Data Doctors Tech Tips

Are you one of the many wannabe musicians that would like to be able to play something awesome on a guitar but you are just unwilling to commit the time it takes for lessons? If so, have I got a tip for you. The ability to visualize lessons can be extremely helpful anytime you're attempting to learn something new and that's the approach that the CoachGuitar app takes. Never mind all that music theory, chords or something called ' ablature', you'd be happy to crank out some riffs from Stairway to Heaven or Back in Black, right? The app shows you step by step, how to crank out those riffs from popular songs using videos and animated fretboards. It starts by showing you where to put your fingers and which of the strings you should strum allowing you to learn some familiar songs, quickly. The CoachGuitar app is essentially a virtual guitar teacher right on your smartphone or tablet. You can start with the basic app and starter lessons which are free and then buy additional lessons for lots of popular songs if you really get into it. Anyone that wants to learn how to 'shred' should check the apps at http://www.coachguitar.com

Anyone planning a party, big event or a simple gathering needs to decide how they will send out their invitation to get things started. There is no shortage of electronic invitation options that are easy to create and send out with most including a way to see who is planning on attending. But in some cases, it's too important for an informal electronic invitation system, so opting for the old school snail-mail paper invitations is appropriate. Gathering all the needed addresses, selecting the right kind of paper, creating a suitable design as well as the right envelope can be very time consuming. Anyone that needs to send offline or electronic invitations should include https://PaperlessPost.com in their evaluations. This web-based tool allows you to create beautiful online invitations as well as offline paper invitations all in one place. The system even allows you to use an online invitations to collect mailing addresses if you want to also send snail-mail invitations. The tool is available via their website or through any iOS device using their app. Anyone looking for a way to communicate with some pizzaz both online and traditional mail should look into https://PaperlessPost.com

The art of 'craft cocktails' is envogue these days, but bellying up at your local craft bar will get expensive, really fast. Anyone that would prefer avoiding those expensive hipster hangouts, should learn how to make their favorites themselves. While there is no shortage of bar recipe books, a more efficient way to great cocktail recipes is using an app called 'Mixology'. You can tell the app what you have on hand in liquors and mixers so you can search for recipes that use those ingredients. How frustrating would it be to find a new recipe only to see that you can't make it unless you make a run to the store! The app can provide you with random suggestions or you can pick specific liquors as a primary ingredient to view lots of suggestions. The app can actually do more than just cocktail recipes - you can create specialty shots, punch bowls and non-alcoholic options for the designated driver at any gathering. The free Mixology app also offers the tips and tricks of bartending and is available for both the Android and iPhone smartphones. Think of it as a bar expert in your pocket!: http://mixologyapp.com

The Internet has become our go-to research tool for comparing products and services, but what can you do when you don't know any of the competing products? Today's tip if for those times that you know the name of a product but have no idea if they have any competitors. Just add a space and the letters 'v' and 's' (as in versus) behind whatever it is that you are trying to compare. For example, if you're car shopping looking for all the other competeting vehicles, you would type 'VW Touareg vs' This tip seems to be very useful whenever you're seeking the best smartphone app of any type or category. One app will lead to another allowing you to find lots of competing apps using this trick. It also works very well with just about anything technology related, since so many tech-savvy people love to compare gadgets, devices and software around the world. This tip may not work for everything, but you will find that it's effective more times then it's not, because of the way Google combines the keywords you are using combined with popularity rankings.

Weddings are supposed to be a blissful experience but organizing everything that leads up to the wedding day are generally filled with tasks and stress. One of the biggest tasks is choosing how or what gift registry will be used for the wedding. There are endless online resources for generating a gift registry, but they're generally limited to whatever that website is interested selling. Anyone that's in the early stages of their preparation should checkout https://Zola.com and its unique approach to this task. They allow anyone to create a registry not just for products but associated services, or even a honeymoon kitty, with just about anything sold online. Their site creates a single place for any and all items that can be on a couple's wish-list and handles all the transactions. They also offer the ability to schedule the delivery of the wedding gifts, which can be helpful if the new couple is moving or on an extended honeymoon. Zola also makes group gifting easy if there are expensive items on the registry. Think of it as Kickstarter for weddings.

