Nextdoor Neighbors: Tech Future of Community

It Snakes a Village

We recently had a visitor to the house of the reptilian persuasion…never quite found out what it was, but as my wife was shooing it out of the house I was able to mostly determine it wasn’t a rattlesnake.

Of course, “mostly” and “rattlesnake” don’t go together in a lot of safe sentences, and that’s where the true genius of the Nextdoor app came in. Nextdoor is an new online resource that allows you to form a digital community with your real-life neighbors, because sometimes technology works backward.

I uploaded a picture I took of the scaly invader to the site (see, I wasn’t totally useless) and the more nature-savvy members of the community were able to confirm it was a non-venomous kingsnake, which made everyone feel a lot better.

In a, I’m happy to see it gone…I like animals and all, but I can do without constrictor serpents slithering around as I sleep.

Stellar Storage Solutions

OneDrive is an often overlooked element of Office 365. Working in conjunction with more well-known members of the suite such as Word, Outlook and PowerPoint to offer up to 1TB (that’s 1000GB, folks) of secure disk space for documents and images to each user. If you’re not making full use of this convenient utility, here are some nifty benefits you may not have thought of.

Naturally, Google always has an answer in the world of technical solutions, and if your daily agenda leans less toward making graphs and more toward making connections, there’s a really useful feature of Google Drive you may be missing out on.

You see, in the Dark Ages I used to accumulate an ungoshly amount of business cards from trade shows, industry workshops, and other points of networking…sometimes I’d get home in the evening and sift through 30 or more cards before filing them in alphabetical order like some kind of amateur librarian…but no longer!

Thanks to this amazing (and relatively cheap!) combination scanner I picked up on Amazon, all I have to do is take pictures of the cards I encounter. The images scan directly to Google Drive, where I can keep and categorize them papercut-free. It’s an incredibly easy to use feature which doesn’t cost an extra dime to use, and ironically, my pockets have never been lighter.

“Wear. Sunscreen.”

Haven’t been to the beach yet this summer? Well, there’s still time…in most places it won’t stop being hot until well into September.

We all know that prolonged direct exposure to the sun can have damaging effects on our skin, but a few coconut drinks can make it easy to forget that you are being slowly cooked at a low temperature for maximum flavor. 

A fair-skinned friend of mine just hit the shores this weekend and came back with a piece of advice: bring an umbrella. Tanning isn’t my strong suit either, so it’s wisdom I will take to heart…just ordered a new one along with a sand anchor from Amazon today after seeing the aftermath. She’s going to be peeling for a week, but we all can learn from her mistake.
 

Music to Your Ears

Whether you need a new pair for a day on the sand or in the office, if you’re in the market for some high-end headphones, you pretty much can’t do better than these.

Nuraphone headsets have a special proprietary design that works with your individual ear construction and hearing level to deliver optimal sound. They also feature variable noise canceling, so you can choose to block out the entirety of existence or only kinda drown out your surroundings with “social mode.” 

Sound like science fiction? Well it’s science fact, and you can own a piece of tomorrow by checking out the site.
 

The Last Word

Another great week of geek…isn’t the future fascinating? Thanks as always for accepting this week’s edifying edition of “Brad’s Blog” into your life. I’ll keep it closer to the schedule next week, but before then I have to get my snake-savvy neighbor a nice tin of Danish butter cookies.

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