Technology

Mike Gdovin | January 12, 2012
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E-Mail Tips

E-mail has become an essential communication tool, both for work and for personal communication. However, if you recieve too much e-mail it can become overwhelming, but there are few things that you can do to make your inbox more managable and make e-mail something that doesn’t cause you grief. Over the past few years, I have tried many things to attempt and make my e-mail more manageable, but the following five tips are the ones that have have found the most useful in managing my inbox. I will admit that I may go a little over board when it comes to organizing my email, but I prefer to have everything well organized and easy to find.

 

1. One Inbox to Rule Them All

For those like me who have multiple e-mail accounts, I highly recommend that you consolidate all those accounts into one inbox so you can get all your messages in one place. My solution for this is using Gmail, which allows you to receive all your mail accounts and even allows you to send messages from all your accounts as well.  Gmail does limit you to receiving mail from only five accounts, this should be enough for most people and is more than enough even for me. Gmail is my favorite solution but, it is not the only solution to have all your mail in one place, both Hotmail and Yahoo Mail also allow you to do this as well, and you can also use traditional mail clients like Outlook, Thunderbird and Mail on the Mac for this as well. Personally, I find webmail to be the most effective for me mainly because of all of Gmail’s advanced features which you can only get by using the webmail but, that is just a personal preference. By having only one place to go to get all your email, it becomes much easier to read all your messages and make sure you never miss a message.

2. Use Rules/Filters

The reason I use “Rule/Filters”, is because it depends on the client and what they call them. I will call them filters because it is what my client, Gmail, calls them. Filters automate sorting e-mail; you can sort messages by who they are sent to, who they are from, subject, or words in the message. I personally use a lot of filters to sort all my email and have many labels, which I will talk about later, that I sort my email into.  By taking the short amount of time it takes to create the filters, your email will more or less organize itself and helps you be more efficient in checking your email.

3. Use Exchange

Although Exchange is something mostly used in the professional world, some consumer email providers including my favorite, Gmail, offers the use of Exchange email on mobile devices. The reason Exchange is so great and why so many business users use it is because as soon as a message is received, it is instantly pushed to all your devices. Exchange also pushes your contacts and calendars as well so you have access to all your most up-ro-date information at all times. By using exchange, your e-mail to be instantly accessible anywhere you are and with iOS it can even push a notification of new e-message so you know the second a message is received and hopefully e-mail won’t pile-up. I know this works great for my Gmail account on my iOS devices and have heard the same for Gmail and Android, but other e-mail providers do offer it as well. On iOS, setting up Exchange mail is very easy, there are a set of very straight forward instructions posted here. Exchange is mainly for those with a smartphone, but it is really help those people and I encourage everyone with a smartphone to research if their email provider offers Exchange email for their mobile devices because it makes keeping in sync very easy.

4. Use Folders and Labels

There is once again a naming discrepancy here, more traditional mail clients call them folders, while Gmail refers to them as labels. The one advantage to using labels is that you can mark a message with more than one label, while you can only have them in one folder because it moves the message to that folder. Either way, folders or labels can make organizing all your mail easy and can sort them out automatically but using filters. Theres a lot of different methods to organizing your messages,  so find a method that works for you and stick with it! Searching is great, but if you want to see all your messages for work or school or something, folders makes that easy especially when you combine them with filters. You can also use folders combine with filters to sort mail from each of your accounts into separate folders.

5. Prioritize Your Inbox (Gmail Only)

One of my favorite features of Gmail is a Google Labs feature called Priority Inbox. Once you enable Priority Inbox in the Gmail settings, it will detect what messages are and are not important and will learn from your reading behavior you can also use filters to teach your e-mail what is and isn’t important. The inbox part of the Priority inbox takes the “important” email and puts them on top and then has your “less important” in the lower half of your inbox. If an email was marked important and you don’t want it to or if an email was not marked important and you think it is important, there are button on the top of each message and inbox to manually correct the message or messages and then Gmail will remember that next time you get that type of message.

These are my top five tips that I personally use to manage my email and keep it somewhat organized and make checking my email something I don’t dred. Not all these tips work for everyone, but try some of them out and see if this can help make your inbox more organized.

 


Category: Technology |
Mike Gdovin | December 15, 2011
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Going Paperless For Students

Starting this semester, I challenged myself to significantly reduce the amount of paper I use. I began this process last semester when I bought a document scanner last semester and I really took it up a notch this semester. Going paperless may be good for the environment, but it’s not always cheap. The solution that I will outline below is what I have used this semester to much success but, it isn’t cheap! I already many of these things but, for someone starting from scratch it may look expensive. Below is the solution that I employed and worked great for me!

