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Mary asked: “Your show kept me alive while I’ve been hospitalized all this year. You guys make me feel like you’re in the room with me. And the tech you talk about gives me something to get well for. My question is: What technology or stuff would you recommend I get while living in a hospital room. First, reception isn’t that great on my phone. Also, I want to know how I can scan these documents the hospital gives me to sign. They won’t copy them for me. They also won’t let me bring my printer in here. It’s too big. Any other suggestions you’d have to help me stay in touch with reality out there. Merci beaucoup.”
We’re certainly sorry to hear about your health issues, Mary, but we’re glad you find some comfort in our tech talk. We hope you can recover completely!
Let’s deal with the document scanning question first
One app we love, and it exists for iPhone, Android, and Windows phone, is Office Lens. It’s part of Microsoft’s suite of mobile apps. Office Lens takes a picture of the document, recognizes the corners, automatically straightens the image, and cleans up the text. It can store the scans as images or PDF files. It’s designed to integrate to OneNote in Office 365 but it doesn’t require it. We’ve used it to make a simple PDF out of a piece of paper when we were out miles away from any of our scanners. Office Lens is free, and it works! Hard not to recommend that.
Reception is almost uniformly bad in hospitals
Reception is almost uniformly bad in hospitals and office buildings. Lots of floors of metal beams and other signal-absorbing materials, we’re afraid. So what do you do? Well, if the hospital supports guest Wi-Fi (many do) and your phone supports Wi-Fi calling, and your wireless provider allows it, then Wi-Fi calling is an excellent way to deal with low cellular signal.
If you will be spending a lot of time in the hospital room, and you have your own flat panel HDTV in there with you, AND the hospital has Internet access you can use, then it’s hard to go wrong with an Amazon Fire TV (box or stick, your choice) and an Amazon Echo. You have a world of entertainment options at your VOICE command there, and that’s especially wonderful when you’re not able to move about easily.