PBSkids.org/democracy lets kids play politics, creating presidential candidate stickers and posters online. Information about issues is missing, but we learn that Mitt Romney’s favorite food is hot dogs and President Barack Obama likes pizza.
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Microsoft Publisher and Adobe’s InDesign are often used to create newsletters. But they both have a substantial learning curve, so to avoid the curve and stay on the road, just use Microsoft Word.
Filed under: graphics, word processing | Comments Off on MAKING A NEWSLETTER
According to IEEE (the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers), the majority of cars will be driverless by 2040. (California just recently approved their use on freeways.) Google’s chief executive, Sergey Brin, says Google will make driverless cars a reality for ordinary people in less than five years
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Windows 8 comes out this month and all in all it looks great for tablet users; for computer users, not so much. The new operating system is only $15 if you recently bought a Windows 7 computer or $40 if you didn’t. That’s certainly reasonable for a new operating system, but even so, should you bother?
Filed under: trends, Windows | Comments Off on WINDOWS 8 AND ALL THAT
We just bought a new laptop, the HP Pavilion g7 notebook PC, for $650 ($600 after the rebate. It weighs 6.6 pounds, has a beautiful 17-inch screen, a 640 gigabyte hard drive, six gigabytes of RAM and a DVD drive. So what’s the kick? Nothing, except it would have been $100 cheaper to buy it from the Staples web site than buying it from a Staples store. What?
Filed under: computers, discounts, shopping, web | Comments Off on WE BUY A NEW COMPUTER AND PAY TOO MUCH
Wash your clothes in a pollution-eating laundry detergent, and you’ll decrease your city’s smog, according to a report in the Scientific American. The “CatClo” detergent coats clothes with nano-particles that convert nitrogen oxide pollution (caused mainly by traffic) into harmless byproducts. More info at Catalytic-Clothing.org. You clean the air (in your own small way) just by walking around. Sitting around doesn’t count.
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Get ready to donate your Roku box. Roku’s “streaming stick,” for $99 will be out sometime in October. Stick it in the back of a TV, and it will let you stream 600 channels, 75 percent of them free. Roku has Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, Pandora music and Vudu’s “Pay per View” movies, among many choices. The tough part is that you will need a TV that has a “Mobile High-Definition Link” or “MHL” on the back. There will be 50 kinds of MHL TVs by the end of the year. For older sets, there will probably be adapters.
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This is pretty interesting: Contrary to our impression, and perhaps that of many other people as well, only one percent of online purchases are made from social media sites like Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook. The main route for online purchases is by directly visiting a company’s web site. The second most common path comes from links that appear when you do web searches. Y
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“Politicash” for Android and Apple tablets and phones tracks campaign contributions to presidential nominees. We saw that President Obama’s contributors mainly work in government or universities, while Mitt Romney’s top donors often work for brokerages and banks. The app also tracks “Super Pacs,” Here Romney’s top three donors are a builder, a doctor and a hotel owner. Obama’s top Super Pac donors are from DreamWorks Animation movie company, a law firm and a technology firm. Individual donors are listed by name, right down to contributions of $250 or less.
Filed under: Android, apps, Internuts | Comments Off on FOLLOW THE MONEY
