iPhone

Like most Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, I’ve recycled more than a few older phones – flip phones, handsets and various models of the Blackberry^®. I’ve always been a little uncomfortable wondering where exactly the final resting place for those phones is – have they been properly broken down or did they just end up in a landfill?

Well my CLNC^® amigos, worry no more! I just learned that the FCC requires that deactivated cell phones be capable of making an emergency call to 911. So instead of dropping that old cell phone into the recycle bin at your local electronics shop, consider sticking it and a car charger (I’m sure you have one) in the trunk or glove compartment in case of an emergency. It has to be powered up to call – hence the charger. Also, note that any GPS function on the phone will not work so you’ll have to know where you are (and I don’t mean “on the phone”).

We’ve all experienced the trauma of needing to make a stat call for pizza delivery only to find out that we let our smartphone die playing Words with Friends. If you’re ever in a real emergency, that old cell phone just might save a life – and it might even be yours.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

That’s actually a trick question. The real question is whether or not you should use a password on the smartphone or tablet you use in your CLNC^® business. What’s that you say? Passwords are too cumbersome and time-consuming? Well, let me ask you, what do you think would be more time-consuming: taking two seconds to type in a 4-digit passcode each time you reach for your device, or untangling your life after someone has stolen your banking information, all of your contacts, possibly your identity, has read and forwarded your email and just wrought havoc with your life because you’ve lost your smartphone and it has fallen into the hands of some villain?

As our phones have grown smarter and are slowly replacing or supplementing our computers, we use them for more and store more personal information on them. As this occurs, we increase the danger if that device is lost. We protect, or at least I hope you do, our computers with passwords. We use passwords to login to websites, so why not use a passcode on your smartphone or iPad^®? And I do mean something more complex than 8888 or 1234 or moving the puzzle-piece into place to unlock your phone. If you’re really brave (or don’t have children who play with your phone or tablet), you can configure it to wipe itself clean after ten failed attempts to login. That’s what I’ve done (but that’s also why Vickie knows the passcode to my iPhone^®).

I’ve given you tips in the past on how to recover a lost phone; now I’m giving you the best and most important tip of all – use a passcode on your phone, before it’s too late. Remember, there’s more to Taking Care of Business than being in business. That means taking simple steps to protecting your legal nurse consulting business. Start today. Your information is too important to lose and your life is too complex to rebuild.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

What I’m talking about is the daily life of your smartphone’s battery. Every smartphone has a different anticipated, average and not entirely satisfactory daily life. What that means is how long it will go between charges.

As an iPhone^® user, I have to charge the phone’s battery just about every day and a half, depending on whether or not I’ve done something radical like used the phone, headset or checked my email. If I do something totally wild and crazy like surf the Internet or use Yelp to find someplace to take Vickie to dinner, the battery life is even shorter.

Under normal use, I get about 36 hours off a full charge, but Apple^® recommends that you run the battery down below 20% before fully recharging it. If Certified Legal Nurse Consultants follow that rule, they’ll get just under a year of life out of the battery before it starts to degrade and last increasingly shorter periods of time. Worst of all, the iPhone battery is built in so I can’t swap it out myself. If you use your iPhone for your legal nurse consulting business and are pretty hard on the battery life, you might buy an extended life battery, but it ruins the phone’s looks by sticking out the bottom. Maybe you could buy a combination fat case and battery, which adds lots of juice and also ruins its look. I don’t know about my CLNC^® amigos, but I’d rather be cool than ruin the image of my iPhone (besides nobody really knows if your phone is working or not except in a movie theatre).

Being cool means being prepared and this means I have a 12V charger in my car, charging cables attached to my home and work docks and keep a full wall wart charging set in my Codi^® MobileMax rolling computer bag when I travel. Wherever your legal nurse consulting business takes you, take a minute to be prepared.

There are so many Android^® phones out there that battery life and swappable batteries are too varied to write about. Instead, let me offer legal nurse consulting Androids this advice – carry at least one fully-charged spare battery, keep a 12V charger in your car and pack a spare wall charger with your travel stuff. Do this and you’ll never find yourself looking for a payphone again.

