a lot of people out there are being forced to get a Google account (usually @gmail.com) because of their use of Android based devices. however, i've been realizing lately that most people have no idea all the various options available to you with a Google account.... so i thought i'd mention a few i use regularly.
it's more than searching the web and getting email, and i highly recommend people check out the services available, and make use of them no matter where you get your email, or what kind of phone you have.
first: email. most people think of Google email as being email@gmail.com. but if you own your own domain (like my axxiscorp.com) you can move it's mail services to Google Apps - and do this for FREE for up to 10 users. even the regular version @gmail has proven to be the most powerful of all the various options and i recommend everyone have one if only as a backup.
with any account comes contact management, everyone should make sure to use this. with this enabled on your phone, you could lose your phone every week, and never lose a contact. also, your contacts would be available to you from any computer via the web as well as sync to your Linux and Mac address books. this would be considered use of the Google 'cloud'.
like contacts, each Google account comes with its own calendar system. you can create multiple calendars, and share those calendars with other people. and like the contacts, these calendars are accessible from any computer via the web and will sync to Outlook, Linux, and Apple's iCal.
so - that's the basics, Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. if you're using an iPhone, make sure to search for the instructions on how to set up your Google account as an EXCHANGE account to make use of this system properly on the iPhone. this way, your contacts are backed up properly.
from there - Google Books. a lot of people don't know that Google has been creating a digital archive of books literally by the truckload, and subsequently books are available from Google. with that, the Google Books reader is available for iPod, iPad, iPhone, and all versions of Android. http://books.google.com
then when you go to write your own book, a full word processor is available from Google. actually an entire office suite including a spreadsheet, basic graphics editor, and presentation creator is available via the web and Android app. everything you create is saved to the Google cloud so accessible from anywhere in the world - BUT - there is some really odd fine print to the EULA that you agree to when you use the system, so don't put anything top secret or super valuable on there. http://docs.google.com
after documents, there's pictures. the Google system provides Picasa as a competitor to the Apple iPhoto application, which then stores your pictures online via Picasaweb. this allows you to store your pictures in albums, on the Google servers. IMPORTANT THOUGHT: store your pictures on Picasa, then never have to worry about making sure you have your pictures safely backed up. the Picasa system comes with 7gb of space at no cost, and can be expanded at little cost. also, each album you create can have it's own security settings that allow you to share your pictures online, or keep them to yourself.
Google made a run at competing with Facebook with it's Google+ system last year. the service is not doing well in it's fight, but it's mobile app has an awesome feature called Instant Upload. with the app, every picture you take with an Android based phone is instantly stored online, making it so you would theoretically never lose a picture. the iPhone app will upload your pictures as well, but you may start the process by periodically running the app. i use this system in tandem with Apple's PhotoStream, because the PhotoStream only holds photos for 30 days or 1000 pictures, where the Google+ system places my photos into a secured photo in the Picasa system.
mobile users of any kind should also check out Google Latitude. the Latitude system is a location service that sends your location to the Google servers and then lets the users you approve see your location at any time. in my family we use it with teenagers, and i have some friends who will use it with their spouses simply to know when its a good time to call. the system is completely secure, and depends on granting permission to each person you add to your list, which can be limited in many ways for any of you paranoid about being caught in places you shouldn't be. and unlike Apple's 'Find My Friends', the system doesn't require you to constantly log in, or like with marketing based systems like 'FourSquare', you don't have to check in places for it to work. and unlike most 'Family' systems, it's free. i just think its cool to see all your friends and what they're up to worldwide in real time.
when you're back home, and you realize that you've got something to share, Google provides the Blogger system - which is actually how you're reading this now. a BLOG? most people think a blog is for newscasters and info sources, but that's not the case. anyone can use a blog for many purposes, i recently saw a blog run by a woman who posted about her life so her serviceman husband overseas could read up on what she was up to. many people have their passions, from hobbies to politics to random ramblings like mine, a blog can be a place to send a message, serve a purpose, communicate, market yourself, or simply flush out your head, and Google provides a blog server that can host as many blogs as you'd like to work on.
after you write your blog, make sure you get it on tape, then put it on YouTube. yes, YouTube is part of Google. i know very little about video blogs, but, everyone knows YouTube, so i'm putting that out there.
and of course, then there's Google Sites. with Sites, Google allows people who need a website to create one based on their design system which is packed with an amazing amount of templates. within the Google Sites system, you can feed your blog from Blogger, your YouTube videos, your Picasa pictures, and so on.
and, as I stated earlier, all of these systems are available to businesses via the Google Apps system.
i would highly recommend everyone check these systems out - set up your schedule on Google calendar, learn how to store your photos online, and add me on Latitude to see where I'm running around. all these services are free to use, and give the every day user a system equally as powerful as large corporate networks that when properly configured can be used on any computers and will move with you from phone to phone as you grow and times change.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
How We Spent Your Money
skip down to the 'BLAH BLAH' part if you aren't interested in the numbers...
