When our friend from Wisconsin (no, his name is not Yon Yonson) is in our neck of the woods, he wants to watch Green Bay Packers games on his phone. Can he do it? One way is to use Watch ESPN, a free app for Android, iPhone and iPad.
We tried out the ESPN app on our phone to watch football in a doctor's waiting room, and it worked fine. But the catch is, you must verify that you have a subscription to cable TV.
Our friend Lee does not have a cable TV subscription. Instead, he has a home antenna that can pick up Packers games broadcast locally in Wisconsin, and he has a lifetime subscription to the TiVo service. TiVo users can stream programs to their TV at home or to their phone or tablet. In our tests, we could control Lee's TV with the Android app, but we couldn't watch anything live because he doesn't have one of the newer TiVos.
An alternative to streaming is to download recorded shows to your mobile device while in range of your home Wi-Fi network. If you have an older TiVo, you'll need an extra device to do this -- the TiVo Stream.
If you want a variety of programs to watch on the road, consider Sling TV. It costs $20 a month to watch shows online from 28 cable channels, but you can't record anything. Some shows are available on demand, but for the most part, it's live only. Which means, of course, that if you're in Singapore, you can use Sling TV to watch tonight's Rizzoli & Isles series finale, but you'll have to tune in at 9 a.m. Tuesday your time.
If you're a cable or satellite TV subscriber, you can watch everything on phone, tablet or computer from anywhere. Download the free app or watch from your favorite browser. For Comcast, go to TVgo.xfinity.com. For DirecTV, go to DirecTV.com and click "watch now." For Suddenlink, go to suddenlink2go.com. For AT&T Uverse, go to Uverse.com/live. We use Uverse, so now when we're at a hotel, we won't miss our favorite show, Brain Dead.
Be wary of searching online for even more alternatives. Some, like Botmediaz, promise free online sports, but appear to be scams.
Gobs of games
You can get a treasure trove of video games or programming books for whatever price you think is fair. It's called the Humble Bundle, from HumbleBundle.com.
The minimum price is $1, and much of the proceeds go to charity. As of last year, they'd raised $65 million for charity, which just goes to show how those small contributions add up. We bought a recent Humble Bundle for $1. It included four really good books on programming, including Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total Beginners.
The current Humble Bundle is a set of games for the PlayStation. You get four games for $1 plus a coupon for 45 percent off Street Fighter V in the PlayStation Store. The games include Capcom titles such as Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 and Strider. If you pay about $12, which is above average, you get six more games, including Resident Evil and Lost Planet. Pay $15 to unlock even more. There's a new deal every week.
Game Music
Spotify, the free, ad-supported music app and website, now has music from video games. After listening to Bach, Beethoven and the Beatles, it was a nice change to hear the background music for Super Metroid.
To find game music after installing Spotify to your computer, phone or tablet, search on the phrase "Guest List: Games Beat."
Book: Life Hacks
David Pogue, who writes for Yahoo Tech, has a new book, Life Hacks, $20 from FlatIronBooks.com.
The book deals with topics ranging from quenching a hot pepper mouth (use dairy or peanut butter) to folding an airline seat's headrest into the perfect pillow. But it's the tech section where he really shines. Here are a few tips we found especially helpful:
• If you've missed the news for a month, type "August 2016" into the page at wikipedia.org and get a quick summary. If you're curious about the past, type any month and year.
• You don't need a cellphone contract to dial 911. Put any old phone in the glove compartment, and as long as it's charged, it makes a great emergency phone.
• Buy the kids an iPod Touch instead of a cellphone: It's an iPhone without a monthly bill. It can send text messages to other Apple users, play video, take pictures, surf the Web and use all the latest apps. (Our niece used a deactivated older-model iPhone to avoid monthly bills. She could still make calls over Wi-Fi.)
• Use a blow dryer to unclog your inkjet printer nozzles when they dry up. (We haven't tried this. Our usual fix is to throw out the printer.)
Broken Mac
Our Macbook Air laptop broke when we spilled a bit of breakfast on it. If only we'd bought a keyboard skin to protect it.
Kuzy sells one for $8 at Amazon. Many office stores sell them too. If you spill on it, wash it. It also prevents your keys' markings from wearing off and prevents dust from collecting in the spaces. Some users report initial awkwardness while they get used to typing on a skin, but it may save you $750. That's the amount Apple quoted us to make our laptop live again. Be sure to get the right size. (For Windows laptops, TopCase makes a keyboard skin for $6.)
Eye-opening
Joy's new glasses arrived, confirming to her that ordering online works. At $86, they're not as stylish as her $800 pair, but that's because she forgot to get the "semi-rimless" frames. If she wants to swap them for a pair of equal price, there's no extra charge.
Meanwhile, ConsumerAffairs.com wrote us to share their ranking of online glasses stores. In their expert reviews, the top-ranked site was 39DollarGlasses.com, followed by Coastal.com, WarbyParker.com and ZenniOptical.com. In their user reviews, the top-ranked site was still 39DollarGlasses.com, but second was ZenniOptical.com. There were no complaints from the site we tried, GlassesUSA.com.
All of these sites let you "try on" your glasses virtually. You can upload a picture of yourself and see how you look in hundreds of styles. Some sites also sell contact lenses.
Bob and Joy Schwabach can be reached by email at [email protected] and [email protected].
SundayMonday Business on 09/05/2016