On Computers

After I put soapy water in the blender, which I placed on the stove to get it out of the way, I turned it on to clean it. Foam poured out all over, which I quickly mopped up. Moments later, while sitting at my desk, I smelled something funny. Then I saw smoke. When pressing down to mop up, I’d accidentally turned on the burners. The base of my blender melted while a dish towel smoldered and threw out sparks. The whole place stunk. What ever happened to knobs on stoves? The air was so bad I had to open the doors to my balcony and front door. Thankfully, I’d just bought the AirDoctor 4000 to clean my condo. In […]

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Filed under: AI, environment, Internuts, podcasts, radio, robots, shopping, Windows | Comments Off on AIR DOCTOR

Here’s the big reason we get so much junk email. Marketers can see which email we open and respond with an avalanche of new solicitations. If we open email on our phone, as 70 percent of us do,  we might even trigger a call. In the jargon it’s called a “read receipt.” Without your knowing, marketers use these to  tell which email you open. To combat this, we’ve started using “Edison Mail” whenever we’re on our phones.  It works with Yahoo, Gmail, Apple Mail or whatever email service you use, by bringing your mail inside its app.  Besides blocking marketers, Edison neatly categorizes any info about package arrivals, bills and flight changes, while also letting you unsubscribe from any email […]

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Filed under: apps, email, Google, news, podcasts, radio, security, Windows | Comments Off on STOPPING JUNK MAIL

An exchange of emails with a reader on the subject of falling prices for large storage drives, led to an inevitable question: What are they good for? In short, once you get past a few gigabytes – which you can buy as thumb drives for less than $10 – just what are you going to store? We know that the general notion is that bigger is always better, and at these prices why not go nuts and pull up the truck? Terabyte drives are now common. That’s a thousand gigabytes, a million megabytes, a big number. Let’s talk reality here. According to Britannica, all 32 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica would take up 4.7 gigabytes. That’s all the words and […]

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Filed under: Amazon, apps, radio, storage | Comments Off on REALLY BIG NUMBERS

As a special treat for our regular readers, we have nothing to say about Facebook. Meanwhile, back at the ranch … Virtual Reality at the Mall “Virtual Reality” has been over-hyped as a way to experience a movie or game. But it may be about to bring you into the mall. At the Westfield Century City mall in Los Angeles last month, six people at a time were allowed into a special room containing a virtual “Alien Zoo.” Those who made the trip viewing other-worldly animals said the 12-minute journey was something like being inside “Jurassic Park.” Participants, wore goggles and backpacks, fended off aliens and in general had a whopping good extra-terrestrial time. The company that set it up […]

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Filed under: Apple, apps, Internuts, podcasts, radio, Virtual Reality | Comments Off on FACING FACEBOOK

Movies versus video games, public radio app, setting your home page and finding a professional.

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Filed under: apps, business, career, Internuts, radio, trends, Windows | 1 Comment »

BBC radio has free audio books on occasion. The website was too long, so we shortened it to Tinyurl.com/fredinspring. There you’ll find “Uncle Fred in Springtime,” by P.G. Wodehouse, read by a whole group of actors. Part one is available until Dec. 6, at which point they’ll put up part two.

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Filed under: books, Internuts, radio | Comments Off on FREE AUDIO BOOKS FROM THE BBC

“Podcasts” are radio shows you can listen to with an iTunes or Podcast app on your phone or tablet. We’re using “Podcast Addict” on our Android phone. From iTunes or a Podcast app, you can find thousands of shows to listen to. Here are our favorites so far:

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Filed under: apps, Internuts, radio | Comments Off on THE BEST PODCASTS

“Google Play Music” has free radio stations, and will store any music you upload for playback on any device. They start you out with a free trial subscription for their premium service, but you can continue listening for free if you choose to play music from their free stations. We thought they were excellent.

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Filed under: apps, music, news, radio | Comments Off on MUSIC APPS

Spotify online radio now has a Shakespeare channel. You can listen to ninety-eight straight hours of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Of course they will be performed by actors speaking too fast and with forced accents, so you won’t really be able to understand that they’re saying, but that’s the way it is with Shakespeare performances.

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Filed under: music, radio | Comments Off on SHAKESPEARE ON THE RADIO

“iHeart Radio” and so do we. There’s lots of good stuff on radio and unlike TV, you don’t have to be in front of a screen to get it. You can download it as a free app or use it directly from the website iHeartRadio. com.

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Filed under: apps, radio | Comments Off on iHEART RADIO