As Dr. Oz says, “You don’t need to be tech savvy to get the best health gadgets!” This week I talked to Dr. Oz to show off a variety of health gadgets that you can find at your drugstore! The best part? All of these are Dr. Oz-approved, so you know they’re gonna work as advertised!
Here’s the products I showed off.
We’re all about finding new music, but how do you find what your friends, neighbors, or complete strangers are listening to? And then how do you go to those shows? With apps, of course! Here are a few of my favorites.
(Having problems with the video above? Click this link and try and view this video directly on NBCnews.com)
Apps Mentioned in this piece:
Private WiFi – Encrypts your data so anything you transmit online (usernames, passwords, credit cards) aren’t visible to anyone else using the same WiFi network.
Private Browsing – A feature on many major browsers tooday, including Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. You can use this to keep your browsing history safe on a public or shared computer.
Parental Controls – No matter what devices your children are using, there are parental controls you need to be using! Here are some instructions for setting them up on Windows, iPhone, Mac, Blackberry, and Kindle Fire.
Today I’m headed back to school in my hometown of Baltimore, MD, to meet the people behind the software 1sqbox (One Square Box). 1sqbox created tablet-centric software that connects teachers, students, and even the school administration together so everyone can see what’s going on inside the school all through a single tablet interface. The software works with students of all ages from K-12, but 1sqbox also created the tablet itself so it’s an all-in-one solution! The founders have done all that, and more—they’re also taking on the responsibility of handling all of the training as well and with the business growing its becoming harder and harder to communicate with everyone they’re working with in an efficient way.
It’s not often I’m told that when visiting a business I need to pack some old boots! But business today isn’t all clean office environments and suits—it’s dirty work too, like Veteran Compost in Aberdeen, Maryland. Justen Garrity, founder of Veteran Compost, is a veteran of the Iraq war who came back after the crash to find there were no jobs and no real sources of employment left for him. Working a day job and on the weekends while going to school at night, Justen built an amazing business collecting food scraps from local businesses and turning them into compost for local farms to purchase.
Like a lot of businesses, Justen tracks almost everything on paper—pickup times, compost temperatures, almost everything is written down and stored in manila envelopes. While this is fine for a business that’s just getting started, as your business grows you have more and more information you’re trying to process and handle. Enter Pronto Forms from AT&T. Pronto Forms is all about eliminating paperwork and digitizing all of the forms your employees fill our so that you can store everything in a single location and access it quickly and easily. Employees can even capture photographs or signatures on the go! If you’re on the fence, the cool thing is that you can try Pronto Forms for free for 30 days and see if it will really work for your business.
In this episode of CUBED, I visit Barb at Clapp Communications, a boutique public relations agency. Barb is having trouble communicating with a team split between two offices, one in Baltimore and the other in Charlotte, with employees constantly traveling all over the map to meet each other and to meet with clients. Does this situation sound familiar? These days, offices are much more decentralized and connecting everyone on your team regularly and reliably can be difficult.
Enter AT&T Connect. Connect is an integrated audio, web, and video conferencing solution that can help to bring your team together and help you work more efficiently when everyone can’t be in the same place at the same time. With low per-minute costs and deep integration with Outlook, AT&T connect provides conference tools no matter what platforms and devices your business uses, whether its PC, Mac, Android, iPhone, iPad or Android. But it’s more than just a Skype alternative—AT&T Connect brings in tons of features like whiteboarding, shared presentations, and file sharing to make an AT&T Connect meeting just as productive and useful as a real world one. Plus, if some colleagues or clients can’t make it to the meeting, the whole thing can be recorded and shared via email! How great is that?
“Home automation” may sound like a future concept from the Jetson’s, but it’s here and Lowes is helping to make it affordable right now! This week I’m testing out the Lowes Iris smarthome kit which starts at $179. Three versions of the starter kit are available, and they contain everything you need to start controlling your home (and your energy bill) straight from any computer, smartphone or tablet!
Worried about leaving the coffeemaker or iron on when you’re out of the house? Want to see how much electricity an light fixture or appliance is using? Need to let your kids in the house remotely? The Iris system will help you do all of that, and more!
Plus, there are no long-term contracts or monthly fees for all of the basic functionality to control your home. However, if you want to get even more out of it, a premium package costs $9.99/month and allows multiple people receive alerts from the system, plus it offers offers advanced control of your devices as well as additional video capabilities and more storage space.
Allow me to break it down for you. Inside the kit you get the main hub which plugs into your router and is easy to set up, although you should allot about 45 minutes to make sure you can get everything running smoothly. The kits also include some accessories to smarten your home. Lowes offers three different types of kits:
– Comfort and Control ($179): comes with a smart thermostat and plug so you can control your the temperature inside your home from anywhere!
– Safe and Secure ($179): this kit is packed with door, window and motion sensors as well as a programmable keypad to control entry into your home!
– Smart Kit ($299): includes everything in both of the above kits, plus a range extender to help you spread the system into more rooms in a larger house. This is the kit I tested.
Once you’ve got the basic system running, you can add as much to it as you want. Lowes offers a ton of different products that talk to the hub, including:
– A smart button that can be set up as a doorbell or even a panic button
– Smart key that turns the system on and off. Give one to each of your children, and you’ll know when they’re home!
– A wireless video camera to watch your kids or the babysitter while out on the town
– Dimmer switches to help you set the mood remotely
– Outdoor modules to control your home inside and out!
– A smart lock for your front door that can be opened remotely when your kids lock themselves out
Once you’ve got the kit, you’re good to go in terms of automating your whole house. There’s a ton of accessories offered at Lowes to connect to the system, and once you’ve got it all talking to the hub you’re just a tap away from controlling your home and monitoring your energy usage from your smartphone no matter where you are.
In the latest episode of my CUBED video series for the American Express OPEN Forum, I take a look at IcedGems, a boutique bakery that specializes in deserts like cupcakes. They even have a Cupcake Truck which operates as a mobile storefront in the greater Baltimore area. But getting in touch with customers when your storefront is constantly on the move is a difficult process, and having to juggle text messages, tweets, and Facebook was a bit too much for IcedGems to handle. So I came up with a solution to help them out that I think a lot of you entrepreneurs and small business owners out there will love. So head on over to AmEx OPEN and watch the video now!
In my latest CUBED video for American Express OPEN Forum, I meet up with Theresa Nickels, a marketing contractor and road warrior who spends her days traveling between coffee shops, Internet cafes and on the road to meet with clients all over the map. I take a look at some of the areas she’s having difficulty with, and generate some solutions that free up some precious time so she gets to spend more of it with her kids! Check out the video over at AmEx OPEN.