Ideas from Mark Stout

  My Family Tech column this week was about the choices we have in browsers.  I mentioned to my readers that I love Google Chrome and promised a blog post outlining my favorite extensions. I moved to Google Chrome full time a few months ago.  Now that the latest release supports extensions, and there are many useful extensions out there, I can fully recommend Google Chrome for most people. With web access most people's number one use of a computer, your browser is a big deal.  Changing it is akin to a sales company moving their CRM from Seibel to Salesforce, or a corporation converting their financials to SAP.  Of course, it is safer for browsers.  You can, and should, have multiple browsers on your PC.  While I use Chrome primarily, I also have Internet Explorer 8 which I use for one mis-guided web site that seems to work only with IE.  And I keep Firefox, my long time favorite, around too. I thought I'd review some of the extensions I've ...

Evernote  promised rapid improvements once they released 3.5 for Windows, and they are starting to deliver.  I just installed the latest Beta, 3.5.2 Beta 2 and it adds draggable tags.  I've been waiting for that.  I have a lot of tags, and often I forget the one I have and end up creating new tags.  For example I have both "google voice" and "google_voice".  Now I can see my list, and drag the appropriate one over. Guess I need to clean up my tags now.

If you like tech or science and like to laugh (who doesn't?) then I hope you have discovered the TV show "Big Bang Theory" . If you haven't tonight is a good time to sample it.  One of the five best ever episodes repeats night at 9:30 PM on CBS. To bring you up to speed, it is the story of four geniuses and a normal girl. Leonard and Sheldon are roommates.  Both are Ph.D.'s in Physics working at a California University.  Penny is the girl across the hall.  Rounding out the cast is Raj, another Physics Doctorate, and Howard, an engineer. After two seasons lusting after Penny, Leonard and Penny are now in a relationship. Penny is an attractive, popular, socially adept struggling actress and waitress.  Much of the story line is the differences in social abilities between the boys and Penny, with Penny representing the rest of the world. In the biggest breakout performance since The Fonz, is Jim Parson's portrayal of S...

My Family Tech column for the News and Messenger this week is about telecommuting.  The recent snows here in DC shut down the federal government and many businesses for days.  While the Fed and many of those businesses have been good about implementing telecommuting policies, this storm should inspire those that have not be forthright with work from home policies to look at it again. And everyone should look at how they might work from home during periods like this.

It's amazing how effective using green screen video technology has changed location shooting.   You only need to watch the first 30 seconds to get the idea, but there are four minutes of examples using real TV programs if you are captivated by it as I am. I first saw this on Engadget .

There are two new Family Tech columns on-line.   On-line privacy and Podcasts .  Hope you enjoy.

It's not even shipped yet, and Apple's iPad has already polarized techies almost as bad as politics has polarized in the last ten years. On the plus side, iPad's clean design and interface make it attractive.  On the negative, is Apple's notorious closed system.  Foremost in that is the App Store.  While it protects, theoretically, viruses and trojans from reaching the platform, Apple also uses it to prevent apps they feel competes with them.  And most frightening is their ability to delete an app from your device if after initially approving it, they disapprove it. The control extends to hardware.  Apple sells the iPad in various memory sizes.  They could easily have sold it with 16 gigs but with a memory card slot so you could have as much memory as you want simply by buying memory cards.  That would have impacted their ability to upsell you to a larger, more expensive product, so you lose, they win. I'm sort of glad I'm not in a posi...

My favorite took, Evernote has announced that February is Partner Month .  They will the focusing on partners with products linked to Evernote and introducing new products integrated to Evernote.  This is exciting.  I have ideas of things I want hooked to Evernote.  I hope to see them so I don't have to develop them myself. They have already focused on the Nokia N900  and Cliqset . By the way, Evernote's servers will be down for maintenance Saturday 11 AM to 4 PM PST.  If you are using a desktop client, or a phone client with local storage, you should still be able to access your notes.  You won't be able to use the web version or sync during the server downtime. I wonder if something new if coming, or if it is just standard maintenance to serve their growing user base?

Coolgeex has a pretty useful Google Voicemail Reference Sheet . (via Lifehacker.com )

The goal was to point out the advantages Mac's offer, pay homage to Steve Jobs for his contributions to the tech industry, and give my first impressions of the iPad.  That's this week's Family Tech column in the News & Messenger.