Tech and life

Imagine this scenario. You’ve just walked into your parent’s house. They’ve just popped out so no-one’s at home but on the living room table is a copy of their Will. They must have been reviewing it. What would you do? Turn round and immediately walk out the door… or have a sneak peak to see what brother Billy and sister Jill have been left… and of course don’t forget yourself!

I know what I’d do – turn round and run a mile for fear of seeing anything. If something is marked Private and Confidential and it’s not for me, I just don’t want to know. Finding out the contents of a confidential letter or what you have or haven’t been left in a Will beforehand could be a horrible experience and better left until the appropriate time. If it’s not meant for me, I would feel really guilty reading its contents and would hate myself for doing it. But I’m sure many would have no qualms about having a look.

My Will is with our solicitor safely locked away from prying eyes. Make sure your parents’ Will is too before it’s too late and you are tested to breaking point!

And of course, if you have any Private and Confidential files on your PC, make sure they are encrypted and password protected. I’ve been using a free program called Axcrypt to encrypt my sensitive files and it’s working fine for me.

So what would you do? Are there any circumstances when it’s okay to look at Private and Confidential information not meant for you and you’re not 007? Let us know in the comments. And cast your vote in the poll below – it’s the first time I’ve tried a poll on this site so I’ll be interested to test it out.

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Image credit: Janielle Beh

A recent family bereavement got me thinking. What would happen to this blog and all my online accounts if I died tomorrow? I hadn’t really given it much thought before and I’m sure many of you are in the same boat. It’s hard enough to cope with a family bereavement let alone sit down and try and sort out someone’s online accounts so we really should give our loved ones as much help as we can to cover this unfortunate possibility. As it stands, I’m sure my wife would be completely at a loss to know where to start with my online life. Not surprising really as she doesn’t know which online accounts I have! So let’s have a look and see if there’s anything we can do to help deal with our virtual life in the event of our actual death.

What about your blog?

If you have a blog, have you thought what would happen to it if you died tomorrow? It’s actually an asset you own and I guess the first question is would any of your family want to take it on? Better find out now and if there is someone, you’ll need to be able to get your blog admin details to them somehow after your death. Don’t forget to include domain renewal dates and blog host renewal dates. More about that later. If you’ve monetized your blog through advertising for example, the income from that may be a nice little bonus for your loved ones and that may be another reason for keeping the blog alive. So remember to pass on your PayPal details. They’ll need that to be able to remit the advertising revenue back to the family. On the other hand, if no-one is really interested in carrying on your blog, they may consider selling it to another blogger. After all, a ready-made blog may well suit someone who wants to move into blogging and bypass all the hassle of setting it up and building up traffic. What will happen to your blog when you die is summed up very nicely in this post on Daily Blogging Tips.

What about Facebook?

Your loved ones will have the choice of terminating your account or keeping it in a ‘memorial state’ which removes features like status updates and contact details and lets only confirmed friends view the profile and post comments on it. Discuss this with them. Again, they’ll obviously need your admin details whichever they choose. You may also want to arrange a farewell message to be posted in the event of your death. You could keep that with your log in details as discussed next, but make sure your digital heir knows where to find the details.

Passing on the important details after death

Bear in mind that the terms of service of most online accounts don’t permit passing them on to a ‘new owner’. Each site tends to have its own rules about who can do what should someone pass on, and executors may need to make special requests to close down accounts or access your information. For info on the policies of Yahoo, MySpace, Google and Microsoft when it comes to dealing with the accounts of deceased users, read this Educo blog post or this MakeUseOf post.

