I know its here somewhere ...

Our lives are becoming more and more reliant on digital information. Many of us do our banking, file our income taxes, and even keep our medical records electronically. A few weeks ago the topic of an OnMouseClick column was digital housekeeping, and I recommended the practice of regularly making backups of your primary hard drive, and deleting files and applications that are no longer needed. What the column didn’t address was what to do with files that are not currently needed, but might be in the future. 

I recently received a call from a client who hired me for some design work almost ten years ago. He wanted to order 500 business cards from my original design, and I crossed my fingers hoping I could remember where I had saved the file. Since we regularly travel back and forth between New York and Florida, I own several portable hard drives that travel with me. On one of the drives I have a folder named Archives, where I store files that aren’t currently being used. The business card file was easily located in a sub-folder under the client’s name, and I was able to send it out for printing – electronically, of course – within the hour. Heeding my own advice, I also keep a backup of the Archives folder on another portable drive as well. 

In addition to keeping track of where your files are located, it pays to use easily recognizable names for your files, and to organize them into folders and sub-folders (or directories and sub-directories). This is something I recently needed to deal with regarding my OnMouseClick files. All of the column files are located inside sub-folders labeled by year, and the sub-folders are located inside one main folder labeled TR-OnMouseClick. The file for each column is named OnMouseClick with the year and column number. As an example, today’s column is OnMouseClick.2019-11. A good system, except when I need to go back and check what I wrote in an earlier column. Unless I can remember what date I wrote about a topic, I find myself opening numerous files before finding the one I need. A better system, which I am going to use going forward, would be to include the subject of each column in its file name. Instead of OnMouseClick.2019-11 today’s column is going to be renamed 2019-11.OMC.Naming.

It is obvious that how we choose to name and locate our files can have a major impact on our ability to stay organized and quickly find files when we need them. It is a good organizational strategy is to be consistent and descriptive in naming files and folders, and to group files together that contain similar information. 

Both Macintosh and Windows computers feature a folder named Documents, which is the default location for saving a majority of the files you create. While you might want to continue saving most of your files in the Documents folder, you should create a series of sub-folders, by subjects, inside Documents . The same concept is also valid with the Pictures folders of your photographs. Grouping your photographs by dates and subjects makes them easier to find when you need to print or share photos with friends and family. 

While I was researching today’s column I came across an article, published on the staffingindustry.com website, that includes excellent suggestions for naming files. The article, titled PROBABLY THE BEST FILE NAMING CONVENTION EVER, includes a list of seven things that will make your file names descriptive and easy to find. Among the ideas listed are the following:

• Instead of spaces or underscores (_) between words, use capital letters. Files named this way are much easier for a search engine to find. Example: PhotosFlamingos instead of Photos of Flamingos or Photos_of_Flamingos.
• When using dates in a file name, state the date ‘back to front” for better sorting. Example: YYYY or YYYMM or YYYYMMDD – 2019 or 201903 or 20190308. I use hyphens when naming my photographs – 2019-03-08 – The article suggests not using hyphens, but I always put the year first and my photos sort correctly.
• When using a number as a file prefix, commonly used when naming photographs, use a two or three digit number. Example: flamingo.01 or flamingo.001.
• Use folder names that have meaning and can easily be identified as the repository for specific files. 

Something else I recommend, which was not included in the article, is the use of extra spaces at the beginning of a file name. If I have a large group of files in a folder, and there is one or more files I want to access frequently, I will add spaces to the beginning of the name and thus make them appear at the top of an alphabetized list. Example:      ‘   CDE’ will appear above ‘ABC’.

If you are thinking that these suggestions may be useful, but don’t know what to do about all the files on your hard drive, there are a variety of free and low-cost applications that allow you to rename a group of files simultaneously. The renaming applications will give all the files the same name, but with a suffix number to differentiate one from the other. 

To find a renaming applications do a Google search for “bulk renaming Windows” or “bulk renaming Mac.” You can also include the word “review” in your search to read what tech writers have to say about the products. I recommend cnet.com and pcmag.com for reviews. Both publications are reliable sources for objective reviews.

The entire article can be found HERE.

