On Computers

The other day Joy had to help a featured speaker connect a computer to a projector at her woman’s club. The computer was missing Windows 7 menu options like: “connect to a projector.” The speaker said she couldn’t understand this because her computer was practically brand new. So how come it still had Windows XP on it? The likely answer: Windows 7 was probably overwritten when she did a “backup and restore.

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We came across an unusual book which seemed on the face of it to have little to do with computing, but on second thought turned out to fit perfectly with computers and the Internet. It’s called “The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt” and is a full-color novel in the form of a scrapbook set in the roaring ‘20s. It starts with the author at age 17. She goes to Vassar, picks up shocking habits like learning to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and takes on the world. It struck us as an extremely clever way to turn a scrapbook into a novel or a wonderfully expanded family history. “Frankie Pratt” is great inspiration for anyone who wants to turn a digital […]

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Birchbox.com is a new cosmetics delivery service, based on the idea that women love free samples. For $10 a month, you get a box full of cosmetics. If anything appeals to you, you can get the full-size version at the online Birchbox store, which also has beauty articles and video tutorials.

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BccPlease.com reminds you to use the “BCC” field when you’re forwarding an item to a list of friends. This protects their email address from being seen by everyone else on the list. BccPlease also has tips on best email practices.

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JustPaste.It lets you paste images and text into a window on the screen. Then you get a link you can share with your friends. We just looked at JustPaste.It/north,

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SocialGoodies.com offers daily deals and says they give 20 percent of sales to charities such as Teach for America and Doctors Without Borders.

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TrueCar.com claims to be different from all other new-car buying sites. It tells you what the dealer paid for the car and what other people paid for it in the last four weeks (or eight weeks if the price is stable.) Then it helps you get the best deal and gives you a guaranteed price. You walk into the dealership and pay for the car without haggling.

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PBSkids.org/lab just came out with 40 free games for children ages 2 to 8. Though they’re aimed at building math skills, they use friendly characters like Curious George and The Cat in the Hat.

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There are now more cell phones than people in the United States.

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We got a sneak preview last night of a rare 1995 interview with Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer. The film screens at Chicago’s Landmark Century Centre Cinema November 16 and 17. (Details below.) It’s fascinating. Jobs says it was the “Blue Box” that inspired his life of invention. The Blue Box was a device that reproduced the tones AT&T used to connect phones worldwide. When Jobs found a list of the tones in an AT&T technical journal at the Stanford library, he and Steve Wozniak created their own box and used it to call the Pope. They didn’t actually get the Pope because they were laughing too hard just before he came on the line. Bob’s experience with the […]

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