April Fool's

Just seeing the header in my email? I knew it was an April Fool's. LMAO But the real year round joke? The G-Home itself, at least so far compared to Amazon's Echo. They have a long way to go catching up with Amazon. Other than a better sounding speaker, it does nothing for me. It can't even play any of my free or paid music streaming services! It won't control my Insteon smart home system (which is why I got the Echo in the first place, 2015)! Alexa's 10,000 skills and growing. Whatcha got Google? The voice sounds inferior and when I ask for the weather, it takes up to 2, that's right TWO seconds to start speaking. Bleh...

Bugaboos, or my personal pet peeves as an ADHD with co-occurring "disorders"

A. Why don't "they put a scale or numbers on Computer speakers? B. For ADHD ppl with perfectionism as part of their personailty, this stuff drives me batty

Time

Time: Procrastination. Distraction. Frustration. They’re all familiar for kids and adults with ADHD when attempting to get stuff done. Whether you’re trying to help your third-grader tackle her homework or make a dent in your own tax return, it can be hard to master the art of ADHD time management for yourself or alongside y

Google's Pixel has a new feature that's a brilliant insult to your intelligence

Google's humiliating new Pixel feature You need this? You really need this? Google thinks so. You need help. You simply can't be trusted. Be honest, you don't even trust yourself any more, so move aside and let the engineers take over. This is one of the fundamental precepts of recent tech advancements. Machines, goes the thought, can simply do things better than you. So please, dear dummkopf, let them. I stumble into such elevated melancholy on hearing about a new feature that's coming to Android. Specifically, to Google's Pixel phones. The feature is called Heads Up and it makes me bow my head in shame at humanity's plight. The idea is so simple as to make you wonder why no one has done this before: Google wants your Pixel to warn you when you're walking and staring down at your phone. Because you're so engrossed in your phone that you clearly have no idea you're walking and staring down at it. Ever. It seems that Heads Up is the latest experiment that's part of Android's Digital Wellbeing app. Once you enable it, you get a voice screaming at you every 20 minutes: "Oy, you antisocial idiot, you're walking and texting and you'll soon smash your head into another human being's teeth. Or a car. Or a police officer. Or the window of H & M" Wait, it doesn't quite do that. Instead, you get an alert, which I can only hope is as enjoyable as the beep-beep alert that reminds me I haven't secured my seatbelt or the one that whines beeep, beeeep, telling me my car needs a service. Isn't it a pitiful stage in humanity's descent into a pit of beer-battered turnips that we need our phones to tell us we're walking and staring at our phones? Somehow, we've endured a sense-bypass that we have no interest in rectifying, preferring to outsource it to a machine. Naturally, I don't blame Google. It's not as if it, Apple or Samsung has desperately tried to create more and more features that pin our faces to our phones like dogs' faces are pinned to butchers' windows. I wonder, though, whether Google has the psychology quite right. Yes, we've all enjoyed videos of people who walked into mall fountains or completely embarrassed themselves during live TV broadcasts. Somehow, though, people have developed a powerful sense of when they're going to bump into someone as they walk along a busy street -- when there used to be busy streets -- and just avoid them with a swerve at the very last second. Well, at least some people can do that. The rest clearly need to be told that they're doing something that could cause them -- and others -- damage. It's like a warning label on a cigarette packet that beeps at you every time you take one. You'd think we were better than this. But no, we're not. https://www.zdnet.com/article/googles-pixel-has-a-new-feature-thats-a-brilliant-insult-to-your-intelligence/

TIHI ⌚🌛 😒

I love watches, but function comes 1st, it has to have a clean aethetic, (all gold isn't my bag, baby) And most importantly, I have to afford it! Invicta, Seiko, Casio G-Shock, is more my speed. Maybe a Luminox, when I get the 4th stimulus check (Hah!) (Right!) 😜

https://gizmodo.com/this-47-500-watch-contains-a-tiny-moon-1846643476

echo Dot Sound Quality

Update: The price has been $50 USD since long after the intro. In fact, I bought mine on Black Friday @ $40. My sole purpose for buying it was to jack it into my stereo and upgrade my music listening experience from the crappy distorted headache inducing sound of my Echo. I bought that one in 2015 primarily for control of my Insteon smart home system. However speaking as an audiophile, you get what you pay for: convenience over sound quality. The electronics in the Dot (Echo too)  are cheap,  (DAC, analog output amp chip, etc.) There's very limited dynamic range, it sounds dull. I wish it had an optical digital output in addition to the 3.5 mm, but that would probably drive up the price to double. On the audiophile forums, the Chromecast is reputed to be superior, due to the HDMI direct digital connection. My problem is that it excludes my Amazon Prime subscription. I'm not going to pay for another music subscription just to use my Chromecast. Oh, that only applies to the Audio Chromecast. I have the just the original. Bummer.

Echo Show: I want one BAD!!!

I would love to get this Day 1, but my extremely limited budget won't allow me at this time. Shortly after I bought my Echo Black Friday 2015 I got the $40 (sale price) Kindle for the primary purpose of having immediate visual feedback of each command/operation/song, etc.. I always thought the missing piece was a screen. The thing that hooked me into the cult of Alexa was my need to get rid of reliance on my phone to run my Insteon smart home system. What a pain that was to find/get my phone, unlock it, open app, THEN turn on a light or the AC. Sheesh! That all went away with the Echo, what a dream come true. But all the other stuff, a monitor for your front door video-intercom, security cameras, video calls, web browsing, etc, etc. WOW! So I drool over the Show... won't someone gift me one? 😍

Techcrunch.com Echo Show