It is so much more…

The night before I sat down to write this week’s column we had some exciting news from Arizona — our daughter-in-law gave birth to our second grandchild, Julianna. Our son had his mobile phone with him in the delivery room, and he sent us photos of our beautiful granddaughter just moments after she was born. Of course, as a proud grandmother, I want to carry her pictures with me. Not too long ago I would be carrying snapshots, but now I have my iPhone.

The iPhone has an amazing high-resolution display, with a built-in photo app to store images. I try never to be without my phone, and I am therefore never without photos of our family. I regularly update the pictures of our first granddaughter Brianna, and now Julianna has been added to the album. As a photographer, I even keep a copy of my photographic portfolio on the iPhone, just in case I meet someone who might be interested in seeing my work.

Not only does the iPhone display photos, but it sports a very capable camera. Recently, when a professional photographer was asked what camera was best for taking pictures, he answered “it is the one you have with you.” As a an avid photographer, I cannot agree more. I like to always have a camera with me, and thus I have a very small, high quality, Panasonic Lumix point and shoot camera that I carry in my purse. However, I don’t always have my purse with me, and since I bought my iPhone, I find myself taking more pictures with the phone, even posting some of them to my Photo Blog at www.digitalquinn.com/photoblog. One blog visitor commented that the quality of the iPhone photos convinced them to buy the new iPhone 4G.

Here are a few examples of photos taken with my iPhone:

Besides taking photographs, the iPhone camera acts as a scanner in several different situations. If you are out shopping and want to compare prices, you can use apps such as Scan&Shop or Pic2Shop to capture the bar code of a product with your iPhone and you will be shown comparative pricing for the product at other stores or online retailers. Another app, Keyring, lets you scan or enter all of your loyalty cards on your iPhone. Next time you shop at CVS, just show the clerk your CVS card barcode on your iPhone and you are good to go.

Chase Bank has even added document scanning to their online banking. Using the Chase Mobile iPhone app, bank customers can take a photograph of the front and back of a check made out to them and have it deposited directly into whatever bank account they choose. Just in time for tax season, Intuit, makers of TurboTax Software, introduced SnapTax app. Users who file the 1040EZ form can take a photo of their W-2 form, and the app does the rest of the filing. The cost is $15 per filing, although for some unknown reason you must be under 65 years of age. The future of smart phones and financial transaction appear limitless.

Last year I wrote about receiving  a Kindle for Christmas 2009 from my wonderful husband. Now, in addition to my Kindle, I have the Kindle app on my iPhone. The app synchronizes with my Kindle, and I can download the same books to both devices. Why would I want to read a book on my iPhone? For the same reason that I use it to take photos, because I have it with me. If I find myself somewhere with time to kill, I can pull out my iPhone, open the Kindle app, and go to the book I am currently reading. The app automatically asks me if I want to go to the furthest page read, syncs to the appropriate page that I was last reading on my Kindle, and I am ready to read. The high-resolution screen, while small, is very legible, and as an avid reader I thoroughly enjoy having a book with me wherever I am.

Next week I will take a look a some of the other nomenclature I introduced in the first OnMouseClick of the season.

Why I love my iPhone…

Before I retired from teaching, I used a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) to keep track of my calendar, addresses, and class lists. In fact, I was the proud owner of the first PDA ever, the Apple Newton. I used the Newton for several years, and when Apple let the technology flounder, I moved on to a Palm type device. I have to admit that sometimes using a PDA was more trouble than it was worth, and when I retired I found myself using it less and less. Finally, after some neglect on my part, my PDAs battery completely died and I put it to rest. 

I really didn’t miss using a PDA, that is until the iPhone was introduced in 2008. The promise of having all the mini-applications, or apps, available all the time, in a device that would fit in my purse or jacket pocket, was very intriguing. I definitely had iPhone envy, and now that I have an iPhone, I can only say that it is everything I thought it would be, and more. 

Just after I submitted last weeks column, I came across a phrase that is an excellent description of an app — a one trick pony. While most computer programs are fairly versatile, the small programs known as apps have one specific job, and the best of them do that job very well. 

Pre-installed on the iPhone are the basic apps that you would expect, such as an address book, calendar, notepad, clock, weather app, compass, mapping, email, and web browser. 

Contacts, the address book, lets me keep my contact list in groups, so if I need the phone number of a doctor, I can go to my Doctor group for his/her number. Both the Weather app and Clock app allow you to set up a number of locations. My Clock app is set to Eastern Standard Time and Arizona time (our son is living in Arizona), but if we were to be traveling I can easily add time zones from anywhere around the world.

