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Alexa, wake up the kids! Make mornings a little easier with routines from Amazon Kids+ for Alexa. Routines can include the time, a custom greeting, a weather report, jokes, a news flash, daily affirmation and music. Now, if only she’d get them dressed, too.
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I feel lucky to have the job I do. Every day, I help folks stay up to date on tech and help solve all those digital-life problems Google just can’t answer.
And after all these years, I’ll toot my own horn a little and say there’s not much that stumps me anymore. I did get a question recently, though, on my daily podcast that had a not-so-happy answer.
LinkedIn is one of the biggest social media sites for professionals. If you want to reconnect with old coworkers or find new jobs, it’s the place to be. Users love its many features, especially the profile page you can use to brag about your accomplishments.
Get it together: Microsoft’s beefing up its Copilot AI chatbot for Excel and Outlook. They say it’ll make life easier for finance pros, but hold the applause. The latest version of Outlook sends unencrypted passwords, emails, contacts, calendar details and even passwords straight to Microsoft’s servers when you add a new email account. No fix yet, so stick to using Outlook’s web version for now, not the desktop client.
Total spend on the now-scrapped Apple Car. Apple told employees last week the project is dead after 10 years. The internal code name for the car was “Titan” — but employees are calling it the “Titanic disaster.”
Apple and Google let you create “burner emails” to save your inbox from spam. I choose this over giving out my real email address when I’m trying to score a coupon code or a site I’m just browsing requires contact info.
Got an Apple device? The Hide My Email feature lets you generate random email addresses when you fill out an online form or sign up for a website.
Using Gmail? To create an alias in Gmail, add a + (plus sign) after your address, followed by the name of the site, like first.last+target@gmail.com. If you start getting spam, delete that email address. That’s it!
🗺️ Just got an email from Google detailing how they’ve devised a way to read maps backward. Turns out it was spam.
“Kim, what’s coming soon that will change the world?” I get this question a lot. “AI” is a definite answer. But what about life changers that have nothing to do with AI?
Like this one. Infection after surgery occurs in one of every 10 patients. A genius high-schooler created a special suture that changes color when an infection is present. Amazing, right? Here are some others that I bet you’ll want to tell your family and friends about. Shout out to Reader’s Digest for compiling a great list.
PuppyGPT: Brace yourselves because “digital bioacoustics” could allow us to chat with our cats and dogs in just a year or three. Seriously. This tech picks up on our furry friends’ subtle sounds and behaviors, and AI then translates them.
Did you know Google deletes accounts that have been inactive for at least two years? The good news is that you can save that old account you rarely use by signing in.
Once you’re logged in, consider whether it makes sense to download everything associated with that account so you can retire it. Here’s how:
That’s it! Go do it before it’s too late.
Tyler Perry stopped his $800 million Atlanta studio build after seeing OpenAI’s text-to-video tool Sora. He would’ve added 12 soundstages to his 330-acre property. Perry says he’s shocked he “would no longer have to travel to locations. If [he] wanted to be in the snow in Colorado, it’s text.”
You don’t want to miss the last available spot for dinner tonight, so you let a reservation-booking app access your Google Calendar. Harmless, right? Wrong.
The more apps you give access to your account, the more you’re exposed. And if an app suffers a data breach, that puts you at risk.
The good news is it’s easy to revoke third-party app permissions. Here’s how:
NOTE: This does not delete your account with that app. It may request access to your Google account again the next time you open it, so be on the lookout.
🤣 Where’s the best place to hide a body? Page 2 of the Google search results.
