Disruptions: Microsoft’s Struggle to Make Things Simple for Consumers

Gadgetwise Blog: App Smart Extra: Dictionaries on the Go, Both Fancy and Simple

This week, my App Smart column was all about the delights of using dictionary apps on your smartphone or tablet. These apps can help you quickly look up a word’s meaning and usage or learn new words. Compared with a printed paper edition, dictionary apps on your mobile device can also let you share words you’ve found over social media or even quickly swap between looking up text in a dictionary or a thesaurus.

Many big names in dictionary publishing have released apps, and Oxford is perhaps one of the best known. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary is one of the most powerful apps you can get on iOS, though you have to pay $29.99 to access it. Where some similar apps emphasize quick access to word definitions and other useful information like synonyms, this app instead offers full dictionary entries that include examples and even photos.

The app can also teach you the right pronunciation with real British and American voices instead of computer voices. You can download the audio database for all of the 116,000 example sentences so they can be accessed offline. The app even suggests spelling, so you can find the word you’re looking for even if you don’t exactly know how to spell it. The main drawback is that this app’s screen can seem cluttered on a small iPhone display. If the clutter bothers you, you can choose to tell the app to, for example, turn off photos or example sentences.

An alternative, simpler iOS dictionary app is WordBook English Dictionary and Thesaurus, at $1.99. Its design is plainer than many of its peers. It offers a basic ability to look up a word in its database of some 150,000 entries. Each entry includes a pronunciation guide and spoken audio, although you need an Internet connection to get the audio to work. The app includes both British and American spellings of words, but the entries are written in American English.

It also has the ability to search several different online dictionary sources if the word you want can’t be found in its built-in word database. For fun there’s also a “puzzle solver” system that can help you solve anagrams or find words from partly solved crossword clues. It’s not the prettiest app, and you may find yourself yearning for a bit more context or background in each dictionary entry, but at least it’s speedy to use.

On Android there’s also the Dictionary app by Farlex. It’s free in an ad-supported edition, and includes both British and American audio pronunciation guides, and when it returns data on words, it can display some very extensive information. For example, the word “tap” returns some four or five scrollable pages of text, including images and alternative meanings of the word, example uses, history of the word and so on.

But sometimes it can seem like there’s too much data to look through, and it’s all presented in a similar way, which means you have to exercise your own judgment as to which of the results are useful to you. On the other hand, it can work offline, though you have to download data to the app while you have a connection. Plus it has the ability to look up words in several foreign languages, including Spanish and Russian.

Have fun improving your vocabulary!

Quick call: Paper Toss 2.0 is a new edition of the popular casual game, free on Android. The objective is simple: You have to toss scrunched-up paper balls (or bananas and a number of other objects) into a target trash can. The company says it’s like the classic office “time waster” game made digital.

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Finding a Simple Computer

I am trying to find the easiest computer for my elderly mother to use. She has never used one before and only needs e-mail and the Web, so it needs to be really basic. What’s out there?

The Telikin is one such specialized system that touts itself as an “easy-to-use” machine for anyone seeking a basic computer. The system is based on has a touch-screen interface with large icons and includes built-in applications using Web and e-mail. Several reviews of the Telikin can be found around the Web and more information is on the Telikin site. Enablemart also sells computers for those with limited or specific needs.

Another approach is setting up a standard user account, (which can help thwart viruses, unintentional deletions and settings changes) on a standard Mac or PC and configuring the desktop with easy-to-see icons for the mail and browser programs. Accessibility options like screen magnifiers and audio alerts are available in both Windows and Mac OS X may help make things easier to navigate for those with visual impairments.

This approach may take more time on your part, but it also offers a wider array of software and activities should your mother finds she likes the computer. Computers running Windows 8, which has touch-screen capabilities, are expected at the end of the month.

A tablet computer — like an iPad, one running Android, or a coming Microsoft Surface model — may be the most portable and cheapest option for easy access. In addition to configuring a mail account and any third-party apps, though, you need to factor in setting up a wireless network to use for Internet-related tasks on the tablet — or get a model that can use a 3G or 4G cellular data connection.

Gadgetwise Blog: Simple Home Surveillance That Offers Peace of Mind

The Dropcam HD offers live and recorded video monitoring on Apple and Android devices.

I’ve always wondered what my cat did while I was away from home. Did she devour the leaves of the plant in the living room or merely nibble them? How often did she jump up on the kitchen counter to forage for food? Did she dash out through the open window to patrol the ledge from four stories up?

Plenty of video monitoring cameras offer home surveillance solutions, but they are either expensive or the video resolution is low. At $150, the Dropcam HD aims to hit the middle ground, serving as a decent child monitor or home security camera. As I was getting ready to head out of town on vacation, I was eager to try it out.

The Dropcam HD was easy to set up. I was able to connect it to my home Wi-Fi and have it up and running in less than a minute. After that, I downloaded the Dropcam app so I could view my living room from my iPhone (the app is available for Android devices, too). With the camera’s 720p resolution, the image was clear, although hardly high definition. The colors were muted, but the sound was good. The real test, however, would come when I was 3,000 miles away on the West Coast.

While I was out of town, my neighbor promised to feed my cat. Through live feed on my phone, I was able to view him stopping by the apartment and giving the kitty her daily kibble. We could even communicate via  two-way audio, although a three-second delay made conversation awkward.

I checked the Dropcam at night, too, and the infrared vision showed me a quiet, still apartment.

But I couldn’t check the Dropcam every moment. To help with that, the camera has a DVR function that records events, marking them on a timeline of the last seven days. You can check each event and skip the hours of motionless void. Real-time viewing is free; the DVR service starts at $9.95 a month.

Now I know what my cat is up to while I am away. As it turns out, it’s the same thing she does while I’m there: sleep.