Smartphones are wonderful tools. But there’s one weakness that almost every smartphone shares: short battery life. This is a frustrating problem. As you’re logging onto the Web, looking at your e-mail messages, and making phone calls, you’re draining your phone’s battery. With many of the top smartphones on the market, you’re lucky to make it home after the workday with enough battery life left to fit in one quick call for take-out food.

The issue is that smartphones do so a number of things, and run so many apps at once that their batteries can’t take it. There are some things you can do to make your battery last a little longer. We have outlined a few below.

Dimming that smartphone screen

A bright, chaotic screen display sucks the life out of batteries. By switching your screen’s brightness level to the lowest you can endure, you’ll already be doing a lot to improve the lifespan of your smartphone’s battery.

Screen lighting

You can save battery power, too, by adjusting how long your screen stays lit after receiving an input like a screen tap. The longer your screen stays lit, the harder it is on your battery life.

Bluetooth

A Bluetooth device is a huge drain on your battery as well. As it is continuously looking for outside signals, it is continuously draining your battery. So when you are in meetings or not anticipating calls, shutting it off can make your smartphone’s battery work for a lot longer.

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Most of us get a lot of spam, but we don’t need to waste our time searching through it on a daily basis. By using filters, we can do a lot to regulate what gets into our inbox.

The Power of Filters

You can create a whitelist filter. This means that you use the filtering options in your email to create filters that whitelist all your important emails, keeping them in your inbox, while delivering all other emails into a less important folder. After that you can check those folders when you have time to see what is coming in and if it is important or not.

A More Subtle Serving of Spam

A less well-known kind of spam that is increasing in popularity is bacn. This is more subtle, consisting of such things as e-newsletters that you either accidentally signed up for or no longer want. These emails, while not as spammy as those come-ons for discount Rolex watches or revolutionary diet pills, can still clutter your inbox.

You can easily hinder these newsletters from filling your inbox, though, by building a filter that automatically sequesters email messages with the word “unsubscribe” in it. This is helpful because email newsletters must give users the opportunity to unsubscribe from them. Therefore, they all must contain the word “unsubscribe” somewhere within their messages. Naturally, you can manually unsubscribe from email newsletters, too. However, this will take more time and energy.

These two easy steps will help purge your inbox of its spam and they will undoubtedly make you a more productive computer user. So before you spend the next 30 minutes deleting the spam or bacn from your inbox, make sure to set up the filters that will ensure that your most important messages stay a priority.

We have all experienced our computer crashing. We will be in the midst of an email or a report and everything will turn off. What about when your computer starts freezing or is running at a snails pace? These computer problems can slow down our capacity to finish our work, so you have to call on the IT department for help. This is often a daunting task.

It’s not always easy to communicate with your IT department staff. They are specialists in their field and it’s easy to feel uninformed in the face of individuals with such knowledge. Specially when the solution to your problem is “Turn it off, wait a short time, and turn it back on again.” It can also seem like they are speaking a different language altogether.

There are some steps you can take to make this interaction a little easier. The tips below will not only make communication go more smoothly, they will also get the issue solved faster.

No Reason to be Intimidated

First, don’t be intimidated. Yes, that IT worker knows more about your computer than you ever will, but remember, you know more about your specialty. Whether it is the law, accounting, sales, or marketing, you have your expertise and they have theirs.

Screenshots

Screenshots are a blessing for IT professionals. Take screenshots of what is happening. This includes any error messages you get, or everything that pops up that is out of the ordinary. If you can’t take screenshots, try to replicate the problem for them when they get to your desk. Let them watch the actions you take that cause the issue. The more information you can give them the better.

A Written Report

If you notice that every time you do a particular thing you experience an issue, write it down. Every time the same problem occurs, make a note of the programs you had open and the error message you received. IT professionals need to know the full extent of what they are dealing with to truly fix your problem.

In the end, the most important thing is that you communicate as much detail as possible. This will help your team fix the problem so you can get back to work!

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Running a small business is hard, and you want to make sure you are doing as much as you can to make it successful. You have a website and a blog, and social media sites. Now you hear that you also need a tablet computer to make your small business a success. But you are not sure. They are costly and you wonder if tablets are just another tech fad. How can they help your organization?

