The Digital World

Although both Google and my mobile phone service provider try to identify unwanted incoming calls, the number of such calls has increased exponentially.

Unwanted emails are called “spam emails” and these unwanted calls, including computer-dialed “robocalls” that deliver pre-recorded messages, are also known as “spam calls.”

At least with spam email, your email provider and/or yourself (the latter through creating what are known as rules to categorize email as spam depending on criteria such as message subject) can redirect suspected spam email from ever coming into your inbox.

This is the third in a series of articles about mobile phones and plans.

When buying your first smartphone, questions such as “which mobile service provider (aka carrier),” “which mobile data plan,” and “which smartphone” are common.

Although you may get the urge to walk into a carrier store without any research, I recommend doing this first: ask your neighbors about their signal quality of their carrier. Signal quality, i.e. reception, at your abode is important so basic functionality such as calling and texting are reliable.

This is the second in a series of articles about mobile phones and plans.

With the propagation of “always connected” (to the internet, aka the cloud) devices such as smartphones, talk and text (“yap & tap”) plans have become cheap. Still, you may notice that your monthly bill is higher. Why?

“Tapping” on your smartphone is more than just texting. Smartphones require mobile data to be always connected. A handful of MVNOs (resellers of mobile service) like Tracfone are still metering talk and text but most have moved to the new business model of selling mobile data plans while offering unmetered talk/text (i.e. unlimited).

This is the first in a series of articles about mobile phones and plans.

Just like there are AM and FM radio waves, aka bands, there are two mobile radio wave standards, or bands, in use in our country: GSM and CDMA. The important thing is that there are two bands and not what the acronyms stand for. Keen readers and geeks alike will point out that the word “band” is used slightly in a different manner when talking about the mobile phone industry but to keep matters simple, we’ll ignore that it is used differently.

If rock 'n' roll is your favorite music genre, you can tune your radio to 100.7 WMMS or 98.5 WNCX stations on the FM band to get your fix. For traffic reports, news and sports news during your daily commute, you may tune to WTAM 1100 on the AM band.

Like WMMS and WNCX in the FM band, or WTAM in the AM band, analogy here is that we have T-Mobile and AT&T using the GSM standard while Verizon and Sprint are using the CDMA standard.

When I was first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I became very regimented. Taking glucose readings twice a day, following dietary restrictions recommended by my primary care physician, asking for a doggy bag at the beginning of a meal when eating out to right-size the portion, and other adjustments became the norm.

I can laugh about this now but I remember saying in a sarcastic tone, “What do you mean by I can only eat a cup and a half of cooked pasta??” and rolling my eyes. You’d be shocked at how little a cup and a half of cooked pasta is! It’s a miracle, too, that I wasn’t in the dog house that night! With my wife's commitment to adjusting our meal plan to diabetic-friendly Asian cuisine, combined with motivation from the since-retired uber internist Dr. Walborn, I controlled my diabetes without medication for over a decade. I even lost more than 40 pounds in the first year.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about the cord-cutting scene. To the uninitiated, cutting-the-cord replaces traditional cable or satellite TV service in favor of receiving TV programming through the internet (called "streaming").

The advent of “smart TVs” that have computer-like circuitry to connect to your home internet feed makes cord-cutting possible. Even a “dumb TV,” which in my column refers to any modern TV with available “HDMI” connection, can be turned into a smart TV for under $50. Yep, streaming devices such as Roku and Fire TV sticks can provide the same computer-like function to connect the TV to your internet pipe.

I used to make my annual pilgrimage to the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) at the Cobo Center in Detroit every January. A self-proclaimed gearhead, although I confess I can’t turn a wrench, I loved spending the whole day at NAIAS and coming home with a trunkload of catalogs to keep me entertained through the long CLE winter.

However, just like the electronic gadgets we procure stopped coming with manuals, many car manufacturer booths started eliminating hard copy literature, instead pointing visitors to their websites. I haven’t been back to NAIAS since!

