Ideas from Mark Stout

Some readers might recall I once wrote a column for a local paper called Family Tech. It was tech information meant for the casual tech user. I discontinued providing it to the paper a few years back.  A few weeks ago I resurrected it as a Substack newsletter. You can receive free weekly content in an email or by visiting on the web at FamilyTech.Substack.com I hope you will visit, and perhaps share it with those who might enjoy and benefit from it.  Members of your extended family perhaps.

If you are over 40, you must have a we-live-in-the-future moment every time you Skype video with someone.  It is amazing how quickly this kind of phone call has become commonplace. My 90-year-old mother regularly video calls with her great-granddaughter, and she is hardly unique. In my experience, even the most tech resistant senior makes the effort to learn how to video call. Now there are some innovative ways to bring valuable services via the same technology. Professionals can efficiently reach their customers/patients via online video services. Primary among these is video psychological counseling.  Instead of driving to an office, a patient simply Skypes in and has a conversation with a therapist.  Some really like the casualness of it.  There is no sitting in a waiting room where you might feel like others there are judging you. Instead, in the comfort and safety of your own home, you are having a session with someone who wants to help you. And some studies h...

It’s tough ending a 22-year relationship. Trust was broken not once, but at least twice. And while ultimately confessions were made, it was not until years later -- after it was too late to repair the damage. Thankfully I had ultimately moved on to something younger and flashier. I’m talking about Yahoo. In September they confessed they had been hacked, and half a billion accounts were exposed. If that wasn’t bad enough, they confessed the penetration had occurred two years earlier in 2014. And then just last week, they announced a possible one billion more accounts had been violated. Worse, that penetration had occurred in 2013 and Yahoo didn’t find out until the U.S. government found out and let them know last month.  From both hacks, hackers stole names, birthdates, phone numbers and even passwords that were encrypted with a weak encryption technique. Are you one of the one billion monthly users of Yahoo?  I am. I started using Yahoo soon after they began i...

High tech home medical technology used to be a thermometer.  If you were lucky, it was oral. Today, a lot of technology you would only find in a doctor’s office or hospital has come home.  And what you find in the hospital today is truly futuristic. At the hospital, we have robot surgical knives like the Davinci machine that can hold a scalpel rock steady. A few inches movement of the controller by the surgeon might move the scalpel a millimeter.  A tiny camera inserted into the incision along with the scalpel gives the surgeon a view he could not get without opening up a much larger incision.  This minimally invasive surgery allows faster recovery and safer surgery. What’s even more amazing is the controller unit and the patient do not have to be in the same room.  Theoretically, this could allow a surgeon in New York to operate on a patient in Bangladesh, or on the Space Station. Even more futuristic is IBM’s Watson.  Readers may remember...

If you are into tech as I am, it is a never ending cornucopia of new apps to try, new gadgets to covet and new capabilities to instill that “We live in the future” feeling. Alas, like everything though, there is a certain amount of housework to do.  Without the drudgery of protecting our devices and networks from viruses and attacks, the fun soon comes to an end, and what should be a friction-free environment for work and fun gets bogged down and aggravatingly useless. Anti-virus and their ilk are boring to think about. I’ve even put this column off for months as I found more entertaining things to write about. If you are running an antivirus on your PC already, give yourself an atta-boy.  Then go check to see if it is indeed still running. Many of us get a free 90-day subscription to McAfee with our PCs.  Problem is that after 90 days we get nagged to pay for the subscription and, instead of paying, often just turn off the nags. If you did pay, find ...

I hate it when the world mocks a recent column. Two weeks ago I extolled the virtues of the Internet of Things devices. This week, they helped cripple large parts of the Internet for the better part of a day. On Friday the 21st, users were unable to reach sites like Twitter, Pinterest, CNN and many others. These sites all used the DYN Corporation to manage their DNS services. When you type in an Internet address, like InsideNova.com, the request is first routed to a Digital Name Service server. There the name is found in a database, and a number is returned to your browser. That number tells your browser where to find the actual InsideNova web server on the net. If that DNS server is down, then your browser will not find the content you are seeking.    DYN manages the DNS servers for the companies that became unreachable Friday. DYN was attacked by an unknown entity using a denial of service attack, or DOS for short. In a DOS attack a site is flooded ...

