Ideas from Mark Stout

Facebook has made it easy to watch a church service, wedding, graduation, baptism or other family event with their Facebook Live feature. If you can use Facebook, you can both create the video feed and watch it. Since many seniors rely on Facebook to stay in contact with family and friends they should be able to find the video feed. Note: This column began in early July after a friend asked about live streaming her wedding later in the month. Just a week later, Facebook Live proved itself not only as a way to share family moments, but as a force of society when Diamond Reynolds streamed from the car moments after her boyfriend Philando Castile was shot. Starting a Facebook Live broadcast is easy. Just aim the camera of your phone at the scene and touch the new post area, the one that says “What’s on your mind?” Note:  Facebook Help on Live Broadcasts Right below your name is the options to send the video to your friends or to the public. For a church service or a wedding, sen...

I've written here many times about visiting aviation museums. Today, chatting online with a friend about China's new Flying Boat that is as big as a Boeing 737, I realized I'd never written about touring a Short Solent Mk. III Flying Boat at the Oakland Aviation Museum at the Oakland, California airport. It must have been sometime in 1999. My wife was working a few hours at her job with a network equipment manufacturer on a Saturday in San Leandro. Our nine year old son and I dropped her off, then went to look for something to do while she worked. I'd ridden my bike past the museum many times, but never stopped in. I explained to my son who Amelia Earhart was as we looked at an Electra aircraft similar to the one Earhart flew when she departed on her fateful flight from Oakland in 1937. Oddly, I do not see that aircraft on their current list of aircraft on display. Update 7-27-2016: The museum director responded to my email and told me the Electra is now at...

Five years ago when the nation was noting the 150th Anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run, or First Battle of Manassas, I wrote a speculative piece thinking about what tech a survivor of the battle might have seen in his lifetime. I posted it over at the www.FamilyTechOnline.com site.

Soon, some of last month’s high school graduates will have those excited yet fearful knots in their bellies as they head off to colleges and universities. The days of sending them off with a manual typewriter are long gone. A tradition of this column is to consider what we should equip these new freshmen with before they go. It seems this year the picture is clearer than in past years. I think a student needs primarily three devices. Foremost is a laptop. A laptop to today’s young person, and I don’t really need to tell any parent this, is their window to learning and also to entertainment. They will use it to research and write papers, interact with their professors and coursework through sites like Blackboard, and use a variety of online services and software needed for classes. And they will use it to watch videos on Netflix, Hulu and network television websites. Many students will not want to haul a TV to a dorm, content with a laptop. The risk of losing or breaking a laptop that i...

It took a firestorm to learn something about how many people use Evernote. Three weeks ago Evernote announced changes to their service tiers. The Premium price went up, and the Free Basic level was restricted to two logged in devices at one time. Those changes set off a firestorm on Evernote's Forum filling 139 pages in three weeks with complaints, recriminations and threats to move elsewhere.   A common pronouncement among the dissatisfied was  "I am an active user of Evernote. I've created 3000 notes in five years!" They expect Evernote corporate to be impressed by their spirited use of Evernote.  Instead, they underwhelmed me with their Notes per Month rate. I am probably not the typical user.  I have 24,000 notes accumulated over eight years.  That is 3,000 notes a year, or 250 a month. So anyone accumulating 3000 in 5 years is only doing 50 notes a month. I'm going to assume most of these people pay their bills online.  Where are they ...

My wife has returned from four months working and studying overseas with almost 200 photos taken on our Ricoh Theta S camera. I was busy uploading them individually to Ricoh's site, when I had to divert my attention to another project I have on Google Photos . I had not thought of uploading a Theta S image to Google Photos.  I tried it and it worked wonderfully. Instead of having to upload each of my wife's photos to Ricoh's site, I was able to upload the entire set to a folder on Google Drive. Being in Google Photos, it easy to share images with others, add descriptions, and let those you share the images with make comments.

Zoho made a play today for all the free Evernote users upset by the newly announced two logged in device limit, and for paid users upset by Evernote's price increases. Zoho's Notebook is a mobile-first entry. Apps for iPhone and Android are available today. They make no bones about going for Evernote's users : They don't have a web clipper, or a desktop version.  They know it and make this promise : And, they have pledged :  "Notebook is free (and ad-free), just like our other productivity apps. " Now they just need an importer.

You wake up one morning to find an ominous message on your PC. All your files are now encrypted, it says, and you are forbidden access to them unless you pay thousands of dollars.  This nightmare has crippled hospitals, businesses and individuals. It is called ransomware, and the  FBI reports  it is on the rise. It used to be that trying to fool you into giving up information, so someone could steal your identity was the No. 1 goal of online crooks. Now it is ransomware. This column is to help your director of family IT keep all your PCs and devices safe. While the likelihood of someone encrypting your PC is relatively low, it is painless for the perpetrator and could cost you thousands of dollars if you choose to pay the ransom. A user is tricked into installing a piece of malware on their PC. The malware runs in the background and encrypts your files using a strong encryption algorithm. It then posts a message instructing you to send money via Bitcoin within a short per...

Mark Rabo, Mobile Product Manager at Freshbooks, wrote a lucid, business oriented piece on Medium today explaining why Evernote's recent changes were good for Evernote and its core users. Medium Related to this thread on this blog.

Perspective : (created this for myself earlier) Premium $70 a year is $5.83 a month $70 a year is $1.34 a week $70 a year is 20 cents a day. Plus $35 a year is $2.92 a month $35 a year is 68 cents a week $35 a year is 10 cents a day How hard will it be to move your notes to a new system, and learn that system? What is my time worth?

Evernote's recent price increase , and the more controversial restriction of Free Basic users to just two devices, has caused an uproar online. Evernote's Forum thread on this topic has already reached 93 pages. Most free dissatisfied Free users are taking great umbrage, feeling betrayed by a company they have yet to pay a dime to. And some paying customers have legitimate concerns over a pretty big increase for Premium Level from $50 to $70 annually. Many have been casting about for alternatives, and many of pledged to take their ball, er notes, and  leave for greener pastures. They usually mean Microsoft's OneNote. The free users objection to a two device limit apparently is many use Evernote on their home PC, their phone and their office PC. They have not been assuaged by the fact the rather robust Evernote Web Client does not count against the two client limit. And the limit is not truly two devices, but two simultaneously logged in clients.  A free Ba...