The technology for smartphones and tablets improves every day, and a large number of these devices now run on Google^® Android™. According to Canalys, the leading global provider of smartphone market data and analysis, Google Android has quickly become the world’s leading smartphone platform with 32.9 million devices shipped worldwide.

Thus, if you’re planning on buying an Android device, or already own one, the following 5 tips will help you get the most out of your device:

1. Install Applications:

Just like with desktop and notebook computers, you can install additional applications on Android devices that are actually fun and help make you more productive. With more than 150,000 apps to choose from there are a few you should definitely consider getting.

Shopping is always a good place to start, and you should consider Barcode Scanner, which enables instant access to product information and competitive pricing.  When done shopping perhaps you’ll want to grab a bite, and Yelp can help find the nearest restaurant that meets your needs (filter by cost, cuisine, quality, noise, etc.)

Unfortunately, during dinner, suppose work calls and asks you to send a file that unfortunately is sitting on your computer at home?  No problem, use File Transfer by Support.com^® to help find that file on your PC (while you remain sitting at the dinner table), and send it out while you finish dessert.

Now that you don’t have to go home for work you can locate friends nearby and go hang out together using Foresquare.  And for the drive home, why not stream your favorite music (and possibly learn about some cool new artists) using Pandora.

Be daring/have fun: make sure to explore some of the other hundreds of thousand apps available which are easily available at the Android Market or from Amazon.com.

2. Online/Offline Media:

Just like a multimedia PC and notebook, you can use your Android device to watch videos online, as well as offline.  Tablets were designed for the mobile lifestyle which means they are powered efficiently, weigh less and offer excellent battery life (upwards of 2-4 times that of a conventional and much heavier laptop).

If you’re not sure where to get your video content, then check out Netflix for Android which allows you to stream thousands of instant movies to your connected Android device.

Conversely, if you’re looking for a TV-sized bite of entertainment, check out Hulu for the latest popular television shows.  Of course don’t forget about the largest free video library around by using your device to browse YouTube^®!

3. Control All Your Emails:

The high-end touchable interface of Android-based smartphones and tablets are ideal for sorting through emails. If you haven’t configured your email client on your device yet, configure it right away!

Configuring the email client on your Android device is very similar to configuring email clients (Microsoft^® Outlook^®, Outlook Express, Mozilla^® Thunderbird^®, etc) on a notebook or desktop PC.   Most importantly, remember that you can configure ALL of your email accounts on the device so you have instant access to work, home, and your blogging account all from one interface.

4. Use Wi-Fi over 3G/4G:

Your tablet offers multiple connectivity options, 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi being the viable choices for wireless Internet access. If you have subscribed to a 3G/4G data plan and your tablet supports Wi-Fi as well, choose Wi-Fi instead of 3G/4G whenever possible. Wi-Fi generally uses less battery power, and is faster.

When travelling, look for free Wi-Fi hotspots. The best place to look is around any coffee shop, especially Starbucks, which now offers free Wi-Fi in all their stores.  However, be careful if you are connected to an open/unsecured Wi-Fi network as they can pose security threats!

5. Use it as an eBook reader:

You probably don’t feel comfortable reading your favorite novel on your desktop or laptop because of the weight or how hot it gets sitting in your lap — not to mention the persistent noise of the cooling fan.

Guess what? You can use your Android device as an eBook reader as well. Your tablet’s light weight, decent screen size and long battery life will let you read your favorite book and won’t scald your thighs while reading Fahrenheit 451 (not quite the temperature of your laptop!). Your Android-based device supports multiple digital book formats (e.g. PDF, ePub, iBooks, Kindle, etc.) and you can buy those books online using services like Amazon.com.

Finally, if you need help setting up your Android, Apple^® iPad^®, iPhone^®, or iPod touch^® device, the Personal Technology Experts^® at Support.com can ensure all systems are running smoothly on the technical side of things.

# # #

About the author

Marc Itzkowitz is Senior Director of Product Marketing for Support.com.  Prior to helping launch Support.com in 2002, Marc founded SeniorNetConnect, and before that held marketing positions with companies including Informix and General Motors, Inc.