A few weeks ago I mentioned I had a new car. The new car was for a new job, and a daily commute to the Reston/Herndon area.  For the first time in 14 years I have a more or less typical commute for this area. I’ve come to see my car as yet another piece of digital technology. And while my physical life may not be the best organized, my digital life is efficiently optimized. So I set out to find the best suite of tools to make my commute more efficient, while not distracting from driving safely. Since a big part of any job is to arrive on time, my commute efforts begin upon waking. Google Now on my Android phone tells me as soon as I turn off my alarm how long my commute will take on my normal route. This gives me an idea of the urgency needed in getting ready for work. The last part of my morning preparation has me at my computer checking personal email and dealing with column and blog issues. One of my open browser tabs is Google Maps. It shows my route to work along ...

It used to be the only thing in our homes hooked to the Internet were our PCs. In a short amount of time, we added phones and tablets. Now, there are a multitude of things we can connect to the net, in our home and in the outside world. This concept is called the Internet of Things, or IoT for short. The Internet of Things will dramatically change the world and, if we choose, our homes. IoT in the world can be sensors along the roadside that report traffic flow. It can be power meters already in many homes that automatically report meter readings to utility vehicles that pass your street. IoT can be sensors monitoring pipelines, medical equipment monitoring patients as they go about their day, buoys at sea watching for tsunamis, remote seismometers, and new uses every day. IoT may already be in your home. There are home automation lights you can control from your phone, the Harmony remote control system for controlling TVs and other home entertainment, the Ring doorbel...

Our county libraries are bragging they are Pokemon Go gyms, where players of the game can capture virtual Pokemons.  This phone game is all the rage now with kids through adults. I know a minister who plays and is proud his church property is home to three Poke stops. I’m happy to see the library promoting this on its website.  Staffers understand that being a Pokemon gym is a wonderful way to attract patrons who may have forgotten about the library. Are public libraries obsolete?  It is understandable to wonder this in the world of broadband, eBooks, Netflix and are other digital media services.  The library does not seem to have the same gravitation pull it once did for many of us. In reality, our public libraries are more important than ever. Not everyone can afford a computer, or if they can, also afford broadband. Yet most jobs these days require you to fill out online applications. Our public libraries and their free computers and inter...

When my employer and I decided to relocate me from California to Virginia in 1999, the owner of the company said, “I wonder if you’ll become politically passionate like everyone else we’ve moved back there.” There is something about this area that infected me. While I’m not passionate, my interest in the process has increased. In the midst of a presidential election cycle, we all find ourselves a bit more caught up than usual. There are online tools to help us follow the elections.  More and more, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are conversing with voters via social media. I have followed the tweets coming from the various candidates through the primaries and now into the general election. I use Twitter’s  Tweetdec k product. It allows me to have columns of related sources together. I created a Twitter list of candidates and another of news sources. While I don’t read all the tweets, a quick glance gives me an idea of the ongoing conversation Clinton and Trump are having wit...

Have you planned on things going wrong in your tech life?  They will.  Better to plan on it now and be ready. And if you are sending a student away to school with a laptop, plan now on it breaking or getting stolen or some other catastrophe. In July we talked about backup options.  Have you started using one yet? Have you setup your student with an automatic, offsite backup system so they do not have to think about it? You will need it. That is almost a certainty. What about anti-virus, for the the PCs at home and those going to college?  Get them installed now, and if there is a subscription, make sure it is paid through the end of the school year. For the college students, check the school’s bookstore or website. Often schools have requirements for anti-virus software for all PCs that use their networks, and site licenses to provide it to students for free. Before you buy any software for students, check with the university. Besides site license...

A telemarketer called me on my cell phone the other day, and I chortled with delight.  Normally, even if you hang up on one immediately as I did, you know they are only going to call back repeatedly. Not this one--or any of them. I use  Google Voice , so I was able to go into my call history and block future calls from that number. From then on when they call, they get the annoying disconnected sound and so they think my phone number is no longer valid. And their call never rings my phone again. If I felt really mean, I could make them their own message talking about the nature of their marketing and perhaps questioning the caller’s life choices. I did not, but the thought that I could is enough to make me chortle on receiving a spam call. Google Voice is not a well-known Google service, but it is one of the most useful. You only need a free Google account. If you already have a Gmail account, you are set.  When you sign up for the actual Voice product, you are given a ph...

