While Mother’s Day has come and gone, and yes, all of the Cast of Dads were able to plan ahead to treat the moms (and wives) of our lives to their special day, we do have a “Mother’s Day Special” after the day went by. And, this episode marks a great milestone for the Cast of Dads – we have a sponsor (Motorola and their new Android RAZR). Let me cut to the chase here – we are GIVING ONE AWAY! All that you have to do is listen to this podcast and then head on over to this episode of the Cast of Dads website to enter. We put the RAZR to the test during Mother’s Day and talked all about it, as well as other Mother’s Day festivities. Alas, we couldn’t use the RAZR for shaving but heck, that could be coming someday! A true “dad’s smartphone!”

We are also calling this a special episode because not all of the Cast of Dads were present. Max was out sailing with his son – what a cool and special occasion! But we covered a lot of other really fun topics – can you say trains, home movies, graduations, getting back to nature and scuba diving? We never know what direction the podcast will go, and that’s what makes it fun!

And thanks again to Motorola for sponsoring this episode. In fact, I’m using the Wifi tethering option to write this post!

The Topics

Here are some of the topics we covered in this Special Mother’s Day Episode:

• Max is at sea
• Boat side BBQ with Jeff & Max
• Enter to win a new Motorola RAZR 
• Rotary dialing apps – Android & iPhone versions
• Retro phone handsets
• How we celebrated Mother’s Day
• Watching home movies
• C.C. goes to National Train Day (photos)
• Chapman kids first time in NYC
• Jeff’s son graduates from Berklee School of Music
• Off the grid time
• Yearly activity traditions with our kids
• Disney or Club Med sure would make great sponsors
• Virgin Galactic
• Deliverance
• Scuba Diving
• By land, sea, train, plane or spaceship

The Audio

As always, the full podcast is available on CastofDads.com and on iTunes. You can also listen to the podcast here: Cast of Dads – Special Episode “Mother’s Day Special”.

Requesting Feedback

If you have questions or ideas for topics that you would like us to cover (remember, between all of us we have 13 children ranging from newborns to young adults), just send us an email to castofdads@gmail.com or tweet us at @CastofDads! Also, our podcast listener base is growing! If you are interested in sponsoring our podcast for an episode or a month, be sure to contact us! If you are interested in sponsoring this podcast, please leave a comment on the Cast of Dads site, send an email to castofdads@gmailcom or leave a question/comment on my Contact form.

Cast of Dads is a group of podcasting and blogging dads who gather to gab about fatherhood. The cast of dads includes C.C. Chapman , Jeffrey Sass , Max Kalehoff , Michael Sheehan , and Brad Powell , who collectively represent 13 kids from the youngest of babies to full grown adults. Each of them brings a unique perspective to being a father.

HTD says: Be sure to enter to win the Motorola DROID RAZR! And Happy Mother’s Day to the Moms out there – without you, we wouldn’t exist!

I have been evaluating 3 different storage solutions from Seagate for the past few months, two of these involve the new super high-speed Thunderbolt connection and one is designed to provide a huge amount of portable hard drive space for mobile devices via a Wifi connection. As we, as consumers, are creating more and more large sets of digital data in the form of multimedia files like high-resolution photos or high-definition videos, having places to store these types of files is critical. And if you are like me, you don’t simply need to store these files, you want to create more media with them. You want to edit video and stream music. And you need to be sure you have that storage available and it needs to be fast.

In this review, I’m actually going to talk about three storage solutions from Seagate, specifically:

• GoFlex Satellite
• GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt Adapter
• GoFlex Portable Thunderbolt Adapter

I’m first going to talk about the Thunderbolt solutions. Thunderbolt is a technology that many multimedia (and Mac designers) have been clamoring for for a long time. Not only does it allow for super fast data transmission & throughput speeds of up to 10 GB per second, it can actually do a whole lot more. You can also daisy-chain up to 7 devices, power some of them and not lose any throughput in the process. So, think about hooking up your Mac, to a Thunderbolt display and then to a hard drive or even a few Thunderbolt hard drives, and you probably can tuck away a few power cords in the process since for some devices, the power is provided through the (expensive) Thunderbolt cables. This is a new standard that Apple is adopting to replace FireWire 400/800 and to compete against USB 3.0.

So as Apple proclaimed that they would stop using FireWire on their machines and start using Thunderbolt, people wondered whether the accessory vendors would follow. The answer is yes…but it was slow at first. And many of the solutions were expensive and you had to basically buy completely new devices that supported this new connection type.

This is where Seagate innovated in a way that I truly appreciate. What they did with their GoFlex Desk and GoFlex Portable solutions was to ADAPT those devices to be compatible with Thunderbolt and provide them as more cost-effective add-ons to their existing devices. Also, by doing this, your older hardware is supported and the Seagate storage solutions could be re-used in any environment.

For starters, there is the GoFlex Portable solution (which I reviewed here in conjunction with their GoFlex Net solution which acts on the same “attachment” principle). So, with the GoFlex Portable, you have a small, high-capacity hard drive that you can take with you, and it comes with a variety of clip-on adapters for different connection types like FireWire, USB 2.0/3.0 and eSATA. Now, with the new Thunderbolt adapter, you can just snap it on and instantly connect to your Thunderbolt compatible devices.

The price for the GoFlex Portable Thunderbolt Adapter is $99.99 (note that the cable is not included and cables can be expensive – Apple sells it for about $50). While I do expect the price of the cables to come down, I don’t view the Adapter to be that expensive and a great way to extend the value of your existing GoFlex Portable.

Moving on up the chain, we come to the GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt Adapter. Similar to the Portable but geared as a solution for your desktop, the GoFlex Desk is a hard drive that performs and adapts as well. From sizes ranging 2 to 4 TB (which is a great amount of space this day and age for all of that digital media and backups), the GoFlex Desk is another one of those adaptable solutions that evolves as the technology evolves. The GoFlex Desk has snap-on solutions as well for different types of connections: USB 2.0 (default), USB 3.0, FireWire 800 and now the Thunderbolt version.

The Thunderbolt adapter simply snaps onto the GoFlex Desk at the bottom (much the same way that the adapter for the GoFlex Portable slides into the Thunderbolt adapter). Slightly more expensive than GoFlex Portable, the GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt Adapter retails for $189. But, it DOES have 2 Thunderbolt ports which means that it can be in the middle or end of a daisy-chain of Thunderbolt devices.

