Oooooh!!!

Have you seen the Samsung advertisement where they are in a foreign restaurant and use their phone to translate on the Samsung Flip6 [or the bigger one, the Fold6] by doing one side with English (the one facing you, the front screen) and another showing the translation into the other language on the cover screen (the one on the outside of the phone)? In the Flip6 the cover screen is fairly large, taking up the whole upper side of the folded phone. I don't have one, though I would like one, but I just paid off my Flip4 and can't justify the expense.

I did just see an article, though, that showed the Google Translate app (not the Samsung version on the Flip6) that allows me to do the same thing on my Flip4. Woo-hoo! The only problem is that my screen is about 1"x3", so it's much smaller. But it still works. Hee hee hee. This might work when I have a family member at work who is speaking a longer Spanish conversation than I can follow and respond to given my intermediate Spanish.

Google Translate Quieyly Added a Dual-Screen Conversation Mode for Foldables using Android 14.

There's an hour-and-a-half of my life I will never get back

So I took a fairly short nap (for me) and got up about 8:30 pm, deciding that I was in the mood to watch television, something that almost never happens when I'm by myself. I like watching things with friends, but not so much alone. Well, I don't have cable for that reason, just a little digital antenna, but I do have a Smart TV that can connect via Wi-Fi to Netflix and other services. I mostly use it for Pandora.

So I go into Samsung's Smart Hub, which updates, then into Netflix, and it won't sign in, because I'd changed my password since the last time I was on, and it wasn't giving me the option to re-sign in. I got out of the application, out of Smart Hub, went back in, and it did let me sign in. Then I thought to myself, I'm a Prime member again with Amazon (on a monthly basis), why don't I set up Amazon Video, too, since that was something I never really got into. So my hell began.

See, the password for that had also changed, so I went to put in the e-mail address and new password, to no avail, as it kept giving an unexpected error. That's what it said--an unexpected error has occurred when you tried to sign on. Sigh. So I poked around the Amazon website, as I was given an error when I tried to go back, an error that didn't show up in their code list. I finally deregistered the TV, tried to register it again, but when I chose that option, no code was given, just a spinning circle followed by nothing changing. So after trying this a few times, I called Amazon. Treyshawn was very, very helpful. [I mean that literally, not sarcastically. I say that because tone is not possible on a blog, He was very professional and kept me calm when I was getting a bit frustrated]. He had me turn off and unplug the TV, then had me put it back on again, and he walked me through the steps I'd done, and that didn't work for him either, so he did some checking and apparently it is a known issue on their end. So he set up a followup where they will e-mail me when the situation is resolved. So there is no Amazon Video possible on my TV at the present, but at least I wasn't doing anything wrong, and he reassured me that I can actually operate technology competently. I asked if it were just a Samsung problem, and it is, so the Roku in the bedroom should work fine. I proceeded to set up both Netflix and Amazon Video on that box, so I can at least watch either in the bedroom now. I've gotten pretty decent at putting things in via a remote control tonight.

Sadly, I spent so much time trying to set things up, that frankly, I'm not in the mood to watch now, and I think I'll read instead. Books never fail me. Even my Kindle, which can lose power and I'm sure have other issues, seems pretty reliable. So, it's back to either Aristotle (which might be nice in the quiet of the evening) or The Other Wind, which I began earlier today. Have a great weekend. I think I'll sign off for now.

PS The pesto bread was good, but it occurred to me that perhaps I'd made a mistake in trying it, given that you can't really eat peanut butter or jam or honey on it, and I have only enough yeast to last for one more loaf. So I've had bread, and only bread, tonight. :( There's not much else in the house. I even had to borrow $10 from YKWIA tonight because I was on my gas light and wanted to make it home. Oh, well, this too shall pass. Good night.

If Samsung wants to sell me another phone

they will have to reinstate expandable memory as a part of their handset. It looks like they might just do that:

Android Circuit: Samsung Galaxy S7 U-Turn, Apple Suffocates Android, Galaxy Note 5 Defeated

Samsung Revives Memory Card Support

One of the big omissions in Samsung’s high-end devices in 2015 has been the loss of expandable memory. The removal of microSD card support saw a huge backlash from fans of the Galaxy devices – especially Galaxy Note users. Reports from HDBlog.it suggest that those complaints have been heard and microSD is on the way back in 2016. Forbes’ Jay McGregor:

Samsung of late has more a pragmatism to it. It’s willing to shun convention in order to secure sales, which it showed by bringing forward the release of the Note 5 and the (rumoured) early release of the S7. It’s likely that Samsung has had serious discussions about a possible return of the microSD slot in its flagship line. Even the notorious leakster, Evan Blass, predicted back in August that the Korean company could make an about-face for a future Samsung flagship.

