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I dont know about you, but I tend to think about my favorite tech tools as being split into two separate saucepans: the classic apps weve known and relied on for ages and then the newer AI apps that have shown up over the past several months to serve some super-specific purpose. More and more, though, Im realizing that the most effective apps are the ones that seamlessly blend those two concepts and create a whole new recipe with the best of both worlds. Thats precisely what the tool Ive got for you today manages to do. Its a brand new app released just moments ago thats basically Google Maps combined with ChatGPT, Perplexity, Wikipedia, and more. And goodness gracious, will it bring some fascinating new flavor into your life. Be the first to find all sorts of little-known tech treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. One useful new discovery in your inbox every Wednesday! A modern mapping mashup Let me back up for one quick second: A moment ago, I told you todays tool is a brand new service. And it isjust released days ago and almost certainly something you havent yet seen. But its also connected to a standout service weve discussed in these quarters before. The service is called PamPam, and we talked about it last May and then again in December, when I featured it as one of my favorite finds from 2024. At the time, I described it as an AI map app thats actually worth your whileand thats still true today. But now, PamPam is even more useful, thanks to a massive upgrade that introduces a whole new ocean of actually-handy AI possibilities. Specifically, PamPams gained some really slick integrations that bring data from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Wikipedia, and other smart sources into its interactive map-exploring experience. So what does that actually look like in practice? Lemme show ya. When you open up the new PamPam app, youre prompted to describe what exactly you want to do or see. You can type out anything, in plain English and without any complicated formatting requirements. PamPam prompts you to ask anything, with a slew of new sources powering the results. By default, the service will pull info from ChatGPT and Wikipedia into its results. If you click the little pill area with the logos, though, you can also bring other info sources into the mixincluding, so far, Perplexity and Foursquare. Wikipedia, ChatGPT, Foursquare, and Perplexity are now a part of the PamPam picture. For one example, I asked the service to suggest stuff to do and places to eat for a day in Pasadena with a family of fourincluding a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old. In a matter of seconds, it served up all sorts of thoughtful and specific suggestions, with info available in a sidebar and locations visible in a large interactive map. PamPam’s results pull data from all your selected sources into a simple, map-embedded guide. Clicking on any item in the map or the sidebar pulls up more detailed info from Wikipedia, along with more suggestions for subsequent questions from ChatGPT and any other activated sources. You can keep asking more questions from all of your selected sources as you go. Everything happens right then and there, in that same single screen and without any external windows or sign-ins. Its about as polished and pleasant of an experience as you could ask for, with all sorts of helpful touches pulled from the different sources and presented in a sensible-seeming, streamlined setup. PamPam’s interface is a whole new experience that brings a blend of different info into a single map-centric spot. PamPam does require you to sign in with a Google account in order to use the service, but it takes all of seven seconds to doand youll be off to the races and exploring your results in another few seconds from there. The possibilities are practically endless, and best of all? It doesnt even cost a dime to try. PamPam works entirely on the web in any browser, on any device. Its completely free to use for these purposes, with evolving limits for the external sources. The site offers an optional Pro plan that raises those limits and unlocks extra features related to some of its other functions. (The company has a variety of corporate plans, too, which seem to be where the bulk of its money is made.) PamPam doesnt require any personal info beyond your initial Google sign-in, and its privacy policy doesnt include anything unusual about how it handles the limited amount of data involved. If you love these types of tools as much as I do, check out my free Cool Tools newsletter. I’ll introduce you to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in delightful waysthen send you another new off-the-beaten-path gem every Wednesday!
