Understanding the Digital Landscape

What is it?
How do you find it?
How do you use it effectively?

Computers save us time in everything from information storage and retrieval, calculation, graphic design, and report preparation. E-commerce allows our websites to keep our businesses running 24/7.

A failure at any point, from our office records to our online presence, can quickly snowball into a technological disaster, especially for a small business that doesn’t have an IT (information technology) staff in-house.

Seminar leader Curt Middlebrook, The Computer Whisperer, provides insights into the equipment, computer programs, and office and internet support services out there, and the people who provide them. You’ll learn how to maximize your online efficiency, and how to track the success of your online marketing.
This is a Lunch & Learn program, part of the Pinellas Park/Gateway Chamber of Commerce Success in Business Series. Your registration includes detailed information for evaluating every aspect of your company’s digital landscape, as well as a light lunch.

When : Tuesday, November 16; 11:30 am to 1:30 pm
Where : Park Station, 5851 Park Blvd., Pinellas Park, Room 202

Cost : $19.95 Pinellas Park/Gateway Chamber Members
$24.95 Non-members

Call Chamber Manager Larry Steinlauf at 544-4777 to register.
You must be registered to attend.

History lesson below, for the interested. For those who are ready and need to donate and move on: Click here.

If you’re looking to help an old Sailor out, then “push” the button for Navy. Know this: It all goes into the same pot, but, the need to poke at our fellow military members doesn’t go away easily, so…resist the urge to help any service team other than Navy…..

Now to some background:

Barely 5 years ago, a “MilBlogger,” and Army Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss, ended up on the wrong end of an IED when on patrol in Iraq and subsequently in Walter Reed Medical Center. Having been a fairly active poster, when a Soldier’s Angels representative asked if he needed anything, he asked for a laptop so he could blog from the hospital, since he’d be there a while. They bought one off of eBay.

He had injuries to both arms, leaving him with one in a cast, and the other in a halo. Typing, as you may surmise, was pretty tough. He posted indicating he sure could use some help…maybe so he could talk to his computer.

Some people helped him out getting Dragon Naturally Speaking. As a result, Chuck’s Blog came back to life.

As a result of that, the idea that this mashup of existing tech would be able to help others. The conception of the idea came from one of Chuck’s reader’s, Beth (FuzzyBear Lioness in the comments section), who thought if it worked for Chuck, who else might it help?

So, the first use of the Project’s Name happened 8/18/2005.

Now we are but 5 years and a few months later, over $600K collected, about 50 bloggers on the teams, and begging for air time on the big websites (and getting some!), with close to 6000 laptops delivered. They are new. They are good ones, and they are provided at the Major military medical facilities, and, they can be requested, if someone has slipped by the system unnoticed.

I believe it was last year, they added the purchasing and providing of Nintendo Wiis, which has helped with physcial therapy for the injured warriors. GPS units are now also provided to those who are getting out and about, to compensate for the short term memory loss issues as a result of TBI and severe PTSD injuries.

The “gateway” to the many pages of information and the project blog is here.

One particularly descriptive post titled “Laptops Save Lives?!” has the words of the real “end users” of the charity of the donors of this work. It may be from 2007, but the truth is right there. This is a great project, which really “gives back” to those who entered the services and gave much of themselves.

Besides just the close to the problem connection, from a problem solving standpoint, I see this as a job training program for the majority of these wounded troops, as they will be medically retired/discharged. If they have used a computer to get and stay in contact with their families, friends and “Battle Buddies,” they sure will be able to draft up a business letter, surf the net to do research and learn to crunch numbers with Excel for the employer who wants a person who looks forward into life and works to achieve their potential.

I could go on for many pages, having personally met Chuck and Beth, and Patti, the Founder of Soldier’s Angels via these campaigns over the 5 years. The stories are real, the ideas amazing, and the unselfish acts to take an idea from one person to many is a lesson in building relationships.

Once more: Donate here to Team Navy!

Walking closer, the screen background shows a large, powerful animal starring at you with coal black pupils, set in a wintery background.

Arrayed along the bottom of the screen are many icons, laid out as you think you may have seen before, stylish, and visually engaging, but still…you wonder what has attracted your attention.

