eflexonics

I have finally found a system that makes researching and organizing the eflexonics tech show much easier. Look forward to a steady stream of great technical stories and opinions. Thanks for joining us on an incredible adventure. Rick and Pat.

(1) Review of last weeks blogs: How do you buy your technology. eflexonics article

(2) Food trucks are twittering like crazy. Maybe you should too. eflexonics article

(3) Our favorite android apps. eflexonics article

(4) Quit drinking the apple kool-aid. eflexonics article

(5) Listen to our very first podcast. eflexonics podcast

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(6) Airlines replacing flight manuals with Ipads

(7) Liquid Keyboard for Ipad

(8) Coke is allowing the common client to do what?

(9) Dell’s using Social Media the right way

(10) One of my favorite rants and raves. Notebook coolers.

(11) Killer Android Apps (5 of them)

(12) Poop Fueled Batteries. Ummm, yeachh.

(13) Japanese car makers are pretty clever

(14) Not tech based, but your going to want to read this. 

(15) Big Retailers are really embracing the Ipad.

(16) A projector camera. I want one.

(17) Samsung changes the TV game ‘big time’.

(18) Cruise Lines go high tech. This is crazy stuff.

What is going on with these ‘Smart Meters’. Technology is a wonderful thing, but after you watch this video, you may be scratching your head and asking yourself why anyone would want to force you to use a wireless device that could be hazardous to your health.

Here’s an interesting discussion from CKNW about smart meters.

I have had my Motorola Atrix dual core processor for over one week now, and I must say that I have been bitten by the ‘Android’ bug. Through the coming blogs and video casts, I will be sharing my personal opinions about the Atrix hardware, cases for the phone, software, experience and practical real world applications that my wife and I are actively testing. Yes, she got one as well, and that means we can have a great time playing with all of the mobile technology that is now at the forefront of technology. (That means that the tech we’re talking about now will probably be obsolete in a matter of weeks or months)

So, lets start with the story. I was ready to upgrade my Iphone killer (snicker snicker) Hey, that’s what Samsung called it. It was a Samsung instinct, which didn’t kill the Iphone. Heck, it didn’t even give it a cold or the sniffles. The Instinct is a boring feature phone with very limited access to everything. Keeping in mind it’s about the furthest thing from a smartphone that you can get. So, I fully intended to get an Iphone. I really appreciate what Steve Jobs has done with the Iphone. He makes a beautiful, classy well designed device that gives the user a very safe, fun and exciting user experience. Here’s where I started to do ton’s of research, and it confused me for several months. This is my mental step by step process that I used to find the product that I literally fell in love with.

Apple VS Android: Their both great, and you will never be disappointed with either platform, but there are some distinct and thought provoking concepts that may confuse you the same way it confused me. I had my credit card out, and was drooling about buying the Iphone 4, when a friend of mine said ‘why would you want an Iphone when you can do more, spend less and enjoy Android much more’. That was a comment that stopped me dead in my tracks, and I said ‘please explain yourself’, and he did.

He started to tell me differences like: On an Android device, you can update or change the battery within seconds. With the Iphone you have to send it to Apple, and its expensive. I found an extended life battery for my Atrix on the internet for sixteen dollars. The Atrix Android combination can be hard on batteries, and the Iphone is excellent for battery life, but I tend to charge up my cell phone every day anyway. The battery for the Atrix promises to last at least 500 charges, so that’s very near to one and a half years average battery life. For sixteen dollars every 18 months for a battery, I can live with that.

On the Atrix running Android, you can increase the storage on the phone by 32 Gigs. The phone comes with 16 gigs to begin with, so when you put the 32 gig chip into the phone, you now have a total of 48 gigs of space, and for a blogger, that was a huge selling point. With an Apple Iphone, what you buy is what your stuck with. 8, 16 or 32 gig models simply do not have the ability to upgrade memory at any time.

If you need support on the Apple device after one year, you have to pay $35.00 per call for any kind of technical support. With an Android device on the Bell network, technical help is completely free for as long as you own the phone. Three major points that showed an advantage in his first sentence. Then, he started really getting into the other areas that are very different.

