Helpful Travel Tips

Just a few helpful travel tips .

BOOK AIRLINE TRAVEL from 12:01AM WEDNESDAY MORNING (Eastern Standard Time) on; all new fares are announced/posted at midnight Tuesday evening for the next week

SIGN-UP FOR ALL E-MAIL NOTICES of special prices from low cost airlines that serve your city or target destination (or are near-by).   Examples include: Kayak's FareAlert, Southwest Ding! Fares, Southwest Click 'n Save fares, AirTran, Frontier, JetBlue, Spirit Airline Red Light fares.  The low cost airlines' special fares are much less restrictive than the high cost carriers' week-end specials.  You can get a weekly summary of many of the airlines weekend specials at SmarterTravel.com. 

LAST MINUTE TRAVEL – Are you retired, a student off for the summer or can take time off from your job on short notice – then register with various “last minute travel sites” who offer incredible deals for short 3 or 4 days vacations to even longer 14-21 vacation land and or cruise packages – Why??  Arrangements are made & once that ship sails or hotel night passes the revenues can’t be made up, so they’d rather sell the package cheap, knowing you’ll spend money on liquor, side trips, gambling & other amenities…  Some incredible deals if you can leave on a few days notice

CONFIRM ARRANGEMENTS. If transportation and hotel are included in the travel package, ask how to contact those companies and confirm with them directly that the reservations have been made.  Always be sure to print off confirmations and keep a print copy with your folder or send yourself an email with the info..(with being able to sync phones & emails & claendars today it's easier than ever to access this info)

EMAIL YOURSELF ALL PERTINENT INFO: Send yourself an email including all airline info; hotel & car rental info & confirmation #'s an rates quoted; list of credit cards you are taking and their pertinent info - #'s, type, exp date, sc code, bank tele #'s; list of all your medications & dosages; doctors names etc... Today no matter where you go you will find a computer so that you can access this data in a pinch..

If you have a suggestion that might be helpful to others when they are travelling, we'd love to hear it...

What is an "Android" ?

We hear about Android Tablets & Android Smartphones all the time, but what is Android?

According to Wikipedia, "Android is a Linux-based operating system designed primarily for touch screen mobile devices such as Smartphone's and tablet computers. Initially developed by Android, Inc., which Google backed financially and later purchased in 2005, Android was unveiled in 2007 along with the founding of the Open Handset Alliance: a consortium of hardware, software, and telecommunication companies devoted to advancing open standards for mobile devices. The first Android-powered phone was sold in October 2008.

Android is open source and Google releases the code under the Apache License. This open source code and permissive licensing allows the software to be freely modified and distributed by device manufacturers, wireless carriers and enthusiast developers. Additionally, Android has a large community of developers writing applications ("apps") that extend the functionality of devices, written primarily in a customized version of the Java programming language. In October 2012, there were approximately 700,000 apps available for Android, and the estimated number of applications downloaded from Google Play, Android's primary app store, was 25 billion.

These factors have allowed Android to become the world's most widely used smartphone platform and the software of choice for technology companies who require a low-cost, customizable, lightweight operating system for high tech devices without developing one from scratch. As a result, despite being primarily designed for phones and tablets, it has seen additional applications on televisions, games consoles and other electronics. Android's open nature has further encouraged a large community of developers and enthusiasts to use the open source code as a foundation for community-driven projects, which add new features for advanced users or bring Android to devices which were officially released running other operating systems."

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you and your family and we hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.  

I want to apologize for the lack of postings the last several weeks - in addition to the normal hustle and bustle of the holidays, I had some major back issues.  So while I was in Boston for the holidays, I finally said "uncle" and gave in and had a necessary medical procedure on my back.  As a result, and much to my dismay, I was unable to spend anytime on the computer (not an easy task for me) as most of you can imagine.....

But I'm pleased to say that I am finally feeling better and look forward to getting back to blogging and teaching...

We hope you will enjoy this little break and we look forward to seeing all of you who are currently taking classes - back when classes resume next week - and it will be week 7 of the current series...

For those of you who are planning to take the next series that will begin the week of February 11th and continue into May (with breaks in February and April during school vacations)..  Registration for the new series will be held at the SA Offices one month from today on Monday, February 4th, so mark your calendars.. 

So enjoy the "refreshing" weather and stay warm... and if you have a topic for our blog or for a class that we should do, I'd love to hear from you...so email me anytime: cherie_houston@hotmail.com

Basic Music Terminology

Basic Music Terminology ...

There is some terminology that you probably need to be aware of as you learn to use music on your computer or any digital device...

·        MP3* - a file format used for compressing audio files to roughly 1/12th their original size.

·        RIPPING - Basically this is the function of  ”copying” your files  – in this case a music album and individual song tracks onto your computer’s hard drive (this is also known as encoding)

·        MEDIA PLAYER - an application that is used to play all types of media (music, video radio, etc.). Windows Media Player, iTunes, VLC. RealPlayer and QuickTime are all examples of media players.

·        BURN – Basically this is the function of ”pasting” your file – in this case music – onto the CD and or DVD. 

*Note: When we save to MP3 format, you typically won’t notice any reduction in sound quality, but , if you want to ensure you have the highest quality you should import the music again from the original source with the original format, and then make a copy and convert the copy to mp3 formatting. 

What is a "Read It Later" service?

Whether you use your computer, tablet, laptop, eReader or other mobile device - such as a Smartphone or iPhone to "surf the web" we all have the opportunity to read numerous articles, watch videos and other information from friends & family on Facebook, Twitter or maybe Pinterest; or you get News Feeds from your favorite media websites... BUT you don't have time to read or view them all now..  

