There was quite a bit of interest in the small research study “Video Games Make Adults Smarter” that we wrote about a few weeks ago.
Though the study group was small, it jibed with our own personal observation of more than 30 years, that playing video games seemed to make people sharper. It worked across all ages. Though it’s generally thought that computer games are mostly played by children, several marketing studies over many years have found that the most frequent game players are in their mid-20s to mid-30s.
Today, the most oft-cited brain games are from Lumosity.com, probably because they’re heavy advertisers.
The site has 52 million users in 160 countries, and after a few free starter games, you pay $64 a year to continue and have your progress tracked. One of the things Bob noticed immediately - and it has often been one of the advantages of having covered this category for many years - is that old games keep cropping up. Quite a few of them came up in Lumosity.
They have old hunting games, which came out decades ago and you can probably still find for free. For example, Cabela, the sporting-goods company, comes to mind as one of the sponsors, and there were others: You try shooting grouse or ducks, fishing for bass, etc. The games require reasonable reflexes, and you have to pay close attention. Web searches should turn these up again from other sources. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL provide lots of free games that require paying attention to what’s happening and reacting to it. And after all, that’s what developing your brain is all about.
Where do you find them? Go to the “start” button in Windows 7 or XP and scroll through till you see “games.” In Windows 8, tap the Windows flag on your computer and type “games.” “Xbox Games” comes up, but they can be played on your computer. Click “games” at Yahoo.com or go to Games.com, a site run by AOL. You will quickly find more than a hundred games, all of them free.
If we go back to Lumosity for a moment, the sheer size of their data from game-playing adults is being looked at for possible medical and behavioral correlations. With 52 million players in 160 countries, that’s a big data vein to be mined.
GETTING A NEW WINDOWS 8 COMPUTER
Just when we thought we’d heard every complaint about Windows 8 computers, we heard a new one. A friend wondered where in the world she should save her files, because now she sees two choices: “Skydrive” and “This PC.”
The best choice is Microsoft’s “Skydrive,” also available to Windows 7 and XP users at Skydrive.com. It offers 10 gigabytes of storage space in the cloud. When saving files there, you don’t have to worry about your computer going down, getting stolen or otherwise exploding. The files will be there, ready to download to another machine.
Skydrive is one folder in what is now called “File Explorer,” the place where you see all of your file folders. Windows 7 and XP users know it as “Windows Explorer,” and old-timers like us will remember “File Manager” from Windows 3.1. To get to File Explorer, click the “start” icon in Windows 8.1 with your right mouse button and then click “File Explorer.” Or click the manila folder that usually shows up in your task bar.
Another problem you may have when you buy a new computer is bringing in your mail contacts. A friend uses Windows Mail, so those contacts are all offline, stored on her old machine. (Using a service like Gmail, Yahoo, AOL or Outlook.com is easier, since everything goes with you when you log in.) If you search “Import Windows Mail Contacts,” you’ll find a Microsoft article about how to do this.
Finally, what if you don’t want to buy Microsoft Office for your new computer? Welike “Kingsoft Writer Free,” which looks like a clone of an older version of Word. To get an Excel-like spreadsheet for free, download OpenOffice from OpenOffice.org.
APPY MUSIC
Sketch a Song for Android or iPhone lets you create music by drawing patterns on a cartoon background. (NOTE: Similar programs for composing go all the way back to the Apple II, 30 years ago. Jazz musician Herbie Hancock used one.)
Spotify.com, the music service that lets you find just about any song and add it to your playlist, has a free version for smartphones and tablets.
INTERNUTS
Ideogram.nl/boxmaker has a neat free template maker for making gift bags, boxes, cones, envelopes and other things out of card stock. Select any size or geometric shape and it will create a template that shows you how to cut out what you need and where to fold and glue it. (How about a dodecahedron? Twelve sides.) Paint it, color it or use fancy paper, and you’ve got an unusual gift box.
JustinGuitar.com has hundreds of free guitar lessons.
PixelPerfexion.net is a free photography site with lots of good tips from a professional photographer.
KEEPING IT CLEAN
Clean Master is a free app for clearing out junk files and restoring privacy to your Android phone.
When we tried it, we discovered we had 38 percent of storage space left, and we boosted it to 41 percent using the app - not a big deal, really. But if we’d wanted, we could have gained a gigabyte more storage using the advanced setting. An app manager uninstalls unwanted apps.
The “privacy” button gets rid of your browsing history and anything potentially embarrassing on the phone. A survey conducted by the app’s makers uncovered that 7 percent of men and 3 percent of women have naked pictures of themselves on their phones. About 16 percent do not use a security code to keep this stuff private. Bob and Joy can be contacted by email at bobschwab@gmail.com and joy.schwabach@gmail.com.
Business, Pages 22 on 12/30/2013