What’s a Keyboard?

One of my favorite Star Trek movie moments came when Kirk,Bones,Spock and Scotty found themselves back on earth saving some whales in San Francisco. Scotty was in need of some computer data and found an old Apple Mac in a lab. He picked up the mouse and began to speak commands into it. Of course Spock was quick to point out to Scotty the error of his ways and suggested that he may need to use the keyboard to enter his commands. At this Scotty mumbles, “How Quaint!”

Well, since Bill Gates was knee high to a microprocessor, computers and keyboards have been synonymous. We no longer teach “typing” or even “word processing”, we teach “keyboarding.” While the old QWERTY pad is not going away soon, several other ways of interacting with computers are quickly developing.

Most of us have been caught in “Voice Mail Hell” trying to communicate via phone with our bank or other large company. No longer must we “Press 2 to speak with a customer service associate” we can just say “2”. Voice recognition has come a long way. I can “tell” my cell phone to call home. Many high-end cars allow you to change radio stations and make other adjustments by voice.

A few weeks ago, Microsoft demonstrated a new concept in interacting with a computer. The device has no keyboard and looks like a high tech coffee table with the screen serving as the table top. The touch sensitive screen allows the user to manipulate virtual items. For example, the screen might display a pile of photographs just retrieved from a digital camera. Using your hands you can move them into piles or make each photo larger or smaller. Even the process of downloading the photos from the camera to the computer is simplified. You just place the camera on the “table” and the photos appear on the screen. Place them on the icon of the printer and they get printed.

One demonstration showed how one would order from Amazon.com. You select your books and place them in a virtual pile. The you place your credit card on the table top screen and using your hands push the pile on top of the credit card. The books are billed to the card and sent to a predetermined mailing address.

At one time many of these non-traditional ways of interacting with computers or other machines were thought to be only of interest to the physically challenged. For sure, text recognition and speech synthesis for a blind person is awesome. For a person with limited use of arms or legs, the ability to instruct, via voice commands, the TV to go on or the air conditioner to change temperature, provides tremendous benefit. But these technologies will continue to be part of everyday life and promise to make the venerable keyboard as archaic as IBM punch cards.

Setting up home wireless network is easy and inexpensive

The lazy days of summer are here. It is a time when many of us move outside for the next three months. Grilling on our decks or sitting out and enjoying the evening breezes. Just as you have been able to take your telephone conversations with you to the back yard or deck using a cordless phone, you can also take your laptop as well. Setting up a home wireless computer network is really quite easy and inexpensive. Even if you don’t venture outside, having access to the internet in any room of the house and having multiple family members share the single connection is a real plus.

A home wireless network consists of a small device that connects directly to your cable or DSL modem. It is called a Wireless Network Router. Instead of maintaining the connection to all the computers in the house over wires, it actually “broadcasts” to these computers within about 100 feet of the device using high frequency radio waves. Each computer must be equipped with a wireless network card. So for most of us mortals who live in standard size houses, the 100 ft. radius encompasses all the rooms in the house and the back yard.

Each computer using this wireless network signal must have the appropriate add-on hardware. Often laptops come with a built in card. There are also adapters that plug into the USB port of your desktop computer.

You can set up a home network that includes the wireless router and three cards or add-on devices for three computers for a total of about $125.00. All computer stores and the major appliance retailers have the equipment for sale. Two of the most popular brands are Lynksys and D-Link.

The cost of the equipment is a function of the speed that it can send and receive data and the distance it can broadcast. For most homes look for a label on the device that reads “802.11g.” This should work fine, unless you are a power user sending high definition video around your home on this network.

Be sure that you follow the directions to “secure” your network. A person driving down your street with the proper equipment could eavesdrop on your connection and capture data that might have your banking or other private information. If you live in the city where apartments or homes are close together, a non secure network could provide free internet access to several of your neighbors. The only way you would know is that your connection might get very slow.

