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Both Paul & Glenn were in the studio today

Paul talked about how the internet has made it easier to find gifts for the holidays. Some people say it's too easy. We quickly spend our money rather than spend the time shopping. "The thing of value, which is time, has been replaced by the thing of indifference, which is money", he said.

Paul went on to tell us one of the most profound things he's learned on the internet. He talked about a hospice nurse who, for 20 or 30 years, had been helping people at the end of their lives. She conveyed what she learned was of value to her patients. There were 2 things the patients considered valuable — love and relationships. And there were regrets that most shared…
– People said they wish they hadn't worked so hard.
– People wished they had told those close to them that they loved them.
– They wished they had used their time better.
– And they wished they had spent more time with those who mattered to them.

On this last point Paul opined that we've made such an effort to make our lives so efficient that our lives have gotten cluttered up with trivia <to the exclusion of spending time with loved ones>.

Glenn had an update about his Ring.to phone service <mentioned on the last show >. It doesn't transcribe incoming calls, like he had thought. However, it does send him a text message with the voice mail audio attached.

One of the reasons he went to Ring.to was to maintain ownership of his phone number when he terminated his NetTalk account. The services Ring.to offers are free for now. On the next show, Glenn plans to explain how they can offer the service for free.

Paul noted that viral marketing could be the reason companies give things away for free. Word-of-mouth is worth a lot in terms of advertising.

Paul mentioned that he was unhappy with Freedom Pop <mentioned on the 10-9-13 show>. The company sells you a mi-fi unit for about $20 so you can have a wireless hotspot to use with a laptop or tablet. In his case they couldn't activate it because there was no 4G cellular service in his area. They said if he wanted to use it with 3G, he'd have to pay $3.95/mo. He decided to give it a try, but 2 problems came up.
– He took the unit to San Francisco, where 4G was available, but couldn't use the 4G because the plan he was now paying for was only for 3G.
– The 2nd problem was that they started charging him $10/mo for some mysterious reason, in spite of the check mark on their website that said "do not auto-decrement my credit card". He eventually got the money back.

Betsie called to let us know about youmail.com. The service sends your phone's voice mail to you as an audio file. The service is free and their webpage has mobile apps available for Android and Apple devices. The company tries to sell you related services, which you're not obligated to buy.

Paul talked about having Coryon Redd on the show previously and he had suggestions for promoting yourself or business on social media sites. The key sites were Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.
– Facebook is like going to the pub or bar where you have your familial clan relationship with up to maybe 160 people. Facebook reflects a clan structure where you have a reasonable familiarity with up to 160 friends.
– Linkedin is your professional network, though it's lost some relevance lately.
– Twitter's structure is more like people around the water cooler where you hear about the latest news or gossip.

Paul talked about a trip to the bay area and his experience with the tolls on the various bridges. Going South on the Golden Gate there was no one collecting a toll. But about a week later he received a notice in the mail asking him to pay the toll.

That got Glenn talking about the FasTrak.
– As long as you have some money on deposit, $25 he thought, it doesn't cost anything to use.
– When you use a toll bridge, the toll is deducted from the account.
– Some places in southern California allow you to use the HOV lane with the FasTrak.
– FasTrak can be used anywhere in California.
– There are no toll takers on the Golden Gate at all. You can use FasTrak or a picture is taken of your license plate when you pass thru — as Paul found out.
– If you go thru in a rental car without a FasTrak, the rental car company will charge you about $25 — for the toll + service fee.
– The FasTrak is a transponder that you can get from Costco.
– The down side is that your location can be tracked <and used against you in court>. Some Bay Area residents have proposed using Bitcoins, instead of credit cards, for anonymity.
– You can associate 1 or more cars with a FasTrak so if, for some reason, it malfunctioned at a toll plaza, you would not be penalized for a violation.

While talking about the anonymity of Bitcoin, Paul said people have been putting "wheresgeorge.com" on $1 & $10 bills. If you go to that site, you can see where these dollar bills have been.

Neil called in. He had called a couple of months ago about getting a blank screen for some websites when using Internet Explorer. At that time, it was suggested he restore the IE settings to their factory defaults. <See the notes for the 11-26-14 show>. He said the suggestion worked.

At that time it was also suggested he use a different browser. He tried Firefox but didn't like it. He tried Chrome and it was working fine. But then he went back to using IE and it was loading pages like he was on a bad dialup connection <slow>.
– Having used Chrome would not cause such a problem.
– There are 2 ways to check additional settings in Internet explorer: using either the Control Panel -> Internet Options, or using Internet Explorer -> Tools -> Internet Options -> Programs -> Manage Addons. There you'll find other addons that got installed. "Anything you don't understand, kill it". You can't remove the items, just click the 'disable' button.
– If you use Spybot Search and Destroy, you can kill 'browser helper objects'.
– Neil said he had done a system restore to get it to work right.

William called. He had been using Ccleaner. <They talked at the same time so I couldn't make out what his problem was>. Paul seemed to hear him ok and the problem had something to do with passwords.
– Ccleaner can remove saved passwords from websites, but there is a check box to stop it from doing that. Your main goal is to clear out the cache and you can use the check boxes to specify what else you want to clean out or keep.

William also asked if there are alternatives to using Ccleaner.
– Though Ccleaner cleans your registry, you can try Eusing for that.

On the 1-28-15 show William called about transferring iTunes to a new machine and wanted to clarify what folder he's supposed to transfer.
– It's not the iTunes folder in the Media Library folder. The folder you want is the iTunes folder in the Music folder.
– Just copy the folder, don't delete it on the old machine, in case something goes wrong.
– Paul said if you're going to mess with the iTunes library, it's important you go to Google and search for the words: consolidate itunes music. Some of the music may reside outside of the library.

Last Update 10:16 PM 2/11/2015