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Move your "Stuff" to the Cloud
June 15th, 2011
Cloud computing is in the news more and more these days, as newer players such as Google and Amazon have pushed the older traditional players such as Microsoft and even Apple to abandon the PC as the “center of the computing universe” and move services to the Internet. This change was coming, whether we wanted it to or not, and really is happening rather organically due to changes in our habits and consumer preferences. New laptop releases are ho-hum affairs that no one pays any attention to these days. Everything these days is about smartphones and tablets and apps. We still use our PCs, we’re just not that excited about them anymore because they aren’t our only or most used Internet device. Steve Jobs calls this the post-PC era and I think he’s right.
So it’s a natural thing to want all our “stuff” that still sits on our PC’s and until recently was the only practical place to keep our digital belongings – photos, music, email, documents and the like – to be on our other, more used devices like our iPads, iPhones, Android devices, secondary PCs and even shared computers. And now the pieces are in place for that to happen and there are many benefits to moving our digital stuff to the cloud.
With our devices freed from the PC we have access to all our things no matter where we are and what device we’re using. For example, Google Music (currently in invite-only beta) lets you upload all your music files to Google’s servers (the Cloud) and then access them either by streaming the music or by downloading it to other devices such as an Android phone. No more syncing or storage limits. I have over 60GB of music (over 7,000 songs according to Google’s count) and now every last song is available to me whenever I sign in with my Gmail account and without filling up my phone’s storage card.
Apple just announced their iCloud service which will replace the over-priced MobileMe service and will be free. You will no longer need a PC or a Mac to sync your iPhone or iPad. Your PC will be demoted to just another device that syncs to the cloud so photos you take with your iPhone will automatically appear on your iPad and PC through the Internet – no cables to connect, not even to activate a new phone.
Another big shift is in document creation, storage and sharing. Many people have already moved off the PC-with-Microsoft Office paradigm to Google Docs, Dropbox and Microsoft Live. Google Docs comes free with your Gmail account and allows you to upload existing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files to Google Docs and also to create new documents from within Google Docs. You can then share them by supplying the recipients email address or you can download the file in .docx or openoffice formats (or other applicable formats) and simply email the file (the old school approach).
The benefits of this approach should be obvious – you have anywhere, anytime, any device access to your documents that you can invite others to collaborate with you on and you have no software to purchase, no computer to maintain, no files to back up and total simplicity in sharing. I am quite certain we have signed our last Microsoft Office license contract and will instead move to this model.
Microsoft in turn has offered their version of Office in the Cloud with Office Live, a free service offering a light version of Word, Excel and Powerpoint that should suit most non-Power users of Office. If you aren’t creating a web page or linking multiple spreadsheets to each other than the online versions of these programs should work great for you. You’ll need a Windows Live ID (like a Hotmail account) and you’ll get 25GB of storage in your SkyDrive in which to store documents. You can upload documents just like Google Docs and can share documents with others as well.
In our offices, we have Microsoft Office installed on three or four computers per office. When a document is created and saved on that one PC it can only be accessed again from that one PC and if someone is using that public computer when you need access to that file, or someone deletes or alters that document you are out of luck. You have no privacy or security and only one place to get to your documents. If instead Google Docs or Office Live is used, you have total control, privacy and security and access from any machine and with no software costs – so you can use your own devices rather than a shared machine.
With this shift the device you’re on becomes less important than the service you are connecting to. We’re moving to a TV-like model; like a television only displays content rather than creating it, your device will let you access and manipulate data but won’t be as responsible for it since it won’t store it and in many cases won’t be responsible for the actual processing. Your device (tablet, television, smartphone, laptop) will simply be a display and interface device and the content providers will handle software updates and data storage and backup making life much simpler for the average user who just wants to get things done and not concern themselves with the technical hurdles and headaches.