You gaze intently:

And now you need a closer look, as you dare to be consumed by your curiosity:

OMG!!!!!1111!!1111!!!! HOW CAN IT BE!!! IT’S FREAK OF DIGITAL NATURE!!!!

YOU SCREAM ALOUD TO YOUR SELF “PLEASE LET ME NOT DREAM OF THIS HYBRIDIZED ELECTRONIC MASHUP ANY LONGER!” but you do…and you wish you had one, don’t you?

Oh, yeah, and I have it…..:)

And check your calendar: It’s not April 1st and no, it’s not a PhotoShop hack job to fool you either.

On a pragmatic note: I don’t need the monster TV Studio in a 17″ laptop bag all the time. I can use something like this for about 85% of the work I do on a mobile basis and it will work fine. When I’m doing streaming video, it will certainly become an easy to haul along “monitor,” that I can use to check the viewer’s view of my video output, as well as the sound setting to make it better on the other end of the experience.

Top it off with I will have a real, live, running copy of Snow Leopard 10.6.3 (I’m told 10.6.4 isn’t stable in this environment just yet), so I can reestablish my proficiency in the Mac World, that I used to have, before being forced (under duress) to “The Dark Side!” (MS-DOS was a step back in the late 80s…before Windows was to be!).

Me? More full featured, more “on top of it” and with improved opportunities to prevent thinking I’m still young and strong. Now I’ll let the “wise” take over for a bit. This move was one of those few wise moments I have had lately.

Curious about how this happens? Read more @ Gizmodo!

The “bad guys” are hard at work. About 6 months ago, people called me with “scareware” viruses and I could eradicate them in under an hour. Since then, a new wave has appeared, and they not only have a propensity to fake where they are installed, they also now find the more common anti-spyware database files on your systems and remove the identification data, so you can scan your system and they are not recognized. Net result: The “infection” hangs on longer and takes more effort to find and eradicate them. Are you practicing “safe computing?” If you don’t have anti-virus and anti-spyware and a firewall besides the one that comes with Windows, shame on you! By having those installed, you have a much better chance of not having to call me in to get you back to work, and writing me a check.

Smartphones. Geez….the iPhone 4 is very, very cool. That, along with the many others hitting the market, both in the Android and Windows based ones, cell phone band width will become an issue. We consumers will be amazed that “unlimited” plans really aren’t. In defense of the carriers, it takes money and technical expertise and time to keep the “backbones” upgraded for us to use. Think of it as road construction, and it’s going to be a massive rush hour. Just as we see our digitally connected worlds expanding exponentially, there will be the just one more customer that sends your connection speed down the tubes. It’s a problem of aggregation, not that one users.

Next issue: Apple really upped the ante with the “retina” display technology. Think you have a nice screen now? Think again. We have been living on display surfaces, both in the cathode ray tube and now the LCD/LED era, at resolutions of no greater than 75 dots per inch (dpi), at best…usually 72 dpi.

drool over this: 326 dpi! Math: 326/75 = 4.3X improvement in picture clarity. It used to be, I “thinned” out pictures for web use to 100 dpi, because above that, you couldn’t tell the difference, and it also less data to transfer, so the pictures on a web page loaded much faster. Now 400 dpi wil have to be the default standard for high quality on the net. That also means more data flying about, clogging the pipes. In actuality, it will be a while before we really have to worry about this, as only the really big corporations, and “bleeding edge” early adopters will have such displays, but maybe 5-8 years down the road, this resolution will become an accepted common standard. My prediction, not connected to anything I’ve read…yet.

WordPress is no longer just blogging software. It’s now a true “Content Management System” (CMS). I’ll be revamping the site one day, to take advantage of this functionality, but It will be a planned, staged retooling, as I see potential for dropping all the blog posts into thin air, if the right steps aren’t taken. I have a “sandbox” out there in the net, just so I can see what steps to take, in what order. Part of my self-educating process, so I can do it for clients.