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E-Commerce
As I write this, the most pleasing sound is washing over megentle waves ebbing and flowing onto the shore. Sadly, Im not actually on some magnificent tropical beach. Instead, the sounds of the sea are being generated by my Mac. Yet, more than just being pleasing to the ear, this sound, and others the Mac can generate, have helped boost my focus in recent months when Im under deadline and trying to get work done. The feature is called Background Sounds. Here are some of the benefits Ive gotten from it and how you can use it, too. The pandemic made me realize background sounds help me focus I know some writers who need absolute silence when they are working. Ive never been one of those people. I work best when there is low-level noise from something else in the space around methe rustling of tree branches outside a window or the indistinct murmur of other people in a cafe. I didnt realize how much I relied on background noise to stay focused until the early days of the pandemic when lockdowns hit. Like many, I was suddenly stuck working from home, cut off from the background noises I had become accustomed to. I tried supplementing the newfound silence with music, but songs and even instrumentals were too distracting. Then, by chance, while browsing YouTube on my TV out of boredom one day, I came across an eight-hour video titled something like Relaxing Coffee Shop Ambience. The entire video was just an animated photo of the exterior of a visually appealing coffee house that played in a loop, but was set against a soundtrack of invisible customers murmuring, coffee mugs occasionally clacking, and autumn leaves blowing in the wind. I played it on my television that day and, I swear, Id never focused so well on work before. Since then, I almost always play background ambience videos while I write. The cafe ones are nice, but natural ones, like rain or ocean scenes, really work for me. They seem to have a dual effect: increasing my focus while boosting my creativity. But playing those videos is not always practical if you go outside the house. At work, you dont want your boss to think youre wasting time watching YouTube, and playing an hours-long video on your laptop is a great way to run out of battery halfway through your workday. Thats where the Macs Background Sounds feature comes in. It doesnt have the visual distractions or battery drain issues that YouTube ambiance videos do. And while Apple may not be the first company to bring background sounds to the masses (apps like Calm and Headspace are the leaders in the ambient sounds landscape), the big benefit of Apple’s BackGround sounds is that it’s built into macOS, and so is free to use. This is terrific for those with subscription fatigue who don’t want to shell out monthly for yet another software service. How to use Background Sounds on your Mac If you have macOS Ventura or later, you can use the Macs Background Sounds capabilities. But first, you need to enable the feature. To do this, open the System Settings app on your Mac, click the Accessibility options, and make sure the Background sounds switch is toggled on. Next, go to the Control Center options in the System Settings app and make sure under Hearing that Show in Control Center is toggled on. Once youve done this, you can quickly turn on the background sound of your choice. Heres how: Click the Control Center icon in the Macs menu bar. Click the hearing button (the ear icon). Click Background Sounds. Now click on the background sound you want to play. The background sound you choose will now play in an infinite loop from your Macs speakers or through any headphones connected to your Mac. Your options include five natural soundsocean, rain, stream, night, and fireand three more basic white noise soundsbalanced, bright, or dark. If youre like me, you may soon find that enabling any of these background sounds on your Mac helps you stay focused while working. Is there any science behind the productivity benefits of white noise? Ive met many people who are like me and say that playing background sounds helps them focus and even makes them feel more creative. But does science actually back this up? It depends. Ive yet to find a rigorous scientific study that explored whether natural background noises, like rain or a crackling fire, actually have a measurable impact on ones ability to focus at work. However, a 2022 study from researchers at the University of Southern California looked at the impact of white noise on neurotypical individuals. That study found that white noise played at 45 decibels resulted in improved cognitive performance in terms of sustained attention, accuracy, and speed as well as enhanced creativity. And when played at 65 decibels, the white noise led to improved working memorybut also higher stress levels. Personally, I cant imagine working without some calming seaside background noise. It’s no day at the beachbut it’ll sound like it is.
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E-Commerce
Here in Atlanta, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum has been part of my daily life for years. Parks and trails surrounding the center connect my neighborhood to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park downtown and everything in between. At the end of December 2024, thousands of people walked to the library to pay their respects to the former president as he lay in repose. The cold, snow and darkness of the evening were a stark contrast to the warmth of the volunteers who welcomed us in. Our visit spiraled through galleries exhibiting records of Carters life, achievements and lifelong work promoting democracy around the world. U.S. presidents have been building libraries for more than 100 years, starting with Rutherford B. Hayes. But the urge to shape ones legacy by building a library runs much deeper. As a scholar of libraries in the Greek and Roman world, I was struck by the similarities between presidential and ancient libraries some of which were explicitly designed to honor deceased sponsors and played a