I recently saw a video about Joplin’s tornado and it said that people were being offered 50% of their contents insurance unless they could provide a written list of everything in the house. I have about $250,000 contents insurance. That means I could potentially take a $125,000 loss.

I decided to take a picture of my house and everything in it. I wasn’t that meticulous, but did open up all the doors and closets etc.

After about 1.5 hours and 477 pictures, I was done. I then downloaded the pictures to my computer – 2.7 gb.

I was taking high resolution (6000 x 4000 jpg – 350 dpi) pictures so that I could zoom in and identify all of my contents later.

The question then became – where can I put these pictures so that later I could retrieve them in the case of a calamity – my answer was SkyDrive. As a previous user, SkyDrive recently gave me 25gb for free as I upgraded my account.

While I could have used Google Drive, they only offer me 5 gb of space and they resize the pictures to 2048×2048. I needed original quality size pictures.

In SkyDrive, make sure you uncheck the box which says Resize photos to 2048 pix.

I made a folder in SkyDrive and then added all my 477 pictures to the folder. It naturally took a while, but I feel better now knowing that my pictures are relatively safe in the cloud.

It will index your entire computer and help you find files in short order.  According to Paul from winsupersite.com, it’s much faster than using windows.

It runs in the background or you can just start it up and it will update its index.

Note – it doesn’t index the file contents – only file and folder names.

You could also use it to remotely access your computer.

Being free for personal use is great since I wouldn’t use this very often.

Setup

- After you connect, it’s supposed to open the MyDashboard – it didn’t.
- I had to go online to garmin.com/dashboard.
- You then have to download a Garmin plugin, close your browser, open your browser and then allow the plugin to run.
- Go back to garmin.com/dashboard – allow the plugin – Refresh.
- Finally I got to MyDashboard and downloaded some system updates and a British male and female voice.

The instructions now were:
1. Disconnect your device from the computer and manually restart it using the power button..When the restart process is complete, turn the device off.
3. Reconnect your device to your computer and wait 30 seconds.

Maps
- You have two options for maps – you can download a program to run in the background to automatically check for new maps or download a program to run and do this on a one-time basis. I did a one-time update – I don’t need more junk running on my computer.
- Even though I just bought the device, there was a new North America map update.
- It took about an hour to download and update the unit.

So in all it probably took 1 1/2 hours to setup the new garmin – not too bad, but not ideal.

Operation
- One of the first things I noticed is that this model doesn’t connect via the regular mini-usb plug I have, but a smaller micro plug – don’t lose this usb cord!
- The manual is online so you will have to download it.  I printed it out – 4 pages/page and I’m slowly going through it – 19 pages total.
- When you update, you can download different voices. We tried the British woman’s voice, but she was using words we weren’t familiar with, so we’re going back to the American voice.
-  The car base attaches to the window only. You can order a base for the dashboard for free. The cord attaches to the base – not the unit.
- One nice feature is the ability to change the Main Menu to features you like.
-  A number of people don’t like the Traffic Ads, but to turn them off you have to turn the Traffic feature off – Tools – Settings – Traffic  - Disabled.  For some reason this does not show up unless you have the unit plugged into the cars power adapter.

Note – I was comparing this to the 2555LMT model which is similar in price.
The 2460 has these extra features – Bluetooth, powered mount, and voice commands.

I bought this particular unit mainly for the larger 5″ screen and the free lifetime map updates.

It appears that they initially import over all your google docs files and folders.

The only question I have is – Why would I want to install one more thing onto my computer? Google Drive seems to work just fine without installing anything. I can still create and upload files, just like in the old google docs – which worked just fine for me.

It seems to work similar to google docs, but not google drive. You don’t have to install anything. Unfortunately, I don’t see anywhere to share a file or folder with anyone else.

Drive. Google.com is finally up and running, but still not ready for business.
Click on the “Notify Me” link to have an email sent to you when it’s available.

They give you 5 GB of space for free.

An extra 25 GB will cost $30/year.

One nice feature is – you can now open thirty different file types – HD video, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop files etc., without having the programs on your computer.

You can share files or folders, start discussion,s and let others view, edit or comment on your stuff.

File Encryption – not available for you to encrypt before they get it – so be careful what your post. It is encrypted online, but they have the key.

You will have to install a program on your computer/smart phone to use Google Drive.

Below is a link to compare Google Drive with other online storage.

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1080740/bigchart-7.jpeg

Just found out via Paul Thurrott that SkyDrive is changing their storage limit to 7 GB – down from 25 GB.

They are allowing previous customers to upgrade back up to 25 GB.

So if you think you may have already signed up for SkyDrive.com – it’s part of Windows Live, sign back in and do the free 25 GB free upgrade NOW!

I ended up buying the Sony ICD-AX412 at the local Best Buy store. Even though I paid $20 more than what it costs online, they had it in stock and I couldn’t wait.

After playing with it for just an hour or so, I’m impressed with just about everything.

• The two AAA batteries are supposed to last 60 hours and the 2GB of memory will give me 23 hours of recording.
• You can set the recording mode to one of several. I set mine to “lecture” mode since my speaker will be fifteen feet away from the recorder. It picks up the speakers voice just fine although there is some background noise.
• It records in MP3 format which makes it easy to use with other software and devices.
• You can easily transfer the files to your computer with a supplied USB cable.
• You can also add a micro SD card for added storage and recording time. I bought one from Amazon for $4.
• While it’s not the smallest recorder it will fit easily in a pocket. I also appreciate the slightly larger screen.
• They have a switch for noise reduction – they call it Noise Cut. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any difference in the noise level when the feature is on or off. You can use an audio editing program to reduce this noise level later.
• I wish they had a simpler on/off switch. You have to hold the switch down for a couple of seconds before the recorder will turn on and off.
• It also has a nice flip-up stand so that you can get a better recording when you set it on a desk.
• It has a microphone in and headphone out jacks.
• It has a T-Mark button to allow you mark certain points in your recordings. They show up in the audio editor as little blips and noises on the screen.
• I also appreciate the 130 page manual that comes with the recorder. There are lots of options you can set with the device.
• After you start recording, you can also select the HOLD setting so that you don’t accidentally stop the recording.

In conclusion, if you need to record a long conversation, music or lecture, this recorder will will do the job well.

Here are the storage limits for each of the Google Products.

Gmail – 7 GB

Docs – 1 GB for your uploaded files (documents created in Google Docs and converted files don’t count towards your storage but do have some size limitations).

PicasaWeb – 1 GB for photos and videos. Files under certain sizes don’t count towards this limit. (This gets complicated .)

Google+ – unlimited storage for photos, which are automatically resized to 2048 x 2048 pixels. Videos up to 15 minutes in length are also free.

Free storage space is specific to each product and can’t be shared.

You can buy extra storage which is shared:

• 20 GB – $5/yr
• 80 GB – $20/yr
• 200 GB – $50/yr etc.

Here’s the problem that I see with sharing photos via Google+.
You can only do this with people who are signed up with Google+.
Any of your other non-google+ friends are just out of luck if they want to see your photos.

The other problems I’ve noticed is that when I get an invitation to VIEW ALBUM from a friend it doesn’t send it from their email address, but from a “NoReply” email address. You can’t reply to them directly.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This information was found at this link.