ARTIFICIALLY INTELLIGENT MUSIC

AI writes the songs that make the whole world stop singing. In other words, artificially intelligent music is definitely a work in progress. For example, I went to Suno.ai and typed: “Write a song in the style of Dixieland jazz.” It was awful. So was 60s rock. And so was a rewrite of “The 12 Days of Christmas.” If this is the future of music, I might stop listening. But I liked the bluegrass tune “Neon Cowboy,” and was intrigued by “My Truck Found Love.” It’s about a self-driving vehicle gone rogue. Supposedly, you can also get tunes from the Suno plugin in Microsoft’s Copilot. Search on “Microsoft Copilot” or click the blue-turquoise icon in the top right in Edge. […]

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STOPPING TRACKERS IN THEIR TRACKS

You may think your phone is protecting you from trackers. But is it? Even iPhone users who disable usage sharing aren’t immune. Data is collected from every app except “Health” and “Wallet,” according to the security firm Mysk. Android users fare no better. The average user is tracked 1500 times a day by 150 apps. A free app from DuckDuckGo offers “app tracking protection.” But it’s far from perfect. Even after you switch it on in settings, you’ll see a list of apps that DuckDuckGo won’t touch. I saw 13 of them, including Google Chrome and YouTube. When I tried turning their trackers off, I got a warning. Besides app protection, the DuckDuckGo app offers an “@duck.com” email address, which […]

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ROLE PLAYING WITH AI

Duolingo, the language app, is now boosted by CHATGPT-4. Thanks to artificial intelligence, it’s rolling out “Role Play.”  Role Play drops you into an imaginary scenario in French or Spanish. For example, suppose you’re bantering with a waitress in Barcelona while munching tapas. After your conversation, a robot will tell you how you did. It’s part of the new “Duolingo Max” subscription for iPhone only, which is slowly rolling out across America. In an article in a recent New Yorker magazine, the writer describes her mock session in a French cafe. After some exchanges, she said “I love you,” to the AI machine. When it asked if she would rather spend evenings alone, she said she would if everyone was […]

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GOOGLE TRAINING MIGHT BE BETTER THAN COLLEGE

Many businesses would rather hire a skilled high school graduate than an unskilled college grad, especially from Google’s new “Certificates” program. For $39 a month, people from all walks of life are getting trained for tech jobs. No prior experience is necessary. The new program has already placed 75,000 people into jobs with a median salary of $66,000. One of the recent grads got a job in tech support for the NFL. The training requires less than 10 hours of study per week for three to six months. To get started, search on “Google Certificates.” Choices include “Digital Marketing and E-commerce,” “IT Support,” and “Android Development,” among others. There are 150 participating companies offering 1.5 million jobs. The site also […]

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ONLINE PIANO LESSONS ROCK

Years ago, my mediocre piano teacher failed to show up for my lesson, even though we were meeting at her house. I heard she did it to others too.  Phooey on her. I can get the best teachers in America online, and they’re cheaper. According to a 2020 report from Thumbtack, the average in-person piano teacher charges between $40 to $100 an hour. I just got 36 lessons for $25 from TheGreatCourses.com during one of their major sales. By using the free Chrome extension from CapitalOneShopping.com, the price dropped to $18. The equivalent from a live teacher would have cost $1440 to $3600. My online teacher, Pamela Pike, won the “Outstanding Teacher Award” from Louisiana State University, among other honors. […]

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FLIP PHONES FOR CHILDREN

I’ve rarely seen my favorite 11 year-old pick up her phone. She’s not addicted the way other children are. That’s because she uses a flip phone. I recommend it to parents who are worried about obsessive smartphone use. When my friend was 9, I gave her an old Jitterbug phone that came to me for review at least 10 years ago but still works. Besides texts and calls, she finds it handy for taking pictures of school assignments. She also snaps photos of billboards for events her family might want to attend. Perhaps because it’s so old, its photo-forwarding feature no longer works and its call quality is sometimes choppy. But it’s a great example of how flip phones offer […]

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GETTING A BETTER DEAL FROM TRACFONE

My quest for the perfect cell phone service started at a square dance. I was trying to make a phone call but couldn’t connect. Everyone else could. A friend suggested I get a cheap Tracfone plan as a backup. So I added it to an old iPhone I had lying around. It seemed like a good idea at first, but I didn’t really need two phone services. So I took the Tracfone SIM card out of the iPhone and put it in my larger and newer Android, after canceling its service. Now I’m saving hundreds of dollars a year, with no connection issues so far. Tracfone is owned by Verizon. My previous carrier, Google Fi, cost me between $20 and […]

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PLANT APP PUTS HOUSEHOLD PLANTS ON A SCHEDULE

Thank goodness for plant apps: I tend to under-water, except when I over-water. I don’t fertilize. I only re-pot when the roots are so big and gnarly there’s no dirt left. “Planta,” for iPhone and Android, rescued me. It puts every task on a schedule without being a Nazi about it. On watering day, for example, it will ask me if the soil is still damp. If so, I can snooze the alert. Different plants are on different schedules. For example, my ZZ plant is over three feet high but almost never needs watering. Unfortunately, the free version of Planta only gives watering reminders – no plant identification or care advice. The paid version, for $36 a year, gives you […]

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MAKING YOUR OWN ONLINE QUIZ

I sent my favorite 11 year-old a personality quiz based on her favorite Amazon series. Then I made a better one. You’ve probably seen such quizzes on Facebook and elsewhere. Perhaps the most famous is from the New York Times. If you search on the phrase “New York Times quiz how y’all,” it comes right up. It figures out where you’re from based on the words you use. They marked me as a Californian, which is right on target, since I grew up there.  One of the words that helped them decide was my use of “crawdad” instead of “crayfish.” But they also figured I’d spent time in Reno, Nevada, which I had, as a college student. To get started […]

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SAVE YOUR SCREEN

A sales rep at T-Mobile tried to talk my friend out of buying a case and a screen protector for her new smartphone. “Just get one or the other,” he said. Wrong! A modern phone’s Gorilla Glass is unlikely to crack. But it can get scratches. According to a scientist on Quora.com, it’s not your keys that cause trouble. Ninety-five percent of scratches are due to quartz. Yes, quartz. An ingredient in sand. Our surroundings have a lot of dust and sand particles. “When you see dust on your phone screen,” he says, “you try to clean it by rubbing it on your shirt, etc. When you do that, you put a scratch on your smartphone.”  You need a screen […]

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