Support.com and Personal Technology Experts are trademarks or registered trademarks of Support.com, Inc. or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Google, Android and YouTube are trademarks or registered trademarks of Google, Inc. or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Microsoft and Outlook are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Mozilla and Thunderbird are trademarks or registered trademarks of Mozilla Foundation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Apple, iPad, iPhone and iPod touch are trademarks or registered trademarks of Apple, Inc. or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. All Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

One of the things I do is use binders. Each project has its own binder, as does planning. This has been a relatively useful way to keep track of ongoing work (when the labels don’t fall off the binders).

New ideas were little harder to track. For a while I was doing the Post-it note method. Every time I got a new idea I’d write it on a Post-it note and stick it up on the wall next to my desk.

This didn’t work for two reasons. One, after a while the Post-it notes just became visual noise; I just didn’t see them anymore. The second reason is the mental clutter they caused me. Although I can block out the content on the Post-it notes, I still knew they were there. Although I wasn’t consciously aware of it, it was causing me constant stress.

I moved away from the Post-it notes to whiteboards. Now whenever a garden idea I could just write it on the whiteboard. The nice thing about the whiteboard is it’s one continual surface so it’s less visually cluttering than Post-its.

However, the whiteboard method isn’t perfect either. It’s great for recording an idea as it occurs to me, but what do I do later? Eventually the whiteboard gets full. I needed some way to deal with the ideas.

Then I thought about Microsoft OneNote. This is a software program that comes as part of Microsoft office. I knew it was part of the package but hadn’t looked at it. Last week I decided to open it and take a look. I’m glad I did.

OneNote is designed for the entrepreneurial ADD brain. You can have different folders for different projects, and different pages in each folder. You’re not stuck to writing an orderly fashion as you would be in a word document; you can put notes anywhere on the page. You can import PDFs or JPEG’s; you can even add audio. You can also hyperlink between different factions within OneNote.

This has been a really freeing tool for me since I started using it. I’m able to take pieces off my whiteboard that I want to implement, and create a kind of plan. As I get new information, new details, new action items to add to this plan, they’re easy to add with OneNote.

When the things that held me back from using OneNote is the fact that I don’t always do my planning and brainstorming sitting at my desk. In fact, I often find it is better for me to leave my office entirely when doing brainstorming. Additionally, I have both a desktop and a laptop machine. I was worried about not having my OneNote document on the correct machine.

Then I had a brainstorm. I’ve been using Dropbox to share documents with customers and colleagues. Why not use it to share my OneNote between computers?

That’s what I’ve done. So now I’m using my whiteboard to record ideas that pop up when I’m in the middle of another task. Then, at a later time, I can take these ideas and add them to my OneNote document. Now I can access this document regardless of which computer I’m using. (If you’d like to see how to add OneNote to Dropbox read this blog post on RetroHack)

Andrea J. Stenberg

Have you been using OneNote in your business? Please leave a comment and tell us how you use this piece of software,

Monitoring your connections, updating your status and just staying on top of your social media presence can become a challenge as your numbers of connections grows, particularly when you have more than a couple of hundred connections.

Even for just Twitter, if you want to be able to connect with people and follow what they say, eventually logging into Twitter.com just doesn’t do it.

That’s where a tool like Hootsuite comes in. I’ve been test-driving it for the past couple of weeks and so far I like it.

What I like about Hootsuite

I really like the pop-up profile. It saves me having to switch over to web browser when I want to see who the tweeter is. It also allows me to Follow, Unfollow, DM and add to a list just from the profile, as well as showing their most recent Tweet.

The “show conversation” button is awesome. It appears below any Tweet that is a reply to another. No more Twitternesia for me, where I forget what I said to the person replying to me. But it’s not just for my @conversations. When other people I follow are having a conversation the button appears so I can view the entire thread.

Speaking of Twitternesia, the Sent Tweets column on Hootsuite is great. Then I can remember what and when I said things, ‘cause I can’t remember.

