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Tech News & Commentary
Luke in Baton Rouge, Louisiana listening on WBRP 107.3 FM asked: “I’m a huge iPhone fan. I’ve got the 4S and absolutely love it. Do you know any of the features on the iPhone 5, when it is released? Do you have any insight to that?”
The only thing we know are rumors that’s about it. Apple spends a lot of time and money trying to keep their future plans a secret. But how could we not indulge ourselves in some rumors, it’s just too hard to resist for us. Well at least for iPhone users.
We looked at Apple’s history and we can maybe expect or lean towards a few things, the recently release “new iPad” features 4G LTE, and if we were betting men, we would probably put some money on that being one of the key selling points Apple will try to market.
The next thing we would hit on is probably a change in the size of the screen. After doing some research that is one of the most heavily talked about points. Now whether it’s a 4-inch screen, or a 4.6-inch we simply don’t know, but given the competition it wouldn’t be surprising to see and increase in the size of the screen.
Finally other things to look for are updates to the iOS. A new battery, processing chip, and probably some upgrades to the cameras. Other then that well will just have to wait and see. Maybe it won’t even be call the iPhone 5 and just the “new” iPhone. Either way we expect a launch around September or October just like the iPhone 4S last year.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Alex in Normandy, France listens “on my fantabulous iPhone” calling in via the App asked: “I have two questions, are going to WWDC 2012? and, what monitor do you recommend for long programming session that, on the long term, wouldn’t hurt my eyes as much as another one? Thanks”
About WWDC, we’ll be reporting on anything interesting that comes out of there, but we won’t be traveling to San Francisco for it.
About your second question, no computer monitor will be especially kind to your eyes but, generally speaking, LED-backlit monitors will be more eye-friendly than regular LCDs.
There are a few things you can do to make things easier on your eyes, you can dim the lights around the room and adjust the brightness on your monitor so they’re roughly the same, you don’t want either one to be much brighter than the other.
You could also try moving your eyes away from the screen as much as possible. If you can read a piece of paper every now and then or look out a window, it should help you keep your eyes active. Minimizing the glare on your screen should also help with your eye strain.
Placing your monitor some distance away from your eyes will also do a little to reduce the strain on them, none of this is really about the best technology, mostly about the best ergonomics, but none of the screen technologies available are very kind to your eyes, so you may benefit more by following these tips.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Jon in Rocklin, California listens to the Podcast, calling in via the app asked: “I have a second hand laptop, it’s never been on my home network. About two weeks ago it did a standard windows update. It’s never been on my home network and hasn’t left the house in 4 1/2 months. I’m wondering how it could’ve done those updates without downloading them from the Internet. I’m wondering about those Windows updates… hmmmm… can you help me understand?”
From what we can see there’s no way for your computer to autoupdate without internet access. Assuming what you saw really looked like a Windows update and that it wasn’t anything else updating itself, then it may actually have been a virus that had been going around at least last year and could’ve infected your laptop four and a half months ago.
The virus looks like a Windows update window, but it can be detected by updated antiviruses. So if you download one on your networked computer and install it on that one using a flash drive, you should be able to run a scan and detect whether or not that virus is on your system.
The name to look out for is dnetc.exe. If your antivirus detects that name, then you were infected with the virus that impersonates Windows Update.
If you’re not infected, then we’re stumped. You have seen something similar to a Windows update screen, or your computer may have connected to a nearby open WiFi network, but without a connection it should not be able to update itself.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest in this hour:
Rod Beckstrom, President & CEO – ICANN
Get ready to enter “ray.pizza” on your Internet browswer. Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are going truly international and customized!
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
In 1928 the time finally had come for the world premiere of television, after many years of intensive research and development around the globe, with Germany as focal point. The venue: the 5th “Grosse Deutsche Funkausstellung” in Berlin, today known as IFA the number one global show. The screen, developed by Denez von Mihaly, was as tiny as a postage stamp, just an inch and a half, square, with only 30 lines and 900 pixels. Von Mihaly received the first license “to build and operate” a television station from the German Post.
Mike in Hendersonville, Tannessee listening on WTN 99.7 FM asked: “My question is how to fix the problem ‘AppleSyncNotifier stopped working’. It comes up when I first boot up my PC. I have looked on the Internet, but have not found a good solution, mostly fixes are to buy some kind of software.”
Your AppleSyncNotifier problem is likely stemming from a corrupt DLL or a problem with your registry. The easiest thing that you can try to fix it is by uninstalling iTunes and reinstalling it from scratch. If the installer asks whether you want to overwrite any DLL files, say yes. And try again, hopefully the installation will have replaced whatever component broke along the way.
If that doesn’t work, you can use a registry cleaner tool, something like CCleaner should do the trick and CCleaner is free.
With any luck running a registry cleaner will wipe a mention of a non-existing DLL and reinstalling iTunes after that may just put the correct reference back on the registry and make the problem go away.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Tom in Geneva, Ohio asked: “I have a Kindle Fire and I know there are options out there to get Barnes & Noble information off of that system. Is there an application out there that makes a one-step thing rather than multiple steps?”
The Nook for Android app will do what you need but, not surprisingly, it’s not something you can get from the Amazon App Store. Luckily, you can side-load the app onto your Fire though. To do that, go to your Fire’s settings, and under “More” and then “Device” enable “allow installation of applications”, that will let you install apps that are not offered to you directly by Amazon.
After you’ve done that, open your browser and head to m.getjar.com, and search for the Nook app, you should be able to find it and download it from there and, if you tap the file from your Fire’s downloads list, it should install and you’ll have the Nook app running on your Kindle device.
You can use the same method to download other useful apps like Google Maps, but keep in mind that by bypassing the Amazon App Store, you’re also giving up the security of downloading from a source that checks up for malware and quality, so make sure you only side-load stuff you need to side-load.
To access your downloads folder on the Kindle Fire, you’ll need an app. We used the ES File Explorer, free in the Amazon Marketplace. It will show you the folders on your Kindle Fire, just tap downloads and then tap the name of the .apk file that you want to install.
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
Blue Microphones: Yeti Pro — A professional USB and XLR microphone. Great for podcast recordings!
Kingston: 16GB SD memory cards and a 64GB Wi-Drive
Radio Shack: Enercell Universal Portable Power chargers
ZoneAlarm (Check Point Software): Download keys for ZoneAlarm Extreme Security