5 digital tricks

File photo. (REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)

Whether you’re skiing or going to the beach, place your phone in a sandwich bag to prevent damage — and best of all, you can still use the touch screen. Need a fast charge? Put your phone in airplane mode to speed up the process by around 25 percent. And if you need to pump up the volume in a flash, set your phone inside a plastic, glass or paper cup, sans liquid of course.

Today’s gadgets, apps and sites are so powerful and do so many different things that most of us will use only a fraction of their built-in features. I put together some of the greatest tricks that you will use every day, or at least on occasion, to impress family and friends.

1. Take a picture with your voice

Smartphones and tablets are great for snapping candid pictures, but tapping the screen or pressing a hardware button can jiggle the gadget and ruin the shot.

Of course, you can avoid this by using your headphone control buttons to take a picture. It’s a definite, crowd-pleasing, “How’d you do that?” moment. Click here for detailed steps on how to do this slick trick and a few others.

But that’s old school now. How about telling your phone to take a picture? In Android, an app like Camera ZOOM FX ($3) has voice-activation. VoiceSnap for iOS ($1) does the same thing for iPhones and iPads. These are also great for taking group pictures from a distance.

There’s a lot more to taking a great picture than snapping the shutter. To increase your digital photo smarts, here are five secrets for Android and Apple to help you take professional-looking photos.

2. Clean up your Facebook News Feed

If you scroll through your Facebook News Feed, trying to get past the ads, game invites and political rants to find actual information about your friends, this tip is for you.

Click the downward triangle in the upper right corner of any Facebook post to see a number of options. You can choose to see less from that friend or unfollow him so you don’t see anything. If a friend is fond of posting stories, videos, and pictures from a specific app or site, you can usually just block that app or site.

For even more News Feed customization options, click the downward triangle in the upper right corner of your profile and select “News Feed Preferences.” Here you can see and choose what people, pages and groups you’re following and unfollowing.

Finally, add friends to your Close Friends list to see more from them, and add people to the Acquaintances list for less. To manage your friend lists, click the “Friends” heading in the left column next to your News Feed.

If the Facebook app is devouring your data, try turning off the auto-playing videos in your news feed. Click here for the steps to make this welcome change.

3. Really use Google

It’s safe to say that without Google Search, the Internet as we know it wouldn’t exist. But it’s more than just looking up websites.

What other ways can Google be useful, you might ask? Well, enter the package tracking number directly into the search box and Google will pull up quick links that let you track the status of your shipment. Travelers love this one: Type your airline name and flight number into Google and you’ll instantly see the flight’s arrival and departure status — and terminal and gate information, too. Need the weather? Type weather along with the city name or zip code.

If you’re watching your weight, type something like “calories carrots vs potatoes” in the Google search bar to get instant nutritional facts. Be sure to click the down arrow to see the details.

Google isn’t all about work. Click here to learn more about Google’s fun side, such as the little Easter eggs programmers slip into search.

4. Your favorite sites in one place

You probably visit a number of websites daily. You might pin a few and bookmark the rest, but that still means you have to look at individual sites and scan the page to see what’s new.

What if you could get every new post on your favorite sites to appear in one place? That’s what aggregators do. Don’t let the fancy name fool you; they’re simple to use and make life a lot easier.

Feedly (free) and Flipboard (free) are two popular options. Just add your favorite websites, organize them however you want, and whenever you open Feedly or Flipboard you’ll have plenty of new content to read. Love this one!

5. Remotely control a computer

This isn’t a trick you’ll use every day, but when you need it, you’ll want to have it. Say you’re helping a friend or family member with a computer issue over the phone, and you know you could fix the problem in 30 seconds if you were standing there. Unfortunately, trying to walk your friend or relative through the fix is going to take an hour.

Instead, log in and take control of his computer with a free remote access program like TeamViewer. It lets you see the other person’s screen and control his computer like you’re sitting in front of it.

I use programs like this all the time with my friends and relatives. In fact, when I’m setting up their computers, I usually install a remote access program so it’s ready to go when they need help down the line.

Bonus trick:

Have you ever considered adding a second screen to your computer? If you haven’t, then you probably will after you consider that a second monitor lets you move videos, music, email, chat and many other windows without interrupting what you’re doing on your main monitor.

Your tablet or smartphone can function as a second monitor to your PC.

First, pick up a stand for your tablet or phone. I sell my recommended model in my store. Then go ahead and download the app iDisplay, follow the setup instructions and you’ll have a more useful computer in no time. It’s one of these things that once you try, you get it.

