Apple is notorious for introducing new models each year around the same time.  September brings a new iPod model.  June usually has millions of people lining up to buy the next generation iPhone.   With the iPad having been released in April 2010 and iPad2 released in March 2011, now may not be the time to go out and buy a new iPad 2.  Apple already has a media event scheduled for March 7th.

A used model at a good discount may be a different story but we’ve seen no indication of a price change for the iPad3.  Have patience, your spending dollar may go farther in just a few weeks.

iPad3 rumors include increased screen resolution, a faster processor, maybe more ram, a front facing high definition camera for those who like to video chat and 4G LTE speeds.  There is even rumor this new hardware will be capable of running and may come installed with Siri!

Say you have 100 friends who each have 100 friends.  Of course there will be some overlapping of friends but you’re talking 10,000 people right there.  Now throw in the “popular” person who has 2,000 plus friends and assume each one of your 100 friends has a popular friend like that and 10,000 quickly becomes a much bigger number.

Much bigger like SEVEN MILLION!

A study by Pew Internet where 269 voluntary participants allowed their Facebook usage to be downloaded showed the participants averaged 359 Facebook friends.  Interestingly the study says the overall average for Facebook users is 245 friends.  Of the 269 who participated, their “Friends of Friends” averaged 156,569 connections!  The profile with the most Friends of Friends topped out over 7,821,772!  The study showed the median user was around 31,170 which indicated the few accounts in the millions really raised the overall average.

The study goes into more detail on the average number of status updates posted by men verse women, the number of messages sent verse received on a monthly basis and more.  Here is a link to the full study published online – http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Facebook-users/Summary.aspx

The first step is obtaining a Gmail account. You can sign up for a Gmail account by visiting http://mail.google.com/mail/signup. It doesn’t cost anything to sign up or use Gmail.

The second step is forwarding email from your existing email account to your new Gmail account.  We’ll give instructions how to forward Cox Communications email accounts here. You may have to contact your current email provider’s support to determine how to automatically forward incoming mail.

The third step is setting “Send Mail As” settings.

Gmail lets you send messages with other email addresses listed as the sender instead of your Gmail address.  This is the magic behind using your new Gmail account but keeping your old email address. You’ll receive email sent to your old address because it is automatically forwarded AND you’ll be able to send email through your Gmail account and make it appear as if it was sent from the old address.

Before leaving the “Send Mail as” settings click on the reply to option:

This way any message you reply to will be sent as if coming from the email address the message was sent to.  Your friends and family won’t even realize you’re now using Gmail since they’ll continue to send AND RECEIVE email from your old address.

You’re done. You’ve setup a Gmail account to send and receive message from your current email address. You can start using the Gmail account only to manage both email addresses. Tomorrow we’ll show you how to sync mail on your phone, desktop and other locations using IMAP with your new Gmail account.  No more deleting messages in your POP3 account only to have them come back on a different device.

As we learned more about computers and specifically email, we discovered the different options involved in retrieving email. Terms like POP3 and IMAP, which we used to ignore, suddenly became important to pay attention to. After understanding the options we quickly started to learn how good that “free email” with our home cable provider really was. Let us give you a quick summary of how POP3 and IMAP work.

When you use IMAP you are accessing your inbox on the mail server. IMAP does not actually move messages onto your computer.  Instead, think of an e-mail program using IMAP as simply a viewer of your messages on the server.

POP3 does the opposite. Instead of just showing you what is in your inbox on the server, it downloads all the new messages in your inbox onto your computer. POP3 can be setup to save or delete the original email from the server after initially downloading it.

Benefits of IMAP become very clear when using multiple locations or devices to access your email. If you use a mail account setup with IMAP on your cell phone, read the inbox, delete 3 messages and send 2 more, all of these changes will be reflected when you login from your desk. Try the same scenario on a mail account set up with POP3 and you’ll only download a copy of the email to your phone.  Deleting the 3 selected messages at that point will only remove them from your phone. Log in from your desk and they will be back again.  POP3 accounts become very frustrating when trying to manage an email account from two different locations.

