World news comes to mobile apps

Here’s a neat new app from NetworkGlobal Companies, a sort of mobile CNN. They produce online videos, but also allow independent news outlets all over the planet to upload news material. They will bring their NGB.tv news resource library to  iPhone and iPad — likely, other mobile gadgets will jump on as time goes by.

The latest NetworkGlobal News app is free. Users can download or stream recorded news, political information and, social topic videos. NGC claims to host millions of online streams monthly with in their library. They will increase that traffic once the mobile viewing application is established. To kick off the new app, NGC will produce an official live mobile video stream of a 2010 UN General Assembly.

The entrepreneur behind NGC is 25 year-old Gunnar Larson, CEO and company founder.

Auto backup can be a reality

The most annoying thing about safe computing is trying to backup your data and files regularly and simply. It’s usually a task that requires a programmer’s logic, a guru’s insight, and the patience of Job (not Steve Jobs, the biblical guy). I have found a solution that totally turns me on – I took a look at Clickfree Products elegantly simple external hard drive automatic backup system.

About Clickfree Backup

It can take hours to hunt through your hard drive and tell windows Backup, or most other backups, what files to copy and what to ignore. Clickfree’s hard drives, USB Flash drives, DVDs and cables have a built-in bonus. When you plug them into your computer, they auto-launch a backup utility intuitive enough to go look for several hundred common file types or extensions.

You, the overtaxed user, doesn’t have to load software, configure anything, install, follow a wizard, puzzle out a schedule or otherwise frustrate yourself.

The Up Side of Clickfree Backup

• The designs are sleek, durable, and attractive. I used the C2N Automatic Family Backup in white (also available in purple, red, blue). It has a nice modern profile and sits in a USB dock with a very small footprint.
• It’s as easy as playing a music CD. Plug C2N in to a power source or use the included USB power cord. Connect to your computer with included cable. Storage from a few gig to 500 gig.
• No user input required. When they say automatic, that’s exactly what they mean.
• Fast. Total backup accomplished in under ten minutes. You can backup, transfer, restore data or store images, music, other files.
• Controllable. You can set preferences to your taste.
• Simple restore.
• Reasonable price points.  Thumb drives from $9.99 and external drives from about $100 to $169, including dock.

Down Side of Clickfree

• Enclosed documentation and instructions are in a font so small as to be next to invisible.
• The units will not work automatically if connected through a USB hub, even if it’s a powered hub. That information is not clearly indicated in the documentation. It took me about half an hour to figure it out, and I was frustrated.
• Unit must be removed from the dock in order to be powered down, unless you disconnect the whole set up. A bit clunky.

Clikfree Bottom Line

This is a product we liked a lot. There are many gadgets claiming to be easy, simple, and effective, but this one is for real. To date, my storage brand of choice has been Sandisk, a great company, but I have to make room for Clickfree. The auto backup thing is a real time and energy saver, appealing to my low frustration levels.

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Review: ViewGuard privacy filter

HTML5 for everyday computing

Save your eyes, your secrets, and your display

Whether you’re retired and journaling on your computer or still working and longing for privacy at your office desk, ViewGuard is a product that might make your computing environment more secure. I had a chance to try out ViewGuard Anti-Glare Privacy Filter. My test results surprised me.

I work from home, so there aren’t lots of people around. Still, as a writer, I sometimes work on sensitive material that should remain private. I work in the middle of my living on a laptop. Or I work at my desktop in my non-private home office. Sometimes I’ve wondered if I should turn all the monitors to the wall, or just give up.

Trying the Intelligen ViewGuard Anti-Glare Privacy Filter

I installed the filter in about two minutes, using enclosed directions (printed in several languages). It’s a matter of carefully opening the glassine envelope and extracting the filter. I was careful not to slime it full of fingerprints, though an anti-static, non-abrasive cleaning cloth is enclosed. Laying the filer against the monitor screen, I applied four small, clear, self-adhesive tabs on the frame of my laptop display to hold the filter in place.

