Five free Dropbox tools you're not using (but should be)

Dropbox is handy, but you can make it even easier to use with a wide range of products and services that work hand in hand with the cloud-based storage, syncing, and sharing service. Check out these five favorites for getting even more bang for your Dropbox buck.

Dropbox lets you easily share files for other people to download, but it’s harder for people to upload files to your account—unless you have the free service DropItToMe.

To use DropItToMe, you simply allow the service access to your Dropbox, and it creates a DropItToMe folder in your account. You then claim a username, which becomes part of the link that DropItToMe creates for you. I scored “Liane” as a username; with this link, anyone can send me files, which then appear in my DropItToMe folder in Dropbox.

DropItToMe’s interface is easy to understand, but also slick and attractive.

I appreciate that DropItToMe provides an easy-to-remember URL rather than a random link. You also get to create a password, which is required for uploading content to your Dropbox account and provides a measure of security. (As with any password, share it carefully.)

DropItToMe also provides a convenient way to upload files to your own Dropbox account. You could use Dropbox’s Web app when you’re on a computer without Dropbox installed, but DropItToMe’s upload link makes things simpler.

DropItToMe requires a password before a person can upload content to your account, which is a nice security feature.

Compared with Dropbox, DropItToMe lets you upload files with fewer clicks. It allows you to place them only in the DropItToMe folder that it has already created, though, and it limits you to files that are 75MB or smaller. But it offers a free, simple way to allow other people to share content with you without their having to sign up for Dropbox.

Dropbox’s security pitfalls make some users hesitant to store any files there, especially sensitive documents such as tax returns or bank statements. Free service BoxCryptor automatically encrypts your files before they’re uploaded to your Dropbox account. It also supports Box.net, Google Drive, and Microsoft SkyDrive.

Once you download and install the Windows client, BoxCryptor automatically adds a virtual drive to your computer. It finds your installed cloud-storage services and pulls those into the BoxCryptor folder. BoxCryptor uses AES-256 bit encryption to secure your files.

You can view all of your content in your BoxCryptor folder, but you can still use your original Dropbox folder, too. To encrypt a folder, you right-click it and select the Encrypt option. If you look at the file through Dropbox, it becomes unreadable. Through BoxCryptor, however, you get the original, unencrypted file.

To encrypt a file, simply right-click it.

You can choose to encrypt individual files or entire folders. Once a folder is encrypted, any new content is encrypted as it syncs to Dropbox. Using the BoxCryptor view, you can identify files and folders that are encrypted by their green labels. In the Dropbox view, you’ll see a .bc extension added to the name of encrypted files.

BoxCryptor bills itself as “zero-knowledge” software, meaning it does not have access to any of your data. All the encryption happens on your computer, not on BoxCryptor’s servers. This hands-off approach also means that the company does not have access to your password, so if you forget it, you can forget accessing your encrypted data, too. Make your password memorable.

Files and folders that have been encrypted are marked with green text.

BoxCryptor is free for personal use, which covers one cloud-storage service and includes access to the mobile (iOS and Android) apps. The $48-per-year Unlimited Personal account adds file-name encryption and access to unlimited cloud services. The $96-per-year Unlimited Business account adds the ability to create groups for sharing files and folders.

BoxCryptor strikes a nice balance between safety and convenience when it comes to securing Dropbox. It adds an extra level of security without the hassle of switching to an entirely different cloud-based service.

Dropbox is a great place for storing your digital music collection, but its music playback features are limited, to say the least. Sure, you can use Dropbox to access the song files stored on the service, but if you want to listen to the tunes, you need to download them to your device—defeating the purpose of storing them in the cloud in the first place.

Free Web app DropTunes serves as a streaming music player for the audio files in your Dropbox account. (A $1 iOS app takes its features mobile, too, but no Android version exists at the moment.) Simply point your browser to droptun.es, and give the Web app permission to access your Dropbox account. It automatically finds any audio files stored there and allows you to play them back without downloading them.

The $1 DropTunes iOS app is basic, but effective for streaming music.

