It’s always fun reading about the new products launched at the yearly CES show. It just recently ended and here are a couple of possibly useful, possibly fun gadgets to look for this year:
TiVo die-hards will soon get another reason to hang on tight to their DVRs when the company adds automatic sporting event scheduling. Working with a sports data firm called Thuuz, your TiVo will be able to monitor the length of each game and keep the recording going for extra innings or overtime.
Lenovo is hoping to occupy a spot on your nightstand with the Smart Clock, a Google Assistant-powered device with a 4-inch screen that can tell the time, play music, control smart home devices, and tell you the weather, among other things. Its cleverest feature is a smart alarm that will suggest wake-up times based on your calendar, usage patterns, and eventually, your typical commute times. It’ll also try to wake you up gently by lighting up the display a few minutes before the alarm goes off. The Smart Clock will launch this spring for $79.
Tip of the month
Useful Mac Tips
1. Take a screenshot of a specific part of the screen- If you aren’t looking for an image of your whole screen, on Macs there’s a simple way to grab just the part of the screen you want: Cmd + Shift + 4. From there, click and drag out a box over the part of your screen you wish to capture. Upon release the image will be saved to the desktop. If you do just want to grab the whole screen, press Cmd + Shift + 3 instead.
2. View all special characters – Click on the magnifying glass icon in the top right of your screen and search for a program called Character Viewer. Open it and you’ll be granted access to every special character Mac OS is capable of displaying. When you find the character you want double-click it to insert it into the text field you’re currently editing.
3. The Mac equivalent of Ctrl+Alt+Delete – Mac has it’s own equivalent of Ctrl + Alt + Delete. Should you find yourself unable to exit a program, hold down the Cmd + Option keys and press Esc. This will bring up the Force Quit dialog box, which will show you all running applications and allow you to forcefully terminate them.