Next step, turn on the laptop and explore. The size was nearly perfect for my wide-screen. I could see the display from straight on, but people around me could not. From an acute angle, they saw portions of the screen, darkened. From an obtuse angle, the screen was as black as though it were turned off.  No casual onlooker could observe what I worked on.

Benefits of ViewGuard Anti-Glare Filter

• Total privacy for your computing.
• Overhead or peripheral glare is reduced or eliminated, and the manufacturer claims reduction of UV damage.
• Medical personnel, sales people, government employees, or anyone who works with sensitive data can work securely. Personal correspondence or writings remain personal.
• Protects display against scratches, permanent finger marks, and other damage.
• Prices start at under $15.
• Variety of sizes means no cutting or adjusting necessary. It’s kind of plug and play.

Drawbacks or the downside of ViewGuard

• Reduces image contrast. Quick fix may be to increase your display’s brightness.
• Fingerprints pretty easily.
• Sticky tabs have to be glued (self adhesive) to your computer display’s frame. Unclear whether removing them will cause a problem.
• Scratches if in contact with rough surfaces, but is easily replaced and cost-effective.
• Size is not perfect fit. A tiny line of unprotected display appeared at the top of the screen, and felt awkward.

Bottom line – ViewGuard

I’m not a government employee, nor am I subject to HIPPA regulations when I work most of the time. Still, I am enjoying a more secure sense of privacy as I work with my laptop. I’m seriously considering purchasing another ViewGuard privacy filter for my desktop monitor, and am looking forward to seeing the company develop a filter for outdoor computing. This Intelligen product is useful, easy to work with, affordable, and practical.

Lots of digital savvy grands like their smart phones, but some baby boomers have pared down t he amount of connectivity they have. For those who like the information superhighway but want to keep it under control, there’s a new gadget called WikiReader. The tiny, capable, fascinating digital reader, the WikiReader, might be worth a look.

I had the chance to try one out.

WikiReader’s Good Points

1. The unit is quite small, like the size of a deck of cards, maybe, but square with rounded corners. Comfortable to use.
2. It has a pretty good display, with fair resolution, that can be seen indoors and outdoors.
3. Comes loaded with content – and the content can be free or upgraded to a pay subscription. The free is more than adequate, the pay version is fun, adding languages, dictionaries and other perks.
4. There are parental, or grandparental, controls.
5. Very simple. You select, read, review your history, or get random pages with one touch selection. I like the random stuff. Being a pretty random person, it suited me. I’m a Stumbleupon addict, so this felt good. Click and it brought me something to read I had never seen before.
6. Price point is as low as under $100.

WikiReader Weaknesses

• It’s a one-trick pony. Good for bringing your current events and encyclopedia type info.
• Not rechargeable. It runs, the maker says, for up to one year on two included triple A batteries, but nonetheless, it needs disposable or rechargeable batteries. Not very green, right?
• Fatiguing for long reading sessions. If the big-guy electronic readers are suffering a lag in popularity, this gadget may never get off the ground.

WikiReader Bottom Line

WikiReader is not exactly new. It’s been around a year or two, but has not taken off the way it’s backers would have liked. The team is now marketing heavily to us, the baby boomers who embrace tech and gadgets. Not a bad move since we tend to be pretty mobile and travel a lot. This gadget can slip into purse, pocket, briefcase, or suitcase and give you an edge in pulling info when you travel.

It’s a fun toy and a novelty that will set you in the early adapter echelon. For a few bucks, it’s probably worth the buy if you really like to keep up.

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Interesting things are happening at YouTube, now owned by Google. The cloud, cloud computing, is trying to be a big deal though it’s seems to start and stop. But this could be a shot in the cloud. Google says YouTube’s new editing tool allows users to manipulate video online, FREE.

Apparently there’s no complicated software download and a very shallow learning curve. You can be up and running, editing your video clips in the cloud to your heart’s content. YouTube Video Editor has a vast library of borrowable tracks to enhance your work and add some fun. You’ll need to register a free account to use the tools – all it wants is your name and email address.

