“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.”
― Mark Twain

This seems like an odd quote from a man who spent much of his life as a newspaper journalist, but there is a decent amount of truth to it. In the 1800’s, people had few sources of information available, one or two newspapers if they were lucky. In the year 2012 our choices are literally infinite. The problem we face today is how to sort through all the noise and find the information we want.

News and information comes in many forms; Dairy, industry, local, political, sports, etc, and there are many different tools available to access it. News apps generally break down into two categories, specialized and aggregated.

Specialized news apps are usually produced by the publisher, are feature rich and contain in-depth content. The Fox News app for iPad and The New York Times for Android are examples. I use specialized apps for local news and market information. I use the Fresno Bee app for Fresno State Football news, obituaries, and local stories of interest. Dairy Market Central and Dairy Source are two excellent apps for dairy specific news, CME market data, weather, and more.

News aggregators are a way to pull information from many different sources into one place. My favorite news aggregator for mobile devices is Flipboard. Flipboard uses Twitter and other social media sources for all its content. For this article I will focus on Twitter. Twitter users post links to news stories, Flipboard follows those links and brings the stories back to you. You simply flip through the articles like a magazine until you find something of interest.

Within Flipboard you can easily search for and subscribe to Twitter feeds from a variety of news organizations like @CNN (Note: The @ sign denotes a Twitter address), @USAToday and @ESPN, and specialized publications like @DairyToday and @FarmJournal. You can even subscribe to individuals like @DairyDino (That’s me, by the way).

Some individuals and organizations perform the role of news curators. These people search the Internet for news they think is relevant to their audience. Many state (@CAFarmBureau) and county (@kingsfarmbureau) Farm Bureaus tweet news articles as well as dairy trade groups like Western United Dairymen (@WUDnews).

In addition to subscribing to individual Twitter feeds, Flipboard allows you to follow Twitter lists, groups of Twitter feeds created by you or others. Typically these lists match up people posting similar content. A popular list is @FollowFarmer/ag-journalism, which contains a group of 115 Ag journalists. I just created @DairyDino/FarmJournalMedia, a list with all of Farm Journal publication’s feeds. You can create your own custom lists, however, you must make these lists on Twitter, not in Flipboard. Probably best of all, Flipboard makes it easy to share articles with people who have similar interests than you.

If Mark Twain were alive today, I’m not sure he’d have good things to say about the bias of modern media, but with easy access to so much information Mr. Twain would certainly be well informed, and thanks to Flipboard, you can be too.

Extra Content:
Flipboard offers a third option for subscribing to content, searches. From within Flipboard you can search for keywords such as “Dairy”, “Cow”, or “Milk” and Flipboard will query several sources including Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Youtube, and Instagram.

Links:
Fox News Apps
New York Times Apps
Dairy Market Central Android
Dairy Market Central iOS
Dairy Source Andorid
Dairy Source iOS
Flipboard
Twitter

Share/Save

The pirates were able to trick my mother into giving up her information with a little virus that popped up a message that said, “Your Yahoo account is about to be closed permanently, if you would like to keep your account active, log in below.” Not knowing any better, she sent her password to the pirates. Lucky for her it was only her email.

These scams are happening all the time with banks and credit cards. So here is the lesson. Never enter your login information into a web browser unless you check the address and know it to be legitimate.

For example, If you bank at Wells Fargo and want to log into your www.wellsfargo.com online account, make sure the address in the web browser is in fact www.wellsfargo.com. Not something like wellsfargo.04.ru. This address gives your bank account information to pirates in Russia.

In addition to verifying the authenticity of websites prior to entering sensitive information, strong passwords help keep your information secure as well.

Here are a few tips for strong and secure passwords.
1. Use a different password for every website.
2. Make your passwords long with 10 or more characters.
3. Include lower and upper case letters, numbers, punctuation and symbols.
4. Don’t use words found in the dictionary. Make up acronyms from phrases you can easily remember. Example: “Dairy Today magazine is the best.” Use the first letter from each word and your password would be DTmitb.
5. Change your passwords often

Most people don’t follow these rules because it is difficult to remember so many passwords. A simple way to have different strong passwords that you can easily remember is to build them from a formula. Here’s an example:

1. Pick some numbers you will remember. Don’t use your birthday or ATM pin number. Let’s use the number “42”.
2. Now create an acronym like “DTmitb”.
3. Pick some special characters, I’ll use “<>”
4. String those together and you end up with 42DTmitb<>. This will be the basis for all your passwords.
5. To create a unique password for each website that is easy to remember, add several letters from the website’s name to your formula.

Let’s pretend this is for Facebook. I’ll use the first and last letter of the name “F” & “k” and add them to the end of the formula. So now the final password will be: 42DTmitb<>Fk. For Gmail it would be 42DTmitb<>Gl and so on.

This formula is only one example of millions of combinations. Take some time to sketch out your own formula then go change all your passwords. Every 6 months or so come up with a new formula and change them all again.

They say “there is no such thing as a free lunch”, but lunch in exchange for fixing your mother’s computer is probably the closest thing to it.

