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My visiting family went out dolphin watching today taking advantage of the sunny day. The dogs and I are hanging out at my home office and I am listening to some Eagles music as I work.
Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!
_Don, Dean, Emily & Scott_
I am the kind of gal that admittedly likes gadgets and accessories just because they are cool, I don’t even need to have a use for them to make me want one! If there is a new iPad case, a new speaker, a new product announcement from Apple, I want it. This has resulted in a vast collection over the years of all kinds of gadgets, gizmos and some stuff that I just hang onto for no good reason other than I might need it one day. Some things have been a bit of a fad, others have stood the test of time. Over the years I have found that I few items in my collection of gadgets that have either become invaluable or the kind of item that really stands the test of time.
p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4651.jpg!
My first must have and favorite gadgets are portable bluetooth speakers, and I have had several over the years. The battery powered speakers from Skullcandy I had were one of my most favorite pocket sized speakers! It took up little room in my bag and I could have my music wherever I wanted. You never realize how much you miss having music wherever you go until you start to use these kinds of speakers and then suddenly don’t have them! I eventually outgrew my little Skullcandy speakers and upgraded to a larger but still portable Altec system. This speaker system went everywhere with us. In fact, it still travels with us in our camper even though it features a 30 pin connection for our phones. What I loved most about this set up was that it had a rechargeable battery, so unlike my little Skullcandy speakers I didn’t need to worry about carrying around spare AA batteries. It also allows me to use a 3.5mm headphone cable and an FM radio. I recently started to use the “**Outdoortech Turtle Shell**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/85338/outdoor-tech-turtle-shell-2-0-rugged-wireless-boombox-electric-blue speakers to replace the old Skullcandy speakers for immediate portable sound, and as a huge bonus this speaker is bluetooth, something none of my previous portable units had. I will admit, I still haven’t found a better replacement for my aging Altec portable speaker as far as sound quality goes, but I will also admit finding a newer solution would require my having to let go!
My second must-have gadget is an airport express base station. You might be surprised that it is not the Airport Extreme. Why do I love the “**airport express**”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/80932/apple-airport-express-base-station-802-11n-wi-fi so much? Well part of it might be a bit nostaglic. It was my first introduction into wireless speakers. How cool was it to plug in my Harmon Kardon speakers, simply tap my iPhone while sitting on the couch, and my speakers came to life like magic? But the great features don’t stop there. It’s a really powerful and inexpensive wireless router. For many, we don’t have huge areas we need to cover with wireless. Maybe it’s just a small apartment, or perhaps your house just isn’t that big. When I first started to use the airport express the one draw back was that the only ethernet port had to be designed (in most cases) for your internet modem, but in recent years Apple has added a second ethernet port allowing for more flexibility and versatility with this little gem.
p{text-align: center;}. !http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4650.jpg!
iPad and iPhone cases are another huge weakness of mine. I probably have no less then five cases for my phone and for my iPad. You could say I collected cases like some girls collect shoes! But on a serious note, this is a very important accessory for your iPhone or your iPad. Some folks prefer form fitting and minimal, others prefer a more rugged case. I have come to prefer several cases. However, I think cases that combine both slim form factor and serious protection are the “**Lifeproof**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002119 cases. I have one for my phone and one for my iPad. What I love most of them is that they come off easily! I don’t always want a heavy duty case on my devices, but have found that many cases that offer greater levels of protection end up being very difficult to take off your device.
I got my start in using computers with CPM operating system and keyboard shortcuts were present there. I used them all the time so they come as second nature to me. But as I go out and talk with customers and help them with their Macs, I am surprised by the number of people that do not know that most of the things you can do with your mouse by clicking on a menu item can be done faster with keyboard shortcuts.
The first thing to learn about shortcuts are the symbols that are used to show these keys.
Command ⌘
Shift ⇧
Option ⌥
Control ⌃
Caps Lock ⇪
Fn
These work for your Mac Keyboard but if you are using a keyboard made for a Windows machine you need to substitute the Windows logo for the Command key and the Alt key for the option key. When you look at a menu in almost any application you will find the common commands for all these symbols next to them to indicate the keyboard shortcut. Here are some common ones:
Command-X **Cut** Remove the selected item
Command-C **Copy** the selected item
Command-V **Paste** the contents
Command-Z **Undo** the previous command
Command-A **Select all** items
Command-F **Find** open a Find window
Command-G **Find Again** Find the next occurrence of the item previously found
Command-H **Hide** the windows of the front app.
Command-M **Minimize** the front window to the dock
Command-M **New** Open a new document or window
Command-P **Print** the current document
Command-Space bar **Spotlight** show or hide the spotlight search field
Command-Tab **Switch apps** switch to the next most recently used app
Command-shift-3 **Screenshot** take a screenshot of the entire screen
As you can see, there are endless keyboard shortcuts to use, and these are only a small fraction of what you can do with “**keyboard shortcuts.**”:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 So the next time you find yourself wondering what you can do if your mouse suddenly stops working or if your just looking for a more efficient way to do something, keyboard shortcuts might just be what your looking for!
