Observations from the Technically Challenged

As the newest member of the BestMacs team, my role is simply customer service and organization. It is my goal to keep you, the client, happy and the team on task. However, you should know that I am not what one would call “tech savvy”! In fact, I will be chronicling my adventures as I learn and grow in the Mac world. Follow my articles Observations from the Technically Challenged here at BestMacs.com.

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My three favorite parts of iPhone OS 4

The iPhone OS 4 event was earlier this week. Tonight I finally got a chance to sit down and watch the video. There were just a few items you had to see to really appreciate. Among the quoted 100+ new features, I have three favorites. And I think they might surprise you. I’ll start with the obvious one.

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Four days to productivity

Its now been 4.5 days since the iPad arrived into our lives, either as owners like me, fans like the many people who taken mine for a spin, or the haters who find fault in the device’s gaps.

In reading my last article, I sound like one of the latter by focusing on particular gaps: file server access and printing. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the negatives in life. This is no different. But give me some points for vowing to “keep trying” because the results a scant half-week later paint a different picture.

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Awesome Note

I have used a ton of to-do systems, mostly recently Remember the Milk (RTM), but they have never really fit the way I needed to remember things. RTM in particular is overkill for what I need. Awesome Note ($3.99 in the App Store; free “Lite” version available) for my iPhone [iTunes link] combined with Evernote and Google Calendar have finally, I think, filled the bill for me. A review of Awesome Note follows, but first here is a quick description of my system. I created a new Google Calendar called “My Tasks” for tasks that absolutely have to be done on a certain day (repeating tasks like “take out the trash”). They send SMS or e-mail reminders to me. The e-mailed ones are automatically tagged “To Do” in Gmail. Yes, I use my inbox as a to-do list, and I feel fine about it. It works for me. I look at it constantly and feel an innate drive to get rid of those to-do labels. Inbox Zero is not in operation in my life.

It’s the other to-do items and notes that have floated from one system to another for me. I’ve even used paper because dang, these electronic systems get too complicated. I use Evernote to capture a lot of stuff, but it’s not fast enough to suit me for capturing quick to-do items, and you can’t create to-do’s from the iPhone. It’s great for reference material, though, so I wanted to keep it in my system.

Therefore, Awesome Note has filled a gap. It lets me create categories and combine notes with to-do items in ways that are intuitive to me.

Read more about why Awesome Note is… well… awesome.

iPad: Answers and Challenges

First off, yes, I am writing this on the iPad.

As an “executive summary,” I’ll just say this: it is what everyone thought it was. And the answers to both of my questions in last night’s final preview article have been revealed. The short answer is that while the iPad is a great piece of hardware, and a lot of fun, it’s going to take some work to make it fit in to a business environment.

So let’s jump in and look at what works, what doesn’t and the challenge that lies ahead.

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The Last iPad Preview Article

So at this point, with iPad pre-order deliveries less than 12 hours away, you’re either sick of hearing about it, or so excited you can’t stand it. Put me in the latter category. Much like a kid on Christmas, I doubt I’ll sleep much tonight.

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April Fools – It’s Time to Switch to Windows

I’ve been telling many of you that over the first quarter of the year, I have been working very hard on a major change for BestMacs.   Today, I can reveal that change: we’re dumping Mac support and switching to Windows.

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How Secure Is Your Password?

I just read an interesting article from lifehacker.com that can be found here regarding the security of passwords. I know many of you have seen at least one of the crazy passwords that BestMacs has made for secure use, and many of you may have probably wondered why? Well, this article highlights the reasons why passwords like the ones we use are so secure.

One thing I wanted to highlight is a cool table on the site showing how long certain passwords would take to break by using a program that would try every possible combination of characters. The table breaks up the passwords into character length and whether or not the password uses all possible characters including capitol letters, symbols and numbers compared to just lowercase letters. The table is fully available from the link above however, I wanted to highlight some interesting things I found from the table. Namely, the difference in time between cracking a 7 character password that is only lowercase characters which is 2.23 hours, compared to one that is 7 characters but uses lots of characters which takes 2.21 years a difference of about 2 years, give or take 2 hours. Even more staggering is that when a password uses 9 characters and is composed of symbols, capitol letters and numbers it can take a computer 20 millennia to run through every combination until it finds the right one.

What is so interesting about the article is that it was written from the mindset of an unethical hacker, detailing exactly how he would attempt to find a users password and for each instance he also explains how the end user can safe guard against it. So if you wanted to know how to better protect yourself password wise or are just curious about all things technological, this article is one that would be good to check out with a lot of practical value.

10.6.3 Out Now

10.6.3 is now out for all of you Snow Leopard users out there. This update fixes a plethora of bugs, and weighs in at almost 800MB. I havent read about any problems with the update and am personally running it on my system. Hit the more link to get more specific info about what the update entails. Read the rest of this entry »

iPhone in Italy

Our friend Megen is an ER nurse by trade, but a Mac and iPhone geek for the sheer fun of it.  She got her first Mac in 1995.  She enjoys blogging about medical stuff, Macs, iPhones, and productivity (and how to squander it by messing with productivity tools).  Her reviews of iPhone apps and usage in particular are excellent; thus with her permission we plan to start re-posting them here.  Enjoy!

In case anyone missed it, I just spent 10 days in Italy, and I did a ton of research before going about using my iPhone over there. It was hard to piece everything together. Here’s my own experience.

In a nutshell, unless you put the iPhone in airplane mode and resign yourself to being cut off for the time you’re there, it costs big bucks to use the iPhone overseas. Digest that, and then read on for ways to minimize the pain. Read the rest of this entry »