On Computers

A friend said she often loses cell service when camping in Yosemite. Either she’s too far from a cell tower or the signal is blocked by hills, dense trees and stormy weather. So what happens if she’s stung by a bee? There’s no Google when the internet is down. But there is artificial intelligence. A new iPhone app called “Survivalist.ai” can answer almost any question you throw at it, even offline, because it stores 1.8 gigabytes of info on your phone and was trained on 15 trillion tokens of public data. However, it can only provide event information up to March 2023. That’s because the system is based on many different language models, one of which, Llama 3.1, took 7.7 […]

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Filed under: AI, Android, apps, computers, Google, Internuts, keyboards | Comments Off on GETTING ANSWERS OFFLINE

Google Lens is changing the way I look at objects. Now when I point my phone at one and talk, Lens answers me. After pointing Lens at a blue bar stool, for example, I said to my phone: “Where can I buy a bar stool like this?” It immediately showed me the same stool at Amazon and elsewhere. I pointed the Lens app at a plant and asked: “How often should I water this?” It not only identified the plant as a weeping fig, it told me about its watering needs– by considering the size of the plant, the pot, and how fast it dries out. I pointed at a poster and said: “What inspired this painting by Renoir?” Google […]

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Filed under: apps, drones, health, Windows | Comments Off on USING GOOGLE LENS OPENS UP THE WORLD

I’m not addicted to my smartphone. But if I was, I’d switch to a flip phone. Today’s flip or clamshell phones can do a lot more than you think. For example, they can hail an Uber just by dialing 833-USE-UBER, or 833-873-8237. Once a driver has been assigned, you’ll get a text message with their name, picture, license number and estimated time of arrival. If you prefer Lyft, the $80 Jitterbug Flip 2 phone comes with an operator who will schedule a ride and stay on the line with you until it gets there. An alternative is the F1 Horizon Bluebird, a $249 flip phone from Sunbeam Wireless. It doesn’t come with a personal operator, but you get lots of […]

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Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on FLIPPING OUT OVER THE FLIP PHONE

If you’re like me, you hate to pay Microsoft $70 a year for Office 365. But you can get a nearly equivalent version for much less, and it’s a one-time-only payment. Go to StackSocial.com and search for “Microsoft Office 2019.” It’s identical to Office 365, except you don’t get Microsoft Teams or updates. Besides Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, it includes Notes, OneNote, Publisher and Access. Its $25 price was expiring in 40 hours when I looked, but new deals arrive almost daily. When I checked, Windows 11 was $20, down from $199. Lifetime subscriptions to Babbel and Rosetta Stone, the language-learning programs, were more than 50 percent off. There were also discounts on gift cards, gadgets and toys. But some […]

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Filed under: facebook, Microsoft, phones | Comments Off on DEALS ON MICROSOFT OFFICE AND BEYOND