AI ANALYZES YOUR TASTE IN MUSIC
Ever wonder how 79,032 music critics would rank your tastes? Do a Google search on “Pudding Cool: How Bad is Your Streaming Music?”
After you sign into your Apple or Spotify account, an artificially intelligent robot will look over everything you’ve been listening to, ask you questions and combine the opinions of experts.
“Do you really listen to The Girl from Ipanema by Stan Getz?” it asked me. When I said yes, it said, “Like, ironically?” When I said “no,” it said “cool.” It teased me about my other choices and asked whether I’d rather marry the Tijuana Brass, Glenn Miller or Fred Astaire. Yet my score was 79 out of 100, compared to 21 out of 100 for a supposedly-hip ZDNET critic.
Finding Old Gmail Accounts
On December 1, Google began deleting inactive accounts if they hadn’t been used in two years. But you still might recover yours.
Do a Google search on the phrase “Google User Name Recovery” using your phone or computer. On my PC, it was the third result. Following the prompts, I found an account I created in 2014. I’m happy to use it again, though I could have started over with a new one.
It’s great to have an extra email address to give out to merchants and bloggers. I’ve been using an AOL account for that, but it fills up with thousands of emails before I can even turn around. Now I have a pristine account that isn’t accumulating anything but my latest receipts.
Zoom Versus Facetime
Which is better? Zoom or Facetime for live video chats?
Zoom, even in the free version, can handle 100 people. Facetime can handle only 32. But Facetime has better audio quality, according to Lifehacker.
I used to think you had to have an Apple device to use Facetime, but that’s not necessary. Anyone with an iPhone or iPad can send you a link by opening the Facetime app and tapping “Create Link.” It works just like Zoom.
Though some complain that Facetime gives them floating heads, instead of a grid, you can enable the grid layout to see everyone’s faces at once. Like Zoom, Facetime allows participants to show their screen, so others can see their document, photo or video.
Those in my writers’ group still prefer Zoom, which has a 40-minute limit in the free version. So I bought the unlimited “Pro” version for $104 a year with a discount from the free Capitol One shopping extension. It’s great for far-flung relatives.
Fastest Internet
Xfinity offers the fastest internet service in the greatest number of states. It’s followed by Cox and Google Fiber. Unfortunately, Google Fiber is only available in a few states, according to speedtest.net and Hostinger.com, a web-hosting company. For a complete map, go to tinyurl.com/5n95s66w.
All About You
If you’re bothered by all the personal information available about you on the web, try Google’s free removal tool.
To start, do a Google search on “Google Results About You.” Click on it, then follow the prompts. You’ll get an email or text with a link to the findings. Eliminate any info you don’t want public, just by clicking.
When I checked, however, most of the sites are the ones I’m affiliated with and only have my email address. The others are mainly news sites, though I removed several sketchy ones. Every time Google finds something I might want to remove, it sends me another email.
In other news, Google is rolling out their SafeSearch blurring tool. It blurs out explicit imagery, such as adult nudity or graphic violence, that could appear in your search results.
App Happy Cottage
“Country Cottage” is a free app from JacquieLawson.com for your computer, iPhone or iPad. It lets you transform an abandoned cottage into a miracle of light and beauty, just by clicking on the areas you want to fix.
Here’s how it hooks you. When you run out of the points needed to repair or refurnish the cottage, you can earn more just by playing games. But be sure to take every tour they offer, to find out the rules. I like their versions of solitaire and a game that looks like Bejeweled but is quite different. Classical music plays all the while, including the lovely Sicilienne from Faure’s Pelléas et Mélisande, composed in 1893, which sounds like “Hedwig’s Theme” from the Harry Potter movie.
When you’re finished with such tasks as removing the weeds, planting flowers, clearing out cobwebs and hanging paintings, each of which is done in a single click, your wrench changes to a paintbrush and a catalog opens to allow you to “buy” new furnishings. That’s not real money. You buy with points, though extra cottages are $5 each.
To find the desktop version, search on the phrase “Jacquie Lawson Country Cottage app for Windows/Mac.”
YouTube Tip
When I Googled “60 Minutes episodes 2023,” I got the full list from the CBS website. Unfortunately, they wanted me to sign up for Paramount TV to watch them. So I copied the names of the episodes I wanted and searched for them on YouTube. They were all available for free there, though they have lots of commercials. I’m watching “Godfather of AI: Geoffrey Hinton.”