📸 Free grave photos

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🤯 WOW! Last year, volunteers with Find a Grave fulfilled more than 740,000 requests for headstone photos. That’s more than 2,000 families a day getting a picture of a grave they couldn’t reach themselves. The volunteers are strangers. They do it for free, on their own time, with their phones.

The Short Version: If someone you love is buried far away, a volunteer can photograph the grave for you at no cost. Learn how below.

📖 Read time: 2 minutes

Grandma is buried in another state many miles away. You haven’t been able to visit in years. Then one morning, a photo of her headstone shows up on your screen, taken by someone you’ll never meet.

That’s what happens on Find a Grave thousands of times a day.

Find a Grave started in 1995 as a hobby site about famous graves. Today, it’s a free, volunteer-built record of everyday Americans, owned by Ancestry.

The facts:

Volunteers call themselves “gravers.” Most are retirees, history buffs and family-tree fans who think a quiet walk among the headstones beats the gym.

Meet Eileen Mayberry, a retired florist in McLeansboro, Ill. She started out looking for her own family’s stones. Then she spotted 150 photo requests for a single cemetery and got to work. She has photographed 86 cemeteries and added more than 38,000 photos. Her husband drives her to the remote ones and waits in the truck.

Her reason will stick with you. Old stones wear smooth, sink or vanish. “If we don’t take them now, next week or next year, that stone might not be there.”

In Kansas City, volunteer Deb Wade showed up at a cemetery dating back to 1837 with 88 names on her list. One was a baby who lived only four days. The relative who asked for that photo is 70, lives in California and may never make the trip. Now she doesn’t have to.

Request a photo for someone you love:

You can also be the stranger who helps out. Sign up as a photo volunteer, and pick cemeteries near you. It’s exercise, history and a good deed in one afternoon. 

People find long-lost friends, half-siblings and great-great-grandparents on this site. All because someone took a few minutes with a phone.

📩 Send this to someone who has a loved one buried in a town they can’t get back to.

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Susan’s smartwatch started scrolling Chinese text by itself for five solid minutes, twice. We break down what could be going on, what data it could reach, and what to do before you wear one.

▶️ Watch on YouTube →

Or for audio only, click your favorite podcast player below:

💻 Touchscreen takes over: Remember how Apple spent years telling us a touchscreen MacBook was unnecessary? Looks like it plans to launch one around Oct. 27, in 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with OLED displays and a Dynamic Island. They should be thinner and lighter, which sounds cool until we see the price. If you plan on upgrading any Apple product, wait until the end of the month, so you don’t buy tomorrow’s old computer at yesterday’s full price. 

🥼 Keeping up with the AI-dashians: The Kardashians kicked off Season 8 on Hulu with AI-generated versions of themselves jet-setting from a Saint-Tropez yacht to the Swiss slopes. Then the glitches hit. Khloé sprouted a giant eye, Kim’s ear went rogue and Kourtney’s face turned into a thumb. The real family stepped in, flipped the switch and declared, “AI Could Never.” Plenty of viewers needed a minute to figure out which images were AI and got very, very upset. My take? If you can’t tell the real Kardashians from the AI ones, the AI did its job. So did the plastic surgeon.

🌸 Selfie of the century: In 2021, Jeremiah Harris posted an Instagram selfie beside a giant water lily in Colombia. A Kew Gardens botanist noticed something off: That species doesn’t grow there. He investigated further, using satellite images, and scientists arranged a five-day expedition to confirm a brand-new giant species, Victoria colombiana. Only 30 to 50 exist in the wild. Harris, a U.S. plant nursery owner, got a coauthor credit on the researchers’ findings. Your vacation photos might be science. Post accordingly.

🍼 Milk run to space: Private astronaut Kellie Gerardi became the first person to pump breast milk in microgravity, only eight weeks after giving birth. The tech test: Would an off-the-shelf wearable pump work without gravity? It did. “Yes, I was able to bring the ‘microgravity milk’ home to my baby,” she says. Moms really can do anything, anywhere.

⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Dishwasher smelling a bit gross? Empty it, put a cup of white vinegar on the top rack and run a hot cycle. Leave the door open to dry. Still smells? Wash the mesh filter at the bottom, and rinse the spray arms. Brace yourself. That filter’s been saving leftovers from meals you don’t even remember.

🚑 Who should EMTs call? If you’re unconscious, your phone can show your emergency contacts without being unlocked. On iPhone, open Health > profile picture > Medical ID > Edit, add yours and enable Show When Locked. On Android, try Settings > Safety and emergency > Emergency contacts > Show on Lock Screen. One of those things I’d rather set up and never need.

Q: Kim, I bake custom cakes from home. My daughter says I need a website, but I’m 46 and don’t know code. Where do I start? Linda, Tulsa A: Your daughter’s right, Linda. Hostinger’s AI website builder asks a few questions about your baking, then designs a professional site in minutes. Add cake photos, an order form and your own domain. Stuck? Real humans answer 24/7. No designer, no big bills, no stress. Get started at hostinger.com/kim.* Your orders will rise. After all, you knead the dough! 😅

📸 All your Facebook photos, one download: You don’t have to save years of pictures one by one. Open Settings > Accounts Center > Your information and permissions > Export your information. Choose your device, then Customize information, select Posts and untick everything else. You can keep a copy on your computer. Sorting through them? I’ll leave that bit to you.

⌨️ Stop typing your email address: On iPhone, open Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement, tap + and teach “@@” to spell out your full email. On Android, try Settings > System > Keyboard > Personal dictionary. Two keystrokes, zero typos. 

💡 Less explaining, more showing: When Claude’s explanation isn’t clicking, ask “Show this as an interactive visual” in its web or desktop app. It can turn the answer into a chart, diagram or comparison you can play with. Think holiday packages, streaming subscriptions or household bills. Save it as an image for later. And yes, it’s free.

🚶🏼‍♀️ Take me on a walk: Click to listen to my latest show on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I also make chores go by faster!

Ever looked at a perfectly walkable distance and thought, No thanks? Your moment has come. 

Moonwalkers Dusk are shoes from Shift Robotics that strap over your sneakers and boost walking speed up to 7 mph. Their AI adapts to your stride within about 10 steps, senses hills and different movements and lets you switch modes with little foot gestures. 

Shock-absorbing wheels handle cracks and uneven pavement. Only a matter of time before people use them to juice their Strava stats. 

They’ll run you $1,199. 

Check them out here. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for lazy-kind.

🎓 What you learned today: Volunteers are preserving gravestones for families far away, touchscreen MacBooks may be coming, the Kardashians got the AI treatment and robotic shoes can boost your walking speed to 7 mph. Not bad for one email. AI is eating the world’s memory chips and your next laptop is paying the price. Tomorrow, how to see what Amazon thinks it knows about you.

🏈 The answer: B) 10 times per second. Yep, every NFL player has two or three RFID chips tucked into their shoulder pads, reporting their location 10 times every second. That’s how broadcasts know who hit 21 mph, how far a receiver ran and which poor lineman looked like he was moving through wet cement. 

The football has its own chip, reporting 25 times per second. Around the stadium, 20 to 30 receivers collect those signals, turning every play into a ridiculous pile of data, with 500 to 1,000 new stats per play.

So yes, the league knows exactly how slow your team’s left tackle is. What’s a football player’s favorite ice cream? Any given sundae.

🛡️ Modern hackers don’t crash your computer: They sit inside it quietly. Watching you type. Stealing your logins. Old antivirus misses this entirely. Webroot is built for this new AI threat. Get 65% off. Only $17.50 a year.*

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

🏆 THE KIM CHALLENGE: Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is.

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, Govee, TUYU, @ritwikpavan via X

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