As a quick test, I decided that I would make a backup of my MacBook Air which has a 60 GB SSD drive (probably with 30 GBs used on it). Using Carbon Copy Cloner and doing a full backup onto a new 125 GB partition that I made on the GoFlex Portable, I was able to fully clone the hard drive in about 13 minutes via the Thunderbolt connection. THAT is fast. Then I tried booting from the GoFlex Portable with the Thunderbolt connection and it booted just slightly slower than if I were to do it with the internal SSD. Impressive.

The last hard drive device recently coming from Seagate is one that is focused on mobility and portability. It’s the GoFlex Satellite which is a Wifi-enabled, USB powered hard drive. Think of it as your ideal mobile companion. Not only can you connect this USB-powered hard drive to your Mac or PC, you can also connect it via Wifi to your smartphone, extending its storage capabilities.

The capacity of the Satellite is 500GBs which means that it can be used for a variety of solutions. You can use it for backups or for transporting your documents and media back and forth to and from the office or school. But the true power lies in the ability to stream media to up to 8 devices wirelessly and simultaneously  The Satellite is a pretty nice self contained unit in that it has a built in battery, wireless transmitter and obviously, hard drive.

There is an iPhone application that you can download and use to connect and manage your Satellite (or you can manage the device via a web interface as well). The wireless is 802.11n which means that you can stream media fairly well using N-compatible devices. Due to limitations that Apple has placed on how data is accessed on 3rd party devices, you can only GET data or media from the device using iOS. In order to put movies or music or photos onto the device, you need to connect the Satellite via USB to a computer and then transfer those files that way.

So while the Satellite is not exactly a mobile 2-way device, it is a great companion for the mobile traveler who wants to bring a few movies and all of their music and still use the hard drive to store documents or presentations. And, I believe it to be a great device to have on those lengthy road trips with the family. Just be sure that you load up a bunch of movies and music first on the Satellite and then all of your kids who are using iPhones or iPads during the trip, can wirelessly stream their movies. Hopefully, this will eliminate arguments over what to watch as well as minimize the “are we there yet?” questions. Oh, and it does come with a power adapter for the car so that you don’t have to worry about running out of battery on the road. Do note though, strangely, the USB connection does NOT recharge the battery. You need to use the included power adapter to do that.

The Satellite has over 7 hours of battery life which obviously can vary depending on the number of devices connected as well as the type of media being streamed. It does have the ability to stream without using the iOS application via a web browser instead. It retails for $199, which, on its own is a pretty good price for just a 500 GB hard drive. But when you throw in the Wifi and streaming capabilities, I believe that this is an important tool for any parent to have in their tool chest. It currently is selling on Amazon for $159.99 which I feel is a pretty decent price.

But how well does the streaming work? I have seen mixed reviews, but things that could probably be easily overcome through some firmware updates. I personally tested streaming 2 movie videos to 2 devices simultaneously and my results were just fine. I was able to watch 2 movies at the same time on an iPhone and an iPad without any stuttering or issues.

To connect to the Satellite, you first create a Wifi connection (you only need to configure it one time and then later just connect to that SSID) on the Satellite and then attach your devices to that Wifi connection. If you are on an iOS device, you then connect using the Seagate app. If you are on a laptop or other type of smartphone, you can simply use your browser to connect to the IP address of the Satellite and browse your media that way. And, you don’t have to worry about Internet connections because you can configure your Satellite to pass through an existing Wifi connection, meaning that you attach the Satellite to your regular Wifi and then attach your device to the Satellite and voila, you can connect to the Internet without issues.

The Satellite offers you the ability to expand your mobile storage. Why pay more for an iOS device with extra storage when you can have this to stream your music and videos via this portable device and also use it for your computers as well!

HighTechDad Ratings

For the two Thunderbolt adapters, I give pretty high reviews simply because they are cost-effective alternatives to simply purchasing dedicated Thunderbolt drives. The fact that they come as adapters that can work with current Seagate storage solutions make them much more attractive. And the fact that they are “backwards compatible” with other hardware that you might have make them a winner in my book.

The Satellite Wifi-connected storage solution is the second type of product that I have seen and tested in the marketplace. I like the fact that it has a storage capacity of 500 GBs. This means that you can put your entire music library as well as plenty of large videos on there and still have room to spare for other data and documents. While the physical footprint is a bit larger than other similar Wifi devices, it is still no larger than a portable hard drive. It is fairly easy to use in terms of moving your media to the device and then when you want to view your multimedia files, the iOS interface does the job. I do hope that the iOS app is updated to make it a bit more useful (e.g., displaying ID3 music tags) but this is probably an easy fix. The price point is quite reasonable, especially if you are looking for a storage solution for both your laptop and smartphone or iOS device like an iPad. The ratings below are for the Satellite only.

EASY TO GEEK FACTOR – is the device easy to get up and running

FAMILY FRIENDLY – does the device fit well into family environments

RECOMMENDABILITY– would I recommend it to others (more means “yes”)

PRICE POINT – does the price reflect the product function

OVERALL – my general rating

Disclosure Text : I have a material connection because I received a gift or sample of a product for consideration in preparing to write this content. I was/am not expected to return this item or gift after my review period. All opinions within this article are my own. More information can be found in my About page as well as here.    

HTD says: Seagate continues to provide innovative, useful and cost-effective storage solutions to help you get a handle on your multimedia and other data.

I have driven a sedan now since 1998. It’s a great form factor for a 4-5 person family, especially if your children are younger. As they grow up, sedans might not be a preferred choice, until the kids have flown the nest. But as a second car, a sedan is a definite solid addition to the family fleet of cars. For 10 days, I got to play around, elegantly I might add, in the 2012 Chrysler 300S sedan. It was, for lack of a better word, solid. Not only does the outside styling look refined in a slightly edgy manner, the interior was packed with luxurious comforts that you might find in cars twice the price. And this blending of styling and comfort was supplemented with performance and bolstered by technology.

What first grabbed my about the 300S that I drove was the color choice for interior and exterior. The outside was a rich, dark black which looked really sleek. And the interior is what I really loved. The S version has red leather seats so the combination of the black and red fit right at home with HighTechDad, my preferred colors.

