Category: Technology

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Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Safety and Awareness Wrap-Up Pointers by D.G. Kaye | Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

Published on by dgkaye28 Comments

Today I’m sharing my recap post from my Safety and Awareness series this year at Sally Cronin’s Smorgasbord Blog Magazine. In case you missed any, find recaps and links of each post below.

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Welcome back to my last post of the year for my Safety and Awareness series. I talked a lot about staying safe in various scenarios this year. In this post I’d like to go over the highlights of these posts to reinforce and remind you all. 

If you click on the headings it will take you directly to the relevant post.

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The topics I covered this year in this beware series recap:

Staying Aware in the Public Eye

Covering pointers – to beware of distractions when out in public with distracted drivers, people attached to their phones not paying attention, reminding to beware your surroundings, petty theft warnings, message to men why not to put wallets in their back pockets, and cellphone precautionary tips in case you get stranded.

Beware Email Scams and What to Look For

In this post, I offer valuable tips on how to detect scam emails, what to look for in the URL address line, what links to NEVER click on, and how to deal with scammy emails, not just deleting, but reporting them as well.

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Travel Safety and Awareness Part 1

In Part 1, I’m offering up some great travel solutions to remain safe while traveling and while on vacation. I suggest some good tips for bags and locks for travel, as well covering the importance of having RFID covers for credit cards and passport to deter passerby scammers who can steal our credit card/passport info with a tiny device without even stealing our bags.

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The topics I cov

Travel and Safety Part 2

In Part 2 of Travel Scams to beware of, I discuss methods for staying safe at bank machines and in hotels – room safes, bank machine scammers, what to look for when using foreign bank machines, what not to wear when touring.

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Mobile and Email Digital Communication Safety

In this post I talk about how to safeguard our mobile phones and computers from unwanted privacy invasions pre-installed on our devices, and how to remove these unknowing and unauthorized permissions.

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s year in this be this post, I offer valuable tip on how to detect scam emails, what to look for in the URL address li

Skin Safety Awareness and Vitamin D

Are you getting enough Vitamin D, or perhaps too much? In this post, I explain how SPF works and just how much Vitamin D we’re getting in various seasons, and when to use supplementation, the bewares of skin cancer, and sun protection protocols.

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ne, whatnks to NEVER click on, and how to deal w

How much do you know about using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) for protection on your Digital Devices? 

In this post I cover what a VPN is, how to obtain one, and the very many benefits of having one installed on your mobile devices for privacy, both at home and for use when traveling. It prevents anyone on the internet from knowing our real IP address. And it’s so good to have for private wifi when out in public places, where hackers can easily get in our phones or laptops using unprotected public wifi.

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fire blanket

ith scammy emails, n

Fire Safety Protocols and Escape Plans

In this post, I’m discussing the importance of having a plan in case of fire. I am also mentioning a great fire safety tool to have in our homes – the Fire Blanket – a handy thing to have in the home or car for putting out fires instantly. They can be thrown over fires or used for wrapping ourselves in case we need to flee the flames.

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Happy Holidays

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I hope you’ve found this series helpful in your everyday living and beyond. I wish you all a beautiful holiday season, and I will be back here next April with a new series to both – entertain and inform, here at Sally’s Smorgasbord of information and entertainment.

©DGKaye2025

Original Source: Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Safety and Awareness Wrap-Up Pointers by D.G. Kaye | Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

ot just deleting, but reporting them as well.

ware series recap:The top

ics I covered this year in this beware series recTrav

The topics I

ed this year in this

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I hope you’ve found this series helpful in your everyday living and beyond. I wish you all a beautiful holiday season, and I will be back here next April with a new series to both – entertain and inform, here at Sally’s Smorgasbord of information and entertainmen

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Headshots by A.I. – For Real!

Published on by dgkaye112 Comments

I’ve been wanting to update my author picture for ages, but wasn’t looking forward to the price for a new professional headshot. In my surfing travels last week, I came across a site that creates headshots from using our own real pictures!