Anyone who uses Gmail knows how powerful it is with a word processor, calender you can share with friends and family, rss readers and much more works perfectly with Android because Google who owns You Tube also owns Android, and makes sure that their products communicate with each other both in the hardware and software realm. Another consideration is that Android is open source, and that means that it actually invites competition to drive more aggressive technology markets. Guess who has more apps and widgets now? Android. And Android is activating millions of new devices per week. Sure you can buy a bad mobile device with over 80 handsets to choose from, but you also have the opportunity to do some homework and get a great smartphone that you don’t have to upgrade for a few years.

Android, coupled with the right hardware is fast, and I mean screaming fast. Here is what really turned me to Android and Atrix. Steve Jobs is a genius. Of that there is no question. However, Steve has built his kingdom on his opinion, his personal designs, his dream, his walled garden experience. He protects his property with a vengeance, which he should, but his Iphone is really limited to only one hardware platform for a mobile phone. It’s very proprietary in nature. I ran into this phenomenon when I was working on IBM equipment some 12 years ago. At that time, IBM had what they considered was the best computing platform on the face of the earth. It was called microchannel architecture, and it bombed big time. I’ts because IBM released a product into the marketplace that was so proprietary (meaning that only that company creates, designs and builds the hardware or software) that it died on the vine like a rotten strawberry.

Apple is one of the leaders in usability and intuitive design, but let’s not forget that over 90 percent of all businesses in the world are still run on the Windows and PC platform. Apple will undoubtedly continue to grow and prosper, but have you noticed that the Apple price point is always far above its competition? Some folks would say that it’s because Apple makes a better product, but have you noticed that the Iphone is still made in China just like all the rest of the competition.

Lets talk about Itunes. If you own an apple device, you are going to run into a situation that forces you to use Itunes, period. There is no choice. Itunes can take up allot of room on your hard drive, mobile device or other computer platforms and I have found that Itunes is not that intuitive or elegant to use. You have to import anything you want to listen to or view into your library, then put it into your folders, whereas Android wants to be open about music and video collections and for me, are much less work to use and administer.

Atrix, coupled with Android is a match made in heaven, and I will be telling you much more about this winning combination in the future. Right now, I have to go play with my new superphone. Yak at you later, Uncle Ricky.

As I surf the internet looking for articles about computer health concerns in order to help educate and inform PC users, all of a sudden it hit me square in the eyes. Instead of putting a bunch of repeated facts and figures about sore wrists, back muscles, dry eyes, and a long list of other aches and pains, I thought it would be prudent to suggest that we keep a PC health diary together. And I don’t mean recording the health of the PC, instead, keeping a list of what causes you discomfort when operating the computer.

So, where do we begin? I say, anywhere and everywhere you can think of. For example, what aches and pains do you indeed suffer from, and how long does the pain last. If we start tracking the symptoms, then we have a very good starting point for using all of the accumulated articles, information and education in this blog and others that may be able to help you. Tell you what. I’ll start first. In the next few days, I will chart what physical, mental and even emotional discomforts I have and put them in the blog post as a sort of road map that we can all discuss.

(Tonight is June 1st, and I watched the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, so I will begin this experiment June 2)

June 2nd. OK, I spend several hours per day on the computer and am realizing that I put my body in some very unusual positions while working on a notebook PC. But my wife is even worse. A few blog posts ago, I commented on how I think every computer user should buy a reclining sofa, loveseat or chair. Thinking that this would really help our body positions and help us alleviate aches and pains. That is of course, until one of our cats jumps up on the loveseat and wants to sit on my wife’s lap. Then, she places the cat on her legs, makes sure its in the most comfortable position, and then attempts to rest her notebook computer on the edge of the loveseat and twists her body into a horrible contortion that makes me ache just looking at her trying to type.

It’s important for her to make sure the cat is comfortable, more comfy than her before she starts surfing the internet or checking her email. Just goes to show y0u that no matter how many good intentions you have, you can still end up in a very compromised situation when it comes to your health. So I would say, that one of the first things that we need to be aware of is how we control our physical environment. We can have some very sophisticated tools at our disposal and still suffer from poor choices or habits.

A few months ago, I was researching the internet for blog material and came across a really unique web site. It’s called ‘Citizens for safe technology’, and I was very impressed with what they have accomplished, and I wrote a blog post about the work they were doing, and put in my two cents worth on the subject. Because I am an electronics technician, I happened to agree with a wide variety of statements they were presenting. They are well organized, have some very credible people on their side, and make some excellent arguments.