Posted by: 
George Christodoulou
Apps to put your iPad to work
May 23rd, 2011
Dropbox is a cloud storage service (the cloud = a server connected somewhere to the Internet but “the cloud” sounds cooler) that lets you upload, store and access files on your iPad, PC, Android device, and Blackberry. You install the app or program on your device and create a free account. You get 2GB of storage for free and you have the option of purchasing more storage space if you so desire. Once you have documents uploaded you can access them from any of the other devices where you installed Dropbox. In addition, you can share documents with another user by simply providing their email address. This is a useful option for those files that are too large to email.
Another nice benefit to Dropbox is the built-in viewers. You can open Word documents, PDF files, jpeg photos, etc. from within Dropbox without having to install any other software (however, you can only view, not edit them from within Dropbox).
Many Realtors are using Dropbox to share and store purchase agreements and the like. A really easy way to get your Powerpoint presentations on your iPad is to save them as PDF's from within PowerPoint and then upload them to Dropbox. From your iPad you can open them directly in Dropbox.
If you have a Gmail account then you have access to Google Docs. You can create, edit and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. You can upload any kind of file such as PDF, jpeg, etc. but can’t edit those file types from within Google Docs. The advantage to Google Docs over Dropbox is the ability to edit documents as well as storing them. From within your Gmail account you will see “documents” across the top of the screen and it works in the iPad’s Safari browser as well as your PC and Android device.
Konica Minolta Pagescope Mobile
Search for “Konica Minolta” in the App store. This app will allow you to print to the Bizhub color copiers in our offices. You can print documents from your iPad and scan documents to your iPad. You can also get documents via email from within the app if you add your email account. If it automatically finds the copier in your office there isn’t much you need to do to get it printing. If not you’ll probably need to put in a call so we can walk you through manually adding the copier.
HP iPrint
This is a similar app to the Konica Minolta Pagescope app but instead prints to networked HP printers. I have an HP inkjet on my home network and the app allows me to print photos from my iPad (and also my Android phone as there is an Android version of the app). One extra benefit is the app will act as a viewer for PDF documents. Thanks to the tiff between Adobe and Apple over flash there is no Adobe PDF viewer for the iPad or iPhone.
You don’t need an actual “app” to have the same functionality of an app. The iPad has the excellent Safari browser built-in and the full callcarpenter.com website works quite well in it. You have mobile access to the best local and neighborhood information available in Central Indiana and in addition you can switch to the mobile version of the site and use the GPS home search to find properties close to wherever you are right now. If you still want an "App" you can create an icon that opens the Callcarpenter.com site or your favorite page within Callcarpenter.com.
Posted by: George Christodoulou
The paperless presentation finally is upon us
May 19th, 2011
I remember the days when everyone thought that laptops were going to become the ultimate presentation tool, where CMA’s and listing presentations would never be presented on paper again. I personally put a lot of effort into making that work for many of our Realtors. Maybe for some people that happened, but I mostly saw laptops fizzle because they were awkward to use with a client – being bulky and slow to boot among other problems. Certainly they are very useful for day-to-day work like checking email and cruising the Internet, but I don’t think the form factor works as a presentation tool.
A few months ago, I had a change of heart when I started to see how the Apple iPad could be used simply and effectively in front of a client. Not used as a tool for the sake of using it (in other words when it would have been easier and more effective to just use a printed presentation) but used because it was a better method of presenting the material. I mean, stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the iPad just works and nothing can be easier than flicking your finger across a screen to move from slide to slide. And the last time I checked you can’t embed a video into a piece of paper (they’re getting close though…) so showing off things like our weekly TV show or our listings on YouTube are possible on an iPad and also practical (unlike the less wieldy laptop).
