Inside the brain of a Geek: Protecting your iPhone’s data

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Mobile devices can store a mass amount of data. What do we store on our iPhone and iPad? Photos of your pets?  Confidential corporate email? According to a 2011 study, 50% of mobile users store credit card, PIN, or passwords on their mobile device.  Your data needs to be protected in case your iPhone becomes lost or stolen.

For a video on how to set a passcode on an iPhone click the photo below.

Tech Warning: When you are setting up your passcode you will see an option called “Erase Data”  Only turn this feature on if you backup your iPhone at least once a week and don’t have small children.

 

Reference - http://www.darkreading.com/cloud-security/167901092/security/news/229625511/half-of-lost-or-stolen-mobile-devices-store-sensitive-company-data.html

Video by 02GureTV

 

Your suggestions and questions are always welcome.  Please email me using the form on this website.

Inside the brain of a Geek: Resize Application Windows in a Snap!

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Are you constantly resizing application windows to utilize your whole desktop? Windows 7 has a feature that makes this process a snap. This week I will show you how to use Snap’s side-by-side feature.  I use this feature on a daily basic and am actually using it now to writing and research this tip. 

Follow the detailed instructions or use the link below to watch a short 1 minute video. 

To arrange windows side by side

  1. Drag the title bar of a window to the left or right side of the screen until an outline of the expanded window appears.
  2. Release the mouse to expand the window.
  3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 with another window to arrange the windows side by side.

To return the window to its original size, drag the title bar away from the top of the desktop and then release.

Keyboard shortcut:  To snap an active window to the side of the desktop using the keyboard, press Windows logo key +Left Arrow or Windows logo key +Right Arrow.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Arrange-windows-side-by-side-on-the-desktop-using-Snap

Instructions and video courtesy of Microsoft.

Your suggestions and questions are always welcome.  Please email me 

Inside the brain of a Geek: Crop Pictures to Shape in Word

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I’m always looking for ways to add a little more visual interest to my newsletter.  I poked around in Word and found “Crop to Shape”. I had never used it before and had fun learning and playing. Today I’m going to show you how I used crop to shape created the pictures below. My example is a picture of Duke our Customer Relations Vice President hard at work.


Instructions:

 

First insert the picture. Select the Insert tab – Picture

 

Select the picture then click Insert.


Select the picture then click on the Format tab. Select Crop – Crop to Shape.  Pick a shape

Finished picture is below.

Your suggestions and questions are always welcome.  Please email me using the form on this website.

Inside the brain of a Geek: Exercise with Me! (No Burpees, I Promise)

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Sitting in front of a computer typing and click for hours cause pain and stiffness.  Doing this for years can cause repetitive stress injuries (RSI). I developed pain in my hands about a year ago and I use simple stretching exercise to help me alleviate it.  I now do these exercises several times a day as a preventative.

 

Exercise:

Wrists: With opposite hand, gently pull your fingers back allowing the wrist to bend. Hold for three seconds. Switch hands. Repeat three to five times.

Hands: Refresh your fingers by first making a tight fist with both hands and then spreading your fingers as far apart as they can go. Hold this for five seconds then repeat three more times.

References

Princeton University Ergonomics and Computer Use

http://www.princeton.edu/uhs/healthy-living/hot-topics/ergonomics/#rsi

Carnegie Mellon RSI Web Site

http://www.cmu.edu/rsi/WaysToPreventRSI.htm

 

Your suggestions and questions are always welcome.  Please email me using the form on this website. You can google Burpee and see what I mean in the title.

Inside the brain of a Geek: More Juice Please!

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How often do you get to the end of the workday with more work than battery life?  I went on a Google quest to find tips to improve the battery life on my iPhone and found several great articles from lifehacker.com. Below is a trick from each article. Click the links to read the full articles. 


