Debbie Mayo-Smith: Help! how do I?

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It has always been a blessing being married to a curious, technology loving, intelligent high level CIO (chief information officer).

Steve taught me about the Internet before many knew. He showed me email before it was popular. He set up my systems and always responds quickly when he gets the 'Honey! Help! X , Y , or Z isn't working'.

He's patient when the kids or I mess things up or download what we shouldn't. He's rebuilt our computers countless times as well as being the unknown angel that answers all of the tricky questions that people email me.

Let me take you back to last Monday morning. We were sitting side by side - Steve on his iPad; me on my new Galaxy Tablet. Steve did his normal "Look at this app Debbie. It's amazing. Just think only $1.00 and what it can do." It was an app called Blender which blends two images together with fabulous touch and swipe technology.

I guess because I was struggling with that darn Tablet it was the last thing I wanted to hear. I was personally in the middle of GRRRRR! How does this darn thing work? What are all the icons? What do they do? Ever have that feeling? I bought the Galaxy so I could see what android was like in comparison to the iPad.

While I need to know about these things for business, I didn't think about having to learn yet another operating system, Android on top of years of Microsoft and Apple with the iphone. Not to mention the darn things don't come with user manuals in hand (though who would read them).

So on this occasion, being married to a CIO made me depressed. Why? It highlighted not only how quickly technology is changing, but the immense amount of things you need to know, the millions of applications there are (but you never heard of) and how very, very hard it is to keep abreast of even a portion of it. +

Why just yesterday I held down my iPhone home button a touch longer than normal and all of a sudden voice control popped up. How it works is you just say "call Tim, or call 09 575 5555 and voila, it does it! Now I've had iPhones since the first generation - five years - and I've only just found this out. Again, by accident.

I know what you're thinking - if she should know this, or wants to - it's easy to search, download manuals, look or ask for tips. Yes, you're right. But if you don't know there are features you don't know about or you're time poor like many - what is the solution?
Here is my 2012 promise to myself. Why don't you consider something like this too.

Just like I make time for the Pump, Pilates, Spin classes at the gym; time to walk the dogs through the park; read for business education, I'm going to start looking up the manuals and searching for more tips and apps that are applicable to my business. It will be a new twice-weekly recurring appointment in my diary.

I'd love to know what your everyday technology challenges are? Or how you search and find new functions or applications for your phones/tablets. Please share it with us all.

Written by international speaker and bestselling author Debbie Mayo-Smith. For more tips, over 500 how-to articles visit Debbie's article webpage.