Document Scanner: I typically scan any papers I get for class, usually every day, using my Doxie Document Scanner. The scanner is extremely easy to use and has great software. The one downside is that papers get scanned crooked sometimes and can be frustrating at times. Either way it works fairly well and lets me turn all my papers into PDF files and It also does photo scanning as a bonus.

Some professors post their class papers online, for download or if it’s just a webpage I can print it to PDF. This is an option built into Mac OSX ‘s print menu as well as on Linux. Windows users can add this feature easily as well by installing the CutePDF writer  which creates a fake printer that will save documents as PDF files.

Dropbox: I have sung the praises so many times in past blog posts, I lost count. I use Dropbox for all my documents including my scanned documents. This way I can have access to them anywhere and I know they are backed-up incase tragedy strikes. I also use an iOS app that I will discuss next to synchronize my documents to my iPhone and iPad.

Good Reader: Good Reader is a great reading app for iOS and allows you to sync documents from a wide variety of cloud services to your device for offline access.  I use Good Reader to have offline access to read all my documents on my iPhone and iPad. The app is $5 for both the iPad and iPhone version but, it is the best solution that I have found to access my Dropbox files offline. One other downside is that you have to manually setup each individual folder to sync which is tedious but, you only have to do it once. Good Reader also doesn’t automatically sync your files making you have to manually synchronize your files.

E-Books:  For those who are a bit more adventurous, you can get many textbooks and other books as electronic books either on the Kindle or iBook Store. I used a kindle book on my iPad for one of my classes just to try it and it was a great experience. E-books are save a lot of space and can be easily searched to quickly find information, they also allow you to adjust the font size of the text to make it the optimal size for you to read.  However there are a few downsides, first, e-books tend to be a bit more expensive than if you buy a used version. Also, when your done with the book, you can’t sell your book like many students do with their old textbooks, this issue can be alleviated by renting books through Amazon Kindle store, but it doesn’t save all that much money over just buying the book.

 

Category: Technology |
Mike Gdovin | July 19, 2011
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Going Paperless- The Definitive Guide

An on-going project that I have been working on this year has been to go paperless. It was one of my big projects for this year in order to to reduce clutter and make it easier to find information in much less time than it would take to sort through many paper documents. I started slowly and then expanded as it became feasible. I plan to not carry any paper documents with me next semester in school and to apply this also to other projects.

1. Manuals

I had a huge folder of user manuals, setup guides and other documentation in my filling cabinet that was difficult to transport between home and my dorm and also not necessary since I rarely use them.  The best way I found to digitize manuals  was to Google the device I needed the manual to and then “PDF”. Many manufacturers had PDFs available on their websites, while some of them where available as a webpage as PDFS which I just downloaded. For those that we just webpages or some other format, I converted them to PDF first.  On Windows this can be done by using Cute PDF Writer and on the Mac you can do it by clicking File—>Print or holding the Command+P keys on your keyboard and then choose PDF from the bottom left side of the print screen. I was able to find the majority of manuals online for my devices, if you can’t find them from Google or the manufacturer’s website where manuals can usually be found in the support page try Retrevo has many manuals posted in PDF format that are free and  easy to download.

2. Documents
To digitize my documents, I got a Doxie Document Scanner. Although any scanner can be used to scan documents (as long as it can save to PDF or other document format) I picked the Doxie  because it’s flat and fits under my computer stand and only requires a USB cable to operate. In addition to all that, it’s easy to transport and scans documents really well. My friend Michael Plasmeier uses an auto-feeding document scanner which allows him to scan many documents at once however, these are much more expensive and bulky which I didn’t want to have  t transport back and forth to school.  Doxie makes it easy to scan documents (photos too) and save them in a variety of file formats. I scan documents to PDF files although Doxie can also save to: Evernote, Google Docs and other cloud sites in addition to many file formats. One thing to note however, is that the Doxie, as of the writing of this article, does not support OCR (Optical Character Recognition) which lets you scan files and make them into editable text files on your computer. Personally most of the files that I scan are just for reading and do not need to be edited but be aware of this if that is something you need.

