Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Apple news, tech tips, and more…

KB Dog

  • Staying Safe Online

    Using the Internet can be very dangerous. There are many individuals who are constantly attempting to infiltrate the computers of unsuspecting Internet users to steal money or personal information. There are many different commercial antivirus software packages available to prevent these attacks, and they are widely used. A huge number of the computers that are brought to me have some kind of antivirus software installed on them by the user.

    The popular perception is that once an antivirus software is installed on a computer, the user can freely browse the internet and download any file at all, and the antivirus software will protect them. This could not be further from the truth.

    Installing antivirus software on your computer is similar to wearing a bulletproof vest every day. The bulletproof vest will protect you against some types of attacks, but not all. Similarly, antivirus software is constantly being updated to protect against the newest virus attacks, and will never detect every kind of virus. There are simply too many different types of viruses being created every day for antivirus software programmers to keep up with.

    It is true that a bulletproof vest does offer some protection against physical attacks. However, if a person enjoys wandering down dark alleys in a major city late at night, it will only be a matter of time before something bad happens to them, even with a bulletproof vest. The same principle applies to avoiding virus attacks. The only near-guaranteed way to stay virus-free is to avoid shady websites and downloads

  • _Hello Fellow Technophiles,_

    Regular readers will notice that I have not used a picture of myself as the main image for this week’s Tech Tails. While I am definitely the eye candy that really sells this newsletter, I thought that I would share a picture of some of the team members that work behind the scenes here at Small Dog Electronics answering our tech support line and repairing computers.

    As you can see, the vintage white iMac comes in three sizes and so do our technicians. I have put their articles in order this week from tallest to shortest. Ben helps you stay safe on the internet, Kevin explains a useful Terminal command for finding lost files, and Erich talks about managing your photos on your iPhone.

    Thanks for reading Tech Tails!

    Mike
    “*michaeld@smalldog.com*”:mailto:michaeld@smalldog.com

  • Keep Your Passwords!

    You have a password for the online banking, one for your Apple ID, one to log into your retirement amount. Your password for your bank has to have have at least one numeric number, but can’t start with a number and it can’t have any more than two of the same characters found in your username. Your retirement account must include at least 3 numbers and one special character but they can’t be consecutive.

    Does this sound familiar? In the perfect world we would only need one password, but unfortunately for security purposes and as hackers get better at what they do password strength has become critical and part of our everyday lives. The hassle with this is that most sites have their own sets of rules for password strength leaving many of us to peck away at our keyboards or devices in a sometimes endless game of “remember how you manipulated your favorite password 16 different ways and can’t remember if your banking site used the password with the capitalization or the one with the ampersand”.

    For a very long time I will admit my method of keeping track of my usernames and passwords was the stickies program on my Mac, much to the dismay of our IT manager! While stickies are easily accessed they are not secure and I do not recommend this method. Where you should keep them is in your keychain. You can access your keychain through applications and then utilities. Once you are in your keychain you can manually add preferred sites, accounts and passwords you wish to store. Another huge benefit is secure notes. Secure notes allow you store additional confidential information. Keychain is safe and secure because in order to view any of the passwords stored there you need to enter your administrator password. Within keychain you can make sure to safely and securely keep your passwords, and when you forget if you needed that capitalization or ampersand in your password you can simply open keychain and enter into the search field the website for which you need to confirm the password.

    Now what if you don’t have a mac? The loss of passwords, and most often your Apple ID password is a huge concern with users of iOS devices only. Luckily there is an easy solution for that, iCloud and iCloud keychain. Simply go to settings, iCloud and then select keychain. Your iOS device will begin to store your logins and websites. Additionally you can add specific websites and passwords manually to your phone or iPad under safari and then selecting passwords. This is also where you would look if you can’t remember login information.

    Recording safely your logins and passwords is an often overlooked step, especially when users of iOS devices accidentally have the device damaged or lost. Saving your passwords safely and using iCloud keychain can avert your being logged out of accounts.

  • My sister and her partner are coming to visit this week so I hope the sun comes out. It has been sort of cool and rainy here for this week. It is hard to believe that we are already in the middle of January and the Iowa caucuses are only a couple of weeks away.

    I know you will join me in congratulating (or consoling) Emily for her most recent promotion. A frequent contributor to Kibbles & Bytes, Emily has done just about every job at Small Dog, starting out in the shipping department way back when, when the computers were heavy. Emily is now the General Manager of Small Dog Electronics to reflect her pivotal role at the company.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes and for all of the support for Small Dog Electronics. We know it is you, our loyal customers, that sustain us and we appreciate you!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Dean, Scott & Emily_

  • Keep Your Passwords!

