Ideas from Mark Stout

I have to realize that instead of just having only a computer anymore, as I did from 1979 to 2008 when I bought my first smart phone, I now have a computing ecosystem.  I use my phone, tablet and PC together.  Some are better then others for particular tasks, while each can step up and do most of the tasks of the others if need be. My Family Tech column for January 1, 2012 ( Facebook comments about column) is thoughts for the many people who received their first tablets on Christmas Day.  I promised a blog post talking about how you can use your tablet, and phone for that matter, to go beyond the basic tablet functionality of reading, watching videos and surfing the net. The same holds true for phones.  A smart phone is really just a small tablet, connected to the 3g network (while some tablets are too, mine is wifi only). Since April of 2010 I have used an iPad, since November of 2011, a Xoom Android tablet running Honeycomb. By add...

Like many people, I spend a lot of time in the car.  Unlike many, I do not find music soothing while driving--I'm missing the music gene I guess. Anyway, I enjoy the time in the car to catch up on Podcasts.  There are many out there, but I tend to favor the ones done by Leo Laporte's Twit.tv .   Leo is a professional broadcaster of many year's experience.  He has started an awesome online tech news network.  His professionalism makes for great programs. I tend to listen to two shows primarily.  " This Week in Google ", broadcast live on Wednesdays, with podcasts available for download on Wednesday nights.  And " This Week in Tech ", broadcast Sundays with podcasts available later that night. However, I spend more time in the car then the duration of those two shows.  Twit's other shows are excellent, but not as compelling to me as those two are. However, they do have one show I hadn't paid much attention to until recently. ...