Windows 7 is still doing well. I like it more and more. I still haven’t migrated my trusty workhorse, the laptop, but that is another staged, well planned event, so as not to come up saying “Hey! Where did ________________ file go?” Sort of like the locker room scene in “Top Gun,” where the “best of the best” discussed their first day of practice air combat maneuvers (ACM). That part of the locker room scene isn’t on YouTube…

There are a few notes from my world, to give you some insight into yours!

Click the “Read More” button to see a cat using and iPad!

Title: How not to video blog. Lesson number 1 is to pay attention to your “environmentals.” That means, the light and the sound, and anything that will be in the frame of the camera’s view (like the cat..a mobile distraction).

To do this one, I had to do some testing to get some feedback and some white noise out of the sound, before i started. Where the computer had the default settings for the microphone, it was way too noisey. Bringing the volume of the input down helped clear that up.

So, there’s number on in a series. Check back for theo thers coming soon!

When we go the email account data set back in place, and then went looking for the backup files, there was a time warp of those two weeks. Net result: 2 weeks of lots and lots of quotes “out the door,” no longer present.

You’ll pay about $100 for a decent sized (320GB and up) for an external drive. One time cost. All of them come with backup management software. One time cost and you’re covered….well, maybe.

Why only maybe? The rest is up to you. Up to your to plug the external drive in, up to you to set up the backup management software on your computer. Two mighty big “ifs” in my experience. And “if” you do do it the first time, when it’s a new “toy,” most people forget to keep the process of regular backups in place. That can be a result of setting the backup time to run in the middle of the night, so you don’t interrupt your work, and then you turn your system off at the end of your work day. if the system isn’t on, the data isn’t backed up.

Another “fail” in this process is the people using Outlook for their email, contacts, calenders and tasks, don’t know Outlook doesn’t store the outlook.pst file (the database of all your information) in the “My documents” folder, and it never gets backed up. That’s some inside baseball knowledge which can save your hind end.

The better way? pay for a service like Carbonite. !st: i’m not now an affiliate, but I have seen some of my clients using the service and it’s well worth the current $55/year (get two more months for free using the the offer code “kim”). It knows where your Outlook.pst file lives, it knows where your main storage is, and it works whenever you have a net connection and are not making the machine work. Your first set up is all you need to do, it makes sure the rest is done, so long as you get hooked to the net regularly. It’s efficient because once it gets a full backup of your files (about 2-3 weeks, depending on how many files you have and how often you are connected to the net, then it only has to back up the files that change. It keep working right behind you, day and night.

I’ve suspected, at the barely conscious level that when we all grab our ‘driods and tap into “all you can eat” web surfing, the networks will begin to wheeze.

What next?  Well, as consumers, we shall begin to talk bad about the services that served us well, until we could chop on large heaps of bytes with essentially miniaturized computers in our hands.

At the ARS Technica site, they say this:  How SmartPhones are bogging down some carriers:

Even though AT&T has made improvements to its network over the last couple of years—including moving towers to an 850MHz spectrum that can more easily penetrate building walls, as well as upgrading to faster 7.2Mbps HSPA+ protocols—those improvements have done little to stem the tide of complaints from consumers in larger urban areas. Those users experience frequent dropped calls and an inability to make data connections, and in general they feel that service is spotty.

Just think, the iPad is going to be coming in large numbers…and the Slate, to join the many new phones which are the all in one digital tether to the net we seek like crack.

The pure technical facts are, the “bandwidth” (think of how many lanes in the road) can be used faster than more of the capability can be added. It’s not like we all haven’t experienced this with road construction sometimes in our lives.

I recently worked on a 9 year old Hewlett-Packard Pavillion.  I’ve been “managing” this computer for a client for almost a year.  When I first worked on it, the “it’s slow (a common complaint)” was the issue.  It had 512K of memory installed and, quite honestly, that was sufficient when the computer was new.  WindowsXP has since grow with patches to keep you safe from hackers and other malcontents.  512K memory is no longer a functional configuration.

We ordered more memory, the most the computer would accept:  2GB.  Not bad, but it also was the a prior generation type of memory (DDR), which was more costly than the currently widely used memory type (DDR2).

My recommendation?  It’s as fast as it will get, so…consider a new system after Windows 7 arrives (This was summer last year).  While they were at their other place, someone told them they just needed a bigger hard drive.  They bought one.  500GB, with the not regularly used anymore interface (but required in their older machine.

