Tech Column: Three Great Evernote Tricks

by Bill Adler

This will be my last tech column on the Cleveland Park Listserv. I am going back to focusing on writing books.  
--Bill Adler

If you're not familiar with Evernote, www.evernote.com, it's worth a look. Evernote is cross-platform, which means it works on PCs, Macs, iPhones, Android, the web -- just about anywhere. Heck, you can even use Evernote with a paper Post It note, because Evernote can take a shapshot of that note, save it, and index it for fast finding later on. Evernote lets you store everything you want, so you never have to wonder, "should I save this, will I need it?" Save the information in Evernote; it will be there, and findable, if you need it later. Save phone numbers, web clips, pictures of restaurants you've enjoyed (Evernote keeps the location data, too), to-do items, telephone conversation notes, recipes, driving directions, store receipts (take a picture), anything you want. Did you know that Evernote indexes the words in photos? So, for example, if you photograph a contract you've signed, you can search for that by any word that's in the document.

Evernote syncs with your Mac or Windows PC, your Android or iPhone, even with Blackberrys. The notes and information you put in one place are available every place.

If you’d like to enjoy a life free of paper clutter, then Evernote is your ticket. Evernote comes in free and paid flavors, so you can try it out risk-free.

Evernote can do a lot, even more than you may imagine at first. Here are three Evernote tricks that I'd like to share.

Carry a scanner in your pocket by connecting Evernote with a scanner app: Scanner Pro is the best scanner app for iPhone and Evernote. It's currently free (though that may not last long), and you can find it at http://readdle.com/products/scannerpro/. While you can directly add photos into Evernote via the iPhone and Android Evernote apps, Scanner Pro has a nice feature that the stand-alone Evernote app doesn’t: It automatically sizes and scans just the document, cutting out everything that's not on the paper you want to scan. Scanner Pro and Evernote turn your phone into a full-fledged scanning machine. There are scanner apps for Android, too, so if you have an Android phone, you can turn your phone into a powerful scanning machine, as well.

There are lots of great "read it later" extensions for popular web browsers, including Instapaper and Pocket. These browser extensions enable let you save articles you want to read but don't have time to read now. Click and save; they're easy, fast, and handy. I used to use Instapaper until I realized that I should save articles I want to read in Evernote. Why have a separate program for reading stuff later, when I already was using a perfectly good program, Evernote? Evernote happens to have two different web clippers, one called "Evernote Clipper," an apt name, and the other called "Clearly." You can tweak these clippers to send pages or articles you find on the web into specific Evernote notebooks. (Evernote lets you organize notes into notebooks, as well as tag them.) I use Evernote Clipper to save pages from the web that I'm using for work, but I told Clearly to always save web articles into my "Read Later" notebook. Now whenever I want to save an article to read at my leisure, I clip it with Clearly, and it's on my phone, tablet and PC.

There are a lot of amazing things you can do with Evernote than can lead you toward a paper-free life, but there's one other that I want to mention here. It's a little more complicated than the other two, but very useful if you're an iPhone user. This little Evernote trick lets you save iPhone screen shots directly to Evernote. Actually, it's not that complicated, but involves invoking a second app called IFTTT, which stands for If This, Then That. Here's how it works: IFTTT enables you to connect your phone's or iPad's photos to Evernote (or to other apps.) Whenever it detects a screenshot, that image is automatically added to Evernote. I don't know about other people, but I'm constantly taking screenshots of information I want to save on my iPhone. The process for getting this to work involves two steps. First, sign up for IFTTT, which is free, at www.ifttt.com. Second, add the recipe for saving screen shots to Evernote, which you can find at https://ifttt.com/recipes/124983.

I was asked recently what the difference between Evernote and Dropbox is. Why do you need Evernote if you have a cloud-based file backup service? Evernote is more of a note-taking, information-saving service. Dropbox (or Google Docs) is better suited for saving entire files. Your Excel spreadsheet with the home run averages for Major League baseball players belongs in Dropbox. But notes about players and specific games belong in Evernote. Vacation photos go in Dropbox; a photo of that amazing dessert fits into Evernote. You wouldn't put somebody's name and phone number in Dropbox, but that's exactly what Evernote is good for. Do you collect antique cell phones? You can keep photos and notes about your collection in Evernote, and access it everywhere.

Evernote works. Let it work for you.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys:Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler.

Tech Column: Viber 4.0

by Bill Adler

It would be pretty lonely being all alone. If only we had some way to connect with our friends and family when they’re not sitting next to us. If only there was email, instant messaging, Facebook, IM, Google+, Skype...Yes, I think that chances of becoming unconnected are pretty slim.

So why get excited about Viber 4.0, the latest version of Viber? First, what is Viber? Viber, www.viber.com, is a messaging app that’s not unlike iMessage, or even regular text messaging. Using Viber you can send texts to other people who have Viber. Viber supports most popular phones, including Blackberry.

Third party messaging apps such as Viber use your phone’s data connection, rather than your cell company’s texting service. Data is usually less expensive than texting, especially if you don’t have an all-you-can eat text message plan, or are visiting another country. (“Let’s meet at the museum at 5pm.” “Can we make it 4pm?” “The exhibit closes at 5:30.” “OK, 4pm sounds good.” “Want to catch dinner after?” “Sure.” That exchange might cost you anywhere from 60 cents to $3, depending on where you are and what your cell phone company’s fine print says.)