Oh yes, both Cincinnati Bell ZoomTown™ and Time Warner Road Runner™ will provide and set up a wireless network for you for an extra monthly fee. When I last looked, the cost of doing it yourself would be recouped in about 24 months.

So break out the brews, the hotdogs and the laptop and go wireless this summer.

What's in the Palm of my hand?

As promised last week, we are going to take a little “tour” of my Palm™. No, we aren’t looking at my lifeline or checking my fingerprints with the folks at the witness protection program. We are going to examine the software I carry with me almost everywhere I go on my three-year-old Palm Tungsten /e ™.

For sure the main functions I use most often are my address book and calendar, but I do have several other applications available. Since most PDAs have a small slot into which you can insert a SD memory card (the same used in many digital cameras) they can hold lots of information.

For example, my Palm™ has an electronic photograph album. The photos look good and clear but they are displayed on a small 2” x 2” screen. The number of photos you can store depends on the size of the memory card. You can expect hundreds on a single 1 gigabit SD card.

Since I am seriously “spelling impaired “ one of the most often used feature on my Palm™ is the complete Merriam Webster Dictionary and Franklin Thesaurus. A quick tap of the screen and I can look up spellings and definitions.

Another favorite feature is my AvantGo® software. Each morning when I synch my Palm™ with my desktop computer the front page of the current New York Times is loaded. I also get stories from Wired Magazine. During the day, if I have a few minutes while waiting for an appointment, or the barber, or the doctor, or a plane, I can read the latest news. The AvantGo® subscription is free.

I have a small QWERTY keyboard that folds up into a case the size of the Palm™ itself. With that and my Palm™ I can use mini versions of MS Word and Excel. The documents created on the Palm™ can be loaded and edited on to my desktop PC and visa versa. I would not suggest writing “Gone with the Wind” but for taking notes in a meeting it is great.

I have some specialized things as well. Since I am a frustrated musician, I carry a program called Tuning Fork. The program plays out perfect musical pitches. I have another one that displays chord charts for almost every stringed instrument from guitar to violin.

While I don’t have it, many PDAs can receive and send Email. This feature requires a subscription to a wireless Internet provider. Many high end cell phones have PDA features built in. Just last week, Palm’s co-founder, Jeff Hawkins, announced a new Palm™ product called the Foleo®. Larger than the hand-helds but smaller then a lap top, the Foleo® adds still another option. No matter what PDA device you choose, you will find hundreds of applications that can run on it. Some are frivolous. Others are tremendous time savers.

One common denominator for those who start using a PDA for the fist time is that you will hate it for the first week, tolerate it for the second week and not know how you lived without it by the third week.

Don't Leave Home Without It!

As much of a geek as I am and given to acquiring most anything that is electronic, I was slow to adopt using a PDA or Personal Digital Assistant. A PDA is a very small special purpose computer designed to make your life more organized and efficient. Frankly I was very happy with my little paper Day Planner™ and over the years amassed quite a pile of them in the top drawer of my desk, some of them going back into the 1970s. Today, I truly can not operate without my Palm™ PDA.

A PDA can perform several functions. This week we will discuss the basic features like the calendar and address book. Next week we will look at some neat expanded features like on line newspapers, picture albums and specialized software.

There are two main types of PDAs. The Palm™ operating software-based models and those that use scaled down Windows™ operating system. I use the Palm™ but most of the features are very similar across platforms.

My PDA is a Palm™ Tungsten Model /e and is about three years old and cost about $125.00. It is about the size of a pack of cigarettes but only about ½ the thickness. Don’t let the size fool you, it is a very powerful tool. Right now I have all my contacts in the address book. There are over 1000 different names with telephone and fax numbers, email addresses, home and business mailing addresses. Some entries even have birthdays, kid’s and spouse’s names and other personal information. Of course all is searchable with the touch of a button. All entries can be edited and updated.

The calendar can be displayed in day, week, month or even year format. After entering an appointment in the calendar you can ask the PDA to remind you with an audible alarm a few minutes or a few hours before the event. It can remind you of birthdays or other special events from data in your address book and remind you a few days in advance to send a card. For example my Palm™ reminds me of my wife’s and kid’s birthdays five days in advance.