Megapixel Primer

Pixel and resolution are words we hear often, but how many of us really understand the meaning of these words? Without getting overly technical, the word pixel stands for Picture Element, a tiny dot on a screen. Many millions of these pixels, or megapixels, make up the words and images we see on our computer screens, and the more megapixels imply a higher resolution and thus a clearer image. When it comes to digital and smart phone cameras, manufacturers advertise the resolution based the number of megapixels (or MP), from a low of 8 MP to a high of 30 MP – but what does that really mean? Manufactures would have you believe that more megapixels are always better, but that is not completely true.

Cameras are more than just a computer with a lens, and a digital camera is not all that different from a traditional film camera, except that instead of using film, the camera captures images on a digital sensor. The size of sensor is relative to the size of the camera, and the larger the sensor, the more megapixels receptors it contains.

Most of you are familiar with the term DSLR, which stands for digital single lens reflex camera. Again, without getting too technical, these cameras, built with the same design as film cameras, use a mirror and lens system to capture images. Professional, full-frame DSLR cameras have a sensor that is the same size as a frame of 35mm film. Smaller DSLR cameras, point and shoot cameras and smart phone cameras have smaller sensors. Until recently the quality of images produced by cameras with these smaller sensors was inferior to images from full frame cameras, but that has changed. Now what is more important than the number of megapixels is the quality of both the  actual sensor and the camera lens.

In the dawn of digital photography, low-end cameras featured from one to three megapixels. Over the years sensors improved, and the megapixel count increased. A similar progression occurred when mobile phones began to feature built in cameras. While early models produced poor images, today even the tiny sensors in a mobile phone camera can rival the quality of larger sensors in some DSLR cameras.

Image quality is dependent on several factors – quality of the digital sensor, the size of the digital sensor, the number of megapixels that can fit on the sensor, and most importantly, the ratio of pixels to the size of the sensor. It is also important for a photographer to determine how they plan to use their images. Are the photos going to be printed, and if so how large, or are they primarily for on-screen display?

Most DSLR cameras feature sensors with 24–30 MP; the sensors on point and shoot cameras contain 12–20 MP;  and high-end smart phones feature cameras with 8–12 MP. While the print from a 30 MP, full-frame DSLR can be blown up as large as a billboard, an 8 MP cameras is more than adequate for and 8 x 10 inch print. Photographs taken by most of us will never even be printed on paper. Instead they will remain in the photo gallery on our cameras or computers, and shared on Facebook or Instagram.

Finally, it is worth noting one advantage to higher resolution, larger megapixel count images is their ability to capture images in low-light situations. But ever this advantage is disappearing. Just this month the techradar.com website published an article praising the low-light capabilities of the cameras in the Google Pixel 3, iPhone XS and Samsung Galaxy S9 phones.

Which type of camera you ultimately choose to use depends on not only on how you intend to use your photos, but on the type of subjects you chose to shoot. If you are a wildlife photographer like TR’s own Bradley Teets, the only way to shoot is with a DSLR and a long-telephoto lens. I consider myself a fine art photographer, and my photographs have been exhibited in juried art shows on Long Island and in Manhattan. I still use my Nikon DSLR, but recently I have relied more on the iPhone as my primary camera, and several prints selected for recent exhibits were taken with my iPhone and printed as large as 13 x 19 inches.

Are you up to date?

Do you know when the software on your computers and mobile devices was last updated? Keeping them updated with the most current software versions is very important, and neglecting to perform updates can degrade performance, increase instability and a make the system vulnerable to security threats. 

The operating systems, often referred to as an OS, is the software that controls a computer’s basic functions, and is the most important software installed on our computing devices, and the one most at risk for causing problems. Operating systems are given version numbers, sometimes followed by a code name. Major updates are introduced at intervals of a year or more, and incremental updates are released several times a year, usually to address security issues. Ignoring these updates cannot only degrade performance, but increase the risk of security breaches. 

Apple releases a major new version of its Macintosh, iPhone and iPad operating systems every fall, with minor updates available as they become necessary. MacOS 10.14, code name Mojave, for Mac computers was released in September 2018, and the most up-to-date version, released earlier this month, is 10.14.3. Apple also released its updated mobile operating system, iOS 12, last September, and the most current version is 12.1.2. 

