Data Doctors Tech Tips

I've discussed many travel apps over the years, but when the big boss, better known as my wife tells me she's found the ultimate travel app, I paid attention. She's always been the most detailed trip-planning person I have ever seen work so my many past app suggestions have never impressed her. Trip Rider is an app that appears to have cut through the noise and actually has my in-house travel agent proclaiming its greatness. The app helps you store and track every single detail of your adventures in a single place and is very flexible, so you can easily make changes to your itinerary without having to start all over. By adding quick notes before, during and after your journey, the app also makes it easy to create journals of your adventures. It even incorporates a virtual-wallet for all those critical documents that you need, like ID cards, passports and credit cards. Even if you aren't a hard-core travel fanatic, you should look into the checkout http://triprider.com app, which is currently available for iphone users only.

Incorporating long and complex passwords unique to each of your online accounts is a critical part of protecting your personal information. But trying to remember all those complex passwords is virtually impossible, so using a password manager to help you stay safe is essential these days. If you're still searching for a management system that works for you, take a look at features of http://RoboForm.com. RoboForm is not only a solid password manager program, it can help you fill out online forms with your recurring information, which can be a big time saver especially for online shopping. Another great feature is the batch login option which can automatically log you in to the three or four of the sites that you use everyday, all with one click. As with all password managers, once you get it setup, all you need to remember is one password for your Roboform account to sign into all your online accounts. The basic features are free and there are optional mobile apps that you can buy at RoboForm.com

Think of the many ways we use to communicate with the mountain of contacts we have in our smartphones. E-mail, Phone calls, text messages, Twitter, Facebook's Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, Skype and the list continues on. With that, we have to decide which method of communication is best for each of your contacts and then manually go to the appropriate app. Well, there's good news for Android smartphone users because there's a really good solution to this ongoing communication problem. An app called Drupe, that's spelled D R U P E, presents all your contacts along with your various communication apps on one central screen. You use the Drupe app by dragging your contacts over to the communication app that is best for reaching them...it's a much more efficient way to go. It also works with calendars, reminders, Google Maps and even some payment systems like Venmo and Paypal. This approach makes more sense these days since communicating with your contacts requires so much more than basic messaging. Checkout this Android app at http://www.getdrupe.com

A common pet peeve with our computers is when it takes forever to shut down, right? Well, you may have the temptation to tap the power button to force a shutdown but it turns out to be a really bad idea. Your computer generates lots of temp files as a normal course of business that generally get tagged for deletion when you go to shutdown your computer. Windows in particular has an elaborate housekeeping procedure that it executes whenever you shutdown, which you can watch happening through the flashing hard drive indicator light on your system. When you don't allow this to be completed, you're filling up your hard disc with unnecessary junk files. Remember, a computer that gets low on hard disc space will be impacted by slower performance. If you know that you're guilty of doing this in the past, you can use the built-in Disk Cleanup utility to track down the errant files and delete them to free up that valuable space. When it comes to shutting down your computer, patience is not only a virtue, but a benefit. By the way, Mac users should also do the same to help keep things running smoothly too!

Once again, the Internet of Things or IOT was prominent at CES with inexpensive connected devices being shown by just about everyone. I'm really interested in wireless sensor tags which allow you to monitor everything from location to motion to temperature or even humidity on just about anything in your environment. Inexpensive sensing devices allow you to keep track of things like when your garage door is left open or when any kind of motion is detected. Put one inside your refrigerator and you can get alerts whenever anyone is sneaking into the fridge! The sensors attached to smartphone apps can start to alert you to just about activity as it happens anywhere in or around your home or business. While motion sensing is wonderful, monitoring moisture or humidity levels allows you to get updates in the event of a water leak. This sensing tech that allows you to monitor just about everything you own ranges from $20 to $70. Wireless tags are the starting point to setup your monitoring system and you can learn all about them at http://wirelesstag.net.