Most digital natives will instinctively do a Google search for an electronic – aka “PDF” – manual to find out something; digital immigrants, like yours truly, grew up consulting books, encyclopedias and manuals for knowledge.

There’s nothing anecdotal about the term “silver tsunami.” According to Wikipedia, it is “a metaphor used to describe population aging.” One oft-reported effect is how people are delaying retirement or coming out of retirement to rejoin the workforce.

For the latter rejoiners, what do you do when you were previously in a field/career that didn’t require learning or using digital world tools such as a computer? I bet the ink ribbon of your Smith Corona in the attic is bone dry. And even if you can ask your friend to order a replacement ribbon, that job application process requires an electronic version of your resume.

Staying safe in the digital world, what I call “internet street smarts,” continues to be a hot topic in 2018. “Security” and “privacy” will be digital world challenges for some time to come. Why?

As the internet, aka the cloud, is “borderless,” nefarious actors can be located stateside and/or internationally. This makes it hard to track down perpetrators. By now you may have heard about the FBI advisory to reboot your router to avoid being a potential victim. National media, in most cases, is dispersing the information verbatim and in repetition. Although I wonder how many will actually go through with this as this week I have been asked, multiple times, what a “router” is.

There are many reasons I love Cleveland, one of them being that the four seasons are similar to where I grew up. Yet even after living in CLE longer than I grew up in Japan, I still can’t tell how I should dress during our short spring season. I left home in a T-shirt the other day because it was 76 the day before. I should’ve consulted my digital mercury, aka my smartphone, as it was 46 degrees that day.

At least seniors enjoyed warm weather to attend our second annual Living in the Digital World Senior Expo on May 10.

I frequently laud in my column the 1992 movie “Sneakers” where the plot is almost an accurate premonition of what the digital world would be 25 years later. That world is where “information” and not greenbacks provide unimaginable value to both businesses and nefarious actors alike.

When researching the current state of information collection activities by data brokers, my research also found that the phrase “you are the product,” in reference to one getting something under the misguided pretension of no strings attached, predated consumerization of the internet.

Another movie, this one from the late 1990s, “Wag the Dog,” is another dead ringer where I can discern many parallels to current events. Although not a case of life imitating art, the rise of fake news and strategic use of tools born in the digital world are too eerie to say the least. It’s as if these two movies were prophecies!

Maybe no one explained how the two worlds complement each other. Perhaps the lines were more lucid 10 years ago but now they are blurred. “Shaken, not stirred,” just like Ian Fleming’s British spy agent likes his martini.

Every morning your cerebral cortex signals the idiom “clear as mud” when you try to understand the two worlds but said signal is not accompanied by a sense of urgency. You face another day without grasping the consequences that your actions in the digital world invites in the real world.

While waiting for your afternoon cuppa joe, you learn about the 141st data security breach of 2018, this time affecting 1 million customers; you quickly swipe to the next news story. As common as your customized morning commute traffic reports you get through the “Waze” app on your smartphone, you came to learn that initial numbers in most data security breach news are under-reported. You cynically blame that as crisis management M.O. (modus operandi)!

About a decade ago, I received a T-shirt from Sprint with the words "I am your hotspot" prominently emblazoned across the front. It became my favorite T-shirt because it exuded geekiness!

Our smartphones are always connected to the internet, aka the cloud, because the utility of a smartphone goes beyond just making/receiving phone calls and text messages.

Before the advent of smartphones, you paid for talk time and text messages allotted monthly; in marketing parlance they were “metering” how much you yapped and texted. Although metering exists for non-smartphone users and some providers still use this business model, the industry’s preference seems to require smartphone users to select a “mobile data” plan while talk and text are advertised as unlimited (i.e. unmetered).

