Family Tech: I love it when they think I'm a wizard

Last Friday I went to a friend's house to help get her Christmas present, an HP netbook, up and running.

I had done the same for her when she bought a new laptop several months ago. She wanted to make sure the same programs she used on the laptop were on the netbook, and she had access to the same files.

I looked on the laptop for the notes file I had made with the list of applications, and her logins and passwords, specifically for Dropbox. Dropbox is very useful for making sure the files she uses on the laptop, she also has on the netbook, and indeed, on her office computer.

I couldn't find the notes file on the laptop, but I quickly pulled it up on my phone in Evernote where I'd stored a copy.

When we decided she needed a copy of Office on the netbook, I reminded her she was eligible for a student discount. We went out to one of the many websites that market Office to students. When it required a scan of her student ID card, I used DocScan on my Android phone to take a photo of her student ID card, convert it to a PDF file and email it to her account so she could forward it from her own account to the retailer.

Needless to say, she was quite impressed with what I could accomplish with just my phone.

To tell the truth, so was I. It was all a good illustration of what I had just written about and submitted for this week's Family Tech column: Towards the Paperless Home.

Comments

Notes Folder : My new note taking system

I'm in the process of moving to a new way to keep my notes. It would be best to make a separate post on my long time notetaking app, Evernote, and how it now disappoints me. Bottom line, I no longer trust the company behind Evernote since it was acquired. My first inclination was to finally look at alternatives. like Notion, Joplin, Obsidian, etc. of I was not enamored with any of them, so I gritted my teeth and stayed with Evernote. TThe situation made me think about how I use Evernote. To keep up additional posts on this topic, search on the tag Notes Folder Updates : January 24, 2024 and in updates noted here. Most of the things I store are quick notes, lists, online receipts for online bills, that sort of thing. Kind of an online file cabinet if you will. If I were a doctoral student though I could see storing PDFs of papers and research materials. If were working on a large project, then plans, communications etc. would all be there. Back when I began using Evernote way b

Recording your own notes with Google Voice

Note : April 2016: Frankly I don't know if this works anymore. It is 7 years old. I stopped using this when Google Now became useful on my phone, and I could dictate reminders using it. I found a way a while ago to use Google Voice to record a personal note, transcribe it, and email it to me. A recent Lifehacker post "Five Things We'd Like to See in Google Voice" lists that need as their #5 request, so I realized what I'd figured out is not common knowledge. In GV's Contacts, create a Group "Special Transcription" To avoid listening to my standard voice mail when I call, I recorded a short voice mail greeting for this group simply saying "Record note now" I added a contact with my own cell phone number as the only number, and made it the sole member of this group. In GV's phone settings, I edited the settings for my cell phone. In the section "Direct access to voicemail when calling your Google number from th

Ten Years of Evernote

This blog post was set to publish exactly as the day begins on Tuesday, July 31, 2018. That is ten years to the day after my first Evernote post. With my second note, I was already getting down to business; recording the agreement I'd come to on the phone on a minor business matter. My affection for Evernote has not dimmed since that day ten years ago. Since then, I've accumulated about 7.8 new notes a day. Ironically, I have needed to pull up only a few notes a year. Yet, when I need them, I need them badly and am glad to have Evernote all over again. My philosophy of what to capture is simple : If you encounter something you might remotely want to see again, it goes into Evernote. from a blog post June 1, 2015 I've written here about Evernote than any other topic. Even wrote a now horribly out-of-date book. Don't get me wrong. If something better comes along that imports my Evernote notes well, I can be enticed to move. But in t

Ideas from Mark Stout

Search This Blog