The small video screen can display full color images and text. The size of the text can be adjusted so even my aging eyes can read it easily. The device is battery powered and is charged up each day when I “synch” it with the computer. All the information `contained in my Palm™ is also available on my desk top PC. Each morning I connect, or “synch,” my Palm™ to my PC and the two devices exchange information. So if I added an appointment into my Palm™ it now shows up on the calendar on my PC and visa versa. If there is a conflict it alerts me. If I added or modified an entry in the address book on my Palm™, say a new telephone number, that number is now also updated on my PC.

Having all of this information at my fingertips is a great time saver. Gone are the days of pencil scratched paper address books with old telephone numbers crossed out and illegible addresses and zip codes.

In the next entry I will take you on a tour of my personal model and tell what software I carry in the palm of my hand (or at perhaps in my pocket.)

Hidden Electricity "Vampires"

In the last installment we looked at how simply changing out some of your incandescent light bulbs with new energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs can save hundreds of dollars annually. It can also result in less overall power demand and a significant reduction in the need to burn fossil fuel at generating plants. Less use of scarce resources and less pollution in our air are both very important.

This week we will look at some less obvious devices that may seem at first to be very insignificant but actually consume substantial amounts of electricity over time. We call them Electricity “Vampires.”

One of the negative byproducts of our digital age is the proliferation of devices that require small power supplies that draw current 24/7. Most electric devices of years past consumed current only when they were actually being used. This is no longer the case. For example, even when your TV is turned off, it most likely is consuming between 5 and 15 watts of electricity per hour. This keeps the clock set; the favorite channel selection updated, and allows for an almost instant picture when you do turn it “on.”

Look around your house. I bet you can find a dozen or more small power supplies plugged into outlets. The cell phone or iPod charger, the telephone answering machine, the wireless telephone hand set, the electric screw drive charger and stove timer, all consume small amounts of electricity. When you add them up and figure that most other houses on your street, in your town and in your state all have many of the same appliances, the amount of electricity being used is significant.

It is not practical to turn off some of these devices since doing so will often cause memory loss and the need to re-program them. For those of you without teenagers this can take hours. In other cases, just unplugging chargers when not in use is a good start.

Here are a few other tips:
- If you are going away for three or more days, turn off your hot water heater
- Put motion sensors on lights in hallways, garages etc.
- Use only the amount of light you need for the task at hand.
- Open those windows and use a fan instead of A/C

The bottom line is that energy conservation is a cumulative thing. If everyone does a few things, the impact can be significant.

Save Big and Be Green with Compact Fluorescents

Much attention has been given lately to global warming and the need for all of us, especially those of us in the United State and other industrialized countries, to conserve resources and reduce our contribution to global pollution. If you’re like me, when I hear the reports or read the accounts in newspapers or magazines, it still seems like something that needs to be addressed by someone else. Many of us have the tendency to think that what we do individually makes little difference. That of course is not true. Over the next two weeks I will give you some suggestions for saving electricity thus reducing pollution from our local coal fired generators. At the same time I’ll give you an added incentive, since you will not only be saving energy but be able to put a few bucks back in your pocket.

In any house there are visible and invisible consumers of electricity. Some will surprise you and you will be amazed at the amount of energy (and cash) you can save with just a few changes.

Among the most visible consumers of energy is lighting. Let’s look at household lighting and how to accomplish some significant savings.

I checked with my friends at Duke Energy to arrive at an average residential cost per kilowatt hour. In other words, how much does it cost to use 1000 watts of electricity for one hour? The answer, in the Greater Cincinnati Area including Indiana, but not Kentucky, is 10 cents. I will use that number to compute the cost savings throughout this article. If you don’t live here you will need to find out from your electric provider your KW/H cost.

