Data Doctors Tech Tips

Getting your day off to a good start requires some form of exercise for a large number of you. Staying motivated to exercise can be increased by an app that will benefit others, based on you exercising every day. An app called 'Charity Miles' will convert your daily exercise routine into a charitable contribution for lots of charities that could use the help. Whether you jog, run or ride a bike every morning, your healthy activities can generate 10 to 25 cents per mile for charities using the app. If you've ever seen those regular social media posts about Charity Miles from your social networking connections, you now know what they are referring to. It's a great way to support well known charitable organizations on a daily basis, especially if you need to the motivation or are already motivated to get out there every morning. Once you start using the app, you can think of yourself as one of those famous sponsored athletes doing something good for others!

Remember when we had to use the back button in our browsers to see a website we previously visited? The invention of tabbed browsing changed all that, allowing us to have lots of different websites open at the same time. The downside to this awesome feature is that each additional tab takes up valuable working memory (RAM), which taken to the extreme, can cause lots of performance issues. Closing tabs you no longer need is a good practice, but what happens if you click on the wrong tab by accident? Searching your recent History for that wanted page is one option, but there's a much easier way to bring that tab back. In any brand of browser, in Windows you can use the Ctrl-Shift keys and in the MacOS, you can use Command-Shift then tap on the letter 'T' to bring back your most recently closed tab. It's so much faster than searching through your browser History, especially for those pages you actually opened days ago. The cool part of this tip is that it works for each subsequently closed tab as well, so simply repeat the keystrokes to keep opening previously closed browser sessions.

If you've been an iPhone user for some years, you've probably taken tons of pictures of just about everything under the sun. Because it's so easy to take pictures everywhere, most of us end up with a bunch of unwanted images that stack up and eat up our storages space. The iPhone does a lot of things right, but managing old photos isn't one of it's strong suits. If you'd like some help going through your old pictures efficiently, check out one of our favorite apps called Cleen - https://cleenapp.com Instead of having to use thumbnails to figure out what's in a photo, Cleen shows you the images in full screen mode so you can actually see the whole image. What makes it so fast is that you simply swipe in one of three directions to tell the app what you want to do - up to keep it, down to get rid of it and for those images you aren't sure about, to the left for the deal with it later queue. At any point that you want to wrap things up, just tap the trash icon to get rid of the ones you've tagged for deletion so far.

Even though Facebook is something a lot of people complain about, they still tend to use it all over the place. Have you ever borrowed someone's computer to access your Facebook account and then forgot to log out afterwards? If you did, you know that whoever has access to the computer has full access to use your account. Should you ever find yourself in the position of realizing that you forgot to log out of Facebook on another computer, all is not lost. There's actually a feature built into the Security menu that will allow to remotely shut down any session you may have opened, anywhere in the world. The menu will show you every active log in, including the rough location, the date and time as well as the device used to access your account. You can simply look down the list to terminate any of the sessions you created anywhere. This option is also a quick way to see if someone has nefariously gained access to your username and password, so it's worth checking out from time to time. If you've never done this, here are the step by step instructions for doing it:and#160;https://www.facebook.com/help/211990645501187

We've all heard the saying that we should make every day count, so are you going to remember something special that you made happen today? It's the driving question behind an interesting app called 1 Second Every Day.and#160; The developer initially created the app as a way to document a year long trip he was taking. By creating small reminders of your day, you can instantly be transported to any specific day or event using the app. It's a much more condensed way to relive those memories from every day of your life, if you're willing to take the time to document something every day. If you're going on any kind of a trip soon, it might be worth using the app to help you easily capture those special moments in a way that's a lot less complicated than generating a video. Think of it as a personal documentary of your life that you will appreciate the most. Learn all about this awesome concept at: https://1secondeveryday.com

