Ideas from Mark Stout

The two new iPhone's were not the only cell phones announced in September. Read about the iPhones and the others, in the  latest Family Tech .

Starting with the September issue, Family Tech also appears in  Washington Family Magazine .  You can find the magazine  at these locations . It will be a column that previously appeared in the  Prince William Today  newspaper, so if you have discovered Family Tech through the magazine, and want to read more Family Tech, be sure to pickup the paper each week.  You can subscribe to a digital version or have it delivered.

Had a friend ask today how kids in her high school could locate a lost or stolen smartphone.  Instead of answering by email, I decided to write it here for all. These methods will work only if your phone is turned on, and is in a place it can make contact.  If it isn't these methods can wait until the phone is visible on the cell network. iPhone On a PC, go to icloud.com Login with the phone owner's iTune username and password When this page appears, click "Find My Phone"

A new Family Tech column is online.

Enraged : West Virginia getting more screwed than most on broadband Engaged: And a love letter to my new phone, the LG G3. Both: Comcast doing the right thing, for the wrong reasons I haven't forgotten this blog exists.  Life, and my column keep me busy.

"Well, this audience was built not by them, but by our efforts, by our creativity. And once we have that audience built, they want to charge us for it?" -- George Takei, talking about Internet Neutrality in an interview with The Washington Post . It was your tax dollars that designed and built the Internet. It is your posting to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumbler etc. that makes the content  that compels others to use the Internet.

My favorite tool is also loved by over a 100,000,000 people.  Evernote announced the milestone in a blog post today. It is an awesome tool.  If you are not using it, you should.

For background on this topic, please read the editorial I wrote for InsideNova.com Subject:   Please be a proper steward of the  Internet Please be a responsible steward for all the American people when you take action regarding the Internet. The Internet is as important as the Transcontinental Railroad was in the 19th Century, and the Rural Electrification Project, and the Interstate Highway System were in the 20th.  A free and open Internet is the critical infrastructure the 21st Century will be remembered. It is up to you to protect it for everyone. Most new jobs come from small companies, not large corporations.  And today to start a new business, even ones not entirely in cyberspace, the small companies need a level playing field online.  The voices of the large players in this matter reach your ears readily.  Please listen also to people like me, ordinary citizens who recognize the importance of a free and open Internet. Please take car...

I finally broke down and started using a password manager.  What took me so long? It's a good idea, and the topic of this  Family Tech column .

The paper ran my  guest editorial on Net Neutrality . This is something worth fighting for.

How are your teens driving?  Tech can tell you. A new Family Tech has been posted.

I try to understand the need to exchange inappropriate photos in this week's Family Tech .

Building things is how a nation builds wealth.  New efforts hope to attract girls to engineering. The latest  Family Tech column  is online.

If you ever did the free 30 day trial of Adobe's Creative Cloud where you get free access to programs like Photoshop, Premiere and their other great apps, you can do it again. Adobe has hit reset.  Now everyone can do a 30 day free trial.  Even if they did it before.

Did you know you can buy a video, and later it will be deleted from your library, and you do not receive a refund? It's all legal.  Disney did it at Christmas. Family Tech column  online today.

Family Tech : Simplify your life by using phone & PC together

This is a test of posting automatically from Pocket and using IFTTT.com .  I thought I would try it to start posting more here, using things I find interesting from around the web. American libraries, the argument goes, are in crisis. They've had their funding cut, been forced to fire staff members, and close branches across the country. But, as Pacific Standard explains , that perception isn't entirely accurate. from Pocket http://ift.tt/1aCeBtU via IFTTT

Two days ago, January 24th, was the 30th anniversary of the now famous 1984 ad during the Superbowl announcing the first Apple Macintosh. According to news reports from last Friday, the Mac then hit the stores two day later, or thirty years ago today. It was on that day I had my geekiest moment in my long life and career in technology. Steve Jobs saw me demonstrating the Macintosh. I was recently at a tech meeting that had many Apple faithful in it.  We were asked to go around the room and each tell one interesting them about themselves. I told this story. I wrote a blog post about it five years ago on the 25th anniversary.  The link is here.