What is Kwiry

Kwiry is a web based service that you text or email just about anything you want to remember and have it queried (or kwiry’ed) by the site.  The free service allows you to use your text message/email enabled phone to send short messages to your Kwiry website account so you can recall them later.  Your “kwiry” is displayed on your account page at Kwiry.com with search results from Yahoo.  Yahoo search is not all that’s available though. Tabs within the kwiry result include Local (with results for your zip code), Shopping, and Amazon (great for that book you want to remember to read) searches too.  Sending text to Kwiry is like doing an Internet search without visiting a browser.

Getting Started

You will need to setup a free account at Kwiry.com in order to start using the service.  Your valid email address (or your phone number, if you have setup the SMS integration) will be what Kwiry uses to determine what content to associate with your account.  For instance, if you register mike@example.com, anything you send to save@kwiry.com from mike@example.com will be associated with your account.  You can also associate more than one email address if you want to send things to Kwiry from say a work email account and a personal email account. Once you register, you have the option to configure SMS or MMS messaging from your phone.

How to Kwiry

If you heard a song you liked (Shake It by Metro Station) and wanted to be sure to remember it so you could buy it later, you would text or email  “Metro Station” to Kwiry.  The term you sent (Metro Station in this example) will be saved for you on the Kwiry site.  You can log in to your account at Kwiry.com anytime to view your results.

Organization

Kwiry also has some organization functionality as well.  You can create folders and move kwirys into these folders for further categorization.  If you’re a task minded person, the service allows you to turn any kwiry into a task with a due date that can then be tracked in a view

If privacy is concern, you can designate any kwiry as private by either preceding the text you send to Kwiry with a “p” (for instance: “p call doctor about rash”).  This will designate the kwiry as a private — for your eyes only.  You can also log into your account set the kwiry as private after the fact.  Kwiry’s default setting is to have all your kwirys set to view by “Anybody”, buy you can change this in the configuration.

Social

Kwiry is also social.  If you like, you can invite friends to Kwiry.  You can view kwirys from the public community and comment on public kwirys.  Your kwirys can also be designated as viewable by “Friends” only.  So far the three designations are for “Anybody”, “Friends” and “Private”.

Favorites

You can also designate a kwiry search result as a favorite.  A small star icon to the right of the search result can be clicked to add that result to that kwiry’s favorite tab.  The favorite tab is the collection of favorited results from the Amazon, Local, Web, and Shopping tabs.  If you favorited anything from these tabs, it will show up here.

Expanded Search

You also have the option to do an expanded search.  Links available in the sidebar will send you to pages by Google, Ask, Yelp, Wikipedia, iTunes, and more with your kwiry term in as the search filter.

Integration

Kwiry also does a good job at integrating with other sites and networks.  Here are some features you find quite useful.

• Tasks can be integrated into your calendar program.
• The ability to use Twitter to send updates to Kwiry (this is one of my favorites.  Just follow http://twitter.com/kwiry).
• Show your kwirys on your Facebook page. You can also send kwirys from your Facebook page.
• Subscribe to an RSS feed of your kwirys.

Conclusion

So far, Kwiry has been quite useful for me. The support forums are monitored by Kwiry personnel and seem to be quite responsive to questions or problems.  I had a small problem with my Twitter integration, submitted it to the support forums, and had it fixed in less than 24 hours.  The friends feature of Kwiry might be a bit more useful if there was a way to setup groups. Besides that, I think Kwiry is a very viable service.  If you decide to try it, add me as a friend.  My username is “michaelhayslip”.

Emails and stories like these grab our attention because they seem believable and can get us emotional.  They get us either angry, shocked, sad, or concerned.  Most of the time though, these stories turn out to be false.

Urban Legends

If you have any doubt about whether these emails have any truth to them, you absolutely have to run the story by a debunking / hoax checking site because that email or story may just be and urban legend.

Snopes.com and UrbanLegends.about.com

Both Snopes.com and UrbanLegends.about.com have compiled a comprehensive list of the most common urban legends and Internet hoaxes. It only takes a moment to go to either site and do a quick search on the topic. You can even use Google or Yahoo to do the search. Try typing “site:snopes.com jay leno” into your search box (the “site:snopes.com” portion of the search will restrict the results to only pages found at snopes.com) and check out the results.