Last week I was invited back to present “OMG! What Happened to My Family Memories!” at the Cuyahoga County Public Library. Preparation entailed reviewing my slide deck from five years ago and it was a trip down memory lane. It feels funny using that phrase since it was “only” five years ago – a testament to how internet years are akin to dog years!

Back in 2012, photos and videos taken with digital cameras were mostly copied to one’s computer. The computer became the primary target to be backed up to an external hard drive for contingency planning. Backing up files is like ordering “double prints” when developing 35mm film rolls (remember those?), tucking away one copy in a safe place.

With this week’s title, I don’t blame you for thinking that I switched to a fishing enthusiast column. The good news is that I’m not built for sitting in one place, hours on end, waiting for a nibble on my fishing line. With my luck I’d end up with an old boot when I reeled it in!

If you have been assessing the feasibility of cutting the cord, or the recently augmented streaming of cloud-based programming to your digital world devices, you may have come across the jargon “cast.”

Casting is loosely related to streaming – i.e. you can stream content like a YouTube video or Taylor Swift’s latest single without casting – and Google’s Chromecast is a popular choice when used together with your other digital world tools such as your Android smartphone, Android tablet or the Chrome browser on your computer.

Through the cacophony of silverware, loud laughter, and good conversation at a senior center fundraiser luncheon, a lively discussion about Roku can be heard from the group sitting next to my wife. Call that motivation for today’s article!

In the good ol’ days, network TV programming from ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and others were received over-the-air (aka “OTA”) with a roof-top antenna or rabbit ears. But did you know that even after the analog-to-digital transmission transition mandated by the Federal Communications Commission, you could have continued to receive OTA programming?

A total of 7,878 and counting ... that is the cumulative number of programs, inclusive of some recurring programs of a series, that are scheduled throughout eight senior centers in these communities: Bay Village, Westlake, Avon, Fairview Park, Lakewood, North Olmsted, North Ridgeville and Rocky River.

For free or at a minimal cost, seniors can stay healthy, learn something new, see movies, play card games and more. Not to mention being part of a community, making friends and being engaged.

Utilizing senior center programming is not a “Like” or “Follow” in the digital world; it is tried-and-true relationship curation in the real world. People-to-people connections, aka “connectedness,” can help combat loneliness and help keep seniors emotionally happy … but only if they know about them in the first place!

By the time you read this final WVBO issue of 2017, Santa’s Chief Elf Officer (CEO) will have inputted the billions of delivery destinations into the sleigh’s onboard GPS. He will also have duplicated them into the Google Map app on Santa’s smartphone as a backup in case the GPS receiver in Rudolph’s red nose malfunctions.

Being an avid reader of this column – available even in North Pole through the WBVO website in the digital world, aka internet – Santa’s CEO knows the importance of backups; Santa having a backup methodology for delivery routing is a must!

Has this happened to you? Your car is constantly making clunking noises but when you take it to the mechanic, the noise goes away and you can’t replicate it.

Having lived in the digital world for decades I have encountered analogous situations, both as the instigator and as the person providing assistance, where tools such as computers, tablets and smartphones act up but, when needed, can’t replicate the issue. Also we often have a hard time explaining the error message on the screen to another person.

With the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets, we can of course take a picture of the error (or record that clunking noise) but what if you don’t have a smartphone or digital camera at your disposal? Or what if the error message is on the smartphone itself?

“Can we go sit in our car so I can go online?”

This was what a friend's daughter asked her when their home internet went down recently. The girl had seen a commercial touting a car’s ability to offer Wi-Fi to the passengers and she thought her family car could give her a quick fix!

To her daughter’s dismay, their family car didn’t have that feature nor did Jodi volunteer to offer Wi-Fi through hotspotting as it will use the precious monthly mobile data. Instead, her family got reacquainted with the joys of playing a board game, courtesy of the internet not coming back up for the night.