    You have a password for the online banking, one for your Apple ID, one to log into your retirement amount. Your password for your bank has to have have at least one numeric number, but can’t start with a number and it can’t have any more than two of the same characters found in your username. Your retirement account must include at least 3 numbers and one special character but they can’t be consecutive.

    Does this sound familiar? In the perfect world we would only need one password, but unfortunately for security purposes and as hackers get better at what they do password strength has become critical and part of our everyday lives. The hassle with this is that most sites have their own sets of rules for password strength leaving many of us to peck away at our keyboards or devices in a sometimes endless game of “remember how you manipulated your favorite password 16 different ways and can’t remember if your banking site used the password with the capitalization or the one with the ampersand”.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4644.jpg!

    For a very long time I will admit my method of keeping track of my usernames and passwords was the stickies program on my Mac, much to the dismay of our IT manager! While stickies are easily accessed they are not secure and I do not recommend this method. Where you should keep them is in your keychain. You can access your keychain through applications and then utilities. Once you are in your keychain you can manually add preferred sites, accounts and passwords you wish to store. Another huge benefit is secure notes. Secure notes allow you store additional confidential information. Keychain is safe and secure because in order to view any of the passwords stored there you need to enter your administrator password. Within keychain you can make sure to safely and securely keep your passwords, and when you forget if you needed that capitalization or ampersand in your password you can simply open keychain and enter into the search field the website for which you need to confirm the password.

    Now what if you don’t have a mac? The loss of passwords, and most often your Apple ID password is a huge concern with users of iOS devices only. Luckily there is an easy solution for that, iCloud and “iCloud keychain.”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204085 Simply go to settings, iCloud and then select keychain. Your iOS device will begin to store your logins and websites. Additionally you can add specific websites and passwords manually to your phone or iPad under **safari** and then selecting **passwords**. This is also where you would look if you can’t remember login information.

    Recording safely your logins and passwords is an often overlooked step, especially when users of iOS devices accidentally have the device damaged or lost. Saving your passwords safely and using iCloud keychain can avert your being logged out of accounts.

  • CES Random Thoughts

    I talked a bit about the big Consumer Electronics Show last week and it is rapidly fading in the rearview mirror. I have gone to this show every year for the past decade or more. We actually exhibited our Chill Pill speakers and Hammerhead products at one CES but mostly I have come as a “buyer” to look for new products and trends.

    The Las Vegas convention center is a gigantic venue and the CES show spills out into the parking lot in front but also into some of the surrounding hotels and resorts. The Sands convention center was the second largest and housed some of the more interesting booths. This was the location for 3D printing, health care, fitness, home automation, robots and drones. There were sophisticated baby monitors, constant reporting thermometers, implanted blood glucose monitors and even a company that sold wireless sensors that monitor your soil’s nutrients and moisture. Home automation was huge with several competing standards vying to challenge Apple’s HomeKit. This year more companies were showing HomeKit compatible products so I think that Apple’s vision of your interconnected home is not far off.

    There are lots of ways to move from the Sands over to the LVCC but the best way is the free buses offered by CES. Cabs and the monorail are possible but the buses seem to be the fastest and they are free and comfortable. For me it was a great way to rest my weary feet for a few minutes before going to the other venue to continue walking through the crowds. At the convention center there are three main halls and the international pavilion over at the Westgate (formerly, Hilton). The Center hall is dominated by the big guys with gigantic booths for Samsung, Intel, LG and others. Those booths are usually mobbed so I quickly walked through to check out the TVs and moved on. The North Hall is where the iLounge was born and products for iPad and iPhone dominate that section. The biggest part of the North Hall, however, was the Auto section with concept cars being shown my several manufacturers including Ford, Audi, Mercedes and new electric car upstart Faraday.

    In the past several years the iLounge area and the international area were dominated by all sorts of cases for iPhones and iPads. This year there were a few in each section but cases were definitely not the dominate category. Over at the international pavilion there were lots of hover boards but unlike previous years, demos of the scooters were restricted to the booth area. Nevertheless, all sorts of scooters were being shown. I searched for interesting USB-C products and found some hubs that were not quite ready for prime time and a bunch of cables. I did see the USB-C displays that incorporate a hub and that could be the real solution for the office set-up for the USB-C equipped MacBook.

    I never seem to be able to coordinate my meetings by hall. It seems that I’ll have one meeting in the North Hall, the next in the South Hall and then another back at the hotel. I rode the buses a lot and got to see the whole show floor that way.

    I did find some interesting products that we may add to our offerings, and had some great meetings so it was worthwhile to visit this show that is a window on future technology.

  • _Dear Friends_,

    Well I didn’t win the Powerball so I guess I have to stick with my day job a bit longer. Vermont finally got some winter weather and more snow is in the forecast. It has even gotten a bit cooler down here in the Keys where when it dips below 70° F the down coats and shoes come out.

