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.

Other good reads:

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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DIY videos good and cheap

Animoto.com is an online do-it-yourself video production program so easy your grandchildren could absolutely create their own videos. It’s effortless and affordable. We found it fun and quick enough that the shortest attention span can hold out during the production process.

For free trial use go to the site and clicked on the get started link. We found seven options to make shorts, full-length, unbranded video and four kinds of greeting cards. We got an immediate nudge for upgrading to a paid subscription, but hey, they’re in business to make money. Once you buy a membership – you can begin creating videos. We chose the All Access level and decided to make an unbranded, short video.

We found we could turn photos or clips into a 30 second video the one featured above, with storytelling text. The site is straight forward and easy-to-use. We uploaded still images from our computer to the site. You can use your own images, select from Animoto’s stock library or retrieve from another website like Flickr, Facebook, Picassa. You’re responsible for monitoring copyrights on your own. In other words – use only material you have rights to.

Once we uploaded, the amount of time required was governed by length and resolution of the videos or stills. Animoto allows 8-15 elements (clips or images) in shorts. We chose four still images, typed a little text  and clicked. Animoto took us to background music selection, the  we gave the video a title and short description. Our video processed, analyzed and rendered, letting us know what it was doing each step of the way, for about 60 seconds. Then Animoto began actual production, showing us in color animation what it was doing. I was interested in following the progress over one and a half minutes it took to complete the video.

When finished, Animoto loaded the do-it-yourself video into the page and emailed me a copy. I didn’t have to keep the browser open. You can go do something else, or start another video in the meantime. The end result was attractive, high quality video in less than ten minutes. This process is slick and appealing. You can produce videos for your social media – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – or email them to friends and family. They would be suitable for showing customers your entrepreneurial products, or for sending a video resume to employer prospects.

An enterprising person could buy the pro-quality level and start a business producing wedding or family videos for profit. Animoto has been around for about three and a half years and began as a consumer level product. It has expanded to serve photo professionals and will increase its capabilities this year. Bottom line – we couldn’t find anything to complain about. The prices are justifiable, the quality outstanding, the process simple and fast. We recommend you give it a try. My partner, not easily impressed, said, “This is actually totally cool.”

Price points:

Pro account $249 annual subscription – produce unlimited length, unbranded, commercially licensed high res videos. Three months for $99.

All access: $30 per year. Unlimited full length greetings and videos for the price of an evening at the movies. Finished product has the Animoto brand name on it with music video style credits on it indicating your name as producer. It’s like watching real music videos and there are awesome embellishments available. Animoto will provide a downloadable MP4 file for $5 or a DVD for $20. If you can’t find a use for this product, you’re not a photo enthusiast.

There’s a FREE online productivity suite that uses none of your system’s resources and requires no download. Google Docs is fun to explore and to play with. If you want to jump on the bandwagon and get some of the larger programs off your own harddrive, in other words, go for cloud computing, start with Google’s tour of Docs.

The idea is to upload your existing files and then create new documents from scratch or from templates. You can share the stuff you write, store it online and set controls to keep it private and secure, they say. I’m not sure I trust online workspaces just yet. I mean, how many times a month do we hear that a given site was hacked and all the users vital data has been scattered across the universe?

It all works pretty well if you have a robust broadband connection, though you’ll doubtless experience lags when web traffic is snarled or crowded. I’ve seen lags. Type a sentence and it appears a couple of seconds later. However, consider this, too. Sites come and sites go. This isn’t to say Google’s going anywhere soon, but who thought half the banks of the world would skate the edge of failure, either?

Google Docs is worth a look, especially if you have a thousand year-old version of one of the big name productivity suites and you’re seeing the necessity of upgrading. Those high price tags are intimidating in today’s bleak economy. Go up online, sign in with your Google account or Gmail password and take a test drive. You might like it and you’re likely less paranoid than I.

Google Chrome outshines the rest

Google’s web browser, Chrome, is now in version 4.0.249.89.  I like it, especially in view of IE’s recent problems. Gurus and pundits are advising people to use IE only when absolutely necessary since it’s security credibility roughly resembles Swiss cheese. It’s full of holes and that can cause you problems.