Take a look, give it a try, and see if you can create your own cool portfolio of videos online. If that appeals, don’t forget to take a look at Animoto, as well.

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Dragons, wizards, and grandparents, oh my!

Want to see something cool? Fire up your computer, even your five year-old computer or your netbook. Go over to Wizard101.com, an innovative, entertaining, family participation role play game. Known as an MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game), Wizard101 delights people from pre-readers to post-retirement and everything in between.

I know. I play it. So do my four year-old grandson and granddaughter. My husband claims not to be that interested, but he hovers around and tells us what we need to do when we’re playing. The game is based on a Harry Potter-type world of wizards, creatures, magic, and graphics to die for.

How Wizard101 works

In this MMORPG, you get to create a wizard character, male or female, hair color from brunette to purple, and any variation of ethnicity you could come up with. Diversity is integral. With your wizard born, you hook up with the headmaster for fun lessons in how to play. Everything you’ll need is covered in about fifteen minutes of play.

• Learn to use your wand
• Learn how magic spells are cast via an amazing card game
• Understand your tools
• See how to add pets to your experience
• Begin reading the imaginative backstory

You’re ready, Young Wizard, to play in earnest. Quirky characters visit your screen as you play telling you, in the nick of time, what you need to know. Six brightly beautiful worlds, soon to be seven, make up a universe known as “the Spiral.” Intense color, well animated creatures and characters, and a satisfying soundtrack put Wizard101 out in front of the pack of role play games I’ve seen.

Participate for free as long as you wish. There’s plenty to explore without buying areas or subscribing to the universe, and thousands of people have played free for almost two years. Still, KingsIsle, creators of the game, is characterized by brilliant thinking. They don’t hawk their wares. They never push product at you. They woo you, seduce you into desiring more because it is so much fun to keep going.

Why Wizard101 is perfect for multiple generations

I talked with Fred Howard, KingsIsle marketing VP. He explained, “In 2005, our founder, Elie Akilian, saw a huge space in the gaming world. There was hard core violence, and then sites like Club Penguin for very young children, but nothing in between for family entertainment. Of course there were no wizard worlds, no card-play based dueling. Ours isn’t a tight niche; it’s crossed niches that appeal to all ages.”

He’s right. Wizard101 RPG is simple, user friendly, with much of the story playing out in text-to-speech. Even pre-readers jump in, fiddle around, strike down a banshee with a well-played battle card, and are on their way to saving a world, with magic. More sophisticated players engage in all manner of strategy, learning, and power-ups, taking play to higher levels.

The cool thing, the very cool thing is that people from 4 to 84 can play together– as a team or group. They talk to each other on screen, help each other out, strategize, and learn from each other. Grandma or grandpa, living in Ft. Lauderdale, can spend a couple of hours roaming worlds hand-in-hand with grandchildren in Anchorage, a priceless bridge over geographic distance so difficult for families to manage.

It’s a social thing, this game. Howard likes to call it “family entertainment,” not “family-friendly” play. He means his game is totally engaging for everyone. While family-friendly products like the famous Florida Mouse’s website delight kids and are safe, they could quickly bore the pants off elders.

Why Digital Grandparent is sold on Wizard101

It’s simple. It’s grassroots. This year, KingsIsle will focus on showing

Grandparents can learn magic at this school

Wizard101 to people of mature ages and let us sell ourselves. We grandparents get that it’s wonderful to interact with family in a clean, safe space. We’ve embraced Wii, Skype, and other web properties.

My grands and I learned a new language around this game. We hang out in exotic places. I like Mooshu, the Oriental city of cherry blossoms, black lotus, and the fearful Jade Oni. My grandson can’t stay out of Dragonspyre’s lavafalls, dark broken villages waiting for rescue, and a breathtaking dragonride he can access anytime he wants.

