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Great vacation message app for those who hate messing with Outlook

By on May 20, 2015 in apps, general geekery

Screen Shot 2015-05-20 at 2.21.06 PMI’m a Mac girl living in a Windows world… and while I am blessed to be able to use a Mac at work, our organization of 3000+ employees is a Windows based network šŸ™ and we use Outlook for e-mail. It doesn’t matter if I’m using Outlook in Yosemite or in Windows 7 via Parallels – I feel like the proverbial one legged cat trying to bury poop on a frozen pond when I’m in Outlook. Just like theĀ horrible interfaces of the old flip phones, I can never remember the sequence of things to click on to get to my vacation message, so I either set it wrong, or I never remember to unset it when I’m back from vacay… and here’s my solution: Responder for Exchange!

It has a very intuitive interface, it’s beautiful to look at, and you can set up your vacation message in moments. Before you plunk down the $1.99 for the app, ask your IT team if they’re Exchange 2010 or 2007 with EWS enabled. You’ll need that for the app to run right.

The same developer makes a responder app for Kerio Connect if your company is using that in lieu of Microsoft Exchange.

I love, love, loveĀ this app! I never touch Outlook when I’m going on vacation or just out of the office for the afternoon… I go to this app every time.

I rarely buy apps – I usually wait for apps to go on sale for free during a promo – but once in a while, there is one that works so well, I not only buy it, I recommend it to others. This is one of those apps. If you have to use Outlook and you hate messing with your vacation message – this is the iPhone app for you!

Responder for Exchange

 

The importance of a password manager

By on May 19, 2015 in general geekery

sorry-but-your-password-must-contain-an-uppercase-letter-a-number-a-haiku-a-gang-sign-a-hieroglyph-and-the-blood-of-a-virgin-someecardsMy latest obsession I must evangelize about – and have been doing a lot of lately, is about the importance of having a password manager or password safe in which you manage your passwords. Why? How many accounts do you manage? It’s likely more than you realize. We are in an undeclared cyber war with several countries (such as North Korea) and terrorist organizations. With over 1/3 of Americans now employed by the government, our overseas enemies wish to gather intel any way they can – and if that means hacking into your account, they will try it.

A mere mortal cannot memorize several different passwords that meet secure password criteria. If you’re like most people, you use the same password (including some possible variants) for every site/account you access. You may think, “heck, what’s the worst that could happen if someone hacked into my eHarmony account?” Well… if you use the same password for that account that you use for PayPal – guess what’s gonna happen next? The person that hacked into a website you’re not too worried about and will now try that same e-mail you use with every online account they can find.

Let your imagination go wild on that one for a minute. I will wait here while you change your underwear.

That’s where a password management schema comes in. I started using 1Password (version 5) a few months ago and I am sold on it. If you tried it in the past, they have worked out the major bugs and annoyances – and the big draw to me is that it works on Android, iPhone, Windows and Mac. There are a few cross platform choices out there, but for now they are slim – and this one is not dependent on a website to retrieve.

I’m such a big fan of 1Password, as a matter of fact, I am in the process of creating a course on Udemy.com on how to use it on a smartphone and desktop. I will be giving followers of this blog exclusive free access to that course when it goes live – but you’ll need to comment below and your comment will need to be dated BEFORE the course goes live. šŸ™‚

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