_Hello Friends,_
The big winter storm called Jonas is heading for the east coast and Vermonters are hoping that it tracks north of the current projections but it looks like it might miss northern New England and hit the coastal areas. The lack of snow in Vermont and the unusually high temperatures have hit the Vermont ski areas and local merchants pretty hard. Here it is the end of January and no significant snow in Vermont. Well for all the skiers and especially for the businesses I hope that those areas that can’t really handle snow get bypassed and Vermont gets the big dump because Vermonters are ready.
Down here in Key West it has been sort of cool meaning I have to wear long pants and shoes, although if it was this warm in Vermont everyone would be in shorts. Down here when it gets below 65 you see people with down coats. NOAA reported this week that 2015 was the warmest year in recorded history breaking the record from 2014 by far.
Apple honored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on its home page on the national holiday on Monday with Dr. King’s quotation “Life’s most persistent and urgent questions is, What are you doing for others”. Tim Cook tweeted his respects, too. I had the honor of marching with Dr. King and share this respect, he was truly one of the great Americans of all time
We always advertise our “Celebrate Diversity” slogan during this time of the year. We strongly feel that you gain strength through diversity whether it is race, religion, national origin or sexual orientation. I remember a long time ago we had a series of Celebrate Diversity web banners that created a lot of controversy with some sites refusing to run them. Diversity is much more mainstream now despite some candidates for President attempting to divide us.
This week’s Kibbles & Bytes Exclusive is weather related with $20 off the “**Tempus Pro Bluetooth Weather Stations.**”:http://www.smalldog.com/wag900002127/special-save-20-on-tempus-pro-bluetooth-weather-station This was one of the most popular gifts this holiday season and is a great way to keep track of the weather in your microclimate. This complete weather station includes indoor and outdoor sensors that measure temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind and barometric pressure. Complete with mounting hardware it is simple to install and once you download the App you can monitor the weather on your iPhone or iPad. Read a Small Dogger review of the Tempus Pro “**here.**”:http://blog.smalldog.com/article/fody-weather-station/ Normally, $159.99 this week Kibbles & Bytes readers can get the Tempus Pro Weather Station for only **$139.99**
iPhones are pretty awesome cameras and they are pretty awesome displays for photos as well. They’re actually such awesome cameras that almost everyone fills them up with pictures, and then you’re out of space and can’t take any more photos. To see what’s taking up space on your iPhone, you can navigate to a breakdown of what’s taking up space and how much.
Go to *Settings (the gray gears) > General > Storage & iCloud Usage*. Under the heading of *Storage* you’ll see *Used* (what’s actually taken up on your phone) and *Available* (how much free space you have). There is another option, *Manage Storage*, which gives you a breakdown of how much space each app is taking up as well as the option to remove that app and its data right from there.
Photos & Camera is the number one culprit for taking up space on most of the phones I see. It’s just so easy to take photos like crazy and run out of space. The biggest culprit is videos; a short video can take up more space than a few dozen photos, or maybe even a hundred or more, depending on the length of the video.
There are a number of different solutions. A common one is to move them onto your computer and remove them from your iPhone. Another one is to upload them to an online service and there are a lot of options here. Facebook, for example, is where many of my best photos can be found. But for the real bulk of my photos I don’t really want to share them with the world, I just want to hold on to them. For this I use *iCloud Photo Library*. I do need to pay for extra iCloud storage space, but $0.99 per month gets me 50GB. It can take hours or even days to upload an entire Photo Library, depending on the size and the upload speed, but it’s really great when it all gets uploaded. There are two options: Optimize iPhone Storage, meaning you get a low resolution thumbnail on the device and a full version available to download in iCloud, and when you try to view that photo it will download for your viewing. The other is Download and Keep Originals. I do that on my Mac, where I have a ton of available space, but not on my phone.
There are many Terminal commands that one can use to expand control over OS X. We are all aware of Spotlight and Finder, but many find that the Terminal offers a wider range of options than the GUI. Today I will talk about the *find* command and how to use it.
The syntax for the find command is as follows:
*find ~/ -name testing.rtf*
The first word will always be *find*, the second will be the directory or folder you would like find to search, the third will alway be *-name* and the last is the file you need find to search for. As you can see I used the master level of the home folder to start the search by using the *~* symbol. This ensures I will not miss the file I am looking for. Please see the example below.
!http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4648.png!
Find also allows you to search for a file type instead of a specific file. Just replace the file with the file type and include an asterisk, which is Terminal’s wild card symbol, in front of it. See the example below.
!http://blog.smalldog.com/images/4649.png!
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
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_
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.