RFID tags are the new Black

If you don’t know what an RFID tag is, you will soon.  An RFID tag is a non-contact electronic device that transmits a signal to a reader that passes close to it.  What’s the big deal you ask?  Well, some RFID tags do not require a battery, last for years, and are the size of a grain of rice.  The fact that they can be hidden seamlessly in anything, can hold a password or other information, don’t need any maintenance and are just generally pretty cool means that these devices are creeping into just about everything.  So what are the most useful places for an RFID tag?  How about the most terrifying?  Let’s investigate.

Most Penny Pinching:

Some theme parks are adding drink stations throughout the parks.  Historically they had two options, have an employee at each station to ensure people aren’t stealing beverages, or trust people not to fill up old 2 liter bottles with free Cola.  That didn’t work out too well for the theme parks, so now we have…..RFIDcups!  Your cup is time stamped, and you can get drinks for a set amount of time after purchasing that cup.  After the time stamp expires, the beverage fountain will not dispense to you.  At least until someone with a lot of time and know how makes their own time stamped RFID cups, but until then…

Grab a drink!  And Enjoy it during the next 59 minutes…

Most Green:

Saguaro cacti have long been stolen from national parks out west, and sold for top dollar through a sort of Cacti black market, or green market if you will.  Not surprising, considering this cactus takes 75 years before it even starts to look like a cactus.  Not the sort of thing you buy as a small plant and watch grow.  So the national parks service has installed RFID tags in  many cacti in national parks, so if a person has a suspected stolen cactus, authorities can scan it and see if, and from where it was stolen.

Put your hands up, cactus thief!

Most detrimental to the odds of your pet having a grand adventure:

Many pets now have an RFID tag put in them when they are young, often while being spayed or neutered.  These tags allow a vet or shelter to scan the pet if ever lost and recovered.  The chips put in these pets can have just a simple phone number, or a web URL leading to a page with full contact information on the owners and even pet allergies and medical conditions to be aware of.

No, this is not how they give the kitties their RFID tags.

Most Unsettling:

Party-goers at some pool based hotspots can choose to have an RFID tag put under their skin, with their age and debit card number on it, so they don’t need to carry a purse or wallet.  I can think of no appropriate picture of that.. so lets just look at the cat above again.

Jon (jaustin) @ CoreTechs.com

Gmail Labs, the real and the wanted

If you happen to use Gmail as your mail client, you probably know about the number of labs they have available. Not the spam you get about adopting a puppy, but the labs you can enable to change the way Gmail works for your account. There are several that I made use of, that you may not even know about. Of course there are also some that I feel we need, that don’t exist yet. We’ll cover both.

The Real Labs, my top three:

Sneak Peek: Right click on a message to see a preview of the contents of the message. Helps you decide if you are mentally prepared to deal with the contents of a message before formally “opening” it.

Un-Send: Gives you between 5 and 30 seconds after clicking send, when you can cancel the delivery of a message. Good for if you forgot an attachment, or make a terrible mistake in judgement.

Insert Images: This one is pretty self explanatory, it lets you put images in the body of your Gmail messages, rather than sending them as attachments.

 

 

 

So with those out of the way, what do we need from Google for the next round of Gmail updates? How about they give us…

Already Sent: Allows you to backdate an e mail. “Did you send over that proposal Johnson?” “Yes, 3 days ago” Would probably lead to the complete downfall of corporate productivity, but well, that’s a risk I feel we need to take.

Not From Me: Tired of being the bearer of bad news? Being a whistle blower not high on your to-do list? You need the “not from me” lab, which allows you to send mail anonymously or from a range of predetermined fake e mail addresses. “Someone drove through your flower bed Bob” – Anonymouscitizenwishingtoavoidreprisal@gmail.com
A winning Idea if ever I’ve had one.

Finally I think we all need this last one.

Bad News Filter: They have given us a spam filter, and a phishing filter, so why not a bad news filter. When activated, it could screen your e mails and respond to any who would seek to ruin your day with a computer generated message specifically tailored to your situation.

Bearer or bad news:”Jim I’m afraid we have to make some budget cuts, and you aren’t putting in enough hours to warrant your current salary.”

Jims auto response: “Jim is currently asleep at his desk after putting in 97 hours this week. After his 12 minute power nap he will respond to your message in the order it was received. You are number 14574, and your estimated reply time is March. Thank you.”

 

Jon (jaustin) @ CoreTechs.com

Draw Something!