Microsoft Windows 10, which runs on most other computers, was released in 2015, and periodic updates have been issued as needed, the most recent being version 1803. The current Android mobile operating system, named Pie - version 9.0, was released in August of 2018, and since then there have been several security updates.  

Both Microsoft and Apple include options to automatically download OS updates in the background. To activate automatic updates on a Mac running Mojave, open System Preferences and select Software Update and check ‘Automatically keep my Mac up to date.’ The actual installation process will be completed once the computer is restarted. In addition to MacOS, this also includes updates to software applications purchased through the App Store. 

For Windows 10 Home users, manual updating is not an option — the OS automatically updates whenever a new version is released. Most Windows users have had the experience of turning on their computer and getting the message that an update is in progress and the computer needs to restart. Since most OS updates require the computer to restart, you should always save your work when you leave the computer unattended, as most of us never know when an update will take place. Application software (word processing software, photo applications, etc.) should also be kept current, and most publishers notify users when updates are available.

It is also important to keep mobile devices current, and activating automatic updates is the best course of actions. On Apple iOS devices go to Settings; General; Software Update  and turn on Automatic Updates if it is not already turned on. iOS updates will be downloaded in the background, and you will be notified when an update is ready to be installed. You can then postpone the actual installation until you are not using the device.

You can also set your Apple devices to update installed apps as they are released. To do so, go to Settings and select your name, which appears at the top of screen. Select iTunes and App Store from the list, and turn on Updates. To view recent update activity, select the App Store app and tap Updates from the menu bar. The resulting screen shows a list of updated apps, with the most recent app at the top of the screen.

The Android operating system runs on devices made by a variety of manufacturers, and in most cases OS updates are the responsibility of the cellular carrier. As I have never used an Android device, I did some research on how to enable automatic updates, and it appears that each manufacturer handles the update system differently. My advice is to visit your carrier’s website for directions on how to enable updates of the OS and installed apps. It is also important to remember that updates to mobile operating systems can only take place when the devices are fully charged or plugged into a power outlet. 

When major OS updates are announced, Microsoft and Apple will include requirements for running the new software. Some equipment is just too old to be compatible with operating system versions that require additional memory and processing speed. It is also important to note publishers of application software must issue updates to keep pace with the updates to operating systems. If your computers and devices cannot run new versions of an operating system, then you may not be able to run current versions of your valued applications.

Are you looking at me?

For a minute, envision a movie or TV show featuring a law enforcement agency looking for the bad guy who is trying to flee the country. Cut to a computer screen using facial recognition technology to scan every person picked up by a CCTV Surveillance camera at the airport (CCTV stands for closed-circuit television). Within minutes the missing person is identified by the computer and apprehended. Is this speed of identification really possibly or still in the realm of science fiction? I decided to do a little research to learn the answer. 

While not yet ubiquitous, facial recognition technology is being used in the real world for a variety of applications. Facebook uses facial recognition technology to tag people in the photos you upload, and many digital photography applications can recognize, sort and identify the people in your photos. If you use an iPhone X, Galaxy Note 9 or an LG G7 mobile phone, you can unlocked it by holding the phone up to your face. Apple calls their system Face ID, and according to the Apple website, “Face ID uses advanced machine learning to recognize changes in your appearance. Wear a hat. Put on glasses. It even works with many types of sunglasses.” To train a device, the user takes multiple photos of their face, and software builds a facial map to use for identification. 

On the other side of the world, Australia has been in the forefront of facial recognition technology since 2007 with the system-wide introduction of SmartGates border control. The system is used for holders of ePassports entering the country at its international airports. ePassports, available in Australia and a number of other countries, including the United States and Canada, include an embedded, biometric chip containing a photograph and personal data. Upon entry in Australia, SmartGates uses facial recognition technology to verify travelers identities by comparing a facial scan to the data stored in the passport, in addition to information housed in international immigration databases.

