Shaine Mata Blog

Our household finally adopted a Kindle. As I am an Amazon Prime subscriber, and I already do so much business with Amazon, it made sense to invite a Kindle into our home. When it came time for my family to decide whether to go the route of Kindle or Nook, we decided to go with the Nook. Our family frequents the local Barnes and Noble stores, so there was that congruent experience possible between retail store and eBook reader. I haven't jumped on board the Kindle bandwagon all the way. Rather than a recent model, I stopped by the pawn shop and picked up a Kindle Touch for a little less than $40. This model is similar to the Nook Simple Touch in that there is a power button, a home button, and a touch screen. I like that about the Nook. The current base model Kindle has those stupid little buttons on the edges that I would most likely snap off some day. The biggest draw to the Kindle, for me, is that it is much easier for getting work documents in it through the Amazon Cloud Dri...

The idea of three screens is not my original idea. International man of Technology PR,  +Alan Weinkrantz  introduced me to the idea through his blog, 3screens.net where he originally meant broadcast television, your desktop, and your mobile phone. The concept began with Alan's subscription to AT&T's U-Verse, which was pretty new at the time. Back to the point, you had 3 screens to enjoy media. Alan's tastes in media have evolved to where he watches less broadcast television and more internet broadcasts. His three screens these days likely involve his laptop, iPad, and iPhone. I think for many of us, the experience is similar. What We Do Not everybody does this. For some of us who are compulsive Internet users, we can be watching TV with a laptop, tablet, or phone handy to check up on actor profiles, obscure references in the script, or for some backstory. We may be twittering our reactions to the latest Game of Thrones episode as it's playing. We might be watc...

What typically happens when I set out to write a blog post, lately, is that I have ideas and a rough outline of what I want to write. I sit down and start typing away at the keyboard. I get through a good chunk of the body and then ...that's it.  The end product is not ready for publishing; but, I don't quite want to spend time editing either. So, the piece gets saved into drafts, and stays there.  I have given thought to why this is. Part of it is that I am stealing away time to write a blog post. I have other things that need doing; but, there is also writing that needs to be done. However, the time spent on writing is often is short spurts and then back to doing what I was doing. The solution to this is that I should schedule time specifically for blogging. This way my mind is completely focused on accomplishing the task rather than being elsewhere.  Another issue is that the post as written turns out different than imagined. While writing, my thoughts chang...

I had an opportunity to connect the Microsoft vision with Windows 8, RT, and Mobile. Tonight, I went out shopping for tires for my wife's van. So naturally, I wound up at Best Buy to check out what's new on the retail tech market. I had a chance to play with a touchscreen Windows 8 all-in-one computer. In recent days, I have heard good reports on Windows 8.1 for mobile, especially Cortana, the new personal assistant. And, of course, I've had clients purchase the Microsoft Surface tablet. All of these together gave me the "aha!" moment I get from time to time. Before jumping into the blog post, allow me to preface that I am a big Google fan. I love the way Google does many things, even the ones that freak other people out. When I recommend to clients that they should switch to Google Apps, it's often because of the low cost and ease of use. The biggest hurdle I have is when people are steeped in Microsoft experience. I cannot, for the life of me, convince peo...

For the past few months, I've been heeding the advice of the medical community in that I have been drinking a glass or two of wine every evening, . . . well, it's mostly two glasses and occasionally one. Back to the story, the other night I indulged in an extra glass of wine, number three. Boy, was that a mistake. Although I was feeling pretty good in the evening, the next day was ass-draggy. Normally, I would go past the limit on a Friday or Saturday evening, when I know that I can sleep in the next day. I suppose I never suffered the consequences having slept them off. So, the lesson here, kids, is that you should stop at one or two glasses of wine if you have to go to work the next day. That is, if you have a rather strict schedule and are up past your ideal bedtime. It's possible that you have the liver of an alcoholic, and you wouldn't even feel buzzed after two glasses of wine. If this is the case, are you really drinking for the health benefit? After the se...

Google announced that their Sheets and Docs apps within Google Drive will now be standalone apps on Android . Furthermore, they will work very well in offline mode. This is great news for me as using Google Drive has been unsatisfying when I am without mobile service, which is often at work. By making the web apps modular and usable offline, they make it easier for people like me to start creating things without hunting for a signal. I have used Quickoffice on occasion, as the app does work in offline mode. However, those files are apparently in a different format as Google Docs and Google Sheets. Technically, Quickoffice can do the same things; but, the results are not the same. I have introduced a competitor to Sheets recently, Smartsheet . However, Smartsheet suffers the same shortcomings that Google Drive previously had, which is the required Internet access. I don't think I'll abandon Smartsheet. Despite their limitation, it is much better suited to tracking work. I wo...