Technology and Gadgets Thread

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donbosco

donbosco

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I checked around via the search box but found no dedicated thread -- If I missed it Mods please delete. It seemed that such a thing might be useful.

And I'm going to kick things off with two queries and 1 recommendation.

Wondering if anyone has any experience with a very simple wireless printer? Do they still make ones that are not wireless? This is for someone that gets frustrated easily by technology and tends to wait until the last minute rather than plan ahead. I'm trying to help them at least reduce the frustration and anxiety...the planning ahead will take longer. This printer wouldn't need to do big jobs but rather no more than 5 to 10 pages.

Also wondering if anyone here can recommend a way that books or documents (online or real world) can be turned audible, made into recordings...this is for me as I would like to drive, walk dogs, ride the subway, and listen to a million things that are not available by way of "the market." Any ideas or experiences?

Much obliged ahead of time.

My recommendation is an old school one but I've got one of these that I've had for over 25 years and when Helene hit Buncombe it was a true lifesaver.

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www.amazon.com
 
There are a number of AI "natural voice" readers out there. The technology is still emergent, but improving rapidly. This is one example that I don't necessarily recommend long-term, but is extremely user friendly, and a good place to start (Lily's "voice" is particularly good):

AI Voices - NaturalReader Home

NaturalReader: Free Text to Speech for Online, Mobile App, Commercial license and Education with AI voices.
www.naturalreaders.com www.naturalreaders.com
 
sringwal said:
This one is currently less advanced (more robotic sounding), but Snoop is a licensed voice.
speechify.com

Speechify: Free Text to Speech with Humanlike AI Voices

Try text to speech in 60+ languages and 200+ native, and realistic sounding voices. Perfect for PDFs, books, docs, anything. Try it now for free. Type of paste your text to convert it to speech.
speechify.com speechify.com
Click to expand...

That's the one that I had stumbled upon...have you tried it?
 
Don't know if this is relevant to your inquiry, but my wife is definitely in the "I don't want to know how it works, I just want it to work" category. It took some work and patience on my part, but I've got a wireless printer sitting beside her desk in her home office and she can (and does) print to it from both her laptop and her phone. Currently she is a bit pissed at me because she sees something on TV and wants to know why she can't just pause the TV and print the paused image, because the TV and the printer are both on the same WiFi system. All I can say is, "I don't know how to do that."
 
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05C40 said:
Don't know if this is relevant to your inquiry, but my wife is definitely in the "I don't want to know how it works, I just want it to work" category. It took some work and patience on my part, but I've got a wireless printer sitting beside her desk in her home office and she can (and does) print to it from both her laptop and her phone. Currently she is a bit pissed at me because she sees something on TV and wants to know why she can't just pause the TV and print the paused image, because the TV and the printer are both on the same WiFi system. All I can say is, "I don't know how to do that."
Click to expand...

What's the specs on that printer?

I've done the mirror your iPhone thing from time to time on our TV...that might make such a print job possible. Don't know. It would be pretty cool...but paused images are often poor quality.
 
donbosco said:
What's the specs on that printer?

I've done the mirror your iPhone thing from time to time on our TV...that might make such a print job possible. Don't know. It would be pretty cool...but paused images are often poor quality.
Click to expand...
It's an Epson inkjet printer where instead of ink jet cartridges, you buy ink in a bottle and periodically refill internal ink holding containers. Both my wife and I like seeing the levels in the internal containers and knowing we're we are ink-wise before starting a big print job. These levels are visible on the front of the printer and you don't have to open the printer to see them.

Agree on the paused TV image. So many other, better ways to accomplish the same thing without jumping through hoops just to get a crappy image, at best.
 
Well, right now I find myself "jumping through hoops" of all kinds as I deal with trying to screen DVDs across Zoom. There are all sorts of blocks set up to keep me from doing that.

So that's my next technological challenge I guess.
 
unrelated to to printers, but I just got a raspberry pi. Gonna setup a Z wave home automation system for one or two tasks.
 
05C40 said:
Don't know if this is relevant to your inquiry, but my wife is definitely in the "I don't want to know how it works, I just want it to work" category. It took some work and patience on my part, but I've got a wireless printer sitting beside her desk in her home office and she can (and does) print to it from both her laptop and her phone. Currently she is a bit pissed at me because she sees something on TV and wants to know why she can't just pause the TV and print the paused image, because the TV and the printer are both on the same WiFi system. All I can say is, "I don't know how to do that."
Click to expand...
The short answer is that the TV doesn't have a driver for the printer.

The longer answer is, assuming that the TV is a smart tv, you could likely set it up to print if you hacked the TV's hard drive and installed additional software. But no one would do that because it would be a lot of work for very little real return.
 
donbosco said:
I’d love to show a documentary that officially only exists on dvd to students.
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I know you can share video (as long as you’re the presenter) within zoom.

Do you access to a computer with a DVD drive? If so, couldn’t you share your screen & then play the video?

(I’m not suggesting you haven’t tried this, just thinking through the idea.)
 
I have a dvd player and use a Mac. Once I activate ShareScreen the ‘broadcast’ goes gray. Zoom Tech guy thinks Zoom is blocking the share (copyrights - though bootlegs also gray out). YouTube and Vimeo work just fine though apparently PBS videos will not show through Zoom.
 
donbosco said:
I have a dvd player and use a Mac. Once I activate ShareScreen the ‘broadcast’ goes gray. Zoom Tech guy thinks Zoom is blocking the share (copyrights - though bootlegs also gray out). YouTube and Vimeo work just fine though apparently PBS videos will not show through Zoom.
Click to expand...
I just used my work laptop and was able to set up a zoom I joined with my phone, I could see the movie but the sound had some serious issues that I didn't bother to troubleshoot.

That stinks, although I could see why there might be copyright protection.
 
SnoopRob said:
I just used my work laptop and was able to set up a zoom I joined with my phone, I could see the movie but the sound had some serious issues that I didn't bother to troubleshoot.

That stinks, although I could see why there might be copyright protection.
Click to expand...

Were you showing a YouTube or a dvd?
 
donbosco said:
Were you showing a YouTube or a dvd?
Click to expand...
It is possible to stream a DVD via Zoom. I just watched 2 minutes of Tommy Boy on DVD via Zoom in my kitchen while it was playing on my work laptop in my living room. (For reference, my work laptop is an HP with an internal DVD drive.)

Tell me more about your setup, including how you're connecting the DVD player to the Mac? Is it an external CD/DVD drive or an actual DVD player you're connecting to the Mac?
 
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