I want to go out for dinner tonight but I’m having trouble finding a good restaurant with an available table at the time I want. Help!

SUMMARY

Use OpenTable to find a great place to eat at a time that’s convenient for you.

WHY?

When selecting a restaurant, most people prioritize the WHERE over the WHEN. They have a list of restaurants and call each one individually hoping to find an opening at the desired time. The conversation may go something like this:

Customer: “I’d like to make a reservation for 4 people at 6pm. Do you have that time available?”

Restaurant: “I’m afraid not. We have 4:30pm and 8pm available. Would you like to reserve one of those times?”

Customer: “No thanks.”

Does this sound familiar? What if you could pick from a list of all restaurants with space for 4 people at 6pm? This is exactly what OpenTable will do for you.

OpenTable is a free service that I have used since 2005. Enter the time you want to eat and the number in your party and OpenTable displays a list of restaurants that has space available at the time you need. It’s not uncommon for there to be 100 or more restaurants to choose from.

In addition to the time you’re looking for, OpenTable also displays alternate available times if you schedule is slightly flexible. Are you looking for a restaurant with space at 6pm? Would 5:45pm or 6:15pm work as well? No need to call the restaurant. Make your selection from the intuitive interface and your table is reserved.

Create an OpenTable account with your email address, Facebook or Google+ account and you will collect 100 OpenTable Points for each reservation you complete. 2000 points can be redeemed for $20 towards your next meal. While it may seem like it will take a while to accumulate points to get some real money,, some restaurants offer 1000 points per completed reservation, usually at low traffic times to fill the restaurant. Select these restaurants and you’ll be racking up the points in no time, needing only two visits to earn $20.

While OpenTable is great to use in your hometown, it’s invaluable when travelling. It’s difficult to know where to eat when in an unfamiliar neighborhood. OpenTable is like an old, reliable friend offering suggestions complete with the restaurant’s menu to help you decide.

If you’re still not sure if a restaurant is right for you, reviews left by other OpenTable members is sure to help.

Too many options? A filter helps you to narrow down the choices to something more manageable.

Filter the list by cuisine (Italian, vegetarian, dessert),

by neighborhood,

or by price.

You can also display only those restaurants offering 1000 point times to help accumulate OpenTable points quickly.

A long, scrolling list of restaurants is not usually very helpful when out-of-town since none of the restaurants or their locations will be familiar. A map view is also available with push pins showing all the restaurants at once on a single map. Perhaps you’re traveling north and you want to find a restaurant along the way. If that’s the case, you will find the map view extraordinary useful.

If you discover that you need to change your reservation, no problem.  OpenTable allows you to select a new time or if needed, you can simply cancel the reservation.

OpenTable Etiquette

OpenTable provides a wonderful service, but there are a few responsibilities that you will have when using it:

1. If you need to change or cancel your reservation, do it 30 minutes in advance. This ensures that the restaurant will not continue to hold your table for somebody that will never show, and you will comply with OpenTable’s cancellation policy.
2. If you’re running late and won’t make your reservation time, try to change your reservation to a later time. (See #1 above). If you are too close to the reservation time, the website and app won’t let you change it. Instead, call the restaurant as a courtesy using the phone number displayed in OpenTable. I’ve done this before and the restaurant was grateful that I called. Being a “no-show” is very annoying for a restaurant. Although they had to give my table away, they put me first in line when I arrived, and there were no hard feelings.

My own observations about the OpenTable system

I tend to find restaurant’s quality to be higher than average when using OpenTable. Although the service is free for customers to use, I suspect that the restaurant must pay OpenTable for this service, weeding out lower-end restaurants. From what I can tell, OpenTable provides the restaurant with a reservation system to track tables and manage customers. In return for this service, traffic is driven to the restaurant from the website, bring people who otherwise never would have walked in off the street. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

Give OpenTable a try the next time you want to book a restaurant you know or when looking for a new place to dine. I think you will be impressed with the result.

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There’s too much news to read but I seem to be missing important news articles. How can become more efficient in the way that I keep up with what’s happening around me?

SUMMARY

A newsreader is a very specialized type of software designed to display news articles from the sources you select and hides from view the articles you’ve read. Feedly is a great newsreader and is all you will need to keep up with the news.

WHY?

There’s a lot of information on the Internet and everybody is fighting for your attention. A good newsreader such as Feedly makes it possible to keep up with the news and make it manageable.