In 2017 it was estimated that the police in London monitor over 51,000 cameras, and that the average Londoner was captured on camera about 300 times a day. Closer to home, New York has deployed approximately 6,000 CCTV cameras, as well as using license plate readers that capture photos of all cars traveling in and out of the city. The surveillance system in New York is one of the most sophisticated in the United States. The city is working with Microsoft to employ smart cameras using Artificial Intelligence to flag suspicious behaviors, such as vehicles that repeatedly drive around a singular location and unattended packages in public places. Chicago police command center’s continuously monitor approximately 10,000 cameras 24/7. These numbers do not include the thousands of private surveillance cameras installed in many of these cities. What is not widely known is how many of these CCTV system employ facial recognition as part of their regular surveillance procedures.

Many retail stores, as well as public sports and entertainment venues, employ cameras to take photographs of patrons, and compare the photos with databases of known criminals. However, you don’t have to be a criminal to have your photo included in a database of faces. According to reports by several news organizations, including both NBC and CBS news, the faces of most law abiding, adult Americans are part of statewide facial recognition databases. The photos are obtained from driver’s license ID photos, social media, and various government IDs. It is up to the states to decide to make their databases available to law enforcement, and presently sixteen states allow FBI access.

As with most technologies that use AI, this type of surveillance and identification is in its early stages, and privacy, misuse, and abuse are issues that must be addressed. Recently, facial recognition software designed by Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and a Chinese firm Megvii, have come under fire for problems of mis-identification as well as gender and racial bias. Last year, when the ACLU conducted a test of the Amazon software by scanning photos of members of Congress, if found that the software falsely matched twenty-eight of the photos with police mugshots. Citing privacy concerns, state and local governments are beginning to pass laws and issue guidelines to regulate the use of facial recognition software.

It is pretty obvious that facial recognition is going to become a dominant form of identification in the future. What today’s column hasn’t answered is the question posed in the first paragraph. Facial recognition technology does work, abet with many inaccuracies, but nowhere could I find information about the time required to match a known individual against a sea of faces appearing on real-time CCTV cameras. Thus it will probably be a few years before the scenes we see in the movies become everyday occurrences in real-life law enforcement. Look forward to that information in my 2030 column (lol).

Digital Housekeeping

A recent article in the New York Times by tech writer David Pogue outlined the steps users should take to keep their computers and mobile devices healthy. At least once a season I remind TR Times readers about the importance of making periodic back ups of all your computer data, and while Mr. Pogue advised making regular backups, he also recommended a “data cleanse.” The article addressed the idea that, just like in the real world, our virtual worlds accumulate a fair amount of junk, and now maybe the time to consider cleaning your virtual house.

A good place to start is by getting rid of all the files on your computer that are no longer needed — duplicate files, temporary files that were never deleted, downloads that have be save elsewhere and forgotten, bits of leftover files from deleted applications. All of this extra “junk” takes up memory and can slow down your computer and devices. Microsoft, Apple, and Google all offer built-in tools to help you clean out the junk.

• Windows 10 – Go to the Start menu and open Settings; System; then Storage. Click on “Free up space now,” and you will see a list of suggested categories to delete and how much space will be gained. Check the categories you want to delete and click Remove files. You can also turn on Storage Sense (the default value is set to off), and Windows will automatically delete superfluous and unnecessary files – temporary files, and files that accumulate in your recycle bin.

• Apple Macintosh – Included with its most recent version of Mac OS (computer operating system High Sierra or later) is a utility to manage the files on your Mac. To access the utility, click on the Apple menu at the top left of the screen and select About This Mac; click Storage; then Manage. If you choose Reduce Clutter you will be shown a list of files that are deemed expendable. You can also view different types of files from the list on the left of the window. Choosing Applications lets you see if you have more than one version of an application, and which is older. You can also see lists of other categories of files, which can help in spotting duplicate files

• Apple iOS – Go to Settings; General; iPhone Storage for a visual picture of what you have stored on your iPhone or iPad, followed by lists all of the apps on the device and how much space each is taking up. By viewing this list you can decide what applications need to be eliminated.

• Google Android – Beginning with the Oreo version of Android operating system, you can clean out junk files by going to Settings; Storage; Memory; then Free Up Space. You will see a list of  downloaded files, photos and videos and applications that can be deleted by category, or one at a time.