Third-party free and paid Apps are available for the iPhone from the App Store through iTunes, a program that runs on both Mac and PC computers. Before Apple agrees to make an app available in its app store, it has to be vetted for quality. There have been complaints that Apple  censors some material, but with hundreds of thousands of apps to choose from, it is very easy to find an app to fit your needs. Most free apps feature ads, (with an upgrade version that has no ads but is not free) which is a good way to try an app out before buying it. The range of prices for most paid apps are from $.99 to $4.99.

Two apps that I purchased, and use constantly, are Grocery Gadget for my shopping lists and TapExpenses to tally my daily expenditures.  Grocery Gadget, comes with a pre-installed database of hundreds of items, and allows me to keep separate lists for different types of stores. For example, I have a list for local grocery shopping and more specific lists for both Walmart and Costco. I also wanted an app to keep track of how much money I spend, but I wasn’t looking for a full-fledged budgeting application; TapExpenses meets my need perfectly. Every time I spend money I can keep track of how much I spend, when, what it was for, where, and how (cash or credit). I can even call up a report anytime and immediately see what I spent by dates, categories, and stores.

Rounding out my list of useful apps I use regularly are apps for my ToDo List, serving sizer, cooking substitutions app, an app actually turns my iPhone into a small carpenter’s level (really, it works!), mapping (Google Maps on the iPhone are excellent), exercise monitoring, , and locating just about anything.

Next week I’ll complete my musings about “smartphones” and the iPhone with a bit more on using the iPhone to navigate the world around you. I have only discussed the iPhone because that is the only smartphone I have own. There are other smartphones available and although Apples has the most apps available, Google and others have thousands of useful apps for Android phones. 

There's an App for that…

As I begin to write today’s column I know that the local, outside temperature is 65° F., and it is also 43° F.  in Sierra Vista, AZ, where our son and his family are living. I know that because my “smartphone” has an app for that (app is short for application). In fact, my phone, an Apple iPhone 4g, seems to have an app for just about anything I can think of. I have apps for shopping lists, keeping track of daily expenditures, accessing email, viewing webpages, taking notes, looking up telephone numbers, finding businesses, and reading restaurant reviews, to name just a few.

Back in 2001 those of us with mobile phones used them for just one function — making and receiving phone calls. At that time another popular device was a Personal Digital Assistant, or PDA, which was actually a small, self-contained, handheld computers with built-in software for calendar, contact list, world clock, calculator, and note pad. Pagers were also popular in 2001, especially with business professionals, and it was fairly common to see someone with a cell phone, pager, and a PDA all clipped to their belt.

That began to change in 1999, when Research in Motion (RIM), a Canadian company, introduced an updated version of their Blackberry pager. The new Blackberry was a combination PDA and pager with a built-in, albeit tiny, QWERTY keyboard with the capability to send and receive email. The Blackberry became immensely popular, and in 2002 RIM introduced an updated Blackberry with the added capability for both voice and data transmission. The “smartphone” era had begun.

By 2006 the mobile phone market had changed drastically. Phones were becoming smaller, while at the same time increasing their diversity of  features, such as a contact list,  a calculator and a camera. These features were difficult to use on such a small device, and for serious “smartphone” users there was still only one real option, the Blackberry. Then, in January of 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone and the world of “smartphone” was instantly changed.

Apple’s phone featured a full size, touch-sensitive screen, made of scratch-resistant, liquid-crystal glass, with a high-resolution display, visual voice mail, and a two megapixel camera. In lieu of a physical keyboard, the iPhone featured a virtual QWERTY keyboard that filled the screen for typing and a virtual numeric keyboard for making phone calls.

What elevated the status of the iPhone were the many apps available for the device. The word app is short for application, but in terms of “smartphones”, apps are actually very small programs, each designed for a very specific task. While many apps access the web, they only connect to sites very specific to their task. The iPhone managed to carve a large market share, in spite of the limitation of being only available on the AT&T network — something that may have changed by the time this column is published. Reliable sources are expecting an iPhone announcement from Verizon the week of January 9.

Since 2007 the iPhone has been updated four times; the most recent iPhone was released last June. The newest iPhones are available with 16 or 32 gigabytes of memory, feature a five megapixel camera, and can connect to the internet through both a cellular network and WiFi. Until the first Android phones was introduced in 2009, the Apple iphone was the most versatile and efficient smartphone available. Android phones are very similar in appearance and function to the iPhone, and unlike the iPhone, are also available from a variety of carriers. 

As of this date there are more than 300,000 apps available for the iPhone and over 100,000 for Android phones, and there are many versions of the most popular apps that function on both platforms. In the coming weeks OnMouseClick will look more closely at apps, and how they can simplify your life. 

Making Facebook Yours…

FACEBOOK is many faceted, and as you use it you will discover numerous ways to customize it to fit your needs. One thing you will want to customize on your FACEBOOK page is a profile picture. 

