Ideas from Mark Stout

A roommate once laughed at me because he noticed I read TV Guide cover to cover each week.  I haven't taken TV Guide in many years, but I still follow TV pretty closely.   This week's Family Tech column tells you how I keep up on missed episodes when I don't have the time to watch, see what others caught in an episode I did see, but may have missed some details, or even follow shows I never watch.

Back in the olden days of my youth, amid my hobby in photography, I wanted nothing more than to own two projectors and a sync box so I could do quality slide shows with dissolves between slides. Now anyone can do more with a PC then I could have then with my dream setup.   This week's Family Tech is about creating digital stories with photos, using software like Photo Story 3.

The competition in social software is boiling as hot as the spread sheet wars ever did in the 90's.  (Back in those olden days, Visicalc, Lotus 123 and upstart Excel brought out new features at a fevered pitch). Google opened Plus yesterday to everyone.  It also added some new features to Hangout that will make it very useful to business.  You can now broadcast a hangout to the public if you want.  And you can share a screen , a Google document, make notes and do sketches.  Webex and their ilk should be worried. Check out the new features .  And if you join Google Plus, I hope you'll  follow me and let me know you are on Google Plus and also read this blog. Couple interesting coincidences.  Facebook has released a bunch of new features it seems many of my Facebook friends do not appreciate, and Facebook's annual conference is about to begin.  The two are throwing darts at one another, but we are all getting new features, goo...

Hard to keep up with the fast paced Evernote.  They recently upgraded their Chrome Web Extension .  If you are not using Chrome & Evernote's web extension together, you should think hard about doing so. The updated extension lets you easily select the portion of the web page you want to capture. I almost wish I was back in college dong research papers, when I see this.

A nice treat.  Gingerbread just showed up on my "free" Optimus S phone I received from Sprint when I signed up for a new two year agreement last December. So until Ice Cream Sandwich comes out, I have the latest phone version of Android.  I'm content, for now. In one year, I'm eligible for another phone. Oddly, the other two Optimus S phones we have, have not yet upgraded. I am blogging this mainly so if other Optimus S users are searching for information on Gingerbread updates, they will find this and see that the upgrades have begun. I purchased the phone assuming the worst; that I'd never be upgraded.  So I am happy today.

The topics for the last two Family Tech columns are Internet Safety for kids, and how to search more efficiently .