Scheduling Tweets is pretty cool. Now let’s be clear, I’m not a big fan of automation on social media. It’s about networking and conversations with individuals; you can’t automate that. But I have these bursts of Tweeting where I’m reading blogs and finding cool links so I Tweet a whole bunch at once, which may be annoying to followers or may cause others to miss some interesting material.

By scheduling these Tweets of links to blog posts by others, I can spread it out a bit. It’s also great for when I’m online at odd hours when none of my usual people are online too.

To make Hootsuite operate the way I like, I had to install Mozilla Prism which allows me to run Hootsuite as stand-alone program rather than viewing from within my web browser.

Adding other accounts and other users is something I haven’t used but can see how it could be very useful. If you’re Tweeting for an organization where you might have more than one person managing a Twitter profile, Hootsuite is cool for that. You can just add users.

What I don’t like about Hootsuite

This may sound simplistic, but it’s not as pretty as Tweetdeck. Also, I miss the new followers tab from Tweetdeck. It’s nice to see who is new and their profile all in one place.

I really hate that I have to do a second step to shrink links in Hootsuite. In Tweetdeck I can set it to automatically shrink links that I type (or paste) into message bar. It’s not a huge deal, just annoying.

The tabs in Hootsuite don’t really work for me. Since my user name is the same across most social media sites, can’t tell which tab is which.

Speaking of tabs, I kind of hate that Facebook and LinkedIn are separate tabs rather than just another column like they are in Tweetdeck.

Conclusions

I mostly like Hootsuite and will probably keep using it, but I don’t think I’ll give up Tweetdeck entirely, if for no other reason than to keep up with new followers. I think it’s easier to update my Facebook profile and page from Hootsuite and I really like the schedule later feature.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Have you tried both? What’s your opinion? Or is there another tool I should be checking out? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

When you work from home, or even if you have an office or storefront, it’s not always so clear who to call when you have a problem.

Whether it’s a hardware or software program, you feel like you’re on your own. Plus, if you’re bootstrapping you may not want to spend the money on help, particularly if you think you can fix it yourself.

Of course, what looks like a quick and easy problem can rapidly turn into a full day (or many days) problem if you’re like me and know a little bit, but not quite enough.

In fact, in many cases, unless you can get the problem solved in less than an hour, it’s probably a good idea to get help so you don’t waste days on technology rather than running your business. Believe me, there’s nothing more frustrating than coming to a Friday afternoon and realizing your entire week has been spent on technology problems rather than on making money.

So where do you turn for help with computer problems?

Family

In my case, I’m lucky. My husband is very knowledgeable about computers. He used to set up networks and do repairs professionally. He set up our in-home computer network and can usually problem solve most hardware problems.

However, since he’s my husband and not getting paid, tech support is kind of like mowing the lawn or taking out the trash. It may be high on my priority list but it’s not necessarily high on his. That’s the drawback with family help; you can’t just call them on demand like you can when you hire someone.

Teenagers

If you’re not lucky enough to be married to a computer whiz, look to teenagers in your neighbourhood or local high school. There are a lot of teenagers who are very tech savvy. If you can locate one nearby you may be able to hire them for considerably less than a pro. Some may know hardware and networking, while others may be a whiz at programming and setting up websites.

Just a word of caution: a teenager might know the technology but they likely don’t know much about marketing so don’t rely on their advice when it comes to designing your website. They’ll try to convince you to use the latest cool tools, but cool may not be what sells.

Freelancers

If there are no kids nearby (or your problem occurs during school hours) check out some freelance computer repair people. While the large computer stores may not do house calls, sometimes a freelance person will. Often these people are doing it as a sideline to a full time job while others may be doing it as a full time business. Check the local chamber of commerce, other business people or even the computer stores for recommendations.

Your local computer store

Check your local computer stores. Some do have good tech support people. They may have inexpensive service plans for small businesses. Phone around and take a close look at independent computer stores. They may be a little more flexible than the chains. They may even have someone who can walk you through a solution over the phone.

Virtual help

Look for virtual help. There are many virtual assistants and other professionals online who can help you. There are a number of software tools today that allow your virtual tech support to go in and change settings and fix software problems remotely. Ask other business people who they use.