DropTunes displays your Dropbox folders in a column on the left side of the screen. Click a folder there, and any audio files it contains will appear in the main window at the center of the Web app. DropTunes lacks advanced features (such as creating playlists, or scrambling the order of the songs you’re listening to) but it works for basic music streaming.

The interface is simple, and the Web app lacks truly advanced features, but DropTunes makes streaming music easy.

Saving data to your Dropbox isn’t difficult, but you can make almost anything you do on the Web even easier with the help of IFTTT, a handy free tool that creates links between Web services. IFTTT stands for “If This Then That,” and the phrase perfectly describes what IFTTT does: When one thing happens on a service you use, IFTTT triggers an automatic reaction.

IFTTT lets you create “recipes” using channels, which consist of the Web services that are the building blocks of all that IFTTT can do. Channels include Facebook, Evernote, Email—and, of course, Dropbox. As of this writing, 68 channels are available on IFTTT. To create a recipe, you select the first channel and then the trigger (the “If This” part). Once you’ve chosen a channel, IFTTT displays applicable triggers. The trigger is the action that must occur for the result to happen. In the case of Dropbox, a trigger could be a file or photo arriving in your Dropbox.

Not sure what you can do with IFTTT? The service offers community ‘recipes’ that you can adapt for yourself.

After selecting the trigger, you choose the channel and the action (the “Then That” part)—what IFTTT will do when the trigger occurs. You can use IFTTT to automate much of the work you do in Dropbox, or ask it to notify you when actions occur. You could, for example, ask to receive a text message anytime a photo is saved in your Dropbox. Or you could automatically save all Gmail attachments to Dropbox, or save all of your Instagram snapshots to Dropbox.

The list goes on and on, but the end result is the same: You save time while getting things done. IFTTT is a complex but extremely powerful service that can make Dropbox a lot more flexible and useful. It does take some time to understand, though, and I recommend browsing the wide selection of public recipes that the service shares. They’re very helpful for demonstrating just what IFTTT can do, and you can use any of them on your own account.

IFTTT can, for example, save any Instagram photos directly to your Dropbox.

IFTTT offers plenty of options for adding content to your Dropbox automatically—enough options to overwhelm. If you’re seeking a simpler way to send content directly to Dropbox, Send to Dropbox has you covered. This free service generates an email address, and any attachments sent to that address automatically get saved to Dropbox.

The free version of Send to Dropbox doesn’t allow you to create a custom address.

Getting started with Send to Dropbox is a breeze: Just connect it to your Dropbox account, and it instantly generates an email address for you. Remembering it may be a challenge, though: My address contained a short, but random, string of numbers and letters.

Upgrading to the $29-per-year Pro account lets you customize your email address, which is a nice feature for business users—especially for sharing the address with colleagues. The Pro account also provides for multiple addresses and an email whitelist, so you can control who can send files to your Dropbox.

By default, Send to Dropbox saves your files to a new folder it creates in your Dropbox called “Apps/Attachments.” You can change this name and add subfolders that contain the name of the sender and the subject line, if you prefer. However, you can’t share this folder with other Dropbox users, as it is a special type of folder for Dropbox applications.

By default, Send to Dropbox saves files to a folder it creates, but you can create subfolders in there, if you’d like.

In my tests, all of the attachments sent to my Send to Dropbox address appeared in Dropbox almost instantly and were organized in the folders I’d selected. If you’re looking for a quick way to send files to Dropbox, Send to Dropbox can’t be beat.

Dropbox doesn’t need much help. After all, it’s already simple to use and incredibly convenient. But whether you’re looking to access more files, add security, automate your tasks, or listen to music, there’s a Dropbox app to make your life a little easier. And chances are, it’s free.

Liane Cassavoy is a veteran technology and business journalist. She contributes regularly to PCWorld and has written about business issues and products for Entrepreneur Magazine and other publications. She is the author of two business start-up guides published by Entrepreneur Press.
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Review: Easily edit images and create collages using Fotor in Windows 8's Modern interface

Fotor Fotor is no Photoshop, but it's simple, fun, and works well for basic image editing.

