For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow. More by Rick Broida
With all the hubbub about the iPhone 5, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that there's a new iPhone operating system as well, one that's free and available for all iPhone owners starting today.
Usually you don't think of an operating system in terms of productivity, but iOS 6 does bring a few welcome improvements to that table. If you're wondering whether or not it's worth upgrading (trust me, it is), check out these three ways iOS 6 can help you work smarter.
It's the rare new business that wouldn't benefit from a home on the Web. Quite the opposite: If someone goes looking for a business like yours and doesn't find at least a simple Web site for it, well, that's a customer who's going to a competitor.
You might think that setting up shop online costs an arm and a leg, but it's actually one of the most affordable aspects of running a business. In fact, sometimes it doesn't even cost a dime.
Is there anything more amusingly anachronistic in today's tech world than the "Cc" and "Bcc" fields?
For those of you born after 1980, they stand for "carbon copy" and "blind carbon copy," respectively. For those of you born after 1990, "carbon copy" refers to the old-fashioned, pre-Xerox method of copying documents. (Millennials: Xerox is a company that was once known for making copiers.)
In modern terms, the Cc field is used to send a copy of an email to one or more contacts (though it's a bit redundant given that you can just as easily add multiple address to the "To" field).
Cloud storage services are a dime a dozen these days -- though there's usually at least a dime involved, especially if you want more than a few gigabytes of a space.
Last year, Symform shook things up a bit by offering up to 200GB of cloud storage free of charge, provided you were willing to share some unused space from your own local storage.
Today, the company unveiled a new pricing model -- "Bytes or Bucks" -- that gives business users virtually unlimited cloud storage at no charge.
If slide decks are part of your daily routine, you know what a hassle it can be to show them from a laptop.
You have to connect a projector, wait an eternity for the PC to boot, run PowerPoint, load your slide deck, switch the laptop's video output to projector mode, and so on and so on. You can blow 10-20 minutes just getting set up for your presentation, which is not what I would call a productive use of your time.
Can a single app make a major difference in your productivity? For anyone who routinely taps out lengthy emails on their phone or tablet, the answer is a resounding yes -- when that app is SwiftKey 3.
Just how good is it? The app earned an average of 4.5 stars (out of 5) from some 70,000 users on Google Play, and Business Insider claimed yesterday that it will "make you wish you had Android."
