I know that some of you love your little smart voice assistant and some of you hate the idea of technology “listening” to your every word – if you’re in the latter camp then maybe this month’s article isn’t for you.
I love Alexa and we have several of them in our home. Yes, they “listen” to everything we say but they don’t “understand” anything until we talk directly to her by using the “wake up” name, then she very usefully does a whole range of things that we have set up in advance. Read this entire article »
With more and more connected devices in our homes (phone, tablet, laptop, computer and now even TV for lots of us) it’s becoming more necessary for us to have a good, reliable Wi-Fi connection throughout the house and even out into the garden for those long hot, Facebook messenger filled nights!
Whilst many of you have nice fast broadband internet connections, I am still hearing complains about the range of those networks. People are telling me that their Wi-Fi is great in the living room but maybe in the bedroom it’s not great and outside is almost impossible to use. Read this entire article »
If, like me, you have no idea where all your money goes – I think that gremlins break in at night and steal it all personally, usually after I’ve had too many vino tintos!
I’ve started to use a tool that allows me to track what I’ve spent and where and I’ve found it quite useful. It also allows me to share the expenses with Liesl, so we can both add items to each of the categories as we spend, and then we can see an amalgamated categorised summary by month. Read this entire article »
As many of you already know, I do like to mix computing with other things, cycling, astronomy etc. Well, this month we are going to have a look into the perplexing world of astro photography!
Ordinarily you would need a lot of expensive equipment to take pictures of the big wide universe around us but now with a new website its all possible now from without even venturing outside. Read this entire article »
Few things in “modern” computing time have made as much of a dramatic difference to the speed of computers as solid state hard drives. Computer technology and speed increments over time, we know that. I’m regularly asked “Why is my computer slow?” and of course the answer is “it depends”, it depends on a number of different things but it normally comes down to only three – the type and speed of the processor, how much RAM the computer has and the type of hard drive. It’s this last part that we are really interested in exploring this month. Read this entire article »
I’ll grant you, it’s not something that you would usually find on my pages, but because it involves using the Internet to register, I’m claiming it as something that I can write about!
I guess it’s not something that we like to think about much but if we can help people before or after our demise then that’s a good thing in my opinion. Read this entire article »
As we continue to endure the restrictions of this horrible global pandemic, we are trying to behave sensibly and stay inside, isolated, as much as possible to reduce the effect of unwittingly getting or passing on the virus, to help, I look for more and more ways to experience new and interesting things and spend my time with something to look forward to rather than Coronation Street. Read this entire article »
Recently I had cause to renew my passport – I thought I had better get it up to date as it was due to run out the early part of next year. Whilst researching the most efficient way to do this I came across the option now available to renew online and was pleasantly surprised at how easy and straight forward it was – I thought I’d take you through the process this month. Read this entire article »
Are you lucky enough to be the proud owner of an apple iPhone or iPad? Then you probably have been receiving messages about a new operating system. It’s called iOS 11 and it’s free to download if you have an iPhone 5S or an iPad mini 2, Pro or Air or newer. This month we will look at some of the advantages of this new system but also some of the things you should check before you decide to press the upgrade button. Read this entire article »
Those of you that know me well, know that I am a gadget freak through and though – if it’s got a screen or flashing led’s then I will be interested in it!
This month we look at the growing trend in wireless speaker technology. More and more of us are using our mobile devices (tablets and smartphones) to listen to music. The problem is that the speakers that are integrated into these devices usually are not of great quality. Adding a wireless speaker to your device will give you both better quality and a longer battery life (because the tablet isn’t having to use its battery to play the music). Read this entire article »