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If Picasa has taught us anything, it's that not every image editor has to be Photoshop. Sometimes you just want a quick, fun way to enhance your photos, add some neat effects, and maybe create a collage or two. If that sounds like fun and you happen to be rocking a Windows 8 device, you should check out Fotor, a free photo editor that uses the Modern interface. It's fast, visual, and has virtually no learning curve.

Fotor makes it easy to add text overlays to images, but you can control the font size independently.

When you launch Fotor, it lets you open an existing photo to edit, or start working on a collage. It also comes with six sample photos arranged in an attractive grid, to get you started. The simplest way to get a feel for what Fotor is like is to click a sample photo. Do that, and you'll find yourself in the editing interface.

In editing mode, the image dominates most of the screen, and an editing toolbar lines the right side of the screen—opposite where you'd normally expect it, but in keeping with the Modern interface convention. The toolbar is subdivided into eight sections, six of which contain editing tools: Basic editing (color corrections), cropping, effects, borders, focus effects, and text tools. The other two sections let you open new files for editing, and save your work.

Fotor offers numerous effects, including crowd-pleasing Lomo looks

The color correction interface uses sliders, with live image updates: Just move the slider and see the change instantly. Cropping is similarly intuitive, with 11 preset aspect ratios, and a free-crop mode (to set your own aspect ratio). Just drag a frame across the image to set out your crop area, and click Confirm when you're happy with the composition.

Fotor's selective focus tool is the most nuanced one in the app, allowing for fine adjustments.

Image effects are divided into five categories, ranging from Classic to "Dark Corners" (i.e., vignette effects). While each category contains many different effects, individual effects cannot be adjusted in any way. Many of the image modifications are heavy-handed, and Fotor offers no way to tone down the amount of influence a given effect has. Also, you can't layer effects one on top of the other. You need to pick one effect for your image and stick with it. The Borders category is similar: There's a rich selection of borders, but you can't tweak anything, like the size of the margin or the color of a given border.

Fotor's collage mode makes it easy to pick a number of images for your collage.

One category that does offer fine-grained adjustments is the Tilt-Shift Mode, whereby you can apply selective focus effects to your image. Tilt-shift (a "miniature look") isn't the only option: You can also apply a center focus effect, where the subject appears sharp and surrounding detail is blurred out. Both center focus and tilt-shift effects offer many adjustments: You can change the tilt shift's angle, and change either mode's blur radius and virtual aperture size. Of all the tools Fotor offers, selective focus is the most nuanced.

Finally, you can also overlay your image with some text. The text tool offers a limited number of fonts (you can't pick from any font installed on your computer), and lets you pick one of several overlay templates, such as speech or thought bubbles. There is no way to control the font size independently of the template: You can only resize the text along with the speech bubble it's in.

In collage mode, it's easy to move images around, resize the different parts of the collage, or pick one several premade layouts.

All in all, Fotor does what it does quite well. It excels in being quick, and quick to master. Few features are cryptic, and none appear to rely on hidden toolbars you need to slide into view. If you want to edit images in the Modern user interface, Fotor is a great option.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Windows Store, where you can download the software to your system.

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Create A Mobile App Without Any Code Using AppMachine

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Review: Switch lets you shut down any Windows computer remotely, even using Twitter

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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You know what's frustrating? When something that's supposed to be really simple turns out to be complicated to the point of impossibility. For example, remotely shutting down a Windows computer: This is not rocket science. In fact, it's something built into Windows, and Microsoft even provides an extra tool for free, to make it easier. Yet try as I might, I couldn't get either of these tools to work. I spent hours perusing forums and tweaking firewall settings, user accounts, group policies, and anything else I could think of–and I still couldn't shut down my computer remotely. That is, until I installed $9 utility Switch.

Switch presents a beautiful, simple Web-based interface for shutting down the computer remotely.

