Category Archives: senior lifestyle

A Bicycle Built For A Smartphone

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As strange as it may seem, 32,000 cyclists passed by our apartment building this morning as they participated in the annual Five Boro Bike Tour. My building is a few doors down from the entrance to the 59th Street bridge. Bikers started nearby as they rode through all five boroughs –Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, totally free of traffic.

Very few people know about this, but next year this tour might be totally different. There is a new Kickstarter project now underway that is trying to bring bike riding into the age of smartphones. Vanhawks, the bike’s manufacturer, wants to raise a little over $100,000 to fund Valour, a bike that can track your rides, give you directions, and even alert you to passing cars or bumps in the road.

Bike riding just went from being a sport where you were basically on your own, to one of being totally connected. Participants in New York City’s Bike Tour next year will be a lot more knowledgable about the path they are exploring if they decide to buy a “Valour.”

The “Valour” should be ready this October from $999.00 to $1,200.00, depending on various upgrades.

A New Flush

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Here’s a prediction. Five years from now, many Americans will not be using toilet paper to wipe their rear ends. When I first heard about this, I was grossed out. Several friends of mine in Miami bought expensive self- cleaning toilets a few years ago for thousands of dollars just to get a better wipe. They have never stopped raving about the spa toilets since.

I just couldn’t imagine how these new types of toilets worked. I would ask my friends all kinds of stupid questions and I would only get reassurances that it was better than toilet paper.

Apparently, I’m going to find out. The Brondell FreshSpa has just been introduced at $60. The new gadget attaches itself to an existing toilet so that it can turn itself into a hygienic bidet in minutes. Instead of spending thousands of dollars, many more of us will opt for the one well under $100 for the same spa experience.

The FreshSpa website says the “bidet provides personalized wash settings for maximum comfort. The easy to use controls allow for adjustable water pressure – from a gentle wash to a concentrated stream while the wash nozzle has 3 separate angled positions ensuring accurate coverage for all types of users.”

The Brondell FreshSpa’s website also said the bidet dramatically reduces the amount of toilet paper we all use. It could be as high as a 75 to 100% reduction in toilet paper. That has a significant environmental impact. There is good news on the water front. The Brondell bidet attachments and bidet seats also use less water than the toilet paper production process. The unit is available online at http://www.Brondell.com and most Home Depot stores.

The WOW factor? 34 million rolls of toilet paper are used in the United States each day and each roll is 1.5 pounds of wood—so 54 million trees per year are cut down to keep up with the need for toilet paper.

For that reason alone many of us will be upgrading to self-cleaning toilets. Have a good spritz!

From A Cartoon Perspective

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I want to thank Peter Weedfald, my former boss at Samsung, who introduced me to the Toon Camera app. It turned my world into a fun living cartoon.

You can turn all of your pictures and videos into a cartoon just by selecting them from your camera roll when you are in the Toon app. You can choose from pencil, stipple, or ink effects.

By the way, you can share your Toon Camera shots with folks on other social networks.

I am having so much fun converting most of my files into Toon Camera. It’s a whole new perspective on the world.

Take a look!

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Just A Matter Of Time

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I just finished reading an online story in the Miami Herald about how one of my favorite restaurants in Miami recently got robbed. A group of thieves stole a very pricey piece of art from Wynwood Kitchen and Bar. The metallic deer sculpture, valued at $10,000, was created by noted contemporary American artist Ron English.

I was amazed that the robbery was actually captured on video. That video was posted on YouTube and the Miami Herald picked it up from YouTube. I snatched it from the newspaper to deliver it to you.

This whole process felt very surreal. What was even more bizarre was watching the robbery in action. I was almost too scared to take in the whole thing at one time. I found myself looking away because I was afraid something worse was going to happen. The minute I finished watching the whole segment, I knew I had to share it with you. To read more about the robbery click here.

Wynwood Kitchen and Bar, a Latin American tapas restaurant, features a garden area called Wynwood Walls. Both locations are Miami’s epicenter for cutting-edge museum quality contemporary murals. The open-air art park was launched by the late Tony Goldman of Goldman Properties during Art Basel 2009. Goldman also created the SoHo District of Manhattan.

It hurts watching art being vandalized. There has to be more art and tech partnerships in the future in order to avoid this.