Some third party messaging programs, including Viber, also work on your PC, which means that you can type on a human sized keyboard for a refreshing change.

Which brings me to the one of the new features that Viber just implemented: Walkie-talkie, push-to-talk chats. Say what? Let me explain what a walkie-talkie chat is and why you should at least try it. Walkie-talkie chats are like text messages, only you’re sending by voice. Take that exchange above about meeting at the museum. It could take several minutes to carry on that conversation by typing. But by voice the same chat is very fast. Press and hold the talk button; release it, and your message is sent. If the person you’re talking with has Viber open, they’ll get the message instantly. If Viber is closed and running in the background, their phone will beep and they can listen to your message and reply at their leisure.

Aviation is one of the most technologically advanced industries on the planet. Yet Air Traffic Control still communicates with pilots by voice because you can convey a lot more information quickly by voice than you can digitally. With voice you can confirm that the message has been received right away, too. (“Cessna 34987, traffic alert, turn heading 270 and climb. Expedite.” “985 turning 270, climbing.”)

Even if you’re not air traffic control --though it may feel that way when you’re coordinating a bunch of friends meeting for dinner-- it’s convenient to be able to use voice. Now that it’s mitten season in the northern hemisphere, it’s also nice to be able to message people without miniature icicles forming on your fingers.

Voice messaging is often better than actually placing a phone call. A phone often involves a lengthy time commitment to extraneous, mandatory small-talk. It’s rare and rude to call somebody and just say, “Let’s meet at the museum at 5pm.” You have to talk about the weather, your family, work, the traffic and your general state of being before you can get to the point. Also, a phone call usually means you have to stop whatever else you’re doing. But with voice messaging you can respond at your leisure -- when you’ve put the car in park, for instance.

Other message apps have push-to-talk features, including Voxer, but Viber wraps their package in a feature-rich service. In addition to texting and voicing, you can actually place a phone call to other Viber users. Viber uses wifi for calls, so you can have international phone calls without feeling like you have to choose between the call and being able to afford dinner.

The new version of Viber has stickers. Stickers are perhaps the least useful Viber feature, but they are the most fun. Messaging should be fun. Stickers are detailed emoticons. Stickers are drawings, often cartoons, that express your feelings, inclination, desire or mood in a single picture. As with push-to-talk, Viber didn’t invent stickers, but they have plenty of clever ones. Viber gives some stickers away for free, and charges for others. The Viber app and service itself are free.

Should you use Viber? If you regularly use any kind of messaging application, then Viber might make your messaging life both more efficient and more fun.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys:Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His Fire Breathing Toaster column is published on Monday and his Tech Column is published on Tuesday.

Tech Column: International Data Roaming That Isn't Scary

by Bill Adler

I almost switched my cell phone company from AT&T to T-Mobile last week when T-Mobile announced free, unlimited international data roaming in 100 countries. I often roam internationally with AT&T, buying their overpriced 800 megabyte plan for $130. Worse than the rip-off price is the fact that I have to monitor my data use, because one single kilobyte beyond 800 megabytes and I'm automatically charged another $130. Rather than looking at monuments and museums, I'm checking the data counter on my phone. I understand that Verizon's international data rates are just as scary.

I haven't switched to T-Mobile because their unlimited international data roaming comes with a few footnotes. First, it's limited to 2G speeds. I haven't experienced 2G speeds since my Nokia flip phone. Still, even 2G lets you do email, Facebook, Yelp searches, Google maps, and other essentials. The second footnote is that you can't use it too often: You can't live abroad, dining on T-Mobile's data plan alone, without resurfacing in the United States every few months. The third footnote is that you have to sign up with a T-Mobile plan. T-Mobile's plans happen to be a lot less expensive than AT&T and Verizon's plans, but T-Mobile's US coverage isn't as good as the big two's coverage. For now.

Even with these caveats T-Mobile's unlimited, free international data roaming not only is tempting, but makes a lot of sense for a lot of people. (T-Mobile's plan also comes with a flat rate of 20 cents a minute for international voice calls, making it a sweet deal.) If T-Mobile doesn't force AT&T to loosen its grip on my wallet for international data roaming, I'm going to take another look at T-Mobile in a year or so. If you're a frequent international traveler and interested in learning more, visit T-Mobile at www.t-mobile.com.

In the meanwhile, there's XCom Global, a company that rents international cellular modems. I recently rented on for a trip to Europe, and it worked great. It costs about $121 for a week, but that includes unlimited international cellular data, not a cap of 800 megabytes, like AT&T has. XCom Global's mifi connects your cell phone, tablet, laptop --any device that has wifi-- to the Internet. It's fairly fast, too: I got consistent 3G speeds in Europe. The modem is powered by USB and the battery lasts about 4 hours, meaning that you can take it with you for a half day of wifi while you're out and about. After 4 hours, you need to plug in and power up. A lot of hotels in Europe charge for wifi; XCom's daily rate can be less than what your hotel charges. XCom, www.xcomglobal.com, ships their modem to you, and you return it by prepaid FedEx when your trip is over.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys:Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His Fire Breathing Toaster column is published on Monday and his Tech Column is published on Tuesday.
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Tech Column: Mural.ly for Your Personal Corkboard

3M France via Wikimedia Commons

by Bill Adler

Some months ago I wrote about using a virtual corkboard to help achieve a paperless life. At the time, my favorite corkboard was Corkboard.me; you can read about Corkboard.me and why I chose it as the #1 web-based corkboard here: http://bit.ly/13ULnSN.

