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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss a $5 gift card for your privacy, Bluetooth battery levels on Android, voting machine security, iPhone rumors, Instagram getting rid of likes, and more.
David in Madison, Mississippi listens on SuperTalk 97.3 FM and asked: “I’m listening to your guest Laura talk about the panel she installs to help particularly elderly or people suffering disabilities navigate through their home and do functions. What I don’t understand is whether or not it is voice activated or touch activated only.”
From Laura – CEO of GrandCare Systems:
“There are several passive aspects to the system. It doesn’t need to be touched in order to monitor and assess activities of daily living. The touchscreen can also remind the person to do things, make noises, read announcements without touching the screen. Family and friends can even video chat into the system and have it auto answers if they cannot touch the screen. Unfortunately, the resident does need to touch the screen if they want to access various parts of the touchscreen, at this time there are not voice activated options available.”
Penny in Windsor, Ontario listens on AM800 CKLW and asked: “When is not okay to bring phones outside? It’s been very hot in the summer with the humidity, bringing it over 100. When is it not okay to bring it out, and when it is okay, what should I do to make sure it doesn’t overheat. I guess the same question applies to the winter as well.”
Penny, phones don’t do too well when they’ve been sitting in direct sun for too long, or when they’ve been left in extreme cold for too long, other than that, it’s not really worth thinking about.
They’re designed to be on you, so as long as it’s not deep sea diving anywhere you can go, they can probably go too.
If the weather is too hot, your phone will shut off until it cools down, if the weather is too cold your phone will shut off because it won’t be able to pull enough power from the battery to run. If it’s not shutting off, just keep using it.
Typically, if they’re close to your body they’ll be safe, if the weather is cold enough or hot enough to kill a phone, it’s cold enough or hot enough to put your own life in jeopardy and you won’t stay in it for too long.
This is a problem we have here in South Florida. But it’s really only a problem in the direct sunlight. I’ve been at the pool or the beach and inadvertently left my iPhone sitting on top of a cooler or something and I’ll get an error message that the phone has become too hot and needs to cool off before it could be used. But if I put it under a towel or something, I’ve been fine.
Chance in Buffalo Missouri listens to the podcasts and asked: “I’m starting vlogging on my YouTube channel soon, and I don’t have like $2,000 to spend on a really expensive camera. So I wanted to know what a good, cheap camera to use for my vlogs are.”
Chance, your phone is probably the way to go, to be honest.
There are plenty of successful YouTubers that use their phones as their primary means of recording themselves. You already have it, it handles different kinds of lighting pretty well, and it probably records at unnecessarily high resolutions already.
For example, we have more 4K capable phones than 4K capable cameras.
Unless you’re looking at making some money in the short term from your YouTube videos or have some very specific requirements, for example, if you plan to focus on nature videos or anything that requires good lenses, there’s no reason to sink a lot of money into this when you have a handheld camera with excellent quality in your pocket.
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