Without a doubt, smartphones are such useful everyday tools. Yes of course, people know how to use a smartphone to catapult frowning birds at badly behaved pigs; but apart from that, they will help you get an astounding variety of things done everyday.

When Americans were polled about recently about how useful their smartphones were to them, about one out of two said that their phone was very useful in an emergency; and one out of four said that they’d been in situations where they didn’t have their smartphone with them and got into trouble because of that.

And yet, most smartphone users aren’t aware of a vast variety of things they can achieve with them. Yes, they use their phone to look at maps and use them sometimes to access their bank accounts, but that’s about it.

When it comes to apps for smartphones, it’s an embarrassment of riches. That’s just a bit problematic though when you need to pick something useful out for your needs.

Since many of these apps answer needs you have that you didn’t even know about, how do you find these? Well, sometimes, lists like this particular one out. If you want to learn how to use a smartphone and ever more useful ways every day, here are a few ideas.

Back when Baywatch was running about 12 years ago, you’d always get these little stories in the news all the time about how some kid somewhere managed to save a drowning brother or someone because he learned rescue techniques and CPR watching Baywatch.

Well, there lots of people today too who really fancy the idea of learning CPR and first aid. What does that have to do with your phone, you ask?

Well, you can learn how to use a smartphone for this – with the American Heart Association’s Pocket First Aid and CPR app for Android and iPhone phones.

Anytime you have someone on your hands in some kind of medical emergency, the app shows you ways easy animated instructions for what you have to do to save them.

It’s somewhat hard to learn how to use a smartphone to print documents. What do you do though when you are away on the road and you come across a document on the Internet that you would like to print out?

Well, they have a free app for both major smartphone platforms called CloudPrint that will let you do that. If you have a wireless printer at home or at the office something, you just have to set it up to receive print orders from your phone.

You can send the order from anywhere, and when you get home, you’ll find your printed copy waiting for you.

Lots of people are beginning to learn how to use their smartphone to save every time they shop. An app called RedLaser tries to let you be your own red laser-wielding checkout clerk.

You just aim your phone camera at any barcode on any product at the store, and RedLaser will quickly find out what your GPS location is and tell you what all the prices in your immediate neighborhood are.

You can save a great deal on gas with Gas Buddy as well. You just need to ask the app every time you need to fill up, and it’ll tell you what all the gas prices are in a 10 mile radius.

How to use a Smartphone to get things Done is a post from: Computer Spot

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So there your kid is on the couch, being nice and quiet puttering about on the Internet on the laptop. He is a right before your eyes and not getting into any kind of trouble. Is he? Children under 15 do need your help learning stay safe.

They really haven’t understood enough about life to stay clear of on Internet. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children finds that while most parents do establish ground rules for how to be safe on the computer and have had talks about it all, they almost never look in regularly to see that their children really understand what they’ve said.

And one out of two children in America report that they don’t need any parental permission at all to get on the Internet and their parents never ask them to limit the time they spend online. These Internet safety tips for kids that follow should help. But they’ll only help if you check in on a regular basis.

Most children who get into trouble on the Internet have things go wrong the moment they give out personal information on Internet – their phone number or even the name of your school.

It’s not just that you need to tell your children to never give information out to anyone who asks. Often these days, they just disguise their intentions by putting out fake contests, sweepstakes or games on Facebook.

Anyone who wants to enter these needs to give out all kinds of information. Your children are fooled by the official-looking forms that go with these fun-sounding ventures. Most Internet safety tips for kids tell you to tell your children not to give out personal information. They never tell you the ways in which these requests come in.

The “Don’t give out personal information” rule can be surprisingly difficult to keep. For instance, what do you do if your child wants to learn to develop his own website? Most parents would look at this and completely approve.

What’s not to approve – it’s creative, and it requires a bit of hard work. However, do you realize that every domain name registration requires that you submit your address, e-mail ID and phone number, to be published to the whole wide world?

Of course, most kinds of domain names offer you a privacy option – for some money. Your child needs to learn why it is necessary to pay for this. And besides, there are some kinds of domain name TLDs that don’t even allow for privacy.

For instance, a .us domain name has no privacy option. A child needs to learn how to use these choices for his website.

Sometimes, Internet safety tips for kids can be surprisingly simple and still be very effective. For instance, a child needs to be sure to not use something that points to whether the child is a boy or girl. The name shouldn’t even point how old the child is.

With a few commonsense Internet safety tips for kids like these, safety isn’t really a challenge anymore.

Simple but Effective Internet Safety Tips for Kids is a post from: Computer Spot

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Yes, you should buy into the whole 4G technology hype; but that’s not what this article is about. It’s about whether you should do so today.