Now, the World Health Organization has just released a study that actually has forced a drop in cell phone manufacturers stock prices, and believe me, their not happy campers. Yet, the debate is out there, and its gaining momentum. I was perusing the net the other day and came across a study that proves that prolonged cell phone use can actually raise the temperature of the brain, and that is documented. Is it that much of a leap to entertain the possibility that cell phone use may be doing more than just raising the temperature of the brain.

The fact is that, the further away the call phone is from your head the better off you are. In that case, are you using the wonderful wired microphone and earbud’s that almost always are included with your cell phone when you bought it? My suggestion is to start using them, or, at least use a bluetooth earpiece so you can keep the cell phone away from you just a little bit.

Here are some links for you to take a look at: Citizen’s for a safe technology
WHO study, cell phone may cause possible cancer risk

It is very interesting that the internet will allow you to post anonymous remarks on blogs and webpage’s to allow you to ‘speak your piece of mind’. Some people will defend this action by saying that they are simply defending their right of free speech. The only problem with that statement is this. If you have to hide behind an alias, is what your about to say your true feelings, or is it something that you would never dream of saying in public, or in front of someone who knows you, and would be extremely surprised at what flows out of your own personal keyboard.

So, tell me something. When you are in a restaurant or bar, or at a bus stop and you strike up a conversation with someone, do you give them a fake name? When you are out in public with your friends or spouse and are introduced to someone, do you present them with an identity that is not your own?

When you go to fill out any papers for a new credit card, bank loan, library card, drivers licence, pick up a registered letter at the post office or get pulled over by a police officer for a speeding ticket do you once think that it would be perfectly acceptable to give a false name? No? Then why would you feel good about yourself by lying about your name on the internet when you leave a comment on someones blog, webpage or forum?

I am actually horrified, shocked and dismayed at the vile, childish, vulgar and misguided filth that come from people who feel the need to cloak their real names and identities so they cannot be held responsible for their own actions. I have heard that the big heavyweights such as facebook are using a wonderful tool called ‘facebook commenting system’. It means that your real picture and identity will appear on the comment. And, this is a real clincher. There are blogs that claim this is the end of on line anonymity. I say ‘excellent’.

First of all, if your going to lie about your identity right off the bat, what makes you think that anyone is going to trust anything that comes out of your mouth from that point on. And, if you feel the need to become someone else, what would be your true motive? Think about this for a moment. Don’t you want to stand on your own two feet and have the privilege of being honest (which by the way is extremely powerful and the right thing to do) and allows constructive feedback by other honest people who can ‘call you on the carpet’ for bad and or ignorant behavior.

Call me old fashioned, or just plain well, old fashioned but try this experiment. Go on the internet and find some of the dumbest, degrading, nonsensical ramblings that are just plain offensive and I’ll be willing to bet that the identity of the person who presented the comments were hidden by someone with a fake name. Now, doesn’t that make you feel good about the integrity of the internet? Has the internet changed how we view the world, other people, opinions or differences in life’s experiences?

I get spam almost every single day on my blog, and only the legitimate comments don’t get caught by my spam sniffer program. I was listening to the Leo Laporte podcast show the other day and they were talking about this very same subject. Isn’t it time that we gave our own conscience a reality check and decided to own up to our truth responsibility. If you would like to leave a comment about this blog post, it would be refreshing if you could supply your real name and I would be delighted to welcome your input. Until next post, blog at you later. Rick

In the next few days my wife and I will be posting video’s of what its like to receive a hand and foot reflexology session. Then, we will explain why and how our version of reflexology can help you de-stress while sitting watching TV, using your computer, while standing in line at the bank, grocery store, even sitting in traffic. Then, we’re going to share with you some special exercises from our program that we are going to launch very soon. And that’s not all. In the next month, we are going to have a good friend and old work colleague Laura Streifel on our podcast show as a special guest.

Laura worked with me when I was a computer technician for EDS. Here is what we will be talking about. What does it take to be really happy at work? and, if your not happy, what can you do to change it.  We plan to sit around the table, grab a video camera and a microphone and have a candid chat.  Join us, this is going to be a great interview.