Say, Cheese 4+

It’s not just Americans who speak louder & louder when someone doesn’t understand their language. Many years ago when staying at a pension in Italy (I’d have to look at a map to remember where, it was near Firenze (Florence) the hosts had friends over for dinner with us. It was a lovely dinner, but one of their friends got louder and louder as she tried to get me to understand.

That’s not how you do it. You slow down, you seek words with a common root, you gesture, and draw. This was early phones, so interpreting wasn’t available, only slow and humorous translation. I know interpretation has improved tremendously but culturally it has a ways to go. I tried it recently with Russian speakers, but they were too embarrassed to utilize it. My Finnish friend, south Asian Indians, Pakistanis even Mongolians I meet lately all speak perfect English…
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What does that have to do with this app? I can’t speak to it conversationally. Oh no, I have to shout at it. I know my phone isn’t deaf because I’m able to speak to it- right now I’m dictating. I’ve never liked the whole “say cheese” thing, but Snip Snap had stopped working, and I ended up with these cheesy cameras. Usually I use them when I need to hold something in place and take a photo and no one else is around. I’d be mortified or I’d ask someone else to hold a ruler in place while I measured my mattress depth. It’s 230 mm (9”) deep but that’s not why I hate this mattress. Useful cheesy app though.

So I downloaded it and I went in the app and saw their screen like a camera screen, saw a white bar on top and on the very left it had the little button to switch the sides of the camera and on the very right side I saw the word, “listen”,. There also was the word, “cheese” right on the middle of the white bar. I smiled, pressed the word, “listen ”, said Cheese! And automatically took a picture and did put it in my pictures. I think it’s great!

I download this app to take voice activated videos on my iPhone. First, I couldn’t get it to add to “short cuts”, second, it doesn’t activate at all. And finally, it’s not intuitive at all so please include instructions. Meanwhile, I’m looking for another solution.