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Tech News & Commentary
Jon in Rocklin, California asked: “I set up a Google Voice number to have a second number on my phone to use for my side business. I had to do a hard reset on my phone, which deleted all of my apps. I re-loaded Google Voice on the phone, and when I went through the set-up, I chose the wrong e-mail address (originally, Voice was set up on my e-mail account, but I used my business Gmail account this time), and now calls to my Voice number do not forward to my phone. Somehow, it’s set up to “ring all my phones”, even though there are no phones set up on the account. Ugh. Can you help?”
This has en easy fix, just open Google Voice on the phone you had to wipe (the one you used the wrong email address to set up).
Then just go to “Settings” and you will see an option to sign out, just sign out and sign in with the correct email address, that’s all there is to it.
You can also add other phones to ring from either account by logging in at google.com/voice, clicking on the gear at the upper right going to setting and adding phones using the button at the bottom of the list of phones that have already been added, but a given number can only be registered to ring with a single Google Voice account, so you won’t be able to set up both accounts to call the same phone.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Warren in Scott City, Kansas listening to the Podcast asked: “Calling because, I have several computers as I’m sure everyone does and trying to find good solutions for making reliable backups, obviously online backups are an excellent idea but I have 3 different computers and I would also like to do a media server. I tried the Windows Home Server, the 2006-2007 model, it was really disappointing it was an HP device and it really did not live up to it’s expectations. Is that a problem of my own configuration? is that an inherent problem with that home server? does the home server 2011 promise to be any better? or are there other alternatives that are easy enough to set up perhaps with older hardware or inexpensive hardware? I’m looking for something that’s fairly lightweight as far as power draw, that can stay on all the time and yet do the job that needs to be done. Thank you for your time and taking us all into tomorrow.”
It seems as though you’re a good candidate for a NAS device. NAS, or Network Attached Storage, is essentially a smart box that accepts disk drives and makes them available for sharing on the network using standard Windows protocols. We use one here at the studios and Mark has one on his network at home, and they work brilliantly with both PCs and Macs.
There are a lot of different brands. At the studio, we use Buffalo Technology and Mark uses Netgear. Depending on the brand, you can get things like RAID storage so multiple drives will protect themselves against hardware failure. One thing to be aware of is to make certain your backup software supports backing up to a network drive. Not all programs do. Windows Backup, for example, will only save backups to a network location if the network server is running Windows Server Edition.
What Mark does for his backup is make a file backup, since he’s really concerned about data more than anything else. He uses the Robocopy tool from Microsoft and launch a batch file every morning at 3 AM. The batch file runs a Robocopy script that compares files his data folders with folders on the network drive, then adds or deletes whatever it needs to in order to mirror them, that is, to make them the same. Once a month or so he uses Windows Backup to make an image backup to an external USB hard drive, for disaster recovery use.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Karl in South Dakota listening on KOTA 1380 AM asked: “I would like to gather reading articles from websites while my iPad is connected to the Internet and then read them when I am offline. The app should chase my reading down seamlessly as I am doing other stuff with my iPad. What can you suggest?”
You can try a couple different of apps to read articles offline on an iPad. A very popular one is Instapaper, it will cost you $4.99, but it saves both texts and images and it has a very eye-pleasing user interface.
You can also try ReadItLater, it won’t necessarily cost you anything but for extra features you can ungrade to the pro version. ReadItLater will let you save webpages and then bring them up either as text only or as a full webpage with images and the original formatting.
Another app you can have a look at is Offline Pages, this one might be the one for you, it stores complete webpages like the other two, but it also includes a feature that let’s you auto update your favorite pages, so you don’t have to manually download them each time, you mentioned wanting an app that could “chase your reading down seamlessly”, if this is what you meant, then Offline Pages may be the app for you.
The bad news about that is that Offline Pages is also the most expensive of the three apps…it will cost you $9.99 for the version of the app that allows auto-updating.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Rao in Shreveport, Louisiana listens on KEEL 710 asked: “Is there a possibility to have “Heads Up Display” on a glass screen, from a Computer, instead of a Monitor? If so, why is that not commercialized as yet? Also, where are we in getting ‘OLED’ Monitors in the Market?”
There are several HUDs — or Heads Up Displays — for computers on the market, but they’re mostly all wearable and still experimental.
The type of heads up display that you’re looking for is probably not available because it wouldn’t be too comfortable to use, we have them on everything from ski masks and scuba goggles to car’s windshields, but those devices usually just show a small amount of data, and the point of having the information there is the be able to quickly glance at it without taking your eyes off your main task for too long. You can refocus your eyes, check the information on the screen, refocus again and look at the world around you… what you want with computers is usually the opposite… you want a comfortable, clear and information filled display to keep looking at for an extended period of time, what’s behind the screen is usually not as crucial to you at the time as the screen is.
Having said that, we have seen see through displays at trade show and they are mostly being targeted at advertisers that want to display information while still allowing people to see what’s on the other side of the screen, so what you’re looking for may be coming to consumers sooner than you think.