If you aren’t having fun on the internet, you are probably working too much. This latest realization comes to me after having played “Draw Something” this past weekend. Basically, you take your phone of the smart variety, and draw. Doesn’t sound too great, but when you consider you are playing with other people, all of whom have some interesting interpretations of proper nouns, well, it becomes quite fun.

It’s Waldo!!!!

Of course some of the games turn into utter nonsense, but that is the price you pay for such entertainment. Next time you are long on time and short on entertainment options why not try out the free version of Draw Something. Just don’t get upset with me if you can’t guess someones rendition of Rhianna based on their squiggly lines.

Jon (jaustin) @ CoreTechs.com

The Materials mentioned yesterday were not real…

Just so everyone knows, as a few people tried to point out to me, yesterday post was just to be funny. Har Har. I know there is no such thing as Adamantium. Next week it’s back to real posts, so don’t worry!

Jon (jaustin) @ CoreTechs.com

New iPhone to be made of “liquidmetal” plus other exciting materials news!

If you are a fan of Apple products, and I mean, who isn’t; you probably know the next iPhone may well be made of “liquidmetal”. What this means, is the phone will be injection molded from metal, making it tough, smooth, and awesome. Most importantly, it’s new and exciting. So in the spirit of new materials technology, I bring you our top three materials I wait for with baited breath.

I want, now where do I sign up for a new contract!?

3.)Adamantium. Adamantium is a Marvel Comics material that is indestructible. Wolverine was made of the stuff. What more do I need to say? Can you imagine a car made of Adamantium? Crash proof, fire proof, can’t get dirty; the possibilities are endless. What about Adamantium bank safes, window bars, and building studs. The only downside is after we turned everything into Adamantium, we’d never have to replace it, ever. So you’d be stuck with your Adamantium watch for 10,000 years, and who knows what trends would look like then.

2.)Bombastium. Bombastium is a material which can turn water into ice cream. Truly fantastic stuff, as evidenced by the fact that scrooge McDuck paid One Trillion dollars for a sample, plus six kitchen sinks. He literally threw in the kitchen sink. Although America probably doesn’t need more ice cream availability, I wouldn’t turn down a bit of Bombastium for a Barbeque.

1.)Unobtanium. Unobtanium, or Unaffordian is a material which we can’t get. Because of that, it clearly has lots of neat properties, such as anti-gravity properties, can cause cold fusion, and conducts electricity through space. Great stuff. If only we knew where to locate a sample.

honorable mentions : carbonite, chemical X, Element zero, energon, kryptonite, vespene gas

Any good ones I’m missing? Let me know

Jon (jaustin) @ CoreTechs.com

Five Tech Tools you Never Knew You Needed – Part Deux

When last you visited, you may recall we introduced dropbox and lastpass, two very cool tech tools. Today we have three more to get you spending time in front of the computer more efficiently.

First off, is xmarks, a tool to share bookmarks across computers. Like lastpass, it is a plugin that installs into your browser, for free of course, that allows you to mark sites as favorites. When you go to a different machine, your x marks plugin syncs up with any favorites you added elsewhere. You can use it on as many machines as you want, and you;ll have the same favorites and bookmarks everywhere. It also comes with a pretty neat rating tool for websites, but the highlight is the ability to never lose a bookmark when you head home from work, and wonder what site you were looking at earlier.

Next we have the answer if you have ever felt as though Windows Task Manager was woefully under-powered. Process Hacker lets you view and close processes, programs, dlls, network connections and more. It also has the ability to close programs and processes protected by rootkits and security software, letting you fully remove malware and turn off any process when needed. It also gives you a frightening amount of information on whats going on in your computer, so be prepare to be overwhelmed if you start up Process Hacker with just the bare minimum of knowledge about how Windows works. You’ve been warned!

That’s alot of information…

Finally, and this one is kind of a cop out, is everything else on the internet. That’s not a tech tool you say? Sure it is. There are hundreds of free programs, tools, and services available on the internet. WordPress, gmail, open office, and about a million other gadgets are out there for you to find and explore. Most of them are amazingly free too. Do you have any you feel were left off? If so let me know!

Jon (jaustin) @ CoreTechs.com

5 great tech tools you never knew you needed

The internet, in all of its cat talking glory, actually has some useful stuff on it too. Among these neat things you can find if you look hard enough, are five tech tools that you probably don’t use, but definitely need.

First among them is dropbox. Think of dropbox as an offsite hard drive. You can place important documents in your “dropbox” and they are then available from any computer or well equipped phone. Easier than carrying around a USB thumb drive, more intuitive than e mailing files to yourself (admit you’ve done it), dropbox makes it easy to keep all your important files at the same version, available, and readily accessible.