Have you ever found yourself in need of very basic graphic design task, but it's not something you can justify hiring someone for?. Most of us are "design challenged" or lack the expensive programs that would allow you to generate the artwork, so we need to find an alternative. My suggestion is that you checkout a web tool called https://Canva.com. The Canva system is really simple to use, because it's template driven which means you don't have to install anything to your computer. You can use it to create flyers, posters, business cards, web graphics, proper dimensioned social media images or just about any type of graphics without a huge learning curve. You just select a design style, then select an associated template to begin modifying text to finish your design. Canva allows you to upload your own pictures or buy on of their professional images for as little as one dollar. Canva is simple to learn, really easy to use, inexpensive or free and generates professional results...it's the perfect tool for the designed challenged. Anyone lacking in vision, money, design skills or the time to learn how to create great looking graphics should go directly to https://Canva.com!

Our beloved smartphones have the ability to easily create high resolution pictures and amazing HD videos anytime we want. One downside to creating these amazing images and videos is that they generate huge files, especially if you're shooting HD video. Trying to send or upload high-resolution videos through a social media or email account requires that your beautiful creations need to be compressed, lowering the quality. Anytime you need to send a large original resolution video or lots of hi-res images without compressing them, check out an app called 'WeTransfer'. The WeTransfer app makes it easy and free to send those huge files right from your smartphone to anyone through a simple email link. The apps work on Android and iOS mobile devices as well as Mac computers and the Chrome web browser. Unlike a lot of other transfer apps, the people you send your files to won't have to download the app or even create an account. All they have to do is click the 'download' link that you send via email to start downloading your uncompressed videos and pictures. The download link for all platforms is: http://WeTransfer.com/mobile

If you have ever had to call a tech person for help, you have likely been asked to restart your computer as the first step. It is the first step because so many problems can be resolved by robooting and the same holds true for issues when you're surfing the Net by also using a simple step most people forget to perform...clear the cache in your browser. The cache is a random storage of items that you have previously downloaded while visiting pages you were on. By reloading element already in the cache, your devices browser can load a page more quickly because it bypasses the extra steps of downloading those elements from the site. On occasion, these elements in your browser cache can actually cause page loading problems, especially those that require log ins. So, the next time you encounter issues when trying to load a website, start your diagnosis by clearing your cache. If you're not sure how to perform this important task, the instructions for most popular browsers is at: http://www.refreshyourcache.com

Anyone that is a user of Google's productivity tools like Docs, Forms and Sheets will want to look into today's add-on suggestion. The add-on is called 'Save As Doc' which makes it easy to turn any spreadsheet into a doc file. This option is helpful when you need to combine spreadsheet info into a word processing document. It's really helpful when the text in a cell is too wide to display in a standard spreadsheet. The add-on allows you to convert an entire spreadsheet or specific cells as long as they are adjacent that you may want converted into a document that is completely editable. If you're working with a spreadsheet that's the result of a survey that you created in Google Forms, this add-on is especially helpful. No need to manually format the results when you copy and paste info into a document from a spreadsheet. It also allows you to create a page break after each row of data, making the results much easier to keep organized. The 'Save As Doc' add-on is free but will only work in Google Chrome. The download link is: http://goo.gl/H0ed2B

Yesterday we discussed 360 degree cameras technology that is becoming the next big thing in video. But creating amazing videos in 360 isn't of much value if you can't share them for others to easily view them too. The guys and gals over at YouTube made the viewing of 360 videos on the network possible by creating support for the uploading of 360 videos. With the YouTube app installed on any phone or tablet allows you to move around in the video by moving your phone around, allowing you to see all the different direction that was captured. You can kind of do the same thing on your computer at YouTube.com using your mouse to change the point of view, but frankly, the mobile experience is so much better. Checkout examples of these 360 videos and learn more about watching them at: http://youtubecreator.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-new-way-to-see-and-share-your-world.html