With that in mind I did a little auditing of my own habits to see what impact I could have on reducing my own energy consumption and what that might mean for my utility bill. I have already changed out the bulbs in several lighting fixtures with highly efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. These new bulbs come in a variety of sizes with varying light outputs. Some can be used with dimmer switches. (Be sure to look on the package since not all will work with dimmers.)

Currently you can purchase compact fluorescent light bulbs that provide the same amount of light (or lumens) as a standard incandescent bulbs but use a fraction of electricity. Those bulbs will last 10 times longer. Let’s do the math. If you use a 100 watt bulb in a lamp in the family room and it is turned on an average of five hours per day (more in the winter, less in the summer) that will work out to 1,825 hours per year. If you use the regular incandescent bulb, it will consume 182,500 watts in one year ( 182 kwhrs) costing you $18.00. If you replace that incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb using only 23 watts per hour, you will pay $4.00 for the same amount of light for an annual savings on that single lamp of $14.00

If you look around your home, I bet you can find a dozen or more lighting fixtures that can be changed out with little effort and a modest expense. Even figuring in the higher cost to purchase each compact fluorescent light bulb, you will have a net cash savings at the end of the year. Each year thereafter will save you more than $150 if you change out 10 or 12 bulbs. The reduction in electric demand of course will lessen the need for Duke to burn coal to make electricity in the first place.

In the next post we will look at some less visible electricity “vampires.”

Getting together with old friends

Last winter I finally got around to a project that I had been promising myself for several years that I would complete. Over the past 45 years, like many persons of my age, I had collected a fairly robust collection of records. Not CDs, tapes, cassettes or even mp3 files, but real grooved platters fashioned of black vinyl. Some even had a large hole in the center. If you don’t know what that means, ask someone over the age of 45.

In my case, some of the records had been re-released in CD format, but most were not available and I am a cheapskate at heart. For example, my favorite Christmas album of all time was one done by Stan Kenton and no longer available except for some astronomical amount on eBay. Some other classical piano albums actually recorded by Arthur Rubinstein were also not available on CD. Even though we still do have a turntable connected to our stereo, playing one record at a time was just too much of a hassle. So the records were stacked in a corner of the basement gathering dust and some other crud associated with benign neglect storage.

If you find this scenario ringing true for you, I may have a solution. You can easily make CDs or MP3 copies of your records with little effort and some inexpensive software. All you need is a working turntable, a computer that has a CD burner installed and some software.

I used software from DAK www.dak.com. Don’t let the garish web site discourage you. The software really was easy to use and made very good copies of the records. It even had settings to get rid of scratches and other imperfections on the records. There is one setting that allows you to identify each blemish and clean it up one by one. This was a real hassle and I soon opted for the automatic version. The latter does cut down a bit on the audio fidelity, but it provided a clean, clear copy of the vinyl record. For about $70 you get a pre-amplifier/mixer that you can plug into your computer and the software needed to make your copies. If you need a turntable, there is one available at extra cost. I can’t recommend the turntable since I did not purchase one from DAK.

There are other companies like Hammacher Schlemmer www.hammacher.com that have stand-alone copying machines. They are pricey, i.e. $400, but they do a good job. Since you most likely will do this task only once, unless you are a collector of vintage records, I question why someone would spend so much on a single purpose machine.

If you don’t want to do it yourself or you only have a few records to copy there are services that will do this for you. Locally, DLFmusic will provide this service for prices starting at $14.00 for each copy. www.dlfmusic.com. I have not used this company and from looking at the web site I would think it is most likely based in some basement. So I don’t have an opinion on the quality of their work. You might ask for references or just try one record first.

One of the by-products of doing it yourself comes in the fact that you have to play each album as you make the copy. It was really fun to listen to some music that I had not heard in many years. For example, I have one of the early Simon & Garrfunkel albums when they were performing under the moniker Tom & Jerry. Last January and February, each evening I would choose an album to copy and in about one hour, I had a CD version and some good memories.

So next fall, why not get reacquainted with old musical friends and invite them into the digital age?