One task the built-in utilities do not accomplish is identifying duplicate files. To find and delete duplicated files, you will need a third party application. The most popular Windows 10 utility for finding duplicate files is CCleaner, free software file cleaning software that comes pre-installed on many Windows machines.  If it is not installed on your windows machine, it can be downloaded for free at cleaner.com. While the standard version of the software is free, a Pro version is available for $24.95, and also available for the Mac and Android operating systems.

As a Mac user, I am very satisfied with Duplicate Detective, an application that has only one purpose. The app searches for duplicate files, shows you the contents of both files and lets you choose which to delete.  The current version of the application, Duplicate Detective 2, is available for $4.95 from the App Store or fiplabs.com. On my iOS devices, I have installed BeetleCam Photo Cleaner that searches out similar photos, shows thumbnail images of the photos, and lets me choose which ones to delete.

Once you get your digital house efficiently organized, your computers and mobile devices will run faster, freeing space for all the new applications, files and photos you will be adding in the year to come. 

The Future is Happening Now …

The Future is Happening Now …

Last week’s column, titled “The Future is Coming,” previewed innovative technologies poised to enter the marketplace with the promise of making our life easier and more productive. A  more apt title may be the one for today’s column, “The Future is Happening Now.” While we, as consumers, think of technology as the devices and gadgets we see and use everyday, many of the technological advances changing our world happen behind the scenes.

I just finished reading Dan Brown’s 2017 best seller, Origins. While the book itself is rather formulaic, the story features a character named Winston, a very sophisticated AI (artificial intelligence) entity that converses with the protagonist as if it were human. Winston has a voice, communicates though headsets and smart phones, and passes the Turing Test —  a test developed in 1950 by the computer scientist Alan Turing that determines if a computer is indistinguishable from a human. The book postulates (spoiler alert) that the proliferation of personal technology is causing humans to evolve into a new and better species co-joined with technology. While this premise seems far fetched, there are many things happening today in the realm of AI that are fascinating, and maybe more than a little frightening.

In layperson’s terms, a computer programmed for artificial intelligence can interpret, analyze and learn from external information (data), and use what it learns to achieve specific goals and guide future performance. An example is how Google uses AI to rank the results of searches. In the past human operators decided the order of search results. Humans are not always objective and the top results were not always of the highest quality. Google has since replaced the human factor with AI that can more accurately select content for the ranking of search results. These AI based rankings are constantly changing as the AI learns from how users react to the search results. If the result that is third on the list gets more clicks than the results listed first and second, the AI code will change the order and bump number three to the top of the list.

Facebook is very close mouthed about the technology behind its platform, but company officials often cite the use of AI in monitoring community standards and weeding out unsavory, hateful and profane postings. Facebook still uses human moderators to screen and remove offensive material, but these moderators only act when a post is flagged by other users. AI is being deployed to identify potentially offensive material, and even fake news before it is flagged by users. Facebook and other social media apps like Instagram and Twitter also use AI to select the feeds that you see in your timeline. Every post you expand, every search you make, is used by the AI to learn your likes and dislikes and tailor your experience.

What about all the advertisements you see when you visit social media websites. How does the website decide what advertisement to show you, and why? How many times have you done a web search for a particular product, only to find ads for the same or similar product pop up next time you log on to Facebook or some other website. It is called programmatic advertising, and it is the dominate form of digital advertising on the web. Programmatic advertising uses AI to profile visitors to websites and apps, and then use that information to deliver selected ads across a variety of platforms.

Financial institutions use AI as gatekeepers to protect customers from potential fraud. Did you ever get a text or email notification that possible fraud was detected on your credit card? You can thank AI for watching over your account and flagging an “out of the ordinary”.  transaction.

AI is also found in apps on our smart phones that we use on a daily basis. Navigation apps such as Google and Apple Maps us AI to determine the best routes based on the interpretation of current, real-time traffic data. Camera apps with a portrait mode uses AI to select and blur the background, change the lighting and determine the main subject.

