What to do with all your old photos…

Back home in New York we have old family photo albums from our parents, and even grandparents. Add them to our own family albums, plus all the loose photos that never made it into an album, and that makes a large collection of photos describing and displaying our family, friends and history. What to do with it all? The answer for our modern times is to create a digital archive by scanning the photos and creating digital photo albums.

Over the past few years I scanned a good number of our family photos, but life gets in the way and the project never seems to get completed. I have been using a flatbed scanner — and while the quality of the scans is excellent, the process is very labor intensive. The scanner bed needs to be wiped off after each scan to avoid smudges and dust, and scanning high resolution images is a slow process, as is saving the images. 

The photos in the old family albums have been the most difficult to scan. Old photos deteriorate, fade, crack, turn yellow, stick together, and simply decay with age. Most of the photos were placed in albums using photo corners, and some of the adhesive has also decayed over time, making it difficult to remove, and later replace the images in the albums.

Recently I have been targeted by ads, mostly on Facebook, for mobile phone apps designed to create a digital archive using the phone as a scanner. As I use my iPhone to scan documents, with excellent results, I thought these apps would be worth further review. A big plus to using a mobile phone is that the photos would not have to be removed from the albums. After doing a little research I decided to try two apps — Heirloom (for both iOS and Android) and Pic Scanner (iOS only). 

Heirloom is completely free and is easy to use. The only drawback is that before using Heirloom you need to create an account, and all Heirloom scans are saved to the Heirloom cloud server. The uploaded scans are of a higher resolution than the copies saved directly on the phone. In order to use the higher resolution image, which you need if you plan to print, you must sign into your account and download the image to your computer.

Scanning the image is simple, and the streamlined interface is very easy to use. The app recognizes edges and automatically crops images. Once you scan an image, which is just like using the built-in Camera app, you can make simple edits and add a description, date, and location. In addition to saving to the Heirloom server and your device, you can share images with groups or send as email and text messages.

The second app I tried is Pic Scanner. The app is free to download, the first twelve scans are free and unlimited scanning comes at a cost of $2.99 via an in-app purchase. The app automatically detects edges, crops and saves images, and features elementary editing tools. Up to four images can be scanned at one time, and the app recognizes the individual photos. However, for higher resolution, the photos should be scanned individually. Excellent instructions are included with the app and on the publishers website. An outstanding feature of the app is a built-in leveling “ok” notice when the phone is level. I’ve found that one drawback with using an iPhone as a scanner is knowing when the phone is level for scanning. Pic Scanner handles that concern by telling you when the phone is level and ready to scan. When “ok” appears, simply press the shutter button and move on to the next photo.

Both Heirloom and Pic Scanner are excellent apps, but I found Pic Scanner to be the better choice. The only drawback was the automatic cropping, which can produce uneven results. When it does, it is a simple matter to create your own crop. The app works with both iPhones and iPads. For Android users, Heirloom should serve you well.

Setting up a digital archives of your family photographs creates a historical record for your children, grandchildren, and future generations. You will be able to share cherished moments and maybe they will see that yes, we were once young, vibrant and active —  and just maybe we really do have a lot in common.

To find out more about the apps visit for http://www.appinitio.com Pic Scanner and www.heirloom.net for Heirloom. If you are interested in creating your photo archives with a flatbed scanner, PC Magazine published an excellent article on the process — http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2429388,00.asp.

The State of Online Photo Editing and Storage …

How many of us are in possession of family photo albums dating back to the early part of the last century? Since the late 1890s, when Kodak introduced the first truly portable camera, memories have been captured on film, printed on photographic paper and lovingly saved in albums. If you are like me, you inherited photo albums from parents and grandparents, and for years you created your own family albums. Today, most of the photographs we take never become prints, but instead are saved, and displayed, in digital format. How do we keep them safe?

Back in the days when we took photos with film camera, there were limits to how many pictures we could take. Most rolls of film held 12, 24, or 36 exposures. Film was expensive, and was bulky to carry around. When you saw something you wanted to photograph, you usually took one, maybe two shots. Today, with digital photos, there is little thought given whether to take two or ten shots of one scene, just to be sure you get it exactly right. The iPhone even has a built in burst mode; hold your finger on the camera button and the camera continues to shoot photos until you lift your finger. With the ability to take so many photos, it is imperative that you sort through your images on a regular basis, keeping only the best and deleting the rest. When you have decided on the keepers, they should be saved to a local backup drive for safe keeping. Once upon a time you would have used floppy disks for your backups. It would have worked but was labor intensive and required a large number of floppy disks. Today you can use a USB flash drive, also know as thumb drive. Flash drives have become very reasonably priced and an eight gigabyte drive can easily store up to 1,000 four megabyte images.

For added safety digital photos should be stored in more than one location and today cloud storage is the best option. Last week I wrote about Amazon’s Prime Photo service, which is included with an Amazon Prime subscription. Three other possible alternatives are Google Photos, Apple iCloud, and Flickr.

Google Photos (photos.google.com) is the free successor to the popular photo editing application Picasa, which will be phased out over the next few months. Google Photos offer unlimited cloud storage for both digital photographs and videos. The service offers sharing options, organizes photos by months or days, rudimentary editing, and a automated feature, Assistant, which includes face and location recognition. The service can be accessed exclusively online, or by downloading a desktop iOS or Android app. There is a 16 megapixel limit to the size of the images that can be stored, but this should not be a problem for most amateur photographers. Google Photos is accessible to anyone with a free, Google id. 

If you use Apple devices, iCloud offers four levels of service. Everyone who has an Apple ID receives 5 GB of free storage, which can be used to backup all types of files, including photos. The limit increases to 50 GB for $0.99 a month, 200 GB for $2.99 a month, and 1 TB (terabyte) for $9.99 a month (One terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes, and the catalog of a serious photographer can easily exceed this amount of data). To make storing photos effortless, uses can choose to automatically upload every photo taken with an iPhone or iPad. While not for everyone, iCloud offers low cost and a seamless way to backup and store photos for users of iOS devices.

