Data Doctors Tech Tips

If the world of stock trading and investing tend to be a mysterious and intimidating place for you, listen up to this tip! As with many other things, knowledge is power but in this case, you do not have to get a degree from a business school to understand how the markets work. An excellent online resource called WallStreetSurvivor.com, which started out as a 'fantasy stock market simulator' has now became a great tool that demystifies Wall Street. They discovered that gamification is a pretty good way to learn the ins and outs of trading stocks and investing. Rather than being told the old way on how to do things, you get to roll your sleeves up and get involved in virtual market trades without the risk of losing your money. Think of it as a game of a virtual stock exchange combined with tutorials, courses, articles and videos. Not only can they teach you the basics, you can setup a practice portfolio and participate in a league to compete with fellow virtual traders. If you don't know the difference between a 'put' and a 'call' or the overall value of stocks vs a mutual fund, WallStreetSurvivor.com could be a solid return on investment. It's also a great way to get kids involved and learning about investing while they're young.

We're starting today's tip with a little geek speak: 'word cloud'. The phrase 'word cloud' refers to the visual representation of a large chunk of text with the most commonly used words in a larger font and special highlighted colors. Using word clouds makes it easy to quickly pull useful themes within a large body of text. If you're in business, for example, you most likely are asking for feedback from your customers. So instead of tasking someone to manually review each bit of feedback, you can use one of the many free online word cloud tools to see what your customers are generally saying. One of my favorite tools is located at: http://tagcrowd.com because it allows you to use multiple options for displaying the data. Just compile all the text into a single file without having to worry about the formatting. The site also allows you to paste any text into the site's generator box, upload any text based file or document or even use the text on any website by pasting in the URL. Try it for yourself at TagCrowd, that's spelled T A G C R O W D.

If you know of friends that happen to live in an earthquake zone, you've probably seen how social media explodes whenever even the slightest of tremors is felt. Well scientists at UC Berkley are trying to harness this crowdsourced information when it comes to detecting earthquakes as they occur. They have created an Android app smartphones MyShake which leverages the powerful accelerometer in smartphones to help detect earthquakes as soon as they start. This 'crowd noise' data from what they are hoping will be a global seismic network of sensors could become a life saving warning system for people that live farther away from the epicenter of the quake in the future. Anyone you know that lives in an earthquake zone should consider becoming part of this massive people-driven science experiment just by installing the MyShake app on their Android smartphone. Checkout this ambitious attempt to leverage the power of mobile or join the MyShake community yourself at: http://myshake.berkeley.edu

Just how many images and videos are stored on your phone and what are you planning to do with them? If your intention is to post them one at a time to one of the many social networks, they'll likely never see the light of day. If you'd like an easy way to take a large number of images and or videos on your phone and create a great little movie, check out the latest version of FlipaGram. The app allows you to select a large number of images, put them in any order, add effects and captions all in a matter of minutes. To give it an added appeal, you can add music from your own library or use one of the many thirty second music files from popular artists that are part of the network. You can select how long you want each image to be displayed or let the app automatically set the timing based on where you'll be posting it. The FlipaGram app is available for iOS, Android and Windows based phones. http://flipagram.com

The older we get, the more likely it is that we find ourselves trying to remember a word that conveys what we're trying to say. When you conceptually know what you're trying to say, but just can't remember the word that properly expresses your thoughts, there's a web resource called OneLook Reverse Dictionary that can come to your aid. It let's you describe the concept you're thinking of and returns a list of possible words that are related to your concept. For example, if you type 'constant need to travel', you'll get the word: wanderlust! You can be very general with terms such as 'red berries' or 'large fish' which will give you a wide variety of possibilities. The next time that word is on the tip of your tongue, use the OneLook Reverse Dictionary to help you spit it out! The link to this awesome resource is: http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml

