Why is it called “Bluetooth”?

Bluetooth technology gives us a wireless connection within a short distance. Small speakers and many headsets, for example, often use Bluetooth to connect with our iPhones and iPads. But, think about it. This wireless technology isn’t blue. And it certainly doesn’t resemble a tooth ….. so …… ?????

The answer is that Bluetooth technology is named after a Scandinavian King.

Of course.

Wait.

….. What????

Back in the 1990’s, the technology world was looking for a way to unite various devices with a wireless system. This meant uniting devices made by different companies.

(Note the key word: UNITE)

One of the inventors of this wireless technology just happened at the time to be reading a book about Vikings. He learned that the 10th century King of Denmark, King Harald Bluetooth, was famous for uniting Scandinavia.

Ahhh…… there we go. They were inventing a uniting technology. King Bluetooth was a famous uniter.

And so they cleverly called this new wireless connector “Bluetooth”.

One more thing: The Bluetooth symbol? It’s King Harald’s initials, in ancient Scandinavian Runes.

Find Safe, Healthy and Socially Responsible Products with Good Guide

This app was promoted on our latest Earth Day. I learned about it then, and downloaded it immediately.

I’m delighted!

With a massive database of over 210,000 products, this app rates them on a scale of 1 to 10 on health, environmental and social impact.

You can search for a product or you can browse through categories such as pet products, oral care, food, household cleaners and more. I especially like seeing the ingredients listed with ratings on EACH ingredient about its safety (or not). You can even scan the barcode of a product while you are shopping.

I searched for several products that I use regularly and was surprised to see a very low rating for one in particular that I use all the time (oh my ….. a change will happen. 🙂 ).

This app has been featured in the NY Times, USA Today, TIME, Oprah, InStyle, Newsweek, TechCrunch, ABC, CBS, and more. Truly a valuable resource at your fingertips.

Good Guide is FREE in the iTunes store.

Use the “Near” Feature on Google Maps to Find What you Want

Not a day goes by that I don’t click on Google Maps. I use it ALL the time.

I use it for directions, of course, and daily for traffic. I use it to look for shortcuts, and I use it for street view so that I can recognize my destination when I get there.

Another great feature of Google Maps is the “near” feature. I was not very familiar with it, but now that I’m using it …… well, it’s simply invaluable.

Let’s say you are standing in Manhattan, near the Empire State Building. You want to visit a book store, but you have no clue of the name of any local book store let alone where one might be.

Google maps to the rescue.

Simply search for “book stores near (your location)” In this example case, I searched for “book stores near the Empire State Building” and the map below shows the result of that search. A bunch of book stores to explore!

This is obviously a great feature to have when you’re away from home, but lately I find myself using this trick at home, too, to discover unknown-to-me restaurants and other places.

Just search using your own address (or “me” if Google maps knows your home address):
“Mexican restaurants near me,” for example, and, poof! All kinds of new places to explore. 🙂

Weekend Distraction: Bonza: An Addictive Word Game

Bonza is a word puzzle game that’s a bit hard to describe.

The finished puzzle looks like a crossword puzzle, but that’s not how it starts.

You are presented with assorted pieces of the puzzle and it is up to you to slide those pieces around until you make the words that match the theme.

This quick video will show you clearly what I struggle to explain.

Once you download this app, you will get a set of ‘starter’ puzzles to complete. After that, if you want more, you’ll have to buy packs.

** OR **

you can return to the app each day and find a new puzzle …. for free. This is the one-free-puzzle a day model that is also used in the Daily Crossword. I like this. One a day is enough for my rather short ‘game-attention’ span.

Bonza works on your iPhone or iPad and is free in the iTunes store. (I downloaded this a while ago and paid 99¢ for it. As I write this blog post, it appears to be free.)

How to See All the Photos You’ve Sent via Text

Text picture sending is something we all do. A lot.

It’s so easy to send a text photo that today most people share not only the extraordinary moments of their lives, but also the most ordinary everyday stuff. (Food pics? We’ve all done it. 🙂 )

I was astonished to learn that you can SEE all the pics you’ve sent to an individual without scrolling back through eternity.

Just open a text thread, and take a look at the TOP, next to the person’s name.

See the word “details”? Tap on that. Poof!!!

A collage of photos, both sent and received!