Of course I tried it! It asks us to download ten pictures of ourself so the generator can work its magic creating professional images with new backgrounds taken from the photos we downloaded. It will show you all new generated photos with different backgrounds for free, and if you wish to pay for them, then we are able to download them. These are great for authors and other professionals, and especially great to use on social media. Just pick your package of pictures, pay, and download. Just know, they choose the attire to add to the pose.

This pic above is one of the fifty pictures I downloaded and chose for my new author pic. I found it interesting that the app puts us in different outfits and scenarios. I also found it interesting that many of the pictures generated had me with my glasses off. I had downloaded five pics with glasses and five without and the app generated most pics with my glasses off, like the one above.

Once the images are generated, we are offered a 10% discount if we choose to download the pics within ten minutes. The original price was $79 CAD, and it charged me $71 and change. So worth it! The last author pic I had professionally done was almost twelve years ago! One photo cost me $140 Canadian!

Below, I’ll share a few of the other pics just to demonstrate the various poses and sceneries the app generated with me:

Name in lights

Nice dream pic

I’m definitely ready for sun and sea!

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Visit the link below and give it try for yourselves!

https://www.instaheadshots.com

©DGKaye2025

Blog sharing

Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Health and Safety – Safety & Awareness – Do You Understand How a VPN Works? What’s a VPN? by D. G. Kaye | Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

Published on by dgkaye33 Comments

Today I’m sharing my article I shared last week at Sally Cronin’s Smorgasbord Blog Magazine, where I have my monthly Safety and Awareness column. In this post I’m talking about the importance of using a VPN.

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Do You Understand How a VPN Works? What’s a VPN? 

Let’s begin with, do you know what a VPN is? It stands for – Virtual Private Network. I’ve had one for the last seven or eights years and wouldn’t be without it. Why?

Having a VPN offers quite a few benefits. It connects to your computer and all your other devices by installing the download from wherever you purchased it from. There is different pricing depending on how many devices you wish to connect. This now becomes a digital connection between the device and a random server owned by the VPN company, which encrypts our data and masks our real IP address, so we are surfing freely without anyone able to track us.

Not only that, but if you purchase an annual VPN, it offers numerous choices of countries we can click on to, to change location to where we want to be seen as located from. You simply turn it on in your device and it’s on until you turn it off or switch countries and turn on again.

Just note, there are certain websites that won’t allow me in when I’m connected to the VPN. Most of those circumstances happen when I’m on one of our government websites that I must sign into to access financials. Having to sign in and show you are who you are without hiding behind VPNs.

Another handy use for example, when I’m in Mexico, I click on Mexico and I’m on a Mexican server when I want to read the local news, find stores and make restaurant reservations from their websites, and for Google maps. The VPN allows us to get access to websites around the world for regional content we couldn’t otherwise do.

Another bonus of having it when I travel is the fact that I can switch it back to Canada when I want to watch Canadian news, and especially for gaining access to my recorded TV shows at home that I wouldn’t be able to do without a VPN because our media company only allows access throughout Canada. If you are a person who travels away from home a few times a year, it’s definitely convenient to have.

Now let’s talk about the protection part of having a VPN. I would never use airport internets, even hotel room wifi without having my VPN turned on. Using public wifi without a VPN leave us open targets for hackers – especially in airports and internet cafes. Since we all seem to live in a rising in crime world, we are all vulnerable to hackers and cyber crime, which are getting more and more sophisticated. It allows us to bypass censorship and being surveyed, and therefore, halts being followed around by ads. Thus, providing no third party tracking.

My VPN is always on, especially when I’m doing online banking or any online purchases. It’s a great layer of protection. And it’s also a great deterrent for annoying popup ads. Nobody can see our browsing data, and that’s worth something, especially in this era of privacy invasion.

Keep in mind, there are free VPNs available, but the drawbacks are kind of an oxymoron because the free ones can still sell your data to third parties for income compensation. Also, when you use a free VPN you are limited to the only available country, which is the one you are in. You also won’t get the same speeds on the internet and timed usage, and I can’t guarantee any public privacy either.