Barter

If you have a product or service a computer professional might need, consider setting up a barter arrangement with a local computer professional. This can be a cost-effective way to get the occasional help you need. This kind of arrangement works best for problems that have quick and dirty solutions. However, a barter arrangement is somewhat like using a family member for tech support. What may be a red alert problem for you may not make it in the top ten for the other person.

Google and YouTube

If you’re really convinced you can or need to do it yourself, check out YouTube. If it’s not too complicated an issue, you may find a video that walks you through the process. This is particularly true for popular software programs.

Google is another good source. I know just enough HTML to get into trouble, however, with the help of Google I’ve been able to find sources that allow me to go into my blog and chance the code enough to change the font, colours and some basic formatting without messing things up too much. Often just by Googling exactly what I want to do, I can find a blog post that will walk me through the process step-by-step.

Plan ahead.

If you really need your computer to run your business, if you can’t go a day without accessing email or the internet, then get some tech support in place before you run into troubles. Then you know exactly who to call in the event to trouble.

Andrea J. Stenberg

How do you keep your computer up and running? How do you manage your website? If you’ve got a story about what you do, or have done in the past, please share your experience here by leaving a comment.

Table of contents for How to Use Skype

1. Seven Ways To Use Skype in Your Business

Skype is a free service (with some paid upgrades) that lets you make voice and video calls over the internet. For many people, this

free service is attractive because if you are in North America and have family or friends overseas, this can save you a lot of money.

However, if you run a business, long distance is often just the cost of doing business. I don’t really see the point of cheaping out when you have a business. Phone (even long distance) is essential.

On the other hand, free long distance isn’t the only reason to use this service. Many people laugh when they hear this, but the people I Skype with most often are local. In fact, one of them is only a 15 minute walk from my home office.

So why do we Skype?

We use it as an instant message tool to get quick feedback without bothering the other person. Because my message pops up on their computer screen, they don’t get interrupted in the same way they would if I phoned. Now email works the same way, but most of us have in-boxes that fill up pretty quickly. By using Skype, my colleagues know I want quick feedback but it can wait until they have time to respond.

Skype is also good for connecting outside normal office hours. We’ve all heard the joke that being self employed means you’re free to work any 18 hours of the day you want. And while this may be true at least some of the time, you can’t assume other business people are working odd hours. However, I can look on Skype and see if someone is online. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten information about a mutual client or gotten help with a technical problem at a time I would never phone someone.

Sending files is another way we use Skype. Larger files don’t email easily. But you can easily send a file directly through Skype. A nice benefit is you know whether the person has received the file because Skype tells you.

Skype is great for conference calls. There are several of us locally who work on joint ventures together. Since we’re all on Skype, we can get on the call together much easier than figuring out how to do it by phone.

You can record audio from Skype. I recorded my first podcast (coming soon) on Skype and the quality of the audio was much better than doing the recording over the phone. It was much simpler too. No need to hook up any equipment. I just downloaded a Skype plugin and hit record. When I was done, I clicked stop and an mp3 files was ready for editing.

Skype can make it easy to connect with people you find online. I installed the Skype Extension for Firefox Plugin on my web browser. Now when I visit a website with Skype addresses I can click on the link and automatically be connected via Skype. It will also do the same with phone numbers, if I have upgraded to the paid long distance feature. It’s not a big deal, but it saves me having to copy addresses.

One of the paid upgrades to Skype that also looks interesting to me is having a phone number that land lines can call. I’m in Canada and many of my clients and colleagues are in the U.S. I’ve noticed that some of them have phone plans that won’t allow them to call Canada. For just a few dollars a year, I can have an American phone number where customers can reach me.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Have I missed any interesting ways people can use Skype? Please leave a comment and share your ideas.

Or you can go to YouTube and watch it.

And keep your eyes open for my next post about how I use Skype. It’s a little different than how others use it.

Andrea J. Stenberg

When my RSS reader popped up with t Tungle.me I was skeptical. However, after watching the video I’m ready to give it a try.

Or you can watch it here.