As with most autos these days, the 300S has a keyless entry system, meaning that you simply put your keys in your pocket and forget about them. The doors automatically unlock when you put your hands on the handle and you can lock all of them by simply pushing on a button on the handle. Inside, there is a push-button starter, another common feature on many newer cars these days. Let me tell you, it is so difficult now to go back to my tired old car and have to fumble around in my pockets to get my keys. There have been times recently when I simply forgot to take them out and didn’t understand why the doors didn’t automatically open.

The 2012 Chrysler 300S is sporty but in a subdued way. The seats are comfortable and grippy at the same time with plenty of driver adjustments to get that perfect fit. And once you have the seating, mirror and steering wheel position dialed in, you can save that setting for later ease of use. The engine is a V6 AWD 8-speed automatic transmission that has a “sport” mode. The steering wheel has paddle shifters that you can use in normal drive mode and sport mode. I actually preferred the sport mode because the ride was a bit grittier, the steering tighter and the revs a bit higher. In sport mode, the 300S transformed into an energetic car raring to go! And the 292 HP engine provided plenty of pep. I would have loved to have tried the HEMI V8 though, which throws out 363 HP. But having the V6 meant that I also got better gas mileage (my average for city/highway during my test drive was about 20 MPG).

The back seat sat all of my children quite comfortably and there is ample leg room for adults in the back as well. Since I’m on the subject of children, there were a few features that my kids definitely gave the thumbs up. For starters, there was an automatic rear window shade that my kids could control from the back seat (as a front seat person, you can also control it via the touch-screen interface). Since the rear window is pretty large and highly sloped, there is a lot of ways for the sun to come in and warm up the back seat passengers. The rear shade, which lowers automatically when you shift the 300S into reverse for added visibility, provided nice shading in the back.

Another nice (optional – $1495) feature is the dual-paned sunroof which was really a great way to make the already roomy 300S even roomier. With the touch of a button, you can roll back the shade portion 1/2 way or all the way and then pushing another button opens up the sunroof over the front part of the car.

Before I go into too many more details, I did do a video walk-through of some of the features of the Chrysler 300S (also available directly on YouTube):

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

A few other important highlights of the 2012 Chrysler 300S:

• All Wheel Drive – normally in rear wheel drive, the 300S will automatically shift into all wheel drive when it senses limited traction. This all works side-by-side with the ABS, electronic stability control, traction control, brake assist and many other safety features.
• Automatic Sensors – there are automatic headlights as well as windshield wipers which sense the rain. And when it IS raining, there is something called Rain Brake Assist that kicks in to automatically dry out the brake disks.
• Collision Warning – if the 300S senses that there is stopped traffic ahead and you are rapidly approaching it, it will turn off the radio, play an audible alert and flash some alerts on the driver’s dashboard.
• Parking Assist – guiding yourself into a parking space can be difficult, but not with the 300S which has a rear camera and proximity sensors in the front and rear which will warn you as you get too close to cars near you.
• Blind Spot Warning – I have really come to rely on this technology, especially when driving a car that I don’t know. If a vehicle is in your blind spot, an orange triangle appears on the appropriate side-view mirror.
• Adaptive Headlights – these HID headlights will turn in the direction that you are turning and also have daytime running lights which is a nice added safety feature.

While the 300S has some cool technology protecting its occupants, it also has some technology making this HighTechDad happier. For starters, there are the heated and cooled cup holders in the front. I don’t often come across the feature but let me tell you, it’s really a nice little touch. Press one button and your soda can stays cool, press another and you cup of coffee stays hot. Very simple but also very functional.

No auto these days is complete without a big touch-screen in the center console. This is the main interface for all of the functions in the 300S including radio (satellite, FM and AM), CD/DVD playback, MP3/SD card playback and, of course, navigation, climate, bluetooth connectivity for your cell phone and a variety of other controls for different aspects of the car.

The navigation is powered by Garmin and I found the interface to be very intuitive and simple and extremely functional. Many manufacturers often bring their own solution to the navigation problem to their cars but that often leads to sluggish responses or clunky interfaces. Garmin is a trusted name in GPS navigation so it was nice to see it in action.

Also, the 300S had a sound system that was powered by Beats by Dre. Throughout the car, you see speakers with the little red “b” logo, including the subwoofer in the trunk.

This specially-tuned audio system really makes you feel the music and the beats. I didn’t expect this type of added “in-car performance” but this is part of 300S model. There are 10 speakers and 1 subwoofer in this sedan. Wow, talk about surround sound!

Interestingly, as I was exploring the Dre sound system and inspecting the subwoofer in the trunk, I also found that Chrysler had made an unique design choice and had put the car battery in the trunk. While I’m sure they have thought of this, but if you need to jump start your car because of your battery being dead, I hope there is a way to pop open the trunk without using a button. I’m sure that there is an elegant solution that they incorporated but I didn’t spend enough time exploring that use case.

One more fun little tidbit that I discovered (and my wife searched for and had to call me about) was how to open the gas cap door cover. The 300S has a capless gas area but it is covered by a door that has to be popped open. The button for this is located in the driver’s side door and isn’t immediately obvious at first.

Lastly, from a comfort perspective, I do have to mention the sound dampening. I must say that the road and engine noise is truly minimal in the 300S due to the laminated acoustic windshield, wheel liners and the underbody enclosure. What that translates to is essentially a very quiet ride.

Not all of the photos of my test drive are included in this article. You can also see the full photoset on my Flickr account. However, I think it is important to showcase not only the exterior body styling and design aspects of the 300S, but also the interior, so I have put together a video photo montage of the same photos, all with a nice jazzy overlay.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The 2012 Chrysler 300S that I test drove had an MSRP of $44,705 with a bunch of luxury, safety and tech packages which I believe to be a quite reasonable price for the luxury, style, comfort and tech that you get with this vehicle. If you have a chance to test drive one, do jump on that opportunity.

Disclosure Text: Apart from the 10-day loan of the Chrysler 300S, I have not received any compensation for writing this content and I have no material connection to the brands, topics and/or products that are mentioned herein. More information can be found in my About page as well as here.

HTD says: The 2012 Chrysler 300S is a luxury sedan with enough technology, safety and style to make it a great addition as a family sedan.

I usually write about technology and gadgets. Anything bright and shiny really gets my attention, so much so, that I have little to no time to read books as most of my reading is confined to trade publications and articles. My children, however, especially my youngest daughter seem to LOVE reading, which is exciting. However, I just got my hands on an advanced copy of new book coming out soon by Scholastic as part of a new series called “Scholastic Discover More.” The book that caught my attention in particular was one called “Technology – How today’s technology really works” by Clive Gifford.