We talk about the game and plan our best options. We talk to other players, without fear of inappropriate interactions. Filters prevent inappropriate comments in player chatter. It’s almost impossible for anyone to exchange personal information – again, filters remove anything that resembling an address, phone number, real name, even age.

The interface is beautiful. The infrastructure is extremely well-planned for safety, fun, and people-appeal. Once in a while as the audience expands, technical issues arise but are solved fairly quickly. KingsIsle’s parent award winning Wizard101 is not a perfect world. But overall,  I’d be hard-pressed to think of anything else with so much to offer so many.

You, a tech-friendly grand, might just discover how to enjoy this as much as the kids, at no cost or reasonable cost.

They say laughter is as effective in preventing ailments as is exercise – we laugh a lot over this jewel of a toy. Digital Grandparent gives the game a whole bucketful of stars and recommends you grab your favorite child of any age and give it a go. You’ll find yourself feeling younger and more spry with each spell you cast.

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Oil spill is larger than Connecticut

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By Dan Pelland, tech guru guest writer

Remote-operated vehicles (ROV’s) worked on apparatus at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, trying to save a planet. I couldn’t stop watching the live feed from BP. It’s almost interesting enough to dispel some bitterness I feel at the unfolding events down there. Maybe that’s BPs whole idea as their digital imaging technology brings a tragedy into our living rooms.

Early Thursday morning June 3, about 10:30, engineers began work, apparently to disconnect damaged pipes atop the now infamous blowout preventer. Two ROVs were visible. The point of view was a camera onboard what looks like a Millennium II cage-deployed ROV, owned and operated by Oceaneering International, Inc .

The ROV had a circular saw gripped in its right hand. As the ROV maneuvered into position, I could see how intensely difficult the adjustments must have been for the operator 5000 feet above. Regardless of what hi-tech equipment I was looking at, placing a tool with this kind of precision, without the benefit of tactile feedback, requires an extreme amount of skill and patience.

As soon as the blade began to spin, a thick cloud of mud obscured the camera but the operator held the saw in place and kept up the cut. I knew, from my own experience, what could go wrong in a situation like this. A little off axis, and the blade could bind and, in an instant, wrench the tool out of hand.

On the second cut, it happened. As I watched the saw fall out of the ROVs gripper, I knew what the operator was saying. I wondered if it was in a Cajun dialect. The camera panned downward. The saw had come to rest, precariously, on the top of the BOP (blowout preventer). The second ROV moved in to assist. It took the two operators, working from separate consoles. More than 30 minutes to recover the saw and get back to the cut.

Finally after more than an hour of careful maneuvering, a strap around the main riser was removed. At the moment it broke loose, I yelled.

video by alexhiggins732 via Youtube.com

The human factor of BPs oil spill

Regardless of the ill will and contempt many of us feel for the oil industry right now, there are men and women working as hard as any human ever has trying to mitigate the damage to our treasured resource. This is an intense drama unto itself, as compelling and fascinating as anything I’ve ever seen. The fact that I can watch it unfold in real time is a testament to the ingenuity of people like the staff at Oceaneering who put this technology to work.

Oil spill larger than Connecticut

Connecticut isn’t one of our largest states, but it’s intimidating to consider that three and half million people, the population of Connecticut, live in an area about the size of that mess in the Gulf of Mexico. You can not see end-to-end of the BP oil spill from one spot, unless you’re in space.

Gizmodo, a cool website for uber-geeks, has information today about how to map the Gulf oil spill over any land mass using Google Earth. The work is from Paul Rademacher via The Daily What.

Blogger Eric Berger, the SciGuy says the Gulf Spill is being tracked via satellite from space.

The Toronto Star writes about human and animal hair being used to clean up the Gulf oil spill.

One more thing. Chicago’s WGN radio morning talk guy pointed out that while BP owns the oil involved in this disaster, a multi-megabuck company called Transocean owns the rig, pipes, processes, technology, and responsibility for safety out in the Gulf. Some months ago, they were bragging about what a tremendous project this would be.