Switch was a breath of fresh air. Finally, something simple that just does what it's supposed to do. With Switch installed, I could shut down my file server using any computer on my LAN, without installing any client software. All I needed was a regular Web browser, which I'd just point at the file server's IP address. Switch shows up as a pretty webpage with a Shut Down button. Click the button, and the computer running Switch goes bye-bye. It's that simple.

Of course, that's not everything Switch does: That Shut Down button has a drop-down component that can be used to reboot the computer or make it go to sleep. It can also do all three operations (shut down, reboot, and sleep) after a ten-minute delay–not something I'd personally use, but the option is there.

You can use Switch for setting up automated shutdowns.

You can also use Switch to automate shutdowns. The simplest example is shutting down the computer at a set time: It took me less than a minute to set up a rule that shuts down my file server every day at 5am. You can have more sophisticated rules–Switch can monitor the list of running processes and take action as soon as a certain process (application) starts up or terminates. It can also listen for a tweet from your account (or any account you choose) containing specific text, which means you can shut down your computer remotely from anywhere without setting up any special Firewall rules or using a custom client.

Finally, Switch can repeatedly ping an address on your local network or on the Web, and take action as soon as it becomes unavailable for a few minutes. This is a good way to have your desktop automatically shut down once you leave the house with your laptop or smartphone: Your laptop or smartphone will just go dark on the local network, and Switch will detect that and shut down the computer. The only caveat is that you'll have to configure your router to always assign the same IP address to the device Switch is set to monitor.

Switch's log lets you see exactly when and why your computer shut down.

A two-word summary of Switch: "It works." It lets you shut down a Windows computer remotely, with absolutely zero fuss. Sure, you can do sophisticated things with it, but honestly, it's worth the money even if you just use it to manually trigger remote shutdowns. Beautifully executed.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

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Control Your Music With the Palm of Your Hand Using Flutter

Anyone who grew up watching the Star Wars movies knows how cool it looked to be a Jedi and control things with a simple movement of the hand. For a long time, it seemed as if this would remain firmly in the realm of science fiction along with lightsabers. Now a new app that relies on hand gestures is available for controlling your music. Called Flutter, this free Windows software lets you start and stop your music simply by showing the flat palm of your hand to your webcam.

You need to use either iTunes, Spotify, Winamp, or Windows Media Player for your music playing. Anything else, such as Miro or Zune, is not currently supported.

Starting and stopping the music is at present the only thing Flutter can do, so look upon this as simply proof that the concept works. Apparently, according to the company website, next up in the pipeline is a beta version (currently for Mac OS X only) that allows you to change music tracks, simply by swiping your hand in front of the webcam. I'm sure they are also working on a version that increases and decreases the volume (at least, I hope so).

The pros to Flutter are ones that will appeal to efficiency freaks. If you're sitting in front of your computer typing away, and you want to change the track on iTunes, then you would have to stop typing, look for the mouse, find iTunes, then the track…that all takes time. But with Flutter, when you want to change tracks, you just stop typing, hold up a hand in front of the webcam, then go back to typing as the Rolling Stones track flips from not getting any satisfaction to singing about Angie. There's no need to click the mouse or to search for tracks. Your webcam and Flutter do it all for you.

Flutter has cons, though. Throughout the few weeks I tested this app, sudden hand movements at times started my Spotify desktop app. Supposedly Flutter should start Spotify only when I show my flat palm to the webcam, but I've had Spotify starting when I scratched my ear or swatted a fly away from my head. In subsequent tests, I failed to recreate this problem, so maybe it was just a temporary glitch. Nevertheless, when you have Flutter on, you should be cautious with your movements in front of the webcam. Plus, until the next version comes out, Flutter has only one function.

Despite these limitations, if you are a music fan who uses one of the supported music players, Flutter is a great app that gives you a glimpse into the future of what is coming and what is possible.

