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Tech News & Commentary
Christopher in Jefferson City, Missouri listens on 1240 KLIK asked us: “I was calling about a Samsung Galaxy S4 mini that I just got, wanted to know if there are any interesting features or tips on this device.”
Christopher, Probably nothing you don’t already know about.
The S4 mini lost a few of the features of the S4 in the shrinking process, for example, it doesn’t respond to those gestures to scroll up and down without touching the screen that no one used past day 3 anyway, but for the most part you have the regular S4 feature set.
You may not know that you can download Samsung’s Milk Music for free music streaming, think something like Pandora or iTunes radio. Other than that, the operating system itself comes with several useful features, such as offline voice recognition for voice typing, and several new types of Google Now cards.
Some models don’t, but there’s a good chance your S4 Mini has NFC, which means that you should be able to transfer contacts and pictures, set up Bluetooth devices and some other things by tapping devices.
If you watch videos on your phone, you should be able to turn the volume and brightness up or down by sliding your fingers up and down the left and right edges of the screen. If you’re interested in maximizing your battery life, your phone comes with a WiFi timer, that will let the phone attempt to connect to available WiFi networks for a specific period of time.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Dorothea in Farmington Hills, Michigan listens and is calling in on the FREE “Into Tomorrow” App asked us: “The disparity between the hardware that comes into the house – the lines, the service, the strength of the service – and the devices we have in our house; The ever upgrading TVs, technology and so forth are really not in-line with each other. I’m finding that out the hard way right now. The infrastructure, unless you are in a big city or a highly populated area, is really not there to support these nice new shiny things we can buy. Any comments to that?”
Dorothea, The only problem we’ve ran across in terms of the infrastructure truly not being able to keep up has been with internet speeds in really rural areas.
If there aren’t a lot of potential clients nearby, building the infrastructure required to provide high speeds is usually not worth the initial investment to internet providers, so those people tend to be stuck with satellite which can be adequate, but sometimes is not that great.
Other than that, the infrastructure shouldn’t be giving anyone too much trouble, modern devices use a lot less power than older ones used to, for example, a modern SmartTV can easily use a 3rd of the power a similarly sized CRT used to need, that difference alone is enough to make up for a smartphone, a tablet, and a laptop put together, so even account for a WiFi router and other extra devices we tend to have at home these days, your power demands have probably gone down.
If you do mean internet speeds, most people can access at least adequate speeds that should let them access services such as Netflix or Pandora, even those living too far out in the country to have access to standard infrastructure.
The available infrastructure is concern for those manufacturing new products. For example, in 2011 at IFA, Sharp was showing two different future standards for televisions, 8K and even a boring 4K. They told us that 8K wouldn’t be out anytime in the near future because there was no way to distribute 8K content, it just needed too much bandwidth. Now we’re preparing for 4K, and companies seem almost ready to really start distributing 4K content, but the infrastructure is nowhere near ready for 8K, so it’s just not being pushed for now.
Where are you running into trouble? Short of people complaining about satellite, or about not having the gigabit speeds they’d actually want but don’t really need, we haven’t ran across any cases of the infrastructure crippling service.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
John in Wisconsin, Listening via the Tunein app asked us: “I would like to develop a simple journal app. What would be the best steps to take? Where could I get a good quote? Is it safe and satisfactory to use web sites like oDesk to find developers or is there a better to way?”
John, Be very clear on what you want, what you don’t want, what you can offer and what needs to be done by someone else. If you want to get a good quote, the person giving you a number is gonna have to know what work they need to do, and in some cases, what work they’d have to subcontract.
As for sites like oDesk, sometimes they work out, sometimes they don’t. Talented people tend to stay away because most of the competition is on price only, so they tend to lose to random Bangladeshi people that can afford to do the job for pennies. The thing is, the job they do is rarely good.
If you want to give those sites a shot, go ahead, but keep your expectations very low, it doesn’t usually work out very well for any job that can be screwed up by a determined enough person.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Drake in Hamilton, Ontario listens Online asked us: “I was wondering if on the Raspberry Pi is there anyway to convert a EXE file into a ARMS instruction site program. I just wrote a program in the visual basics and I wondering if I could put it on the Raspberry Pi?”