If you can pass the accounts on, first you’ll have to identify someone who would be willing to tidy up all the loose ends, probably your spouse or partner. But don’t forget to cover the possibility that you and your partner may die at the same time. If you’ve already made a Will, this may all sound familiar. Of course keeping your online admin details with your Will may be a good solution. But I can hear you say, I change my passwords regularly and add new online accounts all the time, I can’t keep changing these details in my Will. Well, if you use a username/password manager like LastPass, you only have to add your email address and one master password to your Will documents. All you account usernames and passwords are held securely in LastPass. Once your digital heir accesses your LastPass Vault, they can see all your usernames and your passwords. Another possibility I read about recently on MakeUseOf is LogAway which allows you to create a single click log in for hundreds of websites. You will have to change the master password occasionally but this is all that will have to be updated with your Will documents. Of course, you don’t have to keep your details with your Will. Any secure place will do where your spouse, partner or executor can get hold of the details when required. You could also use a service like Death Switch to email your loved one with all the details after you’ve passed away.

There are also online services like Legacy Locker and Entrustet that allow the creation of a will for digital assets. Legacy Locker’s free ‘trial account’ limits you to listing three digital assets and two beneficiaries. Lifehacker have a post on Legacy Locker here and Entrustet here. Entrustet lets you assign an heir to access your accounts when you pass away. It lets you set up unlimited password-protected accounts to be transferred over to a trusted person upon your passing and lets you decide what will happen to each account.

So don’t leave it until it’s too late. You have a great opportunity to make these decisions now. Do yourself and your family a favour and make some backup arrangements to help deal with your online world in the event of your untimely death. Drop a comment below if you have already made these arrangements and you have some advice for us.

What would happen to your online accounts if you died tomorrow is a post from Tech and Life. If you’re reading it in full elsewhere, it’s been copied without consent. Please go to Tech and Life to read the original post and many others in the archive.

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Further reading: Handling computer accounts after death – Rocket Moms

Image credit: Roy’s funeral

Away from Tech today. I’m sure some of you, your family or friends have been touched by the devastating effects of cancer. If not, you probably will be at some point in your life. Cancer struck very close to me recently and took my brother at the age of 52. He had been diagnosed with myeloma (cancer of blood plasma cells) a little over a year ago. It’s been quite a blow to my elderly parents, both in their mid-80s as they struggle to come to terms with the fact that their son has been taken before them – upsetting for any parent. We’ll all miss him.

My brother led a pretty healthy lifestyle. He wasn’t overweight, he exercised well, ate a reasonably healthy diet, and lived in a stress-free rural area. He was pretty much the last person I would have expected to be diagnosed with cancer, but that’s not the way it works I’m afraid. The causes of myeloma are pretty much unknown at present. Initial signs of the disease were easily misinterpreted: tiredness which he had put down to aging, and a very sore lower back, initially thought to be a prolapsed disk but later diagnosed as fracturing due to weakening by the myeloma cells. Renal failure followed.

He responded to chemotherapy initially but never sufficiently to undergo stem cell treatment. His kidneys started functioning again, but after a few months, his body rejected the first chemotherapy regime and later a second regime. He had an aggressive form of the disease.  The hospital staff were magnificent throughout and he had wonderful support through his final days. He never complained and bore the illness with great courage.

I’m not really sure what the message is here, other than don’t take life too much for granted – you just never know if or when a terminal condition will strike. Don’t put off doing the things that are important to you or that you’ve been meaning to do. And if you are 50 or over, and are experiencing tiredness and increasing lower back pains, see your GP, and insist on blood tests just in case.

Computers. Don’t you just love them! Time rushes by when you are in front of that screen. Oftentimes I’ve let the fire die, or the potatoes boil to a soggy mush as I try to solve a computer problem or devise a workaround. And I’m not alone. They’re supposed to make you more productive… save you time, but sometimes I wonder. I loved this recent post on thrive as the author tried to do some photo editing and the catalogue of problems that ensued and the time wasted – I could identify with so much there.

We’ve all been there – a seemingly simple software problem to sort out or routine to master but it can take an eternity to get a satisfying result. In my experience, with the best will in the world, even after reading software help files, checking the preferences, often you may not get the direct easy solution you wanted but have to resort to a workaround or even have to hunt for an alternative program. Many’s a time I’ve found that with computers, for some reason to get from A to B you have to go via C and D!