I also thought this was a fun quote about Apple vs. Samsung:

Unlike the early days of the smartphone era, the current crop of smartphones have a relatively fixed hardware platform. Your flagship devices are going to offer a broadly similar feature set, from camera output and screen displays, to chipset benchmarks and battery performance. There will naturally be areas where phone ‘A’ is slightly better than phone ‘B’ but for everyday use the sweet spot of current smartphone technology covers the vast majority of manufacturers’ main devices.

The catch is not in building a cutting-edge smartphone, it’s making a cutting-edge smartphone that people believe is a cutting-edge smartphone that they want to buy. This is Apple’s core strength. Samsung can parade the technology for the Galaxy range, but the knee-jerk reaction is that it has all been seen before in the iPhone… even if the technology itself debuted in a Samsung handset.

UPDATE, 12/5/15: According to new rumours, the microSD capability of an S7 may be in doubt.

An echo of what I said the other day

Android Circuit: Galaxy Note 5 Abandons Loyal Users, Google Kills Google, Samsung's Dangerous Gamble

Samsung’s sales for the year are down, and the mobile division saw profits drop 35% in the last quarter. The Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge+ are handsets that simply have to sell. Which is why I think stripping the microSD card and the removable battery – both of which were in the previous Galaxy Note handsets – is a big risk for Samsung to take.

Historically that made the Galaxy Note range a potent combination of size and power, and for a number of years there was genuinely nothing else close to it on the market. Now that the competition has caught up and is offering handsets with broadly matching specifications at a lower cost, Samsung has lost the first mover advantage and instead is relying more on marketing and less on hardware differentiation.

The loss of microSD support and the removable battery weakens the Galaxy Note 5 offering compared to other manufacturers. It also weakens the phablet when compared to last year’s Galaxy Note 4. If your older handset is perceived as a better handset than the latest model, then something is wrong.

So it looks, with the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+, the trend towards losing the important features that make fans loyal, such as removable expansion SD cards and batteries, continues. I'm going to keep my Samsung S5 as long as I can, and if I have to, look elsewhere if this continues. I'm sorry, Samsung, you're gutting your products in the name of form and undercutting your fan base.

Listening to:

Bastille, Bad Blood

Well, it's been a fairly pleasant and productive day, I'd say. This morning it was nice weather, not too hot, and although I can't say for sure this afternoon, as I was inside, at least it was sunny, after so much rain of late.

I'd thought about watching something on Netflix now that I've finished my other activities, but I decided instead to listen to some music, my Bastille CD. I have 1,628 songs on my phone, either ripped from CDs I own, bought as .mp3s, gotten from the Lexington Public Library through the Freegal Music service (which allows you to download three songs a week to keep from their collection), or gotten as .mp3s in addition to CDs via AutoRip through Amazon. The nice thing about getting music through Amazon is that although you can play them through the Amazon music application, or store them on their cloud service, you can also just move them to a music folder, and play however you like. I'm not sure you can do that with iTunes music. I always gathered you had to do everything through iTunes. But I might be wrong; I don't know much about Apple, to be honest. People constantly bring me iPhones to figure out, and usually I can figure out the problem (usually with their settings), but I'm much better with Amazon. One thing I learned early about the Freegal Music, though, is to move it to my SD card shortly after downloading it, because if there's a factory reset or something (I had to do that at some point due to a problem with getting into my phone when I was using the fingerprint scanner), you lose everything on your phone. I keep all my music and photos on the SD card for this reason. Which reminds me...

Dear Samsung,

I read with interest the other day that your sales of the Galaxy S6 were disappointing. Perhaps it is because you have misunderstood those who buy your phones. You sacrificed usability majorly for form, trying to make things more like an iPhone. I bought your phones because, among other things, they had removable batteries, expandable memory, etc. As much as I complained about the little flap door on my charging port on the S5, I appreciated that I could drop it in snow or even water and it would live. But you took all that away to make your new phones 'prettier'. I like the form of the S6 Edge but will not buy one, even though my plan allows me to upgrade, because 1) You took aways some of the most useful things about the phone, and 2) I would have to buy a more expensive, larger storage model to duplicate my otherwise cheap SD card, which I think cost me less than $20 and gives me 32GB of space, of which I've filled about 11GB already, in addition to about three quarters of the phone storage in applications and such. And if I did have to factory reset, I'd lose everything and have to back it up on the computer or such instead, and reload everything, which is a pain. I don't care if my phone is made out of gorilla glass or plastic. If I wanted something more like the iPhone, I'd get one. I don't like iPhones; I prefer the customisablity of Android and all the different things I can do with an Android phone that iPhone users are just now getting with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. And what I care about is that it is durable, usable, and does what I need it to do. So I'll pass on the S6, or even the S6 Edge, and hopefully by the S7 you'll see the error of your ways, or I may just keep my S5 for awhile and shop around for a new phone manufacturer. So there you go, in case you haven't figured it out yet. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who feel the same way, hence the lagging sales. Consider your next design carefully (but keeping the curved edges may be a plus. :) )

What can I say, I am a Windows, Android, Google, and Amazon kind of girl. :) I like to tinker with things, not have them delivered to me in a a nice little package I can't do anything with except consume through some sort of monolithic operation. Just saying....