    I am still struggling a bit with tropical gardening. A large caterpillar ate the leaves off one of my tomato plants overnight and for some reason I cannot get my citrus trees to blossom. I keep feeding and watering them in the hopes that my Key Limes, Myers lemon and Naval oranges will blossom but they seem to just make greenery. We did discover that bananas love coffee grounds and since Grace and I produce a lot of coffee grounds those plants are doing well.

    I upgraded myself from the original iPad mini to the iPad mini 4 before I went to Las Vegas and the differences are remarkable. Not only is it thinner and lighter but the screen is much better, the speed is a lot faster and I simply love the Touch ID. I had been trying to activate my old iPad mini with my finger after being used to that with my iPhone so it is a welcome addition for my primary reading device. I prefer the iPad mini to the full-size iPad or the iPad Pro because of the size. It feels like a paperback book in my hand and even on a crowded airplane it is comfortable to use.

    Do you know about tethering? I don’t know how many people I have talked out of buying a cellular iPad by explaining tethering. I guess that is a bit against my interests as you pay an extra $130 for cellular versions of the iPad. If you buy that cellular version you also need a cell contract which might be another $30 a month. Tethering is a much better idea. Tethering is where you share the cellular connection from your iPhone with your iPad. You activate Personal Hot Spot and boom you have your own private wireless network over cellular. The other day Comcast had an outage here in the Keys and I used tethering with my Mac to work all day. Most carriers will charge you a little more for tethering but it is less than the $30. With my iPad, I simply choose “donphone” from the wireless setup and I am connected with the same speed as if I had the cellular version of the iPad.

    This week’s Kibbles & Bytes exclusive is a “**fully configured 13-inch MacBook Air.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002125/special-save-50-on-apple-refurbished-macbook-air-and-free-hammerhead-case This Apple factory reconditioned MacBook Air carries the same 1-year Apple warranty as new Macs and we are bundling it with AppleCare so you actually get 3-years of warranty protection and 3-years of free Apple technical support instead of the normal 90-days. This MacBook Air is the same as the one I use and love. It features a 1.7GHz i7 processor, 8GB of ram and a big 512GB SSD drive. I am going to take $50 off and include a free Hammerhead neoprene case for this MacBook Air. Regular price is $1639.97 but for Kibbles & Bytes readers this week only (while supplies last) the price for this bundle is “**$1559.98.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002125/special-save-50-on-apple-refurbished-macbook-air-and-free-hammerhead-case

  • On a plane today and back home to Key West which is only a little more laid back. It is like being in a time machine leaving Las Vegas in the morning and back in the Keys by dinner.

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    _Don,Emily, Dean and Scott_

  • Scooter's Internet Service Favorites

    I tend to think a lot about how far technology and the Internet has come. I know I’ve written about some of it here. One of the biggest surprises to me has been how much better web-based services and software have become. Don’t forget, even a popular powerhouse like YouTube was launched initially in 2005. It’s so easy to upload video online these days and share with your friends. It really wasn’t that long ago that such a task would’ve been difficult or impossible. When you add in the fact that mobile computing has completely blown up in terms of processing power and data throughput, it’s enough to make one’s head spin.

    So for this Kibbles and Bytes article, I wanted to talk about a few of my favorite internet-based services and software.

    * “**Vimeo**”:https://vimeo.com/ – YouTube’s smaller, less popular brother? Maybe, but I really like Vimeo. They were always geared more towards higher production quality videos and I love that it’s more about the video itself than the social aspect (as on YouTube). I actually pay for a pro account because I tend to shoot a lot of video and the pro account allows for more upload bandwidth and faster video processing times. Possibly trivial, but I’ve always loved the styling of Vimeo’s site. It’s cute, fun, colorful and simple. It makes using the site a pleasure and helps compliment the great videos and films people post there.

    * “**GitHub**”:https://github.com/ – Yes, this is an obligatory nerd choice. GitHub has exploded as *the* destination for developers to post their code, collaborate with others, download and distribute open source software, manage projects and more. It’s what we use here in the Small Dog IT department for all our software development and distribution. What you may not know is that GitHub doesn’t have to just be for software. Almost anything that you want to collaborate on with others can be set up on GitHub. A few years ago, I experimented with using it as a versioned repository for a story I was writing. It actually worked really well. The versioning works best for flat text files, but technically it can be used for anything.

    * “**Gravatar**”:https://en.gravatar.com/ – Gravatar is a really cool service that allows you to manage all of your online avatars in a single place. Each avatar can be linked to an email address. If you sign up on a 3rd party website with that email address, and the site implements Gravatar’s API (which the vast majority do these days), it’ll automatically pull in your avatar. Want to change your avatar on all the sites you use? Just log into Gravatar and change it! I love this service because it helps keep my online presence consistent and if I feel like changing the image, it’s super easy. It also keeps a library of previous avatars so if you want to go back to a previous avatar, you can do so easily.