While artificial intelligence had moved out of its infancy, it still has a long way to go before it produces entities such as Winston that can converse and interact with us as if they were human. We are living in an evolving future full of promise and trepidation. OnMouseClick was conceived to help TR Times readers learn how to use everyday software. Over the years the column evolved to keep pace with an increasingly knowledgable readership and advances in technology. In 2019 my goal is to alert readers to the ever changing trends in technology and how they affect our lives.  

The Future is Coming …

In the 1989 movie Back to the Future, the main characters Marty McFly and Dr. Brown, travel forward in time to 2015, a time of flying cars and a woman in the Oval Office. Neither of these predictions have come to pass, but last week at CES in Las Vegas (formerly the Consumer Electronics Show), an actual date was projected for the introduction of a flying car. The Bell Nexus, is a VTOL air taxi (VTOL stands for vertical take off and landing) which the company (Bell was formerly known as Bell Helicopters) plans to have soaring over our cities by the mid-2020s.

CES is noted as the showcase for innovative technology. Many of the products featured at the show are prototypes of things to come, like the Bell Nexus, while others are products that will enter the marketplace this year. While most of the automotive related products fall into the first category, the all electric 2020 Harley-Davison LiveWire is set to debut in the fall, and can be pre-ordered now. Priced at just under $30,000, the LiveWire is a futuristically deigned motorcycle that can go from 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds, with a top speed of 110 mph. 

A variety of products were introduced for the home, many of them designed to interact through voice commands through Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa. Over the past year Instant Pot introduced a line of programmable pressure cookers that have been all the rage – promising nutritious, healthy foods cooked from two to ten times faster than on the stove and using 70% less energy. The newest model of the Instant Pot Smart WiFi pressure cooker, priced at under $300, incorporates Google Assistant voice command functionality. Say “Hey Google, set the program on my cooker to rice,” and the Instant Pot will begin cooking your rice, although you do need to add the rice and water to the pot before giving the command!

Whirlpool introduced a countertop version of its Smart Oven, featuring built-in cameras that can detect the food you place in the oven and automatically set the temperature and cooking time. The oven can tell the difference between frozen and thawed items, and can be programmed to bake, broil, convection bake, convection roast, toast, reheat, proof, dehydrate, air fry, slow cook and keep warm. It features a built-in food thermometer, can be programmed with an app and send the app notifications to update you on cooking status. The newest model is compatible with both Google Assistant and Alexa devices, and can be programmed via voice commands. If you want to watch food while it cooks, you can access the internal cameras and see an image of the cooking process in real-time on the 27-inch transparent LCD display built into the front door. The display can also show recipes, and when you select one, it guides you through the step-by-step directions. Pricing and release date have yet to be announced.

Another smart device introduced for the kitchen is the Sensate Faucet with Kohler Konnect. Sensate Faucets have been around for a while, but the newest incarnation is designed for voice activation with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit. The original Sensate was introduced in 2013 and was designed to bring hands-free control to the kitchen sink with a series of integrated sensors that can turn the water on and off with the wave of a hand. The newest version is voice activated, and in addition to turning on and off, it can dispense measured amounts of water and change from stream to spray with a voice command. A sensor on the faucet monitors water usage and sends the information to an app. The new Sensate Faucet is not yet available and pricing has not been announced, but the pricing of the original Sensate Faucets started at over $500.

Past CES shows have featured a wide variety of devices for home security and this year was no exception. Most of the security devices and cameras on display did not include revolutionary features, but Alarm.com did introduce an new variation in home security cameras. The company introduced Wellcam, a wifi-connected video camera that is meant to be located in the home of a loved-one who is in need of monitoring. With a 180-field of vision camera, it captures live video for caregivers and concerned relatives. Caregivers can check in with an Alarm.com mobile app to see live video or captured video clips. The Wellcam sends out alerts when something does not seem right, can make two-way audio-calls, and can send out a help alert without a smartphone. Wellcam is available now and is priced under $350.

Over 4,400 companies exhibited at CES, and the number of products on display is mind boggling. I hope this small peek into the world of high-tech has been interesting, and maybe you or a member of your family, will be bringing one of these products into your home in the near future.