A typical user may go to websites such as Google News or Yahoo News to find out what’s going on. These sites do a great job of combining news from multiple sources and presenting it to you in an organized way. After reading an article on these sites however, the read articles continue to be displayed making it difficult to know what you’ve already read and what new headlines are popping up. Unlike email, there’s no way to mark an article as having been read. It’s also difficult to tag specific articles that interest you for later viewing. Isn’t there a better way of handling this?

That’s exactly what makes a newsreader such as Feedly so great. After reading an article, it’s marked as read and hidden from view (if you wish). In addition, you can also choose to save the article for later viewing or you can share it on a social media site. As you read (or skip) more and more articles those articles are marked as read and you won’t see them again, unless you want to.

We all use multiple devices (PC’s, tablets, phones) and we use all of them all, sometimes doing similar tasks such as read mail, read the news and post to social media sites. With Feedly, articles read at home on your PC are marked as read and those articles won’t show up later in the afternoon when checking the news from your phone. Feedly’s cloud sync ensures that you can pick up exactly where you left off, no matter which device you decide to use.

Get Feedly

To get started, go to the Feedly website and create a free account. Feedly can make suggestions for sites to subscribe to, or you can browse for them yourself.

In addition to using Feedly’s extensive database to find RSS feeds, you can also use Google. For instance, do a Google search for “cnn rss” (without the quotes). The first hit will be a list of CNN RSS feeds that you can add to Feedly. As you add more feeds, you can organize them by group. For instance, I have an Android Category made up of various sites such as Engadget, The Verge, Gizmodo, etc. Although I can read news from each of these sites one at a time, I typically prefer a combined view by reading the “Android” category directly. This includes all articles, sorted by date into one long feed.

Feeds can contain all sorts of information. For instance, since I live in California, I want to have access to a list of recent earthquakes in case I happen to feel one. By viewing the feed, I was surprised to find out how often they occur.

Using Feedly

On a typical day, I keep up with industry news. For me it’s the computer field, but for you, it may be something else. Keeping up with headlines and reading the articles that catch your eye ensures that you’re up to date with the latest news happening around you. Sometimes you may not be ready to read an article or the article is too long to read in the free time you have. Feedly lets you save articles to read later, either within its own program, or to other sites such as Pocket.com. You can then view only the articles you’ve saved.

You can also share articles right from within Feedly using the standard Android share dialog. This is great for sharing articles with friends via email or text, to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. You can also post the article to your blog or even save it to online storage sites such as Box, Dropbox or Google Drive. My personal favorite shares however are to my to TickTick (my do list) and to add videos in the article to my Plex queue. I probably share to Plex the most.

Feed Ideas

In additional to geeky computer news, I also have other types of useful feeds such as:

•  My kid’s school
• Local town news
• FDA Recalls/Safety Alerts
• Recent earthquakes
• Podcast listing

You will be surprised at just how many RSS feeds are out there. Once you start using news readers, you may get hooked just like I did.

• Play Store
• Website

I’m going on a road trip. Are there any good apps to take for the ride?

SUMMARY

Navigation software is good for getting you from point A to point B, but my favorite app for finding food and fuel stops along the way is RoadNinja.

WHY?

When you’re in your car driving for hours on the interstate your priorities change. You have a few basic needs:

• A place to eat.
• A gas station.
• A place to sleep.

If you’re going to stop:

• You don’t want to travel far from the highway.
• If you want to know what stores are at the exit before you commit to exiting.

RoadNinja is a huge help when deciding whether to exit the highway. Using your current location, RoadNinja detects which Interstate you’re on and the direction you’re travelling.

It then displays an easy to digest list of exits and shows you what services are at each one. These include gas stations, restaurants, lodging, pharmacies and more.

Google Maps will find a diner for you, but it could be 20 miles from the highway. RoadNinja performs the specialized type of searches needed for road trips.

Roadside signs do show some of the shops that are at the upcoming exit, but the list is usually incomplete. RoadNinja shows all the shops at the upcoming exit to help you decide whether it’s worth veering off. If you’re not hungry but you know you will be soon, you can look ahead to see what restaurants are up ahead. Each exit shows the miles to that exit, the exit name and number so you can make a plan.

In addition, you can search for a particular type of shop and specify its distance from the highway. For instance, you can search for coffee shops less 0.8 miles from the exit.

