Tech Tip Archives - Page 7 of 29

23Apr2014

Tom’s Tech Tip: Certified Legal Nurse Consultants – Here’s 5 Ways to Speed Up Your Phone

This Tech Tip is directed at all CLNC^® consultants – iPhone^® or Android^® phone users. Last week’s Tech Tip was about why your phone is frozen harder than a tub of my favorite Blue Bell Pecan Pralines ‘n Cream Ice Cream (pronounced prah-leen – not pray-lean). Today, I’ll give you some tips to speed it up so it runs a little faster than a can of Steen’s Pure Cane Syrup (pronounced stean – not stehn).

Certified Legal Nurse Consultants who are Android and iPhone users will follow similar but slightly different steps, but the general concepts remain the same. The biggest cause of a slow phone is you’ve used up all the memory with music, videos, apps and more. Here’s 5 ways to fix a slow phone:

Dump the cache on your web browser and clear out your cookies. We all surf the Web on our phones – looking up information and comparing prices when we shop. All those cached files and cookies take up memory and space – clear’em out.
Delete or turn off apps you don’t use.

16Apr2014

Tom’s Tech Tip: Why Is My Phone Frozen When It’s Springtime?

Every Certified Legal Nurse Consultant has suffered from a frozen phone. Whether it’s an Android^® or an iPhone^® – it freezes on start-up. Sometimes it freezes for a minute, sometimes longer and sometimes it requires a total reboot. What’s the cause? Well, the causes are many and diverse. The first involves the operating system and your apps. When you power your phone on it “checks in” to see if it needs to be updated. At the same time so do all your apps. If you use “push” notifications for email, Shazam, weather or apps that use location services, they’re all competing for your scarce resources the second your phone comes alive. All those apps can take a long time to check in and if one fails during the check-in, it may kill or affect other processes – all of which use up memory and time checking on, or waiting for, each other.

Even worse, Android phones especially tend to multitask, meaning that some apps continue to run in the background once you use them. They take up memory from the last time they were used until they’re either used again or killed off by the Android OS.

9Apr2014

Tom’s Tech Tip: More Email Etiquette for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants

Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of email is not to generate more email. The purpose of email is to communicate and transfer information – not to communicate what you’re doing and how hard you’re working at it.

All too many people, including one or two CLNC^® consultants, use email as a way to let other people know how busy they are on a project. It’s kind of like standing up and shouting “Look how hard I’m working and thinking” and getting immediate feedback saying “Yes you are!”

When you’re working on a project, whether it’s with a group or alone, it’s better to email the fact that you’ve completed the project or that you have a question about it, not that you’re working on it. Likewise, endlessly and fecklessly responding to every email that drops out of cyberspace and into your inbox wastes everyone’s time – including your own. Vickie jokes that there’s no prize for being the fastest email responder. There’s also no prize for being the most prolific responder. It’s almost as bad as being a serial texter.

So the next time you get an email,

2Apr2014

Tom’s Tech Tip: Are You Ready for Windows XPiration?

On April 8, 2014 Microsoft^® will stop supporting and updating its popular Windows^® XP operating system. To the average person this may sound like it’s “going out of warranty.” But to the computer savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultant this should be terrifying. Once Bill Gates signs the death warrant on XP there will be no more security or other updates – XP will become a security nightmare. Even CERT – part of the Department of Homeland Security – has warned that after April 8 anyone running XP and using Internet Explorer as their web browser will be at high risk. CERT didn’t go so far as to urge you to abandon XP, instead they simply recommended changing to an alternative browser such as Firefox^®.

As a CLNC^® consultant you have a duty to do what is necessary to keep your computer files secure. While I don’t recommend going to extremes such as engaging in hard drive encryption, I do recommend installing security patches and Windows updates when they become available. XP users won’t have that privilege or luxury anymore.

26Mar2014

Tom’s Tech Tip: Update Your Browsers – NOW

I know many Certified Legal Nurse Consultants with old computers, maybe not with monochrome screens but close. I also know many CLNC^® consultants with brand spanking new, or nearly new, Macs, Windows 8 and Windows 7 machines. If you’re still running Windows XP, it’s really time to move. If you’re running Internet Explorer on a Windows XP machine take heed of this notice from CERT, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. Running IE and XP creates a security risk for your computer and Cert recommends you move to a different browser. I recommend Firefox or Chrome and I recommend you move quickly.

No matter the age of your computer, my CLNC amigos need to keep your web browsers up to date. Some are easier to do than others – Google’s^® Chrome^® browser updates itself. Firefox^® can be set to do the same. Even Internet Explorer^® 11 can be set to automatically update either by itself or as part of Windows updates (which you should do anyway). Safari^® seems to update itself,

19Mar2014

Tom’s Tech Tip: Web-Surfing Tips for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants

Reading and researching for your legal nurse consulting work product on the web is absolutely necessary as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. But sometimes reading that important scholarly article on a website can be an annoyingly slow process because the site owner/publisher has broken a simple article into 5 or 6 page views.

If you’re like me and prefer to read without clicking, simply look for a “print” icon on the top or bottom of a page. If a CLNC^® consultant were to click on that icon it usually puts the story into a single-page-view designed for printing. And guess what? That single-page-view is ideal for reading the entire article – usually without advertisements. It also looks great when you print it out for that legal nurse consulting work product.

Two more simple tips for my CLNC amigos are to ignore those “back to top” buttons that often float on the side of a webpage. If you need to go to the top of a page (after reading to the end) simply hit the “Home” button on your keyboard. If you want to jump to the bottom of a webpage hit the “End” button.

12Mar2014

Tom’s Tech Tip: Certified Legal Nurse Consultants It’s Time to Customize Your Dictionary!

If, like just about all my CLNC® amigos, you’re using Microsoft® Word in your legal nurse consulting business, you’ve probably added a word or two to your dictionary. During the spell check process, if Word encounters a word it doesn’t recognize, it will ask you what to do with that word: ignore it once, ignore it all the time or, best of all, add it to your dictionary. If it’s a word you’ll use a lot – like an attorney-client’s difficult-to-spell last name – you’d simply add it to your dictionary. Once you’ve done that, Word and Outlook will never ask you if it’s spelled correctly again (unless it’s not).

5Mar2014

Tom’s Tech Tip: What’s Your Digital Legacy?

It’s rare for me to meet a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who doesn’t participate in Facebook®. Everyone I know seems to take more photos with their phones than with cameras and spend more time pinning images, playing games and trimming their Pandora® playlists than anything else. The question becomes: what happens to all of this when you pass?

26Feb2014

Tom’s Tech Tip: How to Protect Yourself Digitally

All Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have heard the news about the increasing numbers of major companies who have had credit cards and other personal data accessed by hackers. More and more of these breaches have involved personal information as well as credit card numbers. If your data has been included in the information that was “hacked” you’ve probably received a notice from either that merchant (Target, Neiman Marcus, etc.) or from your credit card company that you need to protect yourself. Given that the bad guys apparently have addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, those miscreants now have many ways to contact you also.

19Feb2014

Tom’s Tech Tip: When the Weather’s Cool – It’s Time for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants to Get Cooler

Computer cables are pretty much all the same – black or white and sometimes shades of gray (but not 50). They’re functional, but not cool. If you’ve got a future CLNC® consultant in college or high school who has a birthday coming up – here’s the ideal gift: bungee-style USB cables that will work with any USB device – whether it’s an iPad®, iPod®, Android® or other USB device. They come in varying colors, styles and every Certified Legal Nurse Consultant will agree they are a terrific upgrade from that plain white Apple® cable.

Tag: Tech Tip