Joy broke her foot this summer, but that didn't stop her from walking for two hours in an orthopedic boot with her friend Betty. They walked for two hours because Betty couldn't remember where she left her car.
There are free cellphone apps for this problem, and we have tested several. We've found they can't compare with a path-finding gizmo called Zus, which is $30. It not only finds your car, it checks the time left on the parking meter and charges your phone.
To get started, we plugged the Zus into the car's cigarette lighter and downloaded a free app. The Zus has two slots for USB cables and claims to charge your devices twice as fast as other car chargers. Could be, but we didn't care about that; where it shines is in navigation.
We tapped the Zus app after parking the car and took a long walk along the lake. When we were ready to head back to the car, we got a green arrow pointing us in the right direction. When we veered right or left or reversed course, the green arrow pointed us back to the car. It gave us a progress report along the way, showing when we were 750 feet away from the car, right down to the last 20 feet. This last might matter in a crowded parking lot, like at a sports event.
We compared it to a free app called Find My Car. (We're always eager to avoid paying $30.) First we tapped it to set our parked position, then took a walk again. When returning, we tapped "navigate" to get Google Maps' turn-by-turn directions for walkers. But we were practically standing in the lake when a Google voice announced that we had arrived back at the car.
A few other nice Zus features: You could be lost in the woods without cellphone coverage and still use it to track back to your car. It can share its location with family members, so you could all meet up at the car in the Walt Disney World parking lot, without trying to remember where it is. On iPhones and iPads, the app also checks your car battery.
Bogus Email
We've recently had calls and emails that claim to be from Citibank. The free cellphone app Truecaller blocked the call, but we still got it on our landline. Much worse were the emails.
The fake Citibank emails look exactly like a Citicard invoice. They even had the last four digits of a credit card we used to have and a precise sum we owed. The return address appeared to be legit too: citibank.com. But appearances can be deceiving.
Never click on a link in a suspicious email. Look up the phone number in the phone book or on Google, then call the company and ask if they sent it. Or here's a trick Joy uses: Instead of using your left mouse button to click on a link that says something like "Visit Citi Online," click with your right mouse button. This gives you a menu. From the menu, click "copy link address." Then paste it into any word processor. Sure enough, when we did this, it showed that the email didn't link back to citibank.com. Totally bogus, man.
Shared Opinion
A reader turned us on to Opinion, a free app for the iPhone or iPad. It puts your opinions out there as a podcast for the whole world to listen to. A podcast -- a play on "iPod" and "broadcast" -- is like a personal radio show. You can add episodes as often as you wish, and create as many stations as you wish. By golly, this could be a series.
We first did a podcast 10 years ago, using BlogTalkRadio.com, which is still around. It's a simple way to go on the air just by calling in. Books have been written on how to do a professional-sounding show, but the Opinion app is as simple as it gets -- no manual required.
Go to MadeWithOpinion.com and download the free app or find it in your phone's app store. Then choose a name for your show. We chose "Bob and Joy." This gave us our own web address, Bob-and-Joy.MadeWithOpinion.com. (Bob was his usual curmudgeonly self.) Tap to take a picture of yourself or use one you've stored. We didn't have many photos on our iPad, so we Googled "how to transfer photos from your computer to your iPad. " Answer: You connect your iPad or iPhone to the computer, then use iTunes. When you're ready, tap the red "record" button and start talking. If you don't want to share it with the world, you can save it as a private file.
After you talk, you'll have a chance to edit the results. We left our mistakes untouched, but if you record a podcast, you can tap on a pair of scissors to cut the parts you don't want. You can talk for up to 10 minutes. We talked for three, following the journalist's rule of "keep it tight." The premium version of the app is $5 and lets you talk as long as you want. (Remember the rule.)
How will others discover you? You can add yourself to the iTunes Podcast directory. Do a search on "Apple Podcasts Connect" for instructions.
Warning for Now
Three weeks ago, we said you could add the Google Now app to your old smartphone if it didn't already have it. The app lets you speak your search terms instead of typing them. It seemed like a good thing, but it can cause problems.
A reader said he ran into trouble immediately after installing Google Now. Instead of many screens full of apps, he suddenly had just one page. He tried turning off Google Now, but the only thing that worked was uninstalling it. Fortunately, when he did this, all of the missing apps reappeared.
Bob and Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at bobschwa@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com.
SundayMonday Business on 10/17/2016