Last month's "special feature" - a tongue in cheek survey about the Public Television series Downton Abbey - produced fascinating results. Most importantly nearly half of respondents had no interest at all in the program - so much for the "everybody cares about the biggest rock star, the Final Four or any other current craze". One reader claimed not to even know who shot JR! I used this survey to check out the process and I will publish more serious versions in the future. Thanks for participating. I really enjoyed the creativity and humor shown by many of you.

One reader said Branson was coming to Boston to join Tick and Tack the Tappet Brothers on their auto program since he was once a mechanic. Another suggested a more complex scenario based on the relocation of the entire series to America - likely titled "the British are Coming, the British are Coming?" Who says technology can't be fun. In case you missed out on the survey, feel free to click here and add your vote or your note. If you want to see a graph of the results click here - hint, a lot of people haven't given up on good old Branson!

Finally, speaking opportunities scheduled this month include MSAE, MPI and SCORE.                
                           - Gary

Everything you need to know about coming credit card developments
Increasing credit card fraud is causing major changes in that business. Hundreds of thousands of credit card machines will be replaced by October. Why October? That's the month the rules change about who is responsible for a fraudulent transaction - now it's the credit card companies - then it will be the merchant. Part of this change is the rapid conversion from mag stripe cards to chip and pin cards - the type they've had in Europe for years.

Here is a detailed (and very readable) article on chip and pin, EMV and all other aspects of the changes that are happening now. This article reviews eight popular mobile payment apps  - "just Venmo me the money!"

(Part 1 was published in February - read it here)
I was thrilled recently when I discovered our new microwave had one hundred "power levels" - exactly ten times as many as its predecessor - which seemed to cook quite well until it quit cooking. Then I discovered a scary fact: that amount of power was what you would expect from the radiation leak of a medium sized nuclear reactor - a scary thought indeed. Upon further research I discovered that power level 100 (new) is exactly the same as power level 10 (old). Just one of many problems we can blame on Ada Lovelace  (1815-1852) better known as "the first programmer" - yes the first programmer was a woman!

A few decades back when you designed something - a car or a toaster for example - every feature you added required metal or plastic pieces and usually some wiring. - read the rest of the story here -

Picture This - the f/stop can be your friend!
We all have great cameras - whether smartphone, point and shoot or DSLR. Every device we own has the potential to take really good pictures most of the time. Why then are so many pictures so bad? It's hard to take consistently good pictures unless you understand three basic factors that have been associated with photography for a hundred years - aperture opening (f/stop), shutter speed and ISO. I talk about these in my photography lectures and all I will say now is that one good way to learn about them is to install an app on your smartphone or tablet that allows you to see these settings on new or existing pictures.

Data about pictures is called "metadata" it is data about data. In the case of photos metadata also includes date and time the picture was taken, location of photo and brand and model of camera. Many apps allow you to control and/or view this information. Two of my favorites are ProCam XL for both taking photos and viewing metadata and ViewExif - metadata viewer. This odd name comes from the fact that metadata for photos is also called Exif data. I'll publish the names of your favorite Android versions if you send them to me here.