Selecting a result displays a map with the address, phone number and hours of operation. Press the “Directions” button and you’re on your way.

You can also customize the search to make it easy to search for a specific store, such as Subway, Starbucks, etc.

I just love RoadNinja and never travel the Interstate without it.

• Play Store
• Website

What’s the best way to manage and store all of my passwords?

SUMMARY

You need a password manager. Get LastPass. It will improve your security by providing you everything you need to make your password virtually hackproof.

WHY?

It seems that almost every day there’s a data breach. That’s because they occur more frequently than you’d think. (Click this link to search for “data breach” in today’s Google News.)

Most of the sites you visit on the Internet requires some sort of user credentials. It may be your email address or username, but you also need a password. It’s challenging to create really good, difficult to guess passwords that are unique. You need a good password to keep your data safe.

Here are a few techniques people use when creating passwords and what’s wrong with them. These people think they’re doing a fairly good job:

1. My password is my son’s name. This is a terrible password. Anybody that knows you will probably know the name of your son and try that password first to see if it works. (I one time helped a co-worker log into her account because she forgot her password. I asked her a few questions. When I got to a question asking if she had any pets, she told me the name of her dog. Voila! We were in.
2. My password is “pencil”. Any word that’s in the dictionary makes for a bad password and you could be subject to a dictionary attack, where words from the dictionary are used by another computer to hack away at your password.
3. I have a good password which is so good I use it on every site I visit. It’s great to have a secure password, but using the same password over and over on different sites is a bad move. If anybody gets hold of your Gmail password, they may try the same password on Amazon or Citibank. It may work, it may not, but eventually they’ll find a site that works and you’ll suddenly find a lot of terrible movies in your Netflix queue.
4. My password has upper/lower case, numbers and symbols. Oh, and it’s 5 digits long. Short passwords are a bad idea, even if they contain all of the things you need to make a great password.A seemingly great password may be t#9Kd, however it would take a computer less than a day to crack this password using a Brute-force attack as there are only 10 billion combinations. That seems like a high number for a person, but to a computer, it’s quite manageable. The computer would try every single password combination possible until it successfully figures out your password. Example: a, aa, ab, ac, ad, ae … zdm, zdn, zdo, zdp, zdq … etc. Eventually, it will work its way up to your password and break in.

We store phone numbers and addresses in a contact list, so why shouldn’t we write down our passwords and store them somewhere? That’s exactly what we need to do, however the “somewhere” is very important. Storing your password list in an easy to read document stored on your computer in a file named “passwords.txt” is not a good idea. What you really need is a password manager.

A password manager will eliminate all of your bad passwords, by generating, encrypting and storing really strong passwords. How about this for a Gmail password: eMP9Tfg8@gd*aWV7j$. Pretty great, huh? This password would take 129942951805 centuries to crack using today’s computing horsepower as the computer must try 8 Nonillion combinations. As an idea of how large this number is, a billion is 10^9 while a nonillion is 10^30. That’s a lot of combinations!

I have been using LastPass for years. LastPass provides a safe place for all of your passwords. You only need to remember one password. The password for LastPass. So make it a good one!

LastPass is accessible from your browser and has some really great features:

• Generate crazy-long, secure passwords
• No need to type your crazy-long passwords. LastPass will detect username and password fields and fill them in automatically.
• Passwords are stored in the cloud, meaning that you can access them from anywhere.
• For $1 a month, you can use LastPass on your smartphone. Totally worth it! The smartphone app also auto-fills form fields!
• Lots more.

But if LastPass has my password list, can’t somebody hack them and get it? LastPass doesn’t actually store your passwords in a readable format. The data is encrypted by your own PC, not LastPass. What this means is that LastPass never actually has any of your passwords. They only have an encrypted version, which must be decrypted with your LastPass password. All the encrypting and decrypting is done locally on your PC. LastPass only gets the data once it’s been encrypted.

With the recent new of the Heartbleed security bug, I really cracked down on my passwords and make them all extremely secure. Without LastPass, this wouldn’t have been possible for me. If you haven’t changed your passwords recently, give LastPass a try. It’s free for use on your PC.

There are other password managers out there but because I’ve been a user of LastPass for so long and because I’ve never had a single issue with it, there’s been no reason for me to look elsewhere. I am one happy customer.