Another alternative is Flickr (www.flickr.com), the Yahoo service which offers 1 TB of free storage. For over ten years Flickr has been a premier photo storage, organizing and editing service for millions of users around the world. To access Flickr you need a free Yahoo ID, and it can be accessed exclusively online or with an iOS or Android app. Over the past decade, while several other cloud storage services closed up shop, Flickr has continued to evolve and keep pace with the times. Flickr also makes it extremely easy to share photos, both with private groups or with the community of Flickr users.   

Once you decide to use a cloud solution for the backup and storage of your digital photos, you are now creating the modern version of a family photo album. Of course with the rate of change today, modern may only be relevant until the next advancement in 2017! If anyone has any other topics of interest that they would like to see addressed in OnMouseClick, please email me at onmouseclick@digitalquinn.com.

And the answer is …

Two weeks ago I received a phone call from a TR Times reader who inquired if I could expand on my discussion of Amazon Prime Photos, the unlimited photo storage service briefly mentioned in my February 5 OnMouseClick column. To refresh your memory, Amazon Prime is a $99 a-year subscription service that includes free shipping of Amazon products, Amazon Video, Amazon Music, and Prime Photos. Of these services, Prime Photos is probably the least known and most underutilized. 

Prime Photo is a cloud storage service that takes advantage of Amazon's Cloud Drive. Since the journey of bits and bytes to these data centers begins with an upload to the internet, the centers are often referred to as Cloud Storage. When a user takes advantage of cloud storage, it is said that they are storing information on a cloud drive.

Amazon’s Cloud Drive is a service that stores files in Amazons’ secure servers, located at their massive data centers. The Amazon Prime members receive unlimited photo storage and 5 GB of storage for other types of data. While the web abounds with photo storage services, most charge a fee, and as Amazon Prime members are already paying for the photo service, it definitely warrants some review. 

Prime Photos can be accessed from a computer or with the Amazon Photos iOS and Android apps. You sign into Amazon Cloud Drive in your browser at www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos. Once signed in, uploaded photos can be viewed by date, or in user created folders. Images can be moved between folders and sorted by date taken or date uploaded. Images can be shared to email, Facebook, or Twitter. You can also choose a single photo and create a URL (web address) that will allow other people to view the selected image. However Amazon unfortunately does not include any editing features with its service.

Uploading photos from the desktop is simple. You click on UPLOAD in the top right corner of the screen and navigate to the files you want to upload. Unfortunately there is no way of uploading a folder of images without selecting each individual image — to select multiple images, click on the first image you want to upload, hold the shift key and click the last image in the group, and then select enter.

To upload photos on a mobile device, choose Add Photos from the menu (tap the three lines on the top left of the screen to see the menu). You will see the photos albums on your device, including the camera roll. To upload an entire album, click the checkbox on the top right and then select the album or albums you want to upload. To upload selected images, click on an album and select the individual images you want to upload. Once you have made your selections, tap Upload on the top right, and the upload will commence. If you choose Auto-Save from the menu, everything in your Camera Roll will automatically upload to the Cloud Drive on an ongoing basis. When using a mobile device, it is a good idea to remember that uploading a large number of photos at one time can be a drain on both your internet connection and battery. Unless you have fast service, I recommend uploading photos while you are asleep and the device is plugged into an electrical outlet.

Video files are not treated the same as photo images. Videos can be uploaded, but they count against the 5GB Cloud Drive storage limit. For $59 a year, Amazon offers unlimited storage for all types of files, but the Cloud Drive has a limitation as a backup solution since it does not sync files (a backup service that syncs files only uploads files that are new since the last backup). 

Next week I will compare Amazon’s Prime Photo with some of the other popular online photo solutions.

Where has all the data gone?

Download and upload — two words most of us are very familiar with, but do we really know what they mean? Did you send or receive and email today, visit a website, make a Google search, sign in to Facebook, send a text, stream a video, or share a photograph? If you did any of those things, you were downloading and uploading data, but where does the downloaded data come from, and where is the uploaded data going? We say that we use the internet and backup our files to the cloud, but where is the internet; what is the cloud? Are they real, tangible entities or are they as amorphous as they sound, existing somewhere beyond time and space.

In reality, data, which is nothing more than bits and bytes of numerical information, does indeed go somewhere tangible. It goes to data centers all over the globe to be stored and retrieved as needed. These data centers are networks of very powerful computers, called servers, owned and operated by thousands of companies and organizations. These computers perform very different functions than our personal computers. The servers run dedicated software designed to preform specific functions. They wait for requests from other machines (known as clients) and respond to their requests. Some of the types of servers are: file servers receive, store and send data files; web servers store webpages; mail servers receive, store and forward emails; media servers transmit digital video and audio; game servers enable computers and gaming devices to play multiplayer games; database servers maintain and share organized collections of data; application servers host application software that can be utilized without being installed on individual computers.

Millions of servers run continuously around the world and virtually every internet connection requires one or more interactions with multiple servers. The physical size of a large data center varies from 400,000 to more than 1 million square feet. Such centers house thousands of servers, all of which require tremendous amounts of electricity for power and cooling. The amount of electricity used in a large data center is equivalent to the amount used by a small town. 

A online search for Google data centers identified fourteen locations, seven in the United States, one in South American, two in Asian and four in Europe. In 2013 Google’s data centers housed 900,000 servers that consumed 260 million watts of power, enough to consistently power 200,000 homes.

Facebook operates three data centers in the United States and in 2013 it opened its first center in Europe. Located just inside the Arctic Circle in Lulea, Sweden, this state of the art Data Center is one of the most energy efficient centers in existence. Powerful computers generate a great deal of heat, and one of the most critical aspects of maintaining a data center is temperature control, which in most cases involves massive air conditioning units. At the state-of-the-art Swedish facility the frigid arctic air is filtered and piped into the building in lieu of air conditioning. Facebook’s data centers are online twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. As of January 27 of this year, Facebook had 1.591 billion monthly active users, between 2004 and 2014 over 400 billion photo were uploaded, 7.8 trillion messages were sent and in 2014 31% of US senior citizens use Facebook.

