Home Inventory Software - Hometify Blog

How do I Manage My Book Library

info@hometify.com — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 08:14:00 -0700

A few years ago I bought a new house. It was very exciting. I was going to move to a new place and transfer all my things and rearrange them.

Everything happens for the first time…

Maybe I did not know or I was in a rush, but I put all my books, in big boxes and even forgot to add labels. I had about 90 computer related books, 50 fiction books and almost 200 miscellaneous magazines in my library at that moment.

It was a real nightmare to unpack and sort all of these books and magazines again.

I decided to try some book cataloging technique; I found a lot of tips on the Internet but almost of them were for real (and very big) libraries. Despite it I chose some suggestions, in general I wanted to know two simple things:

How many books do I have;
Find the desired book with ease.

I spent couple of hours searching for something useful, of course there were a lot of computer programs (free and paid versions) but almost every of them had some disadvantage and also I did not want an all-in-one book catalog software – I only wanted a simple list of my books with some useful features (like sorting, grouping and searching). So, I decided to create my own book catalog software. In a couple of days I created a simple application with the following features:

Ability to add new book and enter the necessary information (ISBN, Author, Title, Publisher, Year, Format, etc.);
Search in the book database by title, author and/or ISBN;
Sometimes it’s useful to have a book list with full details on the paper, so I added printing features too.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a lot of third-party book catalog software on the market, but they are standalone applications, thus, we at Hometify decided to add an extension to our home inventory software in order to store and manage book specific information as a part of home items.

We believe that this will be a great addition to our home inventory software. Stay in touch.

How to register a new account

info@hometify.com — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 08:08:00 -0700

Simple steps about how to register a new account (Infographic)

Preventing a mess at home

info@hometify.com — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 11:08:00 -0700

To achieve your goals you need to set a realistic time frame. Give yourself a couple of weeks of daily uncluttering before evaluating your progress (2 or 3 hours per day is quite enough). If you think that uncluttering your home may take longer than you thought, just rearrange your time frame.

At the first time you might think that it is very difficult and even decide that it is impossible to arrange everything in the house. But you will see the better side of it, when there will be more clean rooms than the messed ones.

Establish your motivation

It is really very simple!

Before you throw your coat over the back of a chair ask yourself “Is this where it belongs?” Think first, act later.

If you want a more organized home, you should think as an organized person. It’s true that it takes only 21 days to establish a new habit. Start telling yourself that you are an organized person. It helps you to believe that you are really organized and after a few weeks you will become organized.

Once you develop a new habit, it will become second nature and will not look something special.

Improve anytime. When you enter or leave the room, look around, think is it something there you can arrange, or can you improve its appearance?

Focus on doing one thing at a time. If you are organizing your garage, concentrate on it, do it with excellence; if you are watching a TV show or a movie, enjoy it. There is a big difference between effectiveness and efficiency.

Reward yourself

Plan the celebration. After that you finish uncluttering the last room.

The best reward is to invite your friends or family in order to enjoy the beautiful home you have created!

Prepare to unclutter your home

info@hometify.com — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 00:16:00 -0700

What is clutter?

Clutter is anything for which you have no use or need everything from outgrown clothes to old newspapers. It is stuff you don't want anymore.

More clutter brings more mess in the house, more stress for you and less space for really useful things.

Uncluttering is the act of eliminating these unimportant things. It will free up time, energy, and space for the things that really matter.

No matter how much stuff you own, or how small your home you can transform mess into order. You can get rid of clutter.

Why clutter happens

Clutter happens, even if you don’t wish to. If you want to get rid of clutter in your home you should understand how and why it happens.

One reason we have so much mess in the home because our lives have become more complex. We are all rushing off in different directions every single day. We don’t stop even in weekends. And there is no time to think about this little and unimportant thing – cluttered home. When we stop we are too tired to deal with it.

How often you are late for work or for an appointment because you cannot find your keys or something important you need to bring with you? How often you are going from one room to another to remember where are the glasses? How often do you misplace important documents or personal notes?

