Lastpass can save you time and headache with all your passwords and accounts!

Have you ever forgotten your password to your email, or that other email account you rarely check? If you remember your password, is it because they are all the same one? =(

If you have the same password everywhere, only one accidental breach at one company you use could result in your password being out in the open to all your accounts!

The answer to managing all your passwords is Lastpass.com !

It stores all your passwords behind a very secure wall that can be doubly protected (if you want) with a text sent to your cell to confirm your login any time you log in (to be sure it is really you!)

Those days that I spend trying to remember/reset/recovering passwords or find where I wrote down a password on a scrap of paper are over!

The best news for teams or families is that you can securely share your passwords with your teammate or family member/spouse. This way you don't need to have all separate accounts. Or if you need to access private information that is shared with you, you can use your LastPassword to do it. You can even share passwords without revealing the actual password itself. Lastpass can fill it in without revealing it! We use it on our team at Cru all the time. 

It's FREE for use on PC/Mac/Web but It's also an app for iphone and android so you can use it on your phone too (premium account required, only $12/year!)


Let me know what you think!

Godspeed,

John

Have more than one google account? Keep them separate with Chrome profiles!

So maybe you have a personal gmail account and a work google account. Or two personal gmail accounts. Regardless, with any browser, it can get confusing if you try to log into both at the same time. You might even end up forgetting which account you are logged into. The solution for this is Chrome profiles. These help you keep all your settings separate for each account, and then you can have both open at the same time in separate windows without getting them confused. Watch this 40 second video on how to set them up.

Host a picture file on Google Drive!

Long time no post. Sad. But life has been busy. But I'm getting back into some "normalcy" now so here's your latest tech tip, thanks to Google Gooru.

The ability to host an image directly from Google Drive has been discontinued by Google. Luckily, we found an easy workaround, so you can link directly to the image without linking to your Drive.

Today's Top Post - How to host an image from Google Drive

This video will take you through the steps of hosting an image stored on Google Drive so that image can be used on websites, in email signatures, and much more.

Tip #10: Save money on cell service by going to prepaid!

photo credit: http://www.sellmyblackberryblog.com/

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted. Life is so crazy. but this tip couldn't wait any longer.
So I finally took the plunge. After reading about how others are saving money on their cell phone plan by going to Straight Talk or T-mobile's prepaid plans and bringing their own cool smartphones, I finally got off the sprint "everything data plan" and even after only a few months on sprint contract and breaking contract, i'm going to get off contract and be able to take my number anywhere when new deals pop up. if i did it last month i would have saved $100 after selling my old sprint smartphone on ebay, but unfortunately i waited too long and now my old phone is worth less, so I'll pay only $10 more over the course of the next 2 years AFTER I bought my new cool international samsung galaxy note smartphone (but you could save alot more by buying something less complicated than mine), but I'm keeping my eyes peeled for better deals each month on prepaid accounts so as to maybe even save more.

The new Straight talk unlimited plan has unlimited voice and text and data (up to 2 Gigabytes, which i'll never get to) for only $45/mo plus 8% tax (in Albany).

There is a nice perk, however, in that I can pop my sim card out of my cell phone (it's a world phone) and then plug it into the free Google Chromebook i won in a pilot program (only runs a google chrome browser but is lightning fast!) and get mobile broadband while on the road almost anywhere with 3G and even 4G (gsm/hspa+) in most places I go in Albany and the surrounding areas. Sprint still only has 3G service around here with limited "older" 4G wimax service on some phones. Here's a good comparison chart for 4G service if you are curious as to the differences.

I even ported my number, but if I don't auto-refill it each month, i could lose it. I better be sure to keep my credit card up to date! =)

Have you found a great deal on unlimited smartphone cell service? let me know. I'm off contract for good now, so I might try it for a month!

Tech Tip # 9: Setting up Automatic actions using Ifttt.com

I was wondering just the other day "how can I have some kind of automatic text tell me the day before the forecast says it's going to snow?" and then Just today I ran across ifttt.com which stands for "If this then that" which basically allows you to set up automated tasks to happen using your various internet accounts/information like twitter, gmail, weather, the time, etc.  It is one of the most interesting developments and creative ideas I've yet seen on the internet. Of course it's free. Try it out!

One of the best features is that it shares popular ideas that others have figured out with you on their main "recipes" screen so if you also want to have that automatic task happen for you as well,  you can just activate it and so it saves you the time of setting up your own automatic "task" from scratch.  Often times it has information in it that you wouldn't know, like the RSS feed for NOAA Severe Weather Alerts. What a great way to share ideas!

Tech Tip #8: Just legally turned a Nook Color into an Android Tablet for free!

 

My wife received an inexpensive refurbished Nook Color e-book electronic reader for Christmas and I had heard that it also could be turned into an Android Tablet handheld computer for an inexpensive price. Well I had a 4Gb MicroSD card hanging around that I got (for free after rebate! do we see a trend here?) a couple years ago that I thought would suit well for the job and got to hunting down a method on the internet. and found a beautiful one! Thank you to Ana Mardoll and her blog post on How to convert a Nook Color into an Android Tablet that also can easily double as an out-of-the-box Nook Color by simply restarting the thing without the modified SD card inside! It was easier than I thought and I barely ran into any snags at all. In fact it was too easy. I thought there was something I hadn't done right. of course it's only been 1 day but it all went so well. Thank you to the developers out there who build these software packages for free in their spare time and thank you, of course, to Google, Inc., for publishing for free, the awesome software source code that you provide.  What is the strangest thing is that Barnes and Noble makes the Nook Color with bluetooth inside but their software doesn't allow it, as far as I have read (meaning no bluetooth keyboards or mice or headsets, etc).    If you want to have an Android tablet, I highly recommend getting a refurbished Nook Color and trying this out. You even get a 1 year warranty, and as I say with refurbs, whatever was going to break has already broken and been fixed. Its unlikely that anything else will probably break since there are no moving parts.  Happy New Year!

Tech tip #7: Search all your Google accounts with Cloud Magic!

Wow, just watched this video on what Cloud Magic does to help you search your google contacts, gmail, google docs, and twitter (plus more to come) in order to find information you have all in one place (without opening yet another tab to do a search, etc).  I just installed it as an extension in my Google Chrome browser and it worked in a minute after installing it and adding my google account information.  I can't wait until they add FACEBOOK so I can search those messages as well! Check out the CloudMagic video!


Has anyone found a way to integrate their gmail and facebook messages ? I only know of cell phones that merge facebook and gmail contacts, and HP's Palm Pre that merged texts, facebook messages, and emails into one place. too bad there isn't any sync program out there on PC's for such things.