I want to thank TR Times reader Norm from Golf View who inspired this column. After reading the February 5 issue, he called and asked if I could write a column describing  how Amazon Prime members can take advantage of the option to store unlimited photos in the cloud. I plan to cover that topic in next week’s column, but first I wanted to describe a context for cloud storage. 

note: The information in this column was compiled from a variety of internet based sources, including business dictionary.com, Wikipedia, Yahoo!; PC, Cloudyn Blog at cloudy.com, ZDNet, StorageServers blog, theatlantic.com and expandedramblings.com. 

Cut the cord — or at least shorten it…

We live in a wireless world. Or so it would seem, until you look at all the cables and cords connected to our electronics. How is it that these so-called wireless devices need so many wires to make them work?

Mobile phones and tablets need be plugged into a power source to recharge the batteries. We have two of each, which means four cables and four power adapters. Two laptop computers that must be plugged into a power outlet to recharge the batteries. An Apple TV set-top-box that captures a wireless signal, but it needs to be connected to the television set with an HDMI cable and plugged into a power outlet, and two soundbars and subwoofers for two TV’s, both of which need a power connection and also audio jacks to the TV’s. A SONOS sound system that requires a power cord. A wireless printer that comes with a power cord and a USB cable for its initial setup, and finally a Centurylink DSL modem-wireless router with a power cord and DSL phone connection. Back in New York we also have Verizon cable coming into our house, so in addition to the modem with coaxial cabling and a power cord, we have two DVR set-top boxes that need power and cables to connect to the television sets. Wireless we are not!

All of these devices requiring power connections can put a strain on the outlets in your home, not to mention the problems that can occur in the event of a power surge. Devices with small digital components and microprocessors are extremely sensitive, and even a small, 10-volt fluctuation in electrical current can be detrimental to the device. To protect your electronic equipment, you should always plug them into a good quality surge protector that will double as a power strip, adding additional outlets to your home. 

Surge protectors are rated in joules (a joule is a unit of energy). When purchasing a surge protector, look for one with an energy absorption/dissipation rate of a minimum of 600 joules — more is better, a response time of less than one nanosecond, and a status light to let you know that the surge protection is working.

When it comes to mobile phones and tablets, the power cables used for these devices double as a cord to connect the device to a computer. Apple devices use a cable with a proprietary connection called a lightening connector on one end, and a USB connection on the other. Most other devices use a cable with a standard USB connection on one end and a micro USB connection on the other. In both cases, the standard USB connection plugs into a computer, or a power brick that plugs into the wall, and the other end plugs into the device. A power brick is simply a power supply for almost every device on the market similar in size and shape of a small brick, hence the name. It plugs  into an outlet and you can plug components into it for recharging. 

To simplify plugging in two or more devices you can replace the individual power bricks with a wall charging hub that can connect the cable for two or more devices. Another alternative is to purchase a surge protector that plugs directly into the wall and also doubles as a USB charger. Using this type of surge protector eliminates extra wires on the floor while still expanding the number of available outlets. When purchasing an outlet with USB connections, it is important to know the output amp rating (amount of current). A mobile phone typically requires 1 amp and a tablet requires 2.1 amps. To charge both a phone and tablet at the same time the rating should be 3.1 amps or higher. As a device will only take as much current as it needs — a 1 amp device can charge in a 2 amp connection, but a 2 amp device in a 1 amp connection will charge extremely slow, if at all. The photos show examples of both types of units.

There are rumors that Apple may be introducing iPhones that can charge wirelessly in the near future. For now, wireless doesn’t mean truly wireless, but with some planning you can better manage the wires in your house. 

Until next week, visit onmouseclick.blogspot.com for the online version of OnMouseClick.

For your listening enjoyment…

I have written in past columns that Eddie and I stream media content, such as Netflix and Hulu, to our television sets with both an Apple TV and Smart TV. The Apple TV is a small wifi device that plugs into an HDMI port on a television set, enabling it to play streamed content. Similar devices are the Roku 4, Google Chromecast, and Amazon Fire. A Smart TV does pretty much the same thing, but without the need for a third party device. By definition a smart TV is a television set with integrated internet and wifi features.

Each device, or television manufacturer, offers a variety of content, some of it specific to the device and some available across all platforms – each with a unique user interface. For that reason, even though we have two smart television sets in our house, we choose to watch Netflix and Hulu on the Apple TV because we prefer its interface. What we cannot watch on our Apple TV is Amazon Prime Video. Apple and Amazon are feuding and the result is that Apple TV is not available for sale on Amazon (although they do sell other Apple products) and Apple TV does not stream Prime Video.

We came upon Prime Video much by accident. Over the summer we signed up for Amazon Prime to take advantage of free, 2-day shipping on Amazon orders. We do not have a smart TV in New York, but when we arrived at TR in November we gave Prime Video a try. We liked the service — especially the streaming drama series Bosch. (If any of you are fans of the Michael Connelly novels about the detective Harry Bosch, you will love the Amazon Prime series. Season 1 is online now, and season 2 will be available in early March, but I digress.)

More recently we discovered another valuable component to an Amazon Prime subscription — Prime Music. On-demand, ad-free music streaming with access to over one million songs, is available to Amazon Prime subscribers at no extra cost. The two most popular steaming music services, Apple Music and Spotify, charge $9.99 a month, or $120 a year, while the price of an Amazon Prime subscription is $99. For that you get free 2-day shipping on Amazon purchases, Prime Video, Prime Music, and Prime Photo storage.

The music service can be accessed online, or with an Apple iOS or Android app. Once signed in to the service, you can choose to listen to preselected music from a wide variety of genres and artists, or you can create your own playlists and listen to just the music you want to hear. What makes it even more exciting is that it interfaces with our Sonos sound system which wirelessly streams music to every room in our house.

I also mentioned that Amazon Prime membership includes Prime Photos, which offers unlimited cloud storage of digital photos. We discovered the photos service during our recent Hawaii trip when we needed a quick and easy way to archive the photos on one of our iPhones. The upload was effortless, and the photos, which can be as large as 2GB, are easily accessible from any device. Personally, I found using Prime Photo much less cumbersome than Apple’s iCloud.

In our current economic climate, we never know from one month to the next what will happen in our economies. I can only say that at this point in time Amazon Prime, for all it offers, is a bargain at $99 a year.