On the Kim Komando Show, the nation’s largest weekend radio talk show, Kim takes calls and dispenses advice on today’s digital lifestyle, from smartphones and tablets to online privacy and data hacks. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website at Komando.com. Kim also posts breaking tech news 24/7 at News.Komando.com.

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5 digital tricks

DR. ABLOW: Do our digital devices own us? - VIDEO: Why we should unplug

Last Tuesday, a ninth-grader at John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson, N.J., was caught on video throwing his 62-year-old teacher to the ground and wrestling with him in order to retrieve his cellphone, which the teacher had confiscated. Teachers at the school allow cellphones to be used for educational purposes in the classroom, but they may take them and hold them until the end of class if a student appears to be using his phone for any other purpose.

Granted, the boy may have demonstrated problems controlling his impulses in other settings, too, but the video of his attack has resulted in national attention. And that’s because it isn’t the first dramatic example of how attached to our phones we have become. 

Last year, a Houston woman was shot by a mugger when she refused to hand over her cellphone. She survived, and she later asserted that she had done the right thing. 

We have already crossed the Rubicon, almost irrevocably incorporating technology into our psyches in a way that makes us part flesh and blood, part hardware.

In 2013, a 22-year-old man was killed by a train when he tried to retrieve the cellphone he had dropped on the tracks.

Without giving a great deal of thought to the psychological implications, our species has deployed mobile technology very quickly, in a very widespread manner. One reason is that the marketplace embraced smartphones in an astounding way — as if our phones and their apps are a lock-and-key fit with our psyches.  According to one source, there are 7 billion mobile devices on earth, one for almost each person.

What is “in” our cellphones that would lead people to attack others or risk death to keep them? I would argue that the phones absorb and record our thoughts and intentions so dramatically that we become unconsciously convinced they are “parts of us.” Why else would so many people hesitate even to leave a room without taking their cellphones with them? Why would they interrupt meetings and family time to check them? Why would young people be opting to spend their money on newer, faster ones, instead of on clothing?

Why would there be so much interest in personalizing the sounds they make, the apps they hold and the cases that hold them?

I contend we have already crossed the Rubicon, almost irrevocably incorporating technology into our psyches in a way that makes us part flesh and blood, part hardware. The fact that the hardware is outside our bodies (for now) does not mean the integration has not occurred. We are psychologically magnetized to our devices. That’s why some people will fight for them, and even die for them.

The selfie has become so ubiquitous that it no longer seems bizarre to see someone smiling into a cellphone or sticking out her tongue or making a sad face — acting — and then snapping a photo. And these images are then sent not only to her supposed “friends,” who may number in the hundreds, but also to her unconscious mind — reinforcing the idea that she is what her cellphone records her to be. Take away the cellphone and, in some measure, she believes she disappears. She feels she dies a little bit, or more than a little bit, psychologically. 

The business of selling “selfie sticks” — telescoping rods that hold a cellphone far enough away to facilitate a really good shot — is robust enough to make many retailers place large kiosks of them near the checkout register. Cellphones, you might say, are growing arms. Ours apparently aren’t long enough.

This is just the beginning. Cellphones will soon be able to determine whether you are looking at the content on their screens, rather than looking away. They will demand attention. The extent to which we own them versus them owning us will be increasingly in doubt.

Make no mistake: While technology can be good when harnessed for the good (raising money for charity occurs to me), there will be hell to pay for giving so little thought to the downside. That downside likely includes an epidemic of narcissism in young people, increased rates of anxiety and dramatically decreased feelings of autonomy. Because to the extent that one’s self-image is outsourced to a mobile device, it is no more deeply rooted than that. 

Bill Hemmer and Martha MacCallum bring you the news that matters to you!

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DR. ABLOW: Do our digital devices own us? - VIDEO: Why we should unplug

"DIGITAL MUGSHOT" New DNA tech may reveal faces from speck of blood

Candra Alston, 25, (left) and her 3-year-old daughter, Malaysia Boykin (right) were murdered in Columbia, S.C., on Jan. 9, 2011, in a case that remains unsolved.

There were no witnesses to the gruesome murder of a South Carolina mother and her 3-year-old daughter inside a busy apartment complex four years ago. But a new technology that can create an image of someone using DNA samples left at crime scenes might bring police closer to catching the killer.

Reston, Va.-based Parabon Nanolabs, with funding from the Department of Defense, has debuted a breakthrough type of analysis called DNA phenotyping which the company says can predict a person’s physical appearance from the tiniest DNA samples, like a speck of blood or strand of hair.

