Street names on Google Earth omitted on Galaxy S8

A reader writes: “I have a strange situation. I have a Samsung Galaxy S8 and I can no longer get street names on Google Earth.”

Google Earth displays an aerial view of any spot on the planet. You can zoom it. There’s no escape.

To make the street names appear, we thought at first the reader just needed to tap the hamburger icon (three stacked lines), choose “Map Style” and then choose “Everything.” The default position is to leave “Everything” off. But he’d already tried that. You’re probably thinking it’s just him, but he does get street names on his tablet, which runs the same version of Google Earth. We tried it on our Chromebook, desktop and Pixel 2 phone and it worked fine. Apparently it doesn’t on the Samsung S8. So mysterious! He says it worked before the latest update.

Bob often rails against updates. They always seem to take something away. Our reader says it reminds him of the 1980s when programmers would tell you how to enter a program but not how to exit. Back then, Joy was always trying to exit a game her young nephews were playing, while Mom was calling them to lunch. Hitting the Escape key sometimes worked.

But we do like Google Earth. You can search for things like “capital of Nigeria” and get a three-dimensional view. Tap “Voyager” to get some of Google’s own explorations, complete with panoramas. Tap the dice, or “I feel lucky” button, and wind up on the peak of Mount Dana, in Yosemite National Park, or maybe the Matterhorn in Switzerland. Is that luck?

APP HAPPY

’Tis the season for catalogs, charity solicitations and other junk mail. We turned to PaperKarma for relief.

PaperKarma for iPhone or Android lets you unsubscribe from any paper mail you’re

tired of getting. It’s $2 a month or $20 a year after the free trial, which is good for five opt-outs. They’re best at stopping credit card offers, catalogs, yellow pages and anything addressed to you specifically. They can’t handle mail reading “To our friends and neighbors” or “Occupant.” (Who is this guy?)

Here’s how it works: Tap to scan a mailing label and be sure to include the part with your own name and address. Then tap the check mark, and when the name of the company comes up, tap “unsubscribe.” Occasionally, they get the wrong company, but we were able to choose the right one from a short list. Once you’ve tapped “unsubscribe,” they’ll send an opt-out message to the company. Bob says he doesn’t think the service is worth $20 when there’s a trash can next to the mailbox. Joy says it’s always

nice to cut down on waste.

The endless solicitations to give remind Bob of an essay by the Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock, who, when he gave $20 in response to a plea from his university, received a letter back saying: “The usual donation is $25.”

OUT YOUR CARD

Joy is often asked about one of her favorite organizations, P.E.O. Sisterhood. (P.E.O. stands for Philanthropic Educational Organization.) So she decided to make a business card for it with the Web address on it.

She went to Avery.com/ templates to use their free designs. We happened to have Avery blank business cards so she printed them herself. But if you don’t want to, let them do it. They’ll print 250 cards for you for about $23. Start by entering a business card size. Avery’s “print to the edge” business card is number 8869.

An alternative is VistaPrint.

They used to give away free business cards if you allowed them to put their website address on the back. That deal may come back, but right now they’re charging $15 for 100, with free shipping. Snapfish.com is good too, for about 8 cents a card, with free shipping on orders over $29.

Bob’s all-time favorite business card was one that identified the holder as “Some guy I met at a trade show.”

GOING ABROAD

When a reader and her husband planned a trip to Quebec, Consumer Cellular suggested getting a new SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card for her phone at Target. It worked fine before they crossed the border, but stopped working as soon as they hit Canada.

The new SIM card would not even connect to the hotel’s Wi-Fi in Montreal or Quebec City. “We limped along,” she said, “communication-wise, with my sister’s Google Fi phone connecting to Wi-Fi each night. Fortunately, there were no crises with the dogsitting arrangements.”

We wonder why she didn’t use her sister’s Google Fi phone for calls. Google Fi phones can be used in more than 200 countries exactly as if the user were still in the U.S. But another way out is to ask your cellphone service to unlock your phone. That way you can buy a local SIM card, at a big discount compared with roaming charges. Another approach is to buy a cheap, unlocked phone or use a rented phone — then get a local SIM card. Or use the free Google Hangouts app on your phone or computer to receive calls and texts whenever you’re in Wi-Fi range. If all else fails, ask your carrier about a short-term international plan.