Weekend Distraction: Daily Celebrity Crossword

Finally! A crossword puzzle I can complete! (translation: very very easy)

Notice that in the title it says “celebrity” ……. I actually found that off-putting, since I am not one who knows much about actors, sports figures etc.

BUT, to my delight, the celebrity part is usually only two or three clues throughout the entire puzzle, and completely solvable with the cross-clues.

I really enjoy doing crossword puzzles. But I’m also REALLY bad at it. I’ve tried so many, and it’s so discouraging. I love that I can almost always complete this one. I know it’s easy, but that’s ok with me. I still get a happy feeling when I get my completed star and digital confetti as I type in the last word. 🙂

There is absolutely no learning curve to complete the puzzle. The clue is highlighted along with the blocks you have to fill. Just tap and type. (there are some other nuances. You earn coins when solving, and you can use these coins to buy hints, etc. This is something I’ve never needed to do, so I just ignore the whole coin thing. I just do the basic puzzle. Perfect in its simplicity.)

You get ONE puzzle per day. Just one. At first I craved more, but over time I’ve found that one is just enough. This way I don’t over-do and it keeps my interest.

Occasionally you’ll get a bonus free puzzle. As I type this, I noticed that the app is offering a free bonus puzzle for Valentine’s day. So today I’ll do two. Yay!

Daily Celebrity Crossword is FREE in the iTunes store.

Sample puzzle page:

My Laptop was Sluggish. My iPhone, iPad not connecting. Problem…. Solved!

I have a Macbook, and it’s getting old….. So, when it started acting up (gradually), I took it to be a symptom of my computer’s age, and began to slip $ into a cookie jar to save for a new one. The problems were sporadic. A page would load sluggishly. Or not at all. Then it would work fine. Then it would slow down. I’d do all my housekeeping (emptying the trash, deleting desktop clutter, rebooting the computer) and it would get better. And then, after an all-too-short while, give me problems, again. Sigh. Computers are expensive. I wasn’t happy about the impending expense.

And then there was my iPad. It is new-ish, not quite two years old. It worked fine for all off-line activity, but had a terrible time staying connected to my home wi-fi. It often dropped the connection. Not a huge problem for me since most of my internet browsing is done on the computer, but it was still annoying. I would have to go to the settings, and tap on my home internet to reconnect several times a day. I didn’t give it tons of thought. I kind of wondered if I had a dud of an iPad, but I never bothered to take the next step to troubleshoot…..

And this same situation frequently happened with my iPhone as well. I would look for the wifi tornado on my phone, and although it is supposed to automatically connect to my home wifi when I am in the house, it usually didn’t. Again… I didn’t give it a lot of thought. I just ‘noticed’ it….

Throughout all this time, I must point out that our streaming service on the television was working fine. We stream Netflix, Amazon Prime, Acorn and Hulu with no troubles. And this is why I probably never connected the dots and looked to my router. After all, the internet couldn’t be the problem (I thought). The streaming was flawless.

I NEVER deduced that any of this was an internet problem. After all, the wifi in my house was clearly “fine” (I thought). The streaming was working, and the tornado symbol was visible on my computer….. It was “ON” (wasn’t that enough?)

And then, one day, I turned on my Macbook, and had no internet at all. I checked with my internet service provider, and learned that there were no disruptions in my area. So it had to be a problem on my end.

My troubleshooting expertise for an internet problem consists of ONE action, and one action only. Unplug the router, wait a minute or so, and re-plug. Magic! Everything was working again, as usual.

But, remember, my “usual” was not-so-good. Sluggish Macbook and disconnected devices. This had gone on for so long, I was just accepting this as normal. Duh. It’s not.

When I needed to unplug and re-plug the router a few more times, it s-l-o-w-l-y dawned on me that maybe I needed a new router. With a son coming home for Christmas, I thought this would be the perfect time to replace it …. after all, isn’t that what these young people do? Help their parents with these techy installs?

I did a quick internet search, and since I don’t understand this technology at all, I simply depended on the recommendations of websites like CNET, and selected a router in a reasonable price range that was in stock at our local Best Buy. I brought it home, and waited for my son to arrive and install this new mysterious device.