A switchboard for the Internet …

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, one definition for the word geek is: a knowledgeable and obsessive enthusiast, such as a computer geek. To use geek as an adjective you change it to Geeky, and today’s column is definitely geeky (feel free to stop reading here).

Last week I reported in OnMouseClick that the TRR website appeared to be working, except on my 2012 MacBook Pro Retina laptop. Since all of the other computers and devices in our house connected to TRR without a problem, and the MacBook connects to other wifi networks, I suspected the problem was not a hardware or software issue with the computer, but rather a problem between the operating system (I am running OS X 10.11.2, known as El Capitan) and the Brighthouse Network. 

First, a little background on how our computers find and connect to webpages. A domain name is the human language address for the websites we visit. For example, the domain name for Google is google.com, but computers cannot understand human language, they only understand numbers. When you type google.com in the address bar of a web browser, the computer reads it as 173.194.39.78 — which is the numerical internet protocol address — or IP address. But how does the computer know that google.com is actually 173.194.39.78?

To make the translation from human language to numbers, a computer has to contact a Domain Name System server or DNS. A DNS acts like a switchboard operator for websites, matching the human language address we type with the equivalent numbers a computer can understand. There are many DNS servers, and the one your computer contacts is usually provided by your internet provider. I discovered that for some unknown reason the DNS server used by Brighthouse on the TRR network apparently caused a conflict with my computer’s operating system. 

It is possible to change the DNS setting a computer uses, and Google offers free access to Google Public DNS, which is cited by many as being faster and more reliable than DNS servers traditionally used by internet providers. After configuring my operating system to use the Google DNS, I was able to connect to the internet on TRR Wifi and it worked as advertised. I still don't know why there was a problem, but making the DNS change solved this issue.

Until the Brighthouse Network is performing at 100% efficiency, Eddie and I will continue to use our Centurylink DSL connection. As a test, before writing this column, I switched over to the TRR network with the Google Public DNS, and it was working fine. Then, in the quest for answers, I removed the Google DNS settings and allowed Brighthouse to automatically enter the address for the server it uses. Once I had made this change TRR continued to work, but very, very slowly. I changed the settings back to the Google DNS and the webpages loaded at lightening speed. The solution for the conflict between the DNS that Brighthouse uses and computers at TRR may be more complicated than just which DNS it chooses, but we hope it gets resolved soon.

One final comment on the TRR Wifi. Earlier this week we had an out-of-town guest, and rather than go through the hassle of having my friend type in the password for our DSL network, I suggested she use TRR. The connection worked fine until later in the evening when she took her iPad into the bedroom and the connection was lost. Obviously there are still diverse problems with the Brighthouse network connection.

For anyone who wants to read more about DNS, I recommend  www.howtogeek.com/122845/htg-explains-what-is-dns for an excellent explanation in layman’s terms. If you are interested in changing your computer settings to use the Google Public DNS, and you feel confident about changing setting on your computer, I suggest following the directions on these websites: 

For Apple OS X users, go to http://osxdaily.com/2015/12/05/change-dns-server-settings-mac-os-x

For Window 10 users, go to https://support.opendns.com/entries/95614747-Windows-10-Configuration-Instructions

What the future holds…

Before I discuss today's topic, I want to update the status of TRRWiFi at our location. We live at 2704 on Jake Way, and I checked the connection on January 12 after almost a month of traveling. I first tried to connect with my 2012 MacBook Pro, and while I received a wifi signal, web pages would not load. I did, however, get a reasonably fast connection on our new Asus PC and on both of our iPads. We haven't yet attempted to connect with our media devices — an Apple TV and Samsung Smart TV. I think I know  what to do to get my Mac connected, and if I am correct I’ll cover it in next week’s column.

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (know as CES) took place in Las Vegas during the first week of 2016. Since 1967, CES has been the world’s largest showcase of cutting edge technology products. While the word consumer appears in the show’s title, it is a trade show with the focus on industry insiders – retailers, software developers, advertisers, government officials and journalists. It is a forum and showcase for new and established technology companies to demonstrate innovations — and just maybe introduce “the next big thing.” I have been following media reports from CES, and below are overviews of several innovations that sound fascinating. 

Prototypes on display:

A wall mounted television set from Panasonic that turns transparent when not in use. Place it in front of a painting, and when the TV is turned off, the painting shows through. It is scheduled to be released sometime before 2020.

A drone with Real Sense camera technology from Intel that automatically attempts to avoid obstacles in its flight path, and adjusts to obstacles faster than a drone controlled by a human operator. It is available now to developers

Sckipio, an Israeli chipmaker, featured G-Fast, an alternative to broadband internet that offers speeds 50 times faster than cable. The company plans to introduce the service in the United States later this year. 

The Family Hub Refrigerator from Samsung is designed to serve as a digital command center of the home. A digital screen on the outside shows weather information, can play recipe videos and with the use of a smartphone, displays both notes and calendars. An onscreen app can be used to order groceries, and three camera on the inside take pictures of the refrigerator’s contents every time the door is closed, allowing you to see what is inside from your smartphone when you are grocery shopping. It will be available in the spring of 2016 for $5,000!

If you like the idea of the Family Hub Refrigerator, but don’t like the price, you might consider a Fridge Cam from Smarter. The device includes a camera with a fish-eye lens (extreme wide-angle) that snaps a photo each time the refrigerator door closes and relays the information to a smartphone app. It is expected to be available next summer for $130.

A few more practical technologies:

Introduced at CES 2015 were iPhone apps to control hearing aids made by ReSound and Starkey. This year’s app were introduced in conjunction with the Apple Watch. These apps can be used to adjust volume, balance, bass and treble, set personalized setting for various listening environments, find misplaced devices, and make adjustment in difficult environments such as wind or excessive background noise. It is available now.

Bowflex, the maker of fitness equipment, introduced SelectTech 560 Weights that contain an accelerometer to track the number of reps, total weight lifted and calories burned. It is available now for around $500.

CaddyTrek is a robot golf caddy that carries your golf clubs and allows golfers to get the health benefit of walking the course without having to carry their clubs. It is available now for about $1495.

