Ideas from Mark Stout

Do you run out of cell power before you run out of day?  This week's Family Tech column has some suggestions.

Share your running progress, or your weight loss online with friends.  Apps to these and other healthy things are the topic of last week's Family Tech column .

I think it was from my father I got the saying, "That's the best thing since sliced bread."  When I think that about a product or service, it is truly a complement. I felt that way the first time I obtained a word processor program, Sciptsit, on my  old Radio Shack Model I.  I was just two years out of college and I was giddy with joy, and wished I could go back and do college all over.  Word processing would have made it so much easier. Other products that fall into the sliced bread category are Visicalc (and all the spreadsheets I've used since), email, the web, and of course Evernote. Now a new service has my attention.   IFTTT.com , or If Then This Then That. With IFTTT I can build a Task that watches my Google Reader, and when I Star an entry, it copies the item into my Evernote account. Why would I want that?  When I remember seeing something on the web, I don't have to first search Evernote to see if it is a link I captured with t...

How Steve Jobs made things better for even those who never bought an Apple product, is the topic of this week's Family Tech column .

A lot is being written about him tonight.  I want to wait until I have more perspective. Meanwhile, a story I wrote in January 2009 about almost meeting him .

Small, inexpensive video cameras bring the surveillance society right into our homes with Nanny Cams, home security and cameras for fun and adventure.  This is the topic of this week's Family Tech column .

Amazon gave the tablet world a good shaking up this week with the announcement of their $199 Fire tablet . My cousin Dani has asked me via Facebook for my thoughts, and I wanted to share those with a wider audience. The most impressive thing of course is the price.  The only other tablet that compares with this price is Barnes and Noble's Nook at $250.  The Fire is faster and has more memory, so the comparison breaks down fast. Those who know component pricing suggest Amazon is selling this unit at very near cost; maybe even taking a slight loss on each unit   They can do so because they are banking on the razor blade theory of marketing. The Fire is setup to only buy books, apps, streaming video and music from Amazon.  And the biggest advantage is their tie in to the physical products Amazon sells.  Expect UPS business to grow too. There is a huge market out there of people who will see the value of a tablet in the  $200 neighborhood...

A great tip from " This Week in Google #114 " ( TWIG ) from the TWIT network  : to find shared Google Circles, just search in Google Plus for "Shared a circle with you" (use the quotes).  You can refine it by adding a word after the quote, like Photographer, or a state name, or city etc.