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A Place Where No One Knows Your Name

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Photo by Trialx.org.
I love (not really) people who tell me a secret and then threaten that if I tell anyone else they will never talk to me again. First of all, I didn’t want to know the secret. Secondly, why did they feel the need to tell me something that was supposed to be a secret?

Apparently, there is a sub-culture of people who have taken to the Internet to share information that was supposed to be confidential. I’m not sure why people need to share secrets so I asked a psychiatrist friend to explain it to me. She said that when some people gossip it makes them feel special. The fact that they knew the information before others gives them a superior feeling.

For all those who love to gossip but who don’t want get caught, there are apps called Secret and Whisper. They let users anonymously spill their guts and get feedback from those who read the comments. Both apps also feature a private message service so two folks can have a side conversation without revealing their identities. Some people like sharing information without being personally judged.

One of the reasons why I wrote about these two apps today is because they may be great platforms for older people who like to reflect. Not everyone has to be gossipers. They just need a place to air, share, and not get caught.

Double Dose

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I feel the need to share two posts with you today. One is about how to deal with mood swings in the digital age and the other is taking a closer look at the Seinfeld crowd, then and now.

The first story is written by Catherine Shu of Tech Crunch. Catherine suffers from depression. She explains why it is necessary for mobile fitness devices to measure mood swings. It was one of the most sensitive stories I have read in a long time. I think people of our age can learn a lot from her story.

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Jerry Seinfeld in 2014 and 1990. Photo by Wire Image and Getty

Time marches on for all of us. Check out this Seinfeld story from People magazine’s app on my iPhone. Then and now.

Smartphone Attachments

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I think many of us thought about inventing this gadget. We just didn’t know how to do it.

At one time or another, we all just wanted to leave the house with our smartphone, a few bucks, and maybe a credit card or two. Now we finally can.

I just learned about Snap, a 3mm-thick connector that will let you Snap things onto your phone. It will be on sale very soon because it just had a successful Indiegogo fundraising campaign.

The basic ingredient to the Snap attachment system is a circular, low-profile female connector that’s only 3mm thick and 25mm wide. It can actually stick onto any device or case because of its super-strength commercial-grade 3M adhesive. Different types of Snap accessories will simply attach with a quick twist.

The first two products being introduced are an earbud wrap and a money clip, $12 each. Snap is going to introduce many more accessories every year.

Let your imagination run wild. I am sure the inventors of Snap will be thinking along those lines as well.
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Google Updating Street Views

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In case you haven’t heard, Google is upgrading its Street Views this Wednesday so that you can now go back in time to see how roads and streets have changed in recent years. The video above demonstrates how Google will be showing progress in specific locations.

Mashable, the tech site, was one of the first to report that “Google has collected images from its past street view collections – going back as far as 2007 – to create interactive timelines.”

You can now see how buildings and monuments were constructed for the last few years. Or how a street or looked before and after a disaster.

The new feature is only available on the desktop version of Google Maps.

If you want to access past street images, look for the hourglass and a slider on the top left of the screen. It let’s you see the month and year.

The Internet just keeps getting better and better.

Wake Up Call

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Look closely at this painting of Frank Sinatra. Look even closer. It should occur to you that this is not a painting at all.

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This art piece is made up of hundreds of Nespresso coffee cops.

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This piece is in the lobby of the Grand Bay Club in Key Biscayne. There is nothing technical about it. I just thought it was totally awesome the way the whole thing was put together. Apparently, I’m not alone. The luxury high rise can afford to have any painting they want adorning their walls. They opted for this and…..

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a Chihuly

Mini-Mouse

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Say hello to the world’s smallest wearable mouse. It’s so cute and It’s so good for you. No more hurting your fingers or your wrist with a big bulky mouse.

The ThumbTrack just came off of a Crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. It’s ready to go at $119.00.

You can preorder here.

The mini-mouse has a range of 9 feet and a 15 hours of battery life.

This is how it operates:

Press the center button/tracking area for 3 seconds

Navigate – Gently slide your thumb over the main tracking area

Select – 2 touch sensitive buttons and 1 additional button

Scroll – Capacitive Touch-Scrolling for vertical navigation

Switch Off – Press the center button/tracking area for 3 seconds.

Pretty awesome.