Reliefband is a wearable device that treats vomiting and nausea. It is worn on the wrist and simulates the P-6 acupressure point with a mild electronic current to end nausea. It is available now for $89.

Quell, a wearable medical device manufactured by NeuroMetrix, promises an external source of pain relief. The ultra-thin unit attaches to the user’s calf and electrodes stimulate the wearer’s body to send neural pulses to the brain, triggering the release of endogenous opioids, the pain-relief response that blocks pain signals in the spine. The device has been approved by the FDA, and the manufacturer is hoping insurance companies will soon pick up the cost. The device goes for $250, with an additional $30 a month charge for replacement electrode strips.

As the above demonstrates, the future in technology is exciting for both the techie in some of us and the average tech user. It promises to enhance our leisure time, make work time more productive and help us monitor and relieve some of our medical worries. It is truly an exciting time to be alive. 

Knowing when it is time …

Last summer Eddie and I decided that he needed a new computer. His Dell Studio Laptop, with a seventeen inch screen, served him well, but its time was coming to an end. It wasn't an easy decision to make, and there were many variables involved.

When Eddie purchased his computer in 2009, it was state of the art with a fast, Intel Core Duo processor and 4 GB (gigabytes) of RAM — more than enough processing power for the financial applications he uses. But over the years, as the applications were upgraded and new features added, more and more processing power was required. We added another 4 GB of RAM, and that seemed to help for a while, but during the past year, work on the computer seemed to slow to a crawl. 

Adding to the computer’s difficulties were some mechanical problems, that can be expected as a device ages, but still annoying. Several of the number keys stopped working, as well as the period on the main keyboard. 

You might ask what was holding us back from buying a new computer? First, it seemed there was always an ongoing project that needed to be completed before making a change. Then there was the anticipation of all the work involved in setting up a new computer. Eddie has invested a great deal of time and effort setting up his computer and applications, and transferring all of it to a new computer might be very labor intensive, not to mention the worry that something might go wrong. 

We knew exactly what we wanted — a laptop with a 17 inch screen, fast processor running Windows 10, 8 GB of memory, and a solid state hard drive*. When we began researching laptops, we found that 17” screens were hard to come by, and generally cost considerably more than laptops with 15” screens. It would also be difficult to find one that included a SSD as the startup drive.

Two years ago, when we wanted to install additional memory in the Dell PC, we took the laptop to Computers Etc. in Dade City. It is a small operation located in the Business Center at 15000 Citrus Country Drive, just off U.S. Highway 301. Since they also sell computers, we decided to pay them a visit when we came south this fall. We told them what we were looking for, and they were able to customize a computer, with all of our required specifications, at an excellent price.

The ASUS X•Series laptop we purchased came with two, 1 terabyte (TB) hard disk drives, one of which was removed and replaced with a 256 GB SSD (the second 1 TB drive was placed in an external case for use as a backup drive). As an added bonus, and included in the price, the technicians at Computers Etc transferred all of the applications and files to the new laptop. Needless to say, Eddie is extremely happy with his new computer.

There are two parts to the moral of this story. First, there comes a time in the life of every computer, when it has to be put out to “pasture”. When it comes to technology, it seems that most of us want to hold on to what we know, but sometimes we have to let go and move on. If your computer is five or more years old, it is time to seriously consider a new machine. Second, it is often cost and time efficient to find a professional that can make the transition from the old to the new painless. Private firms like we used, or chain operations like Best Buy’s Geek Squad, will preform the setup, data transfer, and give instructions on using a new computer — well worth the extra investment. 

*A solid-state drive, or SSD, uses flash memory — similar to the memory storage on a USB thumb drive, only much faster. SSD drives boot within seconds, and because there are no moving parts they have a longer life expectancy. An SSD take up less room than traditional hard disk drives (HDD), but they cost considerably more.

Keeping track of where you've been …

Happy New Year! It's 2016 and the beginning of another year of adventures.

If you are anything like me, you used your phone to take a large number of photos in 2015, and often it is difficult to remember just when and where the photos were taken. Lucky for me, the iPhone embeds time and location in every photo - as long as you have location services turned on for the Camera app. The question is how to retrieve that information. 

The IPhone and iPad Photo app includes features that let you know the time and location of every picture on your device. When viewing photos in Albums, the date, time and location are displayed at the top of the screen above each individual image. For an overview of all your photographs, select Photos from the menu at the bottom of the screen and you have the option of viewing photos as Moments, Collections or Years. 

Moments sort photos by time, day and place. Images are sorted and can be viewed by the day and location they were taken and for today's photos by the hour. Each Moment includes a thumbnail of all the images. (Insert moments photo here) Collections sort images for multiple days or for a week, depending on how many photos are included. The Collection previews images with small thumbnails and the label gives the location(s) and range of dates (insert collections image here). The last way to view the photos is by Years, with tiny thumbnails of all the photos and a general location (insert years photo here).

Photos can also be viewed on a map. Whether you are in Moments, Collections or Years, tap the location name at the top of the screen to see thumbnails of the photos placed on a map. (Insert map image here)

The time, date and location of a photograph, as well as other information, are embedded in what is called the metadata file. Metadata is not visible, but can be read and displayed by apps, such as Photos, and some other third party apps. I recently discovered InstaPlace, an app that can read a photo's date and location and display it directly on the photo, which is ideal for sharing photos as text messages and on Facebook. Another app, PicIt!, displays all the photos on your device on a map, by state, date, and time. 

I hope I have inspired some of you to take stock of your photo library and take time to remember when and where you have your adventures.

Note — I had planned to include information about viewing date and time metadata on Android apps, but I thus far I haven't had success with my research. If anyone has answers, please email me at onmouseclick@digitalquinn.com.

Social Media & the Baby Boomer Generation …

Just before I finished writing today’s column, I wished a happy birthday to an old friend and also to a former student. I would never have known it was their birthday, or anything about them, if it were not for Facebook. Social media, of which Facebook is most prominent, has changed most of our lives, in both good and bad ways.