Sites and online services change rapidly, and I think that when it comes to online corkboards, there's a new champion: Mural.ly, www.mural.ly.

Before I explain why I like Mural.ly, I want to say what I like about online corkboards. To-do lists are great. Single pieces of paper are adequate for notes. Even classic, paper post-its are great for remembering and organizing. But a corkboard lets you see a lot of stuff all at once. And not just words, as you're restricted to on a to-do list. A corkboard is multimedia: You can post notes with words, and you can post pictures, too.

But the biggest advantage that corkboards have over other organizing tools is that you can see everything at once. It's the forest versus the trees thing. I like being able to quickly scan everything I need to know. Lists and single sheets of paper don't let you do that easily.

On to Mural.ly. One of my biggest complaints about online corkboards is how slippery they are. That is, it's very easy to accidentally move the entire board, when all you want to do is move a note. Online corkboards
are designed to be infinite in space -- you're not limited to one screen. Mural.ly has this problem, too, but the designers added a button that restores your previous view...just in case.

It's easy to add text notes inside of a variety of colorful virtual post-its. You can make your notes circles, squares or rectangles. Mural.ly also lets you easily add photos and web content. But even better is that you can add notes directly from Evernote, www.evernote.com, or add documents from Google Drive http://drive.google.com. I'm a big Evernote user, but its one downside is that you can't easily visualize multiple notes on a single page. With the ability to post Evernote content directly on Muraly.ly, now you can.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys:Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His Fire Breathing Toaster column is published on Monday and his Tech Column is published on Tuesday.

Tech Column: Claim Your 10 GB on Google Drive Today

by Bill Adler

There are lots of cloud storage giveaways. Dropbox, for example, offers a multitude of tasks you can perform to gain extra gigabytes of storage -- everything from referring friends to installing the automatic upload app on your phone.

Until tomorrow, Google is offering 10 gigabytes of storage for two years if you install their Quickoffice --their free Quickoffice-- app on your iPhone or Android phone. QuickOffice lets you create and edit Microsoft Office documents, including Word, Powerpoint and Excel, view PDFs, attach files to email and share files through Google Drive. Quickoffice is tightly integrated with Google Drive.

Even if you don’t work in the cloud, an extra 10 GB of storage can come in handy. Hop over to Google Drive Blog at http://googledrive.blogspot.com/ to read more about this offer, and to find the appropriate link to download Quickoffice for your particular smartphone.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys:Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a
mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: I Heart Mice

Photo by Steve Berger (Creative Comons)

by Bill Adler

I have tried. I really have. I thought I could learn to like the trackpad on my laptop. But just like room temperature beer, it’s a taste that I can tolerate, but never fully enjoy.

I need a mouse. I understand and accept that about myself now. Even if transporting a mouse adds one more gizmo to the bag that’s now devoted to cables, batteries, covers, chargers, memory cards and other technological accessories. (I should take a trip to French Polynesia, far, far away from the Internet. Or maybe to a tropical rainforest, far away from the Internet and the temptation of solar power.)

Some people can work magic with their laptop’s trackpad, but I find the trackpad awkward to use. I agree that a trackpad should be easier to use than manipulating a mouse because you don’t have to take your hands off the keyboard. But for me it’s harder. And judging from the proliferation of magic, portable wireless mice, I’m not alone.

If you’re one of us, then let me suggest the Microsoft wireless mouse, which you can find on Amazon for under $20, http://tinyurl.com/nog4mvx. Not only is it cheap, but it’s simple to use, with no weird buttons dedicated to music playback or anything like that. Think Microsoft Windows operating system, and then the total opposite. The mouse comes with a small, wireless USB connector to attach it to your PC. The connector lives inside the mouse when you’re not using it, so that when you grab the mouse at the last minute for a trip, you don’t say bad words when you arrive at your destination and realize that you forgot the thumbnail sized wireless adapter. You can select a mouse from among 26 different colors and designs, too.

As for those of you who happy to blaze along with a trackpad, how do you feel about warm beer?

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: Weathermob for Your Inner Weather Geek

by Bill Adler

There are a lot of excellent, informative and even fun weather apps for cell phones. My current favorites are Clear Day, which gives you just the right dose of weather information along with an informative picture, http://www.vimov.com/clearday/, and Weather Kitty, that presents only the weather basics, but does so with a cute cat photo, http://bit.ly/17h2ie6.

But what if you want to be more involved with the weather? I'm not talking about using the collective power of all our Android phones, iPhones, Windows Phones and remaining dozen or so Blackberries to change the weather (though that will eventually come to pass.) I'm talking about being a weather reporter, contributing the a massive database of weather information. For that there's Weathermob, www.weathermob.me.

Weathermob describes its mission this way: "Weather observations worldwide are sorely lacking. There are currently only a little over 40,000 weather stations on Earth that have the capability to regularly contribute to global weather forecasting, and more than 80% of those are in the US and Europe. More weather reports are critically needed in the world's cities and rapidly developing countries.

"To create 21st century weather predictions, we need a 21st century weather observation system. One that's people-powered and driven by curiosity and the beauty of the natural world. We here at Weathermob think that system starts with you."

Your Weathermob weather report contains several bits of information: a photo or video, your location, the current temperature, whatever comments you want to add, and icons representing the current sky conditions, your mood and what activities the weather is good for.