There are seven or eight really good browsers. I’ve tried them all, and until recently, was happy with Firefox. However, Mozilla, trying to keep up with Microsoft, bloated and screwed up Firefox. It’s slow. It’s porky. It has way, way too many updates, add-ins and plugins. It’s a drag. Nor is Chrome perfect – the biggest issue is that Chrome doesn’t get along well with a lot of sites. Wordpress and Chrome – not a good fit, for example. On some sites, Chrome can’t display images or headlines. Chrome doesn’t even recognize Stumbleupon, a hugely important tool for web-writers like me. I’ve resorted to using Chrome most of the time, Firefox sometimes, and IE never.

Usually, the first thing I do when  setting up a new installation of IE or Firefox is turn off as many of the menus and toolbars as I can, leaving only the bare essentials like navigation buttons – I do like tabs. Well, for me Chrome is the way I like it, straight out of the box. Minimal menus. One toolbar. Clean text box for the URL I’m visiting, and a few navigation buttons, and tabs. The rest of my screen real estate is open for content, which, after all is what I’m really interested in seeing – not clever icons.

The folks at Google designed this browser to be an application platform, not just a web page viewer. Computer programs and web pages are becoming more and more like each other, and bridging the remaining small gap is something that Chrome does exceptionally well.

Chrome is significantly faster than all others, too, which seems logical, considering its clean, minimalist appearance. The program starts quickly and pages load faster. It can auto fill forms, remember passwords, and do things the big boys do. It has a neat little bookmark bar at the top for those sites you visit continuously – maybe Facebook? Twitter? the browser is secure, too. That may be because it hasn’t attracted hacker interest yet since its market share is rather small. But it downloads easily and quickly – about two seconds – installs like a flash and has no learning curve. You might give it a test drive and protect yourself form the threats hovering about IE and the sludge miring Firefox.

More reading:

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Let’s take a quick look at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, before it opens in Las Vegas and see what might be coming to consumers in 2010. Baby boomers are often early adopters, since we have some discretionary income and resources, and, of course, free time. But baby boomers, while we buy electronics and like them, are very discerning about quality and purpose.

I wandered the Web looking to see what the consensus is. My take, no one is expecting much in the way of mind-blowing excitement. We may not be buying truckloads of gadgets this year. The big thing is expected to be electronic readers, if you’re talking how many will turn up in CES booths.

Electronic Readers

Molly Wood, of my favorite podcast, Buzz Out Loud from Cnet, says it will be raining readers. Only trouble is, most agree that of the dozens or maybe even a hundred that will debut, only three or fewer are likely to have much new to offer. And the prices still suck. Color is still not going to be a factor since the technology is too pricey.

As for 3-D TV

3D sets will probably be available. Molly says it’ll be dead on arrival, no one wants to wear the glasses at home – the providers will charge high premiums; it’s just not main stream. It’s a toy for people who have too much money and too much time. But who fits that demographic these days? 3D was to have been the big deal for 2009 and it fizzled out. As I see it, some people will buy the set, watch one show and say, “Is that all there is?”

Other electronic stuff

Google’s Nexus One Phone will get attention, for sure. I hope they don’t attach it to a particular carrier – rather see it come out unlocked, meaning it can be activated on more services than a single carrier. Three major cell carriers are tooting about 4G technology. Okay. Yawn.

The superstar of CES?

I would love to see wireless recharging – but not a dozen for a dozen different devices or manufacturers. I want a universal. If someone brings one out at CES, I’d buy it – so would a lot of other people. But I’m not going to buy all new electronics so I can recharge batteries wirelessly.

Something like 25,000 new electronic items will spring from about 3,000 companies before millions of show-goers. Some years, consumers latch on to new stuff and spend money like crazy — ya gotta have the latest and greatest. But since 2009 was the year that taught us how dangerous it can be to practice such conspicuous consumption, I don’t believe crowds will line up outside the big box stores, especially crowds of smart baby boomers, like us.

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People are taking sides on whether or not cell phone usage should be allowed on commercial airline flights. DigitalGrandparent has no opinion – we seldom fly. But your take on this is important so here’s a video from the Inflight Passenger Communications Coalition (IPCCC) to explain their point-of-view.

IPCCC Director Carl Biersak is the speaker in the video (runs about three minutes).

It’s one-sided, of course, but makes some fair points. Ring in with your point of view. Comment below and say whether you’d be in favor of cell usage on air planes, against it, or neutral. there are all kinds of issues to consider – passenger convenience, safety (from all angles), whether or not the conversations could become intrusive.

DigitalGrandparent welcomes dialog. Let us know what you think.