We finally turned off a feature in Gmail that's been there since the beginning and has been driving us crazy. It's called "Conversation View." We didn't know you could turn it off.
In that feature, new messages show up at the bottom of the thread. If you have a ton of them, you scroll forever. For example, Joy's friend Mary Lynn Funk went back and forth in one conversation for six months, all with the same heading. Half the time, Joy would lose the thread, unable to find the latest email, as she scrolled past long emails from three months before. Now those emails have been automatically separated into 49 separate chunks. It's much more manageable.
To turn it off in your Gmail, click on the little picture of a gear in the Gmail window. Then, click "Settings." Under the "General" tab, scroll down until you see "Conversation View Off," and click it. Then scroll to the bottom and click "Save Changes."
PROFESSIONAL EFFECTS FOR VIDEOS
StupidRaisins.com has a new tool called "Callout Pop." It makes animated callouts for video makers who use Apple's Final Cut Pro. StupidRaisins is part of FXFactory. We've enjoyed their programs for years.
Instead of a plain text callout for a point of interest in your movie, you can have the text zoom into place. It's very attention-getting. Callouts come in a variety of styles, around 30 of them. Though the program costs $59, there are also freebies available from StupidRaisins. There's also a video that shows them in action.
ROAD TRIP APPS
Techlicious.com did a great round-up of road trip apps. Here are the ones we like.
• "iExit" tells you what's at the next interstate highway exit. We had a friend, a travel writer, who loved Cracker Barrel restaurants and Comfort Inn, wherever he went in the U.S. The iExit app lets you search the next 100 exits to see if your favorite is there. It also tells you if you have enough gas to make it to the next town, whether there's a restroom coming up soon, or whether there's a store where you can buy the camping gear you forgot to pack.
• Toll Guru, which is available as an app or at TollGuru.com, figures out how much you'll pay in gas and tolls on any given trip. For accuracy, put in the make, model and year of your car. Also put in the price of gas. In our tests, it assumed a gas price much lower than what we're paying. If you're unsure, go to GasBuddy.com or use the free Gas Buddy app.
• Google Maps, which comes on Android phones and can be downloaded on iPhones, is good on traffic reports. However, we've noticed one troublesome thing. When you're in a big city, the GPS signals can get skewed. A distance of a few blocks might be reported as 80 miles away. One driver told us he checks for directions before he gets into the city. If you tap the hamburger icon (three stacked lines) in the app, then tap "Offline Maps," you can save a map that doesn't depend on an Internet connection.
INTERNUTS
Coupons.businessinsider.com has a few coupons that actually work, unlike most coupon sites we've tried. (Readers, we'd love your suggestions.) We got money off on two coupons for greeting cards from Zazzle.com. However many of the other "coupons" on the site are just links to 50%-off sales at stores like The Gap.
ZMEScience.com has a report on electric buses. There are 425,000 electric buses in the world, and 421,000 of them are in China. That's 99% of the world's supply. The U.S. has only 300. However, China still relies on coal to produce most of its electricity. According to Wikipedia, Qatar has the highest carbon emissions per person (45.4 metric tons per person), as of 2014. Ours is 16.5, China's is 7.5.
MUTE THE DRIVER
We've been riding Lyft when we need a cab, but Uber has a fun new feature that might make us switch. It's called "Mute the Driver."
Choose between "Quiet," "Happy to chat," or "No preference." Some drivers complain that a passenger's ability to choose silence makes them feel like a robot. Others are glad to know they don't have to make an effort. We've had some good conversations with drivers, and it almost seems unfriendly to choose "Quiet." But if we do choose quiet, we'll probably break the silence within seconds anyway.
3-D PRINTING GUIDE
A Beginner's Guide to 3D Modeling by Cameron Coward from No Starch Press shows you how to make 3-D objects, art and even robots. Learn how to use Autodesk Fusion, the most powerful computer-aided design software, which is free for noncommercial use. The author contributes to Hackster.io and Hackaday.com. He wrote 3D Printing from Idiot's Guides. The book is $25 from NoStarch.com.
Bob and Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at bobschwab@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com.
Business on 06/01/2019