I like Weathermob. It's a good citizen weather reporting tool, and fun for weather geeks. But Weathermob hasn't decided what it is: a social network or a weather tool? Including an icon for sky and weather conditions --sunny, rainy, cloudy, snowy-- is a good idea. But I'm sure that my current mood --happy, glum, dandy, meh-- and what the weather is good for --pizza eating, dog walking, sailing, shoe shopping-- have little bearing on how pleasant, bad, hot, breezy, or unusual the weather might be. I'm also sure that the tornado icon, should that be your current weather condition, shouldn't be on equal footing with the martini glass icon.

In place of icons I'd like to see other data, such as wind speed, humidity, barometric pressure, and even "feels like" temperature. Yesterday it was 93 degrees in Tokyo and with the humidity it felt like 114 F. That's more interesting than the fact that I included a ice pop icon along with my weather report.

In Weathemob you can switch between the two most unspellable words in English, Fahrenheit and Celsius, to suit your preference. You can comment on others weather reports, as well as favorite reports and follow people.

Weathermob is fun. It's a good step forward to making weather reporting ubiquitous and interesting to do. Weathermob just needs a few tweaks here and there to make it as useful as it wants to be.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: All in One Messaging

by Bill Adler

I understand why people give up their land lines. It's not necessarily because it's less expensive to have just a cell phone, though that's often cause enough. It's because it's a pain to have to deal with two separate phones. Ring, ring: You have to dash toward one phone or another.

The same condition exists for messaging. There's Facebook messaging for this new, brave socially networked world. But there are people who've held onto their AOL messenger address all these years. There's Skype for the international set, and there's Google Talk (now Google Hangouts) that seems to work everywhere. There's Yahoo, Linkedin and Twitter, all of which are used for messaging. (Kudos to Facebook, by the way, for making their messenger service work on other platforms. That's not something you'd expect the Keeper of the Walled Garden to do.)

If you want to be able to keep in touch with everyone, it feels like you need a dozen different messenger programs or apps. Fortunately, it only just feels that way. There are some excellent multi-messenger apps that let you send and receive messages on just about every messenger service at the same time. I use one called Trillian, www.trillian.im, but I've also dabbled in IM+, www.plus.im, and IMO, www.imo.im, all of which I can recommend. If you chat with people on more than one messaging service, do yourself a favor and get an app that does them all.

I should add one footnote. Messaging services like Google Hangouts and Skype are different from text messaging services such as Viber, Whatsapp and Line. These new services were invented to make it possible to text phone to phone without paying huge text messaging fees. These services, which have evolved since then to include things like the ability to send voice messages and stickers, can't be used with a multi-messenger program like Trillian: You have to use the app. But if you're using traditional messaging services, ones that predate the iPhone, then a multi-messaging program will work just fine.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: No, No, Not a Facebook Login

by Bill Adler

My doctor's gone high tech in some cool ways, and in one very not cool way. First the cool: I check in at a kiosk at the doctor's office, where I can pay my co-payment before I see the doctor. It's very efficient, very streamlined. Second, the not so cool: The login method that they use to access your health records.

When I went to create a logon I was offered a choice of selecting one of several different services to use for my logon: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft...or Facebook.

Hmm. Facebook as the method I used to logon to a database that contains personal medical records? I suddenly had visions of my weight gain numbers appearing on my news stream: "Bill's gained 12 pounds since his last checkup. Like?"

I know that wouldn't happen, but no matter how much logic I applied to the situation, I couldn't get over the idea that mixing Facebook and my medical records --even if Facebook won't have access to them-- in any way was a good idea. After all, Facebook and privacy are concepts that go as well together as BYOB to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Unfortunately, my doctor didn't offer creating an independent logon as an option. It was one of the gang of four or nothing. I thought about it. There's Google, which already knows everything about me. Yahoo, which recently recycled people's email addresses if they hadn't been used in a year. Microsoft was an option, but, you know, Windows viruses, crashes. Hmm. Eeny, meeny, miny, moe...

Here's the thing about using a third party service for your logon. Something to keep in mind because you might have no choice, as I did, or you might think it's convenient to do that. Your logon is dependent on your continued use of that service. Chances are that Facebook and Google will be around for a very long time, but what if your account is canceled? A service like Facebook has an absolute right to terminate your cyberlife for whatever reason it wants. It's happened, and people who've been booted off one service or another can no longer access whatever it is that they've logged into.

Just some food for thought as our lives become simultaneously more convenient and complicated.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: The End of iTunes

by Bill Adler

Abbie's Sleep Timer is the end of iTunes.

This marvelous, little program adds a much-needed feature to the Windows version of iTunes: a sleep timer.

Just set Abbie's Sleep Timer for however long you want to have Brahms or Katy Perry playing in the background, and at the interval you select, iTunes will shut up and go to sleep. Abbie's Sleep Timer can also shut down your entire PC when it stops the music.

You can claim the sleep timer that Apple forgot here: http://www.ephpod.com/ast/.

Mac users can check out Sleepytime, http://www.irradiated.net/?page=sleepytime.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: Bus Powered Drives

by Bill Adler

Bear with me. This is going to be a short tech column, and not nearly as boring and technical as the article title might lead you to believe.

If you live your computer life properly, you have an in-cloud backup plus an external hard drive backup. Two backups because one is bound to fail when you need it. Murphy's law and all that.

