Data Doctors Tech Tips

Let's start today's tip with a little explanation of a tech term: Word Cloud You may not have ever heard the term, but you've most likely seen a word cloud. It's those visual clusters of random words in a graphic image that shows the words used the most in the largest font or brightest color. Taking a large amount of text and viewing it through a word cloud allows useful themes to emerge. It's a quick way to make sense of lots of feedback from your customer reviews, instead of having someone read them one at a time. An easy way to start making your own word clouds is at a site called TagCrowd which allows you to copy and paste your text, upload a document or even evaluate any web page. I've used it in presentations and for leading team meetings and recommend that everyone in business take a minute to see if a word cloud can make an impact in your business: https://tagcrowd.com

It's no secret that most US citizens have a hard time saving money, though most would like to make it happen. Younger people have little to no savings and generally don't begin saving until their mid-30's. One of the many companies trying to help people start painlessly saving money is called Digit. Their approach examines your personal spending needs and habits to figure out what you can save without missing other payments. By understanding your financial patterns, it can figure out the spare amounts that you won't need for your regular expenses and put it into a separate account. The FDIC insured account gets built up with small, but regular amounts of money that you won't need. This account won't generate any interest, but not much is available that will these days. Anyone looking for a way to start saving or help someone else start to save money should look into how Digit works at https://digit.co

Did you know that the very common file type used for online forms, known as a PDF stands for portable document format? Just about any official form you will ever recieve will be a PDF file, which you generally have to print out to fill out manually. After all that, you still have to figure out how to get it back into your computer so you can send it back. There are lots of programs you can install on your computer that will allow you to fill out forms electronically, but why bother for that occasional need. A better approach for those of you that have an occasional need to electronically fill out a form is at https://www.pdfescape.com While you can download and install their editing tool, using their website to upload your form is fast and hassle free. You can create new forms, upload your own or even load them from another website. To fill out the form, simply use the text menu to start typing just about anywhere on the form and save it back to your computer when you finish filling everything out. It totally bypasses the download, print, fill out, scan then send process so many are still using!

This tip is a very important one for anyone that has setup an Internet connected camera for their business or home. There are websites that have been setup to expose weakly secured webcams by the thousands by showing the live feed because whoever set them up left them with a well-known password. The webcams are not only giving up their live streams, they provide location information as well because they're still setup using the factory installed sign in info. The people putting these websites together see themselves doing public service by exposing this all-too-common oversight. The factory set password can be found by anyone, not just hackers, for virtually every gadget you own, so leaving devices that are connected to the Internet without changing this password is a bad idea. Remember, if you can access something remotely, potentially the entire Internet can if you make it possible. Make sure you change the default username and password on every device connected to your network and the Internet or take the risk of unwittingly sharing it with the world.

Owning a rental property is a great way to build assets for your family, but collecting the rent every month can be an ongoing hassle. If you haven't adopted some form of electronic rent collection as of yet, have I got a tip for you! A free service to both the landlord and the tenant can take the hassle out of manual rent collection.and#160; For the property owner, it takes no time at all to setup your account so you can convert to electronic payments. For your renters, especially if there are multiple parties, splitting up the rent amount is a snap and eliminates the excuse of needing to track down a roommate. The Cozy platform doesn't charge a fee for either party in hopes that it can convince the property owner to use many of its other services like electronic applications, tenant background checks and even rental listings via their network.and#160; You may have to wait a couple days longer than the 1st of each month to get your payments, but getting rid of the hassle could be just what many landlords are looking for: https://cozy.co

If you're a person that has a very active mind, you may have trouble shutting down in order to get a good night's sleep. I'm in that camp and routinely testing various sleep aid apps that I can use in an unobtrusive way when I go to bed. If you like a lot of soothing sounds of nature, check out an app called 'Relax Melodies'. It goes way beyond a handful of pre-programmed sounds and you have total control over all the elements used in making your own sleep sounds.and#160; Birds, waterfalls, rain, ocean waves, running rivers and thunder are just the beginning of the options. When you're done with nature's sounds, you can add any number of etherial music beds to complete you custom made tracks. It's available for free on all the major smartphone platforms with a premium option if you really want everything they have to offer. By the way, it's not just for going to sleep; you can create sounds that will help you be more productive during the day as well. https://www.relaxmelodies.com

There are millions of apps available for our smartphones and many of them are free to use, which makes them very popular. One possible downside to many of those free apps is that they use advertising to pay for them, which can be a hidden cost for those that don't have an unlimited data plan. Another 'tax' that ad-based free apps typically put on your smartphone is a reduction in battery life. There have been research papers done on this issue that show that the ads use eighty percent more data than apps that don't use ads to pay for them. Since they tend to load the ads in the background, they can take up more memory and drain batteries faster. Anyone that's constantly bumping up against their data plan's limits or has to recharge their phone in the middle of the day should pay attention to how many ads are being served in the apps they use. Free apps may be encroaching on your privacy as well, which you inadvertently gave permission to as another way to pay for 'free apps'. If you like a free app and they offer an ad-free version for a buck or two, it may be money well spent!

Anyone that's ever been tasked with manually generating a floorplan for a series of rooms knows how time-consuming it can be. Whether you work in the construction or remodeling business or just a do-it-yourselfer, there's an iPhone app that you may want to check out. RoomScan Pro from Locometric is super simple to use because all you have to do is place your iPhone flat on each wall in any room. The app utilizes all of the very sensitive sensors in the iPhone to create a floorplan from the process. Once you've gone to each wall in the room, the app creates a floor plan which can be built on with other rooms. They've also thought about those situations where you may not be able to reach a wall for any reason. There are lots of great demo videos on how the app works at: http://bit.ly/2WZjw6l

The Internet has become such a huge part of our lives, from the most important things to the most trivial. On the trivial side, how often do you find yourself in a discussion that requires a quick search on the Internet to find the answer? Searching for a specific answer during a discussion often leads to learning something new, but if you want to gain useful trivial knowledge on purpose, take a look at the resources posted at http://www.usefulscience.org Whether you're a trivia fanatic or just like discovering new nuggets of info, this is bookmark worthy. There's lots of great information about music, creativity, the environment, health, fitness, nutrition and lots more. The best part of this resource is that it isn't based on hearsay or conjecture as each nugget has a link to the science behind the information. If you're really into regular learning, you can subscribe to their newsletter here: http://www.usefulscience.org/about or listen to their podcasts here: http://www.usefulscience.org/podcast

Anyone that has a job that mandates strict tracking of times and locations for billing purposes knows that you need look no further then your phone. While your phone may be able to provide some form of tracking without a special app, if you'd really like to step up your tracking capabilities, checkout an app called Instant. It's a personal tracking app that makes it much easier to keep track of just about everything you do, every day. This app is part of something many are referring to as the 'quantified self' approach to managing your life through data that makes it much easier to exact change. It's a great help in managing your work life activities, physical fitness goals or for anyone seeking mindfulness reminders. The instant app can be downloaded from http://instantapp.today and#8232;