On Computers

I’ve rarely seen my favorite 11 year-old pick up her phone. She’s not addicted the way other children are. That’s because she uses a flip phone. I recommend it to parents who are worried about obsessive smartphone use. When my friend was 9, I gave her an old Jitterbug phone that came to me for review at least 10 years ago but still works. Besides texts and calls, she finds it handy for taking pictures of school assignments. She also snaps photos of billboards for events her family might want to attend. Perhaps because it’s so old, its photo-forwarding feature no longer works and its call quality is sometimes choppy. But it’s a great example of how flip phones offer […]

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Filed under: education, Internuts, kids, phones | Comments Off on FLIP PHONES FOR CHILDREN

My quest for the perfect cell phone service started at a square dance. I was trying to make a phone call but couldn’t connect. Everyone else could. A friend suggested I get a cheap Tracfone plan as a backup. So I added it to an old iPhone I had lying around. It seemed like a good idea at first, but I didn’t really need two phone services. So I took the Tracfone SIM card out of the iPhone and put it in my larger and newer Android, after canceling its service. Now I’m saving hundreds of dollars a year, with no connection issues so far. Tracfone is owned by Verizon. My previous carrier, Google Fi, cost me between $20 and […]

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Filed under: 3D Printing, cheap calls, crytpocurrency, education, Internuts, kids, phones | Comments Off on GETTING A BETTER DEAL FROM TRACFONE

Thank goodness for plant apps: I tend to under-water, except when I over-water. I don’t fertilize. I only re-pot when the roots are so big and gnarly there’s no dirt left. “Planta,” for iPhone and Android, rescued me. It puts every task on a schedule without being a Nazi about it. On watering day, for example, it will ask me if the soil is still damp. If so, I can snooze the alert. Different plants are on different schedules. For example, my ZZ plant is over three feet high but almost never needs watering. Unfortunately, the free version of Planta only gives watering reminders – no plant identification or care advice. The paid version, for $36 a year, gives you […]

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Filed under: apps, cameras, education, gadgets, Internuts, troubleshooting | Comments Off on PLANT APP PUTS HOUSEHOLD PLANTS ON A SCHEDULE

I sent my favorite 11 year-old a personality quiz based on her favorite Amazon series. Then I made a better one. You’ve probably seen such quizzes on Facebook and elsewhere. Perhaps the most famous is from the New York Times. If you search on the phrase “New York Times quiz how y’all,” it comes right up. It figures out where you’re from based on the words you use. They marked me as a Californian, which is right on target, since I grew up there.  One of the words that helped them decide was my use of “crawdad” instead of “crayfish.” But they also figured I’d spent time in Reno, Nevada, which I had, as a college student. To get started […]

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Filed under: Android, batteries, books, browsers, education, facebook, Internuts | Comments Off on MAKING YOUR OWN ONLINE QUIZ

A sales rep at T-Mobile tried to talk my friend out of buying a case and a screen protector for her new smartphone. “Just get one or the other,” he said. Wrong! A modern phone’s Gorilla Glass is unlikely to crack. But it can get scratches. According to a scientist on Quora.com, it’s not your keys that cause trouble. Ninety-five percent of scratches are due to quartz. Yes, quartz. An ingredient in sand. Our surroundings have a lot of dust and sand particles. “When you see dust on your phone screen,” he says, “you try to clean it by rubbing it on your shirt, etc. When you do that, you put a scratch on your smartphone.”  You need a screen […]

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Filed under: apps, education, gadgets, Gmail | Comments Off on SAVE YOUR SCREEN

Getting pure water is a bear. I’ve tried everything. Recently, a company sent me a new reverse osmosis system that sits in a small space on my counter. It’s called “Aquibear.” Before Aquibear, I tried water pitchers with replaceable filters, such as Brita and ZeroWater. My new condo has an LG refrigerator with a filter built in. But none of these things were as good as Aquibear is so far. I know because I tested them. I bought a $15 “HoneForest” water-quality testing stick on Amazon. All I had to do was put the stick in each glass of water I tested and check the digital read-out. A high score means lots of pesticides, parasites, arsenic, lead, microplastics, virus nitrates, […]

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Filed under: education, games, health, Internuts | Comments Off on PURE WATER

DJI makes the best drones, according to just about everyone. But who wants to spend a thousand dollars? I don’t know about you, but I’m not planning to become a drone professional. Recently, I borrowed a $31 Holy Stone “HS 210” mini-drone from a friend. It’s astonishingly easy to fly, compared to the last miniature drone I flew. The old quadcopter shot past me like a rocket, banging against every obstacle in my apartment. Not this time. Push a button on the three-inch-by-three-inch flying machine and it launches. Push another and it flies in circles. Push another and it does aerial flips, or lands. Push two buttons —  if it’s about to hit Aunt Sally — and it shuts off […]

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Filed under: apps, art, drones, education, Internuts, tech support | Comments Off on I LEARN TO FLY A MINI DRONE

Did you hear about the New York Times article, still online, that sold for $560,000? How about the digital cat in a pop tart? It sold for $590,000. Or the 5,000 online images that sold for $69 million? They’re part of the brave new world of “Non-Fungible Tokens.”  “Non-fungible” means “can’t be copied, unique,” much like the items on Antiques Roadshow. In the digital world, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are sold in online auctions. If you buy a token, you own a link to a unique piece of digital art, music, video clip or what-have-you. Recently, a video clip of  LeBron James’s basketball dunk was tokenized. The buyer paid over $200,000. Before NFTs, digital files weren’t considered unique because they’re so […]

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Filed under: apps, crytpocurrency, education, Internuts, security, trends | Comments Off on NON-FUNGIBLE IS ALL THE RAGE

My mom used to swear by eye exercises. She said they would correct nearsightedness. Science may be proving her right. Kubota smart glasses can fix your eyesight, if you wear them 60 to 90 minutes a day, according to a report in ZME Science. They work by shortening the distance from the cornea to the retina using augmented reality and virtual reality. Fortunately, you don’t have to wear them for hours at a stretch. They’re a bit odd-looking. At a distance, the lenses look like windshields after rocks have shot through them. The smart glasses were developed by Kubota Pharmaceutical Holdings of Japan. In Japan, 95 percent of those under age 20 are myopic. In South Korea, it’s 96 percent, […]

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Filed under: apps, books, business, education, gadgets, health | Comments Off on SMARTER EYES

I asked a friend to be a guinea pig for the “EyeQue,” a $60 gadget that tests your eyesight and gives you a prescription.  Results were great for him, not so for me — but that wasn’t the machine’s fault. Besides giving you a prescription, EyeQue will send you a pair of John Lennon-style glasses for an additional $19. They call them “try-ons.” They work well and look fine, but you’ll probably want another pair. For instance, the bridge width and earpiece length may be slightly off, since EyeQue doesn’t ask for these measurements, which are typically found on your old pair of glasses. My friend ordered new frames from GlassesUSA, which is not affiliated with EyeQue. He now sees […]

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Filed under: apps, education, health, music, programming, search | Comments Off on LOOK MA, NO GLASSES PRESCRIPTION