Posted on October 29th, 2018 by Joy Schwabach
An exchange of emails with a reader on the subject of falling prices for large storage drives, led to an inevitable question: What are they good for? In short, once you get past a few gigabytes – which you can buy as thumb drives for less than $10 – just what are you going to store? We know that the general notion is that bigger is always better, and at these prices why not go nuts and pull up the truck? Terabyte drives are now common. That’s a thousand gigabytes, a million megabytes, a big number. Let’s talk reality here. According to Britannica, all 32 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica would take up 4.7 gigabytes. That’s all the words and […]
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Filed under: Amazon, apps, radio, storage | Comments Off on REALLY BIG NUMBERS
Posted on October 22nd, 2018 by Joy Schwabach
“Robo calls” are getting worse. Adrian Abramovich, of Miami, has been accused of making 97 million spam calls and is facing a $120 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission. There’s a call-screening feature in the new Pixel 3 phone from Google, and it’s a sure bet you will soon see it in other makes. When your phone rings, you’ll see a “screen call” option. Tap it and a recorded voice in the Pixel phone asks the caller to state their name and the nature of the call. The caller might say something like “You have won a free cruise.” (We win an amazing number of those, which is unfortunate because Bob doesn’t like cruises.) At this point, you can […]
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Filed under: apps, books, electronics, maps, music, phones | Comments Off on LET THE ROBOT TAKE IT
Posted on October 15th, 2018 by Joy Schwabach
An interesting thing happened: Joy was looking up recipes at VegetarianTimes.com. But as she was viewing these in the Chrome browser on her Android phone, she was inundated, distracted and annoyed by a constant barrage of pop-up ads. They were stupidly annoying: “You’ve won a new iPhone 9!” was the first one. (That’s not even the name of the new iPhone. It’s iPhone XR or XS. They skipped number nine). The second pop-up: “You’ve won a prize on Amazon!” Really! The ads were so bad she closed the browser and started over. Pop-ups are supposed to be blocked automatically, if you want. To find out, she went to the Chrome browser, tapped the three dots in the upper right, then […]
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Filed under: Internuts, Mac, spam, troubleshooting | Comments Off on POP-UPS ON YOUR PHONE
Posted on October 8th, 2018 by Joy Schwabach
A reader wrote to say she can’t get fast Internet service from her Internet provider. They say it’s because she’s in a rural area, at the very edge of their coverage. “An update available on my iPhone 6s took a day and a half to download,” she says. “The update on my watch took even longer. My son got both done at his school in two hours! It’s ironic that in order to pay the bill I have to mail it in.” If you’re in the same rocky boat, go to speedtest.net to verify how fast your Internet connection is. (Just click “go” and they do the rest.) Our connection is pretty fast, with a download speed of 20 and […]
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Filed under: environment, games, Internet, trends | Comments Off on INTERNET BLUES
Posted on October 1st, 2018 by Joy Schwabach
We remember when personal computers first came out. You could build them yourself if you were savvy. That’s what Michael Dell did way back when. He sold them to other college students and the business went on from there. Now there’s a computer that kids can put together. The “Computer Kit Touch” is $280 from Kano.me. Designed for young children, it has a ten-inch screen. Follow a printed storybook to build a portable, touchscreen computer, and attach a keyboard. From there, kids can make apps, art, and games with simple steps. Included apps are Chromium (a web browser similar to Chrome), YouTube, Libre Office (similar to Microsoft Office) and Google Drive; more are available in the app store, such as […]
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Filed under: apps, business, education, electronics, gadgets, how-to, kids, podcasts, search, web | Comments Off on BUILD YOUR OWN
