How's Your Infrastructure?

Plug in a light and the bulb glows. Get to the next town anytime by hopping on the interstate. Turn the knob on the stove and the burner fires to life. For the most part we take Infrastructure like electricity, highways, and natural gas for granted.

It's the same with our computer networks. Open the laptop and surf to google. We expect the internet to launch. In offices we expect to be able to send files to and from other computers with ease. Many businesses offer WiFi access in addition to a wired network. We expect to join a network and get data from the grid just like we expect to plug into a socket and get electricity. 

Computer networks are infrastructure. Making changes to infrastructure is time consuming and expensive.

Imagine you buy a house from the early 1900's with ancient electrical wiring. The house has 2 prong outlets and all your plugs have 3 prongs. You can buy adapters and live with it, but it's a hazard. Some of the outlets don't even work. You see sparks when turning on light switches. You've got an infrastructure problem. You bite the bullet and replace the electrical. It's expensive, it's time consuming, it's messy, but after the remodel you're current with local building codes. The electricity "just works" again. You're not frustrated by adapters, sparks, and potentially a major fire. You know your investment in infrastructure has increased the value of your property. 

Now imagine you have an office with an old or improper data network. The wifi coverage is spotty. Some of the network wall outlets don't work. Your internet connection isn't reliable. It's increasingly vulnerable to security attacks. Sound familiar? It's infrastructure. There's not a quick fix. It's going to cost money, it's going to take time, it might be inconvenient, but it's a wise investment. You'll have much lower risk of a major data "fire" that can render your systems inoperable, less risk of a data breach, you'll have fewer intermittent issues, and less frustration. Do you foresee a future where your company will be less reliant on computers and data networks? Of course not, it will get more automated and will require more digital data. Just like electricity, a reliable data network is required for most businesses to function effectively. Investing in your infrastructure is a smart business choice. 

Don't Fall For This iCloud Password Hacking Trick

Make sure you see the "return" key before inputting your iCloud password. If it says "Go" instead of "return" you risk sending a hacker your iCloud password

Be on the look out for a new iCloud password hacking attempt. Features in your iphone/ipad's native email app make it possible to receive an email that prompts for what looks like a legitimate dialog box requesting your iCloud username and password. In reality, the dialog box is an internet form that can send your iCloud username and password to the hacker.

Currently, the best defense against this exploit is knowing that it exists. The best way to tell if the password box is legitimate is to look at the lower right of your keyboard. If it says "Go" in the corner that's BAD! DO NOT INPUT YOUR INFO. If it says "Return" you should be fine. "Go" indicates it will be sending that information outside your device. 

Automated Mileage Tracking

Business owners know we should be keeping a mileage log when we drive for business. Your tax preparer may have told you about the tax benefits of logging your mileage, but it’s such a hassle. As a small business owner myself, I know the last thing on my mind when getting in the car is writing down my starting mileage in a log book. If  I manage to write down my starting mileage murphy’s law makes sure I forget to write down the ending mileage. 

In this day and age where we carry miniature computers (smartphones) in our pockets and our cars give us turn by turn directions there must be a better way.

There is a better way.

I started 2015 by installing MileIQ on my smartphone. MileIQ bills itself as “The smart mileage tracker”. It’s totally living up to that promise. The app runs in the background and intelligently records all my trips using GPS. When I open the app it shows me all the places I've driven and I can quickly swipe to classify each trip as business or personal. To make things easier it shows a small map of the starting and ending location. I can give frequently visited locations a custom name to make identification even easier. As of March 3rd I’ve recorded over $640 worth of tax deducible business driving for the year. The app estimates I’ll finish 2015 with over $3,500 of deductible mileage. 

The app tracks up to 40 trips per month for free. I went through 40 trips in about a week, so I opted to upgrade to the monthly plan which allows unlimited trips. It costs $5.99 per month which works out to $71.88 per year. So for me, it will cost about 3% of the tax deduction they estimate I’ll earn during the year. Sign me up. 

Won’t constantly using GPS drain my battery quickly?

It would, but MileIQ doesn’t constantly use the GPS. It uses low power background tracking that is likely to be enabled already by other apps native to your phone. With this advanced location tracking the battery drain is minimal. Generally, it's less than 1% different per hour than not having the app installed. In my personal experience I didn't notice any obvious decline in my battery life. 

Because of the low power way it tracks the mileage there are occasionally trips recorded that don’t make sense at first glance. For example often when I go to my PO Box it shows a 10 mile trip that starts and ends at my office.  Since I’m only in the post office for a minute or two the app doesn’t realize I stopped. This is actually very useful because if it was too sensitive for short stops it might consider a long stoplight as a separate trip. Now that I'm aware and expect the behavior for short stops it’s much easier to classify the trips correctly. 

As I gear up to file my 2014 taxes I wish I’d known about this app sooner! I'm not getting compensated to write this,  but I am very much looking forward to emailing my tax professional my complete MileIQ log of tax deductible trips this time next year.

Evernote Scannable : Best Productivity Smartphone app of 2015

It’s January, but I’m declaring the winner now. Go download Evernote Scannable and enjoy it all year. If’s for iOS only, so go buy an iPhone if you don’t have one. Ok that’s too extreme, but if you’ve been thinking of getting one or switching to an iPhone Scannable may sway the decision. It’s a GREAT app. Not only that, it’s 100% free. 

So what does Scannable do?

Scannable uses your iPhone camera to digitize paper. Essentially, it takes a picture of a piece of paper and turns it into a .pdf or .jpg file. There’s tons of smartphone apps that exist for this purpose, but Scannable is the first I’ve used that has the simplicity and elegance to become part of my regular workflow. Upon launching Scannable you’re immediately given a camera view to capture paper. The app detects any paper it finds automatically. On your iPhone screen the recognized paper momentarily turns blue to indicate Scannable has detected it, then it instantly crops the picture of the document, removing the background, straightens the image, gets rid of most all document artifacts like crease lines, and converts it intelligently into a digital sharable file that can then be emailed, texted, or saved. All this can be accomplished in less than 5 taps. 

What’s it good for?

Anything you might otherwise want to use a paper scanner for. For example, need to email a receipt to your bookkeeper?

• Tap the Scannable App
• Point your phone at the receipt
• Tap the preview of the receipt
• Press the blue share button
• Tap Mail

You’ve now got an email with the attached receipt ready to be sent. Input your bookkeepers email address and hit send. Done. 

Using the same blue share button you could also save it to Dropbox, Google Docs, iCloud Drive, your iPhone camera roll, or Evernote. Another use for this app could be for contracts or work orders.

Give your client a signed copy of a contract or workflow right onsite. You could do it immediately. Get the signature, use Scannable, send via email.

When Scannable scans business cards it automatically detects them and can transform the business card into an iphone contact. If the contact has a public LinkedIn profile it will include their photo and other LinkedIn details allowing you to save it all to your iphone contacts app.

The Scannable app also integrates with Evernote branded desktop scanners via WiFi to streamline desktop scanning. It allows documents to be scanned directly into the Scannable app from the Evernote scanner bypassing the PC. 

I'm not getting any compensation to write this. I just enjoy the ubiquitous efficiency this app allows. It makes my life easier, so hopefully it can do the same for you. It's free. What are you waiting for?