As I understand it, there was only one person from BP company on that rig most times. The rest were of, from, or working for Transocean. And did you know the WGN guy also reported there was a party happening onboard when the explosion took place? I haven’t read this info anywhere else, and no one can let BP off the hook, but I wonder what the real stories are under the stuff we’re getting in the media?

Tooling around the web I found some fascinating tidbits about Nintendo. My quest began when I browsed the editorial calendar from one of the publications I write for. It said Nintendo, the company, was founded in 1889. It’s been around almost a century and a quarter. Digital trivia I needed to know more about, and I was surprised by what I learned.

Nintendo (the word, says the company website, means something like “Leave luck to heaven” in Japanese) originally made card games. Later, according to Wikipedia, they dabbled in being a taxi company, a TV Network, an instant rice maker, and what is carefully described as a “love hotel.”

Now, they’re mega-players in one of Japan’s busiest industries, electronic gaming. They own the Seattle Mariners baseball team and are worth almost $100 billion.

Before Nintendo wowed the world with two guys, Mario and Luigi, they owned Japanese distribution rights to a video game system most baby boomers will remember, Magnavox Odyssey, often considered the world’s first home video game system. Odyssey was first demonstrated in May, 1973 (again, according to Wikipedia). I recall clearly playing Light Tennis until my eyes went glassy and I had to pee so badly it felt like my teeth were floating.

The first NES game system debuted in the U.S. in 1985 – accompanied by Super Mario Brothers, still a hands-down favorite among serious game enthusiasts. If you think back, you’ll recall that it came with the light gun and Duck Hunt, too, an amazing feat of electronic wizardry for its time.

From manufacturing cards to swamping the electronic home game industry with the innovative Wii system in 2007, Nintendo has come a long way. They’re winding up to pitch a 3D handheld DS game this year, and keep tossing out new ideas all the time like a program to integrate DS game decks into school curricula.

Leave luck to heaven might well be the company motto. Skill and business sense seem to be where it’s at for this firm that employs about 4,000 people in more than half a dozen countries. You go, Mario.

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Edit your videos FREE

We liked this online learning project so much that we invited Mary Ellen Pinzino, Founder/Director of the Come Children Sing Institute to explain her program for our readers. Since 1984, her organization has been a center for research and development in music learning. Mary Ellen tells you how to learn music online. Grandparents and kids can get FREE gift certificates via SKYPE.

The Come Children Sing Institute is conducting research on music learning in the youngest children through online music classes with distant grandparents via Skype.  Come Children, Sing! Online Music Classes for infants, babies and toddlers are designed so that distant grandparents can interact meaningfully with their youngest grandchildren in an ongoing developmental music program.

Grandparents can now engage with their little ones in online music classes from their own homes and on their own schedules, whatever their musical background.  MP3 files, music activities, and grandparent tips are all provided online, while the child sees only the loving grandparent onscreen, engaging with the child in music activities.

Discover new ways to interact with your youngest grandchild via Skype on a regular basis. Become part of the exciting process of your grandchild’s music development during the most important years for music learning. Just sing along, move along, play along, and go along with Come Children, Sing! and your little one via Skype.

Come Children, Sing! is a developmental music program that makes learning music as natural as learning language. Infants, babies and toddlers across the country are thriving musically on Come Children, Sing!, surprising loved ones with their focused attention to music activities designed for the young child’s music development.

Come Children, Sing! Online Music Classes deliver one new lesson each week for 10 weeks.  Participating grandparents are expected to engage with their loved one in weekly lessons for at least 10 minutes each week for 10 weeks, with 14 weeks to complete the 10 lessons. $40 gift certificates for continuing Online Music Classes will be provided for as long as grandparent and child engage in the program via Skype. Three years of quality music instruction for little children are now available online at Come Children, Sing! where you can view sample lessons. Distance learning has now reached the youngest children, with all the benefits of online education. To participate with your grandchild, send an email to Come Children, Sing! with your name, the age of your grandchild, and a notation that you read about the program at DigitalGrandparent.com.

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