Next up, Lastpass. We went over lastpass the other day, so I won’t rehash things here. Got a lot of passwords? Got a bad memory? Don’t like typing 3487sg94shw3985owowe 7 times a day? No worries, lastpass has your back. Just check out my last post for more information, or let cartoon Bob here give you the quick rundown.

Coming up soon : Numbers three through five, the anticipation!

Jon (jaustin) @ CoreTechs.com

Lastpass – The last password you need to remember

If you are reading this, you are likely on the internet, or have some amazing as yet unknown skill to hear html through dental fillings. One or the other. If you are reading this on the internet, you probably have E-Mail, and a Facebook, perhaps a blog and a Pinterest too. All of those require passwords, and having a number of different passwords can cause issues.

What’s a person to do then? Well, one option is a big list of passwords taped to your monitor. Not a good idea though. At all. In fact lets forget that.  Go ahead and cross that off, okay then.

A much better option is Lastpass I can’t possibly explain how it works as well as Bob here in this comic, so lets let Bob take it away.

Still with us? Excellent. If you like the sound of Lastpass, just download it at www.lastpass.com and install it. Once you get Lastpass installed, as you log in to sites, the Plug-In will ask if you want Lastpass to remember your password. Just say yes, answer its prompts, and Lastpass does the rest. You can log in to all of your favorite sites just by entering the url of the site, lastpass will automatically log you in without you entering any passwords. A giant time saver, and the sort of thing we love to publicize here at CoreTechs. Plus, it’s really neat.

Jon(jaustin) @ CoreTechs.com

Facebook, your job application, your password and you (In 6 easy steps)

So you are interviewing for a job, and the hiring manager says to you, “Great, now just give us your Facebook password so we can dig around a bit and we’ll be good to do.”  Your first thought might be “ha ha ha,” but this is becoming more and more prevalent.

What can you do to avoid such a situation?  Well, apparently a lot.

1.) Tech jobs are less likely to ask for your passwords to social networking sites and e mail clients.

2.) Don’t apply for  a public position, particularly in law enforcement.  While it is quite a bit more understandable to want to thoroughly vet those who will be given a badge and gun, many still feel it is an egregious violation of personal privacy, on par with asking to read someones diary.  So if you feel privacy is very important, perhaps a job in law enforcement isn’t for you.

3.) Clean up your page.  This may seem obvious, but apparently a fair number of people go willy nilly into interviews, give out social media credentials, and are shocked when they aren’t hired.  “What do you mean the 600 word diatribe on why I hate my boss is a poor reflection on my work skills.  Aren’t my beer pong pictures proof that I am a proven winner….. etc”  Also apparently, 12% of employers won’t hire you if you use emoticons.  So

4.) Keep it private.  Simply set your page to private, and there won’t be much available for anyone to look at, unless they, you know, require you to give them your credentials.

5.) Say no.  No link here, but if a job asks and you are uncomfortable providing, just say no.  Of course you likely won’t get the job, but that is the risk you take when standing up for your principals.

6.) If all else fails, sue.  Ah yes, law suits, the great American pastime. -As per Kent Willis, an ACLU director :  “We’ve begun to develop legal theories to challenge this practice,” Willis said. “There ought to be some distinction between your private life and your life at work.”  Every case needs someone to start it up, maybe you can be the Gideon of a 21st century cyber rights trial.

 

Have you had a social networking employment fiasco?

Khan Academy is using the web to its fullest

If you are reading this online, you’ve probably watched a video or two online to figure out how to do something.  Maybe you wanted to learn to set the timing on a small block Chevy?  Perhaps you are tired of being the only one who can’t do the shuffle?  All fine uses of the internet, but what if you want to learn algebra?  Perhaps you want to understand the electoral college?  If you want to do one of the latter two things, you need to go to Khan Academy.

Originally started by one man, Khan Academy has grown to a large non-profit with thousands of videos, with topics going from math, art and history, to a complete walk through of what caused the credit crisis.  The beautiful aspects of the site are that it is a.)free, b.) available in lots of languages, and c.) built around how people actually think through and solve problems. Its videos are less a lecture and more a guided tour of subjects.

The academy was recently on 20/20, and its largest benefactor is none other than Bill Gates.

So what does this have to do with our usual topics of mobile apps and web development?  Everything.  The Khan Academy group and site embodies the ideals of the internet perfectly.  Free, accessible in a variety of languages, and designed to get information out to groups and people who might otherwise never have access to it. Go take a look for yourself and maybe you’ll understand quadratic equations this time around.