The bad thing about most external hard drives is that they have two wires, one to connect the drive to the computer and the other to power the drive. The more wires the more tangling. The more wires, the dust collected. So why not get a bus powered external drive (also called a USB powered drive). A what? A drive that doesn't need a power adapter and cord. USB ports provide a small amount of power, enough juice for a low-power hard drive.

If fewer wires are something that tickles your fancy, then the next time you need an external hard drive, get a USB powered one, such as this 1 TB USB-powered drive: http://amzn.to/12Y1pM0. (The drive comes in 500 GB and 2 TB flavors, too.) Unless you like to stay up late at night and watch wires become alive and tangle themselves up.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: Boxcar Email Alerts

Photo by vxla via Wikimedia Commons

by Bill Adler

If you use the default iPhone mail app, you can set things up so that you get an alert when you receive an email from that special somebody, be it your boss, boyfriend or bookie. (The alerts are called VIP alerts, and you can read about them here: http://bit.ly/133x08F.)

But what if you don't use the iPhone's built-in email app, or don't have it set up to automatically check for email because auto checking eats up battery power? Is there a way to be notified that you've received an email from a particular send? Yes!

That alternative is Boxcar, www.boxcar.io. Boxcar is free service that will push notifications to your iPhone or iPad when you receive an email from whomever you designate. It's actually better than the built-in iPhone notification system because your phone doesn't have to actively check for mail at pre-set intervals.

Here's how Boxcar works: Go to www.boxcar.io and download the free iOS app. Create a Boxcar account and set up a forwarding email address. Any email sent to your Boxcar address, which is a randomly generated address like 3434gk90992ti@boxcar.io, will trigger the Boxcar app's notification feature. After you've created an email address, go to your regular email service, be it Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, or whatever, and set up a filter so that whenever you get an email from somebody important, that email is forwarded to your Boxcar email address.

That's it. Once you have a filter for your regular email account created, you're good to go, and you'll be notified whenever an email arrives that you want to know about. Your iPhone or iPad doesn't have to check mail or do anything because Boxcar uses the iOS notification system.

Boxcar can notify you about other events, too, including if your website goes down, you have a Facebook notification, somebody direct messages you on Twitter, and more. You can combine Boxcar with IFTTT (If This, Then That, another powerful alert service, www.ifttt.com) to extract even more capabilities out of Boxcar. You can use IFTTT along with Boxcar for email alerts, among other things: https://ifttt.com/recipes/42541. Boxcar, http://boxcar.io , is worth checking out, especially for the VIP email feature.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: The Paperless Corkboard, Lino

by Bill Adler

In February I wrote about virtual corkboards, a helpful amenity in the paperless world. You can read that article here:  http://bit.ly/13ULnSN. At the time, I was drawn to Corkboard.me. Since then I've tried a few more, including Mural.ly, which has the ability to import notes from Evernote.

I use Evernote as my go-to place for storing ideas, jotting down notes, saving articles from the web. I use Google Docs for writing, and I use Google Tasks for my to-do list. But what every television crime drama has, what every successful movie detective uses, what super smart CIA agent deploys in Homeland for organizing information, is a corkboard. A corkboard stands out among note taking and information management devices because you see a lot of stuff all at once. A task list is just that -- a list. Note programs can't easily let you see multiple notes in their entirety at the same time. Only with a corkboard can you rearrange notes so that you can visualize and connect relationships between ideas and facts.

There's a new #1 in the virtual corkboard world: Lino, www.linoit.com. I like it and use it so much that I've made Lino my browser's homepage. It's the first thing that I see when I open my browser.

Like other online corkboards, you can post a wide range of content, including text and photos. You can have several boards (or canvases), so that you can use a separate board for different projects. Similar to other corkboard services, Lino lets you share a board with somebody else, so you can collaborate with it. Lino uses a familiar corkboard style skeuomorph, but you can change that -- and even make boards that use your own photo as a background.

Before mentioning some of Lino's unique features, I want to talk about one thing that Lino doesn't do that I find annoying with some other virtual corkboards. Many corkboard services let you have a board of infinite size. That means that you can add notes that appear off-screen, and just slide the board to see those notes. It also means that it's easy to accidentally slide your board to the left or right and lose focus. While Lino's boards are infinite size, too, I found that with Lino the board doesn't slip away so readily: Its position is harder to move accidentally.

On to Lino's extra features. You can add notes by email, including pictures, to Lino's boards. All you have to do is snap a photo of something you want to remember, email it to your board's address, and that photo will be right on your board (and somebody else's board if you're collaborating). You can also add due dates to post-its and those note will show up on your computer's calendar, including Google Calendar and Outlook. Having a note also appear in your calendar gives you another shot at remembering something important. Lino, www.linoit.com, will also email you a daily summary of notes that have due dates, if you want.

Lino has tablet and phone apps, so you can take your corkboard wherever you go. Changes that you make via your browser are instantly reflected on your mobile device, and vice versa. If you are collaborating with somebody using a board, you can opt to receive an alert when somebody posts a note on your board.

If you're looking for a way to organize and visualize information, Lino, which has both free and paid versions, is worth spending a few minutes getting acquainted with. It's fun to use, too.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: Ode to Livedrive

by Bill Adler

Last week I wrote about online cloud storage services that basically let you use the cloud as an external drive. Services like Google Drive and Dropbox. I also wrote about connection apps such as Cloudmagic and Attachments.me, that give your cloud services even more oomph, by letting you use multiple cloud services simultaneously.

