Tech For Senior – Educational Series 282A (Aug. 17, 2026)

Have you ever noticed when you’re swiping through your photos on your phone that there’s some movement in there on your iPhone? That’s called live photo. I want to show you where it comes from and what you can do with it. Then Samsung and Pixel have similar features. On Samsung, it’s called a motion photo and on the Pixel, it’s topsh shot. iPhone is by far the most featurerich. So that’s where I’m going to spend most of the time today and then I will show you just a little bit of Samsung and tell you about the Pixel. First, how to take a live photo with an iPhone. It’s in it’s just in your camera. You tap on the little bullseye in the upper right hand corner. You make sure that you’re set to photo and then you just snap a picture with the shutter button like normal. And I want to I want to show you that. And one of the really interesting things is it captures motion before you snap the shutter button. So I’m going to ask Jim to use his hands and count one, two, three, four, five. I’m going to snap the shutter on three and then show you the results. So, here is the Apple camera and it’s this button right up at the top. Notice I’m in I’m in standard photo mode and that little bullseye. I tapped it once and it says live off. I tap it again and it says live. So, the live feature is now on. And Jim’s going to go 1 2 3 4 5. So I tap the shutter button on the count of three. And let’s see what I got. So I see a photo that looks like just a still shot of when he’s holding up three fingers. But if I touch and hold on it, two, three, four, you see all you see the whole count of five. So then what can you do with it? You can you can pick a frame. So this is all on the iPhone. And how you pick a frame is you go into edit mode. So on this photo I tap the edit button. It’s this little sliders button and then you tap the live button and then you can pick another frame. So, I can go to where he just had up one. If I wanted to have I’m number one. And you tap make key photo. But let’s look at some better examples. So, here is a motion photo that I think is a little bit more interesting. It was somebody jumping into the water, scuba diving, and she’s halfway into the water. But touch on it. You see, I get her actually jumping. I would like to have her midair. edit live and find the one where she’s midair and make key photo. Now, that is the photo that will show when I tap done. That’s the photo that shows. But there’s lots lots more. Right up here where it says live, I can make this picture loop, meaning she will just continuously be jumping into the water. That is a loop. I could also bounce, meaning she goes into the water and back out. Into the water and back out. Or I could long exposure. Now, this is not an appropriate picture for long exposure. I’m just going to go back to live. Now, here is one where I told Jim, my my guinea pig for all things photo, I told him to blink a lot. So the the photo that got captured has his eyes closed. If I edit and go into the live mode, I can find one where his eyes are open. There, his eyes are open there. Make key photo and done. And this one he she was serving us champagne and I wanted her to be looking at us and smiling. And I know there that’s what I want. Edit live and find find that frame there. Much better. Make key photo and done. Now, here is one that is appropriate for the long exposure. This is a waterfall. If I tap and hold, you see there is motion and there’s sound. But sound isn’t important for this purpose. Live and long exposure. And you’ll see the water become a soft waterfall, I call it. And it’s do it’s working some other magic, too. It’s making sure that there isn’t any motion in the background. It’s stabilizing the background as it does a long exposure for the water. Way cool. And the last thing you can do is you can if I you just tap on the three dots, if I’m back to just a normal live photo, one of the things you can do is save as video. So instead of the photo and the video, it just becomes a video. Makes it easier to share that way. If you want the motion to review with an Apple photos, you can pick a different frame for the still shot. That’s called the key photo. You can save the video separately. You can make it loop or bounce. That’s fun. And you can make it in a long exposure. What if you have a Samsung phone? It has a similar feature called motion photo. And once again, it’s just like taking a normal photo, but if the motion setting is on, it gets you not quite as much as the iPhone, but it still has a couple seconds of video along with it. On a Samsung, mine happens to be an S21 Ultra. Not all models of Samsung will have this feature, but if I go into camera, I see this little play button icon. The second button from the right is looks like a play button. If you tap it, it says motion photo off. Tap it again, it says motion photo on. So with motion photo on, and you just take a picture, you get that couple seconds of motion. Let me show you some examples. And I’m just going to use Google Photos now to show you these. So, here is a bird that is fishing. And if you’ve ever tried to take a picture and catch them when they when their head hits the water, it’s impossible. How am I seeing that motion? It’s this little play button right here. This is in Google Photos. You can play the motion or you can tap pause and just see the still. And you get the proper frame by scrolling up and then you see all the shots in in this in the motion photo. And you can get whatever one you want. If I want him just just aiming for the water, I can take that and you tap save a