AI ANALYZES YOUR TASTE IN MUSIC

Ever wonder how 79,032 music critics would rank your tastes? Do a Google search on “Pudding Cool: How Bad is Your Streaming Music?” After you sign into your Apple or Spotify account, an artificially intelligent robot will look over everything you’ve been listening to, ask you questions and combine the opinions of experts. “Do you really listen to The Girl from Ipanema by Stan Getz?” it asked me. When I said yes, it said, “Like, ironically?” When I said “no,” it said “cool.” It teased me about my other choices and asked whether I’d rather marry the Tijuana Brass, Glenn Miller or Fred Astaire. Yet my score was 79 out of 100, compared to 21 out of 100 for a […]

Read more

PRINTING IN CHOCOLATE

My late husband had a great idea for a candy: little chocolate sailboats with sails made of some white confection such as divinity. Now you can use a 3D chocolate printer to make them for you. The “Cocoa Press” is $1,500 for the basic model, but you’d have to have a 3D printer to print some of the parts. If you want it fully assembled, it’s $4000. But think of all the creations you could make and sell on Etsy, the crafters’ site. CocoaPress.com shows off some amazing ones, including the iconic “LOVE” sign, based on the famous LOVE sculpture in Philadelphia. It also prints hollow models, which you can fill with jams, ganache or other goodies. Reserve one now […]

Read more

JUST CHICKEN FEED

Your garbage isn’t chicken feed. But it could be. All it takes is the right composter. The “Mill Kitchen Bin” converts discarded scraps and leftovers into food for chickens. When the bin is full, the user empties it into a prepaid shipping box and sends it back to the company. Unlike typical composting, the Bin can handle any food, including dairy, meat, grains– even Twinkies. It de-stinks as it turns into soil-ish. Food waste makes up 24 percent of the stuff in landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and its production wastes water, land, fertilizer and energy. Even worse, it makes methane gas. So instead of throwing out your food, why not mail it in? Here’s the catch: Though […]

Read more

EARBUD COMPANIES NOW SELL HEARING AIDS

Why are the new over-the-counter hearing aids so much cheaper than the traditional kind? Because you don’t have to pay an audiologist. Two-thirds of a hearing aid’s typical $5000 price goes for an audiologist’s professional fitting, follow-up treatment, and maintenance. But last October, the Food and Drug Administration’s ruling went into effect, allowing you to buy them without a medical exam, prescription, or professional fitting.  The Bose company, well-known for home theater and earbuds, gets great reviews for its hearing aids as well. Their over-the-counter “Lexie” models range in price from $749 to $999. Around 97 percent of users say they can hear music better, including treble tones they haven’t heard in years, according to lexiehearing.com. Around 91 percent say […]

Read more

THE FUTURE OF CRYPTOCURRENCY

After the FTX bankruptcy debacle, people lost faith in cryptocurrency. Even I did, though I bought a sweater with bitcoin in 2017. It might be different if I lived in another country. Take Lebanon, for example. According to a report last month, people who try to get their cash out of a bank have to give up 85 percent of it.  CNBC quoted an architect who said he now gets 90 percent of his payments in bitcoin there, which he swaps for a “stablecoin” called tether, which he exchanges for US dollars. “One of the big attractions of cryptocurrency is its independence from governments and traditional financial institutions,” said Joel Ewing, the president of the Bella Vista computer club in […]

Read more

ARE 5G PHONES WORTH THE UPGRADE?

“Is 5G quicker than 4G?” a reader asked. “That would be my only incentive to upgrade.” It depends on the map. T-Mobile has the broadest coverage. Its 5G reaches 9,000 zip codes in over 3,000 cities, more than AT&T and Verizon combined, according to whistleout.com. If you’re in a dead zone, 5G wouldn’t matter. With good 5G, you can experience virtual reality, augmented reality and automated driving. You can download even a full 8K movie in seconds, at top speeds of 20 gigabits per second. With 4G, your best speed is only one tenth of one gigabyte per second. But even that’s fast. It’s enough to enjoy video chatting, movie and music streaming. Did you know that even so-called dumb […]

Read more

MAKING USE OF AN OLD COMPUTER

If you have an old computer gathering dust in the closet, why not turn it into a Chromebook? It could gain a new lease on life. Chromebooks work well for everything we do on the web. They avoid the frustrations of Windows, by fixing problems every time they boot up. Unlike machines that get buggy after too many programs have been installed and uninstalled, Chromebooks don’t slow down over time.  A friend of mine converted his 10 year-old Samsung laptop in about 45 minutes. Most of the changes took place automatically. The improvements are remarkable. The battery life went from about two hours to well over three hours. Web browsing is faster too, though his laptop wasn’t bad to begin […]

Read more

SHORTWAVE SOLVES THE GMAIL PROBLEM

I just whipped through my email in record time using “Shortwave” for Gmail. Shortwave was created by two guys from Google who figured out how to declutter everything. Ironically, Gmail is about to get even more cluttered. Take a look at the preview of the version rolling out this month. I love how Shortwave bundles similar emails together. That way, if the whole group looks like junk, I can sweep it off my plate in one fell swoop. This is stuff I normally would have looked at, wasted time on, been sorry I bothered. But when the subject line of a bundle gives me an instant idea of what’s inside, I have more will power. For example, in a subject […]

Read more

FINDING GOOD TECH SUPPORT

Ever since Kenny, my favorite tech guru, switched careers, I’ve been hearing moans from the readers who relied on him for help. Here are a few good alternatives. The Central Arkansas public library has online tech lessons, as does YouTube. For the library, you can register for one of their “how to” courses by writing them at digital@cals.org, or by calling 501-918-3068. Everything is free. For more extensive help, try a “TotalTech” membership from BestBuy. It covers computers, TVs,  car accessories and more for $200 a year. With that, you get round-the-clock help by phone and chat, as well as discounted prices on stuff you buy from BestBuy.  For the stuff you buy, you get free set-up. This includes mounting […]

Read more

BRILLIANT APP MAKES US ALL SMARTER

For Christmas, my nephew got me a year’s subscription to an app called “Brilliant.” Maybe I’ll end up being as brilliant as he is.  Brilliant.org has over 60 “STEM” courses (science, technology, engineering and math.) They include everything from pre-algebra to the paradoxes of infinity. There’s a free version, but it only gives you the first few chapters of each topic. The paid version is $150 a year or $25 a month. It’s an amazing way to learn, taking you up a gentle slope until you’re “thinking like a scientist,” or doing advanced statistics, or in my case, learning “science essentials,” which includes the history of important discoveries. I’m  tempted by the cryptocurrency course, which has comic art, but it […]

Read more