Most home cable providers (Cox, Qwest / Century Link, Comcast) and even some of the free webmail providers (Yahoo!, Hotmail and others) only offer POP3 access to their servers.  This means if you set up your phone to access these types of accounts, any changes you make to the messages on your phone will not necessarily be reflected when you log in again from a desktop.

Gmail to the rescue.  Google’s Gmail service offers POP3 and IMAP access to Gmail accounts. Using Google’s option to send mail with another email address, you can even start using Gmail as your main mail provider without having to change email addresses! Our tutorial tomorrow will cover how to set up a Gmail account in this manner.

Have questions about POP3 or IMAP accounts? Let us know in the comments. Here is the article we previously published about webmail versus using a desktop mail program.

CactusCarModelers.com is where the club can discuss ideas and techniques, share their works in progress, and display results from themed competitions. At the end of the club’s year, monthly winners compete for the club’s prestigious Model Of The Year award which of course will be posted on the website for the whole world to see!

Their slogan says it all…Whatever or wherever you are shooting, focus with the best.

Their website is still being put together but check them out yourself – http://www.shooters-aids.com

The answers by the way were Ryan Dunn & Google+.  We’re guessing it probably has to do with the timing of when each item became popular with those happening at the beginning of 2011 having a better chance of beating those that happened toward the end of the year.

Zeitgeist helps compile the most popular Google Searches throughout the year.  We posted last years (2010 according to Google) and thought it would be a good tradition to keep going.  So without further delay…2011 according to Google:

After we posted about AVG a few months back we took a lot of flack from coworkers about Avira and Microsoft Security Essentials. As with AVG, both Avira and Microsoft Security Essentials offer free products that seem to receive high ratings each year.

A really good review of Microsoft Security Essentials was written today by Whitson Gordon over at Lifehacker.com.  He covers the features, where it excels, where it falls short and even makes some comparisons to some of the other programs out there.

What we really like most about Whitson’s article is the focus on good browsing habits.  Keeping software updated, not downloading unknown or suspicious files, not opening unknown links in emails or in forums are all good tips that do just as much as a good antivirus program.  Take a look over at the original article on Lifehacker.com for more information on Microsoft Security Essentials and Good Browsing Habits.

Whitson Gordon posted an article today on Lifehacker.com regarding the dangers of removing USB Drives without properly ejecting or clicking on the safely remove option.

Our first thought was who still takes the time to safely eject? After reading the article we came to the conclusion – the best answer is it depends.  It gets a little more technical geeky then that as Gordon points out in his article but the safe answer is to simply get into the habit of safely removing your devices.  Read more at - Do I Really Need to Eject USB Drive Before Removing Them? posted on Lifehacker.com.

A few weeks ago we posted an article about how much promise the Kindle Fire might have. The release date has now come and gone and although we personally haven’t gotten our hands on one of these the initial reviews are not so hot.

We found a great review over at www.CasaDwyer.com titled – Why I’m Returning the Kindle Fire.  Our thanks to Robert Dwyer for allowing us to republish it here:

WHY I’M RETURNING THE KINDLE FIRE

When Amazon announced the $199 Kindle Fire, it was the first time I was intrigued by a tablet other than the iPad. I’m a big fan of the Amazon value proposition and I was impressed with their focus on content consumption at a reasonable price.

I didn’t have any disillusions about the device being an iPad replacement. I had plans for it being two things: A kitchen counter web browser usable by everyone in the family -and- a replacement for our portable DVD player.

But as it turns out the device doesn’t provide a very satisfying web browsing experience and (due to the fragmented content marketplace) it’s not a very good value as a portable video player.

Apps

Leading up to the device’s release there was a lot of information swirling around about which Android apps would be available on the device. By default, you purchase apps through a special section of the Amazon App store, and there are indeed a number of apps there.

