On Computers

After telling you all about my ordeal with Xfinity, I left you dangling.  Now, my new phone service is here, but to get it, I had to learn a big lesson. Don’t sign up for Xfinity phone service over the phone or even at your local phone store. With them, you have to go to the corporate store. That’s what a clerk at my local Xfinity told me. “Why not just call the corporate store?” I asked.   “They don’t have a phone number,” she said. Sure enough, Google listed it as the same 800 number that created my nightmarish runaround. One long bus ride later, I was at the corporate store. They said my phone deal never went through […]

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Filed under: cheap calls, Google, Internuts, maps, phones, robots, Windows | Comments Off on PHONE STORY HAS HAPPY ENDING

I left my phone in a Lyft on the way to the airport. But Google Voice, the free phone service, saved me. Using the airport’s free WiFi on my laptop, I went to Voice.Google.com and typed in my friend’s phone number, to say that I’d arrived. Alternatively, I could have used the Google Voice app, though on a Windows machine you need to go to the website instead. Either way, the call quality is excellent. The great thing is, Google Voice lets you call anyone. With apps like Facebook Messenger, your recipients must use the same service. For the next six days, I was happily phoneless. But I still wanted to find the darn thing. So I Googled “Find My […]

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Filed under: Amazon, apps, books, cheap calls, crytpocurrency, Google, how-to, Internuts, security, training, video | Comments Off on GOOGLE VOICE SAVES THE DAY

My women’s group wanted to see a live memorial service in New Hampshire on a big screen TV in Chicago. Here’s how I cast it from the church website to my TV. First, I went to the website in the Google Chrome browser on my Windows computer. Then I clicked the three vertical dots in the upper right and chose “cast.” Up popped my TV as one of the choices. The ladies were delighted. If you’re casting from an iPhone or iPad, you may need a TV with Apple TV built in, or at least one that’s compatible with AirPlay. Once you’ve got it, follow these steps. First, start up a video on your phone or tablet. Next, look for […]

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Filed under: AI, fitness, gadgets, Google, Internet, Internuts, TV, Windows | Comments Off on CASTING ANY WEBSITE TO YOUR TV

My late husband had a great idea for a candy: little chocolate sailboats with sails made of some white confection such as divinity. Now you can use a 3D chocolate printer to make them for you. The “Cocoa Press” is $1,500 for the basic model, but you’d have to have a 3D printer to print some of the parts. If you want it fully assembled, it’s $4000. But think of all the creations you could make and sell on Etsy, the crafters’ site. CocoaPress.com shows off some amazing ones, including the iconic “LOVE” sign, based on the famous LOVE sculpture in Philadelphia. It also prints hollow models, which you can fill with jams, ganache or other goodies. Reserve one now […]

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Filed under: 3D Printing, AI, Amazon, computers, Gmail, Google, Internuts, security | Comments Off on PRINTING IN CHOCOLATE

Why spend over a thousand on a Macbook or Windows computer when you can get a Chromebook for peanuts? According to ZDnet, there are five reasons why ordinary people would do better with a Chromebook than anything else. First of all, they’re cheap. On Amazon there are dozens of them for $300 or less, including the Samsung Chromebook 4 for $120. Many of these, like the Chromebook 4, have only four gigabytes of RAM, but that’s enough if you’re not a multitasker. If you do Zoom calls, however, you’ll want something more powerful than the Chromebook 4’s Intel Celeron processor. Experts recommend avoiding the Celeron or Pentium processor and going for an Intel Core i3 or above. A second reason […]

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Filed under: Android, books, computers, Google, Internuts, photos | Comments Off on THE SUPERIORITY OF CHROMEBOOKS

A thousand experts have warned about artificial intelligence, but I’m having too much fun to stop. Using Google Bard, I typed: “I have five days in London. What should I see?” The first day of the Bard’s itinerary included a hop-on, hop-off bus tour, a visit to the Tower of London and a boat ride on the river Thames. It was almost as good as travel expert Rick Steves, without the detail. I also asked the Bard to write a program, in the programming language Pascal, to figure out the day of the week for any date going back thousands of years or into the future. The code arrived in seconds. By the way, Christopher Columbus set sail on a […]

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Filed under: AI, apps, Google, word processing | Comments Off on TALKING TO THE BARD

Floppy disks, a creation of the 1960s, will never die. Or will they?In a video that went viral this month, a Chuck E. Cheese employee is seen loading a 3.5-inch floppy into a computer. The floppy is used to send data to animate Chuck E. Cheese and his robotic friends. There are many other entities that use floppies as well. Even our military does. The US Air Force operates six Boeing 747-200 airplanes, each 36 years old, that get updates from floppies. Two of these are Air Force One planes. Airbus, the European rival to Boeing, aswell as some business jets, also use floppies. Why don’t they upgrade to USB sticks, SD cards, or wireless transfer? It would cost thousands […]

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Filed under: AI, Google, photos, storage, trends, wireless | Comments Off on LONG LIVE THE FLOPPY DISK

It takes a lot of gumption for a small company to put their smart speaker up against Google’s and Amazon’s. But the $349 “Mark II” from Mycroft.ai is a big disappointment. It looks like a retro TV, roughly five by five-by-five inches. On its cheery display, it shows the temperature, date and time, plus the answers to your questions, often with a small picture. I love the look. But its voice assistant, Mycroft, is a dud compared to Google and Alexa. When I said “play music” I got nothing. When I asked for a bread recipe, I got a picture of an album by the group “Bread.” When I asked for a definition of “optometry,” it didn’t know. When I […]

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Filed under: Amazon, electronics, gadgets, Google, Internuts, photos, tech support | Comments Off on MYCROFT CAN’T COMPETE WITH ALEXA OR GOOGLE

My black and white pictures of a 1970s newsroom came vividly alive after I let palette.fm colorize them for free. All I had to do was upload my photo and watch it fill with color. I couldn’t believe how those old days became vibrant. A friend tried it with his childhood Christmas photos. At first, his shirt came out green instead of blue. Then he tried one of the palette.fm filters, and the true blue came out. But the web browser may also make a difference. In his tests, Firefox did a better job than Chrome or Vivaldi. I didn’t like any of the Palette.fm filters, preferring the unfiltered version. The browser didn’t matter much either. But I got slightly […]

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Filed under: books, drones, gadgets, Google, Internuts, phones, photos | Comments Off on COLORIZE YOUR BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS

“Is 5G quicker than 4G?” a reader asked. “That would be my only incentive to upgrade.” It depends on the map. T-Mobile has the broadest coverage. Its 5G reaches 9,000 zip codes in over 3,000 cities, more than AT&T and Verizon combined, according to whistleout.com. If you’re in a dead zone, 5G wouldn’t matter. With good 5G, you can experience virtual reality, augmented reality and automated driving. You can download even a full 8K movie in seconds, at top speeds of 20 gigabits per second. With 4G, your best speed is only one tenth of one gigabyte per second. But even that’s fast. It’s enough to enjoy video chatting, movie and music streaming. Did you know that even so-called dumb […]

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Filed under: facebook, Gmail, Google, kids, phones, robots, social networks | Comments Off on ARE 5G PHONES WORTH THE UPGRADE?