Expert Data Labs Blog

You handle many projects at once, every minute of your day is booked, and you feel like you are on the road more then you are at home. You don’t have time for smartphone apps that waste time, and you don’t have the time to waste to search through thousands to discover the few that will save you time. Fortunately, we have found some apps for you. Here are 5 apps bound to simplify your life.

Top 5 Business Apps

1. WhosHere: If a deadline is quickly approaching and you are needing a freelancer, WhosHere enables you to find freelancers for hire in your area quickly. You can send out a search, and text or call any of the professionals that reply.
2. Locale: What's more uncomfortable then hearing your phone blaring during the middle of a vital business meeting? You won't have to worry about this with Locale. This service permits you to choose your phone settings according to your most common locations. For instance, you can automatically set your phone to vibrate mode whenever you enter your office or the local coffee shop.
3. WaveSecure: If you travel frequently for business, you run the risk of losing your smartphone in an unfamiliar city. With WaveSecure you are able to remotely lock your smartphone, track its SIM card, and backup any data stored on your phone until you locate the device again.
4. Bump: It’s all about connections right? Well, Bump lets you exchange contact information with another person merely by bumping both phones together. Bid farewell to post-tradeshow data entry.
5. Scan2PDF Mobile: The Scan2PDF Mobile app lets you scan invoices, proposals, business reports, and other documents using your smartphone camera and transform them into color PDFs. Then you're able to e-mail these scanned documents directly to your computer's desktop.

You would love to get that promotion, or maybe you are in search of that elusive raise. Maybe you simply want to secure your job in this down economic time. But whatever the reason, you're looking for ways to impress your supervisor.

Why not consider Excel? This spreadsheet program might appear to be just a simple, albeit essential, business tool, but the truth is there are several lesser-known Excel tricks that enable you to work more efficiently.

• Hiding Information: There could be an occasion when you want to hide certain data when printing an Excel spreadsheet. For instance, maybe your spreadsheet contains confidential salary information. Luckily, you can tell Excel not to print certain rows or columns by hiding them before you hit print. To hide rows or columns, click the corresponding number or letter then right-click on a highlighted row or column and click the Hide option. You can then choose the Unhide option to bring these columns and rows back into view.
• Timestamping: You can attach a fixed date and time to your Excel spreadsheets with your computer's "Ctrl" key. To do this, hold Ctrl while you press the semicolon key. For the current date and time just hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys while pressing the semicolon.
• A Better-Looking Spreadsheet: Perk up your spreadsheet by utilizing Excel’s Themes option. This is found at the top on the Excel Ribbon. This aspect gives you a large variety of color schemes and fonts, or you could create your own and apply it to your spreadsheet.
• Tracking Trends: This is known as Sparklines and is only available in the latest version of Excel. It allows you to create charts that relate trends in the data within your spreadsheet. This may be helpful, for example, if you need to quickly see how many software bundles your company’s salespeople sold in the first half of last year.
• Conditional Formatting: With conditional formatting, you can instantly customize the look of spreadsheet cells that meet certain criteria. For instance, a cell showing that product sales rose by more than 100 % in a given month might take on a different shade so that it quickly stands out.

As technology changes cyber-criminals adapt to it. Recently MIT's Technology Review published an article about the biggest technology security threats of 2012. A lot of us spend a lot of our time online: working, surfing the Web, or just chatting with friends via social media. If you spend time online, being aware of these threats can help guard you and your data.

Stolen, Spoofed Certificates

The biggest problem that the Technology Review article covered is the growing number of stolen or spoofed certificates. As the article reports, every time you connect to a site, such as your bank's website, your traffic is encrypted using a "certificate" that the site uses to prove to your web browser that it can be trusted. In 2011, though, cyber-criminals could actually spoof or steal several of these certificates. This can help them steal user data or install vicious software on their computers.

A Common Security Mechanism in Trouble?

This is a major problem as the use of certificates and encrypted data is the most common security mechanism on the web. If they can no longer be trusted, that means possible trouble for all computer users.

Another common security concern is what is known as “Hacktivism”. Cyber-criminals look at this as activism through hacking, hence the name. Groups like Anonymous and LulzSec target large businesses that they believe are guilty of wrongdoing. They also target companies to demonstrate the vulnerability and weakness of them. Technology Review thinks that groups like these will continue “hacktivism” for a long time.

Home Automation

The growing popularity of home automation also creates security risks in 2012. As Technology Review writes, a growing amount of automation systems connect alarm systems, thermostats, lights, as well as the locks to homes' front doors to the internet. Imagine the damage that hackers can do should they break into these systems.

Can you imagine life minus the computer? It wasn’t that long ago that we didn’t have them, yet today we carry them around in our purses in the form of smartphones.

How did our culture go from no computers to having so much access to them in such a short period of time? George Dyson, a science historian, asks this question in his book, Turing's Cathedral.

Dyson, the son of scientist Freeman Dyson, has spent much of his life at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies. The institute was home to several of the world’s most impressive scientific minds while the first digital computer was being developed.

