Second City Scenery and the Self-Driving Saga
Windy City Wonders To borrow an insight from the late Frank Sinatra, “this is my kind of town, Chicago is.”
The Enduring Internet and the Latest on iOS 12
Forever Online Here’s a sentence you would have never heard in earnest just 10 years ago: have you ever wondered what happens to your social media accounts
Is That a Laptop in Your Pocket
What’s Old is New Again… Not every step forward is a step up, and so I can’t be the only one that sort of misses physical keyboards on smartphones. They were ubiquitous in the era of Blackberries and Sidekicks, but fizzled out almost all at once as screens got larger and devices got ever slimmer. […]
Your Friends, For Sale
The True Value of You They say the user is the product in any service that is both free and convenient, and Facebook in particular makes a fortune in leveraging the data you directly and indirectly provide. As the man behind the plan himself said with a satisfied smirk in a congressional hearing “We sell ads, […]
Brilliant Buys and Savvy Sales
Home Shopping Season If you’re on the fence about selling your house this year, maybe you should consider making up you mind by the end of the month. According to Zillow, May is the best time of the year to have your property on the market, as on average homes sell two weeks faster and […]
Ultimate Upgrades: Your Life, But Smarter
Rise of the Machines In case my svelte silhouette doesn’t give it away, I’ve gotten more into fitness in recent years. Part of it’s by necessity since I like the way my knees work and the doc says staying active will keep them functional longer, but it’s also easier than ever before thanks to connected […]
Busted Brackets and Cheap Cruise Connections
he Maddest March Yet Like pretty much everyone else, I’ve had my NCAA bracket busted beyond recognition in the first couple of rounds.
Brad’s 23rd Century Retirement Plan
One Day at a Time (for 279 Years) I’ve started looking into retirement options before it’s too late–or at least, that’s what I set out to do recently. Apparently if I want to maintain my standard of living after I punch the digital clock for the last time, I’ll be putting in full shifts on […]
Changing Cyber Regs and Internet Masterclasses
Empire Statement The laws on the books are finally starting to catch up with the realities of the world, and the updated New York cyber reg
This Week’s Upgrades for Your Life
Be Where You Are It’s really amazing to the sum total of human knowledge and a global communication device fit into your pocket, isn’t it? If we’re being honest, it’s sort of addictive…we’ve all seen that table of friends enjoying a night out with their smartphones, silently scrolling through their Snapchat. You may have even […]
The Future We Were Promised and Super Keyboard
Where’s My Jetpack? We were told as children that in the future people would be wearing jetpacks and jumpsuits
Stealth Screens and Insurance by Amazon
Fall of the Trojans Well, it’s been a couple of days and I’m still recovering from the big game–that is, UCLA extending its win streak by taking down archrival USC at home on Saturday. The Lady Bruins even threw in a victory over their counterparts from Southern Cal Monday night just for good measure. With […]
Super Bowl Heart Attacks and Universal Translator
Making Contact For my readers who travel on a regular basis, you know there are two things you can’t necessarily rely on to be in every location
Facebook’s Facelift and Amazon’s Automation
Pray That I Do Not Alter It Further.” If I’m being honest, I myself am not a huge user of Facebook—I just cut out the middleman and share my vacation photos
The Flu Goes Viral
Office Expansion If you’re a regular user of Office 365, the online component to Microsoft’s time tested productivity suite, here’s a great product that give you even more value from the package: Barracuda Office 365 Essentials. This convenient upgrade gives you access to advanced features such as email archiving and email encryption for the protection […]
New Year, Same Geek
…and we’re back! First things first: Happy New Year 2018 to all my readers! By now just about everyone is settling back into their everyday routines, which have hopefully been amended to reflect all those ambitious resolutions made just last week. A simple alteration that has made a tangible impact on my quality of life […]
Falls and Screen Shares
For Your Family I wish I could start off with better news, but this is important to me and could be to you or someone close to you as well. My mother had herself a bit of a fall recently, and unfortunately she sustained some injuries including a concussion and blood loss in the incident […]
Talking InsureTech and InsureTurkey
The Season Begins Happy Thanksgiving! Yes, check your calendar, it is actually the end of November. With that in mind, carving a turkey can be either an engineering challenge on the scale of the Golden Gate Bridge or an effortlessly efficient process, depending on if you know what you’re doing or not. For the many […]
Slick Sales and Christmas Chromebooks
California Wildfires Before the fun and games kick off today, I have to take a minute to address something that continues to affect many of my fellow Californians. Even though the pictures and videos from the disaster paint a dramatic image t’s hard to get a sense of the devastation that the ongoing wildfires have had […]
No Holiday for Hackers
Hacking the Holidays Tis the season…for email phishing and other scams. Unfortunately, cybercrooks are well aware of the increase in online activity that comes with this time of year, and with tools such as keystroke loggers and spoofed links in widespread use, it’s no surprise that a recent survey says at least 15 percent of […]
Netflix Around the World and Billing Issues
Worldwide Workaround Did you know that streaming services like Hulu and even YouTube have different content based on what country your account is currently based in? It’s all due to convoluted licensing and distribution details that can be neatly summed up by the phrase “because money,” but that doesn’t make it any less annoying when […]
Video Vigilance and 14K Chairs
Video Vigilance It’s amazing how the Internet and the proliferation of WiFi have transformed the face of home security. Where once it was a planned Saturday afternoon of watching a burly stranger come into your home and weave a web of wires, now it’s a simple matter of mounting a few cameras, possibly downloading an […]
Is It Really November Already?
‘Tis (Almost) the Season Okay fine, I’ve seen the public service announcements…it’s a few weeks too early to be scouting for Christmas and Hanukkah gifts. We have to let Thanksgiving have its’ turn, it is holiday law. Still, I’m always encountering neat little gadgets that make everyday life just a bit more convenient, and those […]
Maximizing Your Time (and Your iPhone)
It’s Happening! This week marks the grand debut of the newest flagship lifestyle device from Apple, the hotly anticipated iPhone X. I’m sure even if you haven’t heard about its’ all glass display, wireless charging capabilities, and FaceID user authentication, you may have caught wind of its price tag of one thousand dollars–wait, press release […]
5 Days in Las Vegas
Tale of Two Cities It’s just about impossible to avoid the latest attack to grip our nation, particularly with last week’s AppliedNet event emanating from Las Vegas. It was particularly sobering to me because the city is typically a bustling neon playground for older children such as myself, and to have it torn apart by […]
Equifax Hack Aftermath
Damage Control I would say by now I’m sure you’ve heard all about the big Equifax hack that has left millions of social security numbers and other critical personal data vulnerable, but the media coverage for what may be the biggest digital security compromise in the modern era has been remarkably light. Not that running […]
Fearless Flyers
Stronger Through Tech Before the fun starts, I want to start off this week by sending my continued thoughts to those affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma as well as my readers in the Great Plains and Pacific Northwest who are dealing with massive wildfires in their respective regions. While obviously tragic, events like these […]