copy. So instead of making a key frame, it saves a whole other photo. You still have your original motion photo and you have the still. Then actually if that still is all that you really want, you might want to go back and delete the motion photo because they are big files with that two seconds of video. Here’s the review. Using Google Photos on Android, you can view the motion from either iPhone Live Photos or Android motion photos. Just click the play icon. You can save the video separately by swiping up tapping export and then video or you can pick a different frame and I showed you that I do want to show you export as animated GIF. So same thing with this bird. Let’s swipe up and then look at the all the options and there is export export and GIF and export. Now I’ll go look at that and there is the animated GIF. So I can post this anywhere and that motion will be there and will will repeat. Then just a word about the Pixel. On the Pixel, the similar feature is called topsh shot. It captures less time than the Apple or the Samsung and it’s all before the shutter button. It does not capture sound, but it has that same ability to pick the best frame. And my favorite example really is if you’ve ever tried to capture lightning, you know how difficult it can be. But with motion photo, no problem. As soon as you see the lightning, you snap the shot and you get the couple seconds before you snapped it and you can find the frame where there is the lightning. Pretty cool. I’m Chris Gould with Geeks on Tour and this was fun with photos. Hello everyone, Ron Brown here from Tech for Senior. Now be honest, how many of you thought AI was just another tech fad for the grandkids, maybe even something that you might take over the world? Well, relax. This isn’t science fiction. It’s senior friendly science. Today we’re going to talk about AI for everyday life. How it can make your day a little easier, save some money, and maybe even make you laugh. And don’t worry, no programming, no passwords, and definitely no robots chasing you around the living room. Let’s start by admitting something. For many seniors, AI sounds well, complicated. But once you see what it can do, you’ll wonder how you’ve ever lived without it. Let’s face it, there are a few reasons why many seniors are hesitant to jump into this whole AI thing. Let’s go through them with a little humor, of course. The first is the fear of the unknown. When people hear artificial intelligence, they picture hell from 2001, a space odyssey. No, AI won’t lock you out of your house or read your mind, but it might remind you that you’re out of coffee. Barrier two, too much jargon. AI, Chachi, PT, Gemini, large language model. It sounds like science fiction alphabet soup. I used to think that a large language model was something that you ordered at Sears. Barrier three, privacy worries. Yes, privacy is important, but AI isn’t spying on you. It’s just using what you tell it to to help you get the answers faster. I asked Chast GPT for a rhubarb pie recipe. It remembered I hate raisins. Now that’s smart. Barrier four is over complicated interfaces. Now, be honest. We’ve been we’ve all been there. You open an app and there are 14 buttons to push and you need a new password. I swear half of the technology is just inventing new ways to reset your password. And barrier 5 is sort of like feeling left behind. Our grandkids are using AI to write essays. We just want help ordering groceries. The good news, AI now speaks plain English. No degree required. Just talk to it. Okay, barrier smashed. Let’s look and see what AI can actually do for you. All right, so now we’re in chat GPT. I entered in a search to find the best deal on coffee pods at Walmart. So the answer to this was, and remember I’m in Canada, so they’re looking at the Canadian site. Here are the best priced coffee pot options at Walmart Canada right now. If you’re simply hunting for a deal, note that the counts per box vary. Now, it is they noticed a problem in that in that they want to know if I’m looking for Kurig or Nespresso. Anyway, quick take the cheapest box prices. It gives me some ideas there. Some solid name brand values. If you use Nespresso, what to look for. And then it says, “Want me to narrow this curig versus Nespresso?” And I think we’ll stick with KURIG. And let’s let’s keep a budget because we’re budget-minded seniors and we want less than 50. So, I’m going to type in here curig and then do a search. And here we are. Great value. It tells you exactly uh what we’re looking for and it gives you some thoughts here. And if we click this, it takes us right to the Walmart site where you can actually order it. You saw that we clicked over here and it took us right over to Walmart. We’ll go to Walmart ca and it’s going to bring up the uh our account at Walmart and you can order them. So, as we come down here, it’s given all sorts of examples, more information. Why under 50 cents? Is it unrealistic? What you can try instead? Bottom line is no curig pods under 50 cents exist currently or at least not any visible listings on Walmart Canada. All right, so couldn’t find any, but there were lots of other ones here. If you like, I can dig into bulk whole sailors or close out deals, not only Walmart. So you can keep going on and on with this. And it’s it’s a great way to look at shopping. You don’t have to leave your own home. And how simple is this? All right, I’d now like to look at how you can use it to do investigative work on items that you might have found online. This doesn’t necessarily have to be on Amazon. It could be on any online site that you want. The example