Posted on February 8th, 2015 by Joy Schwabach
The “Power Tap” is a wall plug-in charger that looks like a faucet. Turn the tap when you want to power your gadget. We like this a lot. Joy is always hunting for the charging cable for her iPad Mini. Now she can just leave it plugged in without wasting power. We’d be even happier if it had two USB ports, one for the phone and one for the iPad. Then we’d never have to search for the right cable. The Power Tap is $27.50 from AeroPostale.com. (Clothing apparently is a sideline.) You can also find something similar by searching on the key words “Power Tap.” When we tried that, it came up for $10 on Amazon.
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Filed under: gadgets | Comments Off on A BETTER PLUG-IN
Posted on February 7th, 2015 by Joy Schwabach
Flickr gives you a terabyte of photo storage, but now Amazon Prime members get unlimited storage on the free Amazon “Cloud Drive.”
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Filed under: Amazon, photos, storage | Comments Off on FREE UNLIMITED PHOTO STORAGE
Posted on February 6th, 2015 by Joy Schwabach
In March, Intel is coming out with “Compute Stick,” a plastic thingie that plugs into any late model TV and – Poof, turns it into a Windows 8.1 computer. This is way beyond the Roku, Chrome Cast and the Amazon Fire Sticks we wrote about recently. You just have to ask yourself if you want a whole computer on your TV. It’s $149 for the Windows version, and for the real techie types, there’s a Linux version for $89. A keyboard would be extra – but they’re cheap. Our take on this? It would be good for people who find themselves squinting when they look at computer monitors. Get the BIG picture.
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Filed under: computers, TV, Windows | Comments Off on A BIGGER STICK
Posted on February 5th, 2015 by Joy Schwabach
“KidsDoc,” a $2 app, helps you determine what to do if your kid is sick. It is the top iPhone app recommended by the 65,000 doctors at HealthTap.com. The doctors’ favorite Android app is “First Aid American Red Cross.” You can see the whole list at healthtap.com/top_health_apps_2014.
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Filed under: apps, health, kids | Comments Off on WHAT TO DO IF YOUR KID IS SICK
Posted on February 4th, 2015 by Joy Schwabach
“Be My Eyes” is an iPhone app that helps blind people identify a piece of mail, something on a shelf, or anything that needs to be identified visually. The app has already signed up over 78,000 sighted helpers and 5,800 blind users; these would use their camera phone to show a helper what they’d like identified. The helper who gets the call is under no obligation. If they can’t help, it passes automatically to the next helper. This really frees a blind person from dependence on neighbors or friends.
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Posted on February 3rd, 2015 by Joy Schwabach
It’s not enough to have a smart phone these days, you need a smart frying pan.
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Filed under: apps, gadgets | Comments Off on SMARTY PANS
Posted on February 2nd, 2015 by Joy Schwabach
A reader tells us he always starts his Chrome web browser in “private” browsing. This means there is no trace left on your computer of sites you visit or files you download. It’s particularly helpful to use this when you’re on a public computer, like at a library or hotel.
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Filed under: security, web | Comments Off on GOING PRIVATE
Posted on February 1st, 2015 by Joy Schwabach
BitCoin is a much bigger deal than we thought. In the new book, “The Age of Crypto Currency,” by Vigna and Casey, two veteran Wall Street Journal reporters, we learned that Bitcoin is used all over the world where banking is a problem. An Afghani teenager, for example, traded her Bitcoins for an Amazon gift certificate and bought her first laptop. Without Bitcoin, her earnings would have disappeared into her father or brother’s bank account. In Mali refugee camps, people receive Bitcoins as text messages on $5 phones. Without crypto currency, workers often have to depend on strangers to carry money back home to relatives. “The Age of Crypto Currency,” $28 from St. Martin’s Press, also gives us a concise […]
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Filed under: books, digital, electronics, trends | Comments Off on THE AGE OF CRYPTO CURRENCY
