Everyone I’ve spoken to recently complains about the battery in their smartphone – can it last a whole day? This is obviously a problem for many, so portable battery chargers are pushing their way into the tech market. PC World has a great article about 10 ultraportable chargers. Read the whole article here.
iPad Apps
Camera+– cost: $1-This is a great iPhone app, and for anyone who likes to take photos with their iPad, the new dedicated version is a must-buy. The app is packed to bursting with everything from simple adjustment tools to clean up your photos, to stylish effects that help you create real works of art. You can also select scene modes to ensure you capture the best shots in the first place. As you’d expect, there’s social media integration for easy sharing too. This is a great value app for anyone who dabbles in photography with their iPad.Epicurious– cost: free – For the cooking fiend, the Epicurious app is a no-brainer. This colorful and well-designed app offers a wealth of recipes in every possible category, featured recipes by season, as well as a ‘favorite’ button, an easy-to-use built in shopping list, a search feature, and even the option to sync your recipe box with, say, the one from the app on your phone, for $1.99. Most recipes include professional photos and ratings, and users can easily add the ingredients of the recipe to their shopping list with the click of the shopping list icon.News360 – cost: free – There are a lot of news aggregators out there, but the sheer scale of News360 is impressive. You have access to over 20,000 different news sources. You can also personalize the feed. In fact, the app aims to curate content for you automatically by plugging into your social media accounts and taking a look at what interests you.
Tip of the month
Passwords
Everyone is annoyed at the fact that websites are insisting on more complicated passwords, but chances are great that everyone at some point will get hacked. It is very easy to get hacked now – it could take clicking on just one wrong link or attachment. Hackers are also selling passwords for as much as $20 a piece. The following are tips from experts to make your computer more difficult to be hacked. I don’t expect you to follow all of them, but please read them over and consider changing some of your bad password habits:1. If your password can be found in a dictionary, you might as well not have one.2. Never use the same password twice.
3. Come up with a passphrase. Ideally a password should be 14 characters or longer. Consider using a phrase – using the first letter in each word. You’ll be surprised how easily you can remember it.
4. There are password managers that you can use. LastPass, SplashData andAgileBits have password management software for Windows and Macs and mobile devices.
