer close by, open up...

An oldie but a goodie. Why Geeks are sex symbols (or should be).  From 1995 and the ever great Scott Adams, cartoonist of Dilbert.

Avery, the people who make all sorts of labels you can print with your PC, have a a great free PC program.  Avery DesignPro lets you design and print to all sorts of Avery media.  Business cards, CD labels, shipping labels, name tags and more. It can be downloaded for free.  It can be used even with non-Avery labels, if they show their equivalent Avery number and most do.

Yesterday, Google announced extensions for their Chrome web browser.  I've been using Chrome as my primary browser for the last several months.  It is fast and much better on memory management then Firefox. There are a few Firefox extensions I missed.  Xmarks for coordinating bookmarks was a big one.   About the only time I think I'd need to go to Firefox now was if I was dong some Ajax/Javascript development. Firebug is pretty handy. Ironically, I stopped my only real javascript app.  It was my own tool to store the snippets of information I needed.  Evernote did what it did and a thousand times more, so I was glad to stop having to re-invent that wheel. In Chrome, I could use an bookmarklet for grabbing content to Evernote.  However with the release of add-ons for Chrome, there is now a legitimate Evernote Web Clipper.   Evernote's blog today details it. Right now, Chrome extensions only work with the developers version.  You can ge...

Not sure how I missed this, but there is now an Evernote Beta out for the Nokia N97 .  It was first introduced on their forums on November 30. It gave me a good reason to update my " Common Evernote Questions " post.

I think Google will be to phones, as Microsoft was to PC's. That will be a good thing if they can avoid the feeling they need to control everything.  And so far, I think they are doing a credible balancing act.

This week's Family Tech column is about home video.  In my small way, I hope to make the multitude of Christmas Videos about to be made, and videos of Christmas plays a bit more watchable.

How different will newspapers, televisions news, and news magazines be from one another in 10 years? That might sound ludicrious to ask.  But think about it.  What's the one thing each of those news outlets have now? Web sites. The television web sites of course have written stores, just like the newspaper web sites do. And the newspaper web sites increasingly have videos I got to thinking about this from Time Magazine's demo of their new technology for bringing magazines into the 21st Century.  Take three minutes and watch it. Wouldn't a newspaper be able to package its own news in a similar fashion? And TV stations too? TV sets are rapidly becoming computer like. I suspect in the near future, we'll have touch pad remote controls that let us control our TV's just as we do our computers. Instead of moving a mouse to move a pointer around as we do on computers now, or touching the screen as we do on our smart phones, we'll move the pointer o...