3. Receipts:
Receipts I do two different things with, for minor purchases, I just take a picture with my iPhone camera and save it as a note in Evernote which synchronizes across all my devices and  the cloud. Evernote allows me to conveniently access those receipts no matter where I am and can easily find them with a quick search.  For more major purchases, I scan them to a PDF using my Doxie scanner and then save them as a file on my computer in a reciepts folder which is organized for easy access. I do this to have a higher-quality scan of important receipts, although phone cameras are getting better, the scan is much better resolution. You don’t want to have a bad copy of a receipt which has important information that  you might need down the road. Another quick sidenote, the IRS has begun to accept digitized reciepts for taxes as well so scanning receipts can make it easier to get organized come tax season.

4. Business Cards
Being a college student, I don’t have many business cards that I need to hold onto but, I just use the camera on my iPhone to take a picture and then file them in Evernote for easy access like I do with receipts.  I also highly recommend copying the information into your address book so it can be easily access if you need it. There are also specialized apps on iOS and most mobile platforms to scan just Receipts and Business cards but, the cloud synchronization of Evernote and the fact that one app does many things, all in one app makes me choose to just use Evernote to simplify my life.

So, after I digitize these files, I organize the PDF files and put them in my Dropbox  which makes sure that they are accessible anywhere and a backed up so the files won’t be lost. Evernote takes care of everything stored there and syncs them across all my devices automatically.

My iPad was also a great help in going paperless, I use Good Reader to sync my Dropbox to my iPad for offline reading and  Evernote for accessing Evernote notes on my iPad. Both apps are also available on the iPhone as well for full portability.

The last question you probably have is: What do I do with the old papers? Anything with personal information should be shredded for security and then anything else, should be recycled. This way, you get rid of all the extra paper clutter from your home or office but get rid of it in an eco-friendly, green way. You may want to keep important paper files just to be safe but by digitizing them, you now have more options of what to do with them and more portability.

By following these steps, you should be able to eliminate much of the paper-clutter in your life and then as more arises, just continue to follow these steps to make sure no new paper clutter begins to accumulate. For example, when you have a receipt that you want to save from any e-commerce transaction, just save it as a PDF using the steps I mentioned above.  Also, remember that since you are relying on your computer even more for important information,  backup is critical. You should always backup to the cloud at least so that in case of a fire or anything else that would damage your work area, your files are safe. I highly recommend Backblaze which offers unlimited backup on internal and external hard drives for just $5/month.  Once you reduce the amount of paper you use in your life, you will find it easier to find information and less cumbersome.  If you also utilize the iPad, it will also be more portable because you can take what would be many heavy books full of papers in one lightweight, portable device.

Category: Communication, Technology |
Mike Gdovin | May 19, 2011
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Thunderbolt: The Future of Professional Data Transfer

When Apple unveiled the new Macbook Pros in February, the included the new high speed transfer technology developed by Intel called Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt transfers data at 10 Gb/secs, this is incredible! The newest version of USB, USB 3.0, can only transfer data at half that rate, 5 Gb/sec. Neither technology are standard yet, since Thunderbolt just came out in February and USB 3.0 came out in late 2009. So naturally, there are very few devices that take advantage of the higher speeds of USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt. USB 3.0 is starting to appear in higher-end computers, and the same is also true for Thuderbolt which has been adopted primarily by Apple and some other computer manufacturers. HP announced this week that they would not be putting Thunderbolt in any of  their computers, while Apple is rumored to be adding Thunderbolt to all their computers in the near future.

Thunderbolt is not the successor to USB, although it is much faster than even the newest version of USB. Thunderbolt is more of the successor to Firewire as a higher-end data transfer technology. Thunderbolt is based on the mini-display technology and can be daisy chained up to 6 devices. With it’s high-speed data rate it is perfect for high-end data transfers such as video editing, video production as well as many other things. It can be used to capture uncompressed video and write data an external hard drive all from a single laptop. This can let you use a laptop as a all-in-one video studio which is traditionally a room full of equipment.

USB 3.o will most likely be widely adopted by all computer users, while Thunderbolt will be mostly used in the higher-end computers. I hope that Apple will add USB 3.0 eventually to their computers to give the users more options, and I think they will so that Mac users will have two options of high speed data transfer. Firewire will eventually fade away and get replaced by Thunderbolt because its the future of high-end data transfer.