Targeted towards the “Expert Reader” (ages 9-13), the “Technology” book actually was one of the first books that I have picked up and “read” in quite a long time. I put “read” in quotes because it is actually more of an advanced picture book than a book of literature. However, that doesn’t mean that it is better or worse in any way. In fact, the book is not only engaging, but it is truly educational. And, as with books about any type of technology, I would have thought that it would be instantly out of date. In fact, it is pretty current and discusses and breaks down the latest technology trends in easy to understand examples (complete with bright and shiny pictures as well). And, to top it off, each book comes with a unique code that allows you to download a digital companion to it.

The structure of the “Technology” book is unique. For starters, it is broken up in to chapters around certain subjects and within each subject are sub-sections. The primary sections (and some of the sub-sections – I did not list all of them) are:

• Microchips & Smart Tech – smartphones, information technology, the Internet, particle colliders, spy tech and robots
• Fun, Games & Thrills – gaming, camcorders, 3D, sounds, and roller coasters
• Force, Speed & Power – engines, cars, extreme speed, rockets and space
• Technology for Life – mountain bikes, sports shoes, solar power and human engineering

Within each sub-section, there are “spreads” of different type. These are double-paged Stand-Alone Spreads which present as much graphical and written information as possible. There are Timeline Spreads which show you a chronology of a particular piece of technology, and most of them ending in 2011 and the tech of that time. There are Look-Inside Spreads which provides “exploded views” of certain types of technology. explain what the individual components do to form the whole. There are also Stats Spreads which are essentially infographics around the particular subject matter. And lastly, there are Photographic Spreads which are simply there to focus on a particular subject and only doing it visually.

So what better way to talk about the book than to write a few interesting statistics down from some of the sections. Here are some items to sink your technology-inquisitive mind into:

• The 1st shoulder-word “mobile” phone was called the Pye and it came out in 1972.
• The Apple 1 computer was introduced in 1976, was sold in a kit form and had 4KB of RAM; in contrast, the Apple MacBook Air was introduced in 2008 and had 1/2 a million times the memory of the Apple 1!
• When charging a Lithium-ion battery, the ions move from the positive terminal to the negative terminal and as the battery is used, those ions move back to the positive terminal.
• A smartphone has more memory and processing power than a personal computer from the 1990s had!
• Monthly Internet traffic in 2015 could fill 20 billion DVDs!
• There were 204 websites in September 1993 – in July 2011 there were over 255,000,000!
• As of September 2011, there were 170 million blogs (and you are reading one now!)
• From 185 miles above the earth, spy satellites can identify an object the size of an orange.
• There are more than 8.37 million industrial and service robots working worldwide.
• Atari introduced the first commercially successful video game in 1972 called Pong.
• Over 500 million copies of Rovio’s Angry Birds have been sold since being released in 2009!
• 3D technology has evolved from stereoscope (1894) to red & blue lenses to polarization and most recently to Lenticular (glasses-free) 3D in 2010.
• The fastest roller coaster is in Abu Dhabi’s Ferrari World theme park which goes from 0-62 mph in 2 seconds!

There are many more little tech tidbits throughout the book – I just cherry-picked a few that were interesting. But if you have a book simple filled with facts or trivia, that would get boring quickly. Instead the Scholastic Discover More series really goes quite a bit deeper than simply providing snippets. The graphical illustrations, large-format photos and clear explanations, timelines and descriptions help to make an child (or adult) for that matter technically savvy enough to actually hold a conversation about the subject.

Here are a few examples of the spreads. Below is the evolution of the smartphone:

This is the “Look Inside” spread for the exploded view of a smartphone which explains how a touchscreen works:

Ever wonder how a cellular phone call works? There is a breakdown of how those calls work through the network:

I found the computer gaming timeline to be interesting as well:

What is also nice is, as I mentioned, is that the digital companion makes the content current. You can learn more about “Cool Tech Heroes,” get additional stories about technology from encyclopedia entries and look up technology words. The formant is similar to the printed book but the eBook focuses on a handful of tech leaders and innovators.

With each technology “hero,” there is an accompanying timeline of their achievements:

While technology is great, know the history behind the technology is even better. Personally, I, as an adult, found this book to be quite informative and helpful for me to explain tech to not only my kids but also my peers. Not everybody has a passion for technology the way that I do, however, this book presents tech in a way that makes it approachable by just about everyone. I wouldn’t, though, give this book to a child under 10 (unless they are really into tech). But it’s a nice reference book to have on your bookshelf should you need to understand how computers work, for example.

HighTechDad Rating

There are other book in this series as well and they are designed for all ages. For emergent readers (ages 3-6), you have: See Me Grow, Farm, Animal Babies and My Body. For those readers between the ages of 7-9, there is: Penguins, Planets, Bugs and Dinosaurs. And lastly, for those older readers (and I would lump adults in here), there is: The Elements, Oceans and Seas, Night Sky and this one, Technology.

“Technology” comes out in May 2012 and will have a retail price of $15.99. You can (pre)order it on Amazon now for about $10.

EASY TO GEEK FACTOR – is the device easy to get up and running

FAMILY FRIENDLY – does the device fit well into family environments

RECOMMENDABILITY– would I recommend it to others (more means “yes”)

PRICE POINT – does the price reflect the product function

OVERALL – my general rating

Overall, I was quite pleased with the “Technology” book and will be reading through some of the others in this series. Yes, me personally, not my kids. I hope that they will have the same enthusiasm as I did for this book.

Disclosure Text : I have a material connection because I received a gift or sample of a product for consideration in preparing to write this content. I was/am not expected to return this item or gift after my review period. All opinions within this article are my own. More information can be found in my About page as well as here.    

HTD says: Sometimes the best technology comes in the form of a physical book!

While I truly like Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac (you can see my review of it here on the Microsoft Office for Mac Blog), there are some folks who have complained about a feature being removed from previous versions, specifically, the “Work” menu that was present in previous versions of Word in Office for Mac (2004 & 2008). Personally, I never used that feature, simply because I didn’t need to. The “Open Recent…” menu item was just fine for me and I also really try to organize my content into a folder hierarchy on my hard drive or on DropBox.

Also, in the Windows version of Microsoft Office (2010), there is a way to “pin” important documents in the File > Recent area of any of the Office programs (I’m not sure why Office for Mac 2011 doesn’t have this useful feature).