Over the years of doing my share of household chores, I’ve learned to read the care labels on garments carefully. I’ve learned that wool garments don’t like hot water and they shouldn’t be tumble dried either. The tiny print used on those care labels make it extremely difficult to read. It doesn’t help that words start fading after several times through the wringer. Even with a careful inspection of the label, sometimes I notice that my clothes have become tight. Did I gain weight or did the garments grow feet and sneak back into the hot water pile from the cold water pile?

There is a bright side to many of these care labels: the use of hieroglyphics, more commonly referred to as “icons” (aka symbols). Having an icon resembling a clothes dryer with a big “X” through it can’t be misunderstood: no tumble drying.

I’m sure over 143 million Americans would have come up with a similar title for my article today. After a data breach that exposed consumers' personal information, Equifax bungled its crisis management communication. The breach is being blamed on the company's lax response to a known security vulnerability which is analogous to a tiny crack in the foundation for a rat to get in. If history repeats itself like with Anthem, Target, Home Depot, and other breaches that came before it, the number of affected consumers may likely increase.

A long time ago nefarious entities were interested in cleaning out your bank account. Those days are long gone! With the arrival of the internet, “information” and not greenbacks are the currency of the digital world.

Former fellow WBVO columnist R.J. Johnson of “Family Observations” fame surely would have written about this topic. If you are not familiar you can always read any of R.J.’s insightful prose – and any other columnists’ back numbers – at wbvobserver.com.

Growing up in a culture where public transportation was the preferred mode of transportation (many Japanese go through life without ever getting a driver’s license), it was interesting for me to learn that many American teens go through driving education as part of their high school curriculum and get their driver’s license before even their high school diploma. I understood that getting a driver’s license is another rite of passage to adulthood.

About 10 years ago we painted our rooms for the first time. New paint finally brought more warmth to our first house. However I vividly remember how much I hated the process leading up to the first brush stroke hitting the walls.

I’m talking about the “process” of picking the paint color. Back then, and for many people even to this day, picking the color to paint a room means going to the store and bringing back several color samples.

Part two of a two-part series on eliminating a home subscription to cable or satellite TV.

To continue exploring the feasibility of cord-cutting, the internet is a requirement. As I always say, if the gas, electric and water lines coming into your house enable you to go about your daily life, think of the internet as just another utility line that lets you take advantage of what the digital world has to offer. One of those digital-world benefits is the ability to receive live broadcasts of many premium TV channels over the internet, referred to as “IPTV.”

IPTV, or Internet Protocol television, simply means getting TV programming through the internet – aka “streaming.” This acronym makeup is similar to “VoIP” – Voice over Internet Protocol – which means making/receiving telephone calls through the internet.

Part one in a two-part series on eliminating a home subscription to cable TV.

After the last Observer issue hit the streets, I received feedback that readers wanted more details on how to explore if cutting the cable TV cord was possible for them. Here is first in a two-part series on the process.

The first tier of cutting the cord is to determine if you can receive your traditional network channels like NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and PBS for free.

The curriculum for the next-to-last session of our “Discover Digital Literacy!” program, currently hosted by Westlake’s senior center, was supposed to be about intermediate-level email usage tips. But our program cohorts’ curiosities were piqued when I mentioned “cutting the cord” in passing.

Just a week earlier, we invited Trina Thomas from Westlake Porter Public Library for a hands-on discovery session to highlight their digital resources and service offerings such as eBooks, eMagazines, and streaming movies, TV shows and music; they are all accessible through “apps” on the tablets we supply. Graduation day for these 12 seniors, ages 62 to 89, is imminent and students discovering WPPL’s free digital service offerings with Trina complemented our program.

Recently I came across a Wired article titled “20 People Who Are Creating the Future.” In a piece on Parisa Tabriz, the head of security for Google’s Chrome browser, a line caught my eye: “[Tabriz] has spent four years focusing on a vulnerability so widespread, most engineers act as if it doesn’t exist: humanity." In other words, accepting the reality of human error and designing technology to help overcome it, rather than ignore it. Browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Safari allow you to explore the internet (aka the cloud), but can also be a vehicle for scams and viruses to enter your devices.

