Get Reminders To Brush Your Teeth And Water The Plants With The Digital “Mother”

Need a helpful reminder to brush your teeth, take your morning pills, or water the plants? The newly announced device, called “Mother”, imbues everyday objects with the gentle nagging power of our awesome moms. Conspicuous peanut-sized trackers (“Cookies”) attach to toothbrushes, medication bottles, backpacks, water glasses and other household items to track if they’re being used correctly.

Our own dear mothers could be the next to be replaced by a computer–except, of course, telling us to give them grandchildren (oh, and that unconditional love thing).

Inside the Cookie, a tiny accelerometer knows whether, for instance, a medicine bottle has been lifted up and turned upside down–indicating that you’ve dumped our your morning pills. Cookies are placed on all sorts of household objects and wirelessly synced with the base station, which broods from a distance in the shape of a loving Russian doll.

Beginning with mostly household objects, the possible applications for Mother are endless. Imagine any object around the house, car, or office that you’re supposed to use on a regular basis and it, could, in theory, work with Mother’s digital ecosystem. Mother also tracks temperature (for, say, pets) and geolocation (for tracking a child on the way from school).

Sen.se’s Mother device is supposed to launch in the spring with a base station and 4 Cookies for $222. Check out more on their site.

Finally, Yahoo Mail gets encryption by default!

As promised, Yahoo is now automatically encrypting Yahoo Mail users' connections to the service.

The company announced Tuesday it has enabled automatic HTTPS as the default for all users on the network, coming in a day before the January 8 deadline it placed on itself in October. With the upgrade, the Web portal has now using 2,048-bit encryption keys to secure certificates, which are used to set up encrypted communications between a Web server and Web browser.

"Anytime you use Yahoo Mail -- whether it's on the web, mobile web, mobile apps, or via IMAP, POP or SMTP -- it is 100% encrypted by default and protected with 2,048 bit certificates," Jeff Bonforte, Yahoo's senior vice president of Communication Product, wrote in a company blog post. "This encryption extends to your e-mails, attachments, contacts, as well as Calendar and Messenger in Mail."

The move is part of the company's efforts to beef up encryption across all of its products in response to concerns about government surveillance activities on the Internet. Since the release of confidential documents this summer by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden describing the NSA's collection of e-mail metadata and other Internet communications, several tech giants have been actively working to make surveillance, authorized or not, significantly harder.

The issue seemed to take on greater prominence for companies in October, when the Washington Post reported that newly surfaced documents showed the NSA secretly accessed data from several tech giants, including Yahoo, by intercepting unencrypted Internet traffic in a program called Muscular.

Google completed encryption efforts similar to Yahoo's in November to heighten the security of information flowing between data centers, while Microsoft and Facebook have announced plans to switch over to stronger 2,048-bit encryption keys in the near future.

Security Essentials for XP expires with XP, another reason to upgrade!

There are three months to go for Windows XP. The ancient operating system is leaving extended support on April 8, at which point Microsoft will no longer ship free security fixes. XP itself isn't the only thing that's losing support on that date. The Windows XP version of Microsoft Security Essentials, the company's anti-malware app, will stop receiving signature updates on that date and will also be removed for download.

The message is clear: after April 8, Windows XP will be insecure, and Redmond isn't going to provide even a partial remedy for the security issues that will arise. Antivirus software is just papering over the cracks if the operating system itself isn't getting fixed.

In contrast, both Google and Mozilla will provide updates for Chrome and Firefox beyond the cessation of Microsoft's support. Google has committed to supporting Chrome until April 2015.

With three months to go and Windows XP still holding almost a thirty-percent usage share of the Web, the ending of support is going to have an impact on a lot of people. Still, it's unlikely that killing off MSE is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back and forces these Windows XP holdouts to upgrade.

The big question is, what will? XP's end of life shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but there are plenty of XP users who evidently don't care. There's no chance now that the remaining users will migrate off the operating system in the few remaining months of support. An abundance of insecure, exploitable, and most likely exploited Windows XP machines is now an inevitability.

New Year's Tech Resolution: Day Seven: Final Day!

A week's worth of tech resolutions are enough, dont you think?

. Rearrange Smartphone Apps or Windows 8 Tiles

This digital cleanup job is so simple you can do it in bed while you're hung over New Year's Day: reorganize your smartphone or Windows 8 apps.

Most people know what they want out of their app organization, but don't get so caught up in grouping apps appropriately that you forget easy tricks, like prioritizing "hotspots" (those areas where your fingers hover most easily) over consecutive order.

See  tips for organizing iPhone apps and tips for arranging Windows 8 tiles for more.

Google Glass Invite

Limited time only, but if you are interested in purchasing a set of Google Glass, please contact me via email.  I have an invite that I do not intend on using, but if you are truly interested, please let me know. 

New Year's Tech Resolution: Day Six:

6. Clean Up Your Computer's System

If you don't know how to clean up your computer, don't worry. You don't have to. All you have to do is install a small piece of software (and some perfectly good ones are free) and let it do the job of tidying up your system for you. The best tuneup utilities will automatically, and sometimes within a matter of minutes, make your machine and its programs run faster again.

Take 10 minutes New Year's Day to pick a tuneup utility, and you'll thank yourself all year long.