In the early 2000s when social media was in its infancy, I was still teaching, and students were talking about something called Friendster and MySpace. I wasn't sure what they were, but I knew students were using them to connect with each other online. In 2004 college students at Harvard University developed Facebook with the purpose of giving students at the college a centralized website to connect with each other. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, expanding to colleges in the Boston area and other Ivy League schools later. Over the next few years Facebook expanded to include colleges and universities all over the country, and in 2006 it became available to everyone over the age of 12 with a valid email address.

At the time I viewed social media as something for the younger generation. It wasn't until my first grandchild was born in 2009 that I saw a need to join myself. Our son was stationed in Japan, and Facebook brought the family closer together with daily photos and updates on baby Brianna's progress.

Fast forward six years and I cannot imagine life without Facebook. Our granddaughters now live in Hawaii, and the first thing I do every morning is to see if our daughter-in-law has posted any photos while we were sleeping. Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with several long-lost friends from high school, and I enjoy following my New York friends during our months in Florida. Facebook is for interest groups as well as individuals, and I belong to several such groups, including a group for our neighborhood in New York; a group of Florida owners of Leisure Travel RVs; my high school alumni and my high school graduating class groups; and of course TR Residents & Friends.   

I know many TR Times readers are members of the TR Residents & Friends Facebook Group, which was mentioned at the December Residents Forum. There was concern expressed that some members of the group posted derogatory remarks about others. Some negativity is to be expected on a public forum, and I think that is the price we pay for making it so easy to connect with so many people. While I firmly agree that no one should make personal attacks online, a Facebook group is an ideal place to express opinions and start discussions. We live in a hyper-partisan world, and honest discussion and compromise is hard to come by. It is my hope that the TR Residents & Friends can evolve into a forum for honest and intelligent discussions; a place where we can find out what is going on in the resort and maybe even share ideas on how we can make this place we love even better!

Disclosure — I joined the TR Residents & Friends Facebook Group after it was mentioned at the Resident’s Forum and searching back as far as possible, I did not come across the comments referred to at the forum. I can only guess they have been removed.

There’s an app for that — or maybe not …

Today we use computers, tablets and mobile phones to manage most of what we do everyday — sometimes making the task easier, but sometimes adding complications. 

I love the ease of Christmas shopping with the Amazon shopping app. I place an order, receive a tracking number and use the iPhone app Delivered!  to track the package with realtime updates ( a similar Android app is Deliveries). When we plan to travel, I can stop and resume the delivery of our newspapers and magazines by simply visiting the papers’ websites and making the changes.

In New York we subscribe to a Verizon FiOS triple-play bundle for cable, internet and telephone service. With Verizon’s Fios Mobile app, we are able to control our DVR from anywhere — although you still cannot watch the saved programs remotely (bummer!). You can also use the app, or the Fios website, to make changes to your TV channel lineup. However this fall we encountered problems when we wanted to put our Fios service on vacation hold for the winter. 

The website states that you can institute a vacation hold online, but when I tried, I received a warning that putting our service on hold would turn off everything, including the telephone line which is hooked up to our home security system. We recently switched to Verizon from another carrier, and we specifically asked if we would be able to retain our landline service if we used the vacation hold option. We were told yes, but not the complete story.

After seeing the online notice that the telephone would be turned off, I knew I needed to make human contact. However that is not so easy in 2015. For some website the only method of contact is email, while others offer live chat support. I have tried live chat on occasion, with mixed results. For this issue with Fios, I felt I needed to talk to a live person.

The first call I placed was answered by someone who sounded like they were in a call center on the other side of the world. Not being satisfied with her help, I politely requested to speak with a supervisor. After being put on hold for about five minutes, I was informed that the supervisor was on another line and did I want to wait. I said yes, waited some more, and then was told that the supervisor would have to call me back. Needless to say, I never received a return call.

Next time I called I considered myself lucky to speak with Mark, who was obviously somewhere in the United States. He was able to explain the issues clearly, and place our triple play package on a vacation hold while retaining a minimal telephone service. Unfortunately we had been mislead when we initially agreed to a contract with Fios. Now in order to retain the landline telephone, our triple-play services will be unbundled, and we lose our guaranteed two-year pricing. When we are ready to turn the service back on next spring we have to renegotiate a price package for the triple-play services. 

The first moral of my story is that sometimes you need more contact than is available on an app or website, and if the first person you speak with sounds like they are on the other side of the world, say goodbye, hang up and call back later. With luck you will eventually talk to someone in the U.S. The second moral is to get everything in writing from the very beginning. Too many sales people will tell you exactly what you want to hear with nothing in writing. You would think I would have learned that by now but as we know, life is a learning experience, and trying not to repeat mistakes is the goal. We did ask all the right questions when we contracted for the Fios service, and the salesman even called his supervisor to check on a few things, but we did not have the answers in writing. And so ends my tale of woe. A contract in writing is king while a verbal promise can easily evaporate into thin air. On a local basis a verbal agreement might work but when dealing with a big entity, the only enforceable agreement is in writing.

If you have a suggested topic for an OnMouseClick column, please  email it to onmouseclick@digitalquinn.com. (Please note in an earlier column the email address was incorrect.)

Bonus Tip — Did you know you can also type a tracking number from UPS, FedEx, and the US Post Office into the Google search window for package tracking? It doesn’t get much simpler then that.

Dear Santa …

Thanksgiving 2015 is past, and we are now officially in the Holiday Season, With that in mind I am offering a Five Item Technology Gift Guide to help with your holiday shopping.

