What is a Smart Phone? By RaggZ Katt Dowell

What exactly is a "smartphone".  What makes it smart?

A smartphone is a cell phone that does a lot more than make and receive calls and texts. Smartphones are essentially very small computers as they have internet access and can do anything a pc can do. You can access the internet, watch videos like YouTube, send and read email, download books and read them and access social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. You can have any question answered in a few seconds by typing a question into the search box or using your voice to ask the question. For example, if you are eating lunch with people and someone asks what time the Vanderbilt game starts, you could have your cell phone look it up and have the answer immediately. They also can make phone calls. It is hard to believe that a cell phone is as powerful as a pc and you can hold it in your hand and slip it into your pocket.

RaggZ Katt Dowell

CTRL + F by Janis Spivey

“Come on, little pawty dog! Hewp me find the little putty tat!”  Bugs Bunny

Dixie, being the practical dog she is, decided her first blog should be something very useful – CTRL + F.

Microsoft decided, in a rare moment of compassion for their users, to implement Keyboard Shortcuts. Wonderful! The most useful is the CTRL + F (hold down the CTRL key and then enter F).  

A small box will appear on your screen, normally in the top, right-hand corner. Enter the search term you want, usually a word, and hit Enter. If you are at the top of the document, the first occurrence will be found. The Find command box also shows how many occurrences of that term are present, e.g. ‘1 of 8.’ It also highlights the term.  If you’re in the middle of the document, it will say ‘5 of 8,’ and, if you continue searching, it will return the next occurrence, and will loop to the top of the document if you click the Next (points down) or Previous (points up) arrow.

Within Microsoft Word, the Find ‘binocular icon’ actually activates the CTRL + F function for its search. The Find box appears in the top left corner outside the document.  The Find box is at the top right in some browsers.

The term can be multiple words. If you want to find all the Tom Hanks movies we have, simply enter Tom Hanks in the find box (we have 19). FYI, caps don’t matter; you could enter tom hanks.  

Using CTRL + F is especially useful for our RPBOOKS website. Within the Residents Directory you can search for a person’s name or find all residents who have the name Bob (CTRL + F, search word Bob). Within books you can search for all books having a particular word in their title – especially helpful if you can’t remember the book title. Or you can search for a specific author. Within movies you can search for an actor, a movie in the category ‘comedy’ or for release year ‘2015’ for a recent movie.  

Of potentially even more value, CTRL + F works on most screens. It works on a PDF.  It works on your bank’s online system, and, if you’ve downloaded your statement, it’s good at finding transactions with computer generated info, e.g. finding your ‘COMCAST’ payments. It, of course, doesn’t work on pictures or handwritten words.  

Give CTRL + F a try. Dixie thinks you’ll like it too!

What is "The Cloud"? by RaggZ Katt Dowell

Everyone knows what clouds are, they are the puffy white things in the sky. I used to think Angels lived up there. In tech terms, it is not a place where Angels live. Nor are they puffy white things in the sky. Of course, who is to say Angels don't live in the puffy white things in the sky? But I digress, enough of that deep thinking. I am getting a headache.

"The Cloud" refers to lots of computers with lots of wires and silicon chips that exist here on earth. A company that has lots of money can buy lots of computers and buy land and build a huge building to house them. Another name for "The Cloud" is server farm. Then the company can charge companies or individuals to store their data. In the olden days ordinary people like us would buy a computer with a hard drive inside the computer and all our stuff would be stored in our own computer in our own house and we would have to be at home to access our stuff. Hard drives are like filing cabinets. People store folders and files in different size filing cabinets. We start off with a 2 drawer one and expand to a 4 drawer one and then add another 4 drawer one and pretty soon we have to rent a storage room at a local storage facility and pay a monthly fee to the company who owns the storage facility. The storage facility could be thought of as "The Cloud". Our personal stuff is no longer stored at our house but at another facility that we can access when we want. That way filing cabinets are not taking over extra bedrooms, the oven, the bathtub we don't use, etc. We can also think of our storage room here at Richland Place as "The Cloud". We store stuff there that we don't want to clutter up our apartment but have access to it whenever we want.

There are many benefits to "Cloud" storage. My Hooman has all her favorite recipes and her old Thanksgiving lists in the "Cloud" that she share with family members. She used to take paper copies of those with her when she traveled at Thanksgiving. She could be anywhere and she would have access to those lists without her paper copies. Sometimes people wanted a particular recipe and she would give them the website that had them and they could print them whenever they wanted.

Photo sharing is another benefit of cloud storage. Photo files have become larger because digital cameras and cell phones are getting better. Sharing photos with many people used to be accomplished by attaching them to an email which might not be able to process that many files. Now you can upload them to "The Cloud" and share the access to them with lots of people. You are not trying to send 10 photos to 10 people, you are only sending one link to 10 people to click on to access the photos. There are lots of photos of mine in "The Cloud". There are lots of companies that offer free photo storage in their cloud. Remember, that type of cloud exists on earth someplace. Some clouds that I use are Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Google is building a cloud on the ground in Clarksville. They just purchased the former Hemlock Semiconductor site.

So--if you hear someone talking about "The Cloud", don't think of angels in the sky, look toward Clarksville and think huge computer hard drives that store stuff.

Please feel free to comment or ask questions of Dixie Dogg or me, RaggZ Katt. We will be happy to try to help you.