Okay, I've gathered up my laundry for tomorrow, gotten into comfy clothes, wrapped up the bread, and I'm ready to turn in. Good night; I hope your weekend is going well. Good night.

I've been excavating the bedroom

Purses are now neatly hung up. Luggage is put up in the closet. Clean clothes are neatly folded, waiting for me to figure out where on earth to put them. I think it's time to put the cold-weather things into the big bin I keep them in during the summer so I can put the warm-weather clothes in the chest of drawers. The dirty laundry has been sorted into hand washables and regular. I'm going to try to get those out to the car tonight, so I don't have to fool with them in the morning, when I'm on a schedule. Fortunately my friends, who let me use their washing machine, have a hand-washable setting on it. That, plus the delicate cycle on the dryer, means I can wash most of them without having to drip dry.

Of course, the bed is now totally covered.

I did have to switch from my jean capris to some short because, well, they're a little big and they've stretched as I've moved throughout the day, and so they were falling off me. Fortunately that didn't happen at my friends' house or when I was out in public. I think it's time to give them to Goodwill. So they went into the pile to be washed so I can donate them.

I'm tired. This is really more than a day's project. I'm probably not going to have it worthy for visitors by tonight, although maybe I can work a little after the game or Monday morning, and then have them over in the afternoon. Or we'll gather around the computer in their library.

Speaking of watching TV, I was fiddling with mine earlier and discovered that Samsung has revamped things and apparently the Fitness module is no longer there, at least that I can see. And Netflix has not only Galaxy Quest, which I would like to watch, but also 'Battlestar Galactica' (the original series, which I loved, and I never got into the re-make), as well as it's companion series 'Galactica 1980', which I remember as awful, but still, I'd like to re-watch them. There's only 31 episodes between the two series. I know YKWIA will not watch with me, so I'll have to watch on my own. :)

Okay, I'm going to try to do something with the bedroom, maybe put Pandora or Galaxy Quest on the old TV that has a Roku box. I'm not sure I'll be doing any more writing tonight. If not, hope you're having a good weekend, and remember the reason behind the holiday, honouring those who have died, primarily in battle, but here in the South we decorate the graves of our ancestors regardless of service.

Well, I did fall asleep

But I got what I needed to do finished first this evening, and then later I got up and watched an episode of 'Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries' on Netflix. It was excellent. I love the era, the clothes, and I love Phryne Fisher. I have the first three books of the series as well. I'd like to get the first and second seasons on DVD. :) Then I played on my TV for awhile with the various applications, including setting up the fitness one, and registered the TV (an oversight) and my computer monitor. All told I own three, no, four Samsung items (even my microwave that I bought in 1991 is a Samsung), and I did have a Samsung Galaxy S3 phone before getting my S5 in April. So I'm a kind of Samsung/Google/Amazon girl, I guess. :) Okay, it's after 12:30 am. Time to go to bed for real this time.

I read for quite awhile tonight

Gregory Maguire's Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, to be exact. (It's the first book in a series upon which the musical is based.) I got through the first seven chapters (not as impressive as that sounds--they're short chapters. Basically I read 53 pages plus the introduction.) But still, that's more than I've read in a good long while.

I also tried out an application that is free and for a limited time, ad-free, that is available from Samsung for its devices only, called 'Milk Music'. It is a streaming music service built over Slacker radio with an interesting interface. I tried out some preset genre channels and created one of my own, and enjoyed listening for awhile. You can get it in Google Play. I'll need to look to see if it is available at all on my television, which is also a Samsung.

I fell asleep before 'Grimm' came on, but I did record it on the DVR and will watch it tomorrow. Turns out I'm free till about 4 pm. I'm going to go to the blood centre and give blood (the recent weather has really caused their supply to be down), and also on second thought I think I will go see Frozen. I do have a free ticket, after all, and it's not like I have to visit the concession stand. Then there's 'Grimm', game notes to do, and maybe some things around here as a bit of spring cleaning. [I so want it to be spring, and it'll be in the upper 50s, so I could probably open the windows and air out the place.] Then I'll go take my friend to the grocery and help him wash his dog. Bless her heart, she's having some issues and it's leaving her quite stinky. Hopefully those will resolve soon.