    So for this Kibbles and Bytes article, I wanted to talk about a few of my favorite internet-based services and software.

    * “**Vimeo**”:https://vimeo.com/ – YouTube’s smaller, less popular brother? Maybe, but I really like Vimeo. They were always geared more towards higher production quality videos and I love that it’s more about the video itself than the social aspect (as on YouTube). I actually pay for a pro account because I tend to shoot a lot of video and the pro account allows for more upload bandwidth and faster video processing times. Possibly trivial, but I’ve always loved the styling of Vimeo’s site. It’s cute, fun, colorful and simple. It makes using the site a pleasure and helps compliment the great videos and films people post there.

    * “**GitHub**”:https://github.com/ – Yes, this is an obligatory nerd choice. GitHub has exploded as *the* destination for developers to post their code, collaborate with others, download and distribute open source software, manage projects and more. It’s what we use here in the Small Dog IT department for all our software development and distribution. What you may not know is that GitHub doesn’t have to just be for software. Almost anything that you want to collaborate on with others can be set up on GitHub. A few years ago, I experimented with using it as a versioned repository for a story I was writing. It actually worked really well. The versioning works best for flat text files, but technically it can be used for anything.

    * “**Gravatar**”:https://en.gravatar.com/ – Gravatar is a really cool service that allows you to manage all of your online avatars in a single place. Each avatar can be linked to an email address. If you sign up on a 3rd party website with that email address, and the site implements Gravatar’s API (which the vast majority do these days), it’ll automatically pull in your avatar. Want to change your avatar on all the sites you use? Just log into Gravatar and change it! I love this service because it helps keep my online presence consistent and if I feel like changing the image, it’s super easy. It also keeps a library of previous avatars so if you want to go back to a previous avatar, you can do so easily.

  • Droids, Drones, Scooters, Cars and USB C

    I remember only a couple years ago when drones were new and cutting edge technology. Now, there are huge sections of the show devoted to drones of all sorts: fighting drones, mini drones, paper airplane drones and dancing drones. I don’t know if it is the Star Wars influence but droids were everywhere, including “laundroids” for folding your laundry, grill cleaning droids, window washing droids and all kinds of robots.

    3D printers were new and unique and again whole sections of the show were devoted to “replicators” making everything from iPhone cases to clothing to spare body parts. Several companies were there just to show their filaments for these 3D printers.

    Scooters were everywhere. You know, the ones in the news that have the batteries that blow up. Well, literally dozens of companies were showing their versions and the original Segway had a booth, too. Some one-wheel scooters were there as well as shoes with wheels that zipped you around.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4638.jpg!

    Self-driving cars and technology for self driving cars dominated the North Hall and some concept cars were shown, too. My favorite was the Faraday electric car that looked like a single seat batmobile.

    USB-C made its debut at the show with hubs, cables and some USB display port displays, too. I think we will see a lot of USB-C stuff coming up!

    Less prevalent this year was the huge variety of iPhone and iPad cases. There were huge sections last time but while there were several companies showing cases it was toned way down. In their place, power banks of all sorts were being shown in every imaginable shape and size. The Apple battery case, aka the hump, was universally panned but several companies had slim battery cases for the iPhone.

    p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4641.jpg!

    I did walk through the TV section but it was not as notable as in past years. The 3D fad has sort of expired and 4K displays are common. I still love the OLED displays, though.

    Other areas that were huge were health care and fitness with a lot of wearable fitness devices and health monitors or all sorts from implantable blood glucose devices to blood pressure cuffs, thermometers and scales. The home automation section was larger than previous years and there were some new HomeKit compatible devices. I liked the NoLok offering of bluetooth compatible padlocks and bike locks that work similar to the Kevo system.

    It was a quick trip out to Vegas but it was certainly worthwhile. I will follow up next week with a bit more.

  • _Dear Friends_,

    I am in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show and it is bigger than ever. My Apple watch is happy with all the walking I am doing but my feet are not feeling the love. The show is a great way to see what is on the horizon and of course, I had meetings interspersed with walking the show floor. Naturally, the meetings were far apart so I spent a lot of time walking or on buses or cabs.

    This show is pretty different from previous years but still is window to future products. See my short report below and I will follow up next week in Kibbles with a more in-depth look. This week’s kibbles exclusive special is a “refurbished 13-inch MacBook Air with a 512GB hard drive bundled with Applecare and a 2TB Time Capsule for $1759.99”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002113/special-save-150-on-refurbished-mac-bundle-and-keep-it-safe The MacBook Air is one of my most favorite laptops and this refurbished bundle is a great way to upgrade your mac and ensure your data is secure for the new year!