The digital world is abuzz with cautionary tales about the proliferation of “ransomware” which is a type of “malware.” Just like the etymology of the word malware comes from the concatenation of the words “malicious software,” ransomware also has malicious intent.

I always preferred a manual transmission in my cars and not because there was a premium price for automatic transmission. I can’t even supply a coherent reason backing my preference, other than the simple love of cars, driving them and the control [I think] I have when selecting my own gear instead of the car selecting for me. I believe they label people like me “gearheads” or “pistonheads”; that’s “petrolheads” for folks across the pond, I’m told.

Due to my love of driving, I didn’t care too much about the early developments in autonomous, aka self-driving, cars either. Sure, being a self-professed geek at heart, I skimmed through articles about Google's and Tesla’s efforts as they had entertainment value for me. As a strategist, I was keenly aware of the business strategy Tesla deployed in bringing their electric cars to market.

I vividly remember the evening I was able to finally jettison my bicycle’s training wheels. Neighbors probably thought Indy 500 had arrived from across the pond as my friends and I zoomed around the block; no yellow flag, or Mom yelling “dinner!” for the hundredth time that evening, could keep me from stopping due to unfettered jubilation.

Similar exhilaration must accompany a child who just learned to read as parents find their youngsters reading under their covers with only a flashlight; words are coming to life in front of their eyes!

Whether riding a bicycle without training wheels or becoming literate, these are “life skills” that, once attained, are nurtured throughout life.

There is a new life skill that augments traditional literacy. It was borne upon the arrival of the internet (aka the cloud) and has made a huge impact on people's lives.

I had a little fun in the headline with the famous line from the “Star Wars” saga for an easy-to-remember "save the date" reminder for an upcoming event for our beloved seniors, their families and friends.

Although the digital world, aka internet or the cloud, makes it easy to look up information for any senior-centric services and products, meeting the actual representatives to ask questions and receive literature in person in the real world is always helpful. After all, a 2016 Pew Research Center survey showed that 36 percent of Americans over 65 years of age do not use the internet.

According to Wikipedia, the above Spanish term is translated as "Until the (next) sighting" and means "See you later" and "Goodbye." The phrase has been made famous in our pop culture by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” and also by several musicians.

In this case, it seemed the perfect way to say goodbye to Microsoft’s Windows VISTA operating system.

Microsoft is ceasing support for Windows VISTA on April 11. Using a computer running on Windows VISTA after that date, although functional, will increase your risk exposure especially when connected to the internet as Microsoft will NOT be releasing patches to cover up newly found vulnerabilities.

It finally happened – you bought a smartphone. “Ha, Tak is right. This is not bad at all!” you said to yourself. You love not having to schedule your life around the 6 o’clock news, as your smartphone's apps provide news and other information instantly and on-demand. You even tried FaceTime, Apple’s video-chat app, with your daughter on the West Coast and your family is equally ecstatic about your increased level of connectedness.

The euphoria of finally starting to reap digital world benefits came to a screeching halt when you opened your first bill. You owed exactly $15 more than what the salesperson told you. Over Sunday brunch your son pointed out that you were charged a $15 overage fee on your “mobile data” usage during the month. You frustratingly replied, “but the salesperson told me I had unlimited talk and text!” Your son, the calm and logical one, asked if you understood what mobile data meant; you sheepishly admitted “no.”

I’ve noticed a recent uptick in the number of messages left on our digital answering machine. We’ve gotten our share of solicitation scams from callers pretending to be the IRS but this surge seemed different and it's worth repeating the warnings by the national media for the readers of WBVO.

According to Wikipedia, a “phone call that uses a computerized autodialer to deliver a prerecorded message” is called a robocall. One such legitimate robocall is The Illuminating Company asking customers to keep their dogs on leash for the safety of their meter readers. But there are outright shady robocallers trying to scam you.