VPNs don’t cost all that much, especially when you consider the privacy and other perks of using it. I use Bitdefender because I also use their antivirus – for years, after changing antivirus companies several times before finding a fair and reliable service. They also have great support, and no, I’m not plugging them, merely mentioning. They typically range around 50-60 dollars annually. But they are always offering promos, so when I renew, I call them, tell them I’ve seen ads out for promos, and they give me a promo code. I don’t think I’ve paid more than $39.99 at most with codes in the past few years. . . Please continue the conclusion at Sally’s blog where I share best ten VPNs and a short video that describes how easily it is to use a VPN.

©DGKaye2025

Source: Smorgasbord Blog Magazine – Health and Safety – Safety & Awareness – Do You Understand How a VPN Works? What’s a VPN? by D. G. Kaye | Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

digital devices

The Lost Art of Human Interaction – #Poetry

Published on by dgkaye88 Comments

Looking at Phones Instead of Faces

A bit of poetry today on the distant memories of social human interaction. Technology brought us cell phones and computers, but have taken away much of the human element of social conversation and interaction – both in public and the home. Once upon a time, people made small talk in public places such as, buses, airplanes, airports, banks, grocery store lineups, or pretty much when even passing another human in close proximity. And sometimes friendships were struck from these brief and serendipitious meetings. Now, all we see are faces glued to phones.

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Connecting with Human Energy

Emotion reflected in eyes.

The resonation of words

Amplified by tone and

Facial expressions.

A fading art.

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Lost in digits.

Emotions replaced by emojis,

Blinded from body language.

Missing the waft of personal presence,

Tricky to gauge the heart of a soul.

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Human connections live in the flesh,

Emit so much more than

Most fingers can type.

Often leaving emotionless, perhaps,

quizzical response.

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Without peering of the eyes,

It’s difficult to detect a lie

Human interaction waning,

Disguised behind device.

True identities buried by technology.

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©DGKaye2025

Artificial Intelligence

AI and Capabilities of ChatGPT

Published on by dgkaye88 Comments

If you’re a writer, you may be concerned about AI capabilities and the possibilities of having copyrighted material stolen from our own books or work. But like it or not, it’s here. And admittedly, I don’t like this technoligical free for all on author’s works, but apparently, there are up sides to using AI.

Despite my opinions on AI, I was scrolling through Youtube one day and a video suggestion came up talking about the good things ChatGPT can do for us. I was curious to learn what it had to offer, despite my feelings toward AI, so I watched the video. It was quite an informing tutorial. And the first question that stood out to me was, why not just ask Google for something we’re searching about?

Google will bring up websites for us to read through for material and information we’re looking for, whereas with ChatGPT we can drill down deeper. For example, you can ask it to summarize content from a book (kind of cheaty for students) , or you can use it to test yourself by asking it to ask you questions on a topic you suggest, or maybe ask it to test you on your language skills, among many other things.

It’s like the great Wizard of Oz. Ask it to find a video or a book relevant to your question, find resources or forums you can learn from. Be specific, ask as though you’re speaking naturally to another person. The more info specific you are, the better detailed the info you will receive.

At this point and time, I’m not really interested in one more mode of technology to be aware of for taking in copyrighted works, but I do believe there are some beneficial uses for ChatGPT. So when I came across this informative video spoken in simple terms about the benefits of using AI, I thought I’d share the video below here to demonstrate the many uses of ChatGPT in simple terms.

50 Different Command Prompt Examples of ChatGPT

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I also came across an excellent article simplified by Nicholas Rossis, which goes into much more better detail about the possible uses for the good that AI can offer for writers:

Skills Writers need to Thrive in the AI Era

Skills Writers Need to Thrive in the AI Era

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If any of you reading here uses AI for your creations or research, please feel free to share here your thoughts and experience with it.

©DGKaye2024