Category: Technology |
Mike Gdovin | January 13, 2011
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CES 2011 Thoughts

Last week was the annual consumer electronics show, where every major electronics manufacturer unveils their newest products and make all the electronics bought  over the holidays obsolete.  This year there were numerous 3D TVs, Tablets as well as many other  gadgets.  I think tablets are going to be the future of mobile computing, but 3D is just a passing fad and won’t last long. On the other side, there were voice activated TVs for those who loose remotes a lot or who just have too many remotes and aren’t sure of which does what. There was also a 4K TV, which is a very high resolution and I think a much better option that a lower resolution 3D television which is a gimmick at best. There were a lot of camcorders and still cameras as well, 3D camcorders were also there however, but once again I think they won’t last and think it is a better idea to just go with a normal higher resolution camcorder.  There were a lot of other gadgets as always, but there wasn’t much else noteworthy, so much goes on at CES it’s hard to keep track of it all. But these are the primary trends that I saw this year at CES.

Category: Technology |
Mike Gdovin | January 3, 2011
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Evernote-Note Syncing Done Right

The built-in iOS Note app leaves a lot to be desired, the main issue I have is the poor syncing. Although it does have a sync function, it only lets you sync to a notes folder in you email account which doesn’t let you edit elsewhere and just provides a backup of it. This is okay but, what if you want to edit on multiple devices and keep in sync between them all.

The solution is Evernote, Evernote allows you to sync notes between your computer, your mobile device, and the web. You can also take pictures and annotate them with notes and sync them as well. The notes sync back and forth and can be edited on the desktop and mobile platform, while the can be only read online with the free account. It great for any notes or other information you want  anywhere and easily searchable. You can also clip websites to remember and easily access them.

One of the best things about Evernote, is that its free, there are applications for Windows, Mac OSX, iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Web OS, and Blackberry. There are limitations on the free account like the amount of data to be uploaded, no encryption and more. The premium account provides more upload, better support, SSL encryption, and Offline access for either $5 per month or $45 for the year.

Evernote is a fantastic way to organize information and access it anywhere, it is perfectly useable without the Premium account and is a great way to have notes wherever you go. I use it now instead of the built-in iOS notes app and has really been a great improvement. In fact, I wrote this whole article in Evernote on my iPod Touch and then copied it online from the desktop application.

Category: Cloud Computing, Computers, Mobile, Technology |
Mike Gdovin | December 12, 2010
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Is The Netbook Dead?

Netbooks (formerly know as Ultra mobiles PCs)  became a major technology trend in late 2007 starting with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and the Asus Eee Pcs. The original Intel Atom processor had the ability to provide enough power  for a inexpensive, portable computer. However,  it’s 3 years later and people have become more dependent on their computers and more mobile. Some people (like me) just use their netbooks for taking notes and some web browsing. While others use their netbooks as their computer when they are on the move and need more power out of them.

Personally, my netbook is only used when I am in class and before classes. Otherwise it sits in a drawer and is never used on weekends. My feeling is that for my uses of a netbook, I would be able to replace it with an iPad or other tablet device (possibly with a bluetooth keyboard), especially now that the iPad has the key feature of multi-tasking. The iPad is much more portable and has all the apps I know and love on my iPod Touch. It also gets vastly better battery life and has better synchronization both of applications and data. It also is really fast, my netbook is sluggish at times which I attribute to both the hardware as well as it running Windows XP. I have tried several “netbook editions” of Linux but, there are a lot of compatibility issues. The iPad is also thinner and more portable than a netbook. I also can see myself using the iPad outside of the classroom a lot more because of all the great applications available through the app store.

For those who need a more powerful portable computer, they should take a look at the lightweight computers. The best example of this is the Macbook Air but, there are also Windows alternatives like my friend Michael Plasmeier’s Lenovo U350. These computers are double the price most netbooks but, they provide a full computing experience and full powered computer operating system. These computers might not be the the fastest, but they are powerful enough to get most things dones when you are traveling.

Although Google is just releasing their first Chrome OS netbook, I think more people will opt for the either the portable full-featured computer or a tablet like an iPad instead of the netbook. They may be more expensive but, they deliver more features, and power and most importantly, more portability.

Category: Computers, Technology |
Mike Gdovin | July 29, 2010
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Post PC Thoughts

Don’t get me wrong, I love having the power of a computer in my pocket, but the idea of these devices replacing computers leave me a bit uneasy still. I can get a lot done just on my iPod touch (I am in fact writing this article in Notes on my iPod Touch), but I still want to be able to go home and use my computer that has the full power I need for tasks like video editing. Although you can do most of the things average computer users need to do on mobile devices, the devices are just not powerful enough to provide the speed that a personal computer does. I think that mobile devices like the iPad and iPhone might be able to replace less powerful, portable devices like netbooks but,  I still think people will need a desktop or laptop computer as well for more power-intensive tasks plus as of right now, you still need to have a computer to sync your iPhone or iPad.