LastPass

• Play Store
• Website

Do I need a To Do list program? I’ve got a calendar, can’t I use that? If not, which To Do list program should I use?

SUMMARY

Yes, get a To Do list program. Specifically, get TickTick – Todo & Task List. While a calendar can do some of the functions that a To Do list provides (set an event, set a time), it doesn’t do everything. You’ll wind up forgetting to do some important things on your list. TickTick provides everything you need to keep track of the things you need to do. It’s very powerful but not overly complex.

WHY?

While I love tracking my calendar, contacts, etc. on my Android device, I’ve never committed to using a To Do list, even when I first started using the PalmPilot Pro in 1997. To Do list programs were either not powerful enough, too powerful or overly complex. I also didn’t want to remember to launch yet another program every day to see what’s on the schedule.

I tried hard to manage my to do’s with the calendar. The problem is that calendars are designed to do specific things on specific days. You can set an alarm but if you’re not ready to commit to doing the task, you’ll either snooze the alarm over and over, or you’ll cancel the alarm. If you cancel, the event stays put on the calendar, and when tomorrow rolls around, the to do item is out of site (and out of mind) on yesterday’s calendar.

A To Do list manager is really the best tool for the job. When looking at the choices, the following are important to me:

• Simple to use: I don’t want too many options. If there was too much to do, I wouldn’t want to use it.
• Attractive interface: I want the interface to be attractive and well thought out.
• Ability to share: I want to share my To Do list with wife as well as our Nanny so that we can all keep track of what needs to be done for the house and kids.
• Doesn’t cost a fortune: I don’t mind paying money to support a developer, but I don’t want the cost to use the app to be cost prohibitive, especially if all the users I want to share with have to pay.
• Access through a browser: In addition to being able to create content and access it through my phone, sometimes it is easier to enter large volumes of data at a desktop computer. Plus, you can get access to your data from anywhere, even if your phone battery is dead.
• Reminders that aren’t annoying: I understand that a To Do list’s job is to be sure that you get things done, but I don’t want to be harassed by the program that’s helping me to organize.
• Easy to postpone and reschedule items: When the alarm goes off to do a To Do item, you’re not always ready to get it done. It is  very important for items to be easily rescheduled.
• Ability to set a To Do for a specific time on a day: I’m not only interested in doing an item on Tuesday, but sometimes I need to be reminded at 3:oopm on Tuesday.
• Not interested in project management: Some To Do list options give way more functionality than I need, such as: Setting time estimates, assigning resources, etc. I’m not interested in this type of control simply to run a household.

I tried many options. First I tried all of the top To Do list apps in the Google Play Store, including:

• Wunderlist
• Todoist
• GTasks: Ties in with Google Tasks, a huge plus, but it didn’t provide everything I need.
• Tasks Free: Also ties in with Google Tasks but not strong enough.
• Any.Do: Beautiful app and one I really, really wanted to like.

I then tried other apps that I thought could do the job:

• Google Keep: Rats. It doesn’t handle To Do’s, so it’s out.
• Evernote: While I use this program to store notes, it just didn’t make the cut for managing my To Do’s.

Finally, I tried created my own Google Sheets spreadsheet. This actually worked fairly well, but it wouldn’t have provided alarms and the filtering that’s available through the desktop browser didn’t show up on the device app. As a result, it would have been impossible to filter and sort the list properly.

I didn’t try TickTick until after all of the above options and I was shocked to see that it did everything I need, and more! I like supporting developers, plus sharing with 2 people requires a Pro account, so I upgraded without hesitation. I was concerned that each person accessing the To Do list I created would need to upgrade, but that wasn’t the case. Money wells spent and highly recommended! It’s been a few months now and it I couldn’t live without TickTick.

Honorable Mention

I wanted to track my To Do’s from work at well, but I didn’t want to mix business with pleasure. Also, I use Outlook with Microsoft Exchange. Outlook already has a To Do function built-in, so I wanted to see if I could find something that would sync with it.

I discovered Tasks & Notes which fit the bill perfectly and does what I need to track work To Do’s. My personal To Do’s are now separate from my work To Do’s and having the list sync up with Exchange is really great! In addition, Tasks & Notes has a nice Android Widget which lets me see at-a-glance what I’ve got to do. Super handy!

TickTick

• Play Store
• Website

Tasks & Notes

• Play Store