In the meantime, if you want to maximize your TTBC (Tom’s Time Between Charges) for any smartphone, follow these simple steps:

1. Turn off the GPS except for those apps that really need it. If your GPS is on, your phone is either constantly pinging the global positioning system to tell people where you are or pings it every time you use certain apps. Turn it off except for essential apps like Fandango, Yelp, Zagat or others that help you find restaurants, gas or movies. Forget Google, Shazam, Dictionary and other apps that don’t need to know where you are to function properly. You do need your GPS for Facebook (at least for iPhone) if you’re posting a mobile upload. Otherwise, if checking in with FourSquare and becoming “mayor” of the local “Shake ‘n Steak” is important to you, get used to short battery life.
2. Turn off your Wi-Fi – at least when you’re not using it. Wi-Fi is a nice feature that can save considerable costs off your cellular bill if you use it in a Starbucks^®, hotel lobby or anywhere else that offers free Wi-Fi. However, the whole time you’re driving around or walking through Wal-Mart^®, your phone is searching for a Wi-Fi signal, possibly asking you to join any networks it discovers and, at the same time, draining your battery. Instead, keep the Wi-Fi off and turn it on while you’re waiting in line for that double decaf skinny soy latte (with two Splendas) before going to see your favorite attorney-client or CLNC^® subcontractor.
3. Always keep your phone where you can see it. When your phone is buried in your purse or on the backseat or floor of your car, it’s looking for a signal. In fact, it’s straining to find a signal that’s being blocked by a couple of thousand pounds of heavy Detroit metal. This, of course, strains your battery. Instead, keep your phone on the dashboard or in one of the cup holders (where you can safely reach it when it goes off). Turn it off when you’re at an attorney-client’s office and when you’re at work.
4. If you can adjust how quickly your screen goes to auto-lock or your screensaver kicks in, adjust it to the shortest period you can stand.
5. Finally, turn down the screen brightness and then set it to auto-brightness. The lower your screen brightness, the lower your battery draw. You don’t have to turn it down to where you need to step into a dark stairwell to use it, but at least drop it from the brightest to about midway and keep reducing it until you find a level you can live with.

Try these five simple steps and all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants will get some extra life out of their smartphone batteries. I’m sure the day that important attorney-client returns your call and you have the battery bars to take it, you’ll appreciate this tip.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

CLNC^® consultants know how colds are spread, and thanks to my Tuesday Tech Tips, know that there are more germs on your smart phone than on a toilet seat. But did you know that no matter how clean you keep your legal nurse consulting smartphone, it can still spread viruses? I’m really talking about malware. One of the newest areas of computer insecurity is the smartphone because the miscreants who write malware and Trojan horses are now targeting the growing smartphone market. Phones running on the Android^® platform are more susceptible than iPhones^®. If you think of the amount of data related to your CLNC^® business and your personal life that’s stored on your phone, not to mention passwords for your Facebook and other apps, you should be very afraid of having that data compromised. If you’re using your phone for mobile banking or micropayments, you definitely need to read this entire Tech Tip.

So far, iPhone users have been the safest. That’s good news. Part of what protects iPhone users is the centralized Apple App Store (although the occasional bad app does get through). The few iPhone viruses that were out there in the wild attacked jailbroken iPhones. So, as long as you haven’t jailbroken your iPhone and you only download your apps from the Apple App Store, you’ll be safer than the average bear. At the same time, there are no true antivirus apps that will run “in the background” protecting your iPhone as you roam, so just be careful.

However Android users are in a different world because Android-based phones are more often under attack by the bad guys. Android phone users: before you finish reading this blog, you should buy and install an antivirus program like WaveSecure from a reputable company like McAfee. If you’re cheap, oops I mean budget-conscious, you can download and install one of two free products: Lookout Mobile Security or Norton Mobile Security.

There you have it. Smart, Android-using Certified Legal Nurse Consultants now have three ways to protect their smartphones. Vickie likes to say “You can thank me later,” but you can thank me now (or after you’ve protected your phone).

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Last month I gave you some low-tech tips for finding a lost cell phone. Today I’ll fill you in on some high-tech ways to find a phone that’s gone walkabout. Interestingly, they all have similar names, beginning with “Where’s my….” which is a tip-off to what they do. Remember the biggest danger of losing a phone is having some miscreant gain access to all your email, contacts, calendar, racy photos, Facebook, etc.

Let’s start with iPhones^® since that’s what’s clipped to my Bat-Utility belt. Your best option if you have an iPhone 4 is to download the free “Find My iPhone” app. This cool app will not only locate your missing iPhone using its built-in GPS locator, but also gives the you the ability to send a text message of your choice to the phone begging who ever has it to return it to you or, if you’ve simply misplaced it in your home or office, to “ping” loudly until you find it. You can even erase the iPhone’s contents or simply lock it down so nothing can be accessed. If you have an earlier version of the iPhone, you’re not out of luck. Lifehacker.com has instructions for a workaround to use “Find My iPhone” on that earlier device – but you didn’t read that here.

