Happiness is in enjoying everyday's life

The true challenge of technology is how to get the most out of it without letting it overwhelm us. How to keep things simple but powerful. How to master technology without letting it become our master.
Here are some tips how to:

Focus on the essential. It’s important to take some time to think about what’s essential to your tech work (and play). What do you really need? What gives you the most benefit for your time? What’s not so essential? What takes up a lot of time without making much of an impact?

Do one thing at a time. I know. This is super hard when it comes to tech. Browser’s on, a dozen tabs open at once, switching between reading and email and work and IM and Twitter … we live in a multitasking world. But it doesn’t have to be this way. While there’s nothing wrong with having multiple tabs open, it can be very helpful to focus on one task at a time.

Have periods of disconnectedness. While I do most of my work online, I find it extremely useful (and calming) to close my browser and just work offline for awhile.

Don’t live in your inbox. Email is everything to many people. It’s communication, it’s a task list, it’s where you do your work, it’s your organization system. But if you work from your inbox, you are constantly being interrupted by new messages.

Schedule your IM time. If IM is important to your work, then schedule IM meetings, or have certain times of the day when you’re available for IM and tell your colleagues and friends about it. And have it for a limited amount of time and then end it.

Set limits on what you do. For example, check email just twice a day. Write emails of only 5 sentences or less.

Liberally taken by Zenhabits

I guess the secret is not in imposing limits, it is enjoying what you do.
Your life is yours, your day is yours, all the rest is just technology.

IDrive, the easy online backup

How many times we said "If" and "when" and "If just".
Too bad it is always to late.
Who among us has never experienced his or her hard Drive crash?
And of course the loss of ALL DATA in just a few seconds?
But today there is a way to be able to avoid these tragedies.
For people who do almost everything online there is no need any more to keep paper files and in the same time they can feel safe about their data.
They can access all their informations and documents online, they are able to work from anywhere, from any computer.
They use IDrive, which is a user-friendly, safe and reliable application able to do automatically a backup of their data files online.
It's so easy and nice to use, it is "aesthetically" minimalist, because there is no need for drawers to be filled with papers, no DVDs, or external tape drive.
And no fuss to find what you're looking for, wherever you are.
There is no worry about security as all data is encrypted during all transmissions.
There is also an efficient management tool, which allows you to specify, which files are accessible, shared, locked, searchable etc.

All these facts can help you sleep at night.

It's only piracy if YOU make the copies

A federal judge has ruled that a commercial plagiarism-detection tool popular among professors does not violate the copyrights of students, even though it stores digital copies of their essays in the database that the company uses to check works for academic dishonesty. The decision has implications for other digital services, such as Google's effort to scan books in major libraries and add them to its index for search purposes.

The lawyer for the students who sued the company said he plans to appeal.

Judge Claude M. Hilton, of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., in March found that scanning the student papers for the purpose of detecting plagiarism is a "highly transformative" use that falls under the fair-use provision of copyright law. He ruled that the company "makes no use of any work's particular expressive or creative content beyond the limited use of comparison with other works," and that the new use "provides a substantial public benefit."

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When to use a VPN

Where can you find the best VPN service? At an affordable price? How can you surf the Web and be completely anonymous?
The Internet is a global network connecting millions of computers.
But is also a world where the word privacy has no meaning anymore.
You are traceable every minute you spend on the Internet, and your safety is at risk.
VPN is an application defined at the end points, it is usually not a service provided by your carrier.
Today you can Protect your Internet privacy with a VPN account, that will allow you an Anonymous Surfing.
How?
A VPN is literally a Virtual Private Network, a network in the big Internet Network, where you travel alone because some of the links between nodes are carried by open connections or virtual circuits in some larger network (the Internet) instead of by physical wires.
What is the use of a VPN?
You can use it to speed up connections among enterprise offices, it can allow security and quality of service, protect informations, keep it confidential, very often avoid legal problems, send safely marketing and billing informations, or simply create a network among a certain group of users.
Blacklogic can offer you Canadian or US Ip addresses, encrypted IPSEC VPN service.
You can work anonymously wherever you are, at any computer, preventing anybody to spy on what you are doing.
With it you can bypass all blocked websites, watch American TV.
Besides you can have high speed, no need to check regularly as you would with a proxy, 100% content encryption.
And all this just for $100 per year.(Hurry up, it is a limited offer)
The set up is quite easy, you just need a few simple clicks and a minimum of preferences to set.
You can use it with any OS.
And just to be clear, I will list a few of the situations in which a VPN could be a good solution:

When you use a WiFi connection and public Hot Spots
When you check your emails on a different computer or place which is not home
When you talk using VoIP and you want to keep your privacy
When you need to conceal your IP

And remember: A SSL VPN is much slower than the one Blackmagic offers, much unsafer since the Log files are not destroyed and ISP Providers can look into them.

Marijuana, relaxing tool

A variety of middle-class people are making a conscious but careful choice to use marijuana to enhance their leisure activities, a University of Alberta study shows.

A qualitative study of 41 Canadians surveyed in 2005-06 by U of A researchers showed that there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ marijuana user, but that people of all ages are selectively lighting up the drug as a way to enhance activities ranging from watching television and playing sports to having sex, painting or writing.

“For some of the participants, marijuana enhanced their ability to relax by taking their minds off daily stresses and pressures. Others found it helpful in focusing on the activity at hand,” said Geraint Osborne, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus in Camrose, and one of the study’s authors.

The study was published recently in the journal Substance Use and Misuse.

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