Problems with digital home assistants
For the last several months, I have been testing both Siri and the Google Assistant as voice controllers for my home automation products. While neither product is really very good at this point in time, I have less overall problems with Siri than I do with the Google Assistant. In this post I will outline…
The death of the PC needs to be rethought.
It is a very common theme in tech media and podcasting these days to refer to the post-pc era or that the PC is dying. I agree that the desktop PC market is shrinking, but the need for workstation grade computers is not. Content creators regardless of the media type (video, games, text, graphics or…
The Long Road to Connecticut’s Digital Driver’s License
Why Is Connecticut’s Digital Driver’s License Taking So Long? A 2025 Update Imagine ditching your physical driver’s license and simply tapping your phone or Apple Watch at TSA checkpoints. That’s the vision Connecticut promised back in 2021—but nearly four years later, many are wondering: what’s taking so long? What Was Announced & When What’s the…
If the power goes out, so does your local network if you use Eero.
The big Nor’easter hit Connecticut the other day and we lost our power for a few hours. We also lost out cable too: phone, internet and TV. This was and is annoying, but I can understand how much work is involved to fix these things. One new think I learned is that you lose your…
Is the iPhone Alarm Snooze Function Still Really Limited to 9 Minutes in 2025?
If you’ve ever used the default iPhone alarm clock, you’ve probably noticed something strange: the snooze button is locked to 9 minutes. No matter how you set your alarm, if you hit snooze, you get precisely nine more minutes of sleep—never ten, never fifteen. It’s a quirk that most people just accept, but why does…
What is up with Google, Spotify, Waze and Google Music?
Recently, I have been driving to work after a very long stretch of either walking or taking subways/trains. I have found that the GPS apps are pretty useful for letting me know if there is traffic on I-95 South. Currently, I am juggling Waze and Google Maps as my go to apps as well as…
New favorite podcast application/website.
I am a big fan of podcasts and a longtime user. I, like many, started with iTunes in my podcast listening, but quickly grew tired of how it handled feeds that I didn’t listen to in a while. For many years as an Android user, I used BeyondPod for listening to podcasts and in general,…
Things I use, but am not 100% happy with…
Recently, I moved to a larger house after living in apartments and town houses for almost 20 years. Living in small places wifi had never really been an issue to me, and other than the occasional reboot of the router, I was very happy. In the new house, I tried to use my trusty Linksys…
MagSafe Would Be a Game-Changer for the iPad Mini
The iPad Mini has always been the perfect balance of portability and power. It’s small enough to throw in a bag or hold with one hand, yet powerful enough to handle most of what you’d do on a larger iPad. But as great as the iPad Mini is, there’s one feature missing that could make…
Why Won’t Apple Let Me Use an iPad for CarPlay?
If you’re an Apple user like me, you probably love the idea of seamless integration between your devices. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch—they all talk to each other in Apple’s “walled garden.” But there’s one glaring hole in that ecosystem that has been bugging me for years: CarPlay only works with iPhones—not iPads. And honestly,…