Drawback of cluttered home

Sometimes we go shopping with nothing particular in mind and we always come home with something. We just keep bringing stuff into our homes, which is already cluttered. It creates more stress by digging ourselves deeper in mess. Sometimes we buy something on impulse only to discover that we really don’t need it, or we buy some stuff to replace an item that was lost, only to find the original item at a later date.

Sometimes we throw out something or give it away, but mostly we keep our stuff because we can’t bear to let it go even we don’t need that thing anymore. Our stuff becomes quite attached to us.

Knowing that everything is misplaced creates unnecessary stress. Just think, how much energy you waste each day searching for things. Every time you see bunch of magazines, old newspapers and other clutter in one place you feel more tired. Too much stress over a prolonged period can lead to serious health problems.

Also, it is much more time-consuming to have to clean around clutter.

But, the main reason people cannot unclutter their houses is that sometimes they need help getting started.

The power of assessment

It is very useful to assess your current situation. You can try these simple steps:

Walk out the front door, close it and turn around;
Pretend that you are someone who has never been to your house. Look around; imagine that you are seeing that place for the first time.

Rate your impression on a scale of 1 to 10. How would you rate your first impression of your house? How far off is your impression from the situation you would like to make?

Assessing your current situation helps you to think of your home as a reflection of your interests, passions or beliefs.

The next post will show you how to reorganize the home. Keep in touch.

Smartphones for Your Property Management

info@hometify.com — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:38:27 -0700

The smartphone is the most important game-changing technology of the 21st century, making huge waves as did its predecessors the personal computer and the Internet. While discussing the role smartphones play in our lives, we can’t avoid highlighting the contributions of technology’s major players along the way.

Ever-advancing technology has made possible many things that once seemed impossible. Since the radio signal transmission by Marconi and the first telephone introduction by Alexander Graham Bell, the mobiles have gone through the long development process to become smaller and slimmer each day, thus allowing people to communicate like never before. The term 'smartphone' is no exaggeration at all, as besides being sleeker; the modern mobiles are able to perform an extremely wide and tremendously impressive range of functions.

Despite the way advanced features smartphones offer, there quite significant differences that lead them far away the regular phones, including email capabilities, internet browsing, personal organizers, ability to read popular document formats, and superior contact management. With no industry standard definition of smartphones, it is up to manufacturers to deliver 'a cell phone with superior functions, offering a somewhat PC-like experience for the users' for their device to fall in a smartphone range.

With greater advancements in technology the competition between smartphone operating system companies and manufacturers is rising drastically, the most peculiar being Android vs. iOS. Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems are the most widely used smartphone operating systems and have invaded the market through their striking features and user contentment. With the latest Nielsen reports, it’s fair to say that Apple is the largest smartphone manufacturer in the US while Android is way ahead of iOS as a smartphone OS. But there is one more industry player holding 9% of the U.S. smartphone OS market share - Windows Phone 7. Bearing in mind the fact that while major head start its competitors enjoyed, this should be regarded as a bit of accomplishment.

With this three giants competing head-to-head, the standards for the end customers get higher day by day. Those who have ever owned a smartphone will agree that these devices play extremely important role in our everyday life, bringing so much comfort and convenience that we even forget how we lived without them… Keeping this in mind, despite the many other conveniences, soon you’ll be able to access and manage even your home inventory items using your favorite and smart mobile device such as iPhone; Windows Phone 7 or any Android based smartphone… Please again recollect that your property… does really matter.

Several tips for redesigning your home

info@hometify.com — Sat, 26 May 2012 00:41:45 -0700

Sometimes, life is quite boring and we, as human beings always try changing something in order to make it more interesting. One of the most effective ways of making life joyful is home repairs. But the process itself can become much more boring and dull than the routine lifestyle itself.

So here are some tips for starting the redesigning process for your home.

Mind the arrangement of the rooms

Even thousands of years B.C. our ancestors thought and discussed some of the main principles of room placement. Feng shui is as good example of the above mentioned. Besides that, the position of the rooms largely depends on the position of the house itself, its disposition relative to the sun, etc. So read articles, read some interesting blogs and believe, it will economize your money with energy saving, and help you create a warm and cozy atmosphere at home.