—Mark O'Neill

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Secretive Shoppers Prefer Using Mobile Apps

Mobile devices may take an even more important role in the annual holiday shopping spree this year. In addition to finding deals-on-the-go, a new survey reveals some additional reasons that make shopping from a handheld device more appealing than from a computer — all of which involve keeping certain parties in the dark.

A new survey of 2,200 U.S. adults released today (Aug. 23) predicts that three out of five mobile app users would consider purchasing their holiday gifts on a mobile device, be that an iPhone, iPad or Android phone or tablet. The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Apigee, a company that builds the software to fuel mobile shopping apps for companies including Gilt, Walgreens and eBay. Books, electronics and gift cards were the top three gifts mentioned by the respondents.

The survey also included questions about the appeal of mobile shopping in general. Along with the well-known benefits of browsing for deals wherever you are, checking prices in stores in search of a better deal and locating the closest store, people liked the idea of shopping in secret.

Who knows what you’re doing on your phone in the middle of a meeting? Sure, you could be checking vital email, but you could just as easily be eyeing a new pair of boots. Twelve percent of respondents confessed to shopping on their devices at work, and 14 percent said they shop from their phones or tablets to avoid buying embarrassing or personal items from a work computer where an employer could see transactions.

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And the intrigue continued at home. Twenty-five percent of mobile app users said they liked to shop on their handheld devices to hide their shopping from their spouses — whether that was for a surprise gift or an item outside the agreed-on family budget remained a mystery.

Article provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to Laptopmag.com.

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Give Your Windows Clipboard Extra Features Using ClipboardFusion

It's happened to all of us at one time or another. We get an email or a block of text, and we want to copy/paste it into another email or word processing document. But when we copy the text, the formatting comes with it. The text is then too big, the links are still embedded, there's lots of white space and paragraphs, and generally everything is a big mess that takes time to sort out. That's where free program ClipboardFusion comes in to save you a big headache.

Screenshot Fusion offers a wide variety of options to customize your Windows Clipboard.ClipboardFusion is a small Windows desktop app which sits in your system tray and waits for you to copy/paste something. It will then remove all the formatting, white space, and HTML tags, so what you're left with is just pure text. You can then paste it into an email, Word document, or other program.

But I would be doing ClipboardFusion a severe injustice if I implied that was all it did. A few other features make this a great app to have running in the background of your PC. First of all, you can assign keyboard shortcuts for all of CF's features. So for example, using a keyboard shortcut, you can toggle the app on and off without even taking your fingers off the keyboard.

You can also replace certain text strings with pre-defined new text strings. So for example, maybe you want all '&' to be replaced by "and" (or vice versa)? Or perhaps you want to replace the name of something with another name? It's entirely up to you. You just need to maintain a list of text strings inside CF's options that are to be automatically replaced as soon as you copy the text. It's very similar to the find-and-replace feature in Microsoft Word, but it works across all your programs. If you have copied images to your Windows Clipboard, then CF will give you a preview of those images in a pop-up window. You can see at a glance what you have copied. That same pop-up window will also show you RGB color codes if you copied them too.

ClipboardFusion's interface is easy to navigate.But ClipboardFusion's best feature is the macros. Using pre-defined scripts, you can make your copied text do almost anything. And what's even better is that a small CF community makes and contributes macro scripts that you can copy and use. For example, one macro cleans up long, unwieldy Amazon URLs in the Clipboard. Another counts the number of words in a copied block of text.

Don't copy anything to the clipboard that might cause trouble for you if it got out. Of course, you can just wipe the app's history afterwards, but you may not always remember to do that. Play it safe.

A paid option lets you store your clipboard pastes in the cloud on ClipboardFusion's website servers. A one-year subscription costs $16, two years costs $24, and a lifetime subscription costs $35 (all prices in Canadian dollars). Some may like the convenience of having their copied Clipboard pastes online for easy access and convenience, but others may not like the privacy and security implications of anything sensitive being transferred to the company servers.

ClipboardFusion's free desktop app is well worth downloading if you do a lot of copy/pasting. Just remember to clear the clipboard history, if there's anything embarrassing on there, to save yourself any potential repercussions later.

