Ideas from Mark Stout

For something most of us didn’t even have 10-15 years ago, wifi has become virtually indispensable in our homes. Sixty-one percent of American homes have wifi. And wifi can be maddening if it fails to reach all rooms in our home. Wifi provides the internet to more and more devices every year. Our first router back around 2003 served two laptops. Today, in an average home, many more devices are linked to wifi routers including laptops, mobile phones, game consoles, portable gaming machines and more. And more devices will continue to login. Devices such as your refrigerator, washing machine, light bulbs, door locks and those little Dash Buttons from Amazon that let you reorder things at the push of a button. Does your wifi reach all areas of your home? If it doesn’t, you are losing valuable functionality. In this column, we’ll tell you how to easily find dead spots in your home and what you can do to get the internet throughout your home. Read the rest at www.FamilyTechOnline.com

This is the time of year for traditions. A tradition of this column is helping techies get ready for the inevitable requests from family members to take a quick look at their computer. It’s never quick. Being the family tech is a thankless job. If you do one thing to help someone, for years after you will hear comments/requests such as, “I can’t find a file I downloaded” or “What did you do wrong when you fixed my computer?” That column is still relevant. I’ve posted it to  www.FamilyTechOnline.com  if you want to check it out. Despite the thanklessness, those of us not intimidated with technology often want to help our family. For seniors especially, having working technology keeps them in contact and engaged with family via Facebook and email. It helps them not feel isolated if family is not nearby. Here’s a few new thoughts this year on that topic. Read the rest at www.FamilyTechOnline.com

Last week, we talked about interviewing family members with a story to tell. This week, let’s talk about how to make a good video of the interview. Surprisingly, we can do a good job with just our smartphone. Even if you do not want to record a family member’s memories, there might be times you will want to shoot a short video interview. Whenever I watch a reality show about a family, I always enjoy the interviews with the small children, and their unfiltered answers. What a delight it will be for the parents long after the show goes off the air to have these memories. How fun it will be to show some of them at their wedding reception one day. We can interview our own children at different points of their lives or after major events. Talk to them a week after a vacation to find out what memories stuck. After a major family event, such as a wedding, interview them about their understanding and feelings about the event. One of the favorite things I do when I video a wedding, is a p...

What do you do if you're a bizillionaire, and in touch with your inner little boy? Well, you might buy a really big yacht , old tanks, rockets and cool old airplanes.   And you might invest in artificial intelligence, brain science, and other really cool things. I wasn't invited to hang out on any of the yachts but last Sunday I was in Seattle, and visited Paul Allen's (Microsoft co-founder) Flying Heritage Collection  at Paine Field in Everette, Washington. This collection does something interesting.  Each aircraft's informational plaque explains not only the model of aircraft, but the history of this particular aircraft. With only a few exceptions, each of these aircraft are in flyable condition, and do fly once a year.  I saw one aircraft that was the sole surviving aircraft of its type, so while flyable, it was not flown.     The wreck of a Japanese Zero found in New Guineau A restored Zero found in much the same c...

  I have always found using IFTTT to send things into Evernote useful.  I currently have all Starred Gmail's, Saved Reddit posts, Archived posts in Pocket, and more all flow into Evernote, thanks to IFTTT.com    When my wife showed me Trello, I found Evernote and IFTTT didn't work together quite as well as I hoped. If you haven't checked out Trello,it is a more visual version kind of Evernote.  It is great for doing some kinds of project management.  I do not actually use it, but I could see myself using it for a future project. One drawback when I looked at Trello was it didn't have a Web Clipper.  You couldn't just save a web page to Trello. I had the bright idea of capturing the web page to Evernote, and then have IFTTT to move the post from Evernote to Trello. Alas, I had never looked at the Triggers IFTTT supported for Evernote.  It didn't have one to take a new note and copy it to another service. Now good news.  T...

Everyone has a compelling story. Just in the last couple of weeks, I’ve talked to a retired Marine about his service in Vietnam. And another told me about being a young bride in Germany and her move to the U.S. with her GI husband. The next several weeks brings family together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is an opportunity to ask family members to tell their stories. StoryCorps, an organization that has made an educational project for adults and children, is holding “The Great Thanksgiving Listen” project. The nonprofit has long gathered individuals stories on video in kiosks in New York’s Grand Central Station, and other cities. It also has an app for iPhones and Androids that videos an interview, and if you choose, uploads it to its site as well as to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. A man at a Woodbridge continuing-care facility recorded interviews with residents about their World War II memories. The interviews were submitted to the Library of Congre...

I glanced over at my son playing on our gaming PC. He was speaking into his headset, talking to other players. They were from all over the world of various ages and backgrounds. I was struck yet again with a sense: we live in the future. The video games are not the only trigger for me. I have a new app on my phone, FlightRadar 24, which amazes me. It shows all airplanes overhead. Select one and it tells you its type, airline, flight number, origin, destination and route. If a plane declares an emergency, it alerts me if I want to follow its story. What’s really cool is if I aim my phone at a plane overhead, it identifies it for me. All this is done using a database of aircraft under Air Traffic Control, but also the GPS sensor in my phone telling it where it is, plus the other sensors that tell the software where the phone is pointing to and how it is oriented. There are also devices like Microsoft’s Kenect 2 for the XBox. It has a series of cameras and microphones that cou...