Data Doctors Tech Tips

If you're listening to this tip sitting at your desk on your computer, take a quick look at your posture. No thanks to the hours that we all spend on our computers, we're creating new problems for parts of our bodies.and#160; CTS or carpal tunnel syndrome is becoming all too common causing numbness and pain in our wrists and arms. The last thing you want your bad posture to lead to is surgery, but that is often the only way to provide relief. Paying attention to your posture while you are working away has substantial health benefits. It's all about how you position your feet - should be flat on the floor, your knees - should be at a 90 degree angle and your wrists - should be parallel to the floor. If your used to using a laptop, make sure you aren't craning your neck down to see the screen. For those that are already starting to experience the early signs of CTS, getting help in the form of special gloves that help keep your wrists at the proper angle may be a good purchase: https://www.imakproducts.com

It's an unfortunate reality that that over 90% of email messages being sent every day is junk that we all hate to get. It's tainted the purity of the simple electronic messaging platform and the spammers are now gunning for your smartphone. Spammers don't care about laws and rules, so they're finding new ways to send those irritating messages via text messaging. Did you know that you could easily report those annoying messages every time they hit your phone and help keep them from doing it to others? By forwarding the message in its entirety without adding anything to 7726 (SPAM), you can alert your carrier to the junk message and more importantly the number that was sending it. It's not going to stop the spammers from trying but if we all do this regularly, we can make it more difficult for the bad guys to be successful.

The Internet is loaded with websites that focus on food and recipes that range from the high end magazines to celebrity chefs to soccer moms from around the world. One that's lesser known but worth checking out is called http://www.foodpair.com and it does something a little different than the others. It's like a search engine for recipe websites. It allows you to look for recipes by ingredient, which results in recipes that you can actually use with what you have on hand instead of having to run to the store. They also allow you to search for recipes by diet, which course you're considering or even a specific recipe website. It's a very visual website sort of like Pinterest, that allows you to see dishes before you dive down into the recipe. Instead of having to scroll through dozens of recipe websites, now you can use Food Pair to make it much more efficient.

Is this question something you hear a lot in your home or office?: my email isn't downloading or I can't print anything. Technology can be very frustrating when it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, so today's tip is inspired by your shampoo bottle. If you recall, it says to lather, rinse, repeat, which we are borrowing and changing to lather, rinse, REBOOT! Whenever any of your devices isn't operating properly, start with our saying: lather, rinse, reboot As you use your computer, resources are consumed that need to be replenished. The longer it's been between restarts, the more likely that your resources have been depleted to some level. Shutting down extra browser tabs or programs that you aren't using anymore can help, but they never give back 100% of what they take. The next time you run into any kind of a nagging issue on your home or office computer, remember to lather, rinse and reboot before calling for help, since it's most likely the first thing that they'll as you to do.

At the risk of confusing you, we wanted to address the process of keeping the software on your computer updated or in this case, when you shouldn't update certain things.and#8232;and#8232; We were asked via social media about an online service that focuses on something called a driver, which is a small software program that controls a piece of hardware. Randomly updating them, just to update them is not something we would recommend.and#8232;and#8232; The reason for this is that it could end up creating a problem that didn't exist before you attempted the update - specifically the dreaded driver conflict.and#8232;and#8232; When it comes to drivers, the only time we recommend updating them is when a specific problem has been identified and updating the driver is a known potential fix.and#8232; While the service sounds like it will take care of a technical process for you, it's actually a solution searching for a problem... don't risk your computer's good health on it!

Do you remember all those tv commercials that used to air all of the time that claimed that you could get free credit checks? The vast majority of them have gone away because they weren't really free, with the exception of https://annualcreditreport.com which allows one free check per year. There is a legit free service for something better than an occasional check, because it allows you to monitor your credit year round. The site provides much more than just your credit score; it provides lots of suggestions based on your current financial relationships to help you save money. CreditKarma can show you things like your credit utilization, your balances and any pertinent notices for any of your accounts. The service is available on your computer via the web of on you smartphone or tablet via their app. With all of the constant issues with breaches and the fear of ID theft, the dashboard approach from https://.creditkarma.com is a useful free tool to constantly monitor your credit.

Remember when the fax machine was an important part of daily business life? Well, that old relic still has some avid fans that require you to send them info via fax.and#8232;and#8232; There are so many ways to scan and email documents these days that you shouldn't need to fax anything, but if you ever do get that odd request to have something sent to an actual fax machine, we've got the solution.and#8232;and#8232; It's a website calledand#160;https://faxzero.com and as long as you only have a couple of pages to send, it's absolutely free to use.and#8232;and#8232; Should you need to send more than three pages, you can pay $1.99 for up to twenty five pages or take a little longer and send the document three pages at a time. and#8232;and#8232;Just scan the document like you normally do and instead of emailing it to them, upload the scanned file to the Fax Zero website so you can get the document to the recipient's fax machine.and#8232;and#8232; You aren't going to need this very often, but when you do, you'll be glad you added it to your bookmarks!and#8232;

For anyone in the midst of a home remodeling or even new construction project, there's an amazing resource that can fuel your inspiration A website called https://houzz.com is a collection of images presented by professional designers and construction companies that can help you. It's far more than a bunch of pictures as you can research ideas by room, create your own library of ideas and contact professionals from virtually every trade to help you accomplish your vision. The site also has an active user base that discusses virtually any topic or question that you may have. For those in the trade that haven't started using the site, it may be a great way to show folks in your backyard the kind of results that you've delivered for other customers. Even if you think you've got the design that you want, spending some time looking through the visual ideas posted at Houzz.com or downloading their mobile app could take your great design ideas to the next level!

Despite the quality of the filters in our email programs, it's inevitable that some unwanted junk still gets through. There are a plethora of options for dealing with spam in our Inbox, but if you aren't careful, you'll start snagging the good messages too. Messages can end up being tagged as spam for a variety of reasons, mostly based on the senders usage of certain words, images or if their domain has been black-listed by the spam world. Based on this undeniable fact, we thought we'd spend this tip on something simple - a reminder to regularly check your junk folders for wanted messages. The more frequently you check, the better the odds are that you'll catch the good stuff. If you junk folder is already crammed with messages, use the search option in our program using keywords or senders you want to make sure you see. If you discover messages that you did want, make sure to tell your email program that the message wasn't spam to help it know for the next time that person sends a message. Junk filters and junk messages aren't going away any time soon, so do yourself a favor and setup a recurring reminder to check your spam folder.

It's the middle of the summer and the time when we all tend to take some time off to hit the road to get recharged. Even though we want to disconnect from our offices, we don't want to leave all our tech gadgets behind. The number of devices you need to charge, especially if you have kids in tow, can range from everyone's phones, to tablets, digital cameras, GoPros, drones and laptops. The problem for most travelers is that you have way too many items to charge for the available outlets. This forces you to be very diligent in swapping out devices as they charge which can be easily avoided if you arm yourself with a little power charging technology. The one we like to carry with us can turn a single plug-in into charging for five different devices. It's from Belkin (http://bit.ly/2MvhTqa) and not only did they cram lots of power charging options and surge protection into the device, they made sure that you could swivel it, so it's most functional in tight areas. Whether you travel once a year or once a month, having this small but handy little power strip is a no-brainer!