In my technology presentations, when I ask the audience, “What state are we in?”, I see some confused faces but most play along and answer “Ohio!” I proceed to explain that the cross-language homonym of the English word “Ohio” is “Ohayo” in Japanese which means “good morning.”

I tell the audience a white lie that we are about to wake up my parents at 2 a.m. Japan time. Uneasy laughter fills the room as they debate if they want to be part of my shenanigans. My answer? I simply hit the Skype app’s “video call” button on my tablet.

As the live image of my parents show up on the projected screen at the front of the room, the audience has no choice but shout “Ohayo!” in perfect unison. My dad, ever the show off, responds “Good morning! How are you today?” in English.

As I started writing the final WVBO column of 2016, I started reflecting on the mile markers my wife and I crossed this year. One of those milestones was starting a nonprofit, getting approved as a 501(c)(3) organization and graduating the first 12 senior participants from our pilot program – all in 367 days! In a future column I hope to talk about our mission and also additional important work undertaken by the Westshore Senior Center Collaborative, of which we are a part, and includes senior centers from the cities of Westlake and Bay Village, to help the senior citizens of the Westshore area.

Black Friday has been part of the fabric of our culture for a long time, marking the start of the Christmas shopping season. In recent years, Black Friday festivities have started earlier and, to the discontent of some, retail employees have to spend part of Thanksgiving Day at their jobs instead of with their families. So when a handful of retailers announced that they were not going to be open on Thanksgiving Day this year, it must have been a welcome news to many.

There may be other reasons why the tradition of lining up well before midnight on the eve of Black Friday, dressed to the nines (more like dressed with nine layers of clothing to stay warm), to snag that limited-stock doorbuster deal may have lost its allure for many consumers.

No, the headline above is not a typo. Although there is a popular messaging app that goes by a similar name, this week’s article is not about that app either. Today I want to share with you some of the apps I frequently used on my Android-based smartphone in 2016. When there is the same app for iOS (i.e. iPhone), I will put “(iOS too)” at the end of the sentence.

As an Android-based smartphone user, I always envied the intuitive videochat experience that my wife enjoyed with the Apple-exclusive "FaceTime" app on her iPhone. Imagine my surprise when Google came out with the “Duo” app. Duo is easy and intuitive to use like Apple’s FaceTime and the best part of it is that “Duo” exists for iOS too! So unlike FaceTime where usage is limited to communication between Apple products, I can call my wife’s iPhone that has Duo, from my Android-based smartphone, and start a videochat.

It sounds like a feature title that won the Best Documentary award at the Oscars but “Lookup Nation” aptly describes how we, in the real world, find information using tools that gather, aggregate and present data by scouring the digital world. You can even sort the aggregated information by more granular criteria such as relevance to your initial inquiry, utility of the supplied information and more. So did I just explain a new, innovative tool? Nope!

Welcome to early 1990s, as what I described above is basically the core competency of the now-ubiquitous search engine, offered by the likes of Google, Yahoo and Bing. Alta-Vista, Excite and Lycos, although short-lived, were early search-engine pioneers that eventually were dwarfed by Google and Yahoo in the early 2000s.

Does “art imitate life” or “life imitate art”? Although this column has not turned into a platform to debate Aristotle and Oscar Wilde’s take on art, I started thinking about this when I saw my favorite movie for the zillionth time the other day.

It hit the box office in 1992, a time when public and consumer access to the internet was nascent; limited to college computer labs, geeks with discretionary income, or businesses starting to use word processors and spreadsheets on personal computers to replace typewriters and augment calculators. A time when accessing the internet was 1/10th to 1/50th of today’s speeds and without many of the visual cues we see through our browsers today. I remember my first personal computer, which I used for almost 7 years, costing me $2,500 in 1995!