On Computers

Recently, a woman told me she was looking for her biological father. “I think your husband, Bob Schwabach, is related to him,” she said. She needed to know the name of Bob’s father. So did her nine siblings, all of whom shared the same sperm donor. But Bob never knew his father’s name either, having spent his childhood in a foster home and orphanage. Sadly, the week before he died in 2020, he sent a note to a possible cousin, but never heard back. Now, thanks to Google Gemini, a competitor to ChatGPT, I may have found him. Gemini focused on a genetic marker called a “centimorgan,” or cM. Looking at three names on Bob’s family tree, Gemini declared that […]

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Filed under: AI, email, Internet, Internuts, search, spam, virus | Comments Off on GOOGLE’S GEMINI AIDS FAMILY DISCOVERY

A relative spent $6000 on Signia hearing aids, following the advice of her audiologist. A friend spent $389 for his Audien Ion aids, which were on sale on Amazon recently. They’re both happy. The Audien Ion hearing aid system comes with ear domes in two styles and three sizes. The system has four modes, depending on the environment you’re in. These include a normal environment, a noisy restaurant, heavy traffic, or the great outdoors. In each case, the aids reduce background noise and prevent feedback, which happens when the microphone picks up sounds from the speaker. The battery lasts 20 hours before needing a charge. But instead of fumbling with batteries, you just place the aids in their charging case. […]

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Filed under: AI, email, Internet, spam | Comments Off on TRY AMAZON FOR HEARING AIDS

I gave only a temporary email address to Sharper Image, but they started bombarding my Gmail account immediately, three times a day. It started happening right after I signed up for “Email on Deck.” The purpose of a temporary email address is to shield your main address from view. Theoretically, after an hour or a day, the temp address vanishes, taking all spam with it. But what happens if the temp service sells your data? You get inundated. It’s better to sign up for a second regular service. Besides Gmail, I use AOL, Yahoo and Xfinity. I don’t bother looking at these accounts until I know that a coupon or something special has arrived. This works well. New Features Coming to […]

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Filed under: business, computers, email, Google, science | Comments Off on AVOIDING EXCESS EMAIL

After helping a friend start a Spanish Club, I became addicted to Duolingo, the free language app. Then I discovered the power of free, artificially intelligent assistants. I started with Microsoft Copilot, then tried ChatGPT and Google Gemini. I asked each of them if they would chat with me in Spanish on a beginner level. It was great fun, though I kept going back and forth between them and Google Translate to find out what they were saying and what I should say back. Later, I discovered that they would translate each question for me. All I had to do was ask. All three talked to me like I was a friend. Copilot kindly pointed out exactly where I made […]

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Filed under: apps, computers, education, email, Internuts, TV, video | Comments Off on AI HELPS WITH LANGUAGE LESSONS

Does it bug you to see errors in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia? It bugs me. But for the site’s 20th anniversary, they’ve just launched a new mentorship program to help you make corrections. According to a group of German researchers quoted by ZME Science, Wikipedia is 99.5 percent accurate. It’s that other .5 percent that’s so annoying. I’ve tried editing various articles by clicking their pencil icon. But my fixes did not last. Wikipedia articles rely on references from newspapers, magazines and other popular media. Your next door neighbor could be the world’s greatest hero, but if there’s never been an article about him, you can’t add him to Wikipedia. For corrections you make to existing articles, you need references. […]

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Filed under: apps, email, gadgets, Internuts, security, trends | Comments Off on HOW TO FIX WIKIPEDIA ERRORS

I just whipped through my email in record time using “Shortwave” for Gmail. Shortwave was created by two guys from Google who figured out how to declutter everything. Ironically, Gmail is about to get even more cluttered. Take a look at the preview of the version rolling out this month. I love how Shortwave bundles similar emails together. That way, if the whole group looks like junk, I can sweep it off my plate in one fell swoop. This is stuff I normally would have looked at, wasted time on, been sorry I bothered. But when the subject line of a bundle gives me an instant idea of what’s inside, I have more will power. For example, in a subject […]

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Filed under: apps, email, Gmail, Internuts, security, social networks | Comments Off on SHORTWAVE SOLVES THE GMAIL PROBLEM

For Christmas, my nephew got me a year’s subscription to an app called “Brilliant.” Maybe I’ll end up being as brilliant as he is.  Brilliant.org has over 60 “STEM” courses (science, technology, engineering and math.) They include everything from pre-algebra to the paradoxes of infinity. There’s a free version, but it only gives you the first few chapters of each topic. The paid version is $150 a year or $25 a month. It’s an amazing way to learn, taking you up a gentle slope until you’re “thinking like a scientist,” or doing advanced statistics, or in my case, learning “science essentials,” which includes the history of important discoveries. I’m  tempted by the cryptocurrency course, which has comic art, but it […]

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Filed under: apps, business, email, Gmail | Comments Off on BRILLIANT APP MAKES US ALL SMARTER

I feel like Thidwick, the big-hearted moose, throwing freeloaders overboard. My inbox is finally uncluttered, thanks to “OnMail,” a new email service. Every time a new sender is about to put mail in my box, I hit “block” or “accept.” If I hit “block,” they’re banished permanently, unless I unblock them later. It works better than labeling something “spam” in Gmail, which tends to bounce back. Even Gmail’s filters haven’t worked as well in my tests. OnMail has many other nice features. For example, it ignores “read receipts,” those notifications senders get when you’ve read their email. That’s to protect your privacy. If businesses know you’ve opened their messages, they’ll bombard you with more. (West Elm, I’m talking about you […]

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Filed under: email, gadgets, Gmail, health, tech support | Comments Off on TAMING THE EMAIL BEAST

The rivalry between TurboTax and H&R Block is like Hertz and Avis. I started with one company and ended up with the other. Despite my glowing review of TurboTax a couple of months ago, I ran into a snag. I had a complicated tax situation because my husband invested in partnerships. They generated a kind of document called a “K-1.” Actually, lots of them. On the TurboTax website, I pushed the “Do my taxes for me” button and got a nice lady in Missouri. But she bailed out when she found out about my K-1 tax docs. TurboTax experts won’t handle returns with more than one of those. She suggested I do them myself and use their live chat, but […]

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Filed under: apps, business, email, security, troubleshooting | Comments Off on FOR COMPLICATED TAXES, GET A HUMAN

Worldwide shipments of desktop computers have dropped in half since 2010, while tablets and laptops have surged, but I still like the feel of a good desktop. I just have to remember to clean the inside occasionally. This is the perfect time of year for that, before summer starts to fry everything. I’ll never forget the time my husband cleaned my sister’s desktop computer for her. No wonder her machine was slow! The dust bunnies were thick and still multiplying. Dust never sleeps, especially inside a desktop. The cooling fans bring in air from the outside, clogging the parts with dust. If it gets hot enough in there, the central processing unit (CPU) as well as the graphics processing unit […]

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Filed under: Android, apps, computers, email, facebook, security, troubleshooting | Comments Off on SPRING CLEANING