But, I’m always out for a challenge to help out wherever I can. Especially since I know some people who have simply not upgraded to the latest version of Office for Mac because this feature was missing!

So I did some searching around and found a solution (sorry, I didn’t come up with this) but I wanted to document it (with graphics) and share it so that others might benefit from this “How To.”

I have tested this out and it seems to work but I would love to get feedback as well so leave a comment!

How To Create A “Work” Menu in Word for Mac 2011

Here are the steps to create a fully-functional “Work” menu in Word for Mac (note, I have not tested this in other Office applications like Excel or PowerPoint).

1. Open up all of the files that you want to add to the “Work” menu which you will be creating in the following steps.
2. In the Main Menu bar, go to VIEW > TOOLBARS > CUSTOMIZE
   
3. Select the 2^nd tab at the top called “Commands”
   
4. Now scroll all the way to the bottom of the “Categories” box and choose “New Menu”
   
5. Now it gets interesting. You need to drag that “New Menu” command from that window up to the to the “Customize Menu” that appears. Place it between the “Table” and “Window” items (or wherever you want).
   
6. If your menu order is not correct, drag the “Window” menu to the left so that the new “Work” menu will appear where it normally would.
7. Now double-click on the “New Menu” so that you can rename it as “Work”.
   
8. Go back to the “Categories” window and go to the top and select “FileOpenFile:”.
   
9. Select one of the open files that you opened in step #1 above. This will be a file that you want to appear in the new “Work” menu you just created.
   
10. Drag the “FileOpenFile:” command over to the new “Work” menu.
    
11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 for any other files that you want in your new “Work” menu.
12. Click “OK” in the “Customize Toolbars and Menus” box and your file(s) will appear in the new “Work” menu.

That’s it!

Later on, if you ever want to go back to add more files, just repeat the process, but OMIT steps 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 (just do steps 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12)

Here’s what it will look like when you are done:

But what about removing entries? Here are the steps:

1. In the Main Menu bar, go to VIEW > TOOLBARS > CUSTOMIZE
   
2. Click on the “Work” menu and it will display all of the files you have in that menu
   
3. Right Click (Ctrl Click) on the file you want to remove from the Work menu and select “Delete Command”.
   
4. Repeat Step #3 for any other files you want to remove.
5. Click “OK” in the “Customize Toolbars and Menus” box and your file(s) will be removed from the “Work” menu.

There you have it! You now have an easy to use “Work” menu within Word 2011 in Office for Mac 2011. Would love some feedback as to if this worked for you and if you found it useful.

Do note: if you move the file from the location where it was when you first set up the link, the command will not work! So, keep those files in your new “Work” menu in the same location.

HTD says: When you dig into the commands of Office 2011 for Mac, you can do just about anything!

When I was young, I played the piano. I was ok at it, did plenty of recitals and learned enough over 5 years to be able to still do some sight-reading even now. My middle daughter, who is 10 now, is quickly surpassing my skills, although for a while, I was able to sight-read some of her pieces so that I could help her. But she is much better than I am now.

My daughter is sort of a fly-by piano player. Our upright piano is right in the most highly trafficked area of our house. When she walks by it, she will stop to quickly knock out a quick piece. I consider her practicing to be more of “grazing” whereas when I practiced the piano, it was every day for about an hour a day. She is not able to practice as much as I would like, simply because she has an extremely busy schedule with 3 nights of 3-hour gymnastics practices and plenty of homework. And whenever we go on a road trip anywhere, she misses out on precious piano practicing time.

The other thing that she really enjoys is playing on her iPhone. A few months ago, I introduced her to GarageBand on the iPhone and she spent hours crafting pieces using the tiny little built-in keyboard and the built in effects and instruments.

Wouldn’t it be nice for her to have a keyboard that could not only allow her to practice when she is on the go, but also would hook into an iPhone or a computer? I often thought about that ideal solution. Then I was introduced to Mobile Keys by Line6. It was the solution that we were looking for. For starters, the Mobile Keys can connect to iOS devices, as well as Macs or PCs. Do note, it is not a stand-alone keyboard, meaning that it does not have a speaker built into it.

Another cool thing about it is, it doesn’t require batteries or a power cord. It is completely powered by the device attached to it, either via USB for the Mac/PC connection or via an iOS connector when you want to use an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to use it. That is extremely convenient.

Before I go into the details, I wanted to interview my daughter about what she thinks about Mobile Keys, and let her do a quick demonstration of how it works.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

When you first connect the Mobile Keys to your iOS device, you may need to download a helper application in order for the keyboard to be recognized within iOS (as well as to automatically apply any firmware updates for the keypad). Once you get your device configured, just use it the way you would a normal keyboard.

The Mobile Keys keyboard comes in two sizes: a 25-key and a 49-key. The one that my daughter and I tested out was the 49-key version. Remember that a full sized piano has 88-keys (36 black and 52 white). Below is the 49-key version:

And this is the 25-key one:

There are some “professional” and other important features built right into the Mobile Keys keyboard including:

• Velocity sensitive keys – the keys seem to respond to how hard and fast you hit them, much the way a piano or professional keyboard would.
• Work with CoreMIDI music apps – the Mobile Keys works perfectly with GarageBand, Reason, Logic and other digital audio workstations.
• No adapters necessary – and that includes drivers. It’s really nice to be able to simply plug-and-play.
• No power needed – the Mobile Keys uses the power of your device (so be sure that you have fully charged up your connected device).
• Full-sized keys – the nice thing is, when you use the keyboard, you don’t have to modify your finger settings because the keys are smaller or more tightly spaced. When you practice, you are using a real-world keyboard.
• Pitch & Mod wheels – you can control the pitch or modulation using the built-in spring-loaded wheels.
• Sustain & Expression pedals – if you have compatible external pedals, you can connect them to the Mobile Keys keyboard to add effects to your playing, much the same way you would with a regular piano.
• Volume and Pan buttons – if you want to jump up or down an octave, you simply can press a button to do so. Similarly, you can increase or decrease the volume.

The rear of the keyboard has inputs for mobile devices, USB and the 2 pedal types.