If you believe everything that the phone industry tells you, 4G technology will be to the cell phone in your pocket today what the iPhone is to their huge shoebox-like cell phone that people use to carry around in the early 90s.

You’re probably familiar with the kind of hype that 3G came with about 10 years ago. It’s actually taken reality this long to catch up with all the hype that 3G came with 10 years ago.

3G certainly was worth the trouble – it has brought us better call quality, high-speed Internet and the App Store. The iPhone would not have been possible without all this.

But how funny would it have been if you had bought the 3G phone in the year 2001 when the whole 3G circus began?

4G technology isn’t in the kind of sad shape today that 3G was in when it was first hyped a decade ago. 4G is in way better shape; the only problem is, that the industry really hasn’t sorted itself out.

To begin with, there isn’t any one 4G technology that’s established itself yet. And then, even if you ignore that, coverage can be very limited.

In other words, you’ll find that the mobile carriers have upgraded to 4G in a few important markets – along both coasts and in Texas – but there is almost nothing in between over all of the rest of the country.

If you’re really trying to grade all the different carriers today for 4G technology adoption, you’ll find that Verizon has the best coverage and speed and AT&T has the worst. But let’s do away with all those complications for second.

Let’s say that you live in Los Angeles where every carrier has the 4G option, and let’s say that all you ever do is fly around among cities that have 4G.

Should you throw your phone away and jump in feet first into the exciting world of 4G technology?

Well, the thing with 4G is that even if you have a compatible phone and network, you’re not really buying into some kind of life-altering technology upgrade. The best you are talking about is having a YouTube video load 10 seconds faster.

And that’s the best case scenario. More importantly, even if 4G technology is the future, it has to work on cell phones that have decidedly present-day battery technology.

4G drains your battery much faster. But if you would really like streaming video, online gaming, video chatting and all of those things, perhaps 4G technology would be great for you.

The shortened battery life and the extra money charged by some carriers may actually be worth it when you wow your friends with video chatting.

Should you Buy into the Whole 4G Technology Hype Today? is a post from: Computer Spot

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Maybe the British Navy has the right idea about buying into the latest computer technology. On their vertical takeoff Harrier jets, when they need to program the onboard computers with something, they still use cassette tape — you know, like they used to about 25 years ago. NASA still uses ancient Pentium powered computers on some of its satellites.

And these are people with a real use for technology. So when Apple goes and tries to dazzle you with how its latest line of laptops is faster, bigger, brighter and sharper, should you really buy into all of that?

Technology marketers offer you the latest computer technology all the time to get you to give them even more money than you already have.

Does your two-year-old digital camera seem sharp enough? Of course it doesn’t – not now that they can offer you a model that has twice as many megapixels as the embarrassment of a camera that sits in your pocket.

Does your Internet service seem to take a bit of time streaming your movie? For a mere $15 more, you could bump up the download speed and make everything more instant.

And NASA has to wait a week to finish downloading its satellite pictures because they have a slow link and the onboard computer on the satellite was apparently made right about the time the Big Bang occurred.

Manufacturers of whizbang electronics want you to replace every electronic doodad in your house every three years. That’s the cycle they are looking for that will help keep them in business. And people certainly are responding.

The average smartphone that a person has in his pocket these days is only a year and half old. People used to carry their phones around for far longer.

Of course, for a country full of jobless people and little hope for the future, this addiction to technology isn’t a good thing.

Shouldn’t a family that is more or less established today take care of the future and reject the notion of buying an iPad?

An iPad actually costs about $100 more than an entry-level laptop while promising to do far less for you. If you aren’t sure about whether to invest in the latest computer technology, here’s a little primer.

Let’s start with computers – an area that sucks up with a lot more money out of our budgets than it should. Certainly, if you like to look at the Internet with 50 browser tabs open at the same time, buying a $1200 desktop or laptop would make a lot of sense.

But do you really want that luxury when you could apply that money somewhere where it would make a lot more sense — like an investment?

Basically, even the most basic entry level computer today comes with 2GB RAM, a 250GB hard disk and a dual core processor.

Even if you have thousands of MP3s, thousands of digital photos and e-books, you’d find it hard to use more than a handful of gigabytes of hard disk space.

You don’t want to buy a computer unless you find that you’re frequently peaking your computer’s processor and running out of RAM. On Windows, you can check all of this on Task Manager.