I think any tablet works as far as form is concerned because the size is just a little smaller than a letter size piece of paper and easy to pass around and hold. However, right now the iPad is the tablet to buy because it is literally years ahead of any competitors due to its use of the same operating system that is tried and true on iPhones. It also has the best app support for a tablet. I use an Android phone so I am not an Apple fanboy by any stretch, but it’s a different argument when you talk about tablets. Google’s Honeycomb operating system is their first effort in expanding Android to the tablet form factor and I don’t think it’s totally fleshed out yet. On top of that, the Xoom (the only Android tablet you can compare to the iPad with a straight face IMHO) costs $100 more than the wifi iPad2. And right now you can buy the original iPad for $349 from Apple if you buy the refurbished model. The refurbished model comes in a new outer shell so it’s indistinguishable from a “new” iPad and comes with the same 1-year warranty from Apple. To put my money where my mouth is, that’s the iPad I purchased for myself. I’ve had it for a couple months and I haven’t regretted the decision to buy a refurb or to pass on the iPad2.
My next blog is going to be about the apps and ways to make life easier with the iPad – things like Dropbox, Google Docs and putting a PowerPoint presentation on your tablet.
Posted by: George Christodoulou
Android does Zimbra Sync, too
February 1st, 2011
Android users (what Verizon calls “Droid”) can also sync to Zimbra but not as seamlessly as iPhones. iPhones have native CalDAV integration, while we have to use a third-party app to handle the CalDAV calendar syncing in Android. It’s a free app, however, so it’s not too much more effort.
I own an HTC Evo 4G running Android 2.2 Froyo. There are a LOT of Android devices out there these days and I obviously can’t test this on all of them (or any of them other than my EVO for that matter) so your mileage may vary, but I think this should be something that should work fairly universally.
First thing we need to do is get the app from Android Market. Go to the market and search for “caldav” and only one app should show up – Calendar (CalDAV) Sync BETA. It’s a free app. Download and install it.
Start the Calendar Sync app and enter your settings, the most important of which is your CalDAV Calendar URL. It uses the format http://m.callcarp.com/dav/{your zimbra username}/Calendar - so, for example, mine is http://m.callcarp.com/dav/gchrist/Calendar since my email address is and thus my username is gchrist. Pay attention to the capital “C” in Calendar at the end of that address and ignore the warning about not syncing over a secured connection.
Your username is your Zimbra username and the Password is your Zimbra password.
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You then need to set your Synchronization frequency (how often it syncs with Zimbra), the range of dates it will sync and which calendar. I use Google sync to sync my Outlook calendar with my phone so I chose to have the app sync Zimbra with my gmail calendar (see an earlier blog for info on Google Sync). You can choose whichever calendar works for you. Save your settings and then try “Synchronize Now” to see if it works. If it doesn’t, go back and check your settings and make sure you got the URL, your username and password entered correctly.
Now, on your computer go to http://m.callcarp.com and log into your Zimbra account.
Once in your email, click on the Preferences tab and then click on Calendar along the left side of the screen
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Make sure Enable delegation for Apple iCal CalDAV client is checked. Click Save in the upper left.
You should now have your Zimbra and Android phone calendars syncing back and forth so that any appointments you set show up in both calendars.
Posted by: George Christodoulou
Sync your iPhone Calendar with Zimbra
January 31st, 2011
This is a two-part how-to for iPhone and Android users on syncing your Zimbra calendar with your iPhone calendar (part one) or your Android Smartphone (part two).
Steve Jobs really has a vision for how things should work and after adding the calendar to an iPhone and then trying to do the same with Android I have to give props to Apple. First of all CalDAV support is built into iOS on the iPhone (make sure yours is up to date by connecting your phone to your computer and syncing in iTunes) and it just worked – I didn’t have to google the settings or experiment with it. I now have two-way communication between my iPhone’s calendar and Zimbra’s calendar and changes show up fairly quickly on either device.
Here are the steps on your iPhone (using iOS 4.1):
- From your iPhone, tap Settings
- Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars
- Tap Add Account, then tap Other, then under Calendars tap Add CalDav Account
- For Server enter m.callcarp.com
- For User Name enter your Zimbra username. For example, if your email address is dagent@callcarpenter.com then your username is dagent.
- For Password enter your Zimbra email password then tap Next in the upper right corner
- When it says Cannot Connect Using SSL, etc. tap Continue.
Click Advanced and make sure the port number is 80 – change it to 80 if it is any other number if you still get an error. I’ve added and re-added the account while making this guide and it set the port to 8080 one time – don’t ask me why.
