On Computers

My friend Bonnie needs a Korean translator for her memoir.  Could she use AI, she wondered?   To test it, I pasted one of her short essays, “The Cat Ate Kimchi,” into the search box at Claude.AI. She was thrilled with the result. After a few minor touch-ups, she sent it to a Korean writer. The writer found it as hilarious as I did when I first read it in English.  Before testing Claude further, I asked if it would recommend itself for the job. After modestly admitting that it wasn’t a native Korean, it said its translation would work well for a self-published book or as a rough draft for a human translator. Bonnie’s project meets both criteria. Her memoir […]

Read more

Filed under: AI, Android, Internuts, iPhone, troubleshooting | Comments Off on CLAUDE TRANSLATES YOUR MEMOIR

“Do these AI glasses do anything special for seniors?” I asked a clerk in a Meta store. “No,” he said. But an 86-year-old reader named Sheila set the record straight. She says her Meta Ray-Ban Gen 2 glasses help her cope with macular degeneration. Sheila, a retired teacher, isn’t blind, but has difficulty seeing clearly. She got interested in Ray-Bans because of a friend who has a blind son. He said they helped more than anything else he tried.  After purchasing the AI glasses, her first step was to ask them to call out the temperature on her thermostat. Next she asked the glasses to guide her through the settings on her washing machine, dryer, microwave and toaster oven. When […]

Read more

Filed under: AI, environment, health, Internuts, troubleshooting | Comments Off on AI GLASSES FOR VISION AND HEARING IMPAIRMENT

Sometimes switching from one phone and internet service provider to another is a colossal waste of time. I learned this the hard way. Unhappy with a big price increase from Xfinity when I switched to an iPhone, I turned to T-Mobile. Not only did they promise to save me $30 a month on phone and internet, they said their Starlink service could connect me even in remote areas. Goody. But the T-Mobile app instructed me to place my new router near a window, and it looked awful there. So when I ran into another setup problem, I decided to go back to Xfinity. At the T-Mobile store, a salesman went through three verification steps before telling me I had to […]

Read more

Filed under: AI, gadgets, Internet, numbers, storage, troubleshooting | Comments Off on SWITCHING CARRIERS WASN’T WORTH IT

I love “The Ultimate ChatGPT Prompt Book” by Igor Pogany. It’s both fun and serious. The author has lived in six countries, speaks three languages natively, has 30 million views on YouTube and over 400,000 followers.  The Ultimate ChatGPT Prompt Book offers 750 examples of questions or commands you can use at ChatGPT.com, all of which have been tested by experts, from practical to funny. I found myself tweaking every single one, just as it encourages you to do. In the “Excuses” category, for example, I typed: “Write something funny and short with an absurdly implausible reason for not going for a walk with someone you find boring.” It came back with: “I’d love to walk, but I accidentally agreed […]

Read more

Filed under: AI, books, gadgets, security, troubleshooting, wearables | Comments Off on THE ULTIMATE CHATGPT BOOK

To get into Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, all I had was a receipt with a barcode on it, sent to me by email. To make it easier to find, I added it to the Google Wallet app on my Android. The equivalent for iPhone users is Apple Wallet. To add it to Google Wallet, I hit the plus sign in the app and was prompted to choose a category. Since it wasn’t a payment card, a transit pass, a loyalty card, a gift card or an ID card, I chose “everything else.” After I was prompted to take a picture of it, Wallet automatically created a pass reading “Adler Planetarium.” Coming soon, Wallet will also create a digital version of your […]

Read more

Filed under: apps, business, cheap calls, gadgets, Google, Internuts, troubleshooting, Windows | Comments Off on GOOGLE WALLET CREATES DIGITAL PASSPORT

I just had a fascinating conversation with Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher. Instead of just texting him, I talked to him on the phone. It’s the latest feature from the free app, Character.ai. There have already been 80 million calls to characters from the past and present in dozens of languages. The average number of daily calls is 1.25 million. To start, open the app, tap a name and tap the phone icon. The app will say “Listening,” because it’s waiting for you to start speaking. I started by shooting the breeze with Aristotle, then asked about his differences with Plato. Plato, he said, believed we could achieve justice through wealth distribution. Aristotle believed we could attain it by cultivating […]

Read more

Filed under: AI, anti-virus, Apple, apps, games, troubleshooting, virus | Comments Off on TALKING TO CELEBRITIES THROUGH AI

A new app allows you to choose Judy Garland and other icons to read books, news and articles aloud. It’s called the “Reader App” and it’s free from Eleven Labs for iPhone and iPad only. Android users can join a waitlist. It took a little fiddling to figure it out, and it was sometimes buggy. But hey, it’s free. When I got the hang of it, I enjoyed hearing Judy Garland read “A Little Princess” and “The Wizard of Oz.” After that, I listened to James Dean, Sir Lawrence Olivier and Burt Reynolds. There are also a dozen or so non-celebrities with various accents, including a middle-aged Australian dude. The Reader App includes a list of books you can try […]

Read more

Filed under: AI, Amazon, Internuts, iPhone, numbers, troubleshooting | Comments Off on BURT REYNOLDS AND JAMES DEAN WILL READ TO YOU

I just picked up the phone and called Sigmund Freud. He had a lot to say. You can call him too, or almost any other famous person, through the magic of artificial intelligence. It’s a new feature in the “Character AI” app, free for iPhone and Android. After Freud, I looked up Abraham Lincoln. From 98 versions, I selected the most popular, an Abe who had already participated in over 400,000 chats. I asked him about Mary Todd, but unfortunately, unlike the other characters I tried, he was slow to respond. Maybe he’s too popular: He has a great old-timey voice. Most are as jarring as a surfer dude trying to be Franklin Delano Roosevelt. You may prefer texting to […]

Read more

Filed under: AI, art, books, cheap calls, free stuff, Internuts, troubleshooting, video | Comments Off on CALLING FREUD

It’s free to publish a book on Amazon, but what’s the catch? Turns out there isn’t any. Yet when I told an elderly woman about it, she was skeptical. She liked the idea of turning her novel into a paperback book, but balked when I told her that she would have to link her bank account to Amazon if she wanted royalties. “It sounds like a scam,” she said. It isn’t. It’s a familiar practice for anyone who uses online banking. Besides, Amazon couldn’t have gotten this big by scamming people. It sends over $520 million in royalties each year to over one million authors, according to Words Rated. To ease my friend’s worries, I offered to publish the book […]

Read more

Filed under: apps, games, Google, inventions, troubleshooting | Comments Off on PUBLISH YOUR BOOK

The free Yuka app uncovers the dangerous ingredients lurking in foods and cosmetics. I wish it said “yuck” every time it gave a bad rating. Thanks to Yuka, I decided not to buy Mission’s “Carb Balance Whole Wheat Tortillas” ever again. Yuka gave it a dreadful score, with all the reasons outlined. It also suggested healthy alternatives, but best of all, it saves your searches and the ratings, with photos of the scanned products and their alternatives, along with other great info. To start, download and install the free app from the app store, then open it and tap its scan icon. Then scan a barcode. That’s how I found out that Olay’s “Complete Daily Moisturizer,” with sunscreen, which I’ve […]

Read more

Filed under: apps, games, podcasts, robots, troubleshooting, video | Comments Off on FREE APP FINDS RISKY INGREDIENTS IN FOOD, COSMETICS