Drake, You’re not gonna have much luck with .exe files, they’re Windows only and they’re not at all easy to convert into anything else without editing and re-compiling their source code.
You may have a little more luck with Visual Basic, but not much… if you’ve been writing pure Visual Basic programs, then you’re out of luck again. However, if you’ve been using Visual Basic .NET you may be able to run your software, but there are no guarantees.
.NET software should run using a program called Mono as an intermediary, but don’t expect perfection, it may or may not go well.
On the plus side though, as simple a language as Visual Basic is, you could argue that it’s more complex than shell scripts, Perl, Python or many of the other languages you can use to program for the Pi. If you’re willing to put in a little work, some of your knowledge may transfer, and you may be able to program native software for your Pi.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest Segment:
Francesco Baschieri, CEO & Founder – Spreaker
create your own podcast and discover new content.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
Dr. Walter Bruch worked on the giant electronic camera he had developed for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. In 1937 during the Funkausstellung, today known as IFA, a clearly advanced model of the camera was presented for live broadcasting. One of the interview partners was Paul Nipkow, who was baptized the “father of television”, who’s famous mechanical Nipkow disc had become obsolete with the new electronic capturing. Dr. Bruch went on in the early 50s, to invent the PAL color TV standard for Europe.
Art in Cocoa Beach, Florida asked us: ” The problem I have is that I live in condo. The condo has four stacks of three floors each and I live on the first floor in the middle. My cell phone service sucks. I have to go out on the porch to get service. Is their any reasonable solution to my problem? That I do not have to go outside all the time. I do not have a regular phone. Thanks for any help.”
Art, You can try a cell phone signal booster, Wilson Electronics should have quite a few available depending on your carrier and the type of service you need to boost (3G, LTE, GSM, CDMA). You may find some zBoost brand too, zBoost was an independent company, but it was purchased by Wilson Electronics earlier this year.
You can also talk to your phone company and they may be able to send you a repeater themselves.
Depending on what model you go for, installation may be as simple as stick it to a window, or as complex as installing an antenna outside, but as long as you get coverage somewhere, there’s a good chance you can boost your reception inside your home.
The only other alternative would be to investigate some kind of VoIP phone service that works strictly on a data connection. iPhone users calling other iPhones can use Facetime Audio. Or you could look into Skype. There are similar solutions for Android phones, if that’s your brand of choice.
Of course, if the massive condo squatting on your cell phone signal also blocks your wireless network signal for your home Internet connection, then you’re still up the creek without the proverbial wooden stroking device.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Tim in Sparta, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 and calling in via the App asked us: “I am looking for an app that will allow me to text my son from my Android phone to his iPod Touch. I don’t really want to go to an iPhone, so I’m trying to find something that’s compatible to both of us so he can text me while he’s at the house and I’m at work.”
Tim, A great free app that you should consider is TextPlus available for both Android and IOS. You can get an unlimited texting group and even also lets you set up your own phone number. It is ad-supported, but it will get the job done. TextNow is another free unlimited texting app similar to TextPlus but just with a simpler interface. [JP]
There are however hundreds of messaging apps that work on both iOS and Android that you could use, for example: Skype, WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, Viber, Kik, Yahoo Messenger, Nimbuzz, Line, Tango, Pinger, BBM and lots and lots more.
Basically, as soon as users figured out that you can text for free using your data and it has less of an effect over the course of a month than opening a single YouTube video does, messaging apps got popular.
They’re all basically the same, pick whichever you like best.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Kanex: GoPower Pack – 6,000 mAh and 11,000 mAh battery packs with built-in stands for smartphones
Other World Computing (OWC): USB Universal Drive Adapter – The “Swiss Army Knife” of drive and data connectivity.
Bits Limited: Mini Squids — Travel-Sized surge protected power strips
Tylt: ENERGI Sliding Power Cases the Samsung Galaxy S4.
“Into Tomorrow”: Microfiber Screen Cleaning Cloths with Dave’s cartoon on them, for all your smartphones, tablets, TVs, camera lenses and computer screens!