In This Episode: Macy’s department store chain totally flubs the Breach of the Week. Did Obama “lose” 2 million Twitter followers (nope). Gboard adds …Morse Code input?! Man jailed for refusing to unlock his phone for cops on a traffic stop. Features being added to …Notepad?! Rumor: Photoshop is coming to iPad (but can it handle it?)
This Week’s Hosts
- Randy Cassingham, founder of This is True and the Internet Spam Primer.
- Leo Notenboom, “Chief Question Answerer” at tech education site Ask Leo!
- Gary Rosenzweig host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
- Longer Bios on the Hosts page.
Show Notes
- In the warmup, Randy just got back from Indianapolis, where he and his wife both spoke at the Mensa “Annual Gathering” (aka national convention), and Gary notes he has a new free course on Udemy with Mac Tips.
- Macy’s totally blew it when they found out about a data breach …a month ago. They still haven’t bothered to tell their own customers, let alone say what they should do about it. Leo was affected, and relays his experience just trying to change his password on their site: a nightmare. (Chicago Tribune via Dayton Daily News)
- Randy found the headline “Obama Loses 2 Million Followers in Twitter’s Crackdown on Fake Accounts” on Daily Beast, which should know better: we talk about why that is untrue — those people were never there.
- Can you “type” on your phone with Morse Code? Gary says not only yes, but it’s coming to one of the most popular keyboard apps, on both iOS and Andriod (Engaget). Randy notes Jay Leno already “proved” on The Tonight Show in 2005 that an expert using Morse Code is faster to send a message than an expert texter: newspaper article, and see video embedded below.
- Randy thinks this one is sure to make its way up the appeals court process: Florida Man Jailed for Failing to Unlock His Phone on a traffic stop that sure looks like a “fishing expedition” that the Supreme Court has ruled is unconstitutional.
- Leo notes features are being added to one of the oldest, simplist, text editing programs out there: Notepad! We talk a little about the history of the program, why it’s there, and why it’s still being used. (Bleeping Computer). Geek Nit: Leo says Notepad was released with Windows 1.0 in 1983. Randy said no, it came out as a MS-DOS program in 1983. Randy wins: Notepad was released with the Microsoft Mouse in May 1983 for MS-DOS (Wikipedia). Windows 1.0 was not released until November 1985 (Wikipedia). Notepad was in 1.0, and of course is still there today.
- Gary says Bloomberg reports that Adobe is bringing the “full version” of Photoshop to the iPad. We’re all dubious. The tutorial Leo talked about for using Photoshop to enhance your vacation photos is here.
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Gary’s train photo. Click to see larger. Gary will be away for the next three weeks, traveling to Europe (with highlights in Vienna, Pudapest, Venice, and Prague) (which made Randy think of this Billy Joel song, which inspired the episode title). He also told the story about how he got this amazing photo of Mt. Fuji, getting the perfect exposure to show the woman looking out the window in silhouette. You won’t believe how he did it….
Hi Guys. Grant from Australia. Great podcast. Look forward to it every week.
Great photo Gary.
Thanks for Morse code video. Very good.
I have a question/suggestion for a show. My mother is 86. Going blind with MD. She has a iPad2 and likes listening to podcasts and music that I’ve put on her iPad. She loves reading but. Can’t do that anymore. I would like to get her into E-Books. The the problem she has now is that she can’t navigate the screen on where to push the buttons/crosses to get in and out of apps. What I would like to know is the new speakers with voice recognition be suitable and which type. Apple, google etc.
Also do they need a phone/tablet to work or can you just use wifi and the cloud. Any help/suggestions would be much appreciated seeing this is a tech question.
Regards. Grant from Australia.
I can’t speak to the other devices, but my Amazon Echo just:
– read me the beginning of one of my Kindle books
– played me a portion of an Audible audio book
All by voice. Echo connects using only WiFi, but you’ll need a companion smartphone app to at least set it up, I do believe.
Some references:
– reading Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201975870
– playing audio books: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_left_v4_sib?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201813190
Hope that helps!
-Leo
Audible is great for audiobooks. I’m a big fan. And as Leo said, you can just use an Echo and ask Alexa to continue your audiobook without any screen involved. Remember that Audible and Echo are both Amazon products, so they work really well together.
But also I would encourage you to check out all of the Accessibility functions on that iPad. The iPad 2 is a little old and doesn’t use the latest iOS, but it still has the ability to be controlled completely without seeing the screen. Though I’ve never tried it. Plus, you can use Siri to listen to and respond to text messages, which could be a valuable tool too.