Okay, I'm going to go do some things before heading back to bed. Good night.

Fiddling with my phone

When I first got my Samsung Galaxy S3, I bought a full-body protector, a film that when applied protects it from scratches, front and back. I always have it in some sort of case as well, either one that has a front flap to protect it or not. Since not every one has a complete cover, the film helps protect the screen. The nice thing about the film is even though it was pricey (although I think I got it in a buy two items, such as a cover and charger, get one free), it also has a lifetime warranty. So it's been almost a year and the front film was starting to get a little dingy and peeling around the edges. I requested a new one, paid the $3.99 shipping, and returned the old one in an envelope they provided. So, a new film. It's called Invisible Shield and is made by Zagg. I highly recommend paying a little extra and getting this. It was fairly easy to apply (I didn't do quite as well as the T-Mobile associate who waited on me and put the original one on for me, but I did pretty well.) There was one cover that didn't work well with the original, but I apparently placed the new one so the case, which has two layers, a shock absorbing foam and then a hard shell, both protecting the back and sides, isn't rubbing against the film and trying to lift it. Yay!

I debated on putting the replacement on because I am seriously thinking of upgrading to a Samsung Galaxy S5 when it comes out, rumoured to be in April. I'll have my S3 paid off by then and can trade it in towards the new one. I really like this line of phones. We'll see. There's nothing wrong with my phone, and I get plenty of use out of it. But I am a gadget girl, and I like new toys. On the other hand, if I don't get a new one, that's $20 off my bill.

Okay, 'Grimm' is tonight, but I want to spend a little time relaxing before I go over to my friends' house. If I don't write any more tonight, have a good evening.

Woo-hoo (assuming they keep to schedule)

Android 4.3 schedule for Galaxy S 4, S 4 Active, S III, and Note 2 leaks

Mine is 11/25/13 (Samsung Galaxy S III on T-Mobile). I'm interested to see what the new update to Android 4.3 means for my phone. I'm running 4.1.2, I think--they skipped 4.2 entirely. And Android 4.4 will be out soon (aka as 'Kit Kat'), so in the coming months it might make it to the S III, too, I'm hoping. My phone is not the newest model, but it's a pretty decent piece of technology, and still has a lot of life left in it. :)

So they had the big unveiling tonight

This has a nice breakdown of the new features:
Samsung Galaxy S 4: Bigger, thinner, smarter

Then there's Samsung's official Galaxy S4 webpage.

I do love my S3. But it's interesting to see what features they're developing, where we're going now and in the future. But having just gotten my S3, I'm not making a change just yet. Still, it should be interesting to see where they are when I'm eligible for best upgrade pricing (at T-Mobile you can upgrade at any time, you just get to a point in your contract where the pricing is more otpimal). I think I'll stick with Samsung if they continue to do this well.

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised

Rumor: Samsung Galaxy S IV to Include Eye-Tracking Tech

The rumored Samsung Galaxy S IV may be a sight for sore eyes, literally. According to a New York Times report, the company's "next big thing," to be introduced later this month, will include eye-tracking technology that turns your eyeballs into page scrollers.

Citing an anonymous Samsung employee, the Times explained that when the software detects that someone has reached the end of visible text on a smartphone, it will automatically scroll to reveal the next graf.

Even my Samsung Galaxy S III has a nifty feature called Motion that allows for various gestures and movement of the device to do certain things, like placing a call to a contact just by putting it to your ear, or taking a screenshot by putting the hand perpendicular to the screen and passing it across. I haven't really used it much, but it is meant to save time. Apparently Samsung did apply for a patent that would cover the above technology. And on my phone, the front-facing camera is used to see if someone is looking at the phone to stay lit longer, according to the article. I didn't know that. A bit creepy, but it makes sense.

We'll know more March 14th, when Samsung is supposed to have a great unveiling of a new Galaxy in New York. Here's their teaser trailer:



On a totally unrelated note....some fun with YouTube.

I have managed so far to avoid the Harlem Shake thing, but if you go to YouTube and type in the search box: do the harlem shake and then hit enter, watch what happens. Make sure your sound is on (but maybe not really high.) It's kind of funny. Thank you, folks at Google, for making me laugh. And thanks to Vanessa Irvin Morris, who shared it on Facebook.

Okay, that's enough for tonight. I'm going to bed. Good night. :)

Figures

Samsung To Launch Galaxy S4 On March 14

That's a little over a month after I broke down and upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy S3. But that's okay, I love my phone and I expect it will keep me occupied for awhile. :)