1. Portable Cellphone Charger — With heavy use it is easy to drain the battery on a cellphone and having a portable charger can be a lifesaver. Most chargers are no larger than a pack of cards — some are much smaller — and they connect to the phone with a cable or by plugging directly into the phone’s charging port. Some units are device specific, while others are universal and work with multiple devices. Chargers range in price from $20 to $100. Lower priced chargers can supply enough power to charge a cellphone one time, while higher priced units can charge both cellphones and tablets, often at the same time. The unit I use is a $59 Phonesuit Flex XT Pocket Charger (www.phonesuit.com), which plugs directly into the lightening port of my iPhone 6, allowing me to use the phone while it is being charged.
2. Wall Mount Power Outlet Surge Protector with USB Charging Ports — Plug one of these outlets into a standard wall outlet and  plug USB cords directly into the USB ports. Units come with two or four charging ports and cost from $20 to $40. For anyone who needs to charge a tablet, be sure to buy a unit that supplies 2.1 AMPS. Cellphones require only 1 AMP of power.
3. Portable USB Wall Charger — For anyone who travels with multiple devices, (my husband and I have four devices between us), a wall charger that can accommodate two or more cables saves having to pack a charger plug for each device. I recently purchased tow Anker PowerPort 2 Chargers (www.ianker.com, each of which can handle both a cellphone and tablet, or two tablets, and is priced at around $12.
4. Fitness Trackers — Give a gift that promotes a healthy lifestyle. Fitness Trackers are wristbands that track steps, distance, calories burned, active minutes and sleep patterns. Paired with a cellphone app, a wearer can keep a record of these activities on a daily basis. The most popular bands are Fitbits (www.fitbit.com), ranging in price from $59.95 to $249.95. The least expensive count steps and calories while the higher end models also monitor heart rate and act as GPS trackers.
5. Action Camcorders — For the athletes in your life who wants to record every detail of bicycling, motorcycle riding, sky diving or rock climbing in realtime, these small cameras are designed to be mounted on chests, handlebars and helmets. The most well known brand of action camcorders are made by GoPro(go pro.com), which are priced from $300 to $500 and come with a variety of mounts. 

Until next week, happy shopping.

High Hopes …

Welcome back to Travelers Rest and another season of OnMouseClick technology columns. This season begins with a topic that I expect is on the minds of many TR residents — the new TRWIFI.

As most of you know, last spring the Board made a pledge to replace the existing wifi system. They entered into a contract with Bright House Networks that promised to meet all the wifi needs of Travelers Rest residents and visitors — even streaming. Over the summer, manager Rick Lindquist kept residents up-to-date on the progress of the installation through the Summer Updates, and in the October Summer Update, he anticipated the service would be both operational and useable by October 31.

We arrived at our house in the Village on November 9, and with high hopes we attempted to log on to TRRWIFI. Initially it did not show up on any of our devices (a PC laptop, a MacBook Pro, two iPads and two iPhones). It finally appeared on my iPad and worked for about ten minutes, when it again disappeared. We learned from our neighbor that the signal was not strong enough for most of the Village homes, and that Bright House was continuing to work on a fix. As a consistent internet connection is a requirement and not a luxury for Eddie and I, we thus called Centurylink and turned on our DSL line.

As I began writing this article on Tuesday, November 17, I again tried the TRRWIFI network at our house. My iPad picked it up flawlessly. I walked around the entire house, inside and out, while streaming a video. However, neither of our laptop computers were able to use the network. Both were able to sign on to TRRWIFI, but neither could download webpages, raising questions that will take some research to answer.

I was curious about the speed of the network connection on my iPad, and I used a program SPEEDTEST to preform this test. Network transmissions are measured in megabits per second (a megabit is 1 million bits, the smallest unit of information), or Mbps. An average of three tests showed the TRRWIFI download speed at 6.88 Mbps which is only slightly lower than the average DSL download speeds of 9 Mbps. The next day I again connected the TRRWIFI to my iPad, and the download speed was significantly slower — less than 3 Mbps. I do not know if the rest of the park is having similar problems, but in the Village we can safely say that as of November 18 the Bright House network is not ready for prime time. I will continue to monitor the network, and OnMouseClick will continue to feature updates on the status of TRRWIF over the next few months. If any of the TR Times readers would like to share their experience with the new TRRWIFI, good or bad, please send me an email at onmouseclick@digitalquinn.com.

On a related topic, a concern I had about the new Bright House Network was its security. It is true that it is not an open network, and you need an access code to sign on, but there was still a concern about using a shared network for online banking and shopping. Over the summer I queried Rick Lindquist about this, and he in turn spoke with the engineers at Bright House. In simple terms, the answer was that the system is configured in such a way that each user’s session is unique, and transmitted data cannot be view by anyone else on the network. This put to rest my concerns about security, and I still have high hopes that this network will begin work for all our needs over the coming months.

Until Next Fall …

At the TR Annual General Meeting on March 10 we learned that by next fall the current park-wide WiFi system will be replaced by a fiber optics WiFi system provided by Bright House Networks Business Solutions. The new system promises high speed internet access that will allow residents to download streaming media. In the first OnMouseClick of the season I wrote that with the loss of a dedicated cable TV service at TR, residents can use either a smart TV or a digital media player connected to a TV, to access streaming services such a Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime. The one caution mentioned in the column was that streaming media requires a high-speed connection, which at TR meant subscribing to Centurylink DSL service. If all goes as promised, Eddie and I look forward to canceling our DSL service, and next fall I will write a column or two to help OnMouseClick readers make the most of the Brighthouse WiFi.

More recently I wrote about smartphone photography, and how the photographic quality of smartphone cameras is equal to the quality of point and shoot cameras. I have personally been using the camera in my iPhone 6 more than my point and shoot camera, and I even ordered a telephoto lens attachment to enhance my iPhone photography. I promised to report on how my review of the lens before the end of the season, and I can honestly report that I love it. In fact I liked it so much that I also ordered a second wide angle lens from the same company.

I settled on lenses that can only be ordered online from Moment (momentlens.com), a new company located in Seattle, Washington. The first lens I ordered was the 2x telephoto. The built-in iPhone 6 lens has a focal length of 29mm, and the Moment telephoto boosts the focal length to 60mm, which produces an image slightly bigger than seen by the native eye. The company also makes a wide angle lens, with a focal point of 18mm, which provides a wider viewpoint than the native 29mm lens. Each lens costs $99, featuring high quality glass optics that produce true, distortion-free images. Moment lenses are available for the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, 4, 4s and iPad Air 2.

Before ordering my lenses I did extensive research, and learned that there are two classes of lenses available for use with smartphones — inexpensive lenses made with plastic components and higher priced lenses incorporating glass optics. I focused my research on the better quality lenses, taking into consideration both image quality and ease of lens attachment. I seriously considered lens systems by three manufactures — ExoLens, Izzi Gadget Remix and Moment Lenses. An in-depth overview each of these lenses appears in last week’s online version of OnMouseClick.