The most critical thing to the design of Line6′s Mobile Keys is that they wanted the design and feel to emulate the natural playing experience. I found the keys to be very responsive which is important when doing trills for example. Many keyboards on the market simply cannot handle very fast actions either because they are not sensitive enough or the physical keys themselves do not spring back quickly enough. I did not find that to be the case with Mobile Keys. And if you want to adjust the sensitivity of the keys, you can do so by changing the selectable velocity curves to your liking.

HighTechDad Rating

Both my daughter and I found the Mobile Keys to be quite easy to setup and use. A couple of times, however, the keys did not respond and seemed to loose their connection with our iPad or iPhone. However, simply disconnecting the keyboard and force-quitting the application we were using (e.g., GarageBand) and then reconnecting after restarting GarageBand brought the keyboard back into action. Once you have it configured, you definitely have a lot of fun using it with the different keyboard instruments found in GarageBand. It really does bring out the creativity in you or your child. I would definitely recommend the larger keyboard (the 49-key version) simply because you can really play or practice 2-handed pieces much more easily.

The 25-key Mobile Key retails for $149.99 (on Amazon, it is currently $149.00) and the 49-key version goes for $199.99 (and $199.00 on Amazon currently). As I said, I think the extra keys is worth the $50 price difference.

EASY TO GEEK FACTOR – is the device easy to get up and running

FAMILY FRIENDLY – does the device fit well into family environments

RECOMMENDABILITY– would I recommend it to others (more means “yes”)

PRICE POINT – does the price reflect the product function

OVERALL – my general rating

Overall, if you are thinking about getting a keyboard for you or your child to practice with or become creative, I believe that the Mobile Keys by Line6 is a pretty reasonable gadget to get. While you do need a companion device in order to use it (like a Mac/PC/iOS device), the fact that it doesn’t need power really is nice. And it feels so close to the real thing, you might be able to really have a piano on the go when you need it.

Disclosure Text : I have a material connection because I received a gift or sample of a product for consideration in preparing to write this content. I was/am not expected to return this item or gift after my review period. All opinions within this article are my own. More information can be found in my About page as well as here.    

HTD says: Get your piano to go with the Mobile Keys by Line6.

See larger image Line6 MOBILE KEYS 25 25-Key Controller for Mac/PC/iOS () List Price: $149.99 USD New From: $149.00 In Stock

See larger image Line 6 Mobile Keys 99-072-0515 49-Key Midi Controller (Electronics) List Price: $199.99 USD New From: $199.00 In Stock

With Springtime comes change. Hills start getting greener, trees start having leaves emerge from their dormant branches, flowers start opening, eyes start getting scratchy, noses start running, sniffles replace tabletop conversation, sneezes disrupt the normal flow of life. Yes, with Spring comes pollen and allergies. It’s pretty hard to get away from it unless you live in a desert or the arctic or on the moon, or magically aren’t bothered by allergies.

When Spring rolls round in our household, the share price of Kleenex and allergy medicine consequently goes up! We all have varying levels of allergies in our household, ranging from fatal peanut allergies that my youngest has, to general cat allergies to dust particles and finally including the massive pollen of spring and summer.

I think that our kids would not be surviving the spring if not for the help from some Honeywell filters. Up until a few weeks ago, my wife and I kept alternating which of my kids’ rooms held the Honeywell HTT-145 (see my review of it here). The problem is, all of my kids (and my wife and I) were all suffering pretty badly from allergies, and to cap it off, my oldest daughter is asthmatic. We needed to have a really strong solution for her room.

That’s where the Honeywell HPA-150 came into play as the savior from dust, pollen and air-born allergens. The HPA-150 is a true HEPA filter that is in a form factor that works in just about any room. The dark color blends into the room and the tower design make it be able to be placed just about anywhere.

The true HEPA filter of the HPA-150 gets up to 99.97% of all floating particles like pollen, smoke, dust and pet dander. It can capture specks as small as 0.3 microns from the air that passes through the filter. For particles larger than that, there is a carbon pre-filter that helps remove other odors found around the house.

The filter is extremely easy to use, there are 3 simple fan settings: low, medium and high. At the low setting, you can barely hear the fan as it is extremely quiet. At the medium setting, the noise of the fan is still extremely low and barely noticeable. And at the high setting, you definitely hear the fan, but it is not overpowering. For night-time, if you use a sound machine, the medium or high level provide, I believe, enough white noise to drown out ambient noise (which is a plus for kids sleeping – especially in our household).

Putting in and replacing the filters is also a no-braining. The back of the unit comes off and you simply remove the 2 filters and replace them with new ones. There is also the pre-filter that you can simply clean yourself using some water and letting it dry. You need to replace the HEPA filter 1 time a year (about a $40/year cost – but compare that against Kleenex and allergy pills).

HighTechDad Ratings

So, how well does the HPA-150 work? Well first of all, lets talk about my kids using it. All that they have to do is turn the knob to turn it on or off. It couldn’t be easier. Secondly, the unit seems to be fairly safe, no fingers to get chopped off by a spinning fan blade. But lastly, how well does it filter the air? Before using the HPA-150, my oldest daughter was pretty plagued by her allergies, coupled with asthma. So, we put the HPA-150 into her room and closed the door and let it run on high before she went to bed. Then when she went to bed, we left it running on medium the entire night. The next morning she definitely seemed to be less congested. When I asked her how she felt, she told me that she had actually slept better. I realize that this is not scientific, but ensuring that my children sleep well is important.

We now use the HTT-145 in one room (saving the noses and eyes of 2 kids) and the HPA-150 in another. And it seems to be working well.

The HPA-150 has a retail price of $199.99 and you can currently get it on Amazon for $136.67 which makes it, in my opinion, quite a good deal. Now if my wife and I can just get one for our room!

EASY TO GEEK FACTOR – is the device easy to get up and running

FAMILY FRIENDLY – does the device fit well into family environments

RECOMMENDABILITY– would I recommend it to others (more means “yes”)

PRICE POINT – does the price reflect the product function

OVERALL – my general rating

Disclosure Text : I have a material connection because I received a gift or sample of a product for consideration in preparing to write this content. I was/am not expected to return this item or gift after my review period. All opinions within this article are my own. More information can be found in my About page as well as here.

HTD says: Why suffer though allergy season when you have Honeywell to help you out with their HEPA filters like the HPA-150 or the HTT-145!