As for OLEDs – Organic Light Emitting they’re not all the way there technologically, they’re very expensive to make, which obviously makes them expensive to buy, and they have far shorter lifespans than regular LED screens (think a thousand hours versus hundreds of thousands for LEDs), so you may have to wait a little bit before you see them replace regular LED screens.
Plus, try to imagine what it would be like having a see-through computer display. You are trying to focus on some information displayed by your computer and at the same time, someone is walking back and forth, distracting you. A heads-up display is a critical and vital component of many applications where the information is only part of what you need to know, you also need to see what’s out in front of your fighter plane or in the path of your car.
When you’re trying to write a report for work, what else do you need to see at the same time, really?
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest in this hour:
Roberto Tagliabue, Founder & CEO – Visere
Learn about a new app called Clibe that’s reinventing the traditional journal/diary and pen and paper.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
Many breakthrough technologies have been shown for the first time at IFA, the International Funkausstellung in Berlin, and one of the most important is mp3. Developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in a group lead by Karlheinz Brandenburg since 1982, the finalized and standardized technology was shown first at the science and technology forum of IFA in 1995. Music via the internet would not be possible without this compression method, and billions of tiny music players have been sold since 1998.
That’s this week’s IFA Update brought to you by Messe-Berlin. Be sure to visit IFA-Berlin.com.
Daniel in Millbrook, Alabama listening on WLWI 1440 AM asked: “I have an old LG Verizon phone. Probably 4 years old or so. I was thinking about going to a smartphone. My plan costs me $39 for 1000 minutes right now. But if I get a smartphone, my bill will go up to at least $70 or $80. Is there any way I can get the benefits of a smartphone with a big touchscreen without increasing my bill that much?”
You can go with one of the budget cell phone companies, some of them are offering decent smartphones right now. Virgin Mobile, for example, will use the Sprint network and give you unlimited minutes, texts and data for $55 a month, and unlimited texts and data and 1200 minutes would cost you $45 a month.
Walmart’s Straight Talk will give you unlimited everything for $45 a month, with the option of paying several months in advance for a discount, if you pay a year in advance the price drops to $499 for the year which means $41 a month, barely more than you’re paying now.
Cricket will give you unlimited talk and text and 1GB of data for $55 a month. Boost Mobile will also charge $55 for unlimited everything, but they give you the benefit of shrinking your payment over time up to a $15 a month discount. All of the plans are a little more expensive than what you’re paying now, but not the much, at least your bill won’t double the way it would with the major carriers.
Here’s the problem, though. Your choice of phones will be very limited with these low-cost providers. You asked where you can get one of these “big screen smartphones” without paying the major carrier prices for them, and the answer to that part is, you can’t – not really. The major cell phone carriers work closely with the phone manufacturers and lots of money changes hands to assure that the really desirable phones are exclusively theirs, at least for a good long while.
Tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast for more details.
Doug in Miami, Florida listens online and asked: “Dear Dave, I was checking your “Top 10” and saw the C. Crane US3 Super USB WiFi Antenna and was wondering if you have any thoughts about it. I purchased a DAP1522 Dlink adapter which Dlink told me would boost my wireless signal so that my wireless printer would get better reception. But it did not. Do you think that if I got one of these and connected to my Epson Workforce printer it might get a better signal from my wireless modem on the other side of my house?!”
Unfortunately connecting the antenna to your printer won’t help, this particular antenna has hardware inside of it that needs to be controlled by a driver, and you won’t be able to install that driver onto your printer, you will need either a Mac or a PC.
You could turn the setup around and connect the antenna to your computer if it’s stationary, and move the wireless modem closer to your printer, assuming that’s an option, or you could get a wireless access point to act as a repeater and place it somewhere far enough from the main wireless modem that your printer will be reached by it’s signal, and close enough that it will be able to get a good signal from the modem.
The good thing about this last set up is that it may end up costing you even less than the Super USB WiFI Antenna 3, and it will boost your signal on that side of the house, not only for one device, but for everything that uses WiFi.
Tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast for more details.
Moe in Saudi Arabia listening on AFN asked: “Is there an office application in Android that has the same usability experience as the iWorks and the slate office lite edition?”
You won’t find the exact iWork experience on Android, but you will find very useful office apps. iWork’s Pages, for example, isn’t just a word processor, a lot of it revolves about the design of it’s templates. That’s the kind of thing you won’t easily find on Android apps.
If what you’re looking for is an easy way to edit documents, you do have options and you also have options that, like iWork, will sync to the could.
The first one we should mention is the one we use, Google Docs. There’s an Android app for it, and it let you access your documents on Google’s servers.
If you want a more traditional office application you can try Documents To Go or Quickoffice, the will both handle all the usual file types if you work with Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but they will cost you some money. Documents To Go is $14.99 and Quickoffice sells for $9.99, but there’s a trial version if you want to see how you like it first.
Tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast for more details.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info,
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This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Creative: Live! Cam Connect HD — Webcam that records 720p video
ScanMyPhotos.com: Several $200.00 eGift Certificates that can be used towards your purchase of any of their online products, such as: Prepaid Photo Scanning Box, Prepaid Slide Box, or Prepaid VHS Transfer Box
Scott Steinberg: Copies of his new book “The Modern Parent’s Guide to Kids and Video Games”