That's how a "Read it later" service or app can help.  These "apps" saves the information - link - etc. so you can view the article, photo, video later at your convenience (yes-this is also cloud computing).  So with thee services, you establish an account, meaning you have to have a username & password and that allows you to access "your account" and whatever you've saved... 

Many of these services are free (including my 2 personal favorites) but some are not - but they all allow us to  manage articles and other media that we want to access later...  Apps for these services can be downloaded to your computer, tablet or other mobile device and they are very very easy to use..... 

If you have a Pinterest or Twitter account they also offer this service and Facebook will offer it very soon....

I've been playing with 2 different services and really like them both - and yes, both are free

Evernote is my personal top choice abs quite honestly the one I now use daily, because I can store anything I want to remember including quick reminder notes (my family and associates will tell you I'm a constant list maker so this is great for me), but I can save anything I want to view or read later.. www.evernote.com

Pocket (formerly known as Read it Later) is my 2nd favorite and worked wonderfully.... www.getpocket.com

Others you may want to check out...

Instapaper, website is:  www.instapaper.com - Free and paid versions

SnipIt, website is: www.snip.it/#welcome - Free 

Side note... For those of you with tablets and other "Android based devices" some of my students in Arizona are loving this new free app - called "CRACKLE" which is a totally legitimate app offering free streaming of TV shows and movies.  I found that it doesn't have all TV shows, but there are lots of old favorites and some of the new ones as well; same goes for movies...  But again, it's free so a great way to play with "streaming" before you move on to one of the paid services, such as Netflick or HBO... so you might want to give it a try... I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the picture...  I don't think this available for Apple devices yet, but keep checking back - no doubt it will be...

 

Check it out: www.crackle.com

Cloud Computing & Music

This is a note I received from Bob Donovan who applauds using Cloud Computing for all of his music... 

"My music is stored in iTunes on my computer. But I've also put it up in Amazon's music cloud (basically because of the Kindle that I own).  

Currently I have 50,595 songs in the cloud. On my computer these songs take up 224 GB. I'm paying Amazon $24.99 per year for this storage. So far, I'm really pleased with it. It's not as simple or beautiful as iTunes, but it works great and I don't think there's any limit.  

Naturally, I normally have to use the search function to find an artist or song or album and that seems to work fine online. 

I also downloaded Amazon's picture storage app, but haven't tried to use it yet-will keep you posted" 

Once you pay for an "app" you can download that app to multiple devices, such as your smartphone - kindle - tablet - etc...How does it know, because Amazon (like other companis) stores the information in your Amazon Account.

To check these "apps" out, or all that Amazon offers, here is the link to the Amazon App Store for Androids...(or you can just go to www.Amazon.com) 

http://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149011

Cloud Computing - Continued Discussion...

Several times earlier this year (in Feb. & May) we discussed Cloud Computing, but things are changing and there are more and more companies offering us the ability to store on their clouds (which means on their servers) So- the discussion continues...

There is no doubt that cloud computing is here to stay.  Many of us have been using "cloud computing" for years without realizing it - If you use a hotmail, yahoo, AOL or Gmail account" for your emails, you go to the specific company's website, via the internet, enter your user name & password (from any computer in the world) and your email messages appear. You can then write/compose new emails - all the while the computer you are sitting at, is simply a vehicle allowing us to see and type - but all of our emails are actually being stored and/or written on/from their computers....hence "cloud computing"

Today many of these same email vendors are providing us with additional free space, so that in addition to our emails we can also store our documents, photos, movies & music in another part of our "email account" - like having an additional file cabinet...  Why would we do that?

Well, like your emails, you can access any of these items stored on their "cloud" when you are away from your computer (home or work) because remember it's stored on their computer - in their cloud...

If you have multiple devices - you may want to "sync" them, so that when you enter information on one device, it appears on all your devices...   

For example:

You have a Windows based computer, a Smartphone & a tablet - if you have a Gmail account and use the Google Drive Cloud - whatever is entered in these on one computer shows up on the rest

Or You have an iPhone, iPad and MacBook - by simply having an iCloud ID and password (and the iCloud ID can be your existing email address w/hotmail, Gmail, etc..) you can select in the settings of your iCloud what you want to share among your devices-Photos, emails, contacts, calendars, etc..

Or maybe you have a Windows PC, an Android Smartphone and a MacBook - you could simply choose to have the Apple iCloud on all your devices to share your music, data & moves...

And the combination goes on and one..

If you have been using hotmail/live/msn accounts - you have "SkyDrive" which is their free cloud computing for us to store data and photos - but anyone can go to SkyDrive.com and download the app and receive a certain amount of storage for FREE - Gmail users have the free Picasa Web Albums and Google Drive cloud; and again anyone can use this or Apple/MAC's iCloud or any of the other hundreds of companies... most allow some free storage - others charge an annual or monthly fee - some based on the amount of storage, some are by computer - it varies..

Shop around and remember you can use multiple "cloud services"; I know some people who store all their music in iTunes synced with the iCloud; and use their SkyDrive for their documents; maybe DropBox for their data from work; Google Drive w/Picasa Web Albums for their photos and Carbonite, so everything is backed up every time they are on the computer (no limit) but this service doesn't allow you to use a syncing feature (yet)!

The list of companies offering cloud computing is growing every day.  Each has their own features, it depends on what you are looking for... I always think it's better to begin with the FREE services while you learn, and once you've mastered that and understand what it is you are using, then you can always switch to or add another service if needed...Here is the link to an article recently published about some of the popular "cloud computing companies" -

http://www.consumer-rankings.com/online-backup