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Tech News & Commentary
Les in Idaho Falls, Idaho listening on 1260 AM KBLI asked: “I’ve got a lot of iTunes gift cards and I’d like to exchange them for something useful like Amazon or something like that. Is there an online exchange I can do that with?”
There are a few sites you can use to exchange your gift card, you will always get a less valuable gift card (or cash) in the exchange, but it may be more useful to you.
PlasticJungle.com will both buy and sell giftcards, and they will accept gift cards with at least $25 on them and they will pay UP TO 92% of the card’s value. Different cards have different values based on how popular they are, so a $25 Starbucks gift card won’t necessarily get you the same amount of real dollars a $25 gym membership gift card will get you.
Cardpool.com works he same way, as does GiftCardRescue.com, which accepts gift cards between $20 and $5000.
All websites will make you an offer for your card before you have to commit to anything, so you can check them all and see who’s offering you more.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
“Into
Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Cindy in Santa Clara, California asked: “I’m looking for the least expensive tool that I can use to get wireless from my home. I want it wireless without any package deal that comes with cable TV, telephone and all that. I just want the cheapest way I can get wireless in my home.”
It depends on what you mean by “get wireless,” if you already have a wired connection you may only need to get a wireless access point or router, if you don’t have any connection at all, you have more options.
Comcast advertises internet only services for your area starting at $20/month and AT&T offers similar plans starting at $14.95/month. That will at least get you online, but it might not get you wireless, for that you will need the same devices we told you about earlier.
A wireless router can cost anywhere upwards of $20 to several hundred, but if you don’t even have wireless internet at home yet, you will probably be just fine with one of the cheaper choices.
You can also look into tethering services from cell phone service providers but it will be more expensive than cable or DSL and will likely have lower data caps and speeds.
Be very careful of those low cost deals from Comcast and AT&T, however. They are very frequently limited-time “introductory prices” that will run out in 90 days or so, and the price will sharply increase.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Joe from Orange County, California listens via the iPhone App asked: “Is there a way to rapidly charge my iphone 5?
And is there individual device or apps I can use to boost my LTE signal at work?”
There’s no way you can charge your iPhone faster.
An iPhone 5 will pull 5W of power or less from the charger, you can’t force it to take more, it does feature the same fast charging many electronics do these days, so it will charge most of the battery within an hour before switching to a trickle charge mode to complete the rest.
You also can’t boost your LTE signal using apps, but you can boost it using physical repeaters. Both Wilson and Wi-Ex make signal boosters, Wilson’s Sleek 4G may work for you, most of your other options will be permanent installations, so depending on whether or not you can get away with doing that at work, you can look into options like a Wi-Ex Soho as well.
Some people will tell you that if you use the 10W charger from an iPad to charge your iPhone, it charges twice as fast. Perhaps you heard that and it prompted your question. In fact, that’s not true. The iPhone won’t draw more than 5 watts. What is true is that if you use an iPhone 5W charger to charge your iPad, it will take twice as long. You might be able to win a bar bet with this bit of trivia. If so, you’re welcome. We’re glad to be of service.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Scott in Nashville, Tennessee asked: “I have a Zune MP3 player. I have all my CDs that I did by hand, probably 100 or more CDS, downloaded to zune.com. Now my wife got an iPod and I have to transfer them over. Is there a way for me to do it just through Zune or where I need to transfer them to get them without having two programs running because it’s taking up a lot of space.”
Not surprisingly, Apple and Microsoft have not made it easy to transfer music between their devices.
If you already have the Zune’s music on your computer, you can make iTunes grab it from the directory it’s in, instead of duplicating files, but you will need to use something as a middleman between the Zune and the iPod.
To make sure files are not duplicated, you can go to iTunes’s settings and make sure that “copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library” is not selected.
Also, keep in mind that Zunes and iPods both play MP3s but there are some formats that each use that the other can’t understand, if you happened to rip your music in WMA before putting it on your Zune, for example, you may have to convert everything before your iPod will be able to play it, iTunes will probably be able to do it for you, but there’s no way around duplicating files in that case.
Other than that there isn’t much you can do, sadly we haven’t found another way to just plug the iPod and the Zune in and have the music transfer from one to the other.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Larry asked: “Did you see any innovative advances in TV remote controls for seniors or anyone else when you guys were at CES last month?”
We saw a couple of what you could call advances to the remotes, though none of them particularly good and none of them really geared towards seniors.
The most useful “remote” we’ve seen at CES isn’t really new, but it’s becoming more and more common, and it’s using a smartphone to control your TV.
On a regular TV this isn’t very useful, but it quickly becomes a much more interesting feature when you go from regular TVs to smart TVs and need to start typing long URLs, or search terms.
Another innovation we’ve seen comes from LG, their newer remotes act the same way a Wii controller does, you move it around the room and a cursor moves around the screen, it’s one way of interacting with the screen, but it’s not as intuitive or comfortable as it sounds, and simply using arrows to reach the clickable part of the screen you need to interact with might be more comfortable to most users.
The biggest change we’ve seen isn’t really ready for mainstream adoption yet, but several companies, from Cube26 (we had their CEO on the show) to giants like Intel — are adding a Kinect style way of interacting with your TV, you move your body or even just your eyes and that acts as your remote, or in some cases more as a mouse.
That may work well for seniors, since you would not really need the remote at all if that technology eventually becomes mainstream.
Tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast for more details. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Scott in Phoenix, Arizona listens Online called us with a comment about Siri: “I heard a recent talk that you gave on the show about iOS 6 and Siri. One of the things I really like about Siri is that you can use it to open apps.”
In spite of my words to the contrary, there are a lot of things to like about Siri. It can open apps, yes, but it can also step you through many common tasks like setting reminders, making appointments, or sending text messages, using a conversational approach that doesn’t require you to work up the entire stream of command+message in a single burst, as you often have to do with Android.
However, Google’s Voice Assistant in Android 4.1 and later has proven, time and again, that it can do almost all of what Siri does — and a bit faster to boot. Google’s Search app, even on iOS, often does a better job conducting voice searches than Siri.
Siri isn’t bad. In fact, she’s wonderful. She makes the phone feel friendly, personal, and easy. But she does have the occasional frustrating brain lock when she just can’t seem to find things or figure out what you want. There is still a lot of room for improvement…Into Tomorrow!
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
Camcorders with built-in VHS or Beta cassettes were bulky. The industry tried to size down with smaller cassettes. VHS-C was a reduced VHS format, in 1982 8mm-Video was announced. In 1989 at the International Funkausstellung, IFA for insiders, Sony introduced Video-8 High band. Years later, With the introduction of the solid state technology at IFA 2001, (the SD card by most manufacturers and the Memory Stick by Sony one year later) camcorder could finally be drastically reduced in size as the cards were tiny and there was no drive needed. Cassette based camcorders started to disappear from the market.
Gene in Clarksdale, Mississippi listens on Supertalk FM 96.9 called us and asked: “I’m looking for a hands-free Bluetooth device to use in my car so I don’t have to do anything with the phone and one possibly that would allow me to voice-activate a call.”
Voice activating a call will depend greatly on the phone you’re using. If you’re using a smartphone, you will likely be able to do it, the Bluetooth standard has supported voice dialing since at least version 1.1, we’re not on version 4.0.
Other than that, since you only want it for your car, you will have two options:
1) Headset that you can wear in your car or anywhere else. You’ll find these in all price ranges from under $20 to several hundreds, obviously quality varies, for a car, noise cancellation may be a nice feature, so you may want to spend a little extra for that.
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2) A visor-mounted version specifically for a car, these act more like a speakerphone, and are loud and tweaked for in-car noise. In this category you will also have a wide variety of models and prices. You can find some reputable ones like the Motorla TZ700 (which will even let you dictate text messages) from about $60, and you can find generics for under $20.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Eddie in Oklahoma listens on TuneIn Radio asked: “I’ve got an HP Dv8000 that shuts off soon after it loads windows. With the battery in its charging light or lightning light blinks continuously. I’ve cleaned out the heat sync and fan. This issue still occurs without the battery sans the blinking light symptom. I’ve also bought a new power supply which didn’t fix the issue. I’m thinking its the motherboard at this point. Here’s hoping you could point me in the right direction!”
You’re not alone, a lot of people who own the same model laptop as you have encounter that same problem.
There’s no official solution to the problem from HP, but a few people have had success cracking open up the laptop and resoldering a cord on the motherboard. Apparently, this cord somehow gets damaged any the computer can’t get accurate readings from the power source and forces itself to shut down. The good news is that, if that’s the same problem you’re having, it is fixable, the bad news is that soldering a cable to a mother board is not something for an amateur to do, you can easily damage a lot of components.
We can’t tell you for a fact that this is your problem, just that it’s what a few other people are reporting as the solution, but if you want to attempt this fix, find out what a pro would charge you, it might make more sense to replace the laptop depending on how old it is.
The blinking battery charge light indicates that the laptop believes the battery is at a low charge. If the computer shuts off, it’s possible that it’s not charging the battery any more. If the power light is blinking, that’s a BIOS code that says the power supply is reporting invalid power.
You’ve replaced the power supply so it’s not likely to be the brick itself. One thing you always want to do with HP notebooks is unplug them, remove the battery, then press and hold the power button for 30 seconds. That discharges all the systems capacitors, which in turn does a true cold boot when you start it back up again. Honestly, I don’t think that’ll fix the problem. I think it’s a motherboard issue, and the dv8000 is a old laptop that’s probably not worth spending the money to repair, unless you could replace the motherboard on your own.
We wish we had more encouraging word for you. But sometimes, things just get old.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
Jaime in Tampa, Florida listens via Zeno Radio asked: “I have one of those pocket HD radios by insignia. It seems like every couple months it goes dead. it lights up but no sound comes out. I’ve gone through 4 of these. Is there any reason it’s happening and what should I do about it?”
A lot of people seem to have the same problem you do with some Insignia radios (the NS-HD01 in particular).
And there is only one answer from the manufacturer: let the battery run out, fully charge it and then reset it by using a pin on the reset switch below the “hold” slider.
This works for some people, it doesn’t for other and it seems there may be a hardware issue involved, the official word from an Insignia Product Specialist is if that doesn’t work, use your warranty and get a replacement, so unfortunately, the only advice we can give you is keep replacing them while you can do that for free or try to get them to let you switch to a different model.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast. Just click the red arrow in the upper right column on this page.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners:
Bedol: Several Bedol Water Clocks – A water powered alternative energy alarm clock. Does not require batteries or electricity. Just fill with normal everyday tap water.
Covington Creations: Earbud yo-yo – A simple solution to tangled earbuds.
Magellan: RoadMate 5265T-LMB GPS – With FREE lifetime map updates and traffic alerts.