Last week I didn't write about Livedrive, because Livedrive is ignored when it comes to add-ons like Cloudmagic, which lets you search (almost) all your cloud services at once, or Attachments.me, which enable you to work with email attachments on a variety of services. Livedrive, www.livedrive.com, is never invited to the cloud party, but it's worth considering as a place to park your files.

I've been using Livedrive for years, in addition to Google Drive and Dropbox, because it has one very strong suit: Price. For $150/year you get unlimited storage. Google Drive and Dropbox don't even offer that size as an option. 500 gigabytes on Dropbox currently costs $500 a year; 400 gigabytes on Google Drive costs $20 a month. If you want to really increase your storage to 1 terabyte on Google Drive that will cost you $50 a month.

You can pay for a lesser plan on Livedrive, too, if you only have up to 1 TB of data. Any way you slice it, Livedrive's price beats Google Drive, Dropbox, Sugarsync and all the others.

Livedrive has two components: backup and something called "briefcase." Backup is intuitive -- your files are simply backed up. Briefcase lets you specify files or folders you want to be available on more than one computer. It's handy for transferring files to other PCs or if you work on multiple machines.

Livedrive is a bargain, not just in comparison to Google Drive and Dropbox, but period. Livedrive doesn't integrate with Gmail and documents the way Google Drive does; it doesn't have all the cool sharing features and apps that Dropbox offers. But Livedrive, www.livedrive.com, which has iOS and Android apps, giving you access everywhere to all your data, is a good service, as well as a very good deal.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: One, Two or Three Cloud File Services?

by Bill Adler

Two years ago Google Drive was born. Google Drive, http://drive.google.com, is a cloud based service, run by Google, that, among other things, lets you park your files in the cloud. It basically acts like a separate drive on your computer.

Google Drive has several competitors, including Dropbox, http://db.tt/lm5HTSj , Sugarsync, www.sugarsync.com, Box, www.box.com, and Microsoft's Skydrive, www.skydrive.com.

These services vary in features and price. It's handy to be able to access your stuff from anywhere, including your smartphone: These services have phone apps, so your files are with you wherever you go. They all offer limited free storage, too, so you can play around with them to see what you like best.

But you don't need to stick to just one cloud service. Browser add-ons and websites enable you to access your files regardless of whether they're on Google Drive, Dropbox, Box or some other place. Why would you want to use a service like that? Because you might split your files up between Google Drive and Dropbox, for example: using Google Drive for personal and Dropbox for work-related files. Or you might just stick with a free account on Skydrive and Sugarsync; a multi-cloud add-on essentially gives you more space by letting you spread your data among multiple services.

Cloudmagic, www.cloudmagic.com, is a browser extension and website that lets you search your various storage services for exactly what you're looking for. It searches not just files, but your email, calendar and Evernote (if you want) and just about everything you have stored anywhere in the Cloud. With Cloudmagic you don't need to remember where you put a file or note: Cloudmagic will find it. It's soooo handy to have one search box that looks everywhere at once.

Attachments.me is another service that I use a lot and find super helpful. Attachments.me, www.attachments.me, lets you save attachments in the Cloud wherever you want. Just connect your various cloud services to Attachment.me, and when an email arrives you can decide where you want to save the attached file. Attachments.me works in the opposite direction, too: You can attach files from whatever cloud service you use to outgoing Gmail.

Using connection services like Cloudmagic and Attachments.me makes it possible and actually easy to use multiple cloud storage services. Cloudmagic for finding your stuff; Attachments.me for saving or attaching files to Gmail. Connection services make the cloud a powerful place indeed.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: Your Phone's Battery is Dying, Thank You

by Bill Adler

I had the not-so-good fortune of not finding a seat in the quiet car during a recent train trip from New York City to Washington, DC. You know what that means: Stock tips, personal advice and information about secret invasion plans.

Needless to say, I was totally uninterested and hoping that everyone's battery would die during the train ride. Unfortunately, Amtrak's equipped with something called electrical outlets, so that meant that by the end of the trip I enough information to make a fortune on the stock market.

Not every journey comes with electricity, so sometimes you need to bring along your own power to keep the conversation alive.

I've tried a lot of portable batteries, ranging from mammoth one-pound batteries to little guys that can slip inside your sock, if that's where you choose to carry your spare battery. There are a lot to choose from, but now that summer's here I want to recommend just two that you might consider taking along if you need a little extra talk or Facebook time.

The first is the New Trent Travelpak, www.newtrent.com, which comes in three capacities and sizes. It has dual USB ports for charging two devices at once (it's nice to share), and you can use it as a wall charger for your smartphone or tablet. Even the smallest, lowest capacity model will power your smartphone a couple of times. The Travelpak has built-in wall outlet prongs, so you don't need to take along any extra charging cables. The Travelpak has a bright LED light that tells you if it's charged. The light doubles as a night light, which can be a good thing or a bad thing. Personally, I haven't wanted a night light since I was five, but there it is.

The Powerstick by, well, Powerstick, www.powerstick.com, is smaller and more portable than the Travelpak, but it doesn't have as much capacity. Figure that it will provide a few extra hours, or 50 percent of your phone's capacity. With batteries, size matters, so if you want to travel light, you won't get as much power.

The Powerstick charges via a USB cable, so you'll need to take that along if you want to recharge it. You also need to carry a supplied 3-inch output cable to connect your device. The Powerstick displays the amount of available juice and holds its charge for about 12 months. Charge it up, pop it into your bag, and it will be there for you when you need it.

