Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.  I’m Fred Fishkin.   Uh oh….  Working from home could be a lot more challenging for the millions of fans of Zynga’s FarmVille.  The iconic mobile game is back with FarmVille 3…and the focus this time is on tending to the animals.  Sonja Angesleva is the product lead…who spent years with her team…bringing the game to life…

“Yeah…several years of work.  It was exciting…a bit scary as well as many in the core team have been developing games for quite some time.  So basically 12 years ago FarmVille was the idol or the icon we wanted to learn to develop or do something similar in the companies where we were working for.”

And the game…will continue to evolve and grow.  FarmVille 3 is out for iOS, Android and Mac M1 desktops.

You can find us at Techstination.com.  I’m Fred Fishkin.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.  I’m Fred Fishkin.  A feature packed 5G tablet at an affordable price.  Verizon is selling the TCL TAB Pro 5G for under four hundred dollars.  The 64 gigabytes of built in storage can be added to via a microSD card slot….and performance feels snappy with the tablet’s Snapdragon Octa-core chipset from Qualcomm.  There’s 10.3 inch HD display that uses what TCL calls NXTVISION to enhance the picture quality.  Another nice feature…the 8 thousand mAh battery can be used to boost phones or other devices through reverse charging in a pinch.  The 13 megapixel rear camera does a good job as well.  Not the caliber that you’d get with the latest iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy devices…but you wouldn’t expect that at the under four hundred dollar price.  Find more at www.tcl.com.

You can find us at Techstination.com.  I’m Fred Fishkin.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.  I’m Fred Fishkin.  Whether it is Black Friday…Cyber Monday…or any day….a lot of us are being taken in by fake reviews when we buy online.  The problem is…when reading reviews on Amazon or other sites…how can you tell which reviews are legit.  An app and browser plug in called Fakespot can help.  It was founded by Saoud Khalifah after he was fooled ….and the free tool…can give you valuable warnings..

“The amount of fake reviews extrapolated online is just getting worse.  And that’s a worrying trend because people are starting not to trust the content they see online or they read online.  And whether it’s a comment, review, the up vote down vote that you’re seeing on a comment, all of that can be gamed and gamified by fraudsters.”

Again…the browser plug in and apps are free.  Find more at www.fakespot.com.

You can find us at Techstination.com.  I’m Fred Fishkin.

Techstination Week is a compilation of this week's Techstination reports with tech journalist and host Fred Fishkin.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.  I’m Fred Fishkin.  This month GM held its official opening for Factory ZERO….which will build all electric vehicles at what was once called the Detroit Hamtramck Assembly plant.  I spoke with Assistant Plant Director Cathy Staelgraeve…

“The people here at this plant who thought that their plant was going to close.  They had to go to other GM sites to work temporarily, and now we were able to call them back.  Many of those people are legacy GM employees.  So their parents or grandparents also worked for General Motors.  Myself, my dad and my grandfather both worked for General Motors.  This is taking what we’re used to and making it so much better with doing things we know we should have done all the time.  We know we should have a world with zero crashes if we can help support that.  A world with zero emissions and a world with zero congestion.”

Happy Thanksgiving.

You can find us at Techstination.com.  I’m Fred Fishkin.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.  I’m Fred Fishkin.  PBS chef and author Lidia Bastianich is out with a new cookbook for the holiday season… Lidia’s A Pot, A Pan and A Bowl.  Lidia was a guest on Help and Hope for the Holidays… Episode 19 of the What’s Next…Living Longer, Better, Smarter podcast.  And on her PBS series…Lidia’s Kitchen..you’ll find her often connecting with loved ones and viewers…via her iPad…

“Absolutely, it’s all about social communication.”

And cooking together…even virtually…can be fun.  On the same episode…Meals on Wheels CEO Ellie Hollander pointed out..

“More and more of the public now appreciate what it’s like to be homebound, lonely, wondering if you’re going to see another person in a given week, and in some cases wondering where your next meal is going to come from.”

Everyday life for many seniors.

You can find us at Techstination.com.  I’m Fred Fishkin.

Accell innovates again with a Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station for the latest Windows and Mac computers.    What can it do?    Accell's Christine English joins Techstination's Fred Fishkin for a look

From heart of a blue whale to the tiny but at the same time proportionally large heart of a hummingbird, Museum of Natural History zoologist Bill Schutt takes us on a journey with Pump: A Natural History of the Heart.  Bill chats with Techstination's Fred Fishkin...and he doesn't miss a beat.

Techstination, your destination for gadgets and gear.  I’m Fred Fishkin.  The team at WowWee has once again come up with a line of in demand toys for the holiday season.  The Got2Glow Fairy Finder is a jar that lights up and captures imaginations and fairies that kids play with and care for.  VP of Brand Development and Creative Strategy Sydney Wiseman..

“So what you simply do is you double press the middle button and it goes into fairy finder mode and now I open the lid and now my jar is literally searching for fairies.  If I shake it, if I do all different things, it will affect the fairy that you catch.”

The kind of physical play that really gets away from staring at tablet or other screens. Another hit for WowWee…the My Squishy Little line of interactive toys and the Pop2Play reinforced cardboard slides, cars and more that fold up for easy putting away are winning lots of fans too.

You can find us at Techstination.com.  I’m Fred Fishkin.