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Tech News & Commentary
Jason in Nashville, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 FM, calling in via the App asked: “I recently bought a Motorola Razr Max and was told I might be able to upgrade the operating system. First question is, should I upgrade the operating system? and second question is, if so, how do I do that? Thank you”
You probably should, besides containing patches and fixes to known problems, Android updates have been improving the operating system little by little, depending on the kind of update you get you may just get patches, but you may get some new or improved features instead.
Andrew: To actually perform the update, you’d normally just wait and say yes when the option pops up, but if you’ve dismissed it, or want to force the phone to check for an update, you can follow these steps:
• Go to Settings
• Then About Phone
• Tap on “System Update” if there is an update available for your phone it will ask you if you want to install it and it will download and start the installation for you.
Given that your phone is a Razr Maxx, odds are your update will be to Ice Cream Sandwich, if that’s the case, we do recommend you update, Ice Cream Sandwich is a big improvement to the Android OS.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into
Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Don in Parksville, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 asked: “I just bought an iPad 2 to read books, but my daughter confiscated it because she’s in college. Wondering if you could use MS Word on it. If so, I’ll just buy her the keyboard and let her use it.”
There’s no Microsoft Word for iPad, there are some other applications and services you can use that will let you edit Microsoft Word documents, but there’s no official Word for iPad.
Your daughter could use Microsoft’s SkyDrive, it’s free and it would let her use the latest version of Word, but she’d have to be online to be able to access it, nothing would actually reside on the iPad, it would all work by connecting to Microsoft’s servers.
The same would go for Google Docs, she could make Word-compatible documents, but she’d need to connect to Google’s servers to achieve that. If you’d prefer an app that will live on the iPad and will work whether she’s online or not, you can try Apple’s Pages. It will open Word documents, but it won’t offer every single feature Word offers. For example, Pages doesn’t allow footnotes, kind of a big deal on some college papers.
Don, the truth is that your daughter is probably more interested in the fun aspect of the iPad than on the productivity aspect of it… for productivity, she’d still be better served by a laptop.
If you want to let her keep the iPad and all you use it for are books, you can look into a cheaper eBook reader, like the Kindle or the Nook.. they’re not as full featured as iPads are, but they’re better for reading books, especially in direct sunlight, and they will cost you a lot less than replacing your iPad!
One exciting new technology you might want to investigate, if you do choose the iPad over the laptop, is OnLive Desktop. OnLive is a company who originally developed a “thin client” that allows you to play video games remotely over the Internet. Meaning that the game runs on their servers, and you play it as a client. We were skeptical that such a thing could be done, but it works very well. OnLive has now used that same remote access technology to create a desktop environment.
OnLive Desktop is an iOS app for iPad right now. iPhone and Android support will be available soon. It gives you a virtual Windows desktop and a copy of Microsoft Office to use remotely. All program features are enabled, this is not a limited use copy of Office. Your daughter would be able to create, edit, save, load, and print just as if she had Office actually on the iPad.
And here’s the best part. It’s free. You’re limited to 2GB of cloud storage for your documents, and all you have access to is Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but the app and the service are completely free. They are planning to offer upgraded services with more storage and additional features soon, for a monthly or annual charge. You can find out more about OnLive Desktop by visiting desktop.online.com.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guests in this hour:
Drew Denbo, Senior VP of Business Development – MOG
Jeffrey Greenberg – Ford
Darrell from California asked: “What’s the easiest, safest and fastest way to remove duplicate and or missing songs from my iTunes library? A free method is preferred, but if I must pay then I must pay. Also, is there a program to make highlighted sports videos similar to those on ESPN?”
Well, the easiest, free-est way of removing duplicates from iTunes would be to go to your music in iTunes, click on the File menu, then “Display duplicates”, that will show you a list of every song that has an exact duplicate, and that duplicate, then you can click on “Date added” so they’re sorted by when you added them to the library and select all of the ones you want to delete and just hit … delete on your keyboard.
As for your 2nd question … There are so many different programs available to edit short videos. It all depends on how detailed you want to get with your editing. If all you’re wanting to do is put some clips together and add music, then any basic editing software, even windows movie maker, will do that. There are countless others on the market. Many of them also have a free trial you can download to see if it does what you want, before you buy.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
Dr. Walter Bruch worked on the giant electronic camera he had developed for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. In 1937 during the Funkausstellung, today known as IFA, a clearly advanced model of the camera was presented for live broadcasting. One of the interview partners was Paul Nipkow, who was baptized the “father of television”, who’s famous mechanical Nipkow disc had become obsolete with the new electronic capturing. Dr. Bruch went on in the early 50s, to invent the PAL color TV standard for Europe.
| Go Further With Ford Candids | ||
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Rob’s turn to drive |
Ford’s past |
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| Offroading | Dave, Adrian Grenier and Rob | Weinermobile |
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| Ford branded plane | Dave at Ford Field | New and old |
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Boingo: Several 60-day Certificates — With Boingo you can connect online at free and paid Wi-Fi hotspots.
Kingston: 16GB SD memory cards and a MobileLite G3 (USB 3.0 Card Reader)
Idea Incubator: Several txtRng — “the stylus with style”. This is a unique stylus Rob recently featured it on our Product Spotlight.
Radio Shack: Auvio Element Earbuds with Microphone