Alternatively, if you’ve insured your iPhone against loss and aren’t worried about getting it back, simply set up a passcode on your iPhone and set the iPhone to delete all content after 10 failed log-in attempts. This is slightly dangerous if you have children who might play with your phone and accidentally trigger the eraser.

If you’re using an Android^®-based phone, download the free “Where’s My Droid” app from the Android Market. This free app lets you create a passphrase that you can send to your phone and, if your phone is on when you send it, will cause the phone to ring at its loudest volume, hopefully allowing you time to find it under the backseat of your Prius. It also has a GPS option in case you left it somewhere more remote, such as the juice bar at Whole Foods.

If you’re the last Blackberry^® user on Earth, you can download “Where’s My Phone” from Blackberry’s App World. There’s a free version which sets off the phone’s ringer when you send it an email trigger. There’s a paid version that, like the Droid app, also has a GPS location option to help you stalk whomever has taken possession of your precious device.

Finally, for those of you who just can’t bring yourself to give up the self-torture of having more than one Windows^® device and are using a Windows Mobile^® phone try WaveSecure from McAfee^® which provides all of the above services, including the secure wipe but with the cool addition of backing up your phone data! WaveSecure also works with Blackberries and Droid phones, but not iPhones.

Whichever high-tech phone recovery solution you select make sure you don’t just install it, but also test it so that in the event you do need to use it, you’ll be ready.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

On our vacation to Provence, I consciously left my iPhone^® at home. That sounds good and healthy, right? Well it did feel good and healthy right up until the time I stepped off the airplane in Paris and reached into my purse for my phone. Nothing there. Momentary tachycardia, like when you can’t find your wallet, car keys or wedding ring (Where was I last night?). I remembered the phone was at home, took a few deep breaths and headed to passport control.

Standing in line at passport control and later in customs there are big multilingual signs, “no cellphone use”. No problem, even though I don’t like to be told what I can and cannot do. It was a different story in the car ride to the hotel, in the Paris subways and on the TGV to Provence. When I sit in a car, I usually take advantage of that time to catch up with my office and Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. It was only natural that when every other Frenchwoman or man pulled out their cellphone to text, Facebook or check their make-up, I unconsciously and enviously reached for my own phone. It’s an involuntary reaction, much like breathing. When I have a bit of free time I grab the iPhone, check email, check Facebook and check email again (just in case).

It took a couple of days, but I soon calmed down and joined fully with the slow life of Provence. Walking from village to village, eating lunch outside in a small café or having an aperitif on the terrace before dinner, I forgot the iPhone. Even the urge to call family or friends left. I was free to enjoy my vacation, and enjoy I did! Although one day the combination of a French baguette, Époisses cheese and a healthy glass of great Bordeaux wine almost had me ready to tweet!

I heartily recommend that all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants take a temporary vacation from your phones. Your mental health might suffer at first, but then it will magically soar. Take a moment, put down the phone, pick up a baguette, some cheese and a glass of French red – you’ll thank me later.

Success Is Inside!

The Fourth of July has passed along with the fireworks, the beer, the barbeque and quite possibly your cell phone, depending upon how hard you partied last night while celebrating the birth of our nation. There’s no faster way to lose a cell phone than to be in some unfamiliar place (or physical state) and put your phone down for just a second. You lay it on the picnic table, tilt the box to get that last tasty bit of white zin and next thing you know you’ve walked away, leaving Steve Jobs’ finest accomplishment behind.

I’m one of those people who can be a tad bit forgetful. I make a habit of always placing my wallet and car keys in the same spot in the house every day, day after day. That way I can reliably navigate to that spot in the house and find my stuff. The only time the keys go missing is when Vickie “purses” them thinking they’re hers. Doesn’t happen that often, but when my keys have vanished through the wormhole – her purse is the first place I look.

Now my office is a different story. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve walked out to fire up the old global warmer for the drive home only to realize my car keys have gone walkabout. Usually with the help of the electric leaf-blower I keep in my office for just that purpose, I can uncover them pretty quickly.

