Thursday, December 15, 2011

The NORAD Tracks Santa Story

The year was 1955 and the very popular department store by the name of Sears placed an ad in a Colorado Springs newspaper that encouraged kids to call and talk to Santa himself. Some elf that put together the advertisement must have typed in the wrong phone number because instead of kids calling Sears, they were dialing the Colorado Springs’ Continental Air Defense (or CONAD for short).  That night Colonel Harry Shoup was on duty. As the calls started to come in, Colonel Shoup told his staff to provide all the kids that called with Santa’s “current location”. From that day on, a tradition was born.  In 1958 North American Aerospace Defense Command (better known as NORAD which is run by United States and Canada) replaced CONAD but kept the tradition or tracking Santa.

NORAD relies on many volunteers to make “NORAD Tracks Santa” possible, who answer phone calls and emails from about 2 a.m. on December 24th to 3 a.m. December 25th. The volunteers answer around 70,000 phone calls and more than 12,000 from more than two hundred countries in that short time frame. With advancements in technology, you can now track Santa on their website www.noradsanta.org and the website is available in eight different languages. Have fun with your family this year and track Santa with NORAD this Christmas Eve.

Happy Hollidays from all of us at TechFarmer!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

TechFarmer December Newsletter

TechFarmer’s December Newsletter is out! This issue includes an awesome holiday technology gift guide and as always it also includes a good amount of “Did you know?!” facts. Find out what a Smartpen is and how it can benefit anyone from a student to a businessman/woman who takes a lot of notes and then needs to share them with others. See how a MIFI internet hotspot can benefit you in your business travel as well as your family while on vacation. Get creative ideas for stocking stuffers, whether they are for your employees or anyone on your holiday list. Be fun with ideas for those geeky coworkers that you have, friends or family members. All in all, this is a fun issue with many neat and unique ideas! If you are not signed up for our newsletter, please do so on our website on the bottom right corner or click here for the newsletter archive.

Have a fun Holiday Season!

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

September Giveaway

All of us at TechFarmer want to congratulate Sheila M. for winning the autumn goodie-bag. This month there was a gift certificate to amazon.com, a TechFarmer coffee mug, a TechFarmer hat, a neat pen, some pumkin spice coffee to celebrate the season, and most importantly there was an iPod shuffle! What a fun goodie-bag of prizes! In addition to this goodie-bag, this year TechFarmer gave away two tickets to Four Mile Historic Park’s “Corks and Cuisine”, another two tickets to Four Mile Historic Park’s “Annual Fling”, and an amazon Kindle.

We announce our giveaways in the TechFarmer newsletters, which go out monthly via email. In order to win the prize, all you have to do is sign up to receive our newsletter. We randomly select a winner and notify him or her by email. The articles featured in our newsletter are fun and informative. Technology is all around and we try to discuss and explain it in easy to understand terminology. We also love everyone’s input. If you are curious about something that is technology related, please ask! All of us at TechFarmer will be more than happy to explain it to you in person or in our newsletter.

Visit our website to sign up for our newsletter! www.techfarmer.com

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Drobo, the easy way to backup your data.

Remember that backing up your digital information uber important?! In the business world, losing data can mean losing business. In the personal world, losing data can mean losing precious memories. There have been backup solutions out there for many years, from tape backups to external hard drives, but there were always limitations. Tapes fail, external drives get dropped, and there might be an unexpected coffee spill. While every device has an opportunity to fail, there should be a way to quickly and effortlessly recover form that failure.

Please, let us introduce you to Drobo! This is an amazing piece of equipment that can be used not only for easy backup but also as a file storage and file access device. Drobo is a hard drive on steroids, a device that can hold from four to eight drives in a single “box” and can store up to 24 TB (One terabyte is 1,024 GB or gigabytes) of information. That’s a lot of information. To make it even more interesting, one can use any combination of 3.5 SATA drives in the Drobo device and you can connect to it via USB 3.0, FireWire, eSATA, or iSCSI interfaces. No matter is you use Windows or MacOS, Drobo supports them both.

At some point all hard drives fail. The smallest Drobo has four bays for hard drives, so if one hard drive fails, simply replace it with a new one. Your data is never lost because it is stored redundantly across all hard drives. If you are running out of space, simply replace your smallest drive with a larger one. Problem solved! The best part of this device is the fact that it is easy to use and understand. If you would like more information about Drobo’s, just give TechFarmer a call. We are an official reseller or Drobo devices and we can tell you firsthand how we use them and how Drobo compares to other products on the market.

Oh, and if you are interested in some hard drives, Amazon has a great deal on 2TB Western Digital SATA hard drives! Just follow the link below.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The New Kindle Family - Which one should you get?

Did you hear that Amazon released the new line of Kindles?! There are now three new versions of the Kindle, the Kindle, Kindle Touch, and Kindle Fire. Here is the breakdown of what these devices are:

The regular Kindle is now more affordable than ever. It is only $75 and no longer has a keyboard. This is a simple device that has a 6” Ink Pearl display, Wi-Fi connection, a one month battery life, 2GB storage and weight of 5.98 ounces. So, what is the reason for such an attractive price? With the regular Kindle, you will get advertising on the device while reading.

The Kindle Touch is slightly more expensive. Its price tag is $99 for the Wi-Fi and $149 for the 3G Kindle. It also has a 6” display but everything is touch activated. Think of it as a black and white reading tablet. The battery power is 2 months, internal storage is bumped up to 4GB, and the weight is slightly heavier at 7.8 ounces.

The Kindle with a keyboard is still available as well as the big display Kindle DX. The prices on these have went down slightly, where the Kindle Keyboard Wi-Fi is $99, Kindle Keyboard 3G is $ 139 and the Kindle DX (which only comes with 3G) is $379.

The real treasure of the Kindle Family is the Kindle Fire. This is the first color device that Amazon has created. It is more of a tablet than a reading device. If you are looking to get something that is easy on the eyes, this may not be a reading device that you should purchase. The color screen is back lit, which will make it feel like you are looking at a computer screen. This tablet is comparable to the iPad and the Xoom but with a lesser price tag. The Fire has a battery that allows about 7.5 hours of continuous use, 8GB of internal storage, a Wi-Fi only connection, 7” display, and weighs about 14.6 ounces. For only $199 you can watch movies, read, surf the web, play games and download apps. It will be released on November 15th. If you are interested in pre-ordering an Amazon Fire, just click on the picture below.   

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Harvester September Issue

Did you know that TechFarmer sends out a newsletter with lots of fun and good-to-know information in it? This happens once a month and the September issue was published today! Check out the TechFarmer Archives to read the September newsletter and any other newsletter that you may have missed.

This month we have a great article that explains the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit machines. There is also a fun article that talks about "good old technology" that is worth checking out. As always, we have a giveaway which this month includes a technology goody-bag! The only way to win it is if you are signed up to receive our email newsletter. We will randomly select a winner at the end of the month. It is not too late! Go to our website and sign up on the bottom right.

Monday, September 19, 2011

TechFarmer Turns 10 Years Old

TechFarmer is proud to announce that September of 2011 marks our ten year anniversary! Many things have happened during the last ten years. Computers are now smaller, lighter, and faster. Cell phones do things that computers can do and take pictures at the same time. Servers are more powerful and smaller. Drives are now sized in terabytes instead of gigabytes and megabytes. Can you imagine what the world will look like in the next ten years?

Anyway… Because we live in the present, help us celebrate these wonderful ten years. We will be giving away prizes and celebrating in many fun ways. These fun and exciting festivities are announced in the TechFarmer newsletters! To sign up for our newsletter please click here.