Extra Content:
A few other sources for creating strong passwords:
The Ultimate Guide for Creating Strong Passwords

Test your password strength here –

—-
Making Strong Passwords
Author: Dino Giacomazzi
Publication: Dairy Today
Publication Date: September 2012

Share/Save

I am pretty convinced at this point in my life (age 43) that my brain is full. I have noticed that with each new piece of information, something old disappears. Sort of like culling cows. Low producing information gets culled to make room for fresh information. The problem is, I don’t have control over which information gets culled like I do on the dairy. Fortunately, there is a way to increase your information capacity even if your dairy is capped.

Enter Evernote, a digital notebook that helps you remember just about everything in your business and personal life. You can capture and store documents, typed notes, voice notes, photos, videos, and more in one central place across all your devices. Evernote can be used on mobile phones and the web, and has desktop applications for Windows and Mac. You can also share notes with other people which means Evernote is a great collaboration tool.

Evernote allows you to organize information using notebooks and tags so your data is easy to find. Here are a few ways I utilize Evernote every day on the dairy and farm:

Feed: Every time I make a feed purchase or agree to a contract I follow up with an email to create a paper trail. I forward emails to my Evernote account and store them in my Business:Dairy:Feed notebook.

Employees: Inside the Business:Employees notebook I keep a note for each employee. I track job performance, reprimands, bonuses, vacation days and other details in there. When an employee is written up for something like a safety violation, I will scan and attach a reprimand form with their signature to their Evernote file.

Equipment: Each piece of equipment gets its own note in the Business:Equipment notebook. These notes contain information like a PDF version of the owner’s manual, filter numbers, and a history of service and repairs. I share this note with my farm manager.

Fields: Tillage passes, seed purchases, fertilizer and herbicide applications, yield data, and pest problems are all kept in my Business:Farm:Fields notebook. Occasionally I’ll record a voice note about some idea I have for next year’s crop.

Special projects: Recently we installed a return pump in a new field. I used Evernote to take pictures of the project site, store brochures and clipped websites of potential equipment purchases, keep bids and email from the contractors, and the spreadsheet I created for cost analysis. Once I had fixed on the equipment and contractor, I simply forwarded them the pertinent information I had collected right from my Evernote account.

Thanks to Evernote I am free to stuff my brain with worthless information (like watching “The Bachelor” with my wife) without fear of giving up something important (like remembering her birthday)!

Extra Content:

Third party tools to extend Evernote’s functionality. These apps and many more can be found in the Evernote Trunk.

Skitch is a drawing and photo annotation tool that lets you sketch an idea, add notes, arrows and more to photos, maps and screenshots.

Web Clipper is a great bookmark replacement. The little green elephant icon sits in your toolbar and you can clip sections of a Web page, just the URL or the entire page. As you clip it, you can add tags, place it in a specific notebook, and make comments.

EchoSign lets you electronically sign documents and keep them in your Evernote account.

ScanBizCards does what the name says: it scans your business cards and extracts the contact information.

Share/Save

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Share/Save

In my left pocket I carry a flashlight, camera, calculator, bubble level, compass, protractor, ruler, and a whole list of other tools. Again, this sounds like a lot of stuff for one guy’s pocket, but these are digital versions of real world tools. They really work and they live in the smart phone.

There are virtually unlimited ways to use your smart phone as an analog for real world tools. Here are a few examples.
Flashlight – A flashlight is a very handy tool. Most phones have LED lights on them to use as a flash for the camera. My favorite Android app is Tiny Flashlight + LED. Not only does this app run your LED light but it also turns the screen into a strobe light, police siren, and other fun effects.

Camera – Mobile phones have had cameras on them for a long time, but only recently do smart phones allow you to do very useful things with them. Recently I had to redo some plumbing on my calf milk pasteurizer. I took pictures of the parts and the pasteurizer area with my phone. At the plumbing store I showed the pictures to the storeowner on the iPad. Using an app called Skitch, we drew a new plumbing diagram right over the top of the photo. I took the parts home and referenced the diagram while putting it all together. I also take pictures of serial number plates on equipment, business cards, broken gates, cow numbers, parking spaces (so I remember when I left my truck), and a lot more. I keep track of all these photos with an app called Evernote, which I am going to profile next month.

Calculator – I use Real Calc for Android and Calc Pro HD for iPad. I like these calculators because of their simple and powerful use of conversions.

Bubble Level – I use the bubble level on my phone to do things like level tillage implements, help my wife hang pictures on the wall, and I recently leveled a pool table with an iPad.

Protractor – Most apps have the ability to overlay the protractor on your camera screen. Simply point your phone’s camera at an object like your silage pile or a roofline, and you can quickly determine its angle and slope.

These tools are part of my modern day Swiss Army Knife. See how many useful tools you can find in your device’s app store and you just may download enough to earn your AgNerd badge!

