by Keith Richardson

Here’s an easy riddle: when is a newspaper not a paper? Answer: when it’s only bits and bytes displayed graphically on an electronic device. Okay, so as riddles go, this is pretty clumsy. But, as always, I wouldn’t bring it up unless I had something worthwhile to show you.

Let’s try a different approach. Assumptions: we own a reasonably up to date computer (less than five years old), and perhaps an iPad and a printer. By how many different means can we access The Vancouver Sun (or any of Post Media’s 10 daily newspapers across Canada)?

Let us count the ways. First and most obvious, we can buy a paper at the corner newspaper box, convenience store, Sky Train kiosk, or wherever. If we do so daily, it’s going to cost us from $28 to $45 month, and we’re going to have on our hands a lot of newsprint and perhaps a lot of printer’s ink (a neighbour whose condo decor is all-white has banned all newsprint from her domicile!). Or, for a small discount, we can have the paper delivered to our doorstep very early every morning; in March of this year I was paying $27.64/month.

Second, we can access The Sun on our computers’ (or tablets’ or smart phones’) web browsers and read most of the content of the daily paper on their screens. Cost? Nothing, apart from the purchase of the computer and Internet link, which we require anyway in order to email around the globe in a virtual instant–and save money on postage. Advantage: news stories via browser are frequently updated from the print version that arrived at the doorstep at 5:30 AM, and breaking news is “online” within seconds of being reported. Disadvantage? Post Media limits how many times (15) we can access a particular newspaper’s articles in 30 days-—unless we have a paid print subscription. After 15 reads, we can still access, but have to dismiss an irritating reminder that we’re over our limit.

More importantly, you ask, how do we read the comics, or do the crosswords, or see the full page ads? We’ll get to that.

Third, we can click the “Paper” link on The Sun’s home page menu bar (under the thick blue bar of links). When that page loads, we can scroll down and see from each of the newspapers sections (A, B, C, D, etc.) the article headlines we would find in the actual paper. Still, however, no comics, no crosswords, no ads. And, yes, a subscription is still required for full service.

Finally, we can subscribe to the ePaper, a digitized version of the newspaper miniaturized to fit the screen. (On The Sun’s home page, click ePaper in the top most thin blue menu line focused on subscriptions.) On our Macs or PCs (but not so well on our iPads) if our vision requires it, we can zoom in on any article, even the comics, or have an article read aloud, peruse the ads, or print the crossword or any other content we need to take with us. Advantage of ePaper: we get everything we would see in the print edition while eating breakfast without also becoming ink-stained wretches (check out wisegeek.com/what-chemicals-are-used-in-newspaper-ink.htm). Disadvantage: we have to pay for it, either through a paper subscription which allows us to have a “free” ePaper subscription as well, or, as my wife figured out, by scrapping the paper delivery, and buying just the ePaper subscription for $10.00 a month and saving over $200 in a year! Oh, did I mention that our Sun access also enables us read in full any of the other 9 Post Media “papers” and to access a month’s back issues?

So, what do you think we did?

Postscript for online readers: You will no doubt have some fun by having the ePaper read to you. Oh, that’s “read” pronounced as “red”, not as “reed.” When I had the ePaper read this headline, “Birdie run puts Woods in lead” it told me that he was in “lead” as it rhymes with “bed.” When I used my Mac’s text to speech service, “lead” correctly rhymed with “deed” not “dead.” However, in the main article, “wind” as in “wind up with” rhymed with “sinned” not with “kind.” Yes, friends, computers are still far from intelligent-major-domos!

It’s equally amusing to take newspaper headlines and put them into Google Translate, convert them to any language you like, then have that language’s rendition translated back into English. Try it out and let me know the funniest rendition you come across!

Let 2013 be your lucky year—the year when you  pay off your debt and build up extra cash for a great vacation, the newest smartphone, or increase your savings. Now that the holidays are over and the bills are in, you may think paying down your debt is not possible.

Don’t despair—one way to tackle debt is to create a budget that will show you how much you are earning, spending and saving.