You would be surprised at how many of the chain letters we receive are actually listed on these sites. They will also go into a little detail about where and when the legend started, and if it was partially based on fact, and whether or not the story is true, a little bit true, or just plane fake. I am a little partial to Snopes.com because they have a nice color-coded breakdown by the legend’s truth factor.

Do yourself a favor before you forward on one of these messages and check one of these sites before you hit “send”. Don’t get worked up over a tearjerker or infuriating story, only to find out that it was bogus.

Fun Factor

Not only are these sites useful for checking on the status of the emails you get, but also can be quite fun to browse. Check out the section on Movies at Snopes.com or UrbanLegends.about.com’s Celebrities section. Both sites have plenty of content to keep you entertained.

Here is a screen shot of just a few of the categories that are available to puruse.

More Links

Here are a few more links to you make want to check out.

• http://thoselegends.blogspot.com/
• http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/

If you’ve found other good urban legend sites, I would love to get their URLs. Leave a link in the comments and I’ll be sure to add it.

Open Wi-Fi

In a previous post, I discussed some of the mistakes that should be avoided when setting up your home’s wireless router (read Are You Making These Mistakes with Your Home Wi-Fi). One such mistake is leaving your access point “open”. Since public Wi-Fi access is usually “open” and you usually don’t have a choice about how to connect to a public access point, you should take precautions when surfing sites that may contain personal information.

Since communications between your laptop and the public access points are made over the air in an unencrypted manner, your email can be read by anybody who is savvy enough to start a free network sniffing program that is freely available for downloaded on the Internet. How much more careful about what your read at one of these hotspots would you be if you knew it was possible for someone to see the data that was being sent to our browser? How much personal information do you store in your email account?

HTTPS Browser Connections

There is something simple and easy you can do to ensure that you’re reading email securely. You can browse to your Gmail account without fear of prying eyes or network hackers. Simply use the HTTPS protocol when accessing your web email. HTTPS encrypts the data from your computer all the way back to the server you are browsing. Since the data is encrypted, even if someone is sniffing the network, they will not be able to determine what you are reading. The data simple looks like a bunch of random bits with no meaning.

Gmail and Yahoo

Both Gmail and Yahoo mail automatically redirect your browser to their “https” versions for login. This means that when you send your username and password to authenticate, it will be encrypted and secure. You can see this when browsing to mail.google.com or mail.yahoo.com. Go ahead and try it. Type “http://mail.yahoo.com” or “http://mail.google.com” in your browser’s address bar and see where you end up. You’ll notice that your browser now reflects the new address which begins with “https://”. Your browser is now using the HTTPS protocol to communicate with the login server.

A Gmail Advantage

The login process is only the beginning. Yes, your login information is secure, but unless you specifically tell the browser to use the “https://” address, your security encryption ends at the login for Gmail users. Browsing to http://mail.google.com will encrypt the login information only, but browsing to “https://mail.google.com” will not only encrypt your login, but your entire session as well. All the information sent to and from your computer to Google mail will be protected along with your username and password. This is one advance Gmail has over Yahoo mail. Yahoo mail will not encrypt the entire session even though you specify “https://” in the address bar.

A Secure HTTPS Session

Notice the “lock” icon in your browsers status bar. It is usually located somewhere near the bottom right of your browser window. If the lock icon is present, it means that your session with the web server is encrypted. Gmail uses will see the lock for the entire session (if they have browsed to the “https://” version of the page), but Yahoo users only see it at the login screen.

Other Web Email

Most mail programs provided by your ISP or hosting service do include web email. Try to access your web mail via the HTTPS address and see what happens.

Bottom Line

Be careful when browsing at public Wi-Fi hot spots. Try to use the HTTPS protocol for web mail because it can protect your privacy and security. At this point, it looks like Google has the advantage over Yahoo in this department. Don’t forget to bookmark https://mail.google.com and https://mail.yahoo.com to ensure you always use the secure pages when possible.