The TV manufacturers really want you to buy Full HD. The problem is, Full HD content is only available on expensive Blu-Ray discs and Hi-def television programming.  If you are someone who takes advantage of all of this, then buying a Full HD television wouldn’t be a bad idea. But you don’t want to buy it just because the salesman seems excited about it.

Should you Buy into the Latest Computer Technology? is a post from: Computer Spot

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It used to be that you could just walk into an electronics store to check out some high tech gadgets, buy whatever you wanted and just leave unmolested. That isn’t how it goes anymore.

These days, there is such a minefield of offers and special service plans that you get propositioned about. If you took all the offers you got, you would probably walk out having paid twice as much for your TV or anything else as you would if you just bought the thing by itself.

It kind of reminds people of the hard-sell that they encounter at car dealerships. Which isn’t surprising – both kinds of retailers operate on the thinnest of margins.

When it comes to making a profit selling high-tech gadgets, retailers like Best Buy have discovered something that really seems to sell well these days. At a higher profit margin than high tech gadgets.

They like to sell you a kind of a guarantee against obsolescence. Best Buy for instance, calls its plan, Future Proof Your Technology.

The plan is, that if you subscribe to the deal, after several months, when the product you buy seems to have lost its technological edge or been superseded by another model, the store will buy the product back from you at a specified price.

It’s supposed to make people feel good about not having to throw away a perfectly good gadget just because it’s been rendered obsolete.

The electronics stores feel that a plan like this can help sell more high-tech gadgets as it psychologically makes consumers feel more confident about buying right now. All stores need to do is to sign up a few suckers. It’ll do their bottom line a lot of good.

For people who love having the latest toy at all times, on the surface, the deal seems to make a lot of sense. You pay $800 for the latest laptop today and subscribe, for $75 extra, to a buyback plan that promises you that in a year, you can bring it back and you’ll be given a voucher for $300 on your next laptop.

Let’s go over why this is a bad idea. To begin with, you pay sales tax three times on the same purchase. When you return your product a year later as a part of your buyback deal, they test it to see if it’s in good condition.

If they decide that it isn’t in great condition, they give you less money or nothing at all back. And oh, did you remember to read the fine print that says that you don’t get anything back if you don’t bring the receipt or if they decide that your device isn’t in good condition? Does anyone know what the appeals process is?

Not to forget, that you only get store credit (and not cash) when you bring your high tech gadgets back. Now that is it real trick; they’re locking you into buying from them forever and tricking you into never exercising your rights to shop around.

You could work around this problem by going to a third-party buyback company like tech forward. They’ll just give you a check because they don’t have a stores to give you store credit.

Obsolescence-Proofing Your High Tech Gadgets is a post from: Computer Spot

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The problem with consumer technology is that no one really wants to crack the manual. Those that have tried it can testify that they aren’t any the better-off for the experience usually, because manuals can be often badly written.

The upshot of all of this just happens to be that even with people who have spent a lifetime with consumer technology, there can be real holes in their understanding.

What we know about the ins and outs of using everyday technology we usually just pick up along the way. There is no one place that we go to, usually.

What makes things really difficult usually is that there are always multiple ways in which to achieve anything. We usually learn the hard way to do something and think that it’s the only way – unaware that there’s a far easier shortcut available that some people know of.

It would save people so much time and heartache if they knew these secret technology tips. And that’s what the following paragraphs are about.

Computers, be they of the Mac persuasion or the Windows kind, are well-known for their ability to act up. When this happens, both experts and novices usually benefit from an ability to share what they see on their screens with other people who might be able to help.

How do you get a nice shot of what’s on your screen? To beginners who look at all the keys on their keyboards, the entire row of F keys and everything else near them are just a total mystery and they just ignore them.

Somewhere near F12, usually, is a key that’s called Print Screen or Prt Scr. That’s your little shutter button for your screen. You just press the button, trust that you have a copy, and go paste it in Paint or Word.

Some people don’t of like the idea of capturing everything that’s on their screen. For these people, Alt-Prt Scr is what they need. Command-Shift-3 and Command-Shift-4 on the Mac does the same thing more or less. You’re learning some important secret technology tips are ready.

People have an awfully hard time often telling genuine stuff on Internet apart from stuff that’s just scammy. Not to call anyone simpleminded or anything – there are some real experts, evil geniuses if you will, who sit around and work their whole lives trying to scam you.

There’s one really good way you can tell if some offer you hear about or some scandalous news you get over e-mail, is real. You just have to check it out on Snopes – command central on the Internet for scam and rumor alerts.

And finally, did you know that if you want to send a really large file over e-mail and your e-mail provider doesn’t allow a file attachment of that size, but you just have to go to TransferBigFiles or MediaFire ?