Consider some quick ways to save money. Spending $2.50 a day on coffee costs you $912.50 a year. You can make coffee at home and cut back on the amount you buy. If you have a balance on your credit card, try to pay it off, or pay off as much as possible of what you owe. Carrying a balance on your card means that everything you charge to that card actually costs you more than the purchase price, because you are paying interest. If you buy a new T.V. for $1,000 and pay only the minimum each month, it will take you almost 11 years to pay it off in full and it will have cost you $1,989 ($989 in interest)—almost twice the original price.

The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada has tips on beating your debt, doing a debt check-up and creating a budget on its website at itpaystoknow.gc.ca. Interest rates are still low, so you may want to get a consolidation loan to pay down debts, especially those with high interest rates. Remember that if interest rates go up this year, your payments on any variable interest rate loans like a line of credit or a mortgage will increase.

www.newscanada.com

Are you dreaming of an early retirement full of travel, golfing and more time at the cottage? If so, you may want to meet with your financial advisor to see if it can become a reality.

“Retirement has been redefined because people are living longer and many have been overspending in this consumer-driven economy,” says Stephen Reichenfeld, a wealth counsellor at Fiduciary Trust Company of Canada. “If you still haven’t paid off your house and have credit card debt, it’s probably best to delay retirement and start saving more.” Make lifestyle adjustmentsReview your spending habits and make some hard decisions with your advisor’s help. Would it be possible to downsize your house now that your children have moved out? Do you really need two cars? Would it be possible to delay that European dream trip? Seek financial advice from someone who can see the big picture and ensure that your plan will help guarantee a long and successful retirement. More information on retirement planning is available on websites such as www.fiduciarytrust.ca.

www.newscanada.com

Juicing can do wonders for your body and soul – and starting a vegetable garden, or a few containers, is an easy way to use the freshest produce and save money at the same time.

Fruits and vegetables are a primary source of much needed vitamins, minerals, iron, fibre, and water. Canada’s Food Guide recommends that an adult male between 19 and 50 years of age consume 8 to 10 servings of fruit and vegetables a day, and a female in the same age group consume 7 to 8 servings. Many of us don’t get enough.

A simple way to increase your daily intake of fruits and vegetables is to juice them, say specialists in this field. The thought of eating a minimum of seven servings can be overwhelming and if you’re not a fan of vegetables, it can seem like an impossible task. Juicing allows you to enjoy several servings at once and if you would like some guidance when making a purchase, retailers point to the popular Breville Juice Fountain Plus. It’s a dual-speed juicer with specialized discs that extracts more nutrients than other choices.

Here are some easy tips to get started:

• Do your research and decide what you would like to grow. Variety is important for juicing.

• Determine how much space you need (or have to use). It’s also important to consider sunlight, soil and access to water.

• When planting vegetables you can either grow many plants of the same kind in rows or group multiple types of plants together.

• Loosen the soil up before you plant.

• Research the amount of care each type of vegetable plant requires.

• Harvest your produce when it’s ready. With many types of plants, the more you pick, the more the plant will produce.

www.newscanada.com

By Matt Mayer, MSc

Canadians are living longer on average.But research shows there’s a 10-year gap between how long we live, and how long we live in health. This gap is largely due to heart disease, stroke and other chronic conditions.

We know that nine in 10 Canadians have at least one risk factor for heart disease and stroke, but did you know that nearly four in 10 have three or more risk factors?

To reduce that 10-year gap, the Heart and Stroke Foundation recommends being physically active, eating well, being smoke-free, reducing stress and avoiding excessive drinking.

Get moving toMake Health LastPhysical activity can be a lifesaver – literally. Inactivity can shave over two years off a person’s expected lifespanand results in nearly four quality years of life lost.

Yet 85 per cent of Canadian adults don’t get the recommended 150 minutes of physical activity each week.

To start on the path to shrinking the 10-year gap, take these tips to heart:

• FIND YOUR SWEET SPOT: Not a gym rat? Not a problem: any activity can have a positive impact, including gardening, dancing and more. • MIX IT UP: Mix and match your activities, varying your level of intensity. Do an hour of yard work one day, bike with the kids the next and head to a yoga class the day after that.