Mind furniture placement

Remember, in the era of Services Marketing physical evidence is one of the main aspects to be taking care of. So is your home. Right placement of furniture and other stuff in your house can help you economize on your time, energy and nerves at the same time. So take care of it: think which furniture is used most frequently and what the usual sequence of their usage is. Once again, designer magazines and web-sites can help here.

Mind color

Color psychology is one of the most recent and useful sciences in the world. You should always remember that some colors are more aggressive than others:

Some are to calm you, whilst some are making your nervous;
Some colors make you hungry and are good for kitchen;
Some of them are on the contrary, working as vanishing detergents for your appetite.

So mind the color, and mind the placement of the colors in various rooms.

Mind modernity

The worldwide experience does matter. All the catalogues and booklets, featuring the most modern, state of the art designs are created using global experience. The designs are created with the combinations of color psychology, ergonomics and other sciences to help you create the atmosphere which will maximize the comfort of living for you and members of your family. So as a first thing it would be good to look at those interior design guides and choose the design you like. Some examples of online magazines include (Dezeen, Interior Design, Home Designing).

Itemize items

And the last but not the least: as the repairs process most usually creates a lot of mass at home and therefore the risk of your losing some of important items is rocketing. So remember to use your home inventory software before and after. Hometify will help you itemize all the important stuff and give their temporary locations to them. This way it will be much easier to finish your redesign process peacefully.

Insuring your home

info@hometify.com — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:32:42 -0700

Your house, most likely, is the most valuable asset and it is very important to make sure that it is insured.

To get the most of your coverage, you will want to insure your home for its replacement cost. It should be the same amount of money that will be necessary to build a new one in case of full destruction. It would be useful to calculate the real value of your property in comparison with average price in the nearby. Insurance agent, homebuilder or appraiser would be able to give more precise value.

Keep in mind that, if you have done any significant changes, for example added additional items to your home, make sure that you get your home reappraised. Adding additions increases home value, so you need more coverage on your policy.

Additionally, it's a good idea to keep an itemized list of all the valuables in home inventory software too. You can read more detailed instructions in the previous blog post.

More tips for homeowners:

Review your policies annually;
Identify risks you face that are not covered by your homeowners policy;
Understand how much coverage you have;
Do your homework when shopping for insurance;
Research carrier performance.

Securing your data

info@hometify.com — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:07:00 -0700

We all know that doing backups is essential and very critical. But often it gets forgotten at the most critical period.

Modern days our PCs are keeping myriads of information, most of which are very important to us:

Financial documentations;
Family photos and videos;
Personal files;
Full live performance concert of our favorite Music band.

Most of the information is not becoming subject to changes but still some of them are being modified and constantly updated. Because of that it is essential to have the backup copy of the most up to date files to be sure that the information is fully secured.

Archiving data can be considered one of the best solutions to the problem, however the space needed to archive our data may be way too large. Let’s consider some of the best methods of archiving.

Buy an additional hard drive. 1 TB drives are ridiculously cheap these days;
Use backup software to automate the backup process. There are lots of applications for backing up, such as Acronis (for Microsoft Windows), etc.

Both methods together guarantee a good level of protection. We can move the important to us files to HDD from time to time, or let the software do it for us. Here automatizing software provide a good help to those in need. They only need particular optimizations after which they will make the back-up duplicates of our data according to predefined schedule.

However despite the above mentioned it is also crucial to have an external backup. Syncing data to additional drivers protects you against the primary hardware failure, but it does not protect you against stealing your home computer or laptop or even burning your house down.

So here comes the need of saving your data off-site. Even at those times when people were saving the information on papers, they came to the idea that the papers needed to be duplicated and saved at a location different from the primary living facility. Nowadays you do not need to walk or ride tens of miles to get to your nearest neighbor and pass the paper to keep it outside your house. You just can upload your data to off-site servers in several seconds and be calm about the safety of it.

But what happens to your home inventory data when you upload it to Hometify? Is it secure on our servers?

As mentioned in previous post the safety of your information is one of the priorities of Hometify team. Hometify server software makes the duplicates of you data on constant bases ensuring us against hardware failure.

So we want you to know that we always remember that your property matters and your home inventory software must ensure highest level of security and safety of your data.

