Stick It! STAND

Stick It!

by Alison

Name the variety of things you have used as a typing stand. The wall, with paper taped to it, is probably on your list – at least until the corners curl and you have to use more tape…and pull paint off the wall. My office phone used to sort of work. It would prop things up at least. Maybe you got one of those fancy ones that hangs off the monitor. Sure stinks if you need to type off of something that isn’t paper though. And of course there are the traditional typing stands that have a secure way to hold things down…which is inevitably in your way as you type.

What if you had a stand that sat upright next to you but didn’t require a holder on it? Try out Justick, $29.98 on Solutions.com,  and you will get exactly that. Things just stick…hence the name. The surface of the stand is electro-adhesion, meaning anything flat that you put on it sticks to it. The patented surface literally grabs the object. And no, it is not static electricity. Using 4 AA batteries, energy literally flows through the Justick. And batteries should last you about 18 months. So no worries. Keep those documents, pictures or articles upright as you need them and don’t hassle with makeshift stands anymore.

Stick It! » Coolest Gadgets

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Why You Don’t Need to Install a 3rd-Party Firewall

Why You Don’t Need to Install a Third-Party Firewall (And When You Do)

Firewalls are an important piece of security software, and someone is always trying to sell you a new one. However, Windows has come with its own solid firewall since Windows XP SP2, and it’s more than good enough.

You also don’t need a full Internet security suite. All you really need to install on Windows 7 is an antivirus — and Windows 8 finally comes with an antivirus.

Why You Need a Firewall

The primary function of a firewall is to block unrequested incoming connections. Firewalls can block different types of connections intelligently — for example, they can allow access to network file shares and other services when your laptop is connected to your home network, but not when it’s connected to a public Wi-Fi network in a coffee shop.

A firewall helps block connections to potentially vulnerable services and controls access to network services — particularly file shares, but also other types of services — that should only be accessible on trusted networks.

Before Windows XP SP2, when the Windows Firewall was upgraded and enabled by default, Windows XP systems connected directly to the Internet became infected after four minutes on average. Worms like the Blaster worm tried to connect directly to everyone. Because it didn’t have a firewall, Windows let the Blaster worm right in.

A firewall would have protected against this, even if the underlying Windows software as vulnerable. Even if a modern version of Windows is vulnerable to such a worm, it will be extremely difficult to infect the computer because the firewall blocks all such incoming traffic.

Why the Windows Firewall is Good Enough

The Windows Firewall does the exact same job of blocking incoming connections as a third-party firewall. Third-party firewalls like the one included with Norton may pop up more often, informing you that they’re working and asking for your input, but the Windows firewall is constantly doing its thankless job in the background.

It’s enabled by default and should still enabled unless you’ve disabled it manually or installed a third-party firewall. You can find its interface under Windows Firewall in the Control Panel.

When a program wants to receive incoming connections, it must create a firewall rule or pop up a dialog and prompt you for permission.

When You Would Want a Third-Party Firewall

By default, the Windows firewall only does what’s really important: block incoming connections. It has some more advanced features, but they’re in a hidden, harder-to-use interface.

For example, most third-party firewalls allow you to easily control which applications on your computer can connect to the Internet. They’ll pop up a box when an application first initiates an outgoing connection. This allows you to control which applications on your computer can access the Internet, blocking certain applications from connecting.

Power users may love this feature, but it’s probably not a good feature for the average user. They’ll be charged with identifying applications that should be allowed to connect and may block background-updater processes from connecting, preventing their software from updating and leaving it vulnerable. It’s also a very noisy task, as you’ll have to confirm a prompt box every time a new application wants to connect. If you really don’t trust a program to connect to the Internet, perhaps you shouldn’t be running the program on your computer in the first place.

Nevertheless, if you want outgoing-connection management, you’ll probably want a third-party firewall. They also offer an interface where you can more easily view statistics, firewall logs, and other information.

For most users, using a third-party firewall just introduces unnecessary complexity.

Advanced Windows Firewall Features

The Windows firewall actually has more features than you might expect, though its interface isn’t as friendly:

• Windows offers an advanced firewall configuration interface where you can create advanced firewall rules. You can create rules that block certain programs from connecting to the Internet or only allow a program to communicate with specific addresses.
• You can use a third-party tool to extend the Windows firewall, forcing it to prompt you for permission each time a new program wants to connect to the Internet.

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A third-party firewall is a power-user tool — not an essential piece of security software. The Windows firewall is solid and trustworthy. While people can quibble about the Microsoft Security Essentials/Windows Defender virus detection rate, the Windows firewall does just as good a job of blocking incoming connections as other firewalls.

SharING DAta & Files Between Android & PC

How to Share Data and Files Between Your Android Phone and PC

Android doesn’t have an iTunes-like desktop program, so the process of syncing your data may not be as obvious as it is with an iPhone.  However, you don’t need a desktop syncing app — even iPhone users are leaving iTunes behind.

While you can move files back and forth with a USB cable or wireless network connection, the ideal way to keep data in sync between your devices is by relying on online services that do the work for you.