My phone is a whole other “true Hollywood story.”  Some days if it wasn’t for the ringer, I’d never find my phone. I’ve never totally lost it, but I’ve taken steps to ensure that I don’t. The steps I’m about to share won’t guarantee you’ll never forget or lose your phone or that you’ll get it back if you do. But you’ll have a better chance of seeing your phone again if you follow these four steps:

Precaution #1: Remember Even Nuns Have Habits. Make one of your habits always, and I mean always, to keep your phone in the same place. If you wear a nerdy belt clip, when you stand up to leave that meeting with your attorney-client, pat yourself down before leaving the room. If you keep it in your purse (or “murse”), keep it in the same side pocket and always check for it before you leave the house or meeting.

In the global warmer I’ve got a silicon sticky pad on top of the dash. As soon as I get into the driver’s seat I’ll put my phone on the pad. Before I dismount I make sure I grab it. The key is visibility, plus I pat myself down before locking it up. If you have a Bluetooth headset, follow the same rule – always keep it in the same place in your car, home or office.

Precaution #2: Keep Your Pocket Litter. If I’m out and about, I run about a day behind filing my cash and credit card receipts. In other words, if I realize something’s missing (usually my phone because I can’t drive home without my keys), I can use my receipts to quickly backtrack my stops and find my lost belongings. So far I’ve recovered my Yankees cap four times this way and my Amex card twice.

Precaution #3: Pick Your Case Wisely. I’m a guy, so a hot pink iPhone^® case just won’t do. For Vickie though, hers is a bright turquoise, anodized, stealth-aircraft grade, titanium case. It’s bright enough that you can see it in just about any light level, a darkened restaurant, movie theatre or at the beach. I tend to drop my iPhone so my case is a big, ugly, cartel-grade, armored Otterbox. It’s also clunky enough that I can feel whether I have it or not. Don’t be afraid of what your case looks like – it’s there for you, not the paparazzi. If it’s colorful enough to catch your eye when you leave it on the table, it works. I don’t care if you bedazzle it – just don’t leave home, the gym or Wal-Mart without it.

Precaution #4: Make Sure Everybody Knows Your Name. First, create a label with any label-maker or even a sticky note and put it on the back of your phone, inside the case. If your phone has a replaceable battery that’s another place to put a label. The label should have your name, WORK phone number (not your cell or home) and offer of a reward. Next, use your computer to print out a page with your name, contact information and work address/phone number and offer of reward. Do it in large, clear text. Then take a photo of that page with your phone’s camera and leave it in the photo file on your phone.

Chances are whoever finds your phone will, out of nothing but prurient interest, look at your photos and they’ll stumble across the one you want them to find, as well as the ones you don’t. This tip works well with digital cameras too. One of my computer magazines did a study where they left phones, cameras, etc., on the subway, in a taxi, at bars and they found that simple labeling resulted in almost a 75% return-to-owner rate. It’s worth a try.

If you do lose your phone, try calling it. If it’s not on silent and it’s still nearby, you may find it. Mine flew off my dashboard while I was off-roading through a CostCo parking lot and I had to take Vickie’s phone and a flashlight to find it (it was well-wedged where the sun doesn’t shine) but I tracked it down!

If your phone’s gone for good, notify your cellular carrier or your IT department immediately. They may be able to disable the phone, wipe the data and cut off service, freeing you from expensive calls and embarrassing uses.

We’re all responsible for taking care of our toys so it’s always better to take preventative steps rather than curative ones.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

I was writing a Tech Tip on a flight home and needed to fact check a statement. I went to open up Firefox^® and was suddenly gripped by the cold realization that I couldn’t access the Net; at least until we were wheels down in Houston and I could activate my wireless card. For that moment, I was disconnected, all alone in the world, and while I wasn’t experiencing withdrawal, I missed the convenience of Googling something of interest for your legal nurse consulting businesses. Continental/United, my airline of lack-of-choice has yet to offer in-flight Internet access. Other more progressive airlines are already doing so, charging an added cost for it like they do for seat cushions, food and restroom access.

While I was feeling the pain of being offline I started wondering, is Internet access on airplanes a good thing? Can we be connected too much or for too long? Is it a good thing to be offline for a little while or is the Internet so much a part of our lives that we can’t live without it, even for that short flight from Bossier City?

I’m sure that Certified Legal Nurse Consultants would agree that there’s no easy answer. I think of it as a double-edged sword. For more than 748,000 miles, airplanes have been a sanctuary for me. Once I’m above the clouds and high over the ground, each flight becomes an opportunity to disconnect from the grid and power out on Big Things. There’s no email to answer, nobody to un-friend, nothing tweeting and no LOLcats to view. As long as the person in front of me doesn’t recline into my lap, some of my greatest creativity comes when I’m airborne. Granted, when I hit the ground and turn on the iPhone^® I pay the price for that freedom. There’s usually one or two urgent voicemails and 25+ emails that need responses, but I can usually get them done before we hit the gate.