I’m going to give you today is a product I just bought on Amazon. Now, I’ve been having a little pain in my shoulder, probably some arthritis, and I wanted to buy a new heating pad. I did a search on Amazon. Well, you know me and Amazon, the truck stops daily at my house, but I wanted to do a little investigation on this particular heating pad and see if it was a good one. And this is I actually did buy this one, but this is the one that I’m going to do some investigation on. But this will work on any product you want to buy wherever you are on the internet. So, this is a little trick I’m going to show you. What you’re going to do is you’re going to come up now and at the top of the search here, this is what we call a URL. This is this is a link that identifies this particular product on Amazon. What we’re going to do is we’re going to select this and I’m going to rightclick and say copy. And now we’re going to paste this into chat GPT. And let’s see what we find. Okay, we’re back over on this is of course chat GPT. Uh, I’m just simply going to paste the URL into into the search bar. And at the end, I’m just going to type in evaluate. And let’s see what happens. So, it immediately finds the item. And then it’s going to give me a whole bunch of stuff. What the listing says, what the pro and con features are, potential limitations, the analysis it gives. It’s going to go and it’s going to tell you what it thinks. Um, and its analysis of this particular product is this seems like a solid midupper tier heating pad. The features are compatible, multiple heat sensors, moist dry region, long cord, gives a bunch of reasons why this is probably a good buy. Then at the very end it says if you tell me you intend to use it for back pain, neck and general da da da, I can compare this to alternatives and see whether this is a good choice for your needs. Do you want me to check user reviews and comparison? And I’m going to say yes and let’s see what happens. And here it gives all the reviews, heat performances, awareness. It goes on weaknesses, complaints, how it stacks up for different uses. And it goes on and on and discusses alternative heating pad options worth considering. It gives you some other ones here that you might want to purchase. And it goes on and on. A lot of the final verdict. Again, it is a lot of information that took seconds to find. just copy that URL into chat GPT and say evaluate. It can’t get any easier than that. All right, let’s talk about another great feature you can use AI for and that is cooking. Now, out of all the things that seniors can use AI for, I think cooking is one of the most impressive things it can do for you. I could do a whole show just on cooking. But in a nutshell, one of the problems when you’re a senior, there’s just my wife and I in the house. So when I want recipes, I want them for two people. Most recipes you find online are for four or six. So that’s the first problem. So the recipes that you can create or you can adjust on in AI, you can just ask it to make a recipe for two people. The second is is we often have leftovers. And I had some salmon the other day and it was salmon and I was sitting around wondering what I was going to do with it. And I thought, hm, I’m going to make a salmon casserole. And so for two and and I did. It turned out it was a simple recipe. They gave it to me. AI gave it to me. I just told it what I had. It created the casserole and it was great. It was absolutely a wonderful casserole. I’ll see if I got a picture of it. I think I do. I’ll show I’ll put it online and I’ll show you how it turned out. But it was great. This morning I got up. I said to my wife, “What would you like for breakfast?” I always do breakfast. She said, “I like pancakes.” So, I asked Chat GPT for a recipe for pancakes for two. Here’s what I just did this an hour ago and here it came up. Here’s the ingredients. The I don’t need the instructions. And you can add some blueberries or bananas in. And then it says, “Would you like me to dra adapt it for whole wheat or gluten-free pancakes?” Well, if I wanted to do that, it’s there, too. Let’s just see what it Let’s ask it. And it’s going to come up with gluten-free versions of this. And it just quickly comes up. And there you go. So, it is so important that this is a huge benefit for seniors. I think if you’re living at home, you’re doing some cooking, it’s great. This is you should be using this every day. It’s an everyday thing that I use and I I couldn’t be without it now. So, the next thing you should be using AI for is asking technical questions around technology. If you’re watching this, you probably have a computer or a cell phone or something that you’ve had some questions about. It doesn’t always work as as as it should. And where do you ask those technical questions? Well, AI is a great place to go. It can give you really good answers. It can drill down on specific problems if you’re having trouble connecting your printer. It can it can zoom right into things that you can try and do. So, it is a great resource and it’s so simple to do. I’ll give you an example. Yesterday, I was mowing the grass. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. I was listening to YouTube m music on my uh earbuds and it stopped playing about 4:30. I know that because I looked at my watch and it uh I I couldn’t get it going. So I came into the studio a little bit later and thought, hm, better check this and I couldn’t get on YouTube. I’d never seen this before. You it ended up YouTube was down. Nothing wrong with my at least I couldn’t see anything wrong with my system. But I just asked you I asked chatgpt if there were any broadcast outages problems with YouTube. Now this occurred immediately. I was in the studio immediately after this occurred. So it was too early for that information to flow through but it did give me some troubleshooting things that I could try. I I sort of suspected it was probably something not within my control. And by the next day, they had the worldwide outage, which was a big deal, fixed. But technical issues are great. You can solve those and you should be using AI to help with those problems. And it doesn’t matter if it’s technical stuff like computer stuff. If you have any plumbing problems, any sort of problems around the house, just ask AI. It’s so simple. All right. Now, I’m going to show you the mobile chat GPT app. Now, you can use Gemini, Copilot, whatever you feel most comfortable with. They all have different flavors, but I exclusively or pretty much exclusively use ChateBT, so I feel very comfortable with it. So, that’s what I’m going to show you. I’m going to show you two features of the mobile app that you as a senior should be using in the grocery store every time you’re shopping. It’s going to save you a lot of money. So, let me show you the first feature that is so simple to use. Now, I will say that I did have a lot of trouble getting this recording because of the technology and the way these phones work. It wasn’t able to capture the image on the phone. So, I had to use an other phone to capture the phone that I was using. Anyway, we got it done. Now, I did do it in my kitchen and my wife’s doing the recording of me on the phone, but you’ll get the idea. Now, in this picture, I’m going to start chat GPT live. This is a different version of chat GPT. Well, it you sort of hit a little extra button and this allowed you just to like having the grocery store manager right there with you. You just ask a question and you’ll see me getting the chat GPT live up. You’ll see me adding the image and us having a little discussion about this product, which I had no idea what it was. So, let’s have a look and see how this goes. It’s a lot of fun and something you should be doing every time you’re shopping. Now, the other thing though, this is very internet dependent. Now, some stores such as uh Walmart are very very internet dependent and provide good Wi-Fi for you while you’re in the store. You have other stores like Costco, which are not. And in our Costco, it’s a there is no Wi-Fi and it’s very difficult even to get cellular signal in these great big concrete stores. So, it depends where you are. But, if you have an internet friendly store, this works extremely well. So, let’s have a look and see what I did. Okay, we’re now I’m going to open up chat GPT on my phone and we’re going to come down to the right hand side here over to the chat GPT live. I’m going to click this and we’re going to open up the this is chat GPT live. Now, I’m going to ask it, can you help me with an image? Absolutely. Feel free to let me know what kind of image you need or what you’re looking to do and I’ll be happy to help you out with it. All right, here’s an image. What is this? Ah, so that looks like a kabota squash. It’s kind of a winter squash. Typically has that dark green rind and bit of a flattened shape. If you’re wondering what to do with it, it’s really tasty roasted or in soups. Let me know if you need more info. That’d be great. How do you tell if it’s ripe or not? Yeah, definitely. So, with a kabota squash, usually if it’s ripe, it feels pretty heavy for its size, and the skin’s going to be kind of a deep, dull green rather than a shiny green. Sometimes the stem area that it’s had time to mature. Also, if you give it a gentle knock and it sounds kind of hollow, that’s another hint that it’s good and ready to go. So, those little cues should help you out. Do you know what the cost of this locally would be? So locally in Canada right now, a kabotaa squash can run roughly between about 12 to 17 Canadian dollars per kilogram, depending on where you’re shopping. So that should give you a ballpark idea. Okay, thanks so much. All right, now the second part of the app we’re going to use is not so much internet dependent, although you will need a Wi-Fi connection. And this is where we’re not going to use Chat GPT live. We are just going to take an image and have it get some information for us. So, I’m in the grocery store and I’ve clicked that little button. You’ll see here there’s a little button to the left. And if you click that, you can create an image from your camera. So, I did that. I’m in the cheese section. And you’ll see here that we have some Dubliner cheese up up on the screen here. You’ll see that. Now, a good question would be, is this a good price? I want to buy some cheese. Is this a good price? How do you instantly get this compared to all the other cheeses by the other grocery stores in town? So, let’s have a look. So, basically, you would just click this. Now, it’s going to ask you a couple of questions here. And why do we want this? And why do we want this? And I said, is this a good price? So then it responds and tells me from the photo it looks like tells me what we’re looking at here. And then now it’s comparing this to other stores in my area. Remember I’m just standing in the grocery store aiming my phone at the cheese and it’s now taking and comparing it to all the other cheeses in town. Is a good price? Well, uh, reserve cheddar at 10.49 49 is very close to a typical retail pricing. Doubliner 949 is somewhat on the higher side relative to some other pricing. So yes, it’s not an outrageous price. You’re paying