Photography for Hometify

info@hometify.com — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:22:00 -0700

As we have already agreed unfortunately none of us are secured from accidents and we must remember, that the best time to take care of the damage brought by accidents is before they happen. You are already aware how can home inventory software help you into your relations with insurance companies and as we have told you in our previous post very useful and essential is taking photos of your items. So here we are going to talk about the hints and best practices of taking photographs of your items.

You will definitely have to take photos of your home and your vehicle from outside, so it is better if you start photographing your possessions on sunny, bright days. Start from outside. Remember, if the process last for too long you can still create artificial “light” for things inside your home, unlike the outside ones;
Be thorough and besides remembering all the rooms inside your house remember the buildings outside it: items in basement, workshop or garage can also be valuable for you;
Take a ruler and place it near each item you photograph. Remember not all sizes of your items are measurable through just looking at its photos. So make it easier for your agent to give you the compensations;
Save the photos off-site. With Hometify it is completely secure to store your photos on our servers. Keep in mind that once a disaster occurs, the data kept at home can easily become lost or damaged. So attaching the photos to your list in Hometify can save you from worries about the above mentioned;
Take photos of damaged items (but first make sure it is safe for you). Take the photos from every angle so that you get the whole image of what has been damaged.

We will continue giving you tips for home inventory process, because we want you to really understand that your property matters.

What are the main determinants of safe internet surfing?

info@hometify.com — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 11:50:00 -0700

There are several criteria which need to be looked upon when seeking for a secure internet surfing.

First of all, the computer must be free of any vulnerability. Each day hundreds of viruses are created, the sole and prime goal of which is to get an access to our private information and to misuse the information later on. According to Panda Security there were 46 million viruses in the whole world by the first half of 2011. By that time 40% of U.S households have been affected by strong viruses and the estimated cost to those households was $4.55 billion. Well, we must remember that these impressive numbers are rising drastically day by day and all of us can be considered the potential victims of those malware.

Using your Internet Browsers

When entering online banking, or paying our bill at amazon.com we are sure that the connection is secured by Industry Standard Protocol, itself ensured by the existence of relative certificate.

The same certificate is a “must have” for those systems which are keeping crucial private information of its users and home inventory software are no exceptions. Therefore you must be 100% sure that you are on a right web-page. With Hometify you can check you are not fooled by an information pirates and you’re at a right web-page by looking at the address bar of your browser.

Hometify login page

Other features of Hometify Advanced Security System

Alongside with delivering the information using secured connection, Hometify uses some of other mechanisms to ensure that your home inventory data is 100% protected.

Encryption

Everything transferred to our servers during the communication is encrypted (user names, passwords, personal information, your items, etc.)

Different application and database servers

Separation of the application and database servers from each other guarantees that no one with bad intentions cannot access home inventory list without passing a hardware firewall.

Hardware firewalls

Data storage is designed to transfer information from certain numbers of hosts only. These devices can manage huge amount of traffic with a minimum latency. So you can be sure that your home inventory data is accessible for you any time you like.

Monitoring

When it comes to security, monitoring is the one of the most essential and useful things for us to be sure that there are no potential threats for you and your information. It helps us get the most up-to-date information from our data-centers and application servers, so that your account in Hometify is always in a healthy state.

We store the most important information in separate data-storages. Credit card numbers or other sensitive data is stored with the most trusted payment processors in the world. We use Amazon Checkout and FastSpring for payments. They provide a top level security both for money transactions and storage for your credit card information.

Some more considerations about security

There are some more recommendations to be sure that your home inventory software is more secured:

Always access your home inventory software from a trusted computer;
Check your computer for viruses on a regular bases;
Always check that the web-site you are visiting has a valid certificate;
Protect your password. Avoid telling sharing it with anyone on the earth. Hometify has a nice, useful feature for your family members, which allows you to create separate accounts for them and assign certain privileges;
Sign out when after having finished your work. It helps you be sure that there is no active account cache left in the browser, especially when you are using a shared computer.

We will permanently be providing you with updated information about security issues, so keep in touch. We do make our best to protect you, because your property matters!