Data Doctors Tech Tips

How often have you entered something into your calendar that you really don't want to do? Isn't it about time you started putting things in that you do want to do? Well, that's the same perspective some Google engineers had as well, so they rolled out a feature called 'Goals' for Google Calendar users. Finding time to do your exercise is a very common goal, so you can choose an activity, set the frequency you want to achieve and your Google calendar will work to find the time in your calendar to make it happen. Whenever there's a conflict during those goals or you are running late, your Calendar will simply reschedule those goals automatically. The ' oal' option for new entries only appears on your mobile app for the moment, but once you've entered them, you will start to see your goals on any computer as well. Since the common problem with achieving goals is simply remembering to do them, the Goal option might be just the kick in the pants you need to start down the path to goal achieving success.

Is your smartphone being throttled? Wouldn't you like to know if your data provider is throttling back the speed on your unlimited data package? Several Internet Service Providers have been found to be lowering the bandwidth of unlimited bandwidth data packages once you've reached a certain level of usage. Many people do not realize it is happening, but they sense that everything seems to take a lot longer to load. If you are an unlimited data package for your smartphone, there is an easy way to test your speeds to see if you are being throttled. Just get the 'Ookla Speedtest' app and do several speed tests at the start of the billing cycle and take note of the speeds. At the end of the cycle, do the same tests to see if your speeds are significantly slower. If they are noticeably slower, you are likely being throttled! What good is an unlimited plan if your data speeds are throttled back because you are actually using it? The link to download the Ookla app is posted at datadoctors.com/radio. http://www.speedtest.net/mobile

Food and travel-based websites are growing in popularity, but in most cases, they have a lot to be desired. Generally light on content and heavy on annoying ads is far too common. Anthony Bourdain got involved with a website called Roads and Kingdoms a while back and it's brought a lot of attention to this useful site. It's award-winning digital journal approach to food, politics, travel and culture make it an excellent resource for anyone interested in any those topics. They use long-form stories and beautiful images to provide a wonderful way to discover new foods, travel destinations and people from around the world. The site lets you explore things by continent, food and drink, politics and culture or travel. My favorite section on the site is called '5 O'clock Somewhere' which will explore a different drinking culture every day. If you are interested in intelligent writing and beautiful images without the usual distracting ads, checkout http://roadsandkingdoms.com for a breath of fresh air.

Anyone that spends time on the Internet probably opens lots of tabs as you go and as a result, you've likely ran into this situation: While you are in the middle of reading something on one website, you suddenly hear a commercial video starts playing in the background on one of the other tabs but you have no idea which one it is. This forces you to click through all the other open tabs and scrolling around trying to figure out which one's causing all the annoying noise... it's a hassle! The folks at Google probably had enough of this irritation themselves, because they added an option to the Chrome browser to fight this annoyance. With Chrome, when any web page is generating any kind of sound, a tiny speaker icon will appear on the right side of the tab which lets you identify the offending page. You can either click on the tab to pause the video or simply click on the X on the tab to close it all together. If you have not tried Google Chrome yet, this is one of many reasons why it's my favorite!

Today, just about all of our mobile devices have the capability to take photos and generally includes an option for a flash of some sort. But if you assume that your flash is only for low lighting pictures could keep you from getting those great images. Outdoor pictures especially when they include people will often end up with harsh white spots along with big shadows, which will ruin the picture. Either of these situations can be improved by using the flash which can turn useless pictures into minor works of art. Using the flash on your phone means you need to be close enough to your subjects to make the weak phone flash useful in bright sunlight. On really sunny days, put your subjects in a shaded area to eliminate them from squinting and use your flash to fill in the shadows. Knowing exactly when to use your flash both indoors and outdoors can have a major impact on the quality of your images. The best way to get to know your camera's abilities is to experiment way before you are in the situation where you need everything to be perfect!

