Besides the Car Pro Show and our weekly newsletter, my other favorite radio show and newsletter is Kim Komando’s. We are on many of the same radio stations across America. She does for her listeners and newsletter subscribers exactly what I endeavor to do: Give you useful information to keep you up to date on the latest in cars, only she does it with technology and there is nobody who does it better. Not sure how she puts out a top-notch newsletter seven days a week, but she does.
With her permission, I comb her newsletters each week and curate a list of her tips and advice that I think you'll find relevant and interesting. Here's what I have for you this week!
As shared in Kim Komando's newsletters:
Turn this on before you split up: Big crowds make it way too easy to lose kids, parents or that uncle who “just went to the car.” Before you leave, have everyone open Google Maps (iOS) > profile picture > Location sharing > Share location. Choose one hour or until the event ends. Panic prevented.
Fake utility call: How annoying is this? Imagine your phone ringing before dinner, and a serious voice says your electricity is getting shut off today unless you pay up. That stomach drop is the business model. The FTC says scammers are posing as gas, electric and water companies, demanding instant payment by gift card or crypto. Classic scammer starter pack. Real utilities don’t do that. Hang up, breathe and call the number on your actual bill.
Dashboard distraction tantrums: Don’t you miss when the most annoying thing your car screen did was showing the wrong time after daylight saving? A new survey of over 92,000 owners after 90 days with 2025 vehicles found that people aren’t happy with their new car’s touch screens. In short, they’re getting cooked by infotainment and phone connectivity, especially Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Infotainment was the nastiest problem bucket, around 42 issues per 100 cars. EVs and plug-ins scored worse than gas cars.
3-second tech genius: ChatGPT and Claude both have free “voice mode,” so you can ask questions like a normal conversation. I use it to brainstorm ideas before I lose the thought or for emails I don’t want to draft from scratch. Open a new chat and tap Use Voice near the prompt box. It’ll all be typed out when you’re done.
One-thumb typing: Larger phones make one-handed typing awkward. On iPhone, touch and hold the globe icon on the keyboard, then pick the left or right keyboard icon. On Android, open the keyboard, tap the three dots, then One-handed keyboard. FYI, this only shifts the keyboard. It doesn’t shrink the whole screen.
Flock around the clock: Kat Vaughn of Roanoke, Virginia, popped out for a quick park trip and came home to a housewarming gift nobody ordered. She found a Flock Raven audio detection pole, freshly planted in the public strip between her lawn and the street. It’s a gunshot-listening gadget, cousin to those ShotSpotter sensors privacy experts keep side-eyeing. The kicker? Even the responding officer needed a tall ladder and a guess to ID it. The city greenlit 75 of these things, but her address never made the list. From the company behind 20 billion plate scans a month, that’s a pole-arizing oversight.
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Photo: Honda.