Or Why Old Tech Isn't Always Bad
I've seen a few articles and even a Dilbert cartoon lately that suggest (or outright say!) that you must be crazy to have a landline – or what we old folks call a "regular" phone line, with a wire leading back to the phone company.While that might be true for some people, I'm not ready to give up my landline just yet.
Since many received iPhones or iPod touches for the holidays, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite applications.There are many available apps out there, some more useful or better written than others. These are a few that I use frequently.
CardStar (free) — this is one that Terry has written about. You know all of those little barcode tags from the drug store, grocery store, book shop, etc.? Enter the barcode numbers in this app and just let them scan your screen. No more tags to clutter your keychain.
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I depend on Mail quite a bit throughout the day and now that it has MS Exchange support I'm using it for work email too. So therefore it's quite easy to get overwhelmed with the volume of mail that you could be getting if you're even remotely involved in an organization, corporate environment or have a lot of friends that send you lots of junk stuff. So here are 10 Tips to help you maximize your use of Apple's Mail app.
1. Use Rules to Automatically Deal with incoming Mail
As the old saying goes, out of sight out of mind. Once an email drifts down beyond the scroll line for me there's a good chance that I'll forget all about it. At least if it goes into a folder structure, I'll be reminded of what's important and what's not. You can setup as many folders (ie. Mailboxes) "On My Mac" as you need. You can then setup Rules to deal with the bulk of the email you get. For example, I have a folder called "From the Boss". Any emails I get from her automatically go into that folder. That way I won't have to sift through tons of other email to look for that one with the details of the report I was supposed to be working on.
2. Use IMAP instead of POP email
Not all email providers support IMAP, but if you have more than one computer or device that you check email on, you definitely should investigate getting an email account on a service that supports IMAP. For example, MobileMe and GMail are IMAP based. This means that when you check your email on one device, it's marked read on all your other devices. If you move it to a folder, it's moved. So you don't end up getting the same email to have to click through on every computer you use. Also with IMAP you can have folders that reside on the server too. This way if you do read an email and file it, you can you still retrieve it on any computer or device such as in iPhone or iPod touch.
The last one, I promise. The MacGroup Five, your Dancing Elves.
I really take delight in being able to bring you this blog every Friday. Some of my associate bloggers have nifty tag lines like “Tech Tuesdays” or “Thirsty Thursdays”. I was going to go with “Fabulous Fridays” but it seemed really cliché. I will find the appropriate one for me, one day.
So, I was really at a miss for what to write about today. My theme is usually something in regards to backup tips and tricks but with the holidays on us, especially today, I thought I would try to come up with something more meaningful.
No matter what your faith may be, we are living in times in this country where there are friends and neighbors that are in need of help. That friend or neighbor may need financial help due to the loss of a job. It may be that they need help of an emotional nature. An emotional need can really surface at this time of year. Having someone to help get through a time like this can be very helpful.
Therefore, the “back” this week I would like to suggest is to “Give Back”.
“Give Back” some of your wealth to that favorite charity.
Perhaps take some cookies and a few young people by a nursing home and see if you can make the holidays brighter for an elderly person. “Give Back” to the elderly.
“Give Back” some of your time to another person that maybe spending a holiday alone. Sometimes just a call can help. Better yet, invite them to join you and your family for the holiday celebration.
“Give Back” some effort to send to the troops overseas, a holiday greeting. Xerox is sponsoring a website that will allow you to do this. The holidays are more than one day. I would not like to be away from my loved ones at the holidays. A word of appreciation from home always makes the stay easier.
http://www.letssaythanks.com/Home1280.html
“Give Back” to your family the traditions and the reasons for the season. Or establish new traditions that can be passed down to the next generation.
Finally, “Give Back” to yourself, the memories of pleasures of the past year. It does not matter how many. Even if it is only one memory, bask in the pleasure of that memory. “Give Back” the hope and promise of a new and even better year and make it for yourself, your family, your friends and associates.
Happy Holidays!
Tis
X
Be careful – Don't ruin Christmas! :-)
Turns those scans into something editable
The topic of OCR software came up on the MacGroup iBBS the other day, and my response to the member that asked for impressions of different software got me thinking about OCR software for the Mac (thanks George! I was stuck for a topic!).