The tech industry preaches about the dangers of public wifi all the time, but there is something that you probably may not have realized. Your personal laptop may be automatically sharing files with anyone connected on the same coffee shop or hotel wifi you are using. Most laptops are setup with default or public shares, so you may be allowing others to access or possibly save random files on your computer. Generally speaking, this isn't going to impact your personal data, but your computer is still accessible by any random stranger connected to the same public wifi. As a safety measure, if you have no use for the public share folders sharing files with others, switch them off. I have actually seen situations where sensitive files were being shared in these publicly accessible folders because the user most likely didn't realize the whole world can access these public folders. Both Windows and Mac users most likely have these public share folders turned on, so I have posted the instructions on how to turn them off at datadoctors.com/radio. Disable public shares in OS X: http://osxdaily.com/2014/02/11/disable-public-folder-sharing-mac-os-x Disable public folders in Windows: http://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-remove-or-disable-shared-documents-from-my-computer

You're bopping around the Internet and suddenly a scary looking window pops up telling you that your computer has been infected. It can look a lot like a regular Windows screen, so you click on 'OK clean up my computer button' and they've got you. The scam popup will take over and keeps you from doing anything, but they do offer to fix your problem if you will just enter your credit card number. These very ominous but convincing scams are tricking people all over the world and we're seeing an increase in these malware attacks lately. They can use official sounding names like Windows Ultimate Booster or Windows Safety Master and if you click on anything, even the cancel button, they'll do their damage. If you ever see anything strange pop up on your screen, don't click on anything no matter how convincing it looks. Instead, use the three-fingered-salute (Ctrl-Alt-Del) to start the Task Manager which allows you to end the process altogether. If you aren't familiar with this useful process, we have created a step-by-step instructional video so you can sidestep this scam: http://youtu.be/LP09QSwKE5Y

You've probably noticed that a lot of websites on the web these days allow you to leverage one of your social media profiles to register for a free service. It will be presented as a much faster way to get setup on the site, but you need to know that you are exposing your profile info just for a little faster access. Many of today's apps will also do the same and before you know it, you will have given permission to boatloads of third parties to gain access to your profile info. Within the settings of each of your social networks is the option to revoke access, but only if you know where to find them. To make it much easier, a website called http://MyPermissions.org provides help. They have mad it a lot quicker to find the setting for all your major social networks. Just tap on the icon for Facebook, Twitter, Google or other well known networks you are using and you'll be taken right to the settings. My Permissions also allows you to sign-up for alerts when any new app gains access to your profile, as well as mobile apps so you can clean on the go.

Supporting causes you believe in is a good way of contributing to your local community and most often raising money comes into play to help your cause. While the various traditional ways of raising money are helpful, leveraging social media and digital platforms can greatly increase the likelihood of funding success. A website that was specifically created for online fundraising is called http://razoo.com Whether you are fundraising as a non-profit, a foundation, a corporation or as an individual, as long as you have a recognized 501(c)(3), Razoo can help you get started. They charge one of the smallest fees as a crowdsourcing site, so more of the donations go to the cause. They also allow you to embed your campaign on a Facebook page or website which makes it easy to promote the fundraising drive by getting the word out. All donations to your campaign are tax-deductible and for those with ongoing fund raising needs, you can recurring donations. Better yet, It's a great resource for finding local charities to support!

If you have ever wanted to snag a YouTube video so you can watch later when you're offline or if you ever want to convert a music video into an audio file, it's really simple to do. While there are numerous sites that offer this type of service, the one I like the most is http://dirpy.com because its really simple and quick to use. All that you need is the Youtube video link so you can paste it into the Dirpy tool to get a screen of download options. If, for instance, all you want is the audio, just select the format quality and click the download link. If you do want the entire video, you can select between low resolution to save space or HD to download a 720p version of the video with just a few clicks of the mouse. Once you have download the file you want, just save it into your media library or sync it up to your smartphone or tablet and you're good to go. Anyone about to go on a trip with children will find Dirpy to be an easy way to gather tons of content that's sure to keep them occupied for hours!