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Consumer Reports Feature With James McQueen
All across America, more and more people are taking photos and videos on their tablets. The built-in lens may seem convenient, but there are challenges in taking tablet photos that can ruin your shot. Consumer Reports Electronics spokesman James McQueen is here with some simple tips to take better photos with your tablet.
Rich in Purcellville, Virginia listens to the podcast – calling in via the App asked us: “I’ve been shopping for laptops and noticed that some come with HDMI ports and some come with displayport connections. Wondering what the 
difference is and which one I should get.”
HDMI ports and displayports basically serve the same purpose but are intended for different interfaces. While HDMI ports are used mainly for consumer electronics equipments, Display Ports are used for computers and peripheral video connection.
DisplayPorts rely on connectors to be able to output to many different interfaces (including HDMI devices), that’s great in terms of flexibility, and those connectors are royalty-free, so they’re likely to be cheaper.
The thing is, you will probably connecting your computer to a very specific device, it may be one with a VGA connector, or an HDMI connector, or whatever connector it has, but it will likely be just that. Most people don’t truly need the flexibility DisplayPorts give, and most devices have HDMI port these days, so you probably don’t need to worry too much about which one of these ports is in the computer you like.
If it has an HDMI connector, so does almost everything else, so it should work out for you, if it has a DisplayPort, you’re a cheap connector away from connecting to whatever you want, HDMI, VGA, RCA or whatever else you happen to have.
Unless you’re trying to connect to an old monitor, either display port will probably work just fine for you.
One thing to keep in mind is that HDMI can, and often does, carry both video AND audio. Now according to the spec, so can DisplayPort, but in practice it rarely is implemented that way. So depending upon whether you need to send video or both audio and video, you might see a difference between the two of them in that respect also.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
The “Into Tomorrow” team discussed the latest apps that they have been playing with recently.
• Mark recommends: Colorzilla , FREE
- “Lets you use a color picker to determine the exact color of anything on your screen so you can input that color code into a graphics editor or website that you’re building.” — Mark
• Michael recommends: SafeTrek, FREE
- “Ever walk through a part of town where you don’t feel safe? Well of course, there’s an app for that and it’s called SafeTrek. It’s absolutely invaluable to anyone walking anywhere where they don’t feel safe. You enter your info and set a pin and then whenever you don’t feel safe, you hold down the blue button until you do. Once you release the button you have 10 seconds to enter your pin, and if you don’t the police will be notified of your location and send a distress call.”
What are your favorite Apps? Let us know at 800-899-INTO and we’ll feature them in this segment!
Tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast for more details
Guest Segment:
Lisa Elzey, Family Historian – Ancestry.com
Discover your family history & start your family tree.
Dan in Fairbanks, Alaska listens on KFBX 970 AM asked us: “Dave, I just bought a new computer with Windows 8.1 on it. I’ve been trying to put Linux puppy or Linux Ubuntu and I find it locked up. I was wondering if you could help out with that.”
We don’t know exactly what you mean by “locked up” but you used to be able to install Linux by just running and installer, but in some newer machines, Windows has finer control over the hardware, and you may need to take a couple of extra steps.
For starters, you should shrink the partition that Windows is using so you have space to install Linux. That hasn’t changed, you’ve always had to assign each operating system a domain over which to rule, but if you haven’t been doing that, make sure you do it.
You will also have to turn off Fast Boot under System and Security on your Control Panel so that you can boot from your installer media (DVD, USB, external hard drive or whatever you’re using), and you will have to turn off Secure Boot from your UEFI settings.
After doing that you should be able to run the Linux installer without any problems.
Searching for specific information on your make and model of computer and including the keywords “linux,” “ubuntu,” and “freezes during installation” might also give you some pointers. It is possible, although perhaps not likely, that you need something adjusted in your build of Linux to compensate for some specific issue with your brand of computer.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Enrique from Miami Beach, Florida listens Online asked us: “I recently had to wipe my 4th Gen iPad. I backed up all my key programs and “Documents-via cloud back up” backed up my pictures via drop box. Installed all my programs fine but on PDF notes all my files are gone ” or so it seems”. Can you help?”
Unfortunately PDF Notes doesn’t seem to be an iCloud backup enabled app, so, unless you backed up to your computer, those notes are likely just gone. Sorry.
Backing up to iCloud is an option that apps can support if they want to, but they’re not required to do it. In the case of PDF Notes they don’t seem to have added that support. iCloud support is not trivial, Apple is serious about making sure their devices provide a good user experience, so an app that backs up data to iCloud has to do it in a way that is invisible to the user, it can’t use the data connection in an excessive way that would be noticed by the user, so the app may have to implement incremental uploads, which is not that simple when you’re dealing with large PDF files.
They also require that you test on several devices at once to be prepared in case two devices try to back up different version of the same file at the same time. It’s a lot of work, and PDF Notes may be relying on the fact that you can already backup to Dropbox to skip on many, many, many hours of work supporting iCloud, which means that unless you took steps to back up the notes personally, you probably won’t be able to get them back through any full phone backups.
Looking at the support website for PDF Notes, it appears that it stores its data in a folder called “Do Not Edit” that is backed up only when you connect your iPad to a computer running iTunes and allow it to sync its data there. PDF Notes does not use iCloud for backup at all. If you have never done that – connected your iPad to a computer so it can sync its data with iTunes – then we’re afraid that you don’t have your data backed up anywhere.
If you did do it, however, there is a procedure you can follow for restoring your data.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Richard in Columbia, Missouri listening on KFRU asked us: “I would like to know if I can add speakers to my computer. I want to listen to music in a room that’s remote and be able to listen to music in the room where the computer is.”
Your best bet may be WiFi speakers.
You wouldn’t need any kind of wiring and they’d connect to your computer via your WiFi network, then you could use software like AirFoil, to select the speakers that you want to use.
WiFi speakers are not a new thing, and you can find them by Bose, Pure, Pioneer, and many, many more companies for prices ranging from better than a few hundred to a few thousand, depending on how serious you are about the sound quality you need.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Hydreon:Fake TV – Burglary Deterrent Device
iolo: Copies of System Mechanic – Tune-up your PC to increase performance and reliability.
Tylt: ALIN Screen Protectors for the iPad Air
“Into Tomorrow”: Microfiber Screen Cleaning Cloths with Dave’s cartoon on them, for all your smartphones, tablets, TVs, camera lenses and computer screens!