Some applications like Photoshop are complex and you need to invest a fair bit of time to master them. Then when these apps are updated, they lose functionality or do things differently and you have to relearn stuff. Other applications just aren’t intuitive enough. I’ve often found that during a software installation or when using an app, the choice of options and the result of choosing an option aren’t clearly explained. I’m often left scratching my head wondering what exactly will happen if I chose a particular option, check a box or follow a particular route – and of course often the wrong choice is made and you have to start over losing more time. If I get the wrong result when using an app, very often I just have to work though the possible options by trial and error, changing one item at a time until I get the right result – more time gone. And of course don’t change two or three things at once as a shortcut – invariably, if you solve it you won’t know exactly which tweak solved it.

But having said that, there’s a great sense of achievement when you crack it no matter how long it takes. I’ve blogged some of my tips when I’ve solved a PC problem so as to try and help people through the same problems – and that’s my point here. When I started with PCs many years ago, there was no real help other than the good old manual, if that. Nowadays, we have so much help, from a quick Google search to tech forums, Twitter and sites like Mahalo Answers and MakeUseOf Answers where you can ask tech questions.

And when you’ve cracked that problem, be sure to make a note of what you did in something like Evernote, so you know for next time. There’s nothing worse that sitting down 3 or 4 months later faced with the same problem and scratching your head wondering how you solved it last time. Use your PC to remind you!

Have you solved a PC issue that’s given you a great sense of achievement? How do you solve PC problems? What do you find frustrating and a real time sink? Have you ever given up in disgust and taken drastic action! Have you resorted to changing your operation system or finding new software? Tell us in the comments!

photo credit: ap

I’ve just finished our annual mailing of Christmas cards – after tracking down our old address lists and address books to find all those addresses I need. In the past, I have used a card list stored on the PC and printed out but always had to go back to address books for the details and any address changes. I’ve decided to make things easier next year. All the contact details from this year’s list will go into a note in Evernote (tagged Xmas) so that they’ll all be easily found in one place next year. I’ll update any address changes there too, and add new friends and also email details where I have them so I can respond with eCards to some.

Yet another great use for Evernote.

Image credit: Kibondo

Now that I’m the wrong side of 50, I’m finding it’s real easy to forget where I’ve put things for safe keeping. I’m reasonably organized and so long as I put things back where I expect them to be, everything is fine. Problem is when I haven’t needed something for 6 months or more, you try the places where you think it might be, and if you draw a blank, then you’re stuck. I hate that. In fact, there are few things worse than wasting time hunting around for lost items, searching the same places over and over again till eventually you track it down, if you’re lucky.

For quite a few years now I’ve been using a personal information manager called InfoMagic to keep note of things I need to remember – contact details, lists, when the car needs its next service, shop opening hours, when I planted out vegetables in the garden, how long it takes to drive to various places, etc. It’s a free form organizer and the data are stored in RTF files so there’s no problem getting the data out again if necessary. The program hasn’t been updated in years, but it doesn’t need to be – one of its key features is its simplicity.

In one of its folders I have a document which I’ve just called Where. In it I put information on where I’ve stored important things I don’t need all that often – the things I know I probably won’t remember where they are in a few months time. I just enter the name of the item and where it’s located. I’ve divided my document into subsections: electronic stuff, books and magazines, household, etc. but this is not absolutely necessary as the data are searchable. If you store stuff in boxes in the basement or loft, you could label them Box 1, Box 2, etc. and detail the contents of each box in this Where document. That way you won’t have to dig through the boxes in your search.

Of course you don’t have to use InfoMagic. There are numerous free searchable notebook applications out there, like for example Evernote and Springpad, both of which are searchable.

The one downside of course is that you have to be pretty conscientious about updating the Where document, particularly when you change your mind where you want to store something. Not much point in having it if it points you in the wrong direction.

So how do you keep track of important things? Drop a comment below.