More and more applications are being ported for use on the web instead of on the desktop. There is (and will be some cross platform code) to have web applications integrate well with their desktop counterparts, and perhaps this new service from Adobe will someday reach that goal with an Adobe AIR version of Buzzword. For now, Buzzword is strictly web based, and extremely easy to use. Here are some thoughts on Buzzword.

Buzzword User Interface

To use Buzzword you must create a free account. Once logged in, you can see that Buzzword has a very clean and uncluttered interface.

The left menu bar will reflect the current function. The right menu bar contains the functions you can use. If the “F” for font is selected, it will be pushed over to the left and all available font options will be displayed in the menu bar.

The right menu bar pushes items out of your way until you are ready to use them. The tools include “Paragraph”, “List/Bullets”, “Images”, “Tables”, “Comments”, and “Docs”. The user interface will animate the clicking of the menu items by showing you a sliding motion.

You will always know what functions you can use by the menu bar items that are visible. There isn’t anything complicated or “advanced” about the Buzzword, so it is an ideal word processor for getting writing done without distractions. If you have ever used a word processor, Buzzword will be extremely easy to navigate. And if you haven’t used one before, Buzzword will be simple to learn.

Storage

Since Buzzword is an online service, the documents you create can be stored on the Buzzword site so you don’t have to worry about carrying them with you on a hard drive, or misplacing or losing your documents. Save documents in MS Word format (which will save to your hard drive) or the default Buzzword format (saves on Adobe’s servers). The “Docs” menu of Buzzword makes finding your saved Buzzword formatted documents fairly simple. You can search alphabetically, search by author, date viewed, or date changed.

Note: The Adobe forums say there are no limits on the number documents you can store, but does mention some file size limits. See the forum post if you are interested in following the discussion.

Other features of Buzzword include:

• Customizable lists and bullets (like this one)
• Image support
  • with easy sizing and positioning with simple word wrapping and justification
• Easy table insertion and manipulation
• The ability to add comments to any section of the document
• Co-authors
• Spell checking and red underline flagging
• Document sharing with others (they will require a free account as well)
• A history tool bar so you can quickly go back to a previous edit (see below)

This is just a sample of the many features Buzzword offers. Check out the Buzzword help page for a complete list of features.

Other Online Word Processors

Of course, Buzzword isn’t the only online word processor available and is by no means perfect (see the “What’s Missing?” section). I have previously used Zoho Writer, Google Docs, and DarkCopy too (Google and Zoho offer similar functionality while DarkCopy is considered a simple text editor). You should definitely check them out for yourselves if you are interested.

What’s Missing?

As I was using Buzzword, I saw a couple of things that bothered me and could be improved. Buzzword is still being actively developed and some of these features may be in later releases.

• The spell checker seemed to flag words like “blog” and “online” as misspelled (you can elect to add them to the “OK” list) and didn’t flag misspelled words like “formated”.
• On slower computers, the response time was a little slow. Although it is web based, the Flash seems to use up a lot of compute power. Firefox CPU usage jumps up significantly when typing or making edits.
• The requirement that other register before they can view documents that you have shared should be removed for just Read Level access. Currently you cannot embed a link to the document on your web site and have people easily view it.
• The right click actions you are used to (cut, paste, copy) are not available. You will need to use keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V, etc…).
• A “Post to Blog” button would be great too.

Buzzword is a simple to use and most people will be perfectly satisfied using Buzzword over other online word processors. It looks good and has many useful features.

What other online word processing tools have I missed that you like?

Take for example ftp. Yes, I can open Cyberduck or FileZilla and do a transfer, but sometimes it is just quicker to open up your trusty terminal.

With that said, let look at how we can drag and drop files from our desktop or a folder view as a way to save us some typing.

Let’s say I have a file on my desktop that is called “myfile.txt”. This is the file I want to ftp to host.com First thing I do is open up a “Terminal” window on the Mac, or a “Command Prompt” on the PC.

ftp host.com

Lets assume I have already logged in and am at the ftp> prompt. I can type:

put “C:\Documents and Settings\<myusername>\Desktop\myfile.txt”

Now that is a lot of typing with backslashes and quotations…. whew….

or I simply type:

put

then drag "myfile.txt from the desktop to the "Terminal" or "Command Prompt" window.

