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Tech News & Commentary
Josh in Sparta, Tennessee listening on WTN – calling in via the App asked us: “Trying to see what your opinion is of the best GPS unit for commercial vehicles. Garmin has one, PC Miler, Rand McNally, Cobra. Don’t want to spend $300 on a unit that isn’t going to be the best one to use on the road.” Josh, The two big favorites with truckers seem to be the Rand McNally TND 720 and the Garmin dezl 760LMT. Both should give you everything you need, but out of those truckers seem to prefer the Rand McNally option. 
We should mention that not everyone loves it, some drivers just see it as ok, but nothing too great, and many people have reported problems with the plug, but overall most users seem happy. The main thing is do not even consider a regular GPS, professional units have useful features such as gas and expense logging, but most importantly the focus on truck friendly exits, rest stops, bridges, roads without low weight restrictions, and more, and those are all necessary tools. You probably don’t need to be told this, but just in case, buying a decent paper roadmap to go along with your GPS is probably a very good idea, since we’ve found a lot of reports of drivers being routed in very strange ways, either being asked to drive an extra 20 miles, or being sent under bridges that will turn their rigs into trendy convertibles, so being able to double check from a trusted source is always good. For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Melanie in Carey, North Carolina listens on 680 WPTF asked: “I’m interested in getting a laptop that’s small like a tablet. I’m not so sure the surface is worth the money. I was also interested in the Yoga. Anything that can run Microsoft Office. I don’t do a lot of super-powered things, but I do need to do Excel spreadsheets and type documents. iProducts are out and I was wondering what the best thing for me to have a small laptop or tablet.”
Melanie, Pretty much any of the smaller Ultrabooks will be a laptop about as small as a tablet, so you shouldn’t have too hard a time finding one. You mentioned the Yoga, there are different Yogas… the Lenovo Yoga is a tablet…an Android tablet, it is definitely not what you’re looking for. The Lenovo IdeaPad or ThinkPad Yogas are full fledged laptops, that also happen to flip and become tablets. Those will do what you need. The Yoga line comes with in 11” and 13” models that won’t be too far from the size of a tablet’s screen, and they’re fully functional as both tablets and laptops and will certainly be able to handle the Excel spreadsheets that you need to work with.I personally use the Yoga 11S and I absolutely love it. You could also look at a Surface 2 Pro, it would be able to handle Excel, however, to be able to use Excel adequately you’ll need a mouse and keyboard, which you can use with a surface, but it would mean you’d end up carrying more bulk than you would if you just bought an IdeaPad, and you’ll likely end up paying about the same. For the price, you might as well get the full device you need, rather than to assemble the pieces separately. Another laptop you can look into is the new Acer Aspire 2-in-1, where you can have it set up as both a laptop and tablet. It runs perfectly well with Microsoft office and is ultraportable when you are on the go. Built in 1 terabyte hard drive, which is PLENTY of memory space. Finally, do be sure to take a look at the ASUS Transformer series and compare them to the Lenovo Yoga models. They are priced about the same, with generally the same tech specs, but you might be able to get better deals on them because many retailers will sell ASUS at a steeper discount than Lenovo. But there is no question that the Lenovo Yoga 2 two-in-one convertible laptop/tablet hybrid seems to be the class of that market segment right now. One final recommendation, we’d strongly recommend spending a few extra dollars to get one with SSD storage over a traditional hard drive. It’s hard to overstate how much that will do for the performance and battery life. Really. Seriously. We’re not kidding. Get an SSD. You will be hugely glad that you did. For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. John in Wisconsin, Listening via the Tunein app asked: “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. According to our App Developer Horacio, 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. Guest Segment: Bob Meighan, VP and CPA – TurboTax
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
The first navigation system was a girl: “Carin” spelled, C-A-R-I-N, was the name of the system developed by Philips which was demonstrated at IFA, the International Funkausstellung in 1993 and tested the same year. The name Carin was short for “Car Information and Navigation System”. Data was stored on a CD and a built-in computer used sensors and optional GPS to select the best route. The result was displayed on a screen and verbalized with a speech synthesizer. Rich in Purcellville, Virginia listens to the Podcast and is calling via the App asked: “I just replaced my Compaq iPaq PDA with an iPod Touch. The one thing I’d like to do is sync it with Outlook. I found that iTunes has the ability to do that, but every time I sync, no data gets transferred. I’m wondering what I’m missing. Also noticed that iTunes will not sync my “to-do” lists. Do you know of a way I can do that?” Rich, You should be able to sync your contacts and calendars from Outlook to your iPod Touch using the latest version of iTunes. You’ll also need a version of Outlook later than 2003, but we’re not certain whether it works with Outlook 2013 yet. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Apple doesn’t sync your task lists at all. In fact, contacts and calendars are the only things they will sync from Outlook. We’ve got a link for you to a page at the Apple Support site that explains the steps in syncing what you can, and it gives some helpful pictures showing which options to set. If you check that out and you have everything set correctly, it should be syncing. Apple has a number of pages devoted to troubleshooting sync problems, but frankly the suggestions seem a little sketchy to us. What we would recommend, if you do have everything set correctly and it’s still not transferring data, is that you explore the possibility of syncing Outlook on your PC with some cloud service (such as Google) and then using an app on the iPod Touch to sync with the same cloud service. For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Richard in Columbia, Missouri listening on KFRU asked: “I would like to know if I can add speakers to my computer. I want to listen to music in a room that’s remote and be able to listen to music in the room where the computer is.” Richard, Your best bet may be WiFi speakers. You wouldn’t need any kind of wiring and they’d connect to your computer via your WiFi network, then you could use software like AirFoil, to select the speakers that you want to use. WiFi speakers are not a new thing, and you can find them by Bose, Pure, Pioneer, and many, many more companies for prices ranging better a few hundred to a few thousand, depending on how serious you are about the sound quality you need. 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
Intuit: Activation codes for TurboTax Premier – File your taxes easily (This version includes investments and Rental property) PhoneHalo: StickR TrackR — find any object you attach it to with your smartphone Noizy: Kameleon Series Bluetooth earbuds PURE: Jongo Wireless Adapters — Allows you to stream all your music wirelessly to your home audio system. “Into Tomorrow”: Microfiber Screen Cleaning Cloths with Dave’s cartoon on them, for all your smartphones, tablets, TVs, camera lenses and compu