Personal digital life

 

Personal Infosec 101 —

Securing your digital life, part one: The basics

In this first of two parts, we go over some security steps everyone should be taking.

Sean Gallagher - 10/25/2021

Digital Protocol and end of the keyboard's dominance

 

An Update to a 37-Year-Old Digital Protocol Could Profoundly Change the Way Music Sounds

MIDI 2.0 is live, and it could mean the end of the keyboard's dominance over popular music.

Quartz

• Dan Kopf

Quotes from the above article

"... A lot of big things happened in music in 1983.... MIDI 1.0 was released. MIDI stands for “Musical Instrument Digital Interface” and, after 37 years, it has finally received a major update. MIDI 2.0 is live, and it could mean the end of the keyboard’s dominance over popular music. 

.... There are a few major changes in the new version. The biggest development is the expansion from 7-bit values to 32-bit values. Mike Kent, one of the technical leaders in creating MIDI 2.0, says this is like going from the resolution of a 1980s television to the high-def televisions of today. It means that instead of 128 steps for features like volume, there will now be billions.

 

.....

Also, with more memory, there are simply many more possible features that MIDI 2.0 can try to emulate.

...........But I believe because of MIDI 2.0 synthesizers and other electronic instruments will become more expressive. We will have more individual control over each note.” 

....nother major advancement is that MIDI 2.0 is that it allows for bi-directional communication between devices. 

.............. The recent MIDI update could allow people to build musical worlds we can’t yet imagine

China and big tech

 

China's great Big Tech experiment

The People's Republic has spent the last year showing tech titans who's boss. The unprecedented crackdown offers lessons about what and what not to do.

Daniel Van Boom 

Oct. 27, 2021

Get organized

 

How To Declutter Your Life in 15 Steps

Start with digital devices, backing up what you need and deleting the rest. Then approach your home and life in the same way.

Apartment Therapy

• Ashley Abramson

How do you store your precious analog photos and videos?

 

The More You Know

Everything You Need to Know Before Renting a Storage Unit

More space, fewer problems

By Bridget Reed Morawski

August 17, 2021

Microsoft alternatives - google docs tips

 Updated information on July 6, 2022

Google docs:

Step up your Google Docs game with these hacks. If you regularly use Google Docs, features like translating your entire document or creating custom shortcuts can help optimize your experience. See the 11 Google Docs features that will make your life easier.

 

quotes from above article

• You might think you know Google Docs well, but there are a lot of lesser-known but useful features.
• Not only can you voice dictate to Google Docs and display a real-time word count, you can create comparisons between similar docs.
• Here are 11 of the most useful lesser-known features in Google Docs. 

• Dictate with your voice

  Voice dictation isn't yet 100% accurate, but it's still a convenient way to create a document using just your voice. Google Docs supports voice dictation. To do it, just choose Tools, then Voice typing. You might need to give Google Docs permission to use your microphone, but after that a Click to speak button will appear on screen (you can drag it around if it's in the way). Click, dictate, and click again when you are done. 

  

 

 

- Crop and edit images in a document

(note: I do use this feature often)

- Translate your document to another language (note: this is totally unexpected amazing feature - got to look into it)

for info check out in detail at:

How to change the language in Google Docs to translate a document or type in a different language

Jennifer Still

Dec 18, 2019,

-

- Turn on an automatic word count display (note: I don't need this feature, but it's good to know for those who need it) - how to: you can enable an automatic word counter if you need it. To turn it on, click Tools, then Word count. In the Word count pop-up, click the checkbox for Display word count while typing and then click OK. 

-

Bookmark sections of your document

You can bookmark sections within a Google Doc and then link to them from elsewhere in the doc. It's handy for setting up an interactive table of contents, for example, or just linking to another part of the document as a reference. 

To do that, select the text you want to bookmark and then choose Insert, followed by Bookmark. Then select the text that you want to hyperlink to the bookmark. Click Insert link in the toolbar and click Headings and bookmarks. Find the bookmark you just created and select it. 

(note: I might need this in my notes - it's good to know!)

- Templates are hiding in plain sight

It's easy to ignore on the Google Docs home page, but the top of the screen has a row of handy templates in Google's Template gallery. You can click Template gallery 

(note: I should look into this, as I use google docs so often!)