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Now, on your computer go to http://m.callcarp.com (did you know that’s the shortcut to log into Zimbra?) and log into your email.
Once in your email, click on the Preferences tab and then click on Calendar along the left side of the screen
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Make sure Enable delegation for Apple iCal CalDAV client is checked. Click Save in the upper left.
Your iPhone will now sync both ways to the Zimbra server meaning any calendar items added to Zimbra will show up on your iPhone and any calendar items you add to your iPhone will show up in Zimbra’s calendar.
You can adjust the sync interval and how much of your calendar to sync on your iPhone (like, Events 2 weeks back, 6 months back, All Events) by tapping Settings, Mail, Contacts, Calendars and scrolling down to the Calendars section. Tapping Default Calendar lets you choose your Zimbra calendar as the default for your iPhone.
Next, Android…
Posted by: George Christodoulou
Location, location, location…
January 25th, 2011
Carpenter Realtors is the first to bring location-aware home searches to smartphones. It’s pretty slick – If you’re standing in front of a house for sale and, for example, you want to see what else is for sale in the area, Carpenter Realtor’s callcarpenter.com mobile-aware website will allow you to see other homes for sale starting with the closest on down in a one mile radius. Nice.
The search depends on the GPS chip sitting in your smartphone – your iPhone, Android device, Blackberry, Windows phone, etc. The only caveat is that you have to have your GPS turned on and you have to allow our app to access your location.
If you’re like me, running a high-powered, large-screened, battery sucking hog of a smartphone, you leave non-essential services turned off to conserve battery. When I’m not at the office or at home I leave my wifi off for example and almost all of the time I leave my GPS off. So before performing a location-based search such as ours you must turn your GPS back on. OK, that’s pretty obvious. The next step isn’t so obvious and it does trip some folks up.
As a security measure you have to give applications permission to access your location. The reasons for this may or may not be obvious to you but think of an app that can follow you wherever you go and know exactly where you are at any given time without you knowing it is doing that. Not cool. So as a security measure, you have to give those apps requesting to know your location permission to do so. So if Google Maps or Foursquare want to access your GPS coordinates, you know they need those to work and probably aren’t doing so for any insidious purposes.
There are so many variations of smartphones these days and variations within them that I would have to write a Tolstoy-esque novel to cover them all. (Here is what Apple has to say about location services for the iPhone.) Basically you will either get a prompt telling you the app wants access to your location – tell it yes. On some phones, however, you may have to go into the phone’s settings and tell it to allow applications to access your location first. And, of course, have the GPS turned on when you do the search. I don’t mean to make this all sound complicated. Most people, including myself, haven’t had trouble and the search just worked. If you’re one of the unfortunate few, however, I didn’t want you left out of this cool and very useful new feature.
And then use the new search function at callcarpenter.com. It will tell where all the homes for sale are in the area you’re looking. No map drawing, no townships to look up, no coordinates to enter. Just, “Hey, what’s for sale around here?”. Slick.
Posted by: George Christodoulou
It’s 3 a.m. Do you know where your data is?
November 9th, 2010
The fire damage to our West office put an exclamation point on my recent concerns with data backup. In my fifteen plus years at Carpenter Realtors I’ve seen many a hard drive bite the dust. I’ve seen the fallout from stolen or misplaced computers and, now, I’ve seen the aftermath of computers that have gone up in smoke – literally. Whether you just have irreplaceable family photos, your tax files, years of business contacts or other important data on your laptop or desktop, ask yourself this question: what would I do if it was suddenly gone? How much would I be willing to pay to get it all back?
The real heartbreaker is knowing how important the files on your computer can be and how easy it is to safeguard that data. An external USB hard drive can be had for less than $50 (Here’s one from Amazon.com). I’ve seen the look of utter dismay on people’s faces when they realize all their files are gone and there’s no way to get them back. I’ve seen it and I can guarantee you that if I’d offered to give them their data back at a cost of $500 most would have jumped at my offer. For one-tenth that price you can be on your first step toward securing your data.