Do I need airborne Internet access? Not really. Do I want airborne Internet access? Yes – for fact checking. Do I want others to have it? It depends on what they’re doing. At the end of the day or the beginning of a flight, I’d rather have Internet access than cell phone service on airplanes and therein lies the rub. Once we get Internet, somebody will crack open the Wi-Fi connection on their iPhone and start making Facetime^® calls and that will be the end of my sanctuary.

As I like to say, the future is in front of us and the Internet everywhere is at hand, for better or for worse. Today, I’d like to hear from you. How do you feel about staying connected and about your neighbor next to you talking on his/her cell phone in flight? Would you rather be connected or free? Sound off and let me know (unless you’re in the air).

Keep on Techin’,

Tom

I believe in dragons – at least the Dragon Naturally Speaking^® software on my laptop and the accompanying app on my iPhone^®. I’m so in love with my Dragons that I can’t imagine life without them. If you’ve ever had a “eureka” thought but no paper to write it down, you’ll appreciate the mobile Dragon. The app allows me to dictate up to a minute of pure brilliant thought or instructions, save them and then, if necessary, edit or add onto them. Once I’ve completed my “voice memo” or idea for the day, I’ll email it to myself or the responsible staff member and have an electronic paper trail to keep them (or me) on track.

As a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant the mobile app gives you the ability to send your own brilliant thoughts to yourself or to an attorney-client as an email or a text message, or even to simply update your Facebook status about the new attorney-client you’ve just acquired. The beauty of the Dragon is now, no matter where you are, you can record the “big idea” that you know won’t last until you find paper. You’ll never again have to worry about reading your scribbled handwriting or decoding the cocktail napkin notes from the 2-martini lunch with your legal nurse consulting mastermind group.

The Dragon software for your computer is an expanded version that allows you to dictate reports, letters, memos or just about any other document. It does require a headset which tethers you to your computer (a minus). You also have to train your Dragon, a more complex procedure than training your Dragon app but once trained you’ll love it.

I highly recommend the Dragon app to any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant with an iPhone. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without a Dragon at hand.

Success Is Inside!

All Certified Legal Nurse Consultants love their electronic gadgets and rarely go anywhere without them. I’ll bet few of you can remember life before smart phones, email everywhere and the connectivity we all take for granted. I’m not sure if it’s good for us. I do know I love having my iPhone^® in the car, especially since the CD player (not my 8-track) in the old “global warmer” crapped out. I have a Monster iCarPlay Cassette Adapter that lets me play my iPhone/iPod^® music through my cassette deck. This of course runs down the iPhone’s battery and gets to the weakness of all electronic devices – battery life.

Any CLNC^® consultant who has ever charged an iPhone, Blackberry^®, Droid^® or iPod using the USB port on a personal computer knows that charging times can be incredibly slow, especially compared to the short charging times of a “wall wart” charger.

Why is that? Well, sparing my CLNC^® amigos the geeky details, the USB ports on your computer put out a lower power level than does a wall charger. If you’ve been in your car and your iPod died during your favorite Justin Beiber song or your phone died in the middle of a legal nurse consulting case discussion with your favorite attorney-client, you’re now probably smart enough to carry a car charger that plugs into your cigarette lighter socket.

It’s one of those immutable rules of life that the longer the drive the quicker your battery will give out. If you use your phone’s GPS, you know how quickly that drains the battery and many car chargers will simply maintain battery level, not charge the battery if the device is on while charging. Likewise if you’ve ever simply tried to charge your phone in the car, you know it’s not a perfect science. Car-charger power levels can be just as low as a USB port.

So what is a savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant to do? Easy, buy a Scosche reVIVE II Dual USB Car Charger. It’s advertised for an iPad but here’s the beauty of this particular charger – it has both a 5 watt (1 amp) and a 10 watt (2.1 amp) output which will kick-start just about any device that can be charged through a USB port! You simply plug in your cable and device and baby, you’ve got the power! You can even charge two devices, like your headset and phone at the same time. SMALL PRINT WARNING: Check your device’s documentation to be sure it can handle a 2.1 amp charge BEFORE charging your device. You’ll also need to buy your own USB cables but that’s not an issue.

Consider one of these for your CLNC^® Batmobile and you won’t regret it.

Keep on techin’,

Tom