Lately, I've been using Adobe Acrobat Pro for most of my OCR needs, because most of the time I'm taking something and scanning it to a PDF anyway. But what about those times you want to edit what you've scanned? Acrobat's a poor choice if you need to do editing afterwards, as PDFs are meant to be an end product. Even Adobe will tell you that to change a PDF it's best to go back to the source document. Clearly, Acrobat isn't the answer in that case. So what is the answer on the Mac?
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I'm sure that some of you are looking forward to that new Mac in a few days. Migrating from an older system to that new one can be a painless process. I just helped a friend set up a new 27" iMac, set up his old Intel iMac for his wife, and finally set up and move her old G5 iMac to their business showroom — all in about 2 and a half hours. In this case, we were able to work from Time Machine backups, so that I could work on all three computers simultaneously.
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Before he appeared on Dancing with the Stars… 
On October 22, 2000, Apple Co-Founder Steve "The Woz" Wozniak made a special visit to MacGroup-Detroit, Inc. During his keynote lecture Woz told us many stories about the beginning of his career, the invention of the personal computer that would revolutionize the industry and how he and Steve Jobs started Apple Computer, Inc.
Thanks to the advances in technology over the years, MacGroup is pleased to be able to make this video available to Macintosh community at large for the first time as a FREE download on MacGroup TV via iTunes. Please accept this as our Holiday Gift to you!
Over the course of time, I have backed up many files from my Mac and or PC. Some of these files have not been looked at since I did the backup and checked to make sure I could restore them. We all have backups like this, and in most cases, these are backups that we can classify as "archives".
What are "archives"?
Archives are backups that you do for long term retention. You may need the information or data, but you really don't know when you will need it. A good example would be your income tax return that you prepared on your computer with TurboTax or some other tax program. The IRS requires you to keep the return 7 years but they may never audit you so you may never have to access a copy of it.
This brings me to the point about archive backups and a tax return is a perfect example. Data stored on media in archive mode has to be "technologically moved forward" so that you will be able to access it in the future or you will have to retain the hardware to access the archive data with.
"Calvin", you say to yourself, what are you saying in simple terms?" Well I am saying you have to move your data from one form of storage media to another over time.
"How do I technologically move forward?"
Let me give you an example:
Remember a technology for saving data called a "Zip Drive". This was a technology that was created by Iomega. It was a slightly larger in physical size that a 1.44 megabyte floppy disk, but, it could hold 100 megabytes of data. It also used a special drive ( Zip drive ) to read and write the disk. This drive was either internal to your Mac or PC or external via USB or SCSI. This technology is no longer made today. You can still buy the media if you search around the net for it. But in computer terms, Zip drives are gone. Zip! Therefore, if you had to retrieve that tax return from that Zip floppy, you would have to have a Mac or PC that had a working Zip drive inside it or externally attached to it to do it. Not an easy task.
The way to get around this problem is to "technologically move forward". The way you do this is easy. Let's take the instance of the Zip drive. When I started to see the Zip popularity starting to drop off, and the popularity of CD's starting to climb and become the "new standard", I started to copy all of my Zip floppies data to CD's. That way I had the archive data on a media that I could read going into the future. When I start seeing CD's losing popularity and some other media, say DVD's becoming the "standard", I will move my data to that type of media.
How often should I concern myself with my archives?
It's a good idea to review your archived media once a year. That way you know if it's time to "technologically move forward" your valuable data. When you move your data forward, you will also know if you can still read the data on the existing media. If you can no longer read the data and unless there is a legal issue to deal with like retention, you can pretty much destroy it and clean up your archive. With the New Year approaching, checking your archives might be something you may want to do during the holidays.
Closing Note
I only capitalized the first 3 paragraphs to reveal the secret word for this blog. Did you figure it out or did you have to use the secret decoder ring you got from sending in labels from your jars of Ovaltine?
Say the secret word and perhaps a bird will drop from the ceiling. Or better yet here is a question to ponder. "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?"
I will be BACK next week!
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