After you've read Turing's Cathedral, you will discover just how much chance went into developing the machine that led to the computers we now take for granted. The personalities at the Princeton Institute didn't always mesh well, but somehow they were able to produce the world's first digital computer. This machine was constructed and run from an otherwise nondescript building in New Jersey.

When great minds work on a project there are sure to be rivalries and heated disagreements, the development of the computer was no different. This book shows that the individuals that worked on this project were geniuses, not necessarily saints. In addition there were some moral concerns that the creators of the computer faced while working on this project, since the work they were doing had a close connection with the U.S. nuclear weapons project.

You may think that history books are dull reads and a history of computers must be crammed with technical jargon. Turing's Cathedral doesn't fit that image at all. Anybody who uses a computer will find this book intriguing. Which is an awful lot of people nowadays.

More and more cars are coming out that permit people to be connected to the Web from the front seat via Wi-Fi or 3G networks.  The Ford Edge, Lincoln MKX, and Audi A6 are all examples of this. With these connections people will be able to stream videos, get up-to-the-minute traffic information, in addition to speak their text messages. These things all sound great, and we generally greet technological advancements with open arms but this make us ask the question: Is full connectivity in a moving vehicle the best thing?

Challenges of the Connected Car

The connected car is a little worrisome. It's well known that drivers become unfocused when they text or chat on cell phones while driving. This leads to accidents. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration states that 80 % of all traffic accidents involve some kind of driver inattention within three seconds of a crash. If texting and cell phones are distracting to drivers, consider how distracted motorists will be when either they or a passenger is enjoying streaming video of a cat slipping off a kitchen counter.

Does Tech Distract Drivers?

Drivers must concentrate on the road. Anything that takes their attention away from it—regardless of whether it's chomping upon a fast-food burger or hunting for traffic information—can cause potentially fatal accidents. That's why the news that cars are on pace to become much more connected is welcomed with as much reluctance as anticipation.

Browsing the Web Inside Your Car

Motorists will soon be able to browse the Web and receive Facebook updates on in-car navigation screens. Automobiles might soon include short-range communication systems that will allow cars to connect to one another and to the infrastructure on which they are driving. This will send real-time road conditions along with other data to drivers.

As we said before, developments in technology ordinarily have us excited. But the biggest concern with the connected car is that, will increasing the amount of distractions increase the level of accidents? Car connectivity will bring lots of pleasure to travelers, especially on long commutes, but it’s important that drivers recognize the need to stay focused on the road no matter how cute that video of a baby monkey is.

When you hear the term "nanotechnology," does science fiction spring to mind? The truth is, nanotechnology is an element of our daily lives; it makes our lives easier. Nanotechnology is basically the science of working with matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Scientists can use nanotechnology to create new materials that can be applied and used in a variety of ways.

The practical side of nanotechnology

As an example, Science Daily ran a feature story about scientists designing a way to use nanotechnology to lessen the amount of friction in car engines and machines. If this technology becomes widespread, it can help lengthen the lives of machines and engines and enable them to operate more effectively. According to the Science Daily story, a team of scientists produced tiny polymer particles that were dispersed in automobile engine base oils. When tested under conditions that simulated those found in car engines, these tiny particles were found to have an extraordinary ability to minimize friction.

More efficient motors

The story noted that even when these particles were distributed at a low concentration, they boasted more effective friction-reducing abilities than the friction reducing additives used by many industries today. The scientists learned that these particles, measuring just nanometers in size, were able to reduce friction by 55 percent more than additives presently can. Expect more discoveries like this in the future. The field of nanotechnology continues to grow. It's growing so quickly, in fact, that the United States recently launched a national strategy for making sure that environmental, health, and safety research needs are recognized and addressed in the field.

The emerging world of nanotechnology

So, whenever you think about nanotechnology consider the engine in your car. In the not too distant future we might have nanotechnology to thank for more fuel-efficient cars, which of course means saving you money.

Global warming? Poverty? Illiteracy? Debt crises? These are all significant global problems. And they have drawn the attention of the technology pros at Google. Google recently announced its new "Solve for X" initiative, a venture in which Google's greatest minds take on the world's most vexing difficulties. The idea is for "Solve for X" minds to propose revolutionary suggestions for eliminating some of the biggest problems facing the Earth.

Tackling the biggest global issues

Of course, it's not all that simple. The "Solve for X" brain trust will be taking on problems that have long confused world leaders. However, the people behind this project are nothing if not eager. They claim the work occurring here is akin to the progressive thinking that was required to send humans to the moon. On the "Solve for X" website, Google describes it this way: "This combination of things—a huge problem to solve, a radical solution for solving it and the breakthrough technology to make it happen—is the essence of a moonshot."

