Need tips for using your Amazon Alexa? Join Lucy on All About Lady A on the second Thursday of the month for simple tricks to get the most out of your A Lady device. Listen on the Unmute Presents podcast feed. See you there. Oh yeah, did I mention you can also check out Unmute show for all past episodes? And to get more information about what we've got going on foreign here and on today's Digital Bite, we're going to talk about an application that I've only used for two weeks now. One was a week ago, the other one was a year ago and this application is called GoodMaps. I want to give you a brief explanation of how Good Maps works and how you can expect it to work if you get an opportunity to check it out. So Good Maps is an app that allows you to use your phone to navigate specifically indoor locations. They do have Outdoor Explorer locations, but I've never actually played with that portion of Good Maps. Last week when I was at csun, I used the Good Maps application the first time I opened it. It offered me a tutorial that I could go through in order to use it. I was already familiar with the experience, but this year it was a lot more reliable and a lot easier to use than what I remember it being last year at csun. For example, when you open goodmaps and asks you to turn to the left or right and point the camera of your phone away from your chest so it can capture the area that you're in. Once it captures that and it's able to determine where it is that you are, then it'll give you a directory you can use that has a list of rooms in the location that you're in. You can pick the room and double tap on it to add it to your favorites or get more details. Or if you flick down on the room name, it will say Go. And when you double tap on Go, it'll start giving you audible and haptic feedback. If you feel a vibration, that means that you're off track and you need to turn, it'll typically tell you 1:00 or 11:00, or turn to your right and you turn until you hear a tone and the haptics stop. When you get to where you hear tone and the haptics stop, then you're able to continue walking in that direction. If you get off path, for example, I curved over to the right when I should have went to the left. It'll tell you things like 11 o'clock and you can use a clock face. I believe Those settings are changeable on how it gives you that feedback in your app as well. It'll also tell you things like openings or doorways or if you need to turn right and what the last stop was to the left. Now let me be fully transparent. I think my favorite feature about the app is I didn't have to ask someone can I get directions to the restroom? I located the restroom near the area that I was at and it led me straight to the door of the men's every time. I also used it so I could easily navigate through a wide open space and Good Maps was very helpful for me. It's free, but locations do have to have their location mapped, so if you aren't in a good Good Maps location, chances are probably greater that you're not going to experience what Good Maps is like. However, search for Good Maps in the iPhone app Store and it'll come up and you can actually check it out. Note if you tell Siri to search for Good maps, it's going to bring you to Google Maps. That's not necessarily what you want. Hope you found this to be useful. Check out Chris, Marty, Sean, me and Steven on Double tap for a quick CSUN recap. Saturday's episode and Monday repeats Hey everyone.
It'S Chris and I'm back with an interesting transcript to read you between Apple and me. So I was recently looking at my Apple Card statement because I've just returned from csun, the Assistive Technology conference that absolutely knocked my socks off. It was so awesome to be there and I did take a few Lyft taxi trips to and from the airport and then some out to dinner and so forth. So I found that there were some pending transactions that had not yet cleared. There was one from the beginning of the week about five days ago and then a couple from say yesterday when I returned home. So I wanted to know why are those still pending? So, so I wanted to find out and I remembered that I had a very helpful experience several months ago when I had a question about my Apple card and then I wanted to find out more information and so I accessed the Apple Chat feature and it was really great. So I wanted to tell you about that. Sometimes these chat features are maybe not so helpful when you're on a website and you need to access the chat and type your answer and know when someone's responding and so forth. This is just really great. So what I did was I opened the Wallet app, I went to my Apple card, I double tapped on more at the top right corner and then There was a button for account details. Now you're not going to expect it in there, but it is located there that you can either chat or call the Apple card support folks or you can go to the website. So since chat was the first thing, and I remember that I had a really good experience with that, I did just that. I tapped on the button and voila, my messages app opened. And so I was typing and I'm going to read the transcript to you and tell you what my experience was like. And it was very helpful. And so first I said, why does it take so long for pending transactions to be approved? And Apple wrote back, hello, good afternoon Christina. Hope you are well. Thank you for letting me know that you need help with pending transactions. I'll be glad to help you. Please bear with me while I verify the information. And then I got a phone call so there was a little bit of a break. And then it said, thank you for waiting. Pending transactions for regular purchases may be posted in two to three business days after the transaction is charged. Here's my response. Some of these transactions are still pending from five to six days ago. They're all from the same company and some of them have cleared. So I was asking basically why have some cleared and some have not? So Apple writes back, hello, I'm Apple's automated assistant. Apple will keep this conversation and may use it to provide you support, quality assurance to train advisors and improve contact center technology. Tap the link below to see how your data is managed. And then there is a button that says message Apple and privacy. Or it's rather a link and then Apple writes back to get you to the right