NEW PELOTON ROWER VS. OLD-FASHIONED KIND

You’ve probably heard of the Peloton exercise bike. Now there’s a Peloton rowing machine. But is it better than the inexpensive machine my mom bought when I was 15? The Peloton Row, at $3195, costs at least $3000 more than my rower. But it’s a lot fancier. It has a 24-inch high-definition display and a slew of videos with rowing instructors. Instructors can be great. At a rowing class in California, I raced six others indoors, looking up at a big screen to see who was ahead. The class was taught by Xeno Müller, an Olympic medalist. He made me work harder than I ever had before. Peloton says that with every stroke, you’re using 86 percent of your muscles. […]

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WONDERFUL WIDGETS

The daily weather report on my Android phone screen disappeared. No one had a clue on how to fix it. So I added a weather widget. Widgets are little marvels. They show info without you having to tap anything. There are widgets for weather, stocks, music, photos, etc. Here’s how to set them up. First, make room on your phone’s home screen by touching and dragging excess icons to a free area on another page. On an Android phone, you’ll want to hold your finger on the clear spot for a few seconds until a menu pops up with the word “Widgets.”  On an iPhone, touch and hold an empty area until the apps jiggle, then tap the plus sign, […]

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SATELLITE PHONE FOR HIKERS

You’re out hiking when an earthquake strikes. You’re covered in rubble and there’s no signal on your smartphone. What to do? Take out your satellite phone. The “Zoleo Satellite Communicator,” which sells for $200, uses the Iridium network when a cellular or WiFi connection is unavailable. It’s about the size of a bar of soap– about four inches by three inches. It’s so rugged that one user said he could drop-kick it down a mountain without harming it. It weighs five ounces and has a battery life of more than eight days. There’s a button on it that lets you send an SOS to the company’s emergency monitoring and dispatch partner. Press another button to let others know you’re OK, […]

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CUSTOMIZABLE PHONE REMINDS ME OF BLACKBERRY

If I were buying a cell phone today, I might get the new Titan Pocket because of its Blackberry-style keyboard. Remember the old Blackberry phone? Its physical keyboard was much-loved. Then the iPhone swooped in with a gazillion apps, temporarily crashing the networks, which weren’t prepared for the onslaught. Google, which had been working on a clone of the Blackberry system, switched to an iPhone clone so it could also offer apps. Now you can have the best of both worlds: a physical keyboard and as many apps as your phone can hold. In the case of the Titan Pocket, what you sacrifice is screen size. Its square screen is only 3.1 inches, which may be too small for people […]

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NEW PORTABLE POWER BANK SAVES THE DAY

On a recent plane trip, I watched in dismay as the power drained from my phone. By the time I got from Chicago to New Hampshire with a stop in Philly, it was circling the drain.  A portable power bank is the answer. Here are two questions: How fast can it restore a phone to full charge? Does it lose power when not in use? In the past, on the rare occasions when I’ve thought to bring a power bank with me, it turned out it wasn’t charged and I didn’t have time to mess with it. Power banks with lithium ion batteries should retain their power months after they’ve been charged. But some products that claim to have lithium […]

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FOR NEW STYLE FUN, CHECK OUT INTO THE MIST

A friend invited me to a live concert, complete with mystery mansion, at IntoTheMist.net. At first it seemed like a video game, but there was more. The setting was the Roaring ‘20s, with jazz bands, bootleggers and flappers. I headed upstairs to the “high roller” area. Suddenly I was in the midst of a Zoom meeting. The chips were flying and the bettors looked attractive. But I ducked out. I prefer family poker. I followed arrows on a dark hallway, stumbling around till I accidentally found myself outside on the virtual street. It was a bit spooky, so I quickly re-entered and found a room with a live actor playing the poet Langston Hughes. He introduced himself and asked my […]

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TOE TO TOE WITH ALEXA AND GOOGLE

A child asked me which was better: Alexa, the voice inside the Amazon Echo Dot, or Google Assistant, the voice inside the Google Home speaker, renamed “Google Nest.” Until recently, I would have said Google Assistant. That was before I read CNET’s “9 Things Alexa Can Do that Google Can’t.” Of course, right after that, I read “9 Things Google Can Do that Alexa Can’t.” Let’s start with some Alexa differences. Alexa can play Apple Music as one of many choices;  Google makes Apple music off limits. Alexa listens for burglars, alerting you if  she hears glass breaking, an alarm going off and other sounds. (But you must turn on “Guard” in “Settings.”) Also, Alexa can hear your whispers and whisper […]

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FREE CALLS AND TEXTS

If you’re on a limited calling plan, you don’t have to buy more minutes when you run out. A free app called “Signal Private Messenger” lets you call for free using a WiFi signal. It beats the heck out of WhatsApp and the other free WiFi calling apps I’ve tried. Using the Signal app, my voice calls are as clear as any on my landline or cell phone service, whether I’m talking or listening. Ironically, 60 of my friends are on WhatsApp, but until I sent invitations, none were on Signal. Yet in my experience, the sound quality in WhatsApp is lousy. When I tried it, the sound kept cutting out. In Signal, it’s great. Signal lets you make calls […]

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REPLACING THE BACKGROUND

Normally, we use the editing tools at Photos.Google.com to crop or enhance our pictures. But recently we discovered PicsArt.com for free special effects and templates. You don’t have to create an account to use the site, and you might not want to. We saw several complaints at commonsensemedia.org. Some users said that after using the link at PicsArt to share their creations, they were bombarded with pornographic images from other members. One user complained of signing up for a “free trial” for certain templates which turned into a $48 charge on their credit card. We tried signing up at the site but none of that happened to us. The PicsArt app has 130 million active users, according to Wikipedia. We […]

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WHERE ARE WE?

A reader writes: “I have a strange situation. I have a Samsung Galaxy S8 and I can no longer get street names on Google Earth.”  Google Earth is available as a free app or at Google.com/Earth and shows you an aerial view of any spot on the planet. You can zoom it. There’s no escape.  To make the street names appear, we thought at first the reader just needed to tap the hamburger icon (three stacked lines), choose “Map Style” and then choose “Everything.” The default position is to leave “Everything” off. But he’d already tried that. You’re probably thinking it’s just him, but he does get street names on his tablet, which runs the same version of Google Earth. […]

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