Tackling water scarcity

The Mashable.com recently ran an interesting feature story on the "Solve for X" project. Mashable cited the account of a participant in a "Solve for X" retreat who stated that the minds gathered with him were focusing on the huge issue of global water scarcity. What kind of solutions are "Solve for X" members devising to address this concern? One involved forward osmosis with recycled ammonium salts. If you have no clue what that means, don't fret—the folks at "Solve for X" do.

The need for technology brain trusts

Whether or not "Solve for X" produces real solutions for the world’s problems, the idea certainly has value. Technologies are usually developed with a single objective in mind, usually for entertainment. That being said, it’s likely that there are many ways we could use current technologies that we haven’t considered. With luck ,, "Solve for X" will help us utilize that potential.

Do you manage a workplace in which people feel free to share new ideas? Do your workers come to you with new plans or suggestions about how to run company meetings more efficiently? Have your employees ever provided ideas for a new marketing plan or recommended topics for the company's blog?

If this does not sound familiar, your company may be mistakenly stifling employee creativity. A lack of creativity amongst your employees, in today’s business environment, can spell the doom for your organization and may keep you one step behind the competitors.

Two heads are better then one right? Well what about a whole organization? Promoting creativity means you have many individuals thinking of new ways to promote your products and services, boost workflow efficiency, and enhance overall productivity. This can consequently mean saving the company money.

The best way to foster creativity is to actually entice your employees to come up with new ideas and then to pay attention to these ideas when employees bring them to you. Send out an email blast asking employees for ideas to improve your company's products or services. Post a notice on the bulletin board requesting suggestions on how to improve the company blog or increase its customer-approval ratings. Then, when employees answer these calls, meet with them—even if it's during a quick phone call—to go over their thoughts. You don't have to apply all employee ideas, of course, but to show respect, you should pay attention to them all.

If you believe that your employees do not have good ideas, then you may be missing out. In addition, not listening to them, or disregarding ideas will motivate your employees to do the bare minimum. You will end up with a group of people working for the weekend.

To truly encourage creativity, reward those employees who do come up with powerful ideas. This could mean paying a small bonus to those employees whose ideas you use. It could mean praising employees in company newsletters or memos. It could even mean an in-person "thank you."

By nature, people are creative; it’s part of being human. We all have independent thoughts and ideas. That being said, even if employees don’t express it, many have ideas and thoughts on how to improve their jobs. Many organisations don’t encourage creativity and this is an untapped resource. So be sure to encourage creativity among your team—the rewards will surprise you.

Are you just becoming accustomed to the idea of social media? Well here comes another that is growing in popularity: Pinterest. One thing that is different about Pinterest is that it focuses less on updates concerning the day-to-day and more on the interests of the users. This encourages creativity among its user base.

But that doesn’t explain what it is. The meaning is inside the name. Pinterest is a combination of the words “pin” and “interest”. In your account you have “pinboards,” similar to bulletin boards. You could make these public or not, and then “pin” images of stuff you are interested in onto these and make notes about these images.

Creating Pinterest Categories

Creating categories will help you organize your account and permit people to decide what in your account they want to focus on. You can decide to share all of your pinboards with other users or only a couple. You can not only make notes about the images you pin to your pinboard, but you can also add links to sites where you found the pictures.

The Social Part of Pinterest

Of course, social interaction forms the core of Pinterest. You can decide to follow people much like you would on Facebook or Twitter. But you can also choose to follow specific collections. Say somebody has a bunch of old movie poster images that you find fascinating. But she also has a collection of images of her 3-year-old son which doesn't quite interest you as much. You could decide to follow her movie posters while ignoring her toddler.

Joining Pinterest

The main challenge with Pinterest is getting an account: you have to be invited to join. You can request an invite straight from Pinterest when you log onto the site, but it is uncertain just how long you will have to wait to receive an invite using this method. It is much more reliable to seek out friends or acquaintances that are already using Pinterest. You can then have them invite you to the site through e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter.

Finding a job nowadays is not easy. So you need to put your best foot forward when interviewing. One way to do this is dress the part.

I know what you are thinking: “The corporate world has become so casual—people wear flip-flops for goodness sake! Workplace attire doesn’t matter anymore.” Incorrect! How you dress says a lot about you and how you feel about your career, and potential employers certainly notice.

Here is a simple rule for any job interview: Overdressed is far better than under-dressed. Even if you are interviewing for a company with a relaxed working environment, you still have to wear proper business attire for your interview. The better dressed you are, the more you show yourself off as somebody who is focused on their career and this particular job. If you decide to show up to an interview dressed down, you're starting from a weaker position.

Then there is the workplace itself. If you happen to work in a casual environment, one in which formal business attire is not needed, it is possible to still dress for success. It might seem obvious, but always wear clean clothes. Resist the impulse to put on last night’s jeans. Try to always take into consideration the clothes you're wearing, something that looks good, or is business casual clothes. Looking sharp will set you apart as a professional.

It goes without saying that looking good isn't a replacement for being a good worker. Actions will always speak louder than appearance. That being said, standing out because you are a good employee AND a smart dresser isn’t a bad thing!