—Mark O'Neill

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Design Attractive HTML5 Galleries With Ease Using Juicebox

Not a day goes by without cat pictures being shared on Facebook, or landscape photos being reused on Flickr via Creative Commons. But the recent acquisition of Instagram by Facebook may have you a bit nervous about hosting your images on someone else's servers. Or you may be a professional Web designer with a portfolio of clients wanting images hosted for business reasons. In these cases—and many others—you can retain more control over your photos by hosting them on your own website. Instead of programming a photo gallery from the ground up, you can take advantage of an app like Juicebox (various paid and free versions) instead.

Within moments, you can have a beautiful smooth HTML5 photo gallery up and running on your website.Right out of the gate, there are two big advantages to Juicebox. If your images total no more than 50, then it's all totally free (albeit with some nice features disabled). Second, it's all built on the up-and-coming HTML5 code standard. So you can be guaranteed a nice-looking smooth professional design with a minimum of fuss and virtually no learning curve. You don't have to be a Web designer, or even particularly tech-savvy, to use this program. Open up the app, follow the easy-to-understand instructions and copy/paste the provided code into your website. Done and finished. No fuss, no mess.

You can upload the images straight from your hard drive or from a Flickr account. Once inside the Juicebox app, the images can then be cropped and resized, and you can customize other factors such as the gallery background color, the opacity, the width and height, whether or not you want thumbnails and so on. Then when it's ready, it gives you the code to put into your website and you can also preview everything first in your browser to make sure it looks the way you want it.

If you're looking for an easy, quick way to host your own photos, then give Juicebox a try. The 50-images only rule for free customers is a little restrictive but like Twitter, it forces you to be concise and to the point, including only the images that really matter. There are two paid versions, Pro Single for $49 and Pro Multi for $99, both of which offer the same amount of professional features. The extra $50 for Pro Multi entitles you to use Juicebox on 5 domains instead of 1.

If you're prepared to shell out the cash for a Juicebox upgrade, you can take advantage of more features such as the removal of the branding, support for audio, autoplay, and watermarks. Oh and don't forget that upgrading removes the 50 maximum images restriction.

You may be pleasantly surprised by how nice you find Juicebox to be. So the next time your cat-loving buddy asks how to make a new online cat shrine without worrying about Fluffy endorsing cat food, send them this app. They'll have it up and running in no time.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

—Mark O'Neill

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15 Current Technologies We’ll Still Be Using in 2030

Back when I was growing up in the 1970s, we fully expected that, by 2012, we’d all be driving flying cars to our condos on the moon where robotic butlers awaited, ready to bring us the cure for cancer from the bathroom first-aid kit. How’s all of that working out? Sure, we now have faster, smaller computers, smartphones that talk back to you, and smart TVs, but in so many areas of technology the pace of change is slower than Windows Vista booting off a floppy disk.

A few months ago, I wrote an article about 15 technologies that will be gone by the time my infant son is old enough to use them. However, barring a zombie apocalypse, there are plenty of mainstays that my son will still be using when he enters college in 2030.

Though voice recognition, handwriting recognition and gesture control will all become more accurate and popular in the next two decades, my son will be typing his term papers like his dad and grandfather did before him. Until mind-control text entry becomes ubiquitous, typing will remain the most accurate method for composing and editing text. We just don’t speak the same way that we write.

Though physical keyboards are in danger of becoming extinct on phones and tablets, their virtual equivalents will live on. On larger form factors like notebooks, the feel of real plastic keys will not be surpassed. Whether virtual or real, the QWERTY layout, which first appeared in 1878, will continue to dominate.

Read More: 5 Things to Look For in Your Next Notebook Keyboard

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5+ Reasons Why You Should Be Using Google+

Though it has more than 100 million users signed up, Google+ might be the most important social network you aren’t using. Despite its high number of registered users, many of which got Google+ accounts automatically because they had Gmail,  the average user spends just 3 minutes per month actively using the service, over 100 times less than Facebook’s 405-minute average. The buzz around the industry is that Google’s social service hasn’t provided a strong enough value proposition to lure users, that it’s little more than a Facebook clone. Nothing could be further from the truth.

