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Tech News & Commentary
Consumer Reports Feature With James McQueen
For all you productivity mavens out there, Microsoft has finally brought Office to the iPad. The free download gets you Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but there’s a catch. Consumer Reports electronics spokesman James McQueen is here to explain.
The “Into Tomorrow” team discussed the latest apps that they have been playing with recently.
• Mark recommends: Twitch, FREE
- “I’ve talked about the Twitch.tv website on the show many times. It is the web’s premier destination for viewing the live streaming of video games, both the eSports professionals and amatuer streamers working from their living rooms, or sometimes their mom’s basement. They’ve had an iOS app for iPhone and iPad for quite a while but, honestly, it’s been crap. The video froze up as often as it played, and the chat room function where you could interact with other viewers and the gamers themselves rarely worked. Since Twitch.tv uses Flash, mobile Safari or Chrome on the iPhone/iPad was out of the question. But now, there’s a NEW version of the Twitch app and I’m pleased to say–it works! You can easily see the streams you follow, or you can browse by game. Video playback features adjustable quality settings and is both smooth and reliable whether I’m on LTE or my home wifi. And the chat room works, 100% of the time. I realize this appeals only to people who like video games, but if you want to watch the latest games played live and talk with the people playing them, Twitch is your place and the NEW Twitch app for iOS is your tool. It’s free in the iTunes App Store.” — Mark
• Dave recommends: Office Anti-Spy, $20
- “For those that are concerned if their Android phone is spying on them … there was a report of a hacker that was using some code and a security hole to capture images on a handset’s camera … Office Anti-Spy is an app that basically puts your Android phone in a locked down mode that disables most functions. Apps can no longer transmit data, the camera and mic are no longer accessible and any attempts apps might make to access any system functions, are blocked, while the App is engaged. Incoming calls and texts will still be received though. A free trial is available or you can buy it for 20 bucks.”
- — Dave
• Michael recommends: Vine, FREE
- “My favorite app of the week happens to be an app that has been out for a while now but has a new video messaging feature that you should check out on Vine. The new video messaging feature allows you to send other Vines or you can send personal video messages to fellow Viners. If you haven’t updated to the new Vine, you should, I found it handy to send a short clip to my family when they weren’t available for a Skype date.” — Michael
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:
Dave Cicirelli, Author of Fakebook
create a fictional social profile
Steve in Lake Villa, Illinois listens to the podcast and is calling in via the App asked us: “My wife wants to go to a virtual phone system like a Google Voice or Skype so she doesn’t have to be tied to an office. Her and her partner are gonna work from home – two separate homes – and would like to get the number to ring at one or both their phones. They’d like to keep their existing landline number. Wondering what you’d recommend for that.”
Steve, Your wife will probably need to abandon the idea of using Skype, Skype does not allow users to port numbers into their service, they require that they use one of their own already available Skype-in numbers.
Google Voice has a similar problem, they do allow number porting but not from landlines, and they also won’t port what they call “corporate numbers,” which probably applies to your wife’s situation.
There are other VoIP providers that will let you port your number and forward calls, but the trick is finding one that will let you both port your landline and forward calls to multiple phones at once.
Ooma, for example, has a feature they call “Multi-Ring” that will call two phones at once, but one of them is the Ooma unit, so it wouldn’t call both your wife and her partner’s cell phones at the same time. This may still work for her, if she just wants a phone to ring at each of their homes, but it may not if they’re expecting to be able to use their cell phones wherever they are. That means that at least one of them may need