The DNA phenotyping service, commercially known as “Snapshot,” could put a face on millions of unsolved cases, including international ones, and generate investigative leads when the trail has gone cold.

“This is particularly useful when there are no witnesses, no hits in the DNA database and nothing to go on,” Dr. Ellen McRae Greytak, Parabon’s director of bioinformatics, told FoxNews.com.

“This is particularly useful when there are no witnesses, no hits in the DNA database and nothing to go on.”

- Dr. Ellen McRae Greytak, Parabon Nanolabs

“Traditional forensic analysis treats DNA as a fingerprint, whereas Snapshot treats it as a blueprint — a genetic description of a person from which physical appearance can be inferred,” Greytak said.

Parabon’s new technology reads the parts of the human genome that code for the differences in physical appearance between people. Snapshot is able to predict such critical traits as skin color, hair color, eye color and face shape. It can also predict the individual’s ancestry as well as highly-detailed traits, like freckles.

Using sophisticated computer algorithms that have been trained on thousands of reference samples, Snapshot translates this raw genetic code into predictions of physical traits. These are then combined to create a composite profile, or “digital mugshot” of an unknown suspect — with remarkable accuracy, according to the company.

“Traits are generally predicted with more than 80 percent confidence, and importantly, Snapshot also reports which phenotypes can be excluded with more than 95 percent confidence,” said Greytak.

While developing the technology, the company “made thousands of predictions on people who we knew” to ensure accuracy, she said. 

The investigator or crime lab sends evidence or extracted DNA to a Snapshot partner lab, where the DNA is run on a genotyping machine to produce the genetic information, according to the company. This genetic information is then securely transferred to Parabon, where an analyst runs it through Snapshot’s predictive models to produce a prediction. A report of the results is then delivered to the agency that requested it.

The new DNA analysis, however, is not able to predict age and height — traits Greytak described as “very complex.”

For investigators in Columbia, S.C., a digital mugshot created by the company might provide a break in a 4-year-old double homicide that remains unsolved.

The bodies of 25-year-old Candra Alston and her 3-year-old daughter Malaysia Boykin were found inside their home at the Brook Pines Apartments in Columbia on Jan. 9, 2011. There were no signs of forced entry, leading police to believe Alston and her daughter knew the killer or killers.

Police have not disclosed how the mother and child died, only saying Alston and her daughter were killed by different means. A laptop, Gucci purse and trash can were stolen from the apartment, as well as gifts the 3-year-old had received for Christmas.

The one clue detectives had was an unspecified DNA sample left at the crime scene.   

Throughout the course of the investigation, police interviewed close to 200 people, 150 of whom submitted their DNA to authorities. But none of the samples proved to be a match, according to Mark Vinson, a cold case investigator with the Columbia, S.C., Police Department.

The police department then turned to Parabon’s DNA phenotyping to create a facial image based on DNA left at the crime scene. Vinson said the computer-generated photo is a “person of interest” in the murders.

“This is DNA from just one person and it’s possible more than one person was involved,” Vinson told FoxNews.com. The person of interest is dark-skinned with brown hair and brown eyes. The picture does not indicate an exact age, so the individual could be older than he appears.

“We suspect the child also knew the person who did this, which might explain why she was killed,” Vinson noted.

“We’re very hopeful this composite

could be the thing that prompts someone to come forward,” he said.

While several agencies are now using Snapshot to help solve cold cases, including international ones, the Columbia, S.C. Police Department is first in the nation to publicly release a digital image generated by the new DNA analysis.

Anyone with information on the murders of Alston and her daughter is urged to contact CRIMESTOPPERS at 888-CRIME-SC or log onto www.midlandscrimestoppers.com.

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"DIGITAL MUGSHOT" New DNA tech may reveal faces from speck of blood

Observer’s teenAGE goes digital

Tuesday, January 06, 2015 | 3:30 PM    

KINGSTON, Jamaica – Students from schools across the Corporate Area flocked the Half Way Tree Transport Centre for the Jamaica Observer’s grand launch of its teenAGE website.

Observer teenAGE, which is in its 13th year as a weekly publication, will see the majority of its content going digital as the newspaper seeks to better cater to the desires of students.

The publication, which is published every Tuesday, will now be updated daily and will create more accessibility for young users.

In an upbeat atmosphere at the bus centre, students shared their views of the publication going digital.

Adrian McCarthy of the Old Hope Road-based Jamaica College said he thinks “it’s a sensible move to put the publication online, because majority of the time teenagers are online”.

