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Showing posts from March, 2023

Duolingo Max Uses AI, But Not Very Well

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All screenshots by author Duolingo has taught me more than any other language app or book. I’ve tried just about all of the apps, paid good money for many, and none of them have given me as much as the green owl and his friends. None of them. However, Duo could do-o so much better. I and others find that it can be quite frustrating as they seldom explain anything very well. More frustrating is that they are sometimes misleading and even completely wrong. Fortunately, comments are allowed and often you can learn what you need from people who help the rest of us by explaining tricky gotchas. When that fails, Google usually can find a deeper explanation. In some ways, that’s better. Early on, deep dives can make things more confusing for students. When I’m ready for it, I look for it, and will understand it better because I’m further along. Duolingo Max But now Duo has announced Duolingo Max. At the moment, this is only available in English speaking countries for Spanish and French course

More Uses For Apple's Freeform App

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I’m surprised by how much I am using this Anthony Lawrence (Pcunix) APPLE Importing photos to Freeform screenshot by Author I wasn’t very excited by Apple’s new Freeform app at first. There are many similar apps (although mostly paid, not free as this is), and Freeform seemed to be lacking important features. Still, I did start using it as a more visual and customizable substitute for Bookmarks. Apple’s New Freeform App Looks Like Someone Phoned It In There is a lot to like, but also a lot missing here Collections In the past few months, I’ve found more uses. One of the first was to organize the photos of my coin collection. The coins themselves are safely locked up in a bank vault, so photos are the only easy way to enjoy them, but I was not at all happy with how they looked in the Photos app. I could print them out and arrange them as I like, but that’s a fair amount of effort itself. I decided instead to bring them into Freeform. Beginning to organize the coin collection photos Just

Don’t Buy an Expensive PDF Editor— Your iPad Can Edit PDFs and Convert Web Pages

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Don’t Buy an Expensive PDF Editor— Your iPad Can Edit PDFs and Convert Web Pages Apple only vaguely has mentioned this, but it works beautifully Anthony Lawrence (Pcunix) APPLE A “printable” form Recently I had to fill out a form for a service I wanted. At this point of website development, I expected to do that online, happily typing in the requested information and submitting it. To my surprise, the site offered a “printable form” instead. Sheesh! Somebody is rather lazy! I might have been annoyed and quit at this point, but this was a service I wanted and that particular website is the only company that I trust to provide the service I wanted. Let me digress a moment. The service I wanted was to restore the looks of a badly tarnished half dollar. You may not know much about rare coins, but the most important rule is this: no matter how grungy a coin may look, you should never try to spruce it up. Only professionals should ever try to clean up a coin’s looks; any attempt you might ma