So, I begin trying to migrate their drive over using cloning techniques, which preserve your entire setup of dat and programs.  I tried 5 different cloning programs, as each time I copied the old disk to the new one, the new one (500GB) would only show it was 131.5GB in size, the rest of it being unusable.  After a few choice words, I recalled there had been times when computers had limitations on the size of hard drive they could see/use.  So, I jumped on the net and dug around a little, specifically for their model of computer and sure enough, something I had not seen in years was the issue:  The configuration of the motherboard in the computer would only see a drive up to 131.5GB large.  They already had an almost full 120GB drive, so that wasn’t much help, not to mention, the majority of the drive they paid for wasn’t even effective, without splitting electronically into three drives, and then you’d have issues of remembering where you stored your data.

Considering the hours spent above an beyond the movement of their pictures, documents and email files to a new computer, they could have purchased a new desktop system for just about the bill they have reached, by trying to keep the old, slow, now two generations of memory (DDr2 is climbing in price, as DDR3 now is becoming the main technology in use) behind, when they could have put the money towards something to take them about 3-4 years down the road, with a full 1 year warranty and a copy of Windows 7 running their programs.  That alone is a big enhancement on speed for your work.

I do enjoy the challenge of moving data, but trust me…I’d rather see you saving money on “upgrading” so I can spend some time helping you understand how to make your computer become your very capable personal digital assitant!

As technology allows components to get smaller, and more powerful, the “geeks” among us come up with ways to apply them to practical problems. In this case, it’s a project called “SixthSense.”

I have dabbled in voice recognition as far back as the Apple II+ days (that’s a long time ago. I didn’t even ask about the cost of the software, I just played with it at Apple World in Boston for as long as I could, in my first encounter. Now, voice systems at the other end of our phones “know’ our voices without us “training” them.

Move to the world of “gestures.” Even before the iPhone using mulittouch technology (reads two points and reacts based on relative movement between them), Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) had a set of gestures for things like add and delete characters and spaces, as you “typed” with your stylus.

Add to this the next small mix of current technology: Face tracking on your webcams. As you move, the digital controls have determined where your face is and automatically keep it centered with in it’s limits of digital or physical movement. That’s on your desk today. More sophisticated systems are being used for security purposes, too.

Now we do have the iPhone and may copycats, like the HTC Touch phone. Microsoft and other companies have demonstrated multi-touch of many more points and Apple has recently patented a multi-user/multi-touch system, that just knows the different sets of fingers and palms touching the display. Look for this type of technology to show up on your favorite high end restaurant’s table soon, with a direct interface to the kitchen and bar staff.

Now, I’ll get back to SixthSense, which requires a small projector and a camera, and a place to project on.  Basically, the projector becomes your display, and the camera sees what your hands are doing between you and the projected image.  Now the software takes over to allow the interpretation, in context, of the hand movements to provide a “Minority Report” like virtual reality display operated just by the motions of your hands in mid air.  Just think, that movie came out in 2002, and here we are, coming close to this being a common method of interacting with a digitally enhanced world.  Does life imitate art or does art imitate life?

This project is designed to be part of a wearable computing system.  Other projects, such as the Microsoft Natal, are for use with a fixed system, in front of your installed display (TV/computer monitor).

This really isn’t far off, and while the videos show the interaction is a little bit jerky, and the componets, as small as they are, are still somewhat unwieldy, this is what “engineering models” look like, and then some other engineers get to work doing things like integrating projectors and cameras and mirrors into a designer set of glasses frames, so it’s actually useful and comfortable.

“Early adopters” will be the people who take a Dremel Tool to that fancy biking helmet, and won’t mind the wires running down the back of thier shirt’s to connet to the battery and computer package.  Trust me, you’ll be repulsed and attracted, simultaneously, to this person and want to know how you can do it too, but you’ll only buy in if they can guarantee you that there is no residual “helmet hair” when you remove your “device.” This prototype was put together for $350 in parts. Amazing!

Interested in the bigger story?  Watch this video of the man who conceived and made this work:  Pranav MistryTED.