Transfer Files Manually to Your Phone

If you do want to transfer files the old-fashioned way, you can copy files directly to your Android device. This is ideal if you want to copy music, videos, or other media files to your Android phone or tablet. After copying the files over, they should be automatically appear in your Android media player app. You can also use a file manager app to view them.

• USB Cables: Connect your Android phone directly to your computer using the USB cable you use to charge it. It will appear as a new drive in the Computer window, where you can copy files back and forth like you would from a USB flash drive. Older Android devices may require you to pull down the notification bar on your phone and tap the Turn on USB storage option to make the Android’s storage accessible on the PC after plugging it in.

• Wireless File Transfers: If you want to transfer files wirelessly, you have a wide variety of options. AirDroid is one of the most convenient. Install the AirDroid app and you’ll be able to access your phone from a web browser, giving you the ability to copy files back and forth. You can also set up Windows networking or create an FTP server to allow your phone to access your PC’s storage.

• Cloud Storage: Copying files the old-fashioned way is best if they are very large — for example, if you want to copy a video file to your Android phone. However, transferring small files and keeping files in sync is easier if you use cloud storage. Whether you use Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, or another cloud storage service, you can drop the file into the cloud storage folder on your computer and open the associated app on your phone. This will give you access to the file without having to transfer it to your phone manually or take up any of your phone’s internal storage.

There are third-party syncing apps that try to replicate that iTunes experience with an Android phone, but you don’t need them.

Sync Your Browser Data

Want all your browser bookmarks, open tabs, history settings, and other data to follow you between your phone and computer? Just enable the sync option in your web browser, install the appropriate browser on your Android phone, and activate the sync option there, too.

• Google Chrome: Log into Chrome on your PC with your Google account and use the Google Chrome browser on Android.
• Mozilla Firefox: Enable Firefox Sync on your PC and use Firefox for Android.
• Opera: If you’re an Opera user, you can enable Opera Link and use Opera for Android.

Users of Internet Explorer or Safari don’t have an official syncing solution. There are unofficial sync apps available, but we haven’t tested them.

Get Music On Your Phone

You could connect a USB cable and copy all your music files to your phone, but that won’t be ideal if you have too much music to fit on your phone. Instead, try using Google Music Manager, which will upload a copy of your music files to Google’s servers for free. You can then use Google’s Play Music app on your phone to listen to your entire music collection if you have an Internet connection, or to cache music on your device to make it accessible offline.

You may also want to try using a third-party music apps, instead. Read more about ways to get music on your Android without iTunes here.

Use Online Services

In the old days, people synchronized their palm pilots and old smartphones with their computers to keep their contacts, calendar events, and other data in sync between their PC and their handheld device. This isn’t the way things are done anymore — in fact, you would have trouble finding a software solution that let you sync your data in this way.

Instead, data is synced by relying on online (“cloud”) services, and Android does this by default. Your Android’s contacts and calendar events are automatically synchronized with Gmail’s Contacts and Google Calendar, where you can access them from a web browser by logging in with the same Google account. Any changes you make to the Contacts or Calendar from your browser will replicate themselves on your phone.

Instead of worrying about synchronizing data back and forth, look for services that have solid Android apps and useful websites or desktop apps and use them to keep your data in sync across your devices. For example, it’s much easier to use the popular Evernote (or another note-taking app, such as Google’s own Google Keep) to keep your notes in sync across your devices than it is to take text notes on your Android and copy them back and forth using a USB connection.

Assuming you use the same services on your PC and your phone, keeping their data in sync should be a snap. This part should happen automatically.

How to Share Data and Files Between Your Android Phone and PC

Google Cloud Print

I cannot recommend Google Cloud Print highly enough.  The only requirement is a Google account and Google Chrome on the computer connected to a printer to which you want to print.

How (and Why) to Get Started with Google Cloud Print

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could print from any of your devices (desktops, laptops, phones, tablets) to any of your printers, at any time? Read on as we explore Google Cloud Print, a fantastic way to enable printing on all your devices big and small.

Why Do I Want to Do This?

The best workflow and computer tweaks make your life easier, and that’s certainly true of setting up Google Cloud Print. Once you have learned about the system and configured it, you’ll be able to print to all your devices without a bunch of annoying go-between steps.

In other words, there will be no more “OK, I looking at this file on my Android phone, so I’ll save it to my phone, copy it to my Dropbox account, go over to the computer and get it from Dropbox, and then send it to my home printer.” There will be only “OK, I’ll print this.” and the Cloud Print system will delivery it right from your phone (wherever you are in the world) to the printer you’ve selected.

Easy printing from a desktop computer has long been a cinch; Google Cloud Print brings that same ease of one-click printing to everything else in your stable of electronic gadgets.

What Do I Need?

To use Google Cloud Print you need three primary things:

• A Google Account.
• A Cloud Print-enabled printer or computer capable of running Chrome connected to the printer.
• A device capable of printing to Cloud Print (e.g. an Android phone, iOS device, laptop, or tablet).