If neither of these suits your power needs, check out some of the larger batteries by New Trent, a brand that I've found to be hardy and reliable. Anker also makes excellent portable power solutions, www.ianker.com. Whatever solution you choose, be sure to take along a cable for your device; without that, you're out of luck.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: Down for the (Cellular Data) Count

by Bill Adler

Onavo Count saved my bacon.

I'm pretty savvy about turning off the send and receive feature using cellular data when traveling to other countries.

Evernote, for instance: I sync when on cellular or wifi at home, but when in other countries, I set Evernote to sync only on wifi. I tell my iPhone to update apps only on wifi, too. Dropbox photo backup: wifi only. And so on.  It's a very memory-intensive process and I have to guess what apps might use cellular data automatically.

While it's a pain to go through my iPhone app by app to make sure that it only sends and receives automatically through wifi, that's now an essential ritual for me before every overseas trip.

I bought an 800 megabyte cellular data plan from AT&T before my most recent trip to Japan, where I am now. You can eat through 800 megabytes quickly by streaming YouTube videos, but 800 megs can hold you for a while if all you do is use cellular data for email, maps, messaging, and Words with Friends, like I do. Or I planned to do.

I took a look at my cellular data usage a few days after arriving in Tokyo. (It's a good idea to reset your phone's cellular data counter before you arrive in whatever country you're going to; otherwise you won't be able to tell how much cellular data you're using.)  I had used some 70 megabytes in a few days. Hmm. I didn't do anything that should have used that much data. And at that rate, I might eat through my entire 800 megabyte plan and soon move into "international overcharge territory," a place I certainly didn't want to visit.

But what app was leaking data? I poked around my apps manually: It wasn't this and it wasn't that, but I did need to track it down. How to do that without checking each of the 300+ apps on my iPhone manually? With an app, of course: I found an app, which I highly recommend if you travel with a limited data plan: it's called Onavo Count, www.onavo.com, and it tells you which apps are running amok with your precious data. I fired up Onavo Count and instantly found that somehow I hadn't turned off Google+'s cellular data backup feature for photos. I really thought I had, but it's easy to make a mistake with apps and phones offering so many feature options. Google+ was backing up my photos all the time while I was roaming on a Japanese cellular network. Not cool. I flipped off that switch, and now I have plenty of data to spare for the duration of my trip.

Onavo also told me that FE Snap was consuming cellular data. FE Snap is an smartphone app that lets you take a quick picture note and save it in Evernote. The has a switch for "wifi only," but I forgot to flip that switch before arriving in Japan. I use Evernote via FE Snap to record places I've been while traveling, so I use FE Snap a lot! Each picture note is about 500k big. Another switch flipped and everything was back to normal.

There are several data monitoring apps that can alert you when you're closing in on your data or voice plan's ceiling, but they're not always reliable on the iPhone. I used to use one called Dataman, but it can be tricked if you power off your phone. Now I just use the iPhone's built-in cellular data tracking function. I haven't tried any data or voice use monitoring apps on Android, but they may not suffer from the same limitations and quirks as on the iPhone because Android is more open when it comes to allowing apps to access the core operating system.

If you're in a data crunch, you can also give Onavo Extend a whirl: Onavo Extend, www.onavo.com, compresses data on the fly, giving you more bang for your proverbial data buck.

With these various data monitoring, reporting and compression apps you can turn limited international data plans into actually useful international data plans. The apps work domestically, too, if you're on a limited domestic data plan.

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Bill Adler is a writer. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft, "Outwitting Squirrels," http://amzn.to/VXuLBh, and a mess of other books. He tweets at @billadler. His tech column is published on Tuesdays.

Tech Column: A Digital Diet

by Bill Adler

I discovered something. I subscribe to a lot of podcasts, but only listen to one. I'm not exactly sure how this realization crossed my mind, but when I unsubscribed to and deleted all the podcasts that I don't listen to, I freed up nearly 2 gigabytes on my iPhone.

Might I want to listen to or watch one of those podcasts one day while waiting in line at the DMV? Perhaps, but not today and not tomorrow.

I recently took a close look at the apps on my iPhone and found that not only were there some apps that I used just once, but there were apps that I hadn't a clue about what they did. Each of those apps is now gone.

My iPhone wasn't running out of space, but these podcasts and apps were still getting in the way, like a sock in the sock drawer that you never wear but you have to paw past to get to the ones that don't have holes in them. These unneeded podcasts and apps were showing up in search and populating folders, making it harder to find what I really enjoy or need, and giving my phone a weighed-down, cluttered feel. Removing this clutter may not make my iPhone run faster, but it makes me faster.

When I looked at my email and thought about the seemingly infinite space that Google provides, I felt all warm and fuzzy inside. Until I searched for a particular email by keyword and found that all sorts of ancient garbage came up, too, cluttering my search results. So I went all crazy and deleted something like 25,000 emails using a variant of the same search that cluttered my search results in the first place. My email searches are now faster, and my entire email collection feels lighter.

I tackled some photos with the same vigor, too. Not family or vacation photos, but stuff that I'd clipped and saved from various websites over the eons, on the assumption that I had virtually unlimited storage space. I don't even remember why I saved a dozen photos of suspension bridges from Europe.

Several years ago I ripped every CD I owned, downloaded free music from promotional websites, and collected other music without listening to it, all because I could. I thought I'd acquire now and decide if I liked it at some point down the road. Years later, I realized that, no, I don't want to listen to Justin Bieber wannabes. I don't even want to listen to Justin Bieber. All that music was extra bits and bytes that iTunes had to sort through when I wanted to listen to something that I actually like. All that music was stuff that begged to be organized in some way -- in a playlist, by rating, by genre.

