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Tech News & Commentary
Dave mentioned Lady Gaga’s iPad dress, here’s the tweeting dress:
Rich in Purcellville, Virginia listens to the Podcast and is calling via the App asked: “I just replaced my Compaq iPaq PDA with an iPod Touch. The one thing I’d like to do is sync it with Outlook. I found that iTunes has the ability to do that, but every time I sync, no data gets transferred. I’m wondering what I’m missing. Also noticed that iTunes will not sync my “to-do” lists. Do you know of a way I can do that?”
You should be able to sync your contacts and calendars from Outlook to your iPod Touch using the latest version of iTunes. You will also need a version of Outlook later than 2003, but we’re not certain whether it work with Outlook 2013 yet.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that Apple doesn’t sync your task lists at all. In fact, contacts and calendars are the only things they will sync from Outlook.
We’ve got a link for you to a page at the Apple Support site that explains the steps in syncing what you can, and it gives some helpful pictures showing which options to set. If you check that out and you have everything set correctly, it should be syncing. Apple has a number of pages devoted to troubleshooting sync problems, but frankly the suggestions seem a little sketchy to us.
What we would recommend, if you do have everything set correctly and it’s still not transferring data, is that you explore the possibility of syncing Outlook on your PC with some cloud service (such as Google) and then using an app on the iPod Touch to sync with the same cloud service.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Consumer Reports Feature With Mike Gikas
The Nokia Lumia 1520 really pushes the limits of how big smart phone ought to be with its humongous 6-inch display. But what else can it do besides take up a lot of space in your pocket – if it fits in there at all? Consumer Reports Senior Editor Mike Gikas is here with his review.
The “Into Tomorrow” team discussed the latest apps that they have been playing with recently.
• Mark recommends: The Bible App for Kids, FREE
- “. This time of year, at least for those celebrating the Christian version of the holiday, it’s nice to have something fun for the kids to do on a smartphone or tablet that tells the story of the first Christmas. YouVersion has always made one of the best Bible apps for mobile devices and now, in partnership with OneHope, they’ve made the Bible App for Kids. Animated with brightly colored graphics, music, and sound, the app presents a collection of familiar Bible stories, one of which is the first Christmas. The app displays text for them and then reads it, and as your children touch the screen, characters and scenes animate in response. There are a limited number of stories right now, but more are coming. If your little ones are fond of your mobile devices, the Bible App for Kids lets you give them something spiritually constructive to do. The Bible App for Kids is available for iOS or Android, and it’s completely free.” — Mark
• Chris recommends: 12 Days of Gifts, FREE
- “This week’s app is 12 Days of Gifts from Apple. By downloading the 12 gifts of Christmas app from the app store you will be given a free gift every day from December 26 to January 6 in the form of an app, book, song or film. Opening the app right now, before Christmas, it tell you houw many days you have left before your first gift arrives. It’s like a post-Christmas advent calendar offering no-strings-attached goodies available for free for only 24-hours before the next one comes along. Apple has run this promotion for the last couple of years outside of the United States, and this year the tech giant is bringing the freebies to the US and it’s definitely worth the download. Previous years have seen episodes of Top Gear, tracks from One Direction, games from Sega and books from Lee Child. It’s all free swag so what’s not to like? And of course the app is free as well.” — Chris
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:
- Richard Claflin, Executive Creative Director – First Folio Productions
- Nick Brous, Managing Director – First Folio Productions
Chris in Baton Rouge, Louisiana listens on 107.3 WBRP asked: “I’m looking at new tablets and was listening to your review of Apple tablets and share your criticism of not having any additional storage on them. What tablet of a different brand that does have more storage, and other features maybe that the Apple doesn’t have, would you recommend?”
We should probably mention that expandable storage is not always necessary, if you buy the right amount of storage in the first place, you probably won’t ever need to expand it.
People use tablets differently to how they use phones and, strangely enough, many people need more storage on their phones than they do in their tablets. Tablets are less comfortable as cameras and don’t always work as your MP3 players on the go.
If you still want an SD slot though, you do have options. You can look at the ASUS Transformer series, they’re high end and very well regarded, the Sony Xperia Tablet Z is another option, and it comes with NFC if you’re one of the few people that already use that on a regular basis.
If you’re more interested in reading than the rest of the tablet’s functions, the Nook HD also has an SD slot, but don’t expect your tablet to be supported forever, since the Nook won’t be around for much longer.
We should also mention that with the increasing popularity of cloud storage services like Google Drive and Dropbox, the need for lots of storage on your device is lessened. Also, a lot of the more popular music and video services are using streaming now rather than taking up space on your device.
Storing full length HD movies, lots of music, or lots of pictures on your tablet is what runs you out of memory. If you fit that description, then you’d either want an iPad with 64GB or 128GB of capacity, or you’d want something like a Samsung Galaxy Tab with its SD card slot.
A couple of interesting notes here. First, the Samsung Galaxy Tab comes with 16GB of memory and can take a 64GB microSD card. So the 128GB top of the line iPad has more memory than you can get with the SD card, although to be fair, you can swap microSD cards. But keeping track of which tiny little memory card a particular app wants can get pretty dicey.
Second, Google sides with Apple on this one. Google’s director of Android services says that SD card storage in your mobile devices is “techy nonsense left over from the paleolithic era of computing.” They chose to emphasize cloud storage with their Nexus tablets, versus expandable memory cards.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Casey in Salem, New York calling in via the App sent us the following comment: “Trying to help out a listener here. I understand he’s trying to enhance his home theater experience with the Raspberry Pi. I would say: Check out the Beaglebone Black. It’s a bit more powerful. It’s only a little more expensive at around $40-$45. The results will probably be significantly better than using the Raspberry Pi.”
Thank you, Casey.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Covington Creations: Earbud yo-yos “A clever solution to tangled earbuds”.
Bits Limited: Mini Squids — Travel-Sized surge protected power strips
Dane-Elec: Mobile Junkie Media Streamer – Stream content from a flash drive or SD card to your Smartphone or tablet.
“Into Tomorrow”: Microfiber Screen Cleaning Cloths with Dave’s cartoon on them, for all your smartphones, tablets, TVs, camera lenses and computer screens!