We did ourselves a favor this month and bought an external keyboard for our smartphone. Wow, what a pleasure to type on an actual keyboard instead of thumbing our way through the tiny keys on a phone screen answering email or writing anything.
We bought a Logitech K380 on sale for $40 at our local Office Depot. This is a standard brand that's been around since the last ice age, and it was wireless; we did not have to connect it to our phone with a cable. Typing on a screen was for the birds. Just because they hunt and peck, why should we? Typing on a roomy keyboard is fun.
So what else does it work with? Besides a phone, we mean. It works with iPads, Android tablets, Chromebooks, Windows PCs and Macs. Three buttons on the front let you switch between the Bluetooth wireless frequencies required to connect each of them. The keyboard is heavier than we expected; it seems to have a steel case. Still, it's less than a pound and feels nice and solid.
If you want to go upscale, for $150 you can get Logitech's "Create Keyboard Case," which holds both the keyboard and an iPad in a closed case. When opened, it acts as a stand. Each key is backlit. Apple has a similar "Smart Keyboard" for the new iPad Pro but its keys are not backlit. There's also the $40 Logitech K480 with a slot for a phone or tablet. (We saw it online after we bought our K380.)
Better Gmail
Mixmax is a free service for Gmail users. Click to add it to your Chrome or Firefox browser and get some great features that Gmail doesn't have -- like "boilerplate." These are standard replies you send over and over to respond to standard questions and comments.
Instead of typing in the same reply to these emails, we now click "templates" from a drop-down list. You can choose from one of the Mixmax standard replies, but it's more useful set up your own. Click "new" and type in a standard response to be slugged in whenever you need it. We have three templates so far, all of which include cartoon images of ourselves.
We particularly like a reply credited to various Ohio Democratic politicians from the 1960s and '70s, especially Rep. Wayne Hays and Sens. Stephen M. Young and Howard Metzenbaum. The story says that their standard response to crazy complaints from constituents was, "Dear Sir: Today I received a letter from some crackpot who signed your name to it. I thought you ought to know about this before it went further."
Mixmax also makes it easy to add maps, surveys and other email enhancements. It lets you schedule an email to go out at a specific time and also lets you know when your email has been opened. Just click the "live" page to see the list of emails recently opened.
The service's newest feature is "Mail Merge." A mail merge lets you send the same email to a group, each of whom will get a personalized version starting with "Dear Penelope," "Hey George," or whatever. We know that mail merge has been around in Microsoft Word since King Tut, but it has a learning curve. Mail Merge was a snap with Mixmax. Upload a "csv" file (comma separated values) and it merges the names for you. The easiest way to get your contacts in a csv file is to click "Contacts" while you're in Gmail and then click "export to Outlook or other apps as a csv file."
By the way, just to say that companies do sometimes listen to us (apropos of our column about corporate tunnel vision), Joy sent them a note saying it was way too complex to navigate, and she asked why they didn't just have pop-up messages telling the user what to do next. Sure enough, a few weeks went by and the updated version had pop-ups telling the user what to do next. They said thanks. Long live the power of the press.
App Happy
• "Yahoo LiveText" is for those situations where you want to see the other person you're texting and you can't talk. Maybe you're at the library. You know how they are about people like you. With this app, you can text each other while also looking and batting your eyes.
• "Printicular" is a free app for iPhone and Android that lets users print photos from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, Dropbox, or their phones' photo galleries for local pick up at one of 9,000 Walgreens drugstores.
Internuts
• Take a walk through the British Museum, save on airfare. Go to google.com/culturalinstitute/collection/the-british-museum for a virtual tour. Pack a lunch; this is a very large museum.
• ChemicalOfTheDay.squarespace.com gives information on thousands of chemicals in the products we use. Joy switched her "natural" skin lotion after finding out it has phenoxyethanol, an aromatic form of ethanol that has raised some concerns. (Just keep in mind that the website is run by Bubble & Bee Organic, a company that makes and sells organic soaps and lotions online, so the website operators are definitely biased.)
Reading on a Tiny Screen
A reader said she was intrigued by the Kindle Fire's ability to switch to a "reading panel" view, with enlarged text and the graphics and ads removed from any website. She'd been straining her eyes trying to read anything on her Samsung Galaxy S2 phone.
But she doesn't have to buy a Kindle to enlarge a page on her phone. The free "Readability" app gives you larger type without all the ads. There's also "Pocket" (formerly "Read it Later.") If you don't like either of those, you can go into your phone's settings and increase the font size.
Bob and Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at [email protected] and [email protected].
SundayMonday Business on 11/30/2015