Buy a cheap removable USB drive – they sell them at Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, etc. and then – wait for it – use it. It’s not rocket science. They usually come with some kind of backup software. Install it and set up an automatic schedule. Backup regularly; weekly or monthly at least.
That will protect your computer from a failure of your primary hard drive – usually the culprit in data loss. Your computer’s hard drive is the only truly moving part in a computer (not counting the cooling fans) and has a limited lifetime. It will die sooner or later and it has all your files on it – everything.
That would be a good first step but there’s one more you should take. If your computer is stolen, or fire or a tornado or some other disaster strikes you could lose your backup as well if you’re like most people and leave it attached to your computer. The smart thing to do would be to back your computer up and then keep the backup drive somewhere else. But I know the drive would just get put into a drawer somewhere and then when your data does slip loose the mortal coil then your backup will be circa 1983 and will be of limited value.
Instead, I recommend a two-pronged approach: a backup drive and an online backup service such as Carbonite backup. The odds are absolutely astronomical that: a. your hard drive will crash while b. your backup hard drive has also been lost while c. Carbonite’s servers have also managed to lose your data. Carbonite costs $55 a year for unlimited backups. So you’ll spend $50 or so on a removable hard drive and $55 on a backup service like Carbonite. Carbonite has lost data in the past, so while I do think they’re reliable I still recommend having your own backup even if you use their service. Having two points of failure (on top of your hard drive as another point of failure) makes it pretty fool-proof that you won’t lose any data no matter the circumstance.
Is your data worth $110 to you? Look at the contents of your hard drive – your photos, emails, documents – and answer that question now while you still have it in front of you. Back it up!
Posted by: George Christodoulou
Keep Your Facebooking Amongst Your Friends
September 24th, 2010
Facebook is quite a phenomenon. A recent Wired Magazine article noted that the Internet is dead and in its place are now portals like Facebook, Youtube and Hulu. Forbes just came out with its list of wealthiest Americans and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has jumped ahead of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Keep in mind that Apple sold over 16 million iPhones in the first half of this year alone and has by far the fattest profit margins of any of the major smart phone manufacturers. Facebook is a web portal that sells advertising through its web presence. And its founders are worth more than Apple’s.
So, yes, Facebook is huge. And far-reaching. I lived in Athens, Greece for four years in high school over twenty years ago and made many friends there. When I returned to the States I never heard from most of those friends again – until Facebook made it so easy to look up old acquaintances, schoolmates and even long lost relatives. It seems like everyone is on Facebook: my mother is on Facebook.
And therein lies the rub. Most folks wouldn’t think of opening a web page with a title along the lines of www.thethingsIsaywillgetmefired.com or www.pleaselookatthesemortifyingphotosofmedrunk.com (and if those are real websites, please don’t click on them!) but they will post photos, or get tagged in photos that are harmless when viewed in context. Hey, everyone has a life, or tries to, that doesn’t involve work – but maybe mom or your boss doesn’t need to see those photos of you bonging a six-pack upside down in Cabo Del Fuego.
The other thing I worry about when I see private information posted on Facebook is how easy we’re making it for criminals to use this information posted in such a public forum for ill-begotten deeds. Birthday, city you were born in, spouse’s name, family members (ergo, maiden names), pets, children. Does that list sound familiar? It should if you’ve ever filled out the security questions that are used to reset your password for anything from your Yahoo email account to sometimes even your banking information. And many, many people post this information with no privacy turned on.
I don’t know how many times I’ve had friend requests, or clicked on friends of friends and seen the usual “this person only shares information with people they know” and then clicked on the Photos tab and all their photos were visible or clicked on the Information tab and I could see what city they live in, their spouse’s name, sometimes even their birthday. And then I sigh.