Funny that this one should count among our secret technology tips, but you’d be surprised how few people are aware of this one.

Secret the Technology Tips for the Uninitiated is a post from: Computer Spot

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Accessing cheap broadband internet in the US requires research and thoughtfulness. In a market that is awash with countless internet providers, the consumers is more likely to fall prey to the marketing gimmicks of the sales agents who despite their promises of quality service provision, usually renege by including hidden costs or unreliable connectivity in their packages.

For fairness sake however, it is worth noting that they are some reliable cheap broadband internet providers whose services are not only cheap, but dependable as well.

Considering the large number of service providers in the market however, it takes some effort on the consumer’s part, in identifying the right provider, with the right services, and at the right price.

Markedly, the concept of cheap broadband internet means different things to different users. For example, a person looking for cheap internet for use at home after work would find purchasing internet bundles according to his/or her use.

On the other hand, a person who needs to connect several computers to the internet would find such an approach too expensive. Instead, users in the latter category usually prefer unlimited connectivity, which is usually available at a fixed monthly cost.

Understanding just how the ‘bundles’ concept work is important for any consumer who wishes to access cheap broadband internet.

Internet bundles are the ‘connectivity package’ that the provider gives the consumer for a specific amount of money. Most ISPs package their bundles in a manner that appeals to the consumer market.

It is however the consumer’s obligation to make the distinction between cheap and expensive bundles. Ideally, each consumer should purchase internet services based on his or her needs.

Frequent internet users, and those who download or upload large amounts of data from the same, are better off purchasing the bundle packages. Occasional internet users on the other hand, are better off subscribing to the ‘pay-as-you-go’ services.

Away from money-related issues, consumers may need to consider the cheap or expansive nature of the broadband internet based on the quality of services.

Generally, the consumer market is made up of three categories of internet users: light users who usually need a maximum of 1-megabyte connectivity a month; medium users who need a maximum of 4-megabytes connectivity a month; and Heavy users who need more than 4 megabytes connectivity a month.

The more time one spends surfing the internet, the higher the likelihood that he or she needs fast connectivity speeds. As such, any service provider who does not meet the speed requirements cannot be regarded as cheap, regardless of the monetary price attached to the services.

In fact, the provider would be going against the broadband concept, since broadband connectivity is meant to provide users with fast internet speeds.

Accessing Cheap Broadband Internet is a post from: Computer Spot

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What it means to use the phone is something that is certainly changing very quickly these days. It isn’t about a phone anymore. It’s all about Internet calling options. And those have players like FreePhone2Phone, Skype, Line2 Google Voice , Globe7 and Fring .

To anyone who isn’t really keeping up with where everything is, it can really get confusing. Let’s do a quick round-up of what Internet calling today offers.

First of all, while theoretically, you should be able to utilize your smartphone data plan to make free calls to all kinds of places, there isn’t any single app that lets you use your cell phone to make free calls everywhere.

What you can do is use your computer and a service like Skype or Google Voice to call any number or computer on earth. Or, you can use your smartphone, equipped with something like a Skype app to call other smart phones with the same app over the Internet for free but you can’t use them to call phone numbers for free.

Even so, the more you try calling over the Internet, from a computer or smartphone, the more you will realized that Internet calling is not really all that it is cracked up to be. To begin with, Internet calling means making do with crackly, distant and choppy voice quality.

It also means waiting longer to connect and putting up with a certain number of dropped calls. And then of course, there’s the matter of voice delay.

If you are expecting voice transmission that’s as instantaneous as a normal phone call, you’ll need to take some time to readjust. Your voice takes longer to reach the other end and you’ll find frequently that you and the other person keep talking over each other.

If you happen to be on Wi-Fi (and not your 3G Internet) though, calls from your smartphone or computer to anywhere can be pretty clear. If you call any phone number in America it’s $3 a call, regardless of how long the call is.

And then, depending on what application you’re using, you can have different kinds of benefits. FreePhone2Phone is great in that it’s not an app thing.

You just get to call landlines in almost any country just as long as you agree to listen to an advertisement. Google Voice is free, but it uses up your cell phone minutes to make calls. Additionally, unless you are using a complicated app called Talkatone you can’t use it on a smartphone.

And the Line2 app on your smartphone functions like it was a separate number working on your phone. It becomes active when you have Wi-Fi. You pay $10 a month and you can call regular phone numbers as much as you want.

And of course, all of these apps will only work for specific countries. Internet calling is still a system that tries to work around a number of obstacles placed by the service providers and the laws. Things should clear up quickly though.

