Peggy Chirico ~ Hartford & Tolland County Real Estate Blog

Read books on your iPod!  Maybe everyone already knows how to do this, but I just discovered this yesterday!

I own a Sony Reader which I absolutely love, but I have to connect it to my laptop if I want to download books. Sometimes that's just not conventient.

Yesterday, my daughter (love those tech-savvy youngsters) showed me how I could use the WI-FI from my iPod to download books. 

The app is Stanza from Lexcycle; it's free and it offers connections to several e-book sources for free public domain books as well as books for purchase.   The books are easy to download and the features are awesome.  You can change from day to night reading, look up words in the dictionary, make notations, bookmark, etc.

If you go to the Stanza site, there is a great video tutorial that explains everything, but if you don't want ten minutes of instruction, the FAQ section is well-laid out and answered all my questions.

In about one second each, I downloaded The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and A Tale of Two Cities without even connecting to iTunes or my computer.  Awesome!

I still love my Sony Reader, but there is definitely a time and place for reading books on my iPod.  The app is so simple and sophisticated that I am sure I will be using it frequently. 

If you love to read, the Stanza app for your iPod or iPhone is a great tool.

You know the feeling--you are rolling along, everything is going like clockwork, you are ticking every item off your to-do list, feeling pretty proud of yourself, when CRASH your whole world comes to a screeching halt.

I was in the office ready to print out some flyers for my new listing, so I plug in my flash drive so I can retrieve my pictures and THE COMPUTER DOESN'T RECOGNIZE MY USB DEVICE.  So, of course, I blame the computer and move to another computer.  Same thing.  Then I notice that the red light doesn't go on unless I jiggle the flash drive. It blinks on and off, and then NOTHING.

PANIC SETS IN.  Everything in my life is on that flash drive.  I know, I know--always back up everything, which I do for my computer, but never in a million years did I think I had to back up the flash drive.  I was only ever concerned that I would lose it, so it is attached to my car keys.  So now what? What am I going to do if I can't access all that information? Most of it isn't even on my computer because I use different computers.  I always felt so smug knowing all my data is conveniently with me at all times.

So I called my local computer geeks and was told that it sounded like the soldering had come lose so it won't connect any more.  SOLDERING? REALLY?  Who even thinks about these things?

They told me that that was a good sign as they might be able to resolder it, which is a much better scenario than if the thing were actually fried.  I guess all those times of plugging it in and yanking it out had taken its toll.

I dropped it off so they could check it out. Three days later, they called to let me know that they resoldered it and got a connection.  Half a week of not having it, though, totally wrecked my week, but at least I have my data back.

Long story short, flash drives are just like any other data storage device:

• They can break
• Be gentle with them
• Always, always, always back them up

I hope this helps someone; I just wish I had realized this before I lost three days and a small fortune getting my data back.