Happy Friday!

Google Meet is now free for everyone with a Gmail address. They already have all of your information, so head on over, read their security docs and have your meet-ups. Security docs can be found here.

Free Friday is here!
You can download Google's worldwide reports to "See how your community is moving around differently due to COVID-19". It's free.

From the web site:
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" What’s a Community Mobility Report?
Each Community Mobility Report is broken down by location and displays the change in visits to places like grocery stores and parks."
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The result is a PDF that connects all the data from Android users who leave their location tracking on. (There are instructions on how to turn off tracking. That's free advice.) I sincerely hope that this does some good now and will be discontinued in the future.  Google has used it's tracking program for other projects in the past, however, so it probably won't.
Looking through the data, I now understand why there are arrests at parks and beaches. That's where the spread is happening.

For specifics on where we live:
Tioga County, NY/Bradford County, PA

​If you need to (quickly) find out what the weather is going to be like, just type "weather" into a Google search box and you'll get back an 8-day forecast for your location.

Free Friday! I'm going to go simple today.

I've always had a problem with PDFs and my phone. It always seems to involve stretching stuff around to make the print bigger and moving it all over the place to get it centered just right. Plus there's the horizontal thing, etc. I've been looking for a program to open PDFs in a reasonable manner for quite a while.

Yesterday my phone offered to open a PDF in Google PDF reader. I didn't specifically have the reader on my phone, but it comes with my Google Suite, so I figured "Eh, why not try it? It certainly can't hurt."

Wow. This is one of the reasons that Google gets into your life and stays there. It's the PDF reader I'll be using on my phone from now on. I love it. It's perfectly centered and the print is legible in horizontal mode. I was able to scroll through a list of command lines and enter the right text into another computer without having to mess with my phone screen at all.

Give it a try! It's free and there are no ads.

It's Friday again!

Today's free stuff is going to be a bit unusual for me. Those of you who know me are aware that I frequently complain about a lack of privacy and have been known to leave electronic devices at home because I don't want to be tracked. I don't have Facebook on my phone. My privacy rants are rather long. Yet, there's my smart phone.

That said, there is room for concern when it comes to parental concerns over their children on the internet on their devices. It's important to know how they are using their phones and tablets.

Sometimes Google gets it right. They developed Family Link to help parents monitor what's going on between kids and their devices. It helps them control the devices and assists parents in teaching their kids to develop healthy relationships with electronic media.

Parents can view their kid's screen time and manage their apps. You pick what they can download and what they can spend on in-app purchases. You can also hide specific apps that they are not to use. You can also pre-approve apps and view recommended apps for kids that come from reputable sources. You can set time limits and lock the device.
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Tracking is also something that Google's FamilyLink does. This one kind of made me wince because it's what I dislike the most. But, I understand a parent who wants to use it. It's a safety thing.

It's Friday! Today's freebie is a nifty little tool for Gmail in the Chrome Browser. 

PixelBlock is a Gmail extension that blocks people from tracking when you open/read their emails. You can find it here at the Chrome Store 

And as a bonus, here's a very short vid to show you how to install it!