Extra Content:
Use the Ruler app to measure pipefittings, bolts, and other pieces of hardware. Be careful not to scratch your screen
Many of the tools mentioned above can be found in one handy app for android called Smart Tools

Links:
The Leatherman tool I carry
Tiny Flashlight + LED for Android
Skitch
Evernote
Real Calc for Android
Calc Pro HD for iPad
Smart Tools for Android

Title: Your digital tool box
Author: Dino Giacomazzi
Publication: Dairy Today
Publication Date: May 2012

Share/Save

Thanks to the Internet and smartphones, all that has changed. Enter RememberTheMilk.com. Remember The Milk (RTM) is a powerful online “things to do” list and task management program. You can access your task list from your web browser, smart phone, or tablet.

RTM is a simple app with powerful features. It only does one thing; manage tasks. A task can have several different properties and that is what makes this program so useful.

A sample task would be something like “Order liners for the barn”. Once you have entered your task you can set its properties.

“Order liners for the barn”

Due Date: Today

Priority: High 

Tags: Call, Dairy, Barn

Location: None

Repeat: Every 3 weeks

Estimated Time: 10 minutes



This seems like a lot of information to add for such a simple task, but entering these parameters takes about 5 seconds. Once you have a list of tasks with properties assigned to them, you can use your list to become very productive.

Let me walk you through a typical day with me and RTM. First thing in the morning I head out to the dairy. I check in with each employee, walk the pens, look at feed, and then drive around the farm to scout fields. As things come up, I add them to RTM using my smartphone.

After that, I go to the office computer and organize my list using RTM online. I decide which tasks I want to do today and I kick everything else into the next day. Then I assign a priority to each item, clean up tags, and get to work. This takes 5-7 minutes.
As I complete tasks, I check them off using my phone. Once the high priority items are complete, I start looking at the list in different ways. I might go to the barn and look at the tag “Barn” to see what needs to be done there. Then I’ll go back to the office, view my “Office” tag to make calls and do paperwork. I will check the list by “Location” to see if there are things I need to do while in town.

I share tasks with my herdsman and farm manager and they also assign tasks back to me like lists of parts they want me pick up.
While you are getting all these things done, don’t forget to schedule yourself some fun things to do as well. You know what they say, “all work and no play,” but then again, “they” aren’t dairy farmers!

Extra Content:
RTM integrates into other productivity apps like Gmail

You can email tasks to RTM using a special email address you get when signing up
You can send tasks to RTM via Twitter

RTM integrates with SIRI on the iPhone 4s
RTM will send you reminders via email, instant messenger or text message

You can have your task list appear in your Google calendar or iCalendar

RTM Syncs with Outlook and Blackberry


Links:
www.rememberthemilk.com

Title: Getting things done with Remember The Milk
Author: Dino Giacomazzi
Publication: Dairy Today
Publication Date: April 2012

Share/Save

The lesson is about security. If someone could get their hands on your phone to play a joke, imagine what would happen if that person was less scrupulous. One of the benefits of having a smartphone is the easy access it gives you to valuable information. Much of this is sensitive information like business records, online store access, bank accounts, or details about the surprise party you are planning for your wife.

Despite the risks involved, I often see people leaving their phone unattended on a restaurant table or the seat of their car. Would you leave your wallet on a bar while you are off at the bathroom?

Remember that a smartphone is a computer and is susceptible to the same security problems. Spam, viruses, malware, and phishing scams are a few examples. Security in the digital age is complicated, but there are a few easy things you can do to protect yourself from would-be bandits:

1. Password protect your phone. Most digital thievery is not done through sophisticated hacking. It’s done by physically accessing a computer or phone that is unprotected. If my friends had their phones locked, they would be sleeping a lot better at night, figuratively and literally.

2. Set your phone to automatically lock the screen after a few minutes of inactivity and require a password to unlock.

3. Encrypt your data. Most smart phones have encryption built in and there is third party software that works as well. If your phone is stolen or lost, this would prevent people from being able to access the files.

4. Check your phone bill for unusual charges. Some apps or malware could trick you into authorizing charges on your phone bill that you don’t know about.

5. Always check web addresses. When entering sensitive data into a web browser, make sure the web address is authentic. Scammers often send email posing as a major bank asking you to sign in for a secure message. Clicking the email link takes you to a site that looks like the bank, but once you enter your username and password, the scammers have everything they need to access your real account.

6. Install remote find & wipe software. Both iPhone and Android have software that will track your phone if it is stolen or lost and allow you to wipe out all the information remotely.

There is a lot more to know about digital security, but if you follow these six easy tips, hopefully the only noise your phone will be making at 3:30 am will be a call from the barn. Take your phone with you—it can be used as a flashlight.

Extra Content:

Additional Tips:
Consider security and antivirus software
Be careful when allowing third party unsigned applications to access your personal information
Do not click on links if unsolicited or suspicious
Update your phone’s operating system regularly
Avoid online banking on unsecured public Wi-Fi
Back up your data regularly
Reset your phone to factory settings before selling, giving, or recycling
Apply these tips to your desktop, laptop, and tablet computer as well

Links:

iPhone – Find My Phone
Android – Lookout Security and Antivirus

Title: 6 Easy Steps to Smartphone Security
Author: Dino Giacomazzi
Publication: Dairy Today
Publication Date: March 2012

Share/Save

Share/Save

Share/Save

Share/Save