significant role in their cities. Trajans library The Ulpian Library, a great library in the center of Rome, was founded by Emperor Trajan, who ruled around the turn of the second century C.E. Referenced often by ancient authors, it could have been the first such memorial library. Today, someone visiting Rome can visit Trajans Column, a roughly 100-foot monument to his military and engineering achievements after conquering Dacia, part of present-day Romania. A frieze spirals from bottom to top of the column, depicting his exploits. The monument now stands on its own. Originally, however, it was nestled in a courtyard between two halls of the Ulpian Library complex. Trajans Column now stands at the center of Rome. [Photo: Olivier Giboulot/Unsplash] Most of what scholars know about the librarys architecture comes from remains of the west hall, an elongated room almost 80 feet long, whose walls were lined with rectangular niches and framed by a colonnade. The niches were lined with marble and appear to have had doors; this is where the books would have been placed. Writers from the first few centuries C.E. describe the library having archival documents about the emperor and the empire, including books made of linen and books bound with ivory. Trajan dedicated the column in 113 C.E. but died four years later, before the library was complete. Hadrian, his adoptive son and successor, oversaw the shipment of Trajans cremated remains back to Rome, where they were placed in Trajans Column. Hadrian completed the surrounding library complex in 128 C.E. and dedicated it with two identical funerary inscriptions to his adopted parents, Trajan and Plotina. Scholars Roberto Egidi and Silvia Orlandi have argued that Trajans remains could later have been transferred from the column into the library hall. Memorial model Either way, I would argue that Trajans decision to have his remains included in the library complex, instead of in an imperial mausoleum, established a model adopted by other officials at a smaller scale. In the eastern side of the Roman empire what is now Turkey at least two other library-mausoleum buildings have been identified. One is the library at Nysa on the Maeander, a Hellenistic city named for the nearby river. Under the floor of its entry porch is a sarcophagus with the remains of a man and a woman, possibly the dedicators, that dates to the second century C.E., the time of Hadrians reign. The ruins of the library at Nysa on the Maeander [Photo: Myrsini Mamoli] Another is the Library of Celsus, the most recognizable ancient library today, found in the ancient city of Ephesus. Named after a regional Roman consul and proconsul during the reign of Trajan, the building was founded by Celsus son, designed as both a place of learning and a mausoleum. The librarys ornate, sculpted facade contained life-size female statues, making it an immediately recognizable landmark. Inscriptions identify the statues as the personifications of Celsus character, elevating him into a role model: virtue, intelligence, knowledge and wisdom. Upon entering the room, the funerary character of the library became quite literal. The hall was designed like the Ulpian Library, but a door gave access to a crypt underneath. This held the marble sarcophagus with the remains of Celsus, the patron of the library. The sarcophagus itself was visible from the hall, if one stood in front of the central apse and looked down through two slits in the podium. An endowment covered the librarys operational expenses in ancient times, as well as nnual commemorations on Celsus birthday, including the wreathing of the busts and statues and the purchasing of additional books. The life-size statues on the facade of the Library of Celsus [Photo: Myrsini Mamoli] Power and knowledge These two provincial libraries highlight how sponsors hoped to be associated with the virtues a library fosters. Books represent knowledge, and by dedicating a library, one asserted his possession of it. Providing access to learning was an instrument of power on its own. Beyond the handful of memorial libraries, many other ancient Roman public libraries were great cultural centers, including the Forum of Peace in Rome, dedicated by Emperor Vespasian; the Library of Hadrian in Athens; and the Gymnasium in Side, a city in present-day Turkey. The most magnificent libraries combined access to manuscripts and artworks with spaces for meetings and lectures. Several had great leisure areas, including landscaped sculptural gardens with elaborate water features and colonnaded walkways. Literary sources and material evidence testify to the treasures that were held there: busts of philosophers, poets and other accomplished literary figures; statues of gods, heroes and emperors; treasures confiscated as spoils of war and exhibited in Rome. A model of how Hadrians Library may have looked, complete with a landscaped courtyard. [Photo: Joris/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA] Like the Ulpian Library itself, they continued the long tradition of Hellenistic public libraries, established by the most famous library of antiquity: the Library of Alexandria. Founded and lavishly endowed by the Hellenistic kings of Egypt, the Ptolemies, the building was meant to portray the king as a patron of intellectual activities and a powerful ruler, collecting knowledge from conquered civilizations. In ancient Greece and Rome, anybody who could read had access to public libraries. Rules of use varied: For example, literary sources imply that the Ulpian Library in Rome was a borrowing library, whereas an inscription from the Library of Pantainos in Athens explicitly forbid any book to be taken out. But these buildings were also meant to shape their sponsors legacies, portraying them as benevolent and learned. Presidential libraries in the United States today follow the same principle: They become monuments to the former presidents, while giving back to their local communities. Myrsini Mamoli is a lecturer of architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
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