Don’t get scared out of using Facebook. Just start using it smarter. While you’re on your Facebook page, click on Account and then Privacy Settings. From there you can completely customize your settings. Who can view your information, who can see your photos and wall posts, even who can see your friends list. You can choose whether you want your profile to show up in Google searches or Facebook searches. If you just want a Facebook page so you can see the photos your kids post of your grandkids and would rather not have anyone be able to search for you, you can do that.
The next thing you need to do is create friends lists. Segregate your “friends” into appropriate groups. If you have business contacts, past clients, etc. put them into a “work” group and then only expose your content to them that is appropriate – photos, wall posts, etc. that you wouldn’t mind them seeing. Make a group for actual friends and relatives – so you can post photos of your children and vacations or let your cousins and close friends be reminded of you birthday and anniversary, etc., without exposing your crazy cousin Louie’s thoughts on politics, money or foul language to your professional sphere. You can control all of that with Facebook’s privacy settings.
Once you’ve tweaked the settings and think you have it locked down, try the settings out. Facebook let’s you “preview” what your page looks like to anyone on your friends list (Account – Privacy Settings, click Customize and then click Preview My Profile). So you can pick one of your business acquaintances and look at your page as he or she would see it. Does it all look appropriate? If not, make the changes that need to be made.
Facebook is a great networking tool and clearly a great way to get information out. Just make sure you control the flow of that information and think about what you are putting out there and who will see it.
Here are a couple links with some more good ideas on Facebook privacy:
10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy
Posted by: George Christodoulou
Stay Productive and Connected on the Cheap
September 10th, 2010
Since no one else wanted to do it, I got dubbed Carpenter Realtor’s “technology guru” (pause for laughter). Along with that illustrious title I get asked often if we have any kind of “inside discount” on Microsoft Office, or Dell computers or what have you. No, I don’t. However, I do let people who ask about some of the alternatives I know of.
OpenOffice is a great, free alternative to Microsoft Office. It is a productivity suite that includes alternatives to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. I use some pretty large, linked spreadsheets and OpenOffice opens them with no problem. I have yet to find an alternative to Microsoft Publisher – one that actually opens and creates Publisher files – so you’ll have to spring for the $99 stand-alone package if you have to have it (but if you’re a Carpenter agent you should use iContact to make your flyers!).
I do know of a way to get good deals on Dell computers. I have bought many, many refurbished Dells and have had no significant problems. You generally get at least twenty percent off what the laptop or desktop would have cost new and since you are buying a product already sitting on a shelf you get the added bonus of having it ship immediately. Dell’s website has a link for “Dell deals” and one of the links is Outlet. Shop away.
If you’re looking for a Mac, Apple has an education discount for those of you with kids in school or college (or for those of you who may still be in college?), and for the past couple years they’ve given away a free iPod Touch with new laptop purchases.
Don’t need an iPhone but want to be mobile and hostile without the $100 AT&T cover charge? Try a no-contract, all you can eat, plan from major carriers reselling their services cheap. Walmart sells two plans that use Verizon’s excellent network. $30 a month gets you 1,000 minutes, 1,000 text messages and 30MB of Internet data or $45 gets you unlimited minutes, messages and data.
Sprint sells their network as Boost Mobile where you get unlimited talk, text and Internet for $50 a month or, if you’re a Blackberry fan, $60 a month for unlimited talk, text, Internet and Blackberry service. You have to buy the phone for anywhere from $100 to $150 from Boost. Walmart sells simpler phones from $30 up to touch-screen models all the way up to $280. Considering that you’ll pay $99 a month for a contracted unlimited plan with the major carriers, you’ll save a boatload of cash over a typical 24-month contract period and you don’t have to sign any contracts. You can walk into any Sprint store to buy Boost Mobile phones or pay for monthly service.
Need home Internet cheap? If you don’t need to download Paramount’s entire movie catalog twice a month you can get by with AT&T’s $14.95 “naked” DSL (no phone line required) for up to 3MB download speed. Comcast has an Internet plan they don’t generally advertise that is $24.95 rather than $42.95. It is much slower than the standard speed tier (capped around 1MB download speed) but is perfectly fine for browsing the Internet, checking email and telling everyone on Facebook that you just got back from the grocery store.
