HOUR 1:
Tech News & Commentary
Jack in Los Alamos, New Mexico listening on KTRC 1260: “I have an elderly parent who is very much of a technophobe. I’d like to get her to access e-mail. Wondering if there are any e-mail only systems out there that are easy to use and of course, inexpensive.”
Earlier this year, our very own Rob Almanza interviewed two different companies that provide computer-less email for seniors. We first spoke to a company called Presto, and the other was Celery.
Presto is more of a modern-day fax for seniors. A user gets a unique email address that is shared with those you want to receive mail from only, so no spam will go through. Using an HP printer dubbed as the Presto Printing Mailbox connected, your elderly folks receive email as a full-color greeting card-looking letters. Pictures & PDF files are printed in color and you can use all sorts of templates to make it more personable. Emails printed look more like letters, which a lot of the older folks are very familiar with. The most convenient part is that emails are printed automatically. It fetches them for you throughout the day. Presto’s service costs about $13 a month and the printer costs a one-time fee of $75.
Celery, on the other hand, offers two-way computer-less email service and even connects them to social networks like Twitter & Facebook. Yes, your grandparents can now tweet without a computer. In fact, they have a video that’s gone viral where they show a grandma tweeting with MyCelery. This service uses a customized Lexmark printer that has optical character recognition, so seniors can hand-write their notes and fax it to the Internet. For example, if they want to tweet, they would write “TWITTER” at the top of the page and write their 140-character tweet. And you can sign up to RSS feeds and determine when to have those delivered (i.e. Facebook status updates & tweets) MyCelery takes computer-less email a step further. Their service starts at about $9 and $89 for the printer. All you need is a phone line – No Internet connection required.
You can also look into PawPawMail.com, a website designed for seniors and with a simple email interface. It’s a straightforward interface designed for those who are new to computers. It also has large text buttons. The Main page of PawPawMail is pretty simple, as the user is never presented with too many options that may confuse someone who doesn’t use a computer as often.
Hope that helps.
Consumer Reports:
“Pocket Camcorders” with Terry Sullivan
Although many smart phones now shoot video, Terry says the newest pocket camcorders are easier to use than phones and are likely to produce better-quality video.
The “Into Tomorrow” team discussed the latest apps that they have been playing with recently.
- For iPhone:Robrecommends: VLC for iPhone – FREE Download. You can view non-Quicktime player compatible video on iPhone.Chris
recommends: Omaha Steaks Steak Time – Over 100 recipes with photos, meal ideas, tips, tools and facts. It also has “How to” videos ranging from “the perfect grill marks” to “Steak Prep”. FREE Download.
- From the Intel AppUp Store, Mark recommends: ScreenSpace – Let’s you zoom any part of an application full screen, for use with netbooks or small notebooks where the screen is small and the text gets tiny. Far more sophisticated than the simple zoom functions built in to Windows. Download for $9.99.
Jim in New York, New York listening via our podcast sent us the following email and asked: “I love your show and podcasts, although my work schedule hasn’t allowed to listen as much as I previously did. My question concerns digital book readers. My wife owns a Nook and we are thinking about at least another for my college freshman daughter. With instability in the book store chains, which digital book reader do you think is best, the Nook, Kindle or the e-reader?”
eReaders have become more and more popular these days. We’ve not played around with the eReader from Spring Technologies, but from what we’ve read about it, we’d recommend staying away from it. The first reason would be that it doesn’t have access to a major eBook store. So your selection would be limited. Another reason is that while the screen used to read the books is e-ink, the smaller LCD screen used to navigate and view pictures seems to really shorten the battetry life. On top of that, it’s still running the older Android operating system and is considerably more expensive than the Nook and Kindle, at about $400.
Now the Kindle and Nook tend to run head to head on just about everything. They are very similarly priced at $139 for the Kindle and $149 for the Nook. The Kindle is slightly lighter at just under 9 ounces, and the Nook is around 11 ounces. Not much of a difference. Both are supported by large bookstores.
Both devices have e-ink screens, built-in wi-fi and have 3G versions available. Where they differ is that the Kindle does NOT support the EPUB format. With the EPUB format, you can obtain loaner books from certain online local libraries, as well as download free (mostly public domain, pre-1923) books from a variety of sources, such as Google Books. Other than that, these two devices are very similar. I’d say, if your wife already has the Nook, and she’s happy with it, then stick with the Nook.
For more information, tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Guests in this hour – Interviews recorded at CEA Industry Forum in San Francisco, CA
Jason Oxman, Senior VP, Industry Affairs – CEA
CEA introduces membership for consumers – CEA Tech Enthusiast – and allows you to participate in several Beta tests.
Robin Ford, Co-Founder & VP of Business Development – Global Caché – Provides hardware that will connect any device to a wireless network or IP connection.
“Wireless Update” Weekly Feature with Chuck Hamby from Verizon Wireless
We talk all the time about cell phone reception on our show. Verizon’s Chuck Hamby has another way to “boost” our connection.
Larry in Japan listening via our podcast sent us the following email: “I followed your advice about a DSLR camera and ended up with the Nikon which I love. It is great fun taking pictures. As a prize, you sent me Site Spinner Pro. Sorry, but that is absolutely fourth rate software. NVU, SeaMonkey, and Aptana 2.0 are all free and do a much better job. Site Spinner is like Steve Jobs — you can do anything as long as it is exactly what the maker wants you to do. Concerning IE9 — it is bad in a very bad sense. If you want a language not related to your system, you can only adjust certain parts of it to the language you want. Firefox, Chrome, and many others allow you to totally convert. I did not see it to be any faster than Firefox. As to the new features, they do not help me go to where I want to. They actually make it harder. Firefox and Chrome have a much lower learning curve and just look better. End of rant.”
Thanks for your email Larry! We appreciate your input.
For more information, tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
AT&T: A Pantech Ease Phone – Interactive touch screen with a convenient slide-out full QWERTY keypad and built-in pedometer.
Honestech: Copies of Claymation Studio 3.0 Deluxe with PC Camera included – stop motion video creation software
Serif: Copies of PhotoPlus X3 Digital Studio – Professional digital image editing software
TuneUp: Copies of TuneUp Utilities – Optimization software for PCs.