Nowadays many of us have phones or tablets with cameras in them. We happily snap away taking pictures and probably give no regard to where they are stored and whether they are safe. If you have received a nice new tablet or phone for Christmas and want to make sure you keep hold of your pictures then this month’s article is for you.
Most people, in my experience, have a computer as well as their tablet or phone, one of the ways in which you can ensure that you keep your pictures safe is to regularly copy them over to your computer or laptop and then make sure that they are backed up using whatever normal backup system you use. If you want more information about backups then have a look on our website and do a search for “backup” and you’ll find loads of helpful articles on the subject. Read this entire article »
Problem: Computer is reporting as not connected to the internet, however other devices (tablet, other computers etc.) on the same wireless network connect to the Internet without problem.
Affects: As far as we are aware we have only seen the problem on computers using Windows 10 Read this entire article »
Office 365
Many of us are accustomed to using the Microsoft Office package. Whether we took the time and expense to purchase a copy or have a pirate copy installed that “came with the computer”, it’s a great tool and one many of us would find it hard to do without for business purposes. Yes of course there are alternatives in the form of OpenOffice, Corel Office and others which serve the purposes of home users, but when it comes to professional business tools it’s hard to find a decent alternative to Microsoft Office. Read this entire article »
As you probably already know I do like to look up every now and then and recently I saw an article online about the International Space Station that fascinated me. Did you know that it’s the largest artificial body on orbit around our planet and that you can see it without any fancy equipment, all your need is a dark night and your eyes!
The ISS orbits the earth once every 90 minutes, travelling at a velocity of 27,600 km per hour (about 5 minutes a second)! It is permanently inhabited with scientists and zipps round at about 400km above our heads. It’s a common mis-conception that the ISS stays in place because of a lack of gravity, in fact it’s more accurate to think of it as constantly falling over the horizon of earth, it’s essentially in a constant `free fall`around our planet. At 400 tons it’s not a small thing but because of the millions of pieces of space debris also orbiting the earth, the ISS does need to be able to move to avoid the larger pieces – having your tin can punctured by a piece of rubbish moving at over 27,000 kmph would seriously negatively impact your day I would imagine! In order to move the ISS to avoid contact with these objects the crew use a team of people on earth whose job it is to track each of the items that are large enough to cause serious harm (around half a million of them), once an item is identified as being on a collision course (or a possible collision course) then the thrusters and gyroscopes on the ISS come into play to move the ISS out of the way – all of this is controlled from the ground, the guys in the “tin can” don’t have to do anything, although sometimes if a smaller object has hit the solar panels they may be called upon to perform a space walk to investigate and repair things outside. Read this entire article »
As you probably already know, I have a penchant for cycling and this month I managed to mix one of my favourite sports with my other love – computers!
Zwift is a piece of software that allows you to connect your bike, an indoors trainer and your computer, the most sensors you have, the more the integration works. If you have a smart trainer (one that connects to your computer) then Zwift will change the resistance based on the terrain that you are cycling through!
Ok I hear you ask, you live in Spain, why on earth would you want to cycle indoors? Well that’s a good point and at first I thought the same thing, however there are some days when its either too windy, too rainy (not many haha) or too hot to safely cycle outdoors, so this system gives you an alternative. Its’ quick, easy and really handy if you have room to have it set up perminantly like I do – I can finish work and be on the bike cycling around Watopia (the name of the island that you cycle around in Zwift) in a matter of a few minutes without ever leaving the house. Read this entire article »
If you have a business here on the Costa’s then you should already know about the power of Facebook, especially if you market to the ex-pat market here as most brits here on the Costa Blanca are very familiar with Facebook, they use it for everything from finding local businesses, rating the service that they have received to catching up with friends and family here and back “home” in the UK.
I would go as far as to say that retired people here in Spain are much more “teched up” and familiar with how technology and Facebook work than their peers back home; of course this ability, I think, comes from the need to use technology to keep in touch that wouldn’t be necessary back in the UK. Whatever the reason, if you’re a business owner then you should know that your core customers use social media. Read this entire article »
We are seeing an increase in this type of computer compromise, so this month I thought that we should spend some time looking at ways in which you can protect yourself from this new and worrying form of virus.
Ok, so first let’s define what we are talking about – ransomware is a type of virus that will encrypt your files (documents, emails, pictures etc.) and then ransom you usually 100’s of euros to get them back. There is no reliable way to get your data back directly once it has been encrypted without paying the ransom. Paying up has two downsides, firstly you’re losing money and secondly in some cases you are handing over your credit card details to criminals. Read this entire article »
If, like me, you have to take pills every day and you keep forgetting to take them then I have the solution for you – a great app called MediSafe . You see I increasingly find it difficult to remember to keep “taking the pills” and recently after I had my leg in plaster I also had to remember to take a whole lot more of them – and a daily injection!
Some of the medication had to be taken once a day, others had to be taken several times a day and to be honest with you I was so busy and so uninterested in taking the medication that I regularly forgot. I had to find a way to ensure that I kept taking them for obvious reasons and being never more than an arms length away from my trusty smart phone I decided to see if there was a app that I would be able to use to replace my failing memory. Read this entire article »
I love making lists! I make lists of things I need to do for work, home, personal life and my business life. It is how I “get things done” – or at least how I like to kid myself that I am at least mildly efficient. Therefore, you can imagine my utter joy when I learned that I could combine my love of things technical with my obsession with making lists!
I needed to keep a list but also share and collaborate that list with someone else. My previous solution would have been to write (or type) the list out and then simply hand it to the other person and say, “here, add your stuff”. However, that simply would not have worked in this instance, as we wanted to add things as we thought of them and we also wanted to complete tasks on the list and ‘tick’ them off in real time as they were done so that the list would be up to date all of the time – I found Wunderlist! Read this entire article »
Well, we are well and truly on the lead up to Christmas! With that in mind I thought I would review some tech-based health themed Christmas gifts that you might want to consider for the smartphone user in your life.
Withings do a great range of health devices that will communicate direct with your smart phone, tablet or PC to enable you to track various aspects of your health. Read this entire article »