Image credit: Gimli_36

Back to a ‘Life’ post and the first on religion and religious beliefs. If you don’t fancy it, try clicking some of the links to other posts on the right but this is more about how our upbringing influences our beliefs so it may interest you.

If we were fully conscious of our surroundings when we entered this world from the womb, we would have observed that many things which will go with us through life were already in place – no matter where we live.  Our parents, sex, nationality and race were all fixed at this point, and we didn’t choose them. Our parents will go on to teach us what they think is right, their attitudes and traditions, and of course, their religious views, if any. If they hold religious views, in most cases they will be obligated by their religion to pass on those views and teachings to us.

The point I would like to make in this post is that we owe so much of our attitudes and views to our upbringing, to the country in which we live and were brought up and to the traditions of that country, our community or region. From an early age, our parents and also later our schooling and church may teach us religious beliefs. We will take these beliefs on board with very little questioning, at least until we are older and can make decisions for ourselves. Even then, fear of going against our parents and community may prevent any consideration of abandoning our religion, or of adopting alternative beliefs.

Very few of us actually set out to chose a religion – why would we? The religion we have been taught by our parents, our church and our society seems right and natural to us. If we haven’t had a religious upbringing, then that seems right. Why change? So we may believe our religion is the ‘right’ religion and that all followers of other religions have somehow ‘gone astray’. We can become polarized against others because they have a different religion.

Having grown up in northern Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s, the choice was to be brought up as a Christian … or to have no real religious beliefs. Most people in my region of Scotland were of the Protestant denomination with some Roman Catholics. My parents were both Protestant so that’s how I was brought up.

Granted there are many who are converted to another religion but I believe on a global scale, they’re pretty much in the minority. Globally, most children and many young adults take on the religious beliefs of their parents, if they have any religious views. My point here is that there was absolutely no chance I would be brought up as a Muslim, Hindu, Jew, etc. because of my parents’ beliefs and the country, community or region where I was brought up. I’m sure the same is true for you if you think about it.

So why is it that many of us look upon our religion as the ‘correct’ one and all others somehow ‘wrong’ or misguided when we haven’t even looked into the merits and demerits of each in an unbiased fashion? If truth be told, it’s only the ‘correct’ religion because it’s the religion of our parents and our region, that’s all. I’m quite sure if I had been born to Jewish parents in New York, I would quite happily be Jewish, if born to Muslim parents in Tehran I would be Muslim and if born to Hindu parents in Mumbai I would be Hindu.

It’s a very simple and logical argument, but, in terms of which religion is correct, one I find very hard to argue against.

The next part is slightly harder. Most religions advocate spreading the Word – certainly Christianity does. Many wars have been fought in the name of religion. For centuries, Christian missionaries have gone around the world ’spreading the Word’. Christians obviously believe this is the right thing to do. Why? Well because they’ve been brought up in the Christian faith and it seems right to them to spread the ‘correct’ religion. But as I’ve argued above, if they’d been brought up under different circumstances, they might firmly believe that another religion is ‘correct’ and they would have happily been spreading that Word. So what does it all mean? I don’t know, but if by some quirk of chance, I’ve landed with the ‘correct’ faith, and I am in the right boat so to speak, what about all the others around the world who have again by chance been dealt the card of the ‘wrong’ faith and will never question it. I do find that very hard to accept.

The bottom line of course is that we should all be tolerant of the beliefs and religious views of others. After all, most of us haven’t actually thought about and chosen our religion.

What do you think? Drop a comment below.

I occasionally wonder how this current period will be viewed historically by people in say a couple of hundred years time. So how have we made a name for ourselves? Well, I guess we are the pioneers of the digital age and the information explosion and I’ve been really lucky to see that in my lifetime. But on the downside, I think we’ll be viewed as very wasteful of our resources and an era who probably didn’t act quickly enough to counter the effects of global warming, which will probably be impacting on those people in 200 years time, if not before.