It’s been a few months now since LG contacted me to find out if I was interested in participating in a head-to-head competition with another “daddy blogger.” It wasn’t a challenge of wit or writing or sports (well not really) – it was a challenge to see whose living room could be “techorated” better by a professional technology designer (Janna Robinson). The makeover would be filmed by a professional film crew as well.  LG supplied the technology, the script writing, the coordination, the furniture, the film crew, sound crew, lighting crew, and a bunch of other crews that I don’t know what their technical names are, while I just supplied my old technology, my home and my natural good looks (sorry). Oh, LG also managed to get ESPN’s Stuart Scott to be the narrator of what was to be a fully produced video of both daddy bloggers’ home entertainment makeover.

Sounds exciting, right? Well let me tell you. It WAS exciting. But doing video production work is really not for me. I’m going to stick with my own quick Handycam videos and my writing, at least for now. The amount and level of coordination is simply staggering, and I am not sure how many showings of Murphy’s Law we had, but the process was definitely interesting. Kudos to all of those crews for their particular expertise, LG’s PR firm (LG-One) and the others who pulled this entire process together.

The video that was produced, narrated by Stuart Scott and hosted by Janna Robinson, was used on the LG Facebook page as well as in advertisements appearing on ESPN. I had old high school friends and people who I hadn’t seen in ages contact me to tell me they had just seen an ad with me in it. It was all for this LG Techorating Home Entertainment Makeover Challenge on Facebook.

I thought it might be interesting to give a quick rundown of the process using some of pictures that I took along the way. But before I do that, I wanted to showcase the final video (the longer cut) of the makeover:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

It’s pretty amazing the amount of work that went into creating that 1-2 minutes of video. That is something that you don’t really think about when you watch advertisements or videos like these.

Designing in a Vacuum

Janna, who did the design work of both of the makeovers, never saw my place until the day before the actual filming. The only things that I had provided to her were some snapshots and a pseudo-architectural drawing of my living room space. Here are a few photos of what she had to work with and how completely neglected my original setup was. She had to pick out furniture, curtains, paint color and accessories. Probably the easiest thing to choose were the 55″ LG 3D Smart TV and the 3D Blu-Ray Entertainment System which would be the new centerpiece of my made-over living room.

Here’s what she had to work with:

The TV was pre-HDMI so it was really old. It was an HD one though. I had lots of things connected to an HDMI hub and then from that hub to a receiver and from the receive to an HDMI-to-DVI converter to the TV. The sofas were as old as our oldest daughter, and while very comfortable, we had no attachment to them whatsoever. Our living room is small and was not really much of a living space. And, since our house doesn’t have a family room, it is where we do our regular “family movie nights” and video gaming.

But the tech was old and covered with cobwebs, literally! And the speakers were held up with oddly placed tape.

And if you looked behind my entertainment center, you would see a mess of wires (yeah, I actually hooked everything up at one point!):

And I managed to quickly throw together a very, not-to-scale diagram of my living room for Janna:

With that, Janna disappeared to do some mental design work, order the things she needed for the Techorating makeover and do the same thing for the other daddy blogger. In the meantime, I tried to pass the days waiting for Film Day to come along. A few days before Film Day, I received a script that had been written that I was supposed to memorize (I later learned that my lines could be ad-libbed a bit as long as I stuck to the message). Yes, everything was carefully planned out.

The Day Before Filming

On the day before filming, I was to meet with some of the production crew as well as Janna. As luck would have it, there were delays at the airport but eventually the team made it over. Also, a bunch of the materials and LG product began showing up for the shoot.

Seeing 4 of these awesome LG 3D TV’s got me pretty excited. I was going to get one for every room in this house, I thought! Actually, 1 was for me and 1 was for the other daddy bloggers makeover. And there were backups for each of ours so that if something happened with the 1st one, there would be a second one just in case.

There was also a large pivoting arm that the TV was going to be mounted to and attached to my chimney area, but a decision was made at the last minute to NOT mount the pivoting arm to the chimney due to logistics. Eventually a stand was used.

We spend a few hours learning about what to expect the next day, the day of the filming. We were to start bright and early in the morning!

The Day of the Shoot

At 6am the next day, we got the knock on the door, as expected. Different crews started rolling in. After that, the entire day became a pretty big blur to me. The photos below are part of a larger photoset from the shoot that is on my Flickr set. First there was make-up:

Yes, even I got make-up!

Then lighting and electrical was set up:

The street and our driveway were filled with production trucks and crew:

Our existing living room furniture made it out to the driveway:

Trucks even in front of our neighbor’s house.

The Sound Crew’s cart was packed as well:

The setup took a while. And I got to exchange lines with Janna for the first part of the makeover. Then the action moved outside where it was trying really hard to rain. We all watched the action from the inside:

Here’s the “set” all cleared out:

At one point, midway through the filming, tragedy struck. Up until that day, we had a hamster. We had a pretty large hamster cage complete with multiple rooms connected via tubes. Unfortunately, its cage was in a shot and had to be moved. So, the cage was moved to one of my kid’s rooms and placed on the floor. Well, our new family dog, Rufus – a rescue Chihuahua + some other breed – also happened to be in that same room. The door was closed and the two animals were left unsupervised. A few minute later, my daughters came to me in tears saying that Rufus had killed Hammie. I was in mid shoot  so we had to take a bit of a breather. To make a long story short, the Chihuahua did what it was bred to do way back in the ancient times, kill rodents.

The entire thing devastated my youngest daughter who had to curl up with a book and a box of Kleenex and get some moral support and comfort from the Wardrobe lady.

The day wore on and after I had done my painting portion (yes, I actually did paint most of the room) and the hand on the wall “accident”, I was actually kicked out of the house so that they could finish the tech make-over. For a while, I just hung outside with only the company of Rufus (as my family had cleared out to stay out of the way). Now, Rufus doesn’t look like a killer, does he?

Once I came back to see the new living room space, I got behind the camera to record the “reveal”.  By that point, day had turned into night and there needed to be “day” in the shoot so a big reflective screen with some very bright lights was set up in front of the living room window (much to the annoyance of our neighbors):

Amazing, no?

And That’s a Wrap!

Finally we neared a “wrap” on the entire project. It was close to 11:00 at night. (Yes, all of the filming and make-over stuff happened in ONE DAY!) The bright lights and loud generators powering all of the lights and equipment had not only caught the attention of most of our neighbors, but also the sheriff who showed up to shut the filming party down. Shortly after that, everyone had pretty much left and the excitement had died down. One of my daughters had a friend over for a sleepover, and they actually spent the night sleeping on the new sofas in our LG-Techorated Living Room!