for premium cheese and import costs, so it’s not shocking. All right, so that’s something that you can use in your everyday shopping trip to get you the best deals and the best price. and it’s right on your smartphone. So, there you have it. Different ways AI can make your life a little simpler, a little smarter, and maybe a little more fun. Remember, you don’t need to understand how it works. You just need to use it. From groceries to health care, travel to companionship, AI is already part of your everyday life. So this week, try one thing. Ask Chachi BT or Gemini a question you’d normally Google. You’ll be amazed how easy it is. And if this video made you smile, give it a thumbs up, share it with a friend, and remind them that AI doesn’t stand for Aunt Irene, though she might enjoy it, too. So see you next week on Tech for Senior. Hopefully you have a good week. I’m Ryan Brown and away we go. Microsoft Windget, a better way to manage your apps. I’m Huie Poplock. We’re going to explore a hidden gem in Windows, a tool called Wingat. It’s short for Windows Package Manager. But don’t worry about the technical name. By the end of this session, you’ll see how this simple feature helps install and update programs safely. No complicated steps, no risk of downloading the wrong thing. Winding is already built into Windows 10 and Windows 11. It helps you find, install, and update your favorite apps automatically. Think of it like a personal assistant that shops for software at Microsoft’s official store and installs it for you. Everything comes from trusted sources, making it safer than downloading from random websites. For many of us, downloading software can feel risky or confusing. There are ads, fake download buttons, and too many clicks. Windet removes that. You just tell it what you want and it does the work for you safely and quietly in the background. It’s also very handy for keeping all your apps updated with one simple command. To use Windet, we open either Windows Terminal or Command Prompt. Both are already installed. You don’t need to be a programmer. It’s just like giving your computer short, clear directions using your keyboard instead of a mouse. Here are three easy commands to remember. Wind search zoom.zoom.exe looks up a program that you want. Windget install Zoom.zoom.exe installs it automatically. Windet upgrade-all updates everything in one go. If you never remember the rest, the last one alone can save time and frustration. When WindGet runs, it connects to Microsoft’s official catalog of software. That means you never have to worry about unsafe downloads or trick installers adding unwanted toolbars. It’s as secure as installing apps from the Microsoft Store. If you’re ever wondering what’s already installed, typed windget list. You’ll get a tidy, organized list of all your programs by name and version. This helps you keep track of updates without opening lots of menus. Obviously, this is a rather long list. So, here is just part of that list so you can see what it says and what it does. Say you need a program to open PDFs. Normally, you would Google Adobe Reader, click through ads, and hope you don’t grab a bad version. With Winding, you type one line. Windet install Adobe.acrobat.reader. Press enter and it safely installs the right program for you. You’ll notice in my example, it’s not quite that text, but it’s close to it. I want to install Adobe Acrobat Reader, but I’m not quite sure how to phrase that. So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to type in when search wind get search and then Acrobat and press enter. And it’ll list several different versions. And the one we want is the Acrobat Reader 64bit. So, it’s going to be with capital letters Adobe Acrobat Reader.64-bit. So what we’re going to type then is windget install Adobeacrobat reader dot. Make sure we’ve got that exactly the same. Adobe acacrobat readader.64bit. We’re going to install it by pressing enter. It’s actually downloading it. It’s extracting the files and it’s installed. We see that Adobe Acrobat is now installed. Let’s work with a list that’s manageable on the screen. What we’ll type in is the command to get the list of files needing upgrading. This will list all of the apps there on this computer that Microsoft recognizes which version it is and also the latest version available. We can tell it to upgrade directly from here. If we want to upgrade one of the apps that we have installed, we type in windget upgrade to see the list. We can do windget upgrade and then all and it’ll do all of them. We’re not going to do that right now. Let’s just do amazon.kindle. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to type in windget upgrade space. We’ll make sure that that’s exactly the way it is right here. And then we’re going to tell it to go ahead press enter. Downloading it. doing the install and it’s installed and it’s updated the Kindle to the latest version 2.80. Windet is safe, but it’s always smart to look before you install. If you ever make a mistake, uninstalling is simple with the command windget uninstall app name. And if your Windows is up tod date, Windet will stay secure automatically. Windet doesn’t have every app in the world yet, but it covers most of the popular ones, Zoom, Paint.NET, VLC, and many others. It does require the internet, and if you share a PC, installing as your own user is best. Let’s recap. Windet comes already built into Windows. It keeps your apps secure, up to-date, and saves time. No more endless download pages or remembering which programs to update. Microsoft Windet, a better way to manage your apps. I’m Huie Poplock.