Profile pictures appear in the top-left corner of the page and can be changed as often as you like. Most people choose a self-portrait, while others include pictures with family, friends, pets, or even a favorite landscape. My current profile picture is one of me with my two beautiful granddaughters, and the page of a good friend of mine features a picture of her cat.

To add a profile picture to your page, begin by choosing a photo on your computer hard drive. I suggest a close-up photo that will show up well in a small, thumbnail size. Open your FACEBOOK page and click the EDIT PROFILE button in the top right-hand corner. If at first you don’t see an EDIT PROFILE button, click on your name on the on the right side of the blue bar at the top of the screen.

The first screen to appear is BASIC INFORMATION, which can be filled in if you choose. Along the left side of the screen are other choices, one of which is PROFILE PICTURE. Choose PROFILE PICTURE and you will see an empty box just waiting for your picture. Depending on the browser you are using, you will see either a CHOOSE FILE or BROWSE button — click on it and navigate to the image you want to upload. After you have selected your image, click on OPEN or CHOOSE (again, which one you see depends on the browser you are using), and the photo will upload to your FACEBOOK page. Click on the HOME button and you will be back on your WALL page.

Your PROFILE PICTURE is now in place and you are ready to tackle adding comments and pictures for your FACEBOOK “friends” to see. Comments are what you want to say, and for every comment you can choose to add one photo, or a group of photos which will then be grouped together into an album.

To add a comment click in the dialog box at the top of the page that contains the words “What’s on your mind?” Type your comment and then click on ADD PHOTO / VIDEO. You will then be given the option of uploading a single photo (or video) or creating a photo album. If you choose to upload a single photo, navigate to the photo (or video) you want to upload, just as you did for the profile picture. If you choose album, navigate to the folder that contains your images (all of the photos must be in the same folder on your hard drive), and shift click on the photos you want to add to the album (by shift clicking you can select multiple photos at one time). Click on CHOOSE or OPEN (depending on your browser) and the album will be added to FACEBOOK and attached to your current comment.

If anyone has specific questions about using FACEBOOK, email them to me at onmouseclick@digitalquinn.com. The subject of next week’s OnMouseClick will be making video calls with SKYPE and YAHOO

A Primer for 21st Century Technology…

Happy New Year! We are now into the second decade of the twenty-first century. Just before New Years IBM published “Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five Years.” As I read through the listed innovations, I thought they sounded pretty far fetched, but then I had to admit that much of the technology we are using today did not exist five years ago, and technology we used just ten years ago seems like a distant memory. In 2001 many households did not own a computer, the majority of people used the internet for little more than sending and receiving email, and social networking meant meeting new people at your boss’s Christmas party.

Fast forward ten years, and much has changed. Computers have evolved into a myriad of ubiquitous devices, and there have been major changes in the way we use traditional computers. To help bring TR residents up-to-date, I plan to devote the 2011 OnMouseClick columns to some of the aspects of technology that we couldn’t even imagine ten years ago.

To begin with, I made a list terms that you may or may not be familiar with. The words are listed here, and I will be defining them in my January and February columns. If you can think of something I missed, please let me know. You can email me at lsquinn@digitalquinn.com, or leave a message on the OnMouseClick blog at onmouseclick.blogspot.com

smartphone

iPad

iPod

iPhone

Android

Google

tablet computer

social networking 

Facebook

Twitter

texting

cloud storage

apps

social coupons

Groupon

eReader

eBooks

Kindle

blog

podcasts

IM

The first word on the list is “smartphone,” which is just what it sounds like — a phone is more than a phone. “Smatphones” can, among other things, send and receive email, display webpages, and display a personal calendars and address books.  Next week’s OnMouseClick will be devoted to “smartphones;” their evolution, how they work, and how they can be used effectively.

This week I want to share with you a website that you might not be familiar with, www.groupon.com. By definition, “Groupon” is a deal-of-the-day website, localized to major markets in the United States. “Groupon” enlists business to offer discounts that can be purchased online and redeemed at a later date. Once you register your email address and location, you receive a daily email with a local offer.

I’ve been receiving Groupon emails for a few months, and while I have only taken advantage of one offer, several others have been tempting. The one I did purchase was in New York, shortly before we left home. An outstanding bakery in a nearby town offered a $20 coupon for $10. I made the purchase online and printed the coupon. When I visited the bakery, just before we left for Florida, I bought $20 of breads and goodies for the trip south. Total cost to me was $10!

Now that we are in Florida I have opted to receive email offers in the Tampa area.  Today’s offer was for two hours worth of bowling, including shoe rental for up to four people at Liberty Lanes in Largo. Included for $29 was a large pizza and pitcher of soda. According to the email, the actual value of the offer was $61. A pretty good deal, if only I liked to bowl and it was closer to TR!