He told OBSERVER ONLINE that having the content online means they will not have limited access to it, citing that they may lose the paper.

Shane Anglin from Linton’s Academic Services says, “It is a good move as the world is becoming more computerised so less teens will be paying attention to the actual paper.”

Norman Manley High’s Deshawn Beckford says he has mixed feelings about the publication going completely digital.

“It is better for it to be both in print and digital so those who still want to buy it can do so and who wants to view it online can do so,” he said.

Minister of State in the Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, Julian Robinson, told OBSERVER ONLINE that the Government is in full support of the move as it encourages more knowledge and innovation.

“I am very happy to endorse and encourage this move by the Jamaica Observer. We believe that if more Jamaicans engage themselves online it will eventually help our economy.”

He urged students to be mindful of cybercrime as they browse online. Robinson said a move such as this encourages youth to become more technologically inclined.

The contents of teenAGE can be viewed at: jamaicaobserver.com/teenage, while selected portions will still be published in the Tuesday Observer.

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Observer’s teenAGE goes digital

Crossing the digital divide

Friday, January 24, 2014 | 5:03 PM    

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, Phillip Paulwell, says he is pleased with the number of elderly people using community access points (CAPS) established at schools, libraries, post offices and other facilities across the island.

Paulwell was speaking at the official opening of the Michael Black Business Resource Centre in Rose Town, St. Andrew on Wednesday.

“In every parish, we have these access points, and they serve well, because it is not only designed for young people. This is a facility for all members of the community,” said Paulwell.

“I am so impressed when I go into communities and see the elderly coming out to learn how to send an email, they only knew about telegram; that was the fastest thing they knew about…our lives are being better because of the technology,” the Minister added.

The Michael Black Business Resource Centre was established at a cost of approximately J$3 million and is equipped with 15 computers, and associated equipment such as printers.

The community access points, 163 in total so far, are set up through funding from the Universal Service Fund (USF), a cess on all incoming telephone calls.

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Crossing the digital divide

Newsweek sold to digital news firm

4 August 2013 Last updated at 07:50 ET The final edition featured the strapline #lastprintissue The former US current affairs magazine Newsweek has been sold to a US digital news company.

IBT Media will buy what is left of the magazine, which published its last ever print edition in December, from owner IAC for an undisclosed price.

After 80 years, Newsweek became a digital-only publication amid falling ad revenues as audiences moved online.

It was last sold by the Washington Post for $1 in 2010 and merged with the Daily Beast website.

The Daily Beast, a news website co-founded by Tina Brown in 2008, will not be sold to IBT Media as part of the deal.

The newsweek.com web address will be revived in the coming weeks, IBT Media said.

Newsweek’s first edition was published on 17 February 1933. At its height, it had a circulation of three million, but declining readership and advertising revenue saw it fall into losses like many of its publishing peers.

“We believe in the Newsweek brand and look forward to growing it, fully transformed to the digital age,” said Etienne Uzac, co-founder and chief executive of IBT Media.

“We respect the brand’s long history of delivering high-quality, impactful journalism and believe this aligns well with IBT Media’s culture and mission. We look forward to working together to create a profitable and successful enterprise.”

IBT was set up in 2006 and publishes International Business Times, Medical Daily, Latin Times and iDigitalTimes, giving content in seven languages in 235 countries.

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Newsweek sold to digital news firm

Regional brodcasters to discuss digital transition next month

News

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — The Barbados-based Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) says it will hold its 44th annual general assembly in Guyana next month.It said the August 19 – 23 assembly will be attended by broadcast executives, industry partners and media specialists where they will discuss issues of digital transition, the business of broadcasting, public service broadcasting, new and traditional media and other relevant topics influencing the broadcasting environment.President Donald Ramotar will deliver the feature address at the opening ceremony of the conference that will also allow for suppliers to exhibit their services and a special screening session, where newly produced content will be shown to broadcasters.CBU Secretary General Patrick Cozier said the Barbados-based group is partnering with the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) in hosting a two-day workshop entitled “The Business of Broadcasting in a Digital Age” which should set the tone for an effective business evaluation of broadcasting in the future.CBU president Shida Bolai said the regional media body will also be looking at its focus and role going forward in a new digital media age.A highlight of the five-day conference is the Caribbean Broadcasting Awards to be held on August 22 with Prime Minister Samuel Hinds presenting the awards.The CBU was formed in 1970.

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Regional brodcasters to discuss digital transition next month