Those of us that live on e-mail usually spend way too much time every day getting distracted by useless messages because we are now on so many junk mailing lists. You most likely have no idea how your address got into the majority of the lists, but because of hidden auto-opt in traps we encounter daily, it is just going to keep happening. If you are fed up with useless messages, junk email and newsletters you don't care to read, a free utility called Unroll.Me will help you reduce your daily load. Once you allow it to scan your Inbox messages, it will automatically list every recognized subscription message alphabetically so you can decide whether you want to keep them, unsubscribe or add less important messages to a 'roll-up'. Think of a Roll-Up as a digest of the messages from less important sources that get combined into a single message, so you no longer get them all day long. For those important messages, you simply choose 'Keep in Inbox' to make sure you keep seeing them as they are sent. The free Unroll.Me service works with popular platforms like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, iCloud, and Outlook.com. Check out this awesome service at https://Unroll.Me!

Practically every major cyber security organization in the world is warning the us all that smartphones are fast becoming the biggest target by hackers and cyber-thieves. The majority of the dangerous threats in the wild are targeting users outside the United States through third party app download sites. Since the most likely method your phone will be compromised these days is through a rogue app, make sure you only download your apps from the official app store, which will bypass the majority of today's threats. If you have an Android smartphone, you can take an extra step to avoid the sneaky tactics to trick users that we're starting to see more of from the bad guys. Go to your phone's 'Security' settings menu and search for the option marked as 'Unknown sources'. If you turn off this switch, your phone won't allow the installation of any app from an unknown source without warning you of the possible dangers. Not only is it a good security practice to avoid unnecessary app installations, it's also a great way to avoid potential privacy issues and retain valuable space for more important things like music, videos and pictures.

Popular search sites like Google and Bing are wonderful for finding what we're searching for on the Internet, but the trade-off is that these sites gather quite a bit of valuable information whenever we use them. While the resulting custom search results can be very helpful, with all of the privacy issues we're hearing about anymore, many people are looking for a little more privacy when searching the web. A web resource called Startpage understands the need for privacy while searching and offers "the world's most private search engine" or so they claim. Popular sites usually capture your current IP address, what you're searching for, the site that you came from and what you clicked in the search results. The Startpage search system doesn't capture any of those things, but it still allows you to use the world's most powerful search engine:Google. Think of it as a Harry Potter invisibility cloak, as they act as a security blanket whenever you are searching around on the Internet. Learn all about it and give it a try at https://Startpage.com

I'm constantly reminding everyone I meet that one of the best security measured anyone can take is to turn on 2-factor authentication for all of their online accounts. It creates an extra layer of cyber-protection that is really hard to beat. 2-factor authentication is actually something you've used on a regular basis for years. A great example is your debit card because you have to have both the actual bank card and the PIN that's associated with it. Can you imagine having a debit card that did not require a PIN to use? Well, it's essentially what your doing with your online accounts if you haven't turned on 2-factor authentication. Once you tun it on, if a hacker manages to steal your username and password, they would also have to steal your smartphone at the same time in order to actually get into your account. As an additional benefit, it will become your early warning system should someone ever acquire your username and password because you'll get a text passcode out of the blue. Virtually every online service is now offering this important layer of security, so if you want if you want step-by-step instructions for most major sites, I've posted the link at DataDoctors.com/radio. https://twofactorauth.org

Understanding our financial status while planning for our retirement is something that we all know we need to do, but getting around to doing it can become overwhelming if you are trying to track everything manually. I recently tried an online resource called https://www.personalcapital.com that greatly simplified tracking all of my various financial accounts. In a relatively short period of time, I was able to generate a dashboard that now shows me everything I have in one place. It provides you with simple tools to see everything from your net worth to an analysis of your investment portfolio and even do some 'what if' retirement planning so you have a clearer understanding of what it's going to take for retirement. Now, this isn't designed for active stock traders, it is really for those of us that just want to go to one place to see all of their financial information. Personal Capital also has a great smartphone app that'll allow you to quickly review your financial life every day, no matter where you are! Manage your personal capital at https://www.personalcapital.com.