Anyway, doing my own small bit for the environment, we were recently issued with recycling bins by the local council for kerbside collection with a booklet advising us what they could recycle. That’s all fine – paper, magazines, cardboard, cans – until I came to plastic. Apparently, we can’t recycle all plastic, just certain types – PETE or PET and HDPE. Unfortunately, there’s quite a lot we just can’t recycle yet.

(chart from www.recycle-more.co.uk)

The real problem is that the symbols for the different types of plastic are often imprinted poorly and illegibly on what are very often transparent bottles and trays. There doesn’t seem to be any regulation regarding the size of symbols or where they should be located, whether on the paper label or on the container itself which is a problem I’m sure for people with poor eyesight and for those of us in a hurry. It can take time to find the symbol and a magnifying glass to read it! I’ve tried to show them on the collage below and have red-ringed the hard-to-spot symbols.

(photo collage made online at photovisi)

My point is that, to make it easier for everyone to recycle old plastic waste, please, please manufacturers, make the symbols large enough so that we can read them without needing a magnifying glass and put them in a consistent location so we can quickly find them and decide if the plastic waste can be recycled. And what about Braille information for the blind? If we want to improve our legacy to the generations that come after us, we all have to do our bit so please try and make it easier for us all to recycle our waste.

Have you any thoughts on recycling symbols and recycling in general? How is your local council doing on recycling? Drop a comment below.

Heard about this site on the Net at Night podcast a couple of weeks ago. The Obameter from the St Petersburg Times is tracking the US President’s 510 campaign promises detailing promises kept, broken, stalled, in the works and compromised. Well worth bookmarking and following.

After almost 3 weeks in office, 7 promises have been kept and 1 broken. Of course, the interpretation of whether a promise is kept or broken differs for people of different political persuasions and may also depend on the particular political bias of the publication. However, I think it’s a great idea to help track the President’s progress over the next 4 years and make him more accountable. I only hope that the UK media can adopt a similar approach after our next general election, whenever that may be.

Away from ‘Tech’ and back on a ‘Life’ topic today and I’m sure it’s a familiar one. No not exercise this time but our diet. We really don’t eat enough fruit and veg. We’re constantly being told to eat 5 portions of fruit and veg a day – or more correctly at least 5 portions. But you know, it’s actually easier said than done. Have you ever tried keeping a tally?

Here in Scotland, we have one of the worst records on coronary heart disease in the world and our diet is generally very poor, but improving. But it’s not from a lack of fresh produce on the high street. I think part of the problem is that fruit and veg are somehow not satisfying, especially as a snack. We’d somehow much rather be stuffing some mixture of fat and carbohydrates into our faces.

I’ve tried to make an effort to improve my daily fruit and veg quota to get to 5 or beyond and here’s what I’ve done:

1. Breakfast: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It must be, I’ve just Googled the phrase and got 140,000 hits! But I know that many people just can’t face breakfast or don’t have time which is a pity because it really sets you up for the day. I used to find fruit a turn-off at breakfast – too sharp on the palette first thing in the morning. However, I’ve found that a portion of tinned prunes in fruit juice is just right to start the day. Not too sharp or bitter and good for the constitution. If you don’t like prunes, try fruit juice instead. If you’ve got room for cereal, or porridge, put some sultanas or cranberries in it. Make time for breakfast and you may just be able to drop that mid-morning snack.

2. Lunch: Try and put some lettuce and tomato in the sandwich or on your snack. You’ve probably made it to 2 portions of your daily quota already.

3. Mid-afternoon: I used to have a cup of tea but I’ve replaced that with a kiwi and tangerine. That keeps me going till dinner.

4. Dinner: If it’s winter, try and get some good soup down you for starters. Hopefully there’s a portion in there. Then a portion of say corn or peas (or both) with your main course. In summer, you really shouldn’t have a problem.

5. Mid-evening: I usually have an apple.

I make that a conservative 6 portions and it’s not too hard. How do you fare on getting your daily quota? Any suggestions? I’d love to hear them. Drop a comment below.

Photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

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