My wife travels for business and when she books a trip she has the app send me an itinerary, which I want so I know what hotel she is in or her airline flights. But managing them and be able to get them was difficult, sent to my regular pop my mail they got downloaded and not online; and trying to deal with folders and being able to get to them on my phone was a pain too, and web based mail solutions are blocked a my employer and not as easy to navigate on my phone.
My solution, create a notebook in Evernote, when I get the itinerary I forward to my the dedicated email address Evernote provided, and add the tag for her Itinerary Notebook ( by adding "@notebook name" to the end of email subject). And the itineraries are now easily stored and accessible from any device (work computer, smart phone and home computer). Keeping the travel date and city in the note title helps to find them quickly.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
Disaster Recovery Part 1
Most everyone has knows that you should have an inventory of what is in your home in case it is destroyed or stolen; and for those really on the ball you have photographs. In the past it was not convenient to take photos dealing with film and processing in the old days or downloading from your camera and putting them on some type of removable media (CD/DVD, flash drive) and if you did, figuring out where to store them or your inventory list so a flood or fire would destroy them as well.
Enter the cloud and Smartphones. Take pictures with your cellphone, and with automatic upload setting on cellphones they can automatically be loaded to the cloud. Personally, I used my Android phone took pictures and had them uploaded to a private (non shared) photo album on Google+, which has no space limit on photos. Similar upload features exist for Dropbox, but those pictures count against your size limit. Microsoft Skydrive and Google Drive would also be options.
With a little more effort you could also load them to Facebook and achieve the same end result.
As for the inventory, my solution is Google Docs. I keep an inventory of all the major purchases in my home (flat panels, appliances, computer equipment...) with model and serial numbers on a Google Docs Spreadsheet. Easy to create, easy to update and takes care of storing it an offsite location that is easy to get to. In addition to the disaster recovery features, you can easily access those numbers from you phone when you need them. Recently I needed to buy a part for our microwave, "What's the model number?" Whipped out my phone and had it in a few seconds.
How do you use technology and the cloud for disaster recovery??
Enter the cloud and Smartphones. Take pictures with your cellphone, and with automatic upload setting on cellphones they can automatically be loaded to the cloud. Personally, I used my Android phone took pictures and had them uploaded to a private (non shared) photo album on Google+, which has no space limit on photos. Similar upload features exist for Dropbox, but those pictures count against your size limit. Microsoft Skydrive and Google Drive would also be options.
With a little more effort you could also load them to Facebook and achieve the same end result.
As for the inventory, my solution is Google Docs. I keep an inventory of all the major purchases in my home (flat panels, appliances, computer equipment...) with model and serial numbers on a Google Docs Spreadsheet. Easy to create, easy to update and takes care of storing it an offsite location that is easy to get to. In addition to the disaster recovery features, you can easily access those numbers from you phone when you need them. Recently I needed to buy a part for our microwave, "What's the model number?" Whipped out my phone and had it in a few seconds.
How do you use technology and the cloud for disaster recovery??
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Introductions
I am creating this blog to share my ideas and get other's thoughts on how to integrate technology into your daily life. For example, calendaring, how do you keep and share your calendar with family members; and multiple places like work, home, mobile..... How do you make technology work for you?
About me: I dabble with various things at home, I have built and upgraded my own desktop computers for the last 8 years; built out my home network, recently converted an old desktop to a NAS (network attached storage), and lots of related stuff my wife calls nerdy (but she is always trying pimp me out when friends need help). On the other hand my wife has little patience for these things and expects things to just work, when they don't either I have to fix it or she doesn't use it.
That helps to explain the mobile devices we use. She upgraded last November from an iPhone 3G to the iPhone 4S; I on the other hand have a Samsung Galaxy S2. She recently bought the iPad 3. Additionally she has a laptop, and I have my desktop at home plus we each have our company issued laptops.
I hope to post new thoughts and ideas once a week. Please offer your thoughts, your ideas and how you deal with the same things.
About me: I dabble with various things at home, I have built and upgraded my own desktop computers for the last 8 years; built out my home network, recently converted an old desktop to a NAS (network attached storage), and lots of related stuff my wife calls nerdy (but she is always trying pimp me out when friends need help). On the other hand my wife has little patience for these things and expects things to just work, when they don't either I have to fix it or she doesn't use it.
That helps to explain the mobile devices we use. She upgraded last November from an iPhone 3G to the iPhone 4S; I on the other hand have a Samsung Galaxy S2. She recently bought the iPad 3. Additionally she has a laptop, and I have my desktop at home plus we each have our company issued laptops.
I hope to post new thoughts and ideas once a week. Please offer your thoughts, your ideas and how you deal with the same things.
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