I was standing in the same place for all three photos. Left is taken with the Moment wide-angle lens, center with the native iPhone camera lens, and right is taken with the Moment telephoto lens.

The computing devices we use continue to evolve, and new innovations are being introduced on a regular basis. Next season OnMouseClick will continue to monitor trends in technology, and to provide helpful advice on using our computing devices.

An unrelated topic, we recently encountered a problem with Eddie’s laptop PC, and we took it to Computers Etc. in Dade City. We have used their services several times and found them to be knowledgable, competent and trustworthy. If you are in need of computer repair services, we highly recommend you do a Google search for Computers Etc. — you won’t be sorry. 

I am posting my iPhone photography at www.digitalquinn.com/photoblog. Have a wonderful summer and see you all next fall.

iPhone Photo Tips and Techniques …

For many years DSLR (digital single lens reflex) cameras have produced high quality images, and recently the quality gap between DSLRs and smartphone cameras has narrowed. Cameras on some smartphones, most notably the iPhone 6, are on par with the quality of point and shoot cameras, but regardless of the camera equipment used, the most important factor in producing good photographs is the person behind the lens. The following seven tips and techniques may help you take better photos using the iPhone Camera app, but may also be applied to other apps and smartphones.  

1. Composition: To help create a well composed image, most camera apps feature grid lines that can be turned on or off. When turned on, two vertical and two horizontal lines appear on screen, dividing the screen into nine equal sections. Placing the primary subject along one of the lines, or at the intersection of two lines, results in a balanced and interesting shot. Use of the grid adheres to a fundamental principle of photographic composition, known as the Rule of Thirds (for a full explanation of the Rule of Thirds visit digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds). The grid lines can also help in positioning your image with relation to the horizon. The grid lines on the iPhone, which do not appear on the photograph, can be turned on and off in the Photos & Camera section of Settings. 
2. Light: It is said that photography is painting with light, and the best photographers use light to their advantage. Expose an image with too much light and it will be overexposed and look washed out; too little light and it will be underexposed and dark. An advantage of using a point and shoot camera over a smartphone camera is the ability to manually adjust exposure. Controlling exposure on a smartphone is limited, but still possible. On the iPhone, tapping an area on the screen will set the camera’s auto-focus and auto-exposure. Where you tap determines the focal point of the image; a yellow square appears around the focal point and a tiny sun icon appears to the right of the square — use your finger to move it up to make the image lighter or down to make it darker. Holding the spot on the screen for a few seconds will lock in the focal point and exposure, a handy feature if you plan to recompose the image.
3. Telephoto and Zoom: An additional advantage to a point and shoot camera is a built-in optical zoom lens. Controlling an optical zoom lens changes the focal point from wide angle (providing a wide viewing area) to telephoto (narrowing the viewing area and  bringing far away objects closer). The fixed focal length of the iPhone camera lens cannot be changed, but it does have the ability to apply a digital zoom, controlled by placing two fingers on the screen and pulling them apart. With a digital zoom, the image is cropped and the remaining portions of the image are made larger, resulting in some loss of image quality. It is possible to add third-party optical wide-angle and telephoto lenses to the iPhone, and an overview of lens options, and their pros and cons, are covered at the end of this column.
4. Using Flash: An iPhone flash only illuminates subjects up to six feet away, beyond which a flash is useless. A flash can also add red-eye and glare to an image, and thus should be used judiciously. The Camera app allows the user to turn the flash on, off, or set it to auto, applying the flash in all low light situations.
5. HDR: Activating HDR (High Dynamic Range) adds subtle improvements to the exposure and contrast of an image and can be used to produce richer outdoor images and low-light photos without a flash. With HDR selected, the iPhone takes three separate photos, each at a different exposure, and blends them into a single image. As with the flash, there are three states — on, off and auto. If you are hesitant about when to use HDR, leave it in auto mode. By default the iPhone saves both the HDR and the normally exposed photo, a feature that can be turned off in the Photo & Camera section of Settings.
6. Burst Mode: Burst mode is activated by continuously holding down the iPhone shutter button, capturing ten frames per second. To view photos taken in burst mode, click Select to scroll through all the images, choosing to save the one you like best (the iPhone suggests the best image with a small gray dot). Burst mode is especially useful in photographing moving objects — taking multiple photos in rapid succession improves the chances of getting an image without blur.
7. Shutter Button: The final tip is one that may make using the iPhone camera a bit easier. The iPhone shutter button is actually a virtual button represented by a large white circle on the screen. If using the virtual button feels awkward, you have the choice of either pressing the volume rocker button on the side of the phone, or attaching earbuds to the phone and clicking the volume control. All three methods achieve the same results, hopefully good quality photos.

Comparison of smartphone attachment lenses I researched. According to the manufacturers websites, they are all made with high quality glass, optics.:

• ExoLens — The ExoLenses, 3x telephoto and wide-angle, were developed specifically to work with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+. The lenses attach to a bracket which fits the phone. The reviews are pretty good, but most say there is some softness around the edges images. $130
• PROs — Made specifically for the iPhone; comes with tripod mount and lens caps; bracket is very sturdy, 3x telephoto instead of the standard 2x.
• CONs — Cannot use a case with the bracket; works better with tripod then handheld, some distortion and focus issues.
• iZZIGadget Remix 5-in-1 — The iZZiGadget is a lens system on a rotating spindle mounted on a case. There are actually four lenses, 2x telephoto, wide-angle, fisheye, and macro, as well as a polarizing lens. $130
• PROs — Lens rotate and all lenses are always available; case protects phone; case includes a tripod mount.
• CONs — Case cannot be used without lenses; Cannot use the native iPhone lens; distortion and focus issues.
• MomentLens Company — The moment lenses are the most expensive, with each lens costing $99. The lenses attach to a bayonet type mount on a plate that attaches to the phone. In June Moment is introducing a case that can replace the plate, and offers many other features. 
• PROs — Very sharp images, standard cases fit over the lens plate and can be used with the lenses, easy on / easy off.
• CONs — No lens caps (supposed to be available this summer; most expensive option.

Only one more issue of the TR Times for this season. Until next week, practice your iPhoneography.