Posted by: George Christodoulou
Tweak, Modify and Soup up your Smart Phone
August 31st, 2010
It was sometime around the summer of 2009 that I became dissatisfied with the ancient mobile operating system on my phone and decided to seek out the rumored leaked updates that were floating around the Internet. Thus began my near obsession with tweaking and souping up my smart phones. I started with the HTC Touch Pro, upgraded to the Touch Pro2 and now on my HTC Evo 4G running Google Android.
Carriers like Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and T-mobile don’t have a whole lot of incentive (or very likely the resources) to keep updating older smart phones to the latest and greatest versions of Windows Mobile or Android. The one exception being Apple and the iPhone but even they don’t push updates to the original iPhone anymore and the iPhone 3G didn’t get all the upgrades available in iOS 4. The carriers want you to buy new phones every year or two and, of course, resign those two-year agreements that keep you tied to them for around $1,000 a year on the average smart phone. There are also limits on how much an older phone can run – for example, the iPhone 3G I own runs dog slow with the newest Apple operating system on it because it’s made for the iPhone 4 with its slick 1GHz processor and extra memory.
However, don’t let any of that stop you from loading up your six month old smart phone with the latest, greatest and processor busting software! The two websites I go to fairly often (and by “fairly often, you should read “twice a day”) are ppcgeeks.com and xda-developers.com. They specialize in Windows Mobile and Android smart phones such as the Motorola Droid, Samsung Captivate and most of the HTC models like the EVO, Incredible and Touch Pro2.
Both sites have user forums where you can post questions, search through previous posts (highly recommend that you search for your solution to make sure it wasn’t already addressed) and, most fun, download updated or unique software. Last summer I was tired of running the dated, and by then ancient, Windows Mobile 6.1 on my touch screen smart phone. I wanted the newer, more touch-friendly Windows Mobile 6.5. After finding ppcgeeks.com, I had Windows Mobile running on my Touch Pro within a couple hours.
For my Android cell phone I have downloaded programs to underclock and undervolt the 1GHz processor in my EVO to conserve power and extend battery life, interface tweaks, free wifi tethering, different lockscreens – you name it, someone has probably already looked for it and someone else probably already posted a solution. I couldn’t imagine going back to the stock operating system on my phone. You don’t have to make wholesale changes – for example the Android operating system is very complete as-is and so is Apple’s iOS 4 – you can tweak just that one program you don’t like and really personalize your smart phone to how you like to use it. If nothing else, you’ll learn something about how your phone works or breathe new life (and save some money) into your slightly older than new smart phone.
Posted by: George Christodoulou
Why are we still faxing?
August 24th, 2010
I still get the calls about problems with fax lines and I hear the complaints about how long it takes to fax a 30 page document and how hard it is to read a faxed and re-faxed and re-re-faxed document and I just wonder why the habit persists to fax documents rather than scan and email them. I understand we should be even beyond scanning and should be totally paperless but that technology still just isn’t “there” yet in my mind. However, scan to email has so many advantages over old fashioned faxing that I am dumbfounded that fax machines haven’t been sent added to the list of things we just don’t do anymore like rotary phones, film cameras and socializing in person (hah!).
If you scan and email a document you can send the document straight to the intended recipient, not the office fax machine that every prying eye in the office can snoop at. Scanned documents don’t get picked up by a careless co-worker along with a stack of their copies or, worse, crinkled up in a paper jam for four hours waiting for the repairman to come fix the copier. Scanned documents also come through crystal clear with very little quality loss compared to the original. You can be anywhere and receive an emailed document, not tied to a stationary fax line at the office or home. And did I mention speed? The Internet used to be accessed via phone line – in 1995. Fax lines still use that same dial-up technology and it shows. A scanned document can be emailed in seconds. A lengthy sales contract can take twenty minutes to fax. You wouldn’t fire up your 56k modem to download a 20 megabyte PDF or printer driver so why do we still use that technology to send contracts?