If you do the drag and drop, you will see the "Terminal/Command Prompt" window has interpreted the file you dragged.  It has expanded the filename to also include the path. That’s much easier than typing that whole line and hitting enter only to find out you made a mistake and have to type it all over again.

This will work anywhere you can drag a file. Try it on a file in your “My Document” (PC) folder or from your “Home Folder” (Mac). It doesn’t matter how deep the folder structure goes either. It can be on the Desktop, or 10 folders below it. As long as you can get to it to drag it, you can use the trick.

Watch the short 30 second video of this working on a Mac.

EchoSign take the hassle out of document signatures. If you own a small business, create contracts or binding agreements, then EchoSign can save you tons of time and effort. The services is super-easy to use and signup only takes a couple of minutes.

So by now you get that EchoSign can help you manage your document signatures, but how does it work. Say you have created an agreement between you and a client that you need to have the client sign. The first step is to signup for an account. You can try the service for free with up to 5 document signatures per month. Once you have an account you simply need to login and click the “Send” tab.

You’ll see a form that is pretty self-explanatory. Just enter the name of the recipient or recipients (you can have multiple people sign the same document) and upload a document for signature. That is as complicated as it needs to be. The recipients each get an email directing them to the EchoSign web site where they can review the document then choose to sign it (their is no signup required to be able to sign a document) by typing their name and initials.

Once all parties have signed, a final .pdf version of the document is emailed to all the parties with all the signatures visible at the bottom of the document.

EchoSign’s management of documents has some nice features as well. You can review the documents you have signed or sent for signature, check on which ones have not yet been signed, are waiting for your signature, or view any archived documents. You can share the documents, send reminders to people to sign, and view all your history too.

Another very nice feature is the ability for EchoSign to accept documents via fax. This is perfect if you don’t have a digital version of the document. Send it via fax to EchoSign and they will convert it to .pdf for you.

Check out EchoSign the next time you have a document that needs signing. I’m sure you will find it a very useful tool.

Each Stikkit you create is watching for certain key words. If it finds them in the data you are typing, it can process your Stikkit accordingly. Stikkits are pretty smart about todos, contacts (which they call peeps), events, and even bookmarks. Stikkits also have support for tags, importing/exporting of calendar entries, emailing to create/change a Stikkit, and even RSS feeds.

The beauty of Stikkits are their “thinking” capabilities. If you create a Stikkit with a proper name, it will automatically create a Peep Stikkit. For example; say I enter:

Meeting with Mary Janus on wed at 10:30 AM

From this line of text, I have now created a calendar event for Wed and a new Peep (Mary Janus). I can now browse to my Stikkit home page and see the meeting in the “Coming Up” section. I can also browse to the calendar and see the same entry there too. If I browse to my Peeps section, I can now see a Mary Janus has been added as a Peep. All by simply typing a few words.

Here is where some of the cool stuff happens. So the meeting is schedule, but I would like to remind myself to call her the day before. I create a new Stikkit with the following text:

Call Mary Janus on her mobile: 444.555.4444

on tues

remind me

Now if I have done this correctly, I will have added an entry for a todo on Tues. and what’s cool is that now I have also added a phone # for Mary Janus on her Peep Stikkit. Did you also notice the “remind me” text? Stikkit.com will also remind me about the call via SMS or Email or both.

Here is the example Stikkit I created. Notice “Mary Janus” as a related Stikkit. If I click on the “Mary Janus” link, I’ll get to look at her Peep Stikkit and all related Stikkits too.

This is just but a sample of what Stikkit can do. Sign up for a free account and try it out for yourself.

Some other cool features include:

• Emailing to a private address @username.stikkit.com to create and modify Stikkits
• Getting your Stikkits as RSS feeds
• Creating Stikkits via SMS
• Entering any URL creates a Stikkit bookmark
• Stikkit bookmark button for your browser
• An API for developers with a very active forum
• Ability to share your Stikkits with other members

Give the service a try and let me know what you think of it.

First let’s explain how this might be helpful.