While it provides a lot of the same functionality as Facebook, Google+ offers a lot of great features that make it a really important place for people to hang out, work together, read the news, and network. Here are more than five reasons why you need to spend more time on Google+:

Google+ is More Professional, Less Silly: Think of  Google+ and Facebook as two different restaurants that attract different kinds patrons. Like T.G.I Fridays, Facebook is an informal place where all kinds of people go to hang out, show off their 50 pieces of flair, and talk about all manner of things: games, family, entertainment and occasionally work.  Yes, professionals can come to this family restaurant for a drink after work, but they act differently when hanging out in a family place that’s filled with the sounds of screaming toddlers than one populated mainly by adults in business suits.

Like a high-end steakhouse, Google+ is filled with serious people who want to have serious conversations about serious topics: work, politics, art. When I post about one of my articles on Facebook, I get some likes from friends, but a lot of them say “I loved your article, but I didn’t understand what you were talking about.” On Google+, I get very thoughtful comments from a world of colleagues, many of whom I don’t know particularly well. I hang out at Facebook to keep up with friends and family; I hang out at Google+ to talk ideas with the best and brightest.

Collaborative Hangouts: You can conduct group chats on Facebook, but Google Hangouts lets you conduct group meetings, complete with video, text, and screen sharing. Best of all, you can use the sketchpad to draw a whiteboard in real-time with others or utilize the notes feature to work on a document together with your colleagues.

Google+’s Hangouts work so well from a business perspective that the feature’s real competitors are GoToMeeting and WebEx, not Facebook. Just imagine holding a project meeting with half a dozen business partners on Google+ and writing the action plan together with them in real-time. Imagine a sales person making a pitch to a group of clients or an academic holding an open lecture in a hangout. 

More:  How to Hold Business Meetings, Show Presentations in Google+ Hangouts 

Superior Privacy Features Protect Your Rep: When you’re in the work world, your personal brand means everything and you need to protect it. Thanks to its Circles feature, Google+ makes it really easy to decide which users you’re going to share each individual update with at the time you post. So, if you do post a picture that’s a little too personal for your boss’s eyes, it’s very easy to limit sharing to family only. By the same token, you can share a business-related post with only your coworkers, not your contacts who work for the competition. Group Your Contacts with Circles: Though Facebook lets you divide your contacts into groups, Google+’s circles concept makes it easy to divide up your personal and professional contacts by category and then monitor their updates. You can make a circle of your clients, another of competitors and another of your coworkers. When you want to keep an eye on what the competition is doing, just click on that circle and browse through the posts for a while. With the right Circles, it’s also easier way to promote content to different groups so you can post a sales video and share it with only your clients.Search Plus Your World Helps Build Your Personal Brand: If you want to build your reputation with clients, coworkers and colleagues at other companies who could someday be your coworkers, it helps to show off your knowledge of the industry, whatever industry you’re in. Whether you make cocoa, coats or code, adding a +1 to relevant articles and sites shows that you’re engaged. When the hiring manager at that software development company you applied to searches for “Java IDEs” and sees a little picture of your head next to some of the results, it sends a strong message that you’re an opinion leader, not just another job candidate. Notifications Are Everywhere : Because your Google+ notification bug sits in the upper left corner of every screen on the Google service, it’s hard to miss updates when someone tags you in a post, replies to one of your posts or reshares your content. If the client you’ve been pitching +1s your post, you’ll see an alert for it while you’re using Gmail or watching videos on YouTube.

A Chrome browser extension called Google+ Notifications puts the notification bug next to the address bar so you can get alerts even when you’re not using Google. Being able to see and respond immediately to comments from contacts is a huge advantage. 

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Meexo Is the Uncreepy Dating App You Might Actually Consider Using

Here’s the first thing that’s different about Meexo: The platform is completely mobile. “We wanted ownership of a smartphone to be the lowest common denominator,” David said to me. Thus, the app does away with the entire website portion of a social network, offering users the dating experience exclusively on the phone.