You can see the official before and after shots below:

Overall, the entire process was fascinating. I had only expected to have a couple of people show up with a HD camcorder or something and then just move around some furniture. I was both wow-ed and pleasantly surprised with the crew of 35+ who each had specific responsibilities and tasks and who executed on those tasks effortlessly and well. And, of course, I love my newly made-over living room. Janna had been able to transform the space into something much more cozy and usable. And in the past, where my wife had complained about how overpowering the TV was, now the new LG 3D TV integrated into the room much more elegantly. And the 3D TV and 3D Blu-Ray technology ran circles around my old set up. The 3D is simply amazing and the 2D is sharp, crisp and vibrant. And both the Blu-Ray and the TV are “smart”, meaning that they are internet-connected devices where you can stream all sorts of media using a variety of services. Quite a nice upgrade!

If the voting and giveaway is still active on the LG Facebook Techorating page, be sure to enter to win and vote for my makeover in the process. Oh, and here is the final results (after we tweaked it back to have it use some more of our own decorations):

I would like to thank LG again for this opportunity of not only the makeover and the technology they provided, but also being exposed to a new experience of being in-front of the camera and part of a professional production. I’d love to do it again!

Disclosure: I am not being compensated by LG or its affiliates for any articles or posts. LG provided me with LG Electronics products as part of the Techorator program experience.  However, all articles, tweets, and other materials that I post related to LG products and the Techorator program are entirely my own opinion. More information can be found in my About page as well as here.

HTD says: LG stands for “life’s good” For me, it’s “life’s great,” especially in my newly techorated living room!

Are you using cloud computing yet? If so, that’s great. If not, what is holding you back? Do you know enough about it? Do its capabilities confuse you? Have you not found a good use for it? I would guess that you are using cloud computing without even knowing it.

As I work in the cloud industry, I get to see the trends as they happen and what innovative ways people are using the cloud to drive business success. Honestly, I think that developers and companies are only just starting to tap the vast potential of cloud computing. While many of the early cloud adopters of (gasp) 3 years ago most likely now have fully vetted out business plans, products and services that hinge on the elastic scalability of cloud infrastructure, for example, we now are seeing the next round of innovators who are living and breathing the tech industry revitalization via the successes of their peers and colleagues.

And the business possibilities are only growing because of the successes of others. Think about social media, social sharing and community services that appeared a few years ago (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and the like). Also think about longer established product and service delivery sites like Amazon or Netflix. Those have communities tied to them as well. As these services grow, their data store of user preferences, likes, purchases, and interactions grows as well, exponentially, in fact. In order to accommodate this huge influx of social and personal data as well as to build recommendation engines and inter-networking with social data, new technologies are coming to light (think Big Data, for example).

So why am I suddenly in the weeds here and not up in the clouds? It’s important to map out some of the trends that I’m seeing in the cloud space and how people are using technology. But developers and innovators do not operate in a vacuum. They need inspiration. They need ideas. And they need lots and lots of coffee. What they don’t want are hurdles to overcome, like figuring out an infrastructure solution. That’s one place where the cloud is important. It’s there, ready to be consumed, ready to scale and ready to be pushed to the limit. The sky’s the limit with clouds, right?

But I want to talk about a use case for cloud computing that I’ve seen to be extremely popular and one that you don’t immediately think about: Test and Development environments. Trial and error is such an important process when developing or creating…well…just about anything. If you don’t try something, you will never succeed with it. This is true when writing, painting, building, composing and crafting solutions. We have all been trained to collect our thoughts before jumping in headfirst, regardless of the situation. Most people do this; it just depends on how risk adverse you are. I, for example, tend to write out my articles with mental preparation only. I have a subject, I create a title, I get the theme and then I just go with it, circling back at the end to fine tune things before publication. Artists work in the same way; they spend countless hours doing studies, testing colors, materials, application and a plethora of other tests and tweaks before they work on their final masterpiece.

Developers, entrepreneurs and innovators do the same thing. They start with an idea, get it on paper and then simply begin the execution of their vision. So once they get to the point of having to create something out of nothing, they need infrastructure to do so. If they are a small business, a start-up or an individual working in their garage, I’m guessing that they don’t have too much room for experimentation, nor a capital budget to play with. And that is where cloud computing is so powerful. It provides these businesses with the canvas to paint on, the scratch paper to scrawl out their ideas, a pile of wood or metal from which to build a structure or a pen to compose their thoughts into flowing phrases and paragraphs.

“Disposable Infrastructure” as I like to refer to it, gives small business (and large) the ability to create, test, tweak and destroy complex architectures, while only spending a minimal amount of capital (and effort) in the process. You build it, use it and tear it down when you are done. That is the beauty of the cloud. And, metered, usage-based billing allows you to keep your budget intact and tight. Many cloud providers offer you trials or pay-as-you-go plans. This means, you could even potentially develop locally and then spin up a cloud environment, put your code, apps or what have you, in that cloud environment and test it out in a near real-life environment. You can load test the architecture, open it up for others to try and continue to iterate as you fine-tune your project. You can save environments for later, branch out with a different experiment, and then roll back to a different instance (assuming your cloud provider allows you to store server images or environments).

And the nice thing is, as I mentioned, you can fully destroy and delete your environments probably in just a couple of clicks of the mouse so that you can start from scratch, OR, you can promote your architecture to be a full production system. I have seen companies do this. They launched their product as a private alpha, got feedback, tweaked the design, launched as a beta, received more success and then converted (or copied) that architecture into a fully public-facing environment. Many of these same companies then continue their development cycles in tandem within the same cloud but on infrastructure within that cloud dedicated to Test and Dev.

So hopefully you can see the importance of this use case. It provides businesses and individuals and easy way to innovate, iterate designs and code, and control their costs in the process. You really wouldn’t want to do this on hardware that you bought or signed a yearlong contract to use (or under-use). And you definitely don’t want to have to worry about power, security, cooling, bandwidth and other headaches associated with doing it yourself.

The nice thing about cloud computing is that it frees you up to focus on your ideas, your business, your vision and your success, while letting someone else worry about the infrastructure powering your product or service. The cloud encourages innovation. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Facebook or Google comes from a few people starting up with just some ideas, lots of coffee and plenty of clouds to power their success.

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

HTD says: Use the cloud to create, innovate and succeed!