I can sit on a beach on a Greek island, take a picture and post it to Facebook in literally seconds. I can take a picture of a check and deposit it into my checking account from anywhere in the world. I can geo-tag a photo and display it on a map instantly showing my location. I can download an album to my phone in one tenth the time it takes to actually listen to said album (and for you born circa 1985 reading this, an album is what they used to call a collection of songs, usually around ten of them, that they used to press into vinyl discs called “records” that would get scratched and would pop and hiss but sounded awesome and had album art and stuff you could read…but I digress). So if we have progressed this far in practically everything else, what is holding us back on the fax machine? Is it nostalgia? Something like, you can take away my vinyl records and my rotary phone, but by God, I’ll not give up my fax machine… or is it comfort food, like chamomile tea for an upset stomach and a fax machine to soothe the troubles of a lengthy contract negotiation. We’ll never know.
Posted by: George Christodoulou
Wirelessly Sync your Mobile and Desktop World with free Google services
August 23rd, 2010
In the age of smart phones, laptops and on the go Real Estate agents, an easy way to keep your separate devices synchronized is with free Google services like Google Calendar and Google Desktop Sync. I use these free services to synchronize my Android powered smart phone with my work laptop running Microsoft Outlook 2007.
Using an Android phone there is literally no setup. On first startup the phone asks for your Google account and password and then the phone takes it from there, automatically syncing your contacts, calendar and email. On Windows Mobile, iPhone or Blackberry you have to add your Google account via Microsoft Exchange services which Google licenses from Microsoft (click on your respective phone for Google’s instructions to sync your Google account with your phone).
For your laptop, download Google Sync to get your Outlook calendar and contacts synchronized between your personal computer and Google’s servers. It’s a small app that runs in the background on your computer to handle the sync. You give the app your Google username and password, set the update frequency and you’re done.
I have never connected my smart phone to my laptop to do a sync and any time I add an appointment to Outlook it automatically shows up on my phone and vice versa automagically. As a nice side benefit, if you happen for whatever reason to be away from your phone and your laptop you can log into your calendar online at google.com/calendar and check your schedule from any Internet connected computer.
Posted by: George Christodoulou
Carpenter Realtors & Konica Minolta Deploy Bizhubs
June 21st, 2010
All Carpenter Realtors offices were recently upgraded with new Konica Minolta Bizhub color multifunction machines adding faster print speeds, scan to mail, faxing directly from the copier and document storage all in one unit serviced and supported by our local Konica Minolta Business Solutions branch.
Technology and consumer preferences have changed the ways Realtors and consumers communicate and share information. Gone are the days when a simple printer spitting out MLS sheets in black and white, a thermal fax machine and a desktop landline telephone were about all that were needed to conduct business and communicate. Today’s real estate agents work with Internet savvy, smart-phone carrying always-connected consumers searching for homes who want information delivered to them conveniently and instantly and the new Bizhubs are one part of that equation.
With more and more consumers flocking to mobile phones and ditching their yester-tech landlines, fax technology is circling the drain along with those disappearing land lines. Scan to mail is replacing faxing for several reasons. Among them: the scanned documents are much clearer than faxes and can be in full color; email doesn’t give you a busy signal and is much cheaper than a phone line; it is more secure – no faxes laying around the office fax machine for anyone to pick up or read and you can be anywhere and receive your emailed documents vs. being tied to a fixed fax line.
The Konica Minolta Bizhubs give every Carpenter Realtors agent at every one of our 30 Indiana locations the ability to print, scan, copy (and, yes, even fax!) documents to other Realtors or to home shoppers. And any Carpenter agent can walk into any Carpenter Realtors office and be at home with the Bizhub since their access code, email address (for scanning) and even the interface on the Bizhubs are the same at every office.
With one piece of gear truly being the communication “hub” in the office, good local support is a must. Konica Minolta has a local presence that covers the entire Carpenter Realtors’ 30 Branch footprint with a promised four-hour or less response time and a service agreement that covers everything but paper and staples.
Posted by: George A. Christodoulou
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