Recomendo

AR Animals/Dictanote/Prime Student

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Recomendo: issue no. 206

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View animals in 3D
Something cool I just learned is if you have a supported smartphone, you can search for an animal on Google and view them in 3D! Here’s instruction on how to do it and a list of all the animals currently available at this time. — CD

Better Dictation
Over the last couple of years, I’ve been teaching myself to touch-type, but my progress has been slow and frustrating. I tried Apple’s built-in speech-to-text feature, but it has a bad habit of shutting off while I’m speaking. I recently discovered Dictanote (which runs in Google Chrome), and I really like its accuracy and the way it doesn’t shut off while I’m using it. It has a number of other features too, such as custom voice commands, which will paste text snippets triggered by a spoken phrase. I use it to write blog posts, reports, a novel I’m working on, and this newsletter. I now consider it to be a mission-critical tool. A lifetime subscription to Dictanote is $19. — MF

Student Prime membership
College students can get Amazon Prime (free shipping, streaming, cheap music) for free their first 6 months of being a student and 50% off thereafter. Check out Prime Student. — KK

So many paper airplane designs
I was delighted to come across this repository of paper airplane designs on Foldnfly.com. I didn’t know so many possibilities existed! We had a fun family tournament in the backyard this weekend. There seems to be quick, video tutorials for all of the designs. — CD

Instant discount coupons
Honey is an online coupon service much like the website Retailmenot. But instead of going to Retailmenot to get a discount code for an online shop (which works very well), Honey lives as an extension in your web browser and automatically pops up on the page when you go to a shopping site. It can also track prices. In my experience about 1 in 10 times Honey has a code I can actually use, but since it costs no money and zero effort to use, it is very much worth it. — KK

Mac OS installer on a flash drive
I had a spare MacBook Air that was running the Linux OS. My daughter suddenly needed a laptop to replace her recently broken one, and so I had to reinstall the Mac OS on the Air. I had difficulty figuring out how to do it until I came across this Apple website that explained how to create a bootable installer for MacOS on a flash drive. Now I have an emergency USB drive and I’m sure will come in handy again. — MF

-- Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson 06/28/20

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