Have you ever wanted to open a file that Windows didn’t know how to open? For instance, a text file that had a weird extension like .out or .dat. You could open it with Wordpad or Notepad, but Windows doesn’t recognize the extension so instead you have to double click on the file and choose what program to open it with. This can be a bit frustrating. Sometimes it can take you longer to open the file than to read the contents.

How about if you could just right click on the file and send it to Wordpad or Notepad? This works great for file types that your Windows XP OS doesn’t know about. For instance, I have a program that creates log files with a .output extension. I know they are text files, and if want to quickly look at them, I can just right click and send them to Wordpad. The file opens up normally and if I want to make edits or changes, I can do that too.

Would you like to easily put files in a folder that you frequent often? Right clicking the files and doing a “Send To”, instead of doing a copy and paste can save us some time.

Want something on the Desktop, why not send it there?

Customize the “Send To” menu is easy and can help make us a little more efficient.

To customize the “Send To” menu:

1. Click on the Start button, then on Run.
2. Type sendto in the box, and click OK.

The resulting folder that appears is where you add and remove items as you see fit. Try adding a shortcut to Notepad, Wordpad, or another of your favorite text editors. Also try adding a shortcut to a folder you copy things to a lot.

What other useful additions to the “Send To” menu have you found?

An online meeting can be defined as a session where you and at least one other person are collaborating on a project in real time via your computers. Say Bob and Jay are in two different locations. Bob wants to have a discussion with Jay about a presentation that is vital to their business. Bob can email the document to Jay with some notes, wait for Jay to review the document, add his own notes, and email it back to Bob so that he can add his changes and finalize the presentation. This process can take a few iterations before the presentation is considered customer ready.

Why not have Bob and Jay work together on the presentation over the phone? While that can be more productive than emailing it back and for, you really don’t get the best collaboration until both of you can see the document together at the same time.

So how about if Bob and Jay sit in front of their respective computers, in whatever city they may be in at the time, and work on the document together. How you say? By starting an online meeting.

An online meeting has the benefits of a face-to-face meeting without having to be in the same place. As long as Bob and Jay have Internet access and a browser, they have the tools they need to start an online meeting. They get the real-time collaboration, the ability to view the document at the same time. Even share their desktops with each other.

Here is a free tool from Zoho called Zoho Meeting that can help you get started with online meetings. Note: Zoho meeting is free while in beta. Take advantage of it now, before they start charging.

With Zoho Meeting, only the meeting host needs to sign up for an account. Others do not need an account in order to join an existing meeting. Once you sign up for a free account, you can begin hosting meetings. It is a very simple process and only takes a minute or two to get started.

Meeting presenters can be both MAC or PC based users while meeting participants can be on Windows, MAC, or Linux; and Safari, Firefox, and IE browsers are all supported. Once the meeting presenter starts the meeting, he or she sends invites to participants via email. A link in the email will direct them to Zoho’s meeting web page where they can click to join the meeting.

Meeting participants can choose to either view the meeting with an ActiveX control (Windows only), Java (all platforms), or through the browser using Flash (Flash must be installed). The ActiveX and Java options will allow for a better experience when asking to take control, or viewing full screen, but the Flash version is useful for simply displaying data without a lot of interactivity, but is not limited to that.

So now, if Bob starts a meeting on his computer he will, by default, be sharing his desktop to all the other meeting participants. They can see where he clicks and what text he types as if they were looking over his shoulder. There is even a chat feature that can be utilized if long distance phone charges are a concern. The Zoho team has also expressed interest in integrating Skype (the free online phone service) with Zoho Meeting for even more savings.

For now, the free version of Zoho Meeting is able to handle my meeting needs pretty well. Currently, there is no limit to the number of meetings you can hold or participate in, or the number of participants that can be in a single meeting. Zoho has not said yet whether this will change once the product is out of beta, or if there will be tiered pricing for more meeting participants. Zoho Meeting works well behind a firewall and uses SSL encryption for security.

To be fair, Zoho is not the only game in town. You can also try Adobe Acrobat Connect, which has a free 15-day trial and allows you to define your own URL for meetings. Also, Webex has a very nice product that starts out at $39/month.

I urge you to check out Zoho Meeting and see how easy it is to collaborate with others. Don’t forget to also check out their other online products (many of them free too) like Zoho Writer (for word processing), Zoho Sheet (for spreadsheets), Zoho Show (for presentations), and many others.

On Tuesday, Steve Jobs of Apple announced a new version of the Apple TV. I have been a fan of the Apple TV since day one and purchase one almost immediately after it was announced.

The reason for my purchase and excitement was the fact that the Apple TV solved a major problem:

How do we easily get our iTunes content to display on our TVs?

Yes, you could watch the content on your computer or iPod and that’s great, and you can even plug your computer or iPod into your TV and watch that way. But the quality from an iPod isn’t as good when displayed on a larger screen and cabling up your computer display to a TV can be cumbersome. Plus, you can’t use the computer while it is displaying content.

One solution was the Apple TV. Getting your iTunes content to display on your TV was now easy to do. Download a movie, stream it or download it to the Apple TV and watch it like any other recorded program. Want to watch your video podcasts, no problem - just stream or sync with the device and watch. As long as you had iTunes on your home network you could get your content on your big screen.

Great; we can watch digital TV shows and movies that we bought from iTunes on our big screen TVs. But the Apple TV isn’t without problems.

Problem 1

Need to have iTunes to be at all useful. No iTunes, no streaming or syncing, no good to you or me. Why should we have to download to iTunes, and then download to the Apple TV, then watch? Why not start downloads directly from the device?

Problem 2

The price of movies is too high. The price point for movies on iTunes has always been a problem for me. Plus I want packaging and extra features. If I buy a movie on iTunes, I have to store it on a hard drive and hopefully back it up from time to time. Also, I’m not allowed to burn it to a DVD that will play on any DVD player.

Problem 3

I don’t want to own every movie I watch. Imagine having to buy every movie you wanted to watch. My DVD player would see a fraction of the action it does right now. That’s just not practical. Most of us only watch a movie once and then return it to the video store or send it back to Netflix. If I love the movie, then I’ll buy it. And I’ll buy it on DVD so I don’t have to worry about hard drive failures, I get special features, and I get special packaging too.

Apple TV 2

We now have news of a new release of the Apple TV which promises to deliver a better user experience and address some of the short-comings of the original release.

Some highlights include:

No New Hardware

This is a big plus for existing Apple TV owners. Who knows what the reasoning is for keeping the same hardware? Perhaps they have thousands of the original devices sitting in a warehouse that nobody bought. Whatever the reason, the “no new hardware” feature is a major win. If you bought the original version of the Apple TV, the new features can be activated by simply downloading a software update from Apple. We get a new product, and it doesn’t cost us anything.

No iTunes Needed

Simply surf the movie, TV, and music libraries from your TV and click to start watching. The content starts playing almost immediately and is stored on the Apple TV’s hard drive. No intermediate (download to iTunes first) step necessary.

Movie Rentals

Some of the best movie studios are on board with Apple and have agreed to supply movies thru iTunes which gives us more choices. And like I said before, I don’t want to necessary own every movie I watch. This new version of Apple TV doesn’t make me. I can choose to rent a movie and watch it within 30 days. I can start watching on my TV, then take the same movie and sync it to my iPod and finish watching it wherever I happen to be. Sync your content for your plane ride, your kid’s road trip, or maybe your long day at the MVD. Watch it as many times as you like during a 24 hour period before it disappears. That means movies won’t take up my hard drive space.

High Definition

The current Apple TV hardware can support up to 1080i high definition video. The rental and movie purchases promise to be available in HD. Slightly more expensive with new releases in HD at $4.99 and library titles at $3.99. A bit pricey for some, but still competitive with Neflix and Blockbuster.

Final Thoughts

I’m feeling quite positive about the new version of Apple TV and hope that the product does well. Apple has some pull with the movie studios and if the movie rentals succeed, perhaps more studios and more content will be distributed via the ITunes store. More choices means more enjoyment.

Were you disappointed with the first release of the Apple TV? Are you more exited about this new version? What are your thoughts?