Bring Back Those Days

"Those were the days." A common phase among people that are out in the real world. Being a kid meant having summer vacations where you had about 90 days of freedom to invent and create without getting smack for coloring outside the lines, and suddenly losing summer feels like losing an arm in a battle you don't remember having. Until the day you die, you're going to have phantom twinges of hope for a three-month holiday that is never ever coming. We can bring it back; in fact summer vacation happens every night. The fun of summer was that you were free from the routine that someone else invented for you. So one of the things that you can do is learn a new skill or take up a new hobby such as application development or learning a new language. Fun fact: doing new things releases dopamine in the brain which can dramatically increase your mood and your overall outlook on life. Get out there and have summer vacation every night.

Coffee: In the News Again

Doesn't it seem like every month there is a different article touting the benefits of coffee and then directly followed by one that says it is bad? Compounds native to the coffee bean include antioxidants that have been linked to a lower risk of skin cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and diabetes. The latest, published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, studied health records of 45,000 people who reported their coffee-drinking habits and concluded that younger people under age 55 who drank more than 28 cups a week were 21% more likely to die prematurely during the 17 year study than those who drank less. So is that morning cup of coffee a health-booster or a health hazard? That answer depends on how the studies that examine this question are designed, and by extension, the type of coffee in question — as well as who is doing the drinking. Unlike the latest analysis above, some studies in the past did not adjust for factors other than coffee that could affect outcomes like mortality, cancer rates or cognitive measures. To complicate matters even more, these effects can greatly vary from person to person. Plus, our bodies tend to adapt to the various components in coffee, including caffeine, so each individual’s response to it may even change over time.

Cloud Telephony

We have all heard that IP telephony can really improve a business but do you the actual benefits? One of the main advantages of internet phones is the simplicity that they offer which can be a huge relief when you consider just how many different ways we have to communicate. Cloud telephony requires no on-site equipment. That means you don’t have a PBX box taking up space in a closet, or thousands of feet of copper wiring in your walls or cable ducts. In addition to being simple, it is also more mobile. In a world where work never really stays at work, it is good to be able to use any device to access your documents. Cloud telephony products’ simple, flexible design greatly streamline phone system management. And the less time spent managing your phones, the more time you have to do value-adding work. Cloud phone service enables you to focus on what really matters

Smartphone Plans

How much do you pay a month for your cell phone service plan that includes a smartphone? Even though that phone is wonderful when it comes to using the different VoIP systems, you are still probably shelling out a good bit on the bill. But good news: Facing stiff competition from budget carriers, all of the major networks recently began offering cheaper “prepaid” plans – which could save you a ton of money. Instead of entering a two-year contract, a “prepaid plan” enables you to pay monthly, without a commitment to stay with a particular service provider. These no-contract, prepaid phone plans used to be just for dumb-phones, the ones that did not really do anything. So here are the amazing deals:

• If you’re a heavy talk and data user, the best plan is on Sprint’s network through Boost Mobile: $50/month for 2.5 GB of data. (Compare this to Verizon and AT&T’s plans – $60/month for 2 GB.) Better yet, if you make six, monthly, on-time payments in a row, Boost will knock $5 off your monthly bill every month thereafter. They’ll reduce your bill again at 12 months, and again at 18 months, so that after a year and a half you could be paying as little as $35/month – if you haven’t switched plans by then.

• If you don’t talk much but use a lot of web access (say, you’re a teenager), Virgin Mobile has a $35/month for 300 minutes of talk – and unlimited text and data.

• If you use a moderate amount of data but want unlimited talk and text, T-Mobile offers unlimited talk and text, plus 500 MB of data for $50/month.

• The cheapest deal I’ve recently seen form the big carriers: If you dig down deep on T-Mobile’s prepaid plan page, you’ll find a plan with only 100 minutes of talk, but unlimited text and data for – get this – $30 a month.

Virtual Therapists

So as we move further and further into the digital age, it seems as though more and more computers are being placed in the position where there used to be humans. Of course companies want to make things more effective and efficient but I wonder if anyone has ever stopped to think if this is such a great idea for some of the positions that might need a certain human touch? Communication services is one of the biggest sections where computers are dominating, from call forwarding to call centers that have you go though about twenty different menus all the while pushing buttons. Some are voice automated but it does seem to help. To add insult to injury, computers that act as speech therapists are being tested. People without speech issues end up wanting to jump across to the other end of the line and destroy that device that will not let them talk to a really human. So what about those people that need constant speech therapy? While the verbal impairment can be life-long, health insurers only pay for a limited amount of therapy. Yet patients like Green need to continuously practice their skills. Does anyone else see the glaring problem with the system?

Cost of VoIP

There’s no doubt that VoIP offers a myriad of benefits, including decreased expenses and increased productivity, but at what cost? According to Columbia researchers, it is a very high one and it is not monetary. The security is one of the biggest downsides of internet phone services. At a recent Amphion Forum, a conference on the security of connected devices, Ang Cui, a fifth-year grad student from the Columbia University Intrusion Detection Systems Lab and his colleague, Computer Science Professor Salvatore Stolfo, demonstrated how easily an IP phone could be compromised. Using a popular Cisco VoIP phone, Cui quickly attached a small external device which allows the transfer of binary malicious code to the phone. The attack enables remote and undetected access to the phone’s microphone, which allows the hacker to activate the microphone without it being noticed and to eavesdrop on conversations in the surrounding environment, even when there is no phone call in progress. The compromised phone can also be used to attack other devices on the network, such as computers, phones and printers. This is the wake up call that demands attention and improvements in security.

How Not to Get Frustrated When Shopping Online

The internet has made it that much easier to spend money that we do not have on things that we do not need. Nevertheless, we all do it, even with all the frustrations that we endure. Even if the communication services are great, the return policy can be horrible and it is something that you need to know before you buy to save you some headaches. I am sure that you might have come up against some horrible policies in the time that you have been shopping online. When the return policy says that once you open something, you can't return it, there are things to think about when purchasing from them. Another thing that you should take into consideration is customer reviews. It does not take a psychoanalyst to figure out which ones are complaining about the same things and which ones sound like commercials for the product or its competitor. The name of the game is research.