- Compare two documents (note - not sure if I need this)

-Paste without formatting (note: sure if I need this feature)

- Quickly add a header or a footer 

You can add headers and footers to your Google Doc files, and even create a different header and footer on the first page of the document. 

To create a header, double click at the top of a page. You'll see the header region appear, and you can simply start typing to create your header. For more customization, click Options and choose the setting you want to change. For footers, do the same thing at the bottom of the page.

(NOTE: not sure if I need this feature)

 

 

==================================

• 10-12-21

Move over, Microsoft Word: The race to reinvent document editing

As ambitious apps such as Notion and Coda think beyond word processing in its classic form, even Microsoft and Google are taking notice. 

Here are some quotes from the above article:

 

"Modern editors such as Notion and Coda don’t mimic the printed page. Rather, using them feels more like browsing the web. Their writing spaces flow freely without page breaks, and they can branch into subpages that link among themselves. Those pages are also interactive by nature, with checkboxes, charts, Trello-like kanban boards, and tie-ins to outside data sources."

 

"Google Docs added interactive checklists and simpler linking to other documents earlier this year. A future update to Box’s Box Notes will add anchor links, callout boxes, and overhauled tables. The project management tool Monday launched a document editor in August with clear nods to Notion’s drag-and-drop content blocks. Microsoft itself is working on a modular Office editing system called Fluid Framework. Meanwhile, smaller upstarts Skiff and Craft are putting their own spin on the formula, with respective focuses on privacy and writing."

Conclusion:

"...All-in-one document editors like Notion and Coda could potentially be the holy grail for this kind of work, which explains why so many other companies are rushing to adapt. Google is trying to fit product planning into its document editor, while Monday is trying to fit document editing into its product planner. It wouldn’t be entirely surprising if Airtable or Trello were to expand beyond their core spreadsheet and kanban board interfaces to include word processing-like documents as well."

 

 

 

 

Variety of information and resources

 The Covid-19 years have shaken up many industries and businesses. People are changing drastically and it's no more business as usual. Here is an interesting article:

The Great Resignation Is Accelerating

A lasting effect of this pandemic will be a revolution in worker expectations.

By Derek Thompson

 

 

 

Resources:

 

 Are you looking to improve your business?

Here is a resource for you to check out:

 

Miami and Bitcoin

 October 2021

Miami's mayor says the city is moving toward paying public employees in bitcoin. The move is part of Mayor Francis Suarez's ongoing push to make Miami a major hub for digital assets. Here's what else Suarez has planned for his city.

Social Media news and updates

 Updated August 18. 2022

Social media is polluting society. Moderation alone won’t fix the problem

Companies already have the systems in place that are needed to evaluate their deeper impacts on the social fabric.

By

• Nathaniel Lubinarchive page
• Thomas Krendl Gilbertarchive page

August 9, 2022

 

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Updated information Aug 1, 2022

Jul 25, 2022 - Technology

Sunset of the social network

• Scott Rosenberg
•  
• Quote from above article:

• Now Facebook wants to shape your online life around the algorithmically-sorted preferences of millions of strangers around the globe.

• That's how TikTok sorts the videos it shows users, and that's largely how Facebook will now organize its home screen.
• The dominant player in social media is transforming itself into a kind of digital mass media, in which the reactions of hordes of anonymous users, processed by machine learning, drive the selection of your content.
• .........
  
•  

• What's next: Messaging will continue to grow as the central channel for private, one-to-one and small group communications.

• Meta owns a big chunk of that market, too, thanks to Facebook Messenger and its ownership of WhatsApp.
• At the other end of the media spectrum, the "discovery engines" run by TikTok and Meta will duke it out with streaming services to capture billions of eyeballs around the globe and sell that attention to advertisers.

All this leaves a vacuum in the middle — the space of forums, ad-hoc group formation and small communities that first drove excitement around internet adoption in the pre-Facebook era.

• Facebook's sunseting of its own social network could open a new space for innovation on this turf, where relative newcomers like Discord are already beginning to thrive.

• 
   

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Twitter now lets you soft-block followers

Now you can remove someone from your followers list without blocking them entirely.

Firefox issues - websites blocked

 It turns out Firefox is blocking wordpress websites:

Here is some information what to do about it:

https://wpglorify.com/cookies-blocked-error-wordpress-admin/