How irritating is it when you expect a solid internet connection, but you can't seem to get anywhere quickly either at home or on the road. Figuring out why your connection is less than useful can get a bit complicated as you don't know if it's your device or something along the connections of the network you are on. When it's your computer and your own network, you have a little more control over tracking down the problem, but not so much when you are using someone else's connection. To help narrow down where the problem may be, checkout this cool add-on called 'Connectivity Diagnostics' for the Chrome browser that will diagnose your connection in real-time. Adding this tool to your browser allows you to thoroughly test your connection and shows you any potential issues that could impact performance. If you're not tech savvy, you may be looking at a bunch of info that looks like Greek to you, but it's useful info when you reach out for help from someone technical. Check it our for yourself at: http://goo.gl/H6VGqxand#160;and#160;

What has made our smartphones so much more than just a calling device is the power of the apps we download and use.and#160; If you or someone you know has been considering creating an app of their own for their business, today's tip is for you. An interesting web resource at https://appmachine.com could be an inexpensive way to accomplish what is usually an expensive proposition. As long as your apps features are fairly simple, you should be able to generate something useful without having to know how to write code. You can use the content on your website to help generate the basis for your app or build it from scratch using their building blocks. Creating your app costs nothing as they make their money when you decide to publish the app via one of the two app stores.and#160; Since there's nothing to risk other than your time, giving it a go is as simple as visiting https://appmachine.com

Malicious websites have been setup all around the Internet just waiting for you to click on so they can attempt to exploit any unsuspecting visitors. Lots of people preach that you shouldn't go to strange websites unless you know something about it, but that's a completely useless bit of advice in reality. The next time you have to try to make a decision about whether you should take the risk of visiting a website that you aren't familiar with, checkout the free Site Safety Center from Trend Micro at: https://global.sitesafety.trendmicro.com The site is a huge database of websites and their associated reputation as well as real-time evaluation tools that will check for signs of a questionable or downright dangerous website. Each website address you paste into their 'Check Now' section will came back with one of four ratings that range from safe, dangerous to suspicious or if it comes back as untested, it will be added for future testing. The tool will also present you with information on the generaly category of information posted at the website for a better understanding of the posted content. Making an informed decision about whether a website is safe or not is made a lot easier at: https://global.sitesafety.trendmicro.com

The currency of the Internet is data and more specifically your behavioral data as you wander around the web. Everything you do is being tracked in one way or another, mostly to determine how best to advertise to you. If you're interested in better understanding which websites and advertising networks are attempting to track you and provide you with some controls, checkout a web browser add-on called Disconnect: https://disconnect.me/disconnect Disconnect provides you with total transparency of what types of requests are being made in the background as well as the ability to decide which ones are granted permission and which are blocked. The free basic tool can be installed in most of the major browsers as well as a Pro app for iOS devices. The tool changes the way that your computer is evaluated because it's being masked by the Disconnect platform. By blocking a lot of the extra background requests, web pages can load a lot faster as well. For a complete overview on how the tool works, go to: https://disconnect.me/disconnect/help If you've been looking for a way to regain control of your internet activities, checkout the Disconnect add-on!

It seems that no matter how many ways we try to filter out junk email messages, some of it find a way into our Inbox. Spam filters use a myriad of processes to screen out spam, but they aren't perfect which means that some good messages can get caught up in the junk filters. The various rules used to try to determine whether a message is 'ham' or 'spam' can be thrown off by the use of certain words or images in the message. With this in mind, we wanted to remind you all to periodically check your junk folders for messages that were improperly marked as spam. If you don't check it regularly, you won't be able to catch these mistakes made by the automated filters, which can be trained. If you're folder is loaded with old messages, rather than scrolling through the whole list, try searching through the messages using keywords or names of people you've been waiting to hear from. If and when you run across a message that was improperly filtered, you can tell your email program that it's not junk so it will know not to filter them in the future. This routine housekeeping is easiest when you do it on a regular basis, so consider creating a reminder to check your junk folder regularly.