Understanding Free Internet Calling without Pulling Out your Hair is a post from: Computer Spot

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Language is permanently evolving. It has been doing so since the first human began to grunt meaningfully and has continued to ever since.

This evolution of language has tended to follow regional trends or fashions, and has happened slowly, leading ultimately to the differences in languages between countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, that at least in theory are supposed to both speak English. It is also the reason that Shakespeare is so alien to us.

The speed at which our language is evolving has increased incredibly in recent years. These changes are no longer just driven by fashion, but by the age of technology that we have found ourselves in.

When cell phones first went on sale they were the size of a small suitcase and not particularly convenient-merely a status symbol for the rich. Technology progressively saw them get smaller, and saw the addition of a wide range of features.

One of those features was the inclusion of SMS text messaging. Initially designed as a network engineer’s tool, the messages only allowed 160 characters to be sent. This meant that you either had to send multiple messages to a person in order to say what you wished to, or you would have to use some fairly impressive abbreviations.

Because of this, a new era of abbreviated speech began. Letter groupings replaced entire phrases in texts, with such things as BRB (be right back) and BTW (by the way) becoming common. The trouble is that these terms didn’t remain isolated in their use, instead spreading very rapidly.

Initially the uptake was limited, but text speak as it came to be known became popular within instant messaging circles. In this case though, it wasn’t because of limited numbers of characters, but because of the fact that typed conversations tended to be slower than spoken ones. In order to speed up the conversation, short abbreviations were preferable to typing the full phrase.

This only worked though as long as the other party in the conversation understood your abbreviations. Many conversations would be spent explaining what it was you really meant, and in this way the understanding of text speak started to spread to people who were otherwise less likely to be exposed to it.

The spread of text speak has expanded to the point that even older people tend to know what LOL (laugh out loud) means. Some people, especially younger ones even use the term in everyday speech. They use it as a word in its own right, even though it is actually an abbreviation rather than a word.

Our language has continued to evolve over the decades, but the major shifts in technology recently have accelerated this process so much that there is an ever growing gulf between the older and newer generations.

New dictionaries now contain many of the terms that were previously unheard of, and that often cause argument as to whether the term should be there or not.

So many people now use tech abbreviations that there are fears that it is affecting people’s ability to write, and one has to ask the question-how will the art of conversation be ultimately affected by this new era in our language development?

Technology and Our Evolving Language is a post from: Computer Spot

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In the days when the majority of businesses were beginning to use the internet for their everyday interactions, the security of the company was left up to the IT specialists of the company.

They had a set of hard and fast rules that were applied. User permissions were limited and firewalls put in place, and along with anti-virus software, the systems were able to remain secure.

Massive changes have since occurred in the world of computing, and these mean that companies may suddenly be finding themselves vulnerable.

It was once a relatively simple job. User settings were at a level where the user was unable to install their own software. This prevented them from running executable files that may be infected with viruses, and firewalls were used to prevent them downloading anything that might be a problem.

Rules were issued to all staff that stated that certain links were not to be clicked, and that only permitted sites could be visited. Even USB ports may have been disabled, in order to prevent media being loaded onto a computer in that way.

There are many new threats to corporate security. The first of these is the ease with which people can now bring in their own media and computing devices.

Many people now carry smart phones, or use netbooks or MP3 players that can be networked, and once networked can be accessed from any computer.

Others still can be linked to a computer via bluetooth or the WiFi network in order to access the files on the device, and this can mean that malware can easily be transferred.

Where once it was easy to see when a link came from an untrusted source, the growth of URL shortening has confused this. By entering the URL into an online tool, the original link can be hidden, and the true origin only discovered when the link is clicked-by which time malware may be already being installed.

Many people now use their work computers during their breaks, in order to browse or to watch videos. Even viewing an infected video can install malware onto your computer.

Collaborative tools can be a dream when it comes to getting team work done. By uploading your work to a shared document tool such as Google Docs, several people can be granted access to it, in order to either view it or edit it, or both.

This can speed up the time in which work gets done, since instant messengers also make it easy to tell the rest of the team when edits have been completed.

The security hole here is glaring. Though these documents are sometimes password protected, passwords can are do get hacked, allowing sensitive information to be viewed.

If the document in question contains client information, or worse-essential information on the running or profitability of your business, it may be disastrous if the document were to experience unauthorized access.

From a privacy point of view, this makes these tools a nightmare situation, yet for productivity they are incredibly useful.

Advances such as these are needed, and are here to stay. But till companies manage to catch up and make them secure, the risk to their businesses will remain.

Why Technology Increases are Endangering Business Security is a post from: Computer Spot