Posted on December 30th, 2013 by Joy Schwabach
Like Bill Gates and many others, we’re big fans of KhanAcademy.com, which offers free lectures in math, science and history. These video lectures are being used to change the usual path of learning: instead of listening to lectures during class and doing problems at night, students watch the video lectures at night and then work on problems in the daytime, with teachers standing there to help.
Read more
Filed under: education, trends | Comments Off on IMPROVING EDUCATION
Posted on December 30th, 2013 by Joy Schwabach
Free video editing programs typically let you make only short videos, but “MixBit” lets you put together as many as 256 short ones for a whole hour of play. It’s for Android and iPhones only, but that pretty much covers the field. Besides making your own video mixes, you can throw in videos made by other MixBit users. The clips that go into your mix and match video can be as long as 16 seconds each. You can trim longer videos to make them usable as clips and then put an hour’s worth together.
Read more
Filed under: apps, video | Comments Off on MIXING IT UP
Posted on December 27th, 2013 by Joy Schwabach
The whole point of saving a document as a PDF (portable document format) is to preserve its formatting. Anyone can open it with a free program like Adobe Reader and it will look exactly the same as the original that was sent. But if you want to make changes, you have to convert it to a form that can be edited.
Read more
Filed under: apps, PDF, word processing | 1 Comment »
Posted on December 25th, 2013 by Joy Schwabach
A young relative visiting us this summer noticed how quickly our Samsung Galaxy S3 went dead. A free app called “Battery Doctor” fixes that.
Read more
Filed under: apps, batteries | Comments Off on BATTERY DOCTOR
Posted on December 23rd, 2013 by Joy Schwabach
We’ve tried several of the new watches that count your steps and measure your fitness , but the one we stuck with turned out to be the least difficult to use and the least expensive. It’s the “Omron Digital Pocket Pedometer,” which was $22 at Amazon. (Amazon’s prices fluctuate, so while you’d think they were always the best deal, often they’re not. Check other discount stores as well.)
Read more
Filed under: electronics, gadgets, health, wearables | Comments Off on TRACKING YOUR STEPS
Posted on December 23rd, 2013 by Joy Schwabach
A reader was frustrated when Windows 8.1 didn’t work well with his Fujitsu scanner, and was tempted to revert to Windows 8.0. Warning: You can go back by using the Windows “Recovery Manager,” but you’ll have to re-install any programs you put on your machine. Our reader elected to download a new driver for the scanner instead.
Read more
Filed under: Windows | Comments Off on WINDOWS 8 WARNING
Posted on December 23rd, 2013 by Joy Schwabach
“WinStreak” is a free iPhone productivity app. At the end of the day, enter your three biggest accomplishments (wins), and three for tomorrow. Share by email, or social networking. Of course, you could do this on paper.
Read more
Filed under: apps, business | Comments Off on WINNING STREAK
Posted on December 23rd, 2013 by Joy Schwabach
“Venmo” is a way to pay your friends back when they buy you dinner or a movie ticket or whatever. Money you receive in your Venmo account can be transferred to your bank account overnight.
Read more
Filed under: apps | Comments Off on PAYBACK TIME
Posted on December 21st, 2013 by Joy Schwabach
“CloudMagic” lets you search Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft Exchange, iCloud, Outlook, iMap and Google Apps from one search box.
Read more
Filed under: apps, cloud computing, Internet | Comments Off on CLOUD MAGIC
Posted on December 20th, 2013 by Joy Schwabach
Type the subject into your browser’s search box and the sites come up: — “Twenty Cool Abandoned Places” has pictures of some very eerie looking places, including medieval villages, decaying hotels, water slides, diamond mines and more, all abandoned, from many places around the world. There’s no explanation for any of the places, but if you Google them, they are usually identified with s short history. (Gulliver’s Travels, an abandoned theme park in Japan, has a view of Mt.Fuji.) — “30 Hilarious GIFs from People experiencing instant karma.” These are videos showing people getting immediate payback for their actions, like the bike racer who pushes a rival off his bike, only to be attacked by a spectator, who throws him […]
Read more
Filed under: Internuts | Comments Off on INTERNUTS: ABANDONED PLACES, HILARIOUS GIFS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