The scary part about deleting digital stuff is that you don't really know if you'll ever need it again. You can be pretty sure, but you can also be very wrong. I've been that in both the digital and physical worlds. Still, a lighter digital load can make your life easier, just like not having to wade through clothes in your closet that you'll never wear again (or, to be more honest, can't wear again), can make getting ready to go out and easier, faster, and a happier experience.

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Bill Adler is the co-publisher of the Cleveland Park Listserv, www.cleveland-park.com. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft . He tweets at @billadler.

Tech Column: Save Your Photos!

by Bill Adler

Summer's here and along with the dangers posed by undercooked barbecue meats, ravenous mosquitoes, thunderstorm-canceled airplane flights and Metro meltdowns, comes the greatest danger of all: lost vacation photos.

But that danger need not exist if you take photos with a smartphone. You can tell your smartphone to automatically back up your photos whenever you're in range of wifi. Once your phone is set to do this, you can have the peace of mind that goes with knowing that while you may have left your favorite sandals at the beach, at least your photos weren't lost there, too.

Let's start with the most ubiquitous app of them all: Facebook. If you have Facebook's app on your phone, you can set the app so that every photo you take is synced with Facebook. Facebook keeps your uploaded photos private unless you release a particular photo to the universe. To set up photo syncing on Facebook visit https://www.facebook.com/help/photosync.

Google+ does essentially the same thing, and is another great way to back up all your photos. As with Facebook, once you've set up automatic uploads, you can forget about it. Also like Facebook, the photos that you automatically upload to Google+ are private unless you specify otherwise. Here's how: http://bit.ly/ZmEMzg.

Dropbox offers the same feature: www.dropbox.com/help/289/en. As with Facebook and Google+, it's easy to set up and the app will automatically upload your photos whenever you have wifi on.

Flickr, owned by the revitalized Yahoo, just added a terrific new feature, 1 terabyte of free storage for everyone. Now that's a lot of photos. Flickr is set up for sharing, but if you want to use it as a backup service and not have every photo you take be visible to the universe, tweak your Flickr privacy settings so that the default privacy mode for your sets is "private" and your search visibility is hidden. Once you've done that you'll have virtually unlimited photo storage. You can get the mobile app here: www.flickr.com/mobile, or a third party app for Android here: http://bit.ly/13a0CTR and for iPhone here: http://bit.ly/12a7Vzh.

These apps should have auto upload on wifi only as their default setting, but that's something you might want to double-check, especially if you have a limited cellular data plan. You can have more than one auto photo uploader, too, for sharing or backup.

Smartphones rock!

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Bill Adler is the co-publisher of the Cleveland Park Listserv, www.cleveland-park.com. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft. He tweets at @billadler.

Tech Colulmn: Have Fun With Kickstarter

Baked By Yael Kickstarter Campaign

by Bill Adler

Let's say you have $50 to spend. What should you spend it on?

You could buy fifty 99-cent smartphone apps. That would keep you entertained for a while. You could by a couple of hardcover books, and as an author, I'm always in favor of that. You could fill up your car with gas, if you want to be practical. You could buy your dog some new toys.

Or you could have fun on Kickstarter, www.kickstarter.com. Kickstarer is a way for entrepreneurs to fund projects and businesses. Getting seed money to be able to write and publish a graphic novel, produce an inflatable bed that doesn't need power or a pump to inflate, or design and put into production a folding lunch box that folds out into a placemat --all actual Kickstarter projects-- is hard. Just about the only way to get seed money is to beg family members, and then beg them again.

But through Kickstarter, you can reach out to the world. If people think your idea has merit, or might be fun, then they can support the development and production of the next great thing: a self-cleaning fish tank or an affordable 3D printer, also actual Kickstarter projects.

The entrepreneur gets funding, but what does the funder get?  A funder does not a piece of the pie, but you often get a big discount on whatever it is that you're investing in, and you get it before stores do. You also get a lot of satisfaction in knowing that you've helped bring a product of service into being. It's a blast to see something you've helped create actually happen.

I've funded several Kickstarter projects including the famed Pebble watch (the first really smart smartwatch), the Hex Flashlight (a programmable flashlight), several music CDs, and a book.

I'm excited that Cleveland Park's own Yael Krigman, a.k.a. Baked by Yael, has a Kickstarter project, http://kck.st/10joD8L . How often do you get a chance to help create a cakepoppery? And right in Washington, DC, too. If you've ever said to yourself, "I wish there was an XYX store in Washington," now's your chance to put those thoughts into action. Funders get get a variety of benefits, depending on your funding level, including a basket of cakepops, a cakepop party, and assorted cakepops. When you walk into Yael Krigman's cakepoppery for the very first time, I guarantee that you'll wear two smiles: One smile because of all the smiles and sights of the colorful cakepops, and one smile because you had a hand in making this store possible. Hop over to http://kck.st/10joD8L and invest any amount from $15 to $1,000 to spread cakepop sweetness over Washington, DC.

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Bill Adler is the co-publisher of the Cleveland Park Listserv, www.cleveland-park.com. He is the author of "Boys and Their Toys: Understanding Men by Understanding Their Relationship with Gadgets," http://amzn.to/rspOft. He tweets at @billadler.