EndNote Reference Manager and Apple iWork Pages - Lessons Learned

A student in one of the classes I am teaching is using Pages on the Mac. I encourage all of the students to use a personal reference manager, such as EndNote (our university has a site license for the software).  What I learned is that EndNote has limited menu features in Pages in comparison to those available in Microsoft Word. 

• There is no clear (have not found it yet) way to refresh the citations in a Pages document when changes were made to the citation in EndNote.  
• Even if the citation output style is noted as APA 6th, EndNote names the reference page as Bibliography in bold font face. 
• You cannot use Cite While You Write from within EndNote because it works only with Microsoft Word.  When you insert a citation using the Pages Insert menu, you are able to search multiple EndNote libraries.

When I installed EndNote on my Mac, it installed correctly.  The install did not work on the student's computer.  We did a Google search and found a plug-in to enable the install.  

The bottom line is that it is possible to do Cite While You Write using EndNote and Pages, but the function is within Pages, not EndNote. There are online resources to assist with the use of the install and use of EndNote for Pages.

Windows 8 and Word Starter - First Impressions

At Georgia College the family nurse practitioner (FNP) and doctor of nursing practice (DNP) students had immersion experiences to prepare them for graduate work.  Several of the students purchased new laptops with the Windows 8 operating system (OS) for school.  My first impression with Microsoft innovations was not good.  With Windows 8 OS it felt Microsoft and Bing had hijacked the computer.  I empathized with the students as they attempted to navigate to the different applications. 

Two students purchased laptops with Microsoft Word starter.  They said that they were misled by the computer sales staff believing that Word Starter would meet all of their word processing requirements.  Word Starter is a "teaser" app.  It will allow the user to do basic word processing.  I was demonstrating the use of EndNote personal reference manager with the new graduate students.  Our university has a site license for EndNote that is subsidized with the student technology fee.  EndNote will not load into Word Starter. Both the students and I learned from the frustrating experiences with the Microsoft innovations.

Security of Data When Using Online Surveys for Research

I was offering advise this morning to a colleague who is doing her research online.  When doing so, I questioned the validity of something I said regarding using Google Drive forms for research.  I investigated the topic and found a webpage, Keeping your account secure, by Google to be extremely useful.  The website is at http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46526

If you followed all of the advise on the website, research data should be secure if you use Google Drive forms. The two-factor authentication is very important.  The information regarding security is applicable to everyone, whether they are doing research or not.

Two-Factor Authentication for Online Accounts

If you have been following the news, you will note that the stock market lost $200 BILLION dollars in two minutes after the AP Press Twitter account was hacked with an erroneous posting about a bombing at the White House.  You can read more about the hack in the article, The power of one wrong tweet, at http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/23/tech/social-media/tweet-ripple-effect/index.html?hpt=te_r1 The common person probably would not be sought out to hack, but it could happen.

PC World has an excellent article, How to set up two-factor authentication for Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and more, at http://www.pcworld.com/article/2036252/how-to-set-up-two-factor-authentication-for-facebook-google-microsoft-and-more.html

You may have already set up two-factor authentication without realizing it.  When a website, such as Facebook or Google sends a code your cell number and requires you to enter it in addition to the login and password, you have two-factor authentication.  So if your account it hacked, the hacker may have your login and password, but not the second authentication code.

Smartphone Sales Changes

I follow Tomi Ohonen's blog about smartphones.  He has been really good at predicting the changes in sales of smartphones.  In today's blog at Tomi Ohonen's Blog he noted that the Blackberry Rim was the second (behind Nokia) largest smartphone producer three years ago.  Today the Blackberry is no longer in the top ten and Nokia is sinking to the bottom of the list.  The game changer is China's Coolpad.  The changes we have seen with mobile devices in the past three years is mind boggling. 

Google Labs

Google has created Google Labs where users can experiment with different settings.  The term "labs" is fitting because the features provide a test ground for users and developers. Like most of my colleagues, my work schedule has little free time, so I missed the notification that was posted on April 19th.

I found the labs function when adding dates to Google calendar this morning.  For example, I am able to add attachments to a Google calendar event.  That feature will be wonderful for meeting agendas!

There are several "labs" available.  For example, there is a gmail lab at 

 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/29418?hl=en 

Information about calendar labs is at http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1187241

Hope this information is helpful to everyone. 

The Importance of Information Technology in the Recent Boston Bombing

I read a wonderful article about the importance of information technology in the recent Boston bombing at http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/it-key-boston-bombing-patients?topic=09,16,17
The article provide personal stories of individuals, Jonathan Teich, John Halamka, and Scott Ogawa.

My personal thanks to every healthcare worker who contributed to the aid of the victims.  I share my prayers and healing thoughts for every person who was affected.  It is good to know that the outstanding leadership, coordination of care, and use of information technology made a difference.