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...

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...

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...

Parents and teachers know kids lose scholarly momentum over the summer, and research backs them up. Certain kinds of summer camps go a long way to keep the brain’s synapses firing. They are expensive and most parents can only afford a week or two, if they can afford it at all. And by now it may be too late to sign up for good camps anyway. How can we keep young brains firing on all cylinders so students can hit the ground running when back in school in late August? I recently came across a website listing 1,800 online courses.  Class-Central.com  does not provide the courses but lists courses produced by universities like Harvard, Stanford and Princeton, and companies such as Google and Facebook. High school students, maybe even some middle schoolers, can watch these videos to get a feel for subjects they are interested in. Even if they do not finish an entire course, it will get them thinking. And it is a wonderful way to dip their toes into subjects they may want to major in...

Google Now is so yesterday, since there is now Google Assistant. Last week Google held its Developer Conference, Google IO, in Mountain View, California. While no new products were released to coincide with the conference, Google showed a number of products that will be coming out this summer and others later on. There were a few items that hopefully will make family life a bit easier. Google Now, Google’s interface for talking to your Android or iPhone, is now called Google Assistant. You can now carry on a conversation with Assistant more than in the past. In the keynote speech, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai asked, “What’s showing nearby” and was shown a list of movies. He said: “We want to take the kids” and the list was amended to show only family-friendly films.  The Assistant asked, “Would you like tickets to any of these?” and he answered, “Jungle Book.” The app bought tickets online and had them waiting at the theater. You can ask Assistant, “Who is Brad Pitt?” and ...

You may need to rethink your definition of a camera  An iPhone 6s and a Kodak Brownie from 1900 work essentially the same way. You hold it up, compose your shot and push a button to take a photo. One could argue the 21st century has been a revolution for photography. Most of us have a phone in our pockets. There is no longer a cost-per-shot, where every time we click a picture there is an associated cost of film, developing and printing. We now can take thousands of shots on a vacation, where before we may have limited ourselves to 36 -- both a blessing and a curse. And how we share our photos has changed. We no longer have photo albums or slideshows we have to convince people to peruse. We share our photos online. But the camera in our phone is still a point and shoot camera, as was that early Brownie. Until now. There is now a type of camera where you do not compose your shot, because it takes a photograph of everything, a complete 360 degrees around you. It gets everything, in...

Several years ago I scanned my father’s slides of my siblings and me growing up. Dad had put together a nice presentation of photos of our lives, and maybe once a year we’d sit down and enjoy a slide show. I noticed how few photos there were of Dad. He had been the self-appointed family photographer. That is a role that no longer exists. Now, on a family vacation or outing, all family members over the age of 10 seem to have their own camera. How do we keep those photos from being in their own universe, and make them truly family photos? I wrote about one possible solution three years ago, and a How-To blog post I wrote to go with that column remains the No. 1-read post at FamilyTechOnline.com. That solution used Dropbox, that give you so much free space and hope you will buy extra space as needed. Photos take up a lot of room, so my solution most likely had most users needing to purchase Dropbox space. When my son and I planned our Israel trip, I rethought this problem. Google Photos l...

Before my wife left for Israel, and my son and I visited her, I had to figure out how we could use our cell phones outside the United States. There are two kinds of cell phone technologies in the world. Here in the U.S., AT&T and T-Mobile use the GSM system while Verizon and Sprint use CDMA. Most of the world outside the U.S. uses the GSM system – think Beta and VHS or AM and FM. They are similar systems, but different. I checked the specs to our phones by googling the models online. Because my wife bought her iPhone at an Apple store, it was set up to work with both the CDMA and GSM systems. The Android phones my son and I have worked with both systems. Ask your cell company if your phone can work on GSM systems if you cannot find the information online. Next, check with your provider for advice. Sprint told me it had an international roaming plan I could put on our phones for free. In Sprint’s case, it allowed for unlimited data roaming but at speeds from 10 years ago, 2G technol...