If you have ever watched a pro athlete studying themselves, you'll often see that they are using sophisticated technology including slow motion to analyze their moves. Well that smartphone in your pocket is also a powerful computer and it can become a similar tool using an app called 'Hudl Technique'. Whether you are an aspiring athlete, parent or coach of a rising superstar, the app will let you breakdown and analyze the motion of everything from a golf swing to a pitching sequence to just about any motion in any sport. It allows you to add notes and annotations so you can highlight changes you suggest and even share the video with others. The app also allows you to match up and sync up 2 videos side-by-side for a comparison which allows you to see progress over time or compare to the form of a professional. The amazing features of this free app are incredible and could help any athlete determined to improve in their sport through an out of body experience. The link to this awesome app is: http://get.hudl.com/products/technique

I'm constantly reminding all of you to make use of 2-factor authentication on all of your online accounts because it provides an extra layer of solid protection. You have been using 2-factor authentication for years with your bank debit card because you need to have both the actual card and the associated PIN. Think about how dangerous a debit card that didn't require a PIN would be...well that is exactly what you're doing if you don't turn on 2-factor authentication when it's being made available. Once you activate it, a cyber thief that steals your username and password will also need to steal your smartphone in order to gain access to your account. It also serves as a great way to know when someone has actually stolen your login credentials. Virtually every major online service or bank you work with will offer this protection. If you want a list of which services offer it and how to turn it on for each one, I've posted a link to a site with a complete list at DataDoctors.com/radio https://twofactorauth.org

The web has made it simple to buy and sell just about anything you want through an endless list of websites. Figuring out the market price for things like cars is pretty easy with sites like KBB.com and Cars.com, but if you're trying to buy or sell toys, clothing, electronics or lots of other personal item, where do you go? You can obviously search on popular sites like eBay or Craigslist manually, but there is a much better way. The next time you need to figure out the best price for something that you want to buy or sell, checkout a resource called Bidvoy. Bidvoy scours data from millions of transactions on eBay to help determine much more than just the best price to buy or sell. It can also give you trending data, what the current price is for the item new and will even suggest the best time to buy or sell. Even if you don't plan to use eBay, the data from one of the most popular online marketplaces is always helpful. No more second guessing whether you paid too much or listed your item too low or too high for just about anything you want to buy or sell. The link to Bidvoy is http://us.bidvoy.net

Raise your hand if you have ever started cursing at your printer because it just ran out of ink right in the middle of an important print job! We have all been in this situation and we also know that printer ink has become one of the most expensive liquids in the planet. Well, the engineers at Epson have created a line of inkjet printers that may be worth consideration; the EcoTank series. Instead of incorporating those tiny ink cartridges that are so common in today's printers, Epson is using large ink reservoirs that can hold the equivalent of twenty to fifty ink cartridges in various models. It should be enough ink to last most of us at least a year or two and the best part; you get to buy ink in squeeze bottles to refill the tanks when they get low. You may pay more up-front, but the on-going expense of ink refills is a lot lower because you are buying ink in bulk. It's a technology that's long overdue; check it out at http://epson.com/ecotank

I was in search of an app that would help with one of our household's biggest hassles: grocery shopping. We, of course, have used text messaging forever, but when the list is long, keeping track of what I've picked up already while I'm shopping is a bit of a chore. If my wife and I were on the same smartphone platform, we could use lots of apps created for this purpose, but since she's got an iPhone and I've got an Android phone, I had to find something for both. After trying a large group of options, my absolute favorite is an app called Wunderlist, that's Wonder with a U. With it, anyone in the family can add or delete entries and now when I'm shopping, I simply tap on each item as I put them in the basket to make them disappear from the list. Wunderlist is absolutely free and works on iOS, Android, Mac OS, Windows and even Amazon's Kindle Fire, so it is completely versatile. The app is super simple to use and can be used for more than just simple grocery lists: we use it to track our favorite songs, personal and work projects, 'honey-do' lists and a lot more. Give it a try at Wunderlist.com