Edward Kiledjian

If been in the computing business for a long time. I remember the old "classic" DOS based games that provided hours or days of senseless fun. Sure you could download an emulator, find the games and run them but most people would quickly give up. 

The Internet Archive has just added over 2,000 classic MS DOS games that will bring back memories of years gone by.  The great thing is that you play these games via your browser instantly. No messy emulators to install or configure. Some games may not work properly but you have over 2,000 to choose from so go out and waste a couple of hours.

Check out the catalog and play games here (link)

Google Cast for Audio is Google's famous ChromeCast tech updated for audio streaming to third party devices. By using the Cast button in supported apps (IOS, Android, browser), you will be able to send audio to any Google Cast for Audio supporting device.

We saw people "hack" ChromeCast dongles with HDMI Converters to create makeshift audio receivers using the cast protocol but this is a much more elegant solution and it beats the crappy audio quality of bluetooth.

Google says the first Cast for Audio speakers will hit US store shelves later in 2015 and that it has already signed up brands like Sony, LG, Denon and more. 

I love the multi-platform nature of this technology. Let's see if it is as popular as the Chromecast or a failure like Android TV.

The Google Play Android App store has over 1M apps but there are a handful of apps I found really useful in 2014 and they tend to be the first apps on a new phone and the apps I use most often.

1 - Drippler

Drippler is a neat little app that provides  reviews, tech tips, updates and app recommendations in a well designed easy to use Android app. This app is a must for anyone interested in Android.

Drippler will provide tips and app suggestions based on the device it is running on. It's simple and straight forward.

Get Drippler from Google Play here (link)

2 - Slice: Online Shopping Tracker

Slice is a helper app for anyone that makes purchases online (and who doesn't). At it's core, it is a fantastically full featured package deliver tracker that has push capabilities (no more checking 5 online package tracking websites). It supports most major US package delivery carriers such as : USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, OnTrac, Lasership, Prestige, Ensenda, and more

In addition to tracking packages, it tracks recalls to see if anything you bought has been recalled or if the price has dropped (helping you claim under price match policies).

If you are in the US and use Android, you should download this now. 

Get Slice from Google Play here (link)

3 - Agent - do not disturb & more

Anyone that has met me in the last year, that uses a non Motorola Android device has heard me recommend this app. It is a must. Everyone that tries this app loves it.

It basically gives you some of the functionality that has made Motorola phones so popular. It is a smart background agent that automatically changes phones settings to save battery, prevent distracted driving, remembers where you parked, silence your phone when you are in meetings or sleeping (except for urgent calls), etc.

The Drive Agent is triggered by your cars bluetooth connection or by the motion of your car. It can be configured to read your SMSs, allow you to respond by voice or auto-respond to callers/texting letting them know you can't answer now because you are driving.

The Battery Agent is triggered when your battery drops below a certain threshold and allows you to turn off blutooth, dim the screen, etc. Everything comes back to "normal" when you charge your device automagically. 

Meeting Agent knows when you are busy (based on your calendar) and then switches your phone to either silent or vibrate. You can specify your work week (days/hours) so it only applies during these windows. 

Sleeping Agent allows you to automatically silence your phone when sleeping. You can configure different times for different days. It can auto-respond to callers/texters letting them know you are sleeping. You can specify which contacts can "wake" you. 

Get Agent from Google Play here (link)

4 - Time Hop 

There was a fantastic online picture storage service (now gone) called Everpix. One of the coolest features they had was a flashback feature where you received an email everyday highlighting a picture from that day a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, etc. It was a great way to relive some of your past moments captured in photos.

Time Hop is a similar concept except it does this for all your social media networks. It brings back this day from your past by surfacing posts and pictures from your various networks: Phone, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Foursquare. 

Get Time Hop from Google Play here (link).

5 - Lastpass

With all the hacks and breaches, you should already be using long unique passwords for each internet site you are registered with. Obviously keeping all of those in your head doesn't work otherwise your passwords aren't unique enough. Enter LastPass. It is a fantastic cross platform password manager that costs just $12 a year.

6 - Evernote

I love Evernote and everyone should have it, use it and love it. 

1 - Une Bobine

Une Bobine is an iPhone or Android charging cable on steroids. It has a strong and flexible cable that allows you to position your device in any position you want. It can be a base, coil around another item and even be used as a smartphone stand in your car.

Even when not being used to charge, you can use it to hold your smartphone for a video conference or as an impromptu tripod for taking that perfect picture. 

$35 on Amazon (link)

2 - Personal Travel Humidifier

Airplanes are dry. Hotels are dry. Travelling causes skin dryness, throat dryness, and many frequent travellers complain it prevents them from sleeping. Enter the Violife Personal Misting Humidifier. It is a self contained travel friendly unit that converts its 27-ounce refillable water bottle into gentle glorious steam (you can also use some standard water bottles).