place. I'll need to get some more information. Please choose your Apply with the option below that best describes what you need help with. And there was a button that was chosen for me the only option was payment topics. And so really there were no options in that category. So I respond back, none of these apply since I have questions about pending transactions which have not yet cleared. Apple writes back, let me get you to someone who can help choose the option from the list below that best describes what you need. And there was a button that says support topics and then there was a list of support topics and I chose Apple Card support. So basically what we've gotten is no help so far, but we're getting closer and we're going to be over to the Apple support folks. Apple says, I can help you with your Apple card. Then there is a button that says verify with Goldman Sachs. So I click on this button that Says yes, verify my Apple Card account button. So then Apple writes back, you are now connected to the Apple Card team at Goldman Sachs. A specialist will send you a message here after reviewing your account. Are you contacting us about a recently declined transaction? Please respond yes or no. Now. Yesterday in the wee hours of the morning when I was awake, I decided to order the Echo vision glasses. And so oftentimes Apple will have a little bit of a tizzy fit about you ordering something from a different company or country. And I appreciate their aggressive lookout for my well being, but sometimes it creates a problem. And so they declined the first transaction that I tried to make and then actually it did then get approved. So I respond back, no, because I'm not inquiring about declined transactions. But they can see that there was a declined transaction there. So Apple writes back, hi Christina, thanks for chatting. This is Liz. Now as an aside and I'm going to make this very gentle comment, I really didn't know whether Liz was a real person or not, but I just very want to kindly say that if there are a couple grammatical errors perhaps then maybe I'm thinking maybe the person English is not their first language and I completely get that. But it is kind of comforting that this is actually a real person that is writing to me and I say that in the kindest way. So Liz continues, would this be related with the pending transactions on your account? I write back, I am contacting you about several transactions that are still pending from Lyft. Yes, Apple says, got it. Let me take a look. Okay, so I can see two transactions and the amounts are given for this. Transactions may take up to three business days to process completely. You can be expecting this to fully process on the upcoming days. In case that this takes more days, I kindly advise you to contact over the merchant for further support. So I notice a couple, you know, little errors in the English and that's comforting to me. So I say okay, thank you. Whom shall I contact if it takes longer than a few days? Apple writes back, in case that the transaction takes longer, I advise you to contact over with Lyft to see why they are not taking the credit of the account. Me? I say, okay, thank you so much. Apple says, no problem. In case of any other inquiry, feel free to reach out. Hope you enjoy the rest of your day. And I respond back, thank you, you too. So that was my interaction with the Apple card support and I really appreciated it because at first I know I was dealing with bots and automated type of things, but I did appreciate that A real person was writing to me and I do appreciate that the chat function in the actual messages app is just great. It is not a website I have to pay attention to. Oh, did they write back? How do I know if they write back? This is just great. I just have a message back and forth and back and forth. One time I did contact the Apple Store and was chatting with the person about the fact that I had gotten some headphones engraved and I did want to know where was that engraving located. And that was a real interesting experience because I needed to have them describe to me exactly where on the case the engraving took place. And the engraving was not tactile so I couldn't find it. So I was afraid they had not engraved my headphones, but indeed they had. I found out later. But it was kind of interesting having this experience over chat. Like how to find the engraved area on your headphones case. But in any case, pun intended. I really am so happy about the chat feature of Apple card support. So in case this can be useful to you can either chat with them, call them, or visit the website.
Hey all, Marty here. And today I want to talk to you about a cool new gadget I got. This is called a Rolls Mic switch. And what it does is it specifically mutes and unmutes your microphone. Now, in the podcasting broadcasting world, you're always looking for an interface with a mute button on it or some way to mute yourself in times of let's say you want to grab a quick sip of something in between or you have a moment, you think you're going to cough, anything like that. So one of the most important tools is having that mute button. Now, a lot of the times you're out looking for an interface that has a mute button on it, but most of them actually don't have a mute button. So you have to look to do it in software or find another way to mute yourself. Or you're constantly looking for that interface that actually has a mute button. What this does is you run it in between your microphone and your interface with two XLR cables. So you place it in between the microphone and the interface. You run the XLR cable out of your microphone into the switch, then you run a second XLR cable from the switch to your interface, and then you have a mute button, a physical mute button that you can hit the button and mute the microphone or unmute. Unmute the microphone whenever you want and you can use it on any interface. So it's called the Rules Mic Switch and it's specifically for muting your microphone. This thing is super basic. It does one thing and one thing great, and that's mute and unmute your microphone. So if you're looking for a way to mute your microphone, check out the Rolls mic switch. It ran me about 60 bucks, and it's awesome because I can use it on any. Any recording situation that I'm using an interface. All right, so check it out and enjoy.