LITTLE ROCK — We lose keys and television remotes constantly. With SticknFind, you can put a Bluetooth sticker on something and then page it.
Unfortunately, this handy little bit of tech is not on the market yet. But SticknFind has raised $734,000 on IndieGogo. com, a crowd-funding site; the initial goal was only $70,000. If you enter your e-mail address at sticknfind.com, they’ll send you an e-mail when it’s available. They haven’t named a price.
Here’s how it works: A small adhesive sticker with enclosed electronics is pressed onto whatever you may have trouble finding from time to time. When you need to find it - whatever it is - you “page” the missing item. The sticker can be set to either light up, make a sound or both. The range is 100 feet. The sticker is about the size of a quarter and only slightly thicker; the battery lasts for a year. Place it on your kids’ shoes, on their backpack or on Granny’s purse.
Using an iPhone or Android app, you can see how close your items are as you walk around with the phone. As you get nearer, you’ll see the item closer to you on a radar chart. If you still can’t find it, set an alert. Your phone will notify you when you’re in range. This is especially handy at the airport for suitcases on a conveyer belt. Your suitcase will alert you when it’s nearby. You also can set the SticknFind to alert you when the object in question gets farther away - handy if your child wanders off.
Other roads to lost treasures: Though SticknFind is not on the market, the maker is a well-established design firm and it seems highly likely it will appear soon. If you can’t wait, there are free apps to help you find your stuff. Where's My Droid? helps you find your Android phone by GPS. Find My Car is an app that places your car on a smart-phone map, so you won’t be wandering the parking lot too long. It also has a timer to remind you to refill the parking meter.
JOY LOSES HER SMARTPHONE
Joy lost her Samsung Galaxy Relay smart phone. She chose it initially, because it has a tiny slide-out keyboard. But that proved awkward to use, so last night we dealt with the loss of the old phone by going out and buying a new Samsung Galaxy S3. Very nice.
CNET reviewers say this is the best tech product of 2012, even better than the iPhone 5. We thought so too, and the impression was immediate. The Galaxy S3’s large screen is easier to type on than the tiny physical keyboard and the ultra-sharp display makes even a tiny movie worth watching. We were suitably impressed by the 8-megapixel camera, which has sharper shots than we get from our regular camera.
All of our apps and contacts from the previous phone were immediately onboard as soon as Joy fired up the new phone and signed into her Google account. We also got 50 gigabytes of storage space free from Dropbox.com. (Normally you just get 2 gigabytes.)
This phone, unlike Joy’s earlier Samsung Relay, walks you through everything you need to know when you first turn it on. Uncheck the boxes that say “don't show this again” till you’ve gotten the hang of it.
We’re on the no-contract $30 a month T-Mobile plan, which has unlimited Web and texting, with 100 voice minutes. Because there’s no contract, the phone itself cost $550 (Ouch!). The average cell-phone contract costs $70 a month and you often have to sign on for two years, so it turns into a big-ticket item even when you get the phone at a discount.
Joy made a dangerous error with her old phone. She kept passwords online in Google Drive. This meant anyone who found the phone could access all her accounts. She quickly changed the passwords and deleted the files from the Drive, so we hope we’re OK. T-Mobile, our carrier, offered to immediately suspend the account for 30 days and wait to see if we found the old one. But we chose to close it out right there and transfer the account to the new phone.
OK, DRAW!
You could use text to tell a story, but according to an old Chinese proverb, a picture is worth a thousand words. (Actually, that proverb is constantly misquoted. The character in the original Chinese does not mean a thousand or even ten thousand words, but simply very many.) Studies show that people learn and retain information six times faster if they have pictures.
Pardon the wordy lead-in, but what we’re talking about here is a new look at Smart-Draw. This program has been around for decades, and it was originally designed to create corporate organization charts. It later was advanced to do flowcharting - you know, breaking large projects into pieces and keeping track of who’s doing what and when they’ll be finished. The new SmartDraw flowcharts can show progress and problems, step by step, with pictures.
Beyond flowcharts, it creates other “business visuals” - project management charts, PowerPoint-style presentations, and so on, with timelines, sales maps, pie charts and 67 other elements.
Everything in the 2013 version can be shared with others just by e-mailing them a link. In the bad old days (like last year), the charts were only clickable to people who also had Smart-Draw on their computers. Now everything can be viewed online, even PowerPoint-style presentations.
Charting Your Brain: We used the program to create what the company calls a “mind map.” This is a brainstorming layout that uses visuals to help organize your thoughts and solve problems. You enter information in expandable boxes shown on-screen and lines are drawn between the ones that seem to be connected. An unlimited amount of information can be poured into each box. The map realigns itself when you delete or move a box and automatically redraws the lines between boxes. Novelists might find this approach useful.
There’s a seven-day free trial version of the $197 program at smartdraw.com.
Bob and Joy can be contacted by e-mail at bobschwab@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com.
Business, Pages 20 on 01/28/2013