The glue that binds everything together is your Google Account and the Cloud Print servers. What is bound together depends on your personal setup. If you have a newer Cloud Print-enabled printer (check the list here) you won’t need a computer to act as a print server.

If you don’t have a Cloud Print-enabled printer, you’ll need a computer that is on and connected to your printer during the times you want to print (if you have an always on home-server, now would be an idea time to configure it to print to your home printer so you can use it instead of your desktop).

The final component is the device you wish to configure to print to your Cloud Printer. This device (or devices) will most likely be mobile because, after all, your permanently located devices like home office computers and such are likely already configured to print to your home computer via traditional methods.

How Do I Configure My Printers?

The first order of business is getting the actual physical printer online and part of your Cloud Print network.

If you have a Cloud Print-enabled printer, the best way to configure it is to refer to the manual–look for a Getting Started with Cloud Print section or the like. Setup should be as simple as plugging in a few items in the configuration panel of your printer.

If you don’t have a Cloud Print-enabled printer, there are a few extra (although trivial) steps to complete. In order to complete them, you will need to be on a computer that is 1) on when you want to print 2) has Google Chrome installed and 3) can print to the printer you wish to print to remotely.

Note: Before we proceed, we highly recommend going into the Devices and Printers menu on your machine and removing any old printers.

We, for example, had several phantom printers installed that were no longer in service in our home office. If you don’t remove them, they’ll end up being listed in your Google Cloud Print account as useless clutter.

First, you need to enable Google Cloud Print in your installation of Google Chrome. This will allow Chrome to act as a print server for the Cloud Print service and send documents to the printers accessible to the computer on which it is enabled.

Click on the Menu button in the upper right hand corner of the Chrome interface and select Settings. Within the Settings menu scroll down to the bottom and click on “Show Advanced Options”. When the advanced options are displayed, scroll down until you see “Google Cloud Print”.

If you are not signed into your Google Account within Chrome, the button will say “Sign in to Google Cloud Print”. If you are already signed in (e.g. you’ve enabled syncing for this installation of Chrome), the button will read “Add printers”. Sign in if necessary and then click “Add printers”; in addition, take a moment to ensure that “Continue running background apps…” under the System section is checked to ensure your Cloud Printer server stays active even when you’re not actively using Chrome.

After you hit “Add printers”, you will be presented with a confirmation screen that indicates you don’t actually have to do this step to use the Cloud Printer service. That’s true, you could use Cloud Printer strictly to print PDF files to your Google Account–that’s an awesome feature, but it’s not our goal today. Our goal is to get physical printouts from our printer.

Go ahead and click the blue “Add printer(s)” button to continue. This step automatically adds all the printers available on your computer to your Google Cloud Print account. It’s important to only do this on one computer that can access your printers–otherwise you’ll end up with a mess of duplicate printers listed in your account.

Once you have added all your printers you can view/manage them by visiting this link:

There are two things worth noting in the screenshot above. First, the “Share” button and second, the “Owned by me” flags beside all the printers we just added into the system. Cloud Print makes it as easy to share printers with people as it is to share documents in Google Docs. Rather than set up some sort of complex networking arrangement, you can simply give your friend’s Google Cloud Print account permission to use your printer. Printers people share with you will appear here but will be flagged “Owned by [Friend's Name Here]“.

How Do I Print to My Cloud Printers?

Now that your printers are Cloud-enabled, we have to attend to the most important business of all: getting documents from your devices to your printers.

If you’re printing from a Google App of any sort, life couldn’t be easier. Whether you’re using the Google Drive app on Android, or Gmail on iOS, or just logged into the web interface for Google Docs from a remote computer, you can print directly from Google Apps into the Google Cloud Printer service. For example, here are some screen shots of me sending my daughter’s chore check list from Google Drive, via my Android phone, to the printer upstairs–no special add on software or tweaks required:

All I had to do was open the document, click the menu in the upper right corner, select “Print”, select the printer, and then review the print options before clicking “Print”. By the time I walked up the stairs to retrieve the printout, it was already sitting in the tray.

When you’re not printing directly from a Google App or an instance of Google Chrome with account syncing turned on, you’ll need a helper application of some sort. There are helper applications available for Android, iOS, Windows, and OS X that extend the print functionality beyond Chrome/Google Apps to any print-capable application on the system (or serve as a sort of mobile print platform where you can open documents from your device and send them to the Cloud Printer).

You can check out the list of apps in the Google Cloud Print Supported Apps section and grab the appropriate app for your system. If you’re curious how these apps work, you can check out our tutorial demonstrating how to use the third party Cloud Print app on Android here. Update: There is now an official Google Cloud Print application for Android.

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Once you’ve completed the simple configuration process, the potential of the Cloud Print system is vast. You can share a printer with a friend or colleague who routinely needs to send you physical documents, you can set up a shared photo printer at your parents’ house so you and your siblings can automatically send photos of the grandchildren, and, at minimum, you’ll never have to dink around with trying to get a file off your mobile device and onto your remote printer again.

How (and Why) to Get Started with Google Cloud Print