But as you push forward and attempt to make the Kindle Fire perform like your iPhone or even your iPod touch you start bumping into limitations. Read this article to get a sense for what it’s like install non-approved Android apps on the device. Within an hour of opening the box I’m wandering around the web learning about .apk’s, sideloading, and rooting. The fragmented app situation on the device is a total mess.

Web Browser

Amazon made a big deal about the “Silk” web browser when they announced the Kindle Fire. It was said to speed download times as it predicted where you were going to browse next. My complaint isn’t so much with the time it takes pages to load as with the lousy overall experience of navigating web pages on the device.

Often you have to tap on hyperlinks several times to be effective, Apple’s brilliant “double-tap” to fit a column of text gesture is missing, and some pages don’t function properly. I thought the larger screen size would enable the Fire to be a usable web browser, but on the contrary, the device is slightly worse than a 3 year old 2nd generation iPod touch – which has a much smaller screen – in terms of web browser usability. Browsing the web on an iPhone 4S is a much more pleasant experience than on the Kindle Fire due to the iPhone’s speed, excellent page rendering, responsive touch screen and intuitive and effective gestures.

Since web browsing was one of the primary things I was looking for in the device it’s a big disappointment.

Books

I’ve never owned an e-ink Kindle, but so many people say they love theirs, I figured this device was a good time to get in on that experience. Unfortunately I’m not feeling the magic. I thought it was pretty nice that I could borrow “Moneyball” for free from the Amazon Lending Library with Amazon Prime, but I find the experience of reading on the Fire a little awkward given how heavy it is.

Compared to an e-ink Kindle, the battery life of the Fire and lack of 3G connectivity is also a concern. I think I’d be better off getting an entry level Kindle e-reader - they start at $79now.

Videos

Next to the web browser this was my second area of interest and also a big disappointment. Video playback looks great and purchasing/renting content from Amazon is a breeze (if you know what you want, navigating the Amazon store for free content is still a bit of a morass in my experience).

My beef is with the still-fragmented market for digital content. It’s still often cheaper to buy a hard copy than it is to rent or buy. Take for example Rio. $8.99 to buy the DVD (free shipping with Prime) or $14.99 to buy the digital copy. Cars 2 isn’t available for purchase – you have to rent it at $3.99 a pop. I see similar with books.

I can guess why this is, but it doesn’t make me any more enthusiastic about accepting it. Until it’s more convenient and affordable to buy digital content it feels like digital just doesn’t make sense yet.

Ripping DVDs for playback on the device is also a complicated mess. After experimenting for a day with the best file format and resolution I still can’t get a video to make use of the full screen. It’s a total pain in the neck.

Magazines

The magazines I want to read (for example Wine Spectator) aren’t available. I want a model where I pay one price for a subscription and I can consume it any way I want to. Print, online, on the go. I don’t think this is any better elsewhere but it’s certainly not good on the Fire.

Conclusion

It’s not so much that the Kindle Fire is a lousy product. It’s that Apple spoiled us and Amazon is doing the best they can within the confines of the ecosystem they’re operating within.

It’s been magical watching our kids intuitively navigate their way around the iPod touch and iPhone. The Kindle Fire has them peppering me with questions about why things don’t work. “You’ve got to tap it a few times sometimes,” says our 6 year old. The iPhone found the perfect intersection of being intuitive, looking gorgeous, and being immensely effective.

About the only thing I like about it is the random high resolution images that greet you after waking the device. Unfortunately, the novelty wears off as soon as you swipe your finger across the device and you’re reminded of the laggy, herky jerky responsiveness you experience last time you touched it.

My experience playing with the device the past few days has made me appreciate what a breakthough device the first iPhone was. And what an amazing device the iPhone 4S is. The core interface of the iPhone hasn’t changed much since it was released – it’s just gotten better and better. Will Amazon be able to pull the same trick? Release a valiant 1.0 and continually improve it through software updates? We’ll see, but I don’t think I’m going to be along for the ride.

Rating

74/100 points – Not Recommended

The original review can be read here - http://www.casadwyer.com/2011/11/why-im-returning-kindle-fire.html