• HANG 10: Short on time? Exercise in bouts of 10 minutes. For example, a quick stroll burns 47 calories.

• CREATE YOUR CUBICLE GYM:Find a space at work for yoga poses, chair squats, running in place and stretches.

• GET INTO CHILD’S PLAY: Have fun and rediscover your youth.Throw a Frisbee, go for a swim or paddle a canoe.

• WALK THE SIDELINES:Don’t just watch your kids on the field. Get up and walk around.

• STEP IT UP: Get off the bus or subway a stop early, or park a few blocks from the office, and walk the rest.

• DO THE HOME STRETCH:Do some stretches when you get home tonight.

Want to find out about your personal risk? Take the free Heart&Stroke Risk Assessment, get personalized tips and set goals for a healthier you at makehealthlast.ca.

www.newscanada.com

by Keith Richardson

How do you “do email” on your PC or Mac? Most people use an ‘email client’—a program installed on their computers to interact with remote servers to receive and send email. PC users will be familiar with Outlook. On Macs, most of us use Apple Mail (or possibly Thunderbird or even Entourage or Outlook.) In addition, we probably use the email servers of our Internet Service Provider (Shaw or TELUS) to handle email deliveries. Shawmail (@shaw.ca) is handled by a system called Post Office Protocol (POP3). TELUSmail (@TELUS.net), is handled by IMAP—Internet Message Access Protocol. Important to many of us, an email client allows us to manage several email accounts in one location and even access both POP3 and IMAP in the same place.

But what if we use our web browser to access email as WEBMAIL—for example Gmail, Yahoo mail or Hotmail? (Or, in some cases, even Shaw or TELUS webmail?) Webmail can be accessed by all web browsers. However, webmail interfaces may not be as well designed as our email clients’. Webmail is a more generic, awkward experience I’d rather avoid if I can.  Doing email in Apple’s Mail client is actually fun!

The main differences between POP3 and IMAP? Unfortunately, the explanation may be complicated because POP3 allows some alternatives in what happens to email after it’s delivered to our client that can make it resemble IMAP.

In the main, however, IMAP mail continues to reside on the host server computer even after it delivers a COPY to our client. POP3 mail, however, eventually deletes the original from the host after delivering it to our computer, where we store it ourselves. How long it stays on the external sever is usually up to us—a setting we control. We can have it deleted, for example, from Shaw’s server immediately upon delivery, or set it to stay on the server for a period of several days or weeks. If we delete POP3 mail on one device, it MAY still be available on another device, depending on settings in our email client.

Email on an IMAP host server, on the other hand, resides there for ages—that’s no problem for us because the company providing this free medium has servers with enormous capacity. No matter what we do with the “copies” on own computers, we can still access the “originals” through webmail. So it might seem to be an advantage to subscribe to an email service that provides IMAP because POP3 requires more management. After receiving an email from a POP3 server, we’re expected to open it, then either delete it or save it in another mailbox in the Client program on our own computer. Eventually, the company server will no longer be able to help us retrieve an old email that we have received and deleted. Copies of SENT emails will reside in our own Client Sent boxes, however, until we delete them from our client. POP3 users have a say in how long our ISP’s store our incoming and deleted mail. But POP3 hosts are more likely to have a small limit on how much they’ll allow us keep on their host servers.

What about browser-accessed webmail handled by Internet companies like Google (gmail.com), Yahoo (yahoo.ca) or Microsoft (including hotmail.com) or Apple (icloud.com or me.com)? All of these use IMAP servers (although you CAN elect to receive Gmail as POP mail if you prefer). And all of these IMAP services can be set up in our email client if we wish. If we subscribe to any of these services on our iPad or iPhone, we’ll be using IMAP which is preferred by mobile devices. (Yes, you CAN set up POP mail for Gmail on a mobile device, but the preference is for IMAP.)  And if you do set up IMAP mail in your email client you can store both received and sent emails on your computer if you wish.

