Real Tech for Real People, Episode 111 “The Self Driving Episode”
Still slowly catching up on the Real Tech podcasts (you can find all the episodes, including the most current, over at http://rtfrp.com) This is episode 111.
Show Notes:
NEWS:
AND… GOOGLE DRIVE is official. Â Is it a “Wow!” or an “Uh?”
TIPS/SUGGESTIONS:
Google Searches made easier: Â A couple “quick hits.” Â Want to search using speech? Simply click on the microphone and talk (assuming you have a microphone). Â Want to find where an image came from? Â Go to the “images” tab, and copy and paste a URL into it. Â OR–find out what other images your image looks like:just drag your image from your computer into the image search block.
Virtual Disks “In the Cloud” –Â Gladinet. Gladinet lets you map your existing cloud storage sites as if they are drives on your machine. Â Now you can edit Word, Excel, or other documents right in the cloud, and not take up space on your hard disk. Â Of course, you have to be connected to the internet. Â Possible sites to use include Google Docs, PicasaWeb, Amazon S3, Microsoft’s Live Storage, and much much more. Â The free version only connects to one, but there are other options as well.
Managing your PDFs: This one can be a real challenge.  You have hundreds (maybe thousands?) of PDFs on your computer, but do you a) know what you have, and b) know how to get to the one you want?  Enter a few choices, courtesy of this article from Digital Inspiration.  I personally prefer Mendeley (these are windows choices) because it is specifically designed for PDFs.  Even still, I would like something with a little more “intelligence” that can sort the files for me based on general content anaylsis.
PAMFAX: Â A new problem these days is “How to send a fax from home, when you don’t have POTS any more?” Â Well, I have settled on a solution that works for me. Â Pamfax. Â It’s made by the same people that make the call recorder application for Skype, “Pamela Recorder.” It’s not free, but it is affordable.
“The House approved Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act with a 248 to 168 vote today. CISPA allows internet service providers to share Internet ‘threat’ information with government agencies, including DHS and NSA, without having to protect any personally identifying data of its customers, without a court order. It effectively immunizes ISPs from privacy lawsuits for disclosing customer information, grants them anti-trust protection on colluding on cybersecurity issues and allows them to bypass privacy laws when sharing data with each other.”
PICKS:
Steve: Paper Camera for Android
Tony: Nike Fuel Band
Steve’s info: [blog] http://theprofessornotes.com [twitter] @scmprofessor
Tony’s info: [blog] http://getthenext.com [twitter] @tonypittman