$39 on Amazon (link)

3 - MiiSTS pocket friendly products

I have written about travelling carry-on only over and over. I hate checking in luggage because it forces you to wait at your destination, you risk losing your bags and usually get you get subjected to a more serious security screening.

Carry-on only means you have to take small amounts of everything but sometimes it is difficult to find what you want in small easy to travel with containers. This is where MiiSTS comes in.  

It is a line of credit card shaped products that are flat, small and easy to carry. Each product offers about 150 uses (or sprays) and meets TSA travel requirements for per product quantity.

They offer:

• hand sanitizer $5.95 on Amazon (link) 
• breath freshener  $5.95 on Amazon (link) 
• sun screen
• zero calorie sweetener
• hair spray
• lens cleaner  $5.95 on Amazon (link) 
• stain remover $5.95 on Amazon (link) 
• insect repellent $5.95 on Amazon (link) 
• wrinkle releaser

4 - Jackery Bar Premium external battery

There are lots of great external battery options available in the market and the 2 that I really liked this year are the Jackery Bar Premium and the LimeFuel. Both were tested and offer the marketed battery capacity. They are both well build and durable (which isn't the case for most cheap battery products). I have had a chance to travel test both and they both survived extremely well going around the world.

I chose the Jackery simply because of it's metal body and premium internal battery. The Jackery Bar Premium comes in 6,000 mAh capacity which should be enough for most business travellers. The built in USB port provides 2.1A of power which means it can fast charge most smartphones and tablets (most cheaper products only output 1A). Jackery uses Panasonic batteries and charging micro-controllers which means you will get the charge capacity and charge cycles promised (my testing confirmed their numbers).

$29.95 on Amazon (link)

5 - NomadKey USB and Lightning cables

I have had a pair of NomadKey USB and lightning cables tethered to my house keys for about 8 months now and they have performed exactly as described. This are small easy to carry cables that are always with you. 

The Lightning cables are Apple MFI certified so no worries about compatibility. My only gripe is that they are experiencing growing pains and a christmas order (placed Dec 5) still hasn't been delivered. Their customer service is good and they did promise to send a replacement ASAP.

• $29.95 USB version on Amazon (link)
• $29.95 Lightning version on Amazon (link) 

6 - Belkin 3 port power outlet

I reviewed this in April (link) and think every business person should always travel with a power outlet strip. I have used it over and over.

I recommend the 3 outlet version with 2.1 A dual USB ports.

$19.35 on Amazon (link)

7 - Grid IT Cocoon organizer

It is an easy way to keep your "stuff" organized when you travel. They offer different sizes and colours. 

Just in time for the holidays, Amazon is offering a staggering $220US (link) worth of Android apps for free. Some are great, some are bad, but all are free.

Some of the more notable apps (being given away are):

• Plex client for Android
• Splashtop remote desktop 
• Sonic the hedgehog
• Fleksy keyboard (awesome by the way)
• DJay 2 (DJ app even amateurs can use)
• Andry Birds Space (ad free)
• much more

Go check it out while the getting is good (link).

Ordinarily, a bad actor would have to steal some of your information before breaking into your 2-factor protected iCloud account. They would need your AppleID, your password and a 2-factor authentication code (or a digital token stolen from an authenticated device like a laptop or desktop).

Now everyone's favorite russian purveyor of fine cracking software, Elcomsoft (link), has a tool called Phone Breaker. This new software requires the aforementioned information but then creates a permanent authentication token which means they won't have to re-authenticate until you change your password. 

It also has a long list of "wonderful" features to make stealing information easier. Sure law enforcement uses this but does anyone believe they use it for legal purposes with a warrant or that other more nefarious bad actors won't use it?

What is a Chromebook?

Google's Chromebook is a specially designed internet connected computing device that run the search giant's ChromeOS operating system. Gartner, an industry think tank, believes Chromebook sales will triple to 14.2M units by 2017 (link). 

Chromebook were initially seen as the reincarnation of the dreadfully crappy netbooks so sales were slow but today many mainstream consumers see it as a viable alternative to expensive and difficult to maintain traditional desktops and laptops (running Windows or MacOS).

Manufacturers have really jumped on the Chromebook bandwagon by designing and selling well built, thoughtfully designed devices at very reasonable prices (HP, Dell, Acer, Asus, Samsung).

As consumers rely more and more on internet based services (instead of traditional PC installed fat applications) the transition to these types of internet terminal devices becomes a much easier proposition.

Microsoft is now seeing Chromebooks as a real threat to its long term profitability and is trying to fight back by offering $0 Windows licenses on certain lower spec small screen devices. We have seen a handful of OEMs jump on the small free windows license bandwagon but it still hasn't set the world on fire. Microsoft should be worried because not only as consumers starting to move to Chromebooks but many schools are choosing to equip their students with them. They are cheap, low maintenance and kids aren't walking around with $600 highly desirable iPad tablet in their backpacks (making them targets for theft).

