If your inbox is cluttered with junk mail, you can fix that. Unroll.Me lets you unsubscribe from all those mailing lists when you never knew you were on them and have no idea how you got there. It rolls them up into one message, which still has links to all that stuff if you want it.
Go to Unroll.me and sign up using your Google, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL or other account. When Joy did it, Unroll.Me found she had 242 subscriptions in her Gmail account and 76 in her AOL account! What? Who were these people and how did they get here? A mystery wrapped in an enigma, as Winston Churchill used to say.
They all appeared on a list, with the words "unsubscribe" next to them. The other choices were "add to roll up" or "keep in inbox." If you do nothing, they all stay in your inbox. If you add them to your roll-up, they appear as one email, containing brief summaries.
Internet marketers never sleep, and Joy was amazed at how many offbeat newsletters she was getting. For example: "Friends of Florida State Forests," "Hello Baby," and "Big Oven." (We're not an enemy of Florida forests, but we didn't know we were close friends.) If you make a mistake, you can click the unsubscribe list and choose to keep any part of it. You must share an Unroll.Me link on Facebook at Twitter to keep unsubscribing after the first dozen or so. But you only do that once.
So to get to the end of the story here, Joy rolled up 127 subscriptions and unsubscribed 191 others. Since not every newsletter sends a message every day, a typical roll-up has about a dozen messages combined into one. If it turns out she feels she's missing all that excitement, she can always go back by going to Unroll.me for a second chance.
Nice Tech Support
When we created our first website using Microsoft software back in 1997, we could call Microsoft up any time and get a human to help us. Those were the days. Maybe that's the reason Google's Project Fi cellphone service has amazing tech support. It's still new.
Google's Project Fi combines T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular into one service and charges $20 a month for unlimited domestic calling and texting, plus $10 a month for each gigabyte of data. If you only use part of a gigabyte, you get the difference back.
We almost got a free replacement for our $400 Google Nexus phone after Bob closed the car door after Joy and crushed it in her coat pocket, which was dangling over the edge. (Bob likes to open and close the door for Joy. Sometimes being a gentleman just doesn't work out.)
We called Project Fi because there was a picture of a dead Android on our phone. This is a picture of a robot lying prone and looking very dead. The case had been crushed by being caught in the car door, and the glass was now slightly cracked and the phone wouldn't power on.
The tech support guy spoke English, which was not as surprising as his offer to send us a new phone if we couldn't get rid of the dead Android body. That was quite a gesture, since we explained that we were the ones who broke it. He understood and knew we no longer had a warranty, but he was still willing to replace it. (We want to point out here, lest anyone think we got special treatment, that he did not know we were journalists).
Following his instructions, we got the phone going by holding the power and volume buttons at the same time. But these stuck there because the frame was bent. Bob was able to straighten it with a screwdriver and a hammer and we decided to live with the tiny crack in one corner. The Project Fi guy still insisted on giving us $20 off on our next bill, which brought it down to $7 for the month. Our service bill is really cheap, normally around $27 a month, and the price stays the same for data even if we're in another country, which we never are anyway. This service is only for Google phones.
Internuts
• "CIA World Factbook." Search on that term to find the CIA guide to the world. Besides geography and basic facts about countries, there's a lot of history. For instance, it has presidential briefings from the Richard Nixon era and information on the CIA's involvement in wars in Southeast Asia. A how-to section tells you how to file a Freedom of Information request.
• "Dog Saves Unconscious Bird." Google that phrase to find remarkable photos and video of a dog that whined until his owner came out to rescue an injured bird.
• "The U.S. Map Redrawn as 50 States with Equal Population." Search o that phrase to find that Orange County, Calif., would be a state on its own and Nevada/Utah/Colorado would all be just one state.
Fix That Body
Portrait Pro lets you make an old face look 30 years younger, or a young face look thinner or unblemished. Now there's Portrait Pro Body. It makes your body look like a model's.
As we mentioned when we wrote about Portrait Pro many moons ago, Joy liked her new face so much she was tempted to go around with a printout of it plastered on her real face. Portrait Pro Body now smoothes your body as well as your face. In tutorials that open up when you start the free trial, you'll see thinner waists, awkward bulges removed, shoulders broadened, and a sleeker you. (Should be useful for posting to online dating sites.)
Start by adjusting the photos they supply. They'll show you where to click. It's easy to draw lines around a torso, then go over to the torso slider and broaden or thin it. It's $40 from PortraitProBody.com.
Bob and Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at bobschwa@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com.
SundayMonday Business on 05/08/2017