IF you do ALL your email through a BROWSER (i.e. as webmail), however, your email, contacts, and stored mail are entirely in the hands of your host. If you can’t access the Internet, you can’t see your stuff. In addition, you lose many of the benefits of well-designed email client interfaces.

For more details, we recommend you consult http://www.howtogeek.com/99423/email-whats-the-difference-in-pop3-imap-and-exchange.

“What difference does it really make whether I use POP3 or IMAP in my email client?” you ask. If you use only one device (computer or tablet) to receive and send email, the answer is, “Not much.” If you also handle email on a tablet and/or smart phone (which also have client software), we recommend you use an IMAP service that reflects the “ecosystem” you’ve chosen to roll with. If you browse with Google Chrome, own an Android smartphone, and use Gmail on your computer, stick with Google products. If you’re “with TELUS” on your PC, you may want to get your smart phone from them, too.

On the other hand, if you use a Mac, an iPad, and an iPhone, take advantage of Apple’s iCloud. Don’t mix Google and iCloud. The main benefit will be that if you delete an email (or contact or calendar entry on your iPhone or iPad) you won’t have to deal with it again on your Mac or other Apple device. However, because the email on your device is just a copy of what’s on the IMAP host server, you can still retrieve the archived original if you need to unless you take the extraordinary measure of deleting it from the host.

Finally, if you’re “with Shaw” and choose, within the same email client, to have a mixture of POP and IMAP accounts (say an @shaw.ca POP3 account and an IMAP @yahoo.ca account or @gmail.com), you will find managing the IMAP account is a little more complex and confusing because it appears to be duplicated! And on that somewhat confusing note, we’ll end by saying, if you need help with your Mac’s Mail client, give MacSeniors a call. We can definitely help.

As the official end to winter draws nearer, there are certainly signs of spring in the air. How fortunately we are to live on the “wet” coast, compared to the fierce cold weather and piles of snow they have been experiencing back east. At least here the snow stays on the mountains, where it belongs.

I don’t know if by the time you read this column the big weather jackpot on 1130 AM radio will have been won, but it hit a record $10,000 (at time of writing). That doesn’t mean that weatherman Russ Lecate has been spot on with his daily predictions (he does get great leeway), it means that our climate is more consistent than we give it credit for. After all, who doesn’t like to complain about the weather?

So while the pot at the end of the rainbow continues  building for one lucky listener, that other weather predictor – Mr. Groundhog – saw his shadow and that should mean an early spring. Hopefully it comes with lots of sunshine.

For me the sure signs of spring are the start of Major League Baseball training camps in Florida and Arizona, and local thoroughbred farms and the racetrack in Vancouver at Hastings gearing up for another season. Horse racing resumes there on Saturday, April 13 and continues until the Thanksgiving Day holiday Monday on October 14. There will be 69 live racing days to go along with the various simulcasts now being offered year-round.

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In the “it’s only going to get worse” category, gas prices continue to creep up and are passing the $1.40 mark in some areas.

Predictions are that the price at the pumps will continue to increase to $1.60 by holiday season when school is out. We are being robbed folks, and held hostage by a greedy industry and governments struggling to balance their budgets.

In doesn’t take a genius to figure out that with fuel efficient cars and better mileage, we are using less gas – which is a good thing.

But those gas companies like to make big profits and that means they will keep upping the prices to make up for it. And governments don’t mind because it means more revenues from gas taxes.

With people using the media to complain about the cost of transit and annoying bicycle lanes, it distracts from the real issue noted above.

The worse offender continues to be the federal government with it’s “tax on a tax”. And it won’t be going away anytime soon because they never get the blame!

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Easter comes early this year at the end of March, so some schools are taking extended spring breaks which will run into Good Friday. Unfortunately there are no uniform dates from school district to school district, so be extra careful out there when driving near parks and schools.

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FINAL NOTE: As we move through the Year of the Snake, always watch your step – especially in business deals. The snake has cunning and wise characteristics so it should always be “buyer beware”.