Windows Laptop

 

“Today's laptops use Lithium batteries instead of nickel, but there's a lot of incorrect information out there about how to charge or drain your batteries, so let's set the record straight: Nickel batteries required being fully drained before a recharge to optimize your battery life, but Lithium batteries are the opposite—you do not need to fully discharge it before recharging, and in fact, if you fully deplete a lithium battery and don't recharge for a while, it can become incapable of holding a charge.”

 

http://lifehacker.com/5566020/how-to-maximize-the-battery-life-of-your-windows-laptop

 

iPhone

 

“Clear the multitasking queue so you don't have an endless trail of open apps. Even though Apple designed multitasking to be battery-friendly, suspending a ton of apps still takes its toll. It can be frustrating to manually close a bunch of apps in the multitasking queue, but doing this on a weekly basis can help reduce unwanted battery drain.”

 

Access the multitasking queue by double tapping the home button, press and holding any app in the queue, and then tap the “-“in the corner of the app.

 

 

http://lifehacker.com/5859413/how-to-improve-your-iphones-battery-life 

 

Android

“Your screen, especially if it's one of the new beautiful Super AMOLED or Super LCD displays, draws by far the most battery from your device. The best way to minimize your screen's battery usage is to turn the brightness down. By default, your phone should be on "Auto" brightness, which works, but might still use up more juice than you'd like.

If you head to Settings > Display > Brightness, you can uncheck "Automatic Brightness" and put it on something like 10%. It'll be a little harder to see in direct sunlight, but you'll be better off everywhere else. Putting the Power Control widget on your home screen makes toggling between low and high brightness a lot easier, too, so that's a widget I highly recommend you use if you don't already. To add it, press and hold on an empty section of your screen, choose Widgets, and pick the Power Control option.”

http://lifehacker.com/5795796/how-to-get-better-battery-life-from-your-android-phone

Inside the brain of a Geek: Multiple actions in one Quick Step

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Quick Steps is a feature in Outlook 2010 that applies multiple actions in one-step. I have a Quick Step setup to start my reminder emails. It takes me one click to start a new email with the To, Bcc, Subject, and partial text already filled in.  Other options:  Move to folder and mark the email as read or Forwards the email to specific address or addresses.

 

Click Home – Quick Steps – click Create New


Type in a Name:

Choose an Action – New Message.  Add the email address

You can add additional actions by clicking Add Action.

Click Finish.

You can find more information about Quick Steps from Microsoft at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/automate-common-or-repetitive-tasks-with-quick-steps-HA010370689.aspx

Inside the brain of a Geek: Take out the Trash

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I’m looking forward to the day that we have a robot named “Rosie” who can remember trash day.  Luckily for us taking out email trash is an easy task to automate.  No robot needed!

 

File – Options

 

Advanced – Check the box Empty Deleted Items folders when exiting Outlook.

Done!  Now you will be taking out the trash every time you exit Outlook. 

 

Your suggestions and questions are always welcome.  Please email me using the contact form on this website. 

 

Inside the brain of a Geek: How to Clean up Your Conversations in Outlook 2010

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Conversation Clean Up is a great time and space saver, because it can delete a wave of older messages from a conversation while preserving all the information.  I found an instructional video that does a good job explaining the use of this feature.

 

 

Inside the brain of a Geek: Exploring the Search options in Outlook 2010

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In the past I used about 80 subfolders to keep my Inbox organized. The advancement of the Search features in Outlook makes finding emails so easy and accurate that I no longer worry about putting emails in the right subfolder. But there is a lot more to searching in Outlook than the Search field. Today I’m going to highlight just a few of the more advanced options available.

 

When you click on the Search field, the Ribbon opens a new tab labeled Search Tools.


The Search Tools tab has many options that can speed up your searches.  I often use the From and Recent Search options.


For even more options go to Search Tools – Advanced Find. Keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+F)

Below I used the Advanced Find feature to locate all the Reminder emails I sent last month.


Your suggestions and questions are always welcome.  Please email me at pfelix@brainstomp.com.