Jon Westfall and I (Todd Ogasawara) took on the following topics this week:
- Amazon Prime 20th anniversary sale a bust for consumers? Ref: TechCrunch
- What’s with the giant gap in Microsoft’s new folding Bluetooth keyboard? Ref: The Verge
- ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley asked Microsoft CEO Nadella about mobile strategy. Ref: ZDNet
And, as a bonus, we discussed these free tips:
- Instead of Adobe Acrobat to create PDF Forms, Use LibreOffice – it can export PDFs with FIllable Forms natively.
- Instead of purchasing books tied to one platform, download free e-books (or strip the DRM off of e-books you own) with Calibre-ebook.com
- Instead of using that stats package you were taught in school (Minitab, SPSS), use R
- Instead of using iCloud Photos & Paying for storage, use Google Photos
- Instead of paying for push gmail with Google Apps, use Jon’s iCloud/GMail solution
- Instead of using “new fangled encrypted message service†(There are a few out there that offer “easy†encryption from providers you’ve never heard of), use good ole’ PGP / GPG – the tools are free.
- Instead of using Papers or Endnote, use Mendeley (2 GB free sync’ing for your PDFs) https://www.mendeley.com
- Instead of using Audio Hijack Pro, use Soundflower + Audacity https://rogueamoeba.com/freebies/soundflower/ (Made by the same company!)
- Instead of paying for clip-art / stock photography, use Flickr photos licensed under Creative Commons (if you pick the right license type, you can even use them for commercial purposes!)
- Instead of paying for Hulu & Netflix, try YouTube & TED talks
And, a couple of paid solutions:
- Instead of using Twitter’s free clients, on iOS/Mac use Tweetbot (saves your place, keeps Twitter under control)
- Instead of using your brain / a list somewhere / the power of prayer – use Lastpass or 1Password to rest easier at night!
- Try viki.com or DramaFever.com for streaming video content from non-English speaking countries. About $4/month for either one