Computer Forensics & Data Recovery

Well. I have finally gave into getting a smartphone. For anyone totally unfamiliar, they are basically a phone, PDA, camera, and internet appliance… all in one.

I held off getting one, waiting for prices to come down and them to become truly useful. I have to say, so far, it has saved me many computer boot-ups to answer support requests and emails. I love being able to take photos, and them instantly upload online. Being able to access Google Maps and Microsoft LiveSearch on the road is great, for driving, touring , and my police work. I can easily record tasks and appointments to my Google calendar then receive text message reminders to my phone.

One of the things I have really loved is the ability to make use wasted previously wasted time.  Lets say for instance, I am stuck sitting waiting for an appointment.  Instead of staring at the clock or some magazine I really don’t care about, I pull out my smart phone.  I read my email, tech news reports, national news… whatever.  Instead of my blood pressure going through the roof at the time I am wasting, I am pretty content getting to read news stories I enjoy.  If you are into technology and computers….. there is always something that needs to be read to keep up!

So, if you are still no the edge… I recommend a smartphone, i-phone, ultra-mobile pc, and whatever else that is small and accesses the internet nicely.  There are lots of choices out there now.  I have personally found it worth the $300 dollars I had to pay Alltel for the phone and my $40 dollar a month data plan.

Happy Browsing and waiting in line….

I happened upon a FireFox add-on called PicLens. I have to say, “WOW!” It is an add on for Mozilla Firefox. It works with Google’s Picasa and image search, Flickr, Yahoo, and Facebook. I would assume they will be adding functionality for other sites also.

What it does, is create a nice photo slide show for images in these sites. For instance, my son is really into birds. I can do a Google image search for a specific bird. I then point at any of the image search results. I translucent play arrow appears in the corner of the photo. Click that arrow. A new window will appear. PicLens reaches out to all the various sites from the search result and grabs the full size photo. The really amazing thing happens though when you click the play arrow in the slide show view. It downloads all the search image results from various websites and plays them in a smooth slide show. Very, very cool for image browsing.

This free add-on is well worth the install!!

http://www.piclens.com/site/firefox/