as of my writing this, there are 313,547,622 million people that are citizens of the United States - according to the US Census Bureau : shown here
as of my writing this, there are just over 2,100,905 people employed by the United States government (federal) - according to FedScope, a website managed by the US Office of Personnel Management : shown here
the average Federal employee earns $76, 231, also according to the Office of Personnel Management : shown here
which means: on average, we spend $160,154,089,055 a year on salaries for our hired federal employees every year. That's $160 Billion, and doesn't include contract workers... which is an important thing to notice.
in business school we learned that it generally costs an employers twice an employee's salary to have them. half for their salary, the other half for things like insurance, pension matching, office space, paper, pens, gas, keeping the lights on, and so on. so let's factor that in.
now we are spending $320,308,178,110 per year before they do any work.
WAIT - they are working for us, but they produce... well, they produce government. and there is ZERO profit margin in government. the government doesn't make us any more, it only costs us money. it's needed to keep the roads paved and the prisons running, but at no point is there a cash return on investment.
one would think that we the people would want to spend as little as possible on this - we want to get the job done well, but we don't want to spend any more than we have to, because every penny spent is just gone. we have to eat food, but we don't just fire out large amounts of money on food everywhere, because all it does is keep us alive. sure, sometimes its nice to eat fancy, and we always want to eat well, but we're not always going to pay for a steak dinner when on the average day we just want a sandwich... right?
in 2010 the federal government took in roughly 2,500,000,000,000 ($2.5 trillion), and over 1% was spent on the people we employed to spend it. so then they went to work: and work they did, spending $3.5 trillion according to the White House, and reported by the Washington Post shown here.
that was NOT a typo. we spend more than 1% of our federal tax dollars paying people to spend 140% of what we gave them to spend. and here's the REAL kicker, they spent $251 billion alone on interest on the debt we created doing this over and over every year.
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH...
if you're reading this, you probably think you're informed. well, the actual numbers are above, stated by public record and verified by what is considered to be a liberal newspaper that backs the current elected party of power in 2012.
the facts are simple: we have created a government that lives to validate itself. it spends, and then it supports itself by spending more.
CHANGE - the current president was elected to bring 'change', but his change was focused on social change, change that would make everyone feel good about life.
life, is not good. it's just not good for us if the government that represents us is spending 140% of it's income every year. that is plain an simple math. it's the government's job to maintain the services we all use: roads, schools, prisons, fire departments, and so on. these services we all need, just like we need to eat... but let's face reality here people; the fattening of our nation is proof we don't eat well. why should we spend a fortune on our government when we don't even spend it on ourselves?
put your annual income into a calculator, then multiply it times 1.4 - then imagine paying an account to tell you to spend that much every year and have nothing to show for it. you can rent cars and houses, but you can't save anything with that money - that's what we are doing.
AND we have built a machine that costs us $320 Billion a year to do it.
we are seeing more arguments over a man's right to have sex with another man than we are this issue in the news today! WHO CARES what two men or two women do in the privacy of their own home??
as of the writing of this, the state of California found itself $16 Billion over budget for this year - everyone running in a panic worried about their part of the government losing their funding. GOOD - it's about time people start to figure out the mess we are in.
PAY ATTENTION HERE - THIS IS THE ROOT OF MY MESSAGE:
you cannot govern morality, and you cannot provide a lifestyle with government - the government can't tell anyone how to live, and you can't even things out for those who are at a disadvantage.
if you want to make a drug illegal, you can do that, but it's not going to make a stoner any less a stoner. and telling the gay person they can't be married doesn't make them any less gay.
subsequently, paying for the poor doesn't make them any less poor, and paying for the uninsured doesn't make them any more insured.
and paying for more government doesn't make it do a better job.
we can argue the angles of trying to make these theories work, but in the long term there is only epic cost and probable failure. and in trying to do so we have created a bloated government that sits around looking for reasons to justify itself.
you want to see change? thin the heard - let's clear out the government and let them fight like the rest of us. focus the government on civil rights laws, enact term limits on all non-military federal employees above $50,000 per year, let each state decide what it wants to spend on schools and prisons, and only spend federal money promoting the idea that we should choose to take care of each other, instead of expecting the federal government to do it for us.
the idea that we can force everyone to take care of each other is nice... but it's not reality. there will always be that group of self-righteous dicks that think they are alone and only need to keep their kids fat and their trophy wife thin, and you can't force them to really care about others.
you just can't, its a fact. you cannot force someone to care by enacting tax laws and loopholes.
and you cannot make a government work by spending more than it has or trying to force people via taxes to pay for things they don't care about.
let it go. taxing people more so that we can spend right will only cause this nightmare to increase, because your 'right' is 'wrong' to someone else.