And now I’ll skip to the GLORIOUS outcome:

After installing the new router, I learned that:

My Macbook is NOT failing. It is NOT sluggish. Its poor performance was entirely due to a failing router.

My iPad is NOT defective. It is firmly attached to the internet, now. Again….. the failing router was responsible.

My iPhone is NOT finicky. When I walk in the door, it connects to my wifi. And stays there until I leave, again. The failing router was totally responsible.

and so ….. My message to all of us un-techy people: Routers do NOT last forever. They fail, and they can fail gradually. If you are having problems, your router MIGHT be your issue. After the replacement, all of our devices are now working flawlessly.

If you want to know more about this, here is a REAL article (as opposed to my uninformed ramblings) from the NYTimes about wifi and router issues:
If your wifi is terrible, check your router

Bottom line, routers don’t last forever. If you are having internet issues, and your router is more-than-a-few years old, consider the possibility that it might need replacement.

How to Permanently Delete Kindle Books from your Library

If you are an enthusiastic ebook reader, you have probably developed quite a library. I know I have, with oodles of books in the Cloud, and a long line of unread books waiting for me on my Kindle.

I have so many that I feel the need to do a bit of pruning. I know there are thorns among the many roses. It’s time to let some of them go.

So …… let’s be CLEAR: When you have a book on your Kindle, and you “delete from the device” ….. , you still own the book. Even though it is no longer physically sitting on your Kindle, it is alive and well and resting in your Cloud Library, just waiting for you to download it to your device whenever you would like to read it.

What we are going to talk about now is a different action. A PERMANENT action. We are going to look at deleting a book from your Cloud Library forever. That’s forever.

If you do this, it will be gone. You will no longer own the book. If you want to read it again, you’ll have to buy it again. So before you do this ..be sure!

Here is how to PERMANENTLY delete a book from your Kindle Cloud Library:

Go to the Kindle books area on the Amazon website. Look along the top of your screen. Click on “Manage your Content and Devices”. (You can also access this area through “your account”.)

There will be several tabs, one for content, one for devices, and one for settings. Tap on Content.

Now you see a list of ALL the Kindle books you own. All your books in the Cloud AND all the books on your device are listed, here.

Once you have found a book that you want to delete permanently, click on the little box with dots to the left of the title.

Once you tap on those dots, a menu will appear. Click on “delete”.

Once you click on “delete”, you’ll be asked…. “are you SURE??” and if you are, go ahead and delete.

That’s it! That’s all there is to it.

Just make sure that you are paying attention as you do this, and only delete the books that you really want to toss from your library.

This Thanksgiving App Could be Quite Helpful Year-Round

“Butterball” is practically a synonym for “turkey.”

Therefore, when I stumbled across this app, I was quite sure it would contain turkey recipes. And yes, it does. But it also has much more, and since the price is FREE, it is well worth the download.

This app has hundreds of recipes represented by delicious looking photographs. Recipes that will be helpful all year round, not just at Thanksgiving.

It also gives you some TOOLS, including a very large substitution chart. I often seem to be missing just one ingredient, so I’m anticipating using this pretty-darn-inclusive list (a lot!).

Butterball Cookbook Plus is available FREE for both the iPad and iPhone in the iTunes store

Apple’s App Store Adds a New Category …… Shopping!

I’m actually surprised it took so long for Apple to make “shopping” its own category. Until now, any shopping app was buried within the Lifestyle group….. but no longer.

I’m pleased. There are actually several of these apps that I wanted to try (but I forgot) and now, with their own category, I see them and I’ll be downloading a few before the day is over. (And of course, if I find something share-able, I’ll post it, here.)

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When I look at myself as an ordinary-person example, I would have to say that on-line shopping has greatly increased over the last decade. Last year, when the holiday season was over, I surprised myself when I realized that a major portion of my shopping was on-line. A quick google search this morning showed me that the e-commerce continues to gain traction year after year, all over the world.

On-line retailers continue to make the deliveries quicker and the returns easier. Someday it’s likely that this trend of on-line shopping will level off, but for now, it continues to grow. Many of these retailers offer special perks, such as free one-day shipping, percentages off your purchase and/or free merchandise.

I use Amazon a lot, but there are many other sites that I enjoy using, as well. I’ll share a few over the next several weeks. How about you? Do you have any favorites? I’d love to know. 🙂