FiT Member, Douglas E, Welch, offers these Step-by-step instructions on installing the latest (and future) IOS updates for your iPhone or iPad.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I stil have not figured out why our tag cloud is borked. Hopefully I will get that straightened out soon.

On another topic, I did a post last year about my eyeFi card. Now that Apple has added Photo Stream sharing that workflow is even more useful. This year I was able to share Christmas related photos with family straight to their iPads. Saving me the trouble of burning and distributing discs of photos. I am loving it!

I especially liked the tagline – “if the barn doors are wide open, why look for mice holes!”

I will admit it that I have responded to emails without completely reading the thread, or glossing over details. This can lead to embarrassment when someone calls you out on asking a question that was already answered in the previous emails.  Not only that there are times when I look at an article online and gloss over it taking in only some of the details and not others. This is not good and does not help when I am working with other people. The problem with myself, I believe, is that I am programmer. I have trained myself to look for patterns in code, or try and follow along with the flow of the logic behind it. Does programming contribute to the e.A.D.D.? Or is it that I just need to slow down a bit to process things.

So what can be done?

There are multiple site online that talk about how to improve your reading comprehension. Some of which refer to kindergarten, however I don’t think I need to go back that far. Some however are useful and here are a few tips that I found here.

• Location - Find a place to read that isn’t too busy or distracting.
• Sound - Much like location, noise can be a huge distraction too
• Read Something That Interests You - Read something that is interesting to you.
• Put away other devices - Of course phones notifying you of messages and iPods with music can take your focus from what you are reading.
• State of mind - Keep a relaxed mind and focus on what you are reading rather than the events that happen during your day.

If you haven’t guessed it yet this is all part of my New Years Resolution(s). Hopefully, a couple of changes and taking a little time for myself will help with my own problem. In the year to come, I plan to take small breaks from the electronic world and disconnect, and I also plan on more creative reading in 2011. (See this post here)

Do you experience e.A.D.D.? or do others you know experience this as well?
Also, what have you done to reset yourself?

Like most folks I moved my MobileMe to iCloud.  Turns out starting Dec 21 the pop3 access quit working. Best I can tell is iCloud is now only supporting IMAP syncing.

So how to restore my backup.  After talking with @johnfbraun I gave the forwarding option in iCloud a try.  It works when paired with an appropriate filter rule in gmail.

1. In iCloud go into preferences via the web page once logged into mail at iCloud.com.
2. In the general tab, check the box to forward and enter your gmail or google apps email address.
3. Do NOT check the box delete after forward if you want to still interact with that mail through the iCloud account on your devices.
4. Next go to your gmail.  Go into the Mail settings and filters.
5. Make a filter based on the TO: matching your @me.com address.
6. Use the actions to Skip Inbox, Mark as read, Apply label

You want to use a label so you can quickly jump to all mail that came to your iCloud account.

That is it.  Works fine for new mail, though we have noticed a few delays in mail making it over to google.  Perhaps Apple is batch processing forwards.

In the previous post I mentioned you can use two factor authentication with Paypal, World of Warcraft and Google. There are a few new places that have added the feature.

Logmein for remote access lets you set your account to send a code by sms to your cell phone. This even works with the iPad application Logmein Ignition. Just start to log in normally. As soon as you enter your password it will send a code and prompt you to enter the code as received on your phone.

** UPDATE CORRECTION** Logmein lets you email a code.  Just tell it the email address matching your phone’s sms address and you have SMS based codes.

Yahoo just added sms code authentication to your account as well. You need to log into Yahoo, on your name and choose to enter your account settings. Once in scroll down to the Sign-In and Security section. Click the Setup your second sign-ing verification. Now you can tell it to send to your phone as an sms code and even force prompt you for the answers to your secret question instead of the code. The point of two factor though is to tie something you know (password, question answer) to something you have (your phone). So I opted to use only my mobile phone number for verification. From now on when you log onto Yahoo from a new device or computer it will also send a code to your phone.

Personally I like Google’s two factor implementation best out of those targeted at the non uber geek set. But even SMS is better than passwords alone.

I have been playing a lot with IFTTT.com and Yahoo pipes.  But what if we want to monitor some site and web service statuses directly and have it show up on our Mac desktop all the time?

That is where GeekTool comes in handy.  Just add a couple of Shell Script objects to your desktop.  Make sure to set the display status to feedback image, choose a reasonable refresh period and a suitable title via the override text fields as seen below.

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Here are two shell scripts.  One monitors status for a WoW Realm I made for some friends.  The other is the example of monitoring the FiT Web site status via downforeveryoneorjustme.com.

WoW Realm Status:

curl –silent http://us.battle.net/api/wow/realm/status?realms=thorium-brotherhood | grep -m1 -E ‘status’ | awk -F “:” ‘{print $5}’ | awk -F “,” ‘{print $1}’ | grep true

FiT Site Status:

curl –silent http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.friendsintech.com | awk -F “</span> is ” {‘print $2}’ | grep up

• Swiss Army Victorinox SwissTool