we as a nation need to focus on reality: the reality is that we have to take care of each other. we have to do it, not the government.
as of my writing this, there are 313,547,622 million people that are citizens of the United States - according to the US Census Bureau : shown here
as of my writing this, there are just over 2,100,905 people employed by the United States government (federal) - according to FedScope, a website managed by the US Office of Personnel Management : shown here
the average Federal employee earns $76, 231, also according to the Office of Personnel Management : shown here
which means: on average, we spend $160,154,089,055 a year on salaries for our hired federal employees every year. That's $160 Billion, and doesn't include contract workers... which is an important thing to notice.
in business school we learned that it generally costs an employers twice an employee's salary to have them. half for their salary, the other half for things like insurance, pension matching, office space, paper, pens, gas, keeping the lights on, and so on. so let's factor that in.
now we are spending $320,308,178,110 per year before they do any work.
WAIT - they are working for us, but they produce... well, they produce government. and there is ZERO profit margin in government. the government doesn't make us any more, it only costs us money. it's needed to keep the roads paved and the prisons running, but at no point is there a cash return on investment.
one would think that we the people would want to spend as little as possible on this - we want to get the job done well, but we don't want to spend any more than we have to, because every penny spent is just gone. we have to eat food, but we don't just fire out large amounts of money on food everywhere, because all it does is keep us alive. sure, sometimes its nice to eat fancy, and we always want to eat well, but we're not always going to pay for a steak dinner when on the average day we just want a sandwich... right?
in 2010 the federal government took in roughly 2,500,000,000,000 ($2.5 trillion), and over 1% was spent on the people we employed to spend it. so then they went to work: and work they did, spending $3.5 trillion according to the White House, and reported by the Washington Post shown here.
that was NOT a typo. we spend more than 1% of our federal tax dollars paying people to spend 140% of what we gave them to spend. and here's the REAL kicker, they spent $251 billion alone on interest on the debt we created doing this over and over every year.
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH...
if you're reading this, you probably think you're informed. well, the actual numbers are above, stated by public record and verified by what is considered to be a liberal newspaper that backs the current elected party of power in 2012.
the facts are simple: we have created a government that lives to validate itself. it spends, and then it supports itself by spending more.
CHANGE - the current president was elected to bring 'change', but his change was focused on social change, change that would make everyone feel good about life.
life, is not good. it's just not good for us if the government that represents us is spending 140% of it's income every year. that is plain an simple math. it's the government's job to maintain the services we all use: roads, schools, prisons, fire departments, and so on. these services we all need, just like we need to eat... but let's face reality here people; the fattening of our nation is proof we don't eat well. why should we spend a fortune on our government when we don't even spend it on ourselves?
put your annual income into a calculator, then multiply it times 1.4 - then imagine paying an account to tell you to spend that much every year and have nothing to show for it. you can rent cars and houses, but you can't save anything with that money - that's what we are doing.
AND we have built a machine that costs us $320 Billion a year to do it.
we are seeing more arguments over a man's right to have sex with another man than we are this issue in the news today! WHO CARES what two men or two women do in the privacy of their own home??
as of the writing of this, the state of California found itself $16 Billion over budget for this year - everyone running in a panic worried about their part of the government losing their funding. GOOD - it's about time people start to figure out the mess we are in.
PAY ATTENTION HERE - THIS IS THE ROOT OF MY MESSAGE:
you cannot govern morality, and you cannot provide a lifestyle with government - the government can't tell anyone how to live, and you can't even things out for those who are at a disadvantage.
if you want to make a drug illegal, you can do that, but it's not going to make a stoner any less a stoner. and telling the gay person they can't be married doesn't make them any less gay.
subsequently, paying for the poor doesn't make them any less poor, and paying for the uninsured doesn't make them any more insured.
and paying for more government doesn't make it do a better job.
we can argue the angles of trying to make these theories work, but in the long term there is only epic cost and probable failure. and in trying to do so we have created a bloated government that sits around looking for reasons to justify itself.
you want to see change? thin the heard - let's clear out the government and let them fight like the rest of us. focus the government on civil rights laws, enact term limits on all non-military federal employees above $50,000 per year, let each state decide what it wants to spend on schools and prisons, and only spend federal money promoting the idea that we should choose to take care of each other, instead of expecting the federal government to do it for us.
the idea that we can force everyone to take care of each other is nice... but it's not reality. there will always be that group of self-righteous dicks that think they are alone and only need to keep their kids fat and their trophy wife thin, and you can't force them to really care about others.
you just can't, its a fact. you cannot force someone to care by enacting tax laws and loopholes.
and you cannot make a government work by spending more than it has or trying to force people via taxes to pay for things they don't care about.
let it go. taxing people more so that we can spend right will only cause this nightmare to increase, because your 'right' is 'wrong' to someone else.
we as a nation need to focus on reality: the reality is that we have to take care of each other. we have to do it, not the government.
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