Posted on March 26th, 2018 by Joy Schwabach
The battle between Amazon’s “Echo” and Google Home never ends. Which is all good for us. The other day we turned to Google’s smart speaker and said “Hey Google, play ‘La Bamba.’” That launched a playlist with some of the best rock ‘n’ roll of all time. Joy could hardly stop dancing and return to the column. Alexa has her own new tricks. For instance, you can give her several commands at once without having to say “Alexa” each time. We said, “Alexa, turn the volume to 7.” A second later, we said “Call Bob,” and Bob’s cell phone started to ring. We also plied it with questions. “Alexa, what’s the population of North Korea? What’s the population of South […]
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Filed under: Amazon, Google, word processing | Comments Off on ALEXA, START MY DAY
Posted on March 19th, 2018 by Joy Schwabach
One of our frequent correspondents had a near miss. That’s a near miss from disaster when he got a phone call telling him his PayPal account had been compromised and he owed $340. The caller said they could fix the problem for $299 but they needed to take control of his computer. They said they needed his bank account number too, so he gave it to them. There was a lot of background chatter on the caller’s end of the line. The red flags went up, the rockets exploded and the bells started ringing. He turned off his computer, told the caller he just had a power outage, hung up and moved everything from his checking account to his savings […]
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Filed under: education, games, security, tech support, trends | Comments Off on HERE THERE BE TYGERS AND ALL MANNER OF STRANGE BEASTS
Posted on March 12th, 2018 by Joy Schwabach
An old friend in the computer gaming business called to pitch a new product. The product was interesting though not yet ready for prime time. But his call opened a window we hadn’t looked through in many years. We hardly ever mention computer games anymore, because it has become a specialty in its own right and is too narrow for this column. And yet, they’re still out there. More than half a million people tune in daily to Twitch.TV, where they can watch other people play video games. Ten million have downloaded the app to watch Twitch on their phones. Sound pretty stupid? We tuned in (because we have to) and it was actually interesting. In fact it was more […]
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Filed under: art, batteries, browsers, environment, games | Comments Off on DEVELOPING A TWITCH
Posted on March 5th, 2018 by Joy Schwabach
A reader innocently called a tech support phone number he saw on the Brother Printers website. It turned out to be a scam. Unlike “click bait,” which leads you to fake news stories or other web sites, this one goes after your wallet. When our reader called the supposed tech support number, he was told they needed to take control of his Macbook Pro to fix a major problem. They said he had a lot of “stuck” and “sleeping” files (whatever those are), and added he needed to pay $299 a year for a firewall. Fortunately, he said “no.” He added: “They told me there was no way that I would get the printer to work without their firewall!” But […]
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Filed under: graphics, health, Internuts, music, photos, tech support, video | Comments Off on BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