What can BestBuy do?

I went to a local BestBuy on Friday to pickup a tablet and while I waited for a rep in blue to serve me, I listened in on an interesting conversation between a BestBuy Canada associate and a customer. 

A mid 60's year old man had come into a local BestBuy store to look at the various Chromebooks. He explained to the rep that he had basic needs to browse the web and his son had recommended he get a Chromebook.

The rep started to explain how that was a bad idea. He explained that Chromebooks were underpowered glorified browsers. He then asked the customer if he would ever need to write documents using Microsoft Word and the customer said he does need need to write basic letters a couple of times a year. The rep then asked if the customer wanted to hookup an external display and the customer said yes. The rep then said for these reasons, he doesn't recommend a Chromebook and instead recommends he buy a $1000 Macbook Air.

Now I use a Macbook Pro at home and absolutely love it but man was this rep wrong. At some point the rep went to help a colleague find an item in the back store, at which time I interviewed. I explained how the Chromebook works, the fact that the device requires no maintenance. I explained that ChromeOS is much less susceptible to virus' and that in the event he "breaks" something, he could recover the machine to factory new in under a minute using PowerWash. 

I explained that Google offers a free online Word processor and showed it to him on one of the demo machines. I then explained how all of Google's services (including Google Play Music) work perfectly and seamlessly on the Chromebook.

I explained how you could hook up an external screen using the Acer C720P's HDMI port (which was the device he was standing in front of). I the walked him through the process of sending content to his TV using the $30 Chromecast.

Finally I showed him the remaining ports, explained how he could use this device to backup his pictures to the Google Cloud, explained how to hookup a printer using Google Cloud Print and the guy was sold.

A couple of minutes before, the customer was about to walk out of the store empty handed ($1000 was more than he wanted to spend) and now he was asking the associate for 2 Acer C720Ps. 

If Google wants the Chromebook to succeed, they need to work with their partner retailers to ensure all of the associates at least have a basic understanding of the technology. They should also offer free only courses on how to use a Chromebook and how to perform common important everyday tasks (setup a printer, connect a screen, stream content to a Chromecast, etc).

Over the last month, I received several emails asking me about CASL (the Canadian Anti Spam Law) which went into effect July 1 2014. The purpose of CASL is to protect consumers from unsolicited email messages.

What is CASL

There are well written white papers by lawyers that provide the legal perspective on CASL and how it impacts business'. If that applies to you, you should go find and read some of those. The Canadian Anti-Spam Law was designed to protect canadian email addresses (.ca) from receiving unsolicited commercial messages. The main drivers are:

• Consent  : the sender needs to secure and record detailed explicit consent from the recipient that they want to receive your marketing content
• Identification : The law required that you clearly identify who is sending the message and who it is being send on behalf of. The recipient must have a way to easily reach you.
• Unsubscribe :  The recipient must have a simple and clear way to unsubscribe from your mailing list. 

Each message you send must contain Identification and unsubscribe.

Not only email

Legislators made sure CASL protect canadians from multiple mediums of commercial message delivery including emails, instant messaging, social media, etc. 

Assume this applies to all mechanisms you use to contact a customer for marketing purposes.

Does this CASL apply to me?

Let me keep this simple... CASL applies to any entity pushing a marketing message and you should plan on adhering to its standards. 

Does CASL apply to not for profit organizations?

As currently worded, the law provides an exemption for government certified charities performing fund raising through emails. Conversely other revenue generating activities are not exempt. 

The identification and unsubscribe requirements of the law apply to not for profits also.

If you want to add subscribers from one list to another, then you will need explicit consent. 

Non commercial messages (aka regular business type emails) are not covered by CASL. 

You can learn more on the government's website (link)

CASL and email address harvesting

A practice used by some email marketers or resellers of marketing lists is to harvest email addresses using electronic programs to collect email addresses from websites, mailing lists, forums, etc.

CASL amends PIPEDA to forbid the activity of email harvesting.

CASL 2.0

January 15 2015 an additional provision will go into effect called the Computer Program Rules. This new provision will require express consent before the installation of a computer program on someone's PC, smartphone or other electronic device. 

This new wave of CASL comes with very stiff penalties that can reach $10,000,000 for companies. This new wave goes beyond Canadian borders. It applies to organizations (can be located anywhere) installing programs on a computer located in Canada or to Canadians installing program on computers outside of Canada (or under the direction on someone in Canada). 

This section of CASL is fairly complicated so I will let you research the interwebs for additional information if you think it applies to you. 

CASL Best practices

In addition to following the CASL requirements stated above, many organizations are also verifying receiver interest in their messages every 6 months. 

Organizations that can prove that they have an existing business relationship will have 3 years to comply but industry best practice says you should plan to comply immediately.