Monthly Archives: October 2025

If you own a cell phone, you probably know the feeling: you hear that familiar alert, glance at your screen, and find yet another text message begging for a donation before midnight. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never signed up for anything, or if you’ve opted out a dozen times already. I typically receive at […]

When Citi rolled out its new Strata Elite credit card earlier this year, it was supposed to be the bank’s long-waited return to the premium card arena. With a $595 annual fee, lounge access, and concierge-level support, it aimed to compete head-to-head with the American Express Platinum and the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Instead, it became a disaster […]

Scams come to us by email, text messaging and phone calls, but other times we go to them without being aware. An example are the fake product reviews that litter the internet everywhere you look. The search engines that serve these review sites to us don’t bother to discern the dishonest ones from the real […]

TheVerge reported this week that Amazon introduced a major update of its line of Alexa-enabled Echo smart speakers and displays that they liked alot, then ruined them a few days later when they began to fill them with intrusive video ads that impacts the products’ usability, much to the surprise of the users. Surprisingly, ads were […]

There’s a moment most of us experience several times a day: we sit down to do something simple online — pay a bill, check a warranty, read an article, or maybe just order takeout — and are met by that dreaded prompt: Enter your password. Then comes the frustration. Which one? Did it need a capital letter? […]

Luggage pack-off: My wife has long sworn by her trusty Briggs & Riley expandable soft-sided carry-on rollerboard. It’s been her travel companion for years — durable, familiar, and once considered the gold standard. I used to have the same bag until I replaced mine with a cheaper Away hard-sided model of the same size. Ever […]

If you’ve called a hotel or airline lately, chances are your first conversation wasn’t with a person. It was with a chatbot or voice bot programmed to answer questions, process simple requests, and—if you’re lucky—eventually hand you off to a human being. Hotels, airlines, banks, and even health-care providers are increasingly leaning on these digital […]