My Favourite Tipples from a technology futurist
Jinfo Blog

By Kevin Curran

Abstract

My Favourite Tipples are shared by Kevin Curran, a reader in computer science at Ulster University who often speaks to the world's press about technology. He shares his favourite online resources in areas from easier mobile to PC file transfer to sites to identify trending issues.

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I'm a long-time technology enthusiast in my home life as well as in my work life, here are a few of the resources I use every week:

• Buffer: I do a lot of media interviews and I share them afterwards on social media sites. Doing this manually on all my accounts can take some time therefore a service like Buffer helps me to share instantaneously to multiple Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest accounts from one place. You can also get analytics for each update you share: clicks, retweets, repins, likes, shares and mentions. You can also schedule your posts to go out automatically at your choice of time and date.

• AirDroid: I mostly use an Android phone on a daily basis and often need to transfer files from my desktop to it. I never actually use a cable but rather use AirDroid from my web browser. AirDroid is a free Android device manager app that allows you to access Android devices from a computer remotely and securely. You simply open a browser tab, take a photo of an barcode and hey presto, you are connected and ready to sync files and photos both ways. 

• Bitly: I often wish to share online articles via Twitter or other social media but pasting the full URL leaves little room for comment so I use a free link shortening service called Bitly. You simply copy the URL of the site you wish to shorten, paste it into Bitly and then hey presto, you have a much shorter URL to share. I also use it when sharing long Dropbox links with students. It really is a time saver.

• Today I Found Out: I regularly visit this so that I expose myself to more than just technical knowledge. I find that I always leave the site a little wiser. I defy anyone not to learn something from an article such as "Why doesn't the Queen of England need a passport?". Turns out that all passports are issued in her name... and she is also immune to criminal prosecution!

One resource I turn to for fun or non-work reasons:

• Digg: Digg is a news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral internet issues. There are other such sites available which collect interesting stories but Digg is one of the sites I always visit prior to lights out.

An article in Jinfo which I found particularly interesting:

• Rachael Elliott's "What does artificial intelligence mean for current awareness?". Rachael makes an excellent point about the importance of calculating how much time is lost a day through manually searching for information and creating current awareness services and calculating the cost of this to the business.

Contribute Your "My Favourite Tipples"

Would you like to share your "My Favourite Tipples" with the Jinfo audience? For contributor guidelines email catherine.dhanjal@jinfo.com or visit the Publish with Jinfo page.

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