HIGH TECH COFFEE

The caffeine in a cup of coffee could blast me to the moon and back. I prefer tea. But when Kflow sent me a portable espresso machine, I had to try it out.  High tech coffee! All you do is add water and espresso grounds and push a button. The “Portable Espresso Maker” makes coffee in 30 seconds. It has 15 bars of pump pressure; the standard is nine. The more bars, the better, they say. I’m no connoisseur, but it tasted great in a latte. The model I received doesn’t heat the water. But you don’t need to heat it to brew a cup.  I added 10 ounces of hot soy milk, maple syrup and cinnamon to my blender, […]

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YOU RANG?

Why do phones sometimes ring just once? It’s a scam. Don’t call them back. According to HowtoGeek.com, if you cave in and call back, your call may result in toll charges similar to a 900 number. The longer you stay on the line, the more money they make. The scam is called “Wangiri,” because it started in Japan. It translates as “one ring and cut.” Calls have been routed to Mauritania, Liberia, Comoros, Chad, the Cook Islands and Nauru. But it’s not always a developing country. Some go to Switzerland. If in doubt, search the web for the number to see if it’s part of a scam. Or if you get a lot of these and have an iPhone, try […]

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NO CAT CALLS PLEASE

Half a century ago Andy Warhol predicted that someday everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. He forgot to mention pets. Now there are websites devoted to making your pet stand out from the crowd. Bowser or Fluffy can even star in their own story book. And of course you can post videos — with background music and sound effects. Don’t worry that people will think you’re some kind of nut, a recent report says 65 percent of pet owners post news of their pets twice a week. Where do they post? On pet social networks, of course. If you search on the phrase “How to Make Your Pet a Star in Social Media,” you’ll get lots of advice. ABC […]

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HELP!

“Ask My Buddy” is a free app for sending an alert to everyone you know, without reaching for your phone or computer. It works just by voice on a Windows 10 computer, a Google Home device or the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot. Plenty more like these are coming out soon. With Windows 10’s built-in voice recognition program, Cortana, you can say “Ask My Buddy to Alert Everyone” and everyone on your contact list will get an immediate phone call, text message and email. Or you can confine it to a single person. Cortana isn’t great unless you’ve trained it by using it a lot, but the Google and Amazon devices are quite good at recognition. For Windows, we found […]

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FINDING FREE MOVIELAND

A reader asks: “Where are the Amazon Prime movies?”  You’d think Amazon would have a category called “Prime Movies” on their website, but no, too simple.. So how do you find them? Prime Movies are freebies for those who have paid for Prime membership. To find, type “prime movies” in the search box at the top of the page at Amazon.com. About 135,000 come up. Don’t have time to go through those? Best narrow the search. There are categories off to the left. In what may be the worst designed web page in the known universe, some of those categories don’t make sense, like “used.” (It’s a download, dummy.) Also ignore the price listings; what part of freebie do they […]

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RANSOM!

A reader writes to tell us her Windows files have been hijacked. The hijacker is demanding money to release her photos and personal documents. Here’s what to do and how to prevent that. Restart the computer. Keep tapping the F8 key as you start up. A recovery option will come on the screen. This will take the machine back to a time before the hijack. (And to think that some people say time travel is impossible.) If for some reason this doesn’t work, there are lots more ways to do it in PC World’s article “How to Rescue Your PC from Ransomware.” It’s better to avoid being taken for one of those rides in the first place by getting free […]

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CELL PHONE SERVICE GETS CHEAP

We love our cell phone service from Google’s new “Project Fi.” It only works with Google Nexus phones, but if you get one, your bill might be as low as $25 a month with tax.  Now they’re expanding it. Google Fi currently works with three phone carriers. If the signal is strongest from T-Mobile, for example, that’s who they’ll connect to. If Sprint is better, you’ll be using Sprint. They’ve recently added U.S. Cellular. A Google Fi account gives you unlimited text and phone calls for $20 a month. Each gigabyte of data (which is what you use up when you’re on the Web and all those words and pictures come in), is $10. But you get money back if […]

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21 FUNNIEST GIFS OF ALL TIME

“21 Funniest Gifs  of All Time ”  Search on that phrase or click here to find some hilarious animations from “Funny or Die.” We liked the baby in a diaper who confronts a giant dog happily resting. The dog gets up and the baby takes over the blanket, and seems to be gloating (trouble ahead with this kid).

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21 BIG DOGS TRYING TO BE BRAVE

“21 Big Dogs Trying their Best to Be Brave.” Google that phrase  or click here to find some hilarious three-second videos and photos. There’s a big dog trying to tiptoe past a cat on the stairs, a huge dog clinging to his owner in a swimming pool, and a third running away from photos of Julia Roberts.

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THE SINGING BASS AND OTHER STUPID GIFTS

Nothing has ever equaled Stupid.com for, well, really stupid gifts. This is where we got the talking stuffed bass, suitable for mounting on the wall, and the two mechanical love birds that sang to each other. We got them for our Aunt Dee; she loved them. We hesitated over the “grumpy cat” coffee mug and the “exploding wasabi” candy, but we were tempted.

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