I confess I haven’t used it much yet, but it’s very easy. The best feature, in my opinion is that users don’t have to have a Tungle account in order to schedule a meeting with me. And Tungle syncs with my Google Calendar so everything should work.

I’m still test driving this but I think (hope) it will cut down on the email tag for scheduling appointments.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Let me know what you think of this, or other tools.

Still no go.

So I calmly clicked the “forgot my password” link. WordPress sent me an email with a link to change my password. I went to my inbox and clicked the link. I was then told I’d get a second email with my new, temporary password.

I waited.

And waited.

No new password.

So I tried again. Got the email with the link to change my password, but never received a new password.

Panic started to set in.

Then I remembered I’d had a friend look at the back-end of my blog when I’d had a problem with something. Problem solved! I asked if he remembered the password I gave him.

No.

Scrolled through our Skype chats to see if it was recorded there.

No dice.

My friend suggested my spam filter. I couldn’t see why the first email from WordPress would get through but not the second, but I was desperate. Checked spam. Still no luck.

Real panic. What if I couldn’t get into my blog – ever?!?

Started scrolling through my sent emails to see if I’d sent my friend the password that way.

Still no luck.

Then it hit me. Several weeks back I’d had some troubles with my site and had given tech support at my hosting company a login and password. Dug up what I’d sent them and tried using that login and password.

Success! I was able to get into the admin in my blog. I quickly changed my password for my main user name, recorded the login and password for the second user and created a third user with another email address I have.

My advice:

Learn from my scary episode. If you have a website, blog, Facebook fan page or any other web presence that is vital to your business, make sure you have more than one user name and password. Make sure both users are designated as administrators with full access and rights to the back-end. Make sure they are attached to different email addresses. If you don’t have a second email address, ask a trusted friend to be your backup or create a gmail account just for this purpose.

Trust me, if you ever have a moment like I had last week, you’ll be really glad you listened to me.

Andrea J. Stenberg

What are some of the ways you protect yourself from weird technology glitches? Please share your secrets here.

Particularly if you have a blog, it is important to notice what blog posts attract the most attention and which blog posts cause people to leave. When you do this, you can decide to write more blog posts about popular topics. You can also look at posts that cause people to leave and work on ways to get them to stick around longer.

One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate Google Analytics with your website or blog. Go into your Google Account, sign up for Google Analytics, and add the code to your site. (Read my previous post about Google Analytics).

While the information supplied by Google is astounding, unless you log into Google frequently and check your stats, it really isn’t helping you. That’s what I found I was doing – or rather not doing. I have Analytics set up, but I wasn’t using it frequently enough.

Then I discovered the Google Analytics Dashboard WordPress Widget. This WordPress plugin allows me to have my Analytics stats right on my blog’s dashboard. Whenever I log in, one of the first things I see is my stats.

I see when my traffic is coming in, and how much. I also see the blog posts that are getting the most traffic.

When I go to the edit posts page, I can see which days traffic has come in and how many left right away.

Now, I don’t have an excuse for not monitoring my stats. I can see a quick snapshot each day. And if I see a trend I want to know more about, I can log into Google Analytics and dig deeper.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Once you’ve done that, information about people in your LinkedIn network will appear at the bottom of emails from that person. Things like who they’re connecting with, when they’ve updated their profile and their status updates may appear. A separate LinkedIn folder is created in Outlook for your LinkedIn connections. You’ll now have names, addresses and photos of all your connections in your email client.

Based on the comments on the LinkedIn blog, some people don’t like having the separate folder because they’ve already got their connections added to Outlook. However, it will be handy for future connections. You won’t have to import them, they’ll already be in your email client.

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you may know that I use Mozilla Thunderbird rather than Outlook. When I hear about tools like this, I once again start questioning my decision to use a tool that is not the most popular one. Although there are many benefits to Thunderbird, sometimes – like now – I wonder if I made the right decision.

Anyway, here’s a video explaining how it all works.

Or you can watch it directly from YouTube.

Since I can’t give this a test drive myself, I’d love to hear from anyone who has tried it out. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Andrea J. Stenberg