Many people think that the Post PC era will behind within the next 5-10 years but, I think that we still want and need personal computers and I think it will stay that way for some time and think that is good. Although I love my iPod Touch I still need my computer for certain things and to get things done faster.

Category: Computers, Technology |
Mike Gdovin | April 11, 2010
One comment

iPhone 4.0 Software Review

One Thursday, Apple gave a media preview of the next generation of the iPhone operating system. Many of the requested features that people have wanted are finally added and i think it is definitely worth the upgrade. They featured 7 major features which were the focus of the event, but there were over 100 additions to this version.

Multitasking- is the one feature that a lot of people have been demanding since the release of the first iPhone. It is very well executed on the iPhone and it isn’t supposed to be as resource-intensive as other mobile multi-tasking. This will make the iPhone platform much easier to get things done on. However, this will only work on iPhone 3Gs and 3rd generation iPod touches. This means that i’m out of luck but, for those with new hardware, this will make getting things done where every your go much easier.

Another great getting things done feature is Folders which allows you to group application into folders and have easy access to all your apps. It also will allow users to have over 2,000 apps and it will make organizing apps much easier.

You are now also able to customize the wallpaper of your device which is nice although I don’t know why it took them so long to add this feature.

The default Mail app got a few upgrades as well. Unified inbox lets you put multiple mail accounts into one mailbox so you can check all your mail in one spot. This makes it much easier for people who have multiple email accounts, as I do, you don’t need to check account individually although, you can if you still want to. Mail also has threaded conversations, like Gmail grouping together email conversations. The final addition to Mail is the ability to open attachments with other applications, which is very important if you want to edit attached files wherever you are.

As, I expected, Apple has made a version of iBooks, their ebook reader for the iPad, available for the iPhone.  It would have been foolish if Apple didn’t include this. You can sync your bookmarks and books with your iPad as well and make it easy to pick up on one device where you left off on the previous one.

Several Enterprise features have been added as well, you can now encrypt your email more thoroughly, use VPNs, and developers can even encrypt application data.

iAds is an interactive Ad system that can be enbedded in apps and have unique ads that are more than a standard banner ad and are even interactive.

Apple’s new Social gaming network will let gamers play against their friends over the internet and develop a mobile equivalent to the Playstation Network or XBox live. This will even further the iPhone as a portable gaming device.

Over-all this new version will greatly enhance the iPhone and has set a high standard for other mobile phone platforms to compete with. iPhone 4.0 will be out this Summer, and will be out in the Fall for the iPad. Pricing has not been announced but, even if it is $10 it is still worth it for the extra features you will gain.

Category: Apple, Technology |
Mike Gdovin | March 16, 2010
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The Growing Use of Computers in Video Production

In the early days of video production, studios and control rooms were filled with single use pieces of equipment that were extremly expensive and were only used for one particular task. However, now in the past few years, those old single-use pieces of equipment are being replaced with computers that can do a particular job but can also do other things as well. This is mainly because computers have become much more powerful and can handle full HD video without any trouble. Now instead of having a special piece of equipment for the character generator, you can, as my college does use a standard off the shelf computer with a special card and some special software for a lot less money. We use the chiron system which is used in about 80% of control rooms in the industry. The other, and probably most important computerized piece of equipment is the swtchee which controls what is either recorded or broadcasted. Hardware switchers, which are still the norm in the industry, cost tens of thousands of dollars. However if you have a powerful enough computer, and the right inputs for your computer, then it can replace the hardware switcher for a fraction of the cost. There are a few software solutions for this, the most common is the Tricaster which Leo Laporte uses for his TWIT Live stream. The other common piece of software that can serve this is Boinx TV which I reviewed in an earlier article. Although this sound appealing, it is still new technology and requires a very powerful computer. However, if you have a powerful laptop it alllows you to have a switcher that you can take with you anywhere and do multi-camera shoots anywhere.

I think as time goes on more and more equipment will go computerized and will further decrease the cost of building studios which will allow more people to afford building a studio. Computers also allow flexibility and allows you to easily change the arrangement of the studio based on the program and th director’s preferences. I was able to see thus first hand when I toured Dallas Cowboys Stadium and saw their control room. The control room screens are all connected to KVM (Keyboard, video and monitor) switches so that the director can decide how they want people arranged in the control room and rearrange the control room just by pressing a few buttons.

Category: Computers, Technology, Video Production |
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