When you're out in nature or part of a crowded scene, your camera may fail to do justice to it. You see a "wow" but the camera sees an "OK." A panoramic picture picks things up.
There are a whole bunch of devices that hold a smartphone or camera and turn it as the lens scans the landscape. These sell for about $15 to $50 and use your camera's software for stitching together single shots into a panoramic view. Most smartphones have a "panorama mode," though you may have to dig through menus to find it. Once you're in panorama mode, you yourself become the device that turns the camera. Hold her steady.
We tried one called Panoramic Pod because it was cheap -- $28, and required no batteries; it was spring driven, like a windup toy. The cellphone mounts on a small spring box, which in turn can be set on any flat surface or on a small tripod that comes with it. You can set the degree of rotation from full circle to any part thereof; so we set it for 180 degrees, a half circle. A full circle can be disconcerting because it shows you everything that's around -- and so few of us have eyes in the back of out heads. The results were OK, but frankly no better than when Joy held the smartphone and pivoted like a ballerina.
To find panorama instructions, do a Google search for your phone or camera's manual. You'll find that there are also panoramic apps. In doing that search, we discovered that our 3-year-old Samsung Galaxy phone has more camera features than we thought. If we press "beauty" mode, for example, wrinkles are smoothed out. "Smile shot" waits to take a picture until the subject smiles. "Buddy share shot" uses facial recognition to automatically send the photo to the friends who are in it. Science marches on.
Digital Dating
According to The Economist magazine, Tinder is now the most popular dating site and app. We thought it was too new to have achieved that status. But young people are now saying Hinge.co is even better. ("Co" is the country suffix for Columbia; it doesn't mean a website is based there, just that it's registered there.)
Tinder lets you swipe past any photo you're not intrigued by. It requires a different swipe when you find someone you like. If they've done the same thing with your photo, you're matched and something might come of this.
Hinge.co matches you only with friends of Facebook friends. Though it might sound foolish to restrict the field, it gives you the opportunity to check on references.
App Happy Sleep
Our sound machine from Sharper Image finally died. This was a box that produced nature sounds to lull us to sleep. Over time its thunderstorms lost their punch, the crashing waves lost their rhythm and the fog horn went from deep bass to soprano.
Well it was nice while it lasted, but now we can get the same thing for free from phone apps. Lightning Bug is free for Android phones and tablets and gives you seven sounds to start with, though we're not sure who would choose sirens or car horns to induce sleep. Tap the icons to go through the sounds or to take a couple and combine them. Rain and thunder came together well and we had our thunderstorm back. Sounds good! There are more sounds available in packs for 99 cents each, such as beach, jungle and forest.
The Naturespace app gives you six free sounds. But we didn't like the "infinite shore" routine because the waves came crashing in without a break. That's not the way we remember waves. The "rain into water" sounded like a leaky faucet. "Daybreak songbirds" might appeal to some who don't want to go to sleep.
In all of this, your cellphone is burning its battery, of course, so it would make sense to have it plugged in and charging while it takes you on the ride to dreamland.
Internuts
• MuchLoved.com lets you create a lovely tribute page on the Web for free. Joy made one for her favorite aunt, who passed away this month at the age of 92. You can password-protect the site or leave it open. Others can send photos and stories; with a few clicks, you can add them to the site.
• Encyclopedia.com. This lets you search over 100 encyclopedias and dictionaries and comes up with different sources for subjects as diverse as global warming, horse racing and Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls fighting Julius Caesar. It was a while ago.
• "5 Ted Talks That Will Marginally Improve Your Life." Search on that phrase to find some interesting 15-minute talks. One is on body language, another on taking talking walks instead of sit-down meetings. The average person sits more than nine hours per day -- not good.
A Better Keyboard
We gave away our $180 Cherry Corp keyboard, the one that automatically encrypts everything you type, for one simple reason: It didn't have a mute button!
It was more important to Joy to be able to quickly mute obnoxious or loud sounds from her computer than to encrypt whatever she was writing. (Frankly, nothing we write needs to be kept secret.) What's nice about a "mute" button is you only have to reach over and strike it. Laptop keyboards often have a mute button but desktop computers usually don't.
So we blew $15 on a new Adesso keyboard called the EasyTouch 132. Besides "mute," it has single buttons for "search," for opening File Explorer (what used to be called My Computer) and for opening your media player, and an envelope button that opens your email. (For 15 bucks, it's hard to see how anybody makes money on keyboards.)
Sharing Video
Joy's brother-in-law recently divided a video into three parts -- to make it easy to email, he said. We could have told him there's an easier way, but he's a lawyer, so naturally he wouldn't have listened.
Upload it to YouTube and change the "public" setting to "private" or "unlisted." If you choose "private," only those you designate will get a link to it. If it's unlisted, it won't turn up by somebody just trying a general search term.
Bob and Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at bobschwa@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com.
SundayMonday Business on 04/27/2015