Meexo also emphasizes privacy. “Each person’s account is tied to their particular device,” David explained, “and they’re only allowed to make one account per device—although they can sign in through multiple devices.” This acts as a safeguard against people making multiple accounts and posting fake photos and details about themselves. And when a person messages another within the network, no actual phone number is shared—so there’s no risk of getting that crazy 4 AM phone call from stalker types.

But what about the biggest reason people still recoil from online dating like it’s the plague—the fear of being discovered by someone they know? Meexo addresses that issue, too. You can connect the app to your Facebook account (other social networks to come) in a kind of reverse “find friend” feature. The app uses this data to ensure sure your contacts never accidentally come across your profile. Ah, those mortifying moments: eliminated.

What’s more, the more a user explores the app and selects profiles they’re interested, the more the app learns about one’s dating preferences, and the more it matches the user up with their type. David described it to me as the “Pandora” of online dating—that is, the app gets smarter the more you use it.

The app also attempts to solve the problem of getting too many messages from others, especially women from interested men. When users join the network, they receive virtual currency, but spend some of it when they message other people. This forces them to be more selective about who they (virtually) approach—although replying to a message costs nothing. But what if you need more credits? Taking a leaf from the Dropbox incentive, those who convince others to join the network via their personalized code get their credits boosted.

Lastly, Meexo includes a number of extra geeky features to help kick off those awkward first conversations. For instance: comparing music tastes. When you and your partner both have your phones out, you can place them side by side and connect them via Bluetooth. Meexo scans both libraries on the phones and starts an animation of the cover art of songs or albums you share, floating seamlessly from one screen to the other. It’s a detail nerds (ahem, admittedly, me) would definitely appreciate. And in the future, David tells me, their engineers plan to add in other ways to view what you have in common with a potential match—mutual contacts, for instance.

Meexo isn’t perfect. It’s iOS-only, there’s no way to uncouple a profile from a device (besides a tedious manual process), and you can only block your Facebook friends for now. But in a world where online dating still carries a stigma, Meexo makes a sincere effort to do things better.

The app went live yesterday, and is available in the iTunes Store for free.

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iPad 2 Can Be Wirelessly Charged Using LaunchPort

Christina DesMarais photoApple's popular tablet can now be charged using the same technology that is built into some of the high-end cooktops on the market today -- induction.

Inductive charging technology had a big presence at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, and one product displayed there can wirelessly charge an iPad 2.

The LaunchPort system works by encasing an iPad 2 in a sleeve called a PowerShuttle that either mounts to a tabletop BaseStation or a WallStation. The system uses induction -- the production of an electric current across a conductor moving through a magnetic field -- which means as soon as a PowerShuttle is magnetically mounted to a station, wireless charging begins without a 30-pin cable connection.

The system is interesting on a couple of levels. The inductive charging is going to be agreeable to anyone who likes the aesthetic of having no wires. In addition, both stations let you rotate the tablet 360 degrees.

Also, the PowerShuttle sleeve that encases the iPad 2 has a built-in wave guide that amplifies sound coming from the speaker, so whatever you’re listening to actually sounds louder when emanating from the sleeve. The sleeve's magnets also let you stick your iPad onto a refrigerator or work bench, if that’s something you might find useful.

Christina DesMarais photoChristina DesMarais photoHere's an idea: Use the LaunchPort system along with a Harmony Link and now your iPad 2 is a universal remote that’s always charged for controlling multiple home entertainment center components.

To use the WallStation you’ll need a handyman to wire it behind your drywall, or hack into your wall yourself.

One knock, though.

You're going to have to throw down $350 to get the sleek-looking system. Even though the inductive charging might be worth a bit more, you can get an iPad 2 Frame for $130, although arguably the LaunchPort tabletop BaseStation is situated at a more ideal angle for actual use compared with that of a frame.

Check out the promotional video:

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