Reasons You Need a Tablet

It may come as a surprise, but using a tablet can be very beneficial to your small business. We have outlined a few of the reasons below.

1. Amazing presentations: Tablets provide you with easy access to your presentation and portfolios. You don’t need to wait for a computer to boot up. You can easily show your potential client what you do. These un-wasted minutes could be the difference between a new client and a missed opportunity.
2. State-of-the-Art: Staying up-to-date in the world of technology is notable to clients, and it’s crucial if your business is technology or marketing. This signifies that you are current and knowledgeable about changing trends. Staying up with current technologies and business trends can make possible clients feel reassured.
3. Information at your fingertips: Tablets make it easy for you to always have the information you need at your fingertips. If a possible client wants to compare your prices to a competitor’s, you can pull it up. Or if you’re in real estate, you can pull up the prices of current houses in a different area easily. Having this type of access to information means you can always provide the most up-to-date and accurate information to people, making you a qualified resource.
4. Signing documents is a breeze: There are numerous applications available that can improve your processes. With a tablet you no longer need to carry paperwork. Everything you need can be saved on your tablet. Your customers can sign any paperwork on your tablet as well. Then you can email these documents without the added step of transferring files to your computer.

New technologies appear all the time, and when they do we replace our old tech with bigger and better gadgets. But what happens to the old tech? We tend to let them fade into history. An illustration of this this is the landline telephone. Some people still have them in their home but they’re being replaced by cell phones. And it’s not difficult to imagine that in the very near future they’ll no longer be a household item.

It’s an intriguing evolution that technology undergoes. So we thought we would highlight a handful of the technologies that may disappear in the next ten years.

Fax Machines: Many people hate sending faxes; it is old technology. There was a time when it was ground breaking, but don’t be shocked if this is one technology that quickly ends up in the “do you remember this?” classification.

Newspaper Classified Ads: Recently The Huffington Post stated that classifieds are on the endangered species list. This is mainly because of sites like Craigslist. They provide massive forums for people to search classifieds and add their own for free. This opportunity might have put the nail in the coffin for newspaper classified ads.

Film-Based Cameras: It seems like film-based cameras are on their way out as well. People have a deep love for classic film so it has taken a while for people to fully transition to digital. But with digital cameras, you can save all your pictures digitally and easily distribute them over the Internet without needing to save negatives. Even Kodak has seen the consequences of this change. There is no arguing that in general we are going to leave behind film-based cameras.

The Calculator Watch: In its short-lived life; the calculator watch was a well-loved item. It made it easy to always have a calculator handy when you needed one. When cell phones with built in calculators came into existence, the calculator watch went out the window. It’s pretty apparent why PCWorld listed it as an obsolete technology.

The Video Arcade: Lots of people grew up playing games in their local arcade so it’s unfortunate that these may be on their way out as well. But with the frequency that game systems improve and the inherent expense that it takes to operate an arcade, most gamers just go with their home systems where they can play in comfort.

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In order for Tech giants to stay on top of the industry, they must continually be improving their products. Businesses like Apple, Microsoft, and Google take this into account and are regularly coming up with new ways to stay ahead of the game.

The Power of the Retina Display

One recent example of a company who is doing this right is Apple. Apple’s new Retina display offers the clearest images and videos when compared with any other. This is because of its 2,048-by-1,536-pixel resolution. Digital Trends recently wrote an intriguing article about it, and it seems like Apple isn’t stopping there.

Arming the MacBook Pro with High-Tech Visuals

So, what is Apple’s next move? They will release a MacBook Pro with 15-inch display and a resolution of 2,880-by-1,800 pixels. When pixels are increased to this density, the human eye can no longer distinguish individual pixels. Images will have a smooth and continuous look. This improvement will make the screen almost twice as clear as current MacBooks.

Not a New Technology

An interesting truth is that this is not actually a new technology. The U.S. military has been using it in their flight simulators for quite some time. And IBM uses retina technology in their massive super-computers. However, until recently, the technology hasn’t been available on the mass market. You can bet that after this next advancement comes out, consumers will be anxiously anticipating the next advancement. So, Apple has the right idea to stay ahead of its competitors as far as screen technology goes.

Workers who trudge into an office building every day envy those who work from home. After all, the work-from-home crowd doesn’t have to fight rush-hour traffic, hear office gossip, or smell the day-old fish that their fellow employees are microwaving in the office cafeteria.

But working from home is not all hanging out in your pajamas and sleeping in late. The typical trap that many of these people get caught in is the inability to stop working. It’s hard to transition from work when you work from home. Many times professionals who work from home will discover that they are still working and it’s already midnight. Having a good work/life balance is essential for everyone and when the lines are blurred between them, things can become ‘caddywhompus’.

Fortunately, work-from-homers can take steps to improve their work/life balance and retain their sanity.

1. Set up a time for your “close of business”: Set normal working hours for yourself and stick to them. Whether you start work at 9 and stop at 5, or work from 11 to 7, make sure the hours you set do not intrude too much on your personal life. Giving up that can be very detrimental. You know, all work and no play etc.
2. Do something for yourself: After you shut off your computer for the day, make sure you do something for yourself. This will help your mind switch between work and your personal life. It doesn’t have to be something grand. It can be watching your favorite TV show, or exercising. Just make sure you do something so you “reset” your day.
3. Leave the house: When you work from home it is easy to end up spending the majority of your time at home. So, it’s crucial that you notice this is happening and leave the house. Make dinner plans with your friends or go hiking. You should do anything to ensure you don’t go all week without leaving the house. That’s simply not healthy.

Overwork leads to stress, whether you work from home, in an office, or out in the field. The key to keeping your sanity, regardless of how you work, is to reserve non-work time for yourself. So what happens if you can’t force yourself to shut off the workday? Maybe it’s time to contemplate returning to the office, where often there is someone around to shut off those lights and chase you out of your cubicle.

Have you ever been curious, in this country of invention, what ideas are sprouting? Google has made it possible for you to explore this with Google Patents.

The Wonderful World of Google Patents

You might not have heard about Google Patents, but it is pretty interesting. It can provide you with a glimpse at what the future potentially holds since you can explore patents that are issued in the U.S. There are many serious patents people have filed for, like new ways to give vaccinations. But there are plenty of silly ones as well, like an electronic pickle jar game. To find these patents you can simply search for things that interest you in the Google Patents search engine. Try it out, you will be amazed at how imaginative and out there these creations can be.

Organizing the World’s Information

Google states that its main mission is to organize the world’s information and Google Patents is one part of that mission. The data that you access when you browse within Google Patents comes from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. All patents issued in the U.S. are public domain, so that makes it very simple for Google to access such a searchable database. And this is no small database; it covers patents that have been issued in the United States from 1790 to the present!

A Patent History Lesson

Due to this huge span of time, with a little investigating, you can get a picture of technological advancements this country has made. For instance, you can see the patent that was presented to Alexander Graham Bell for an automatic short-circuiter for telephones in 1880. If you wish see where we may be headed according to recent patents, check out Google Patents.

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Google has been the leader of online mapping with Google Maps for awhile. But that might change as the people behind OpenStreetmap try to compete for the title of the most-used web map service. This has created quite a stir and the company is only 8 years old!

Like Google Maps, OpenStreetMap is a digital world map, enabling users across the globe find out where they are and where they are going. OpenStreetMap is crowd-sourced – a hot trend these days in the computing world – and free. It’s also becoming more and more popular. In mid-March, OpenStreetMap boasted nearly 560,000 individual registered users, a remarkable total.

OpenStreetMap’s Growing Popularity

At the begging of March, Apple moved from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap for its mobile software for locations outside of the United States. And more recently Apple left Google Maps behind and switched to OpenStreetMap for the creation of the photos on a new photo management app for iOS. This was possibly the clearest sign that OpenStreetMap could be a true rival for Google Maps.

Also, a well known social media service, Foursquare, moved to OpenStreetMap a few months ago. You may wonder why OpenStreetMap is growing in popularity. One reason is that its members are able to update maps based on their knowledge. The reader’s ability to edit and modify articles is what made Wikipedia so popular. Do you think Wikipedia could have become as popular if not for this element?

Google No Longer Invulnerable?

It used to be that challenging Google was an unwise decision, but things have changed recently. Google has had a few shots that it has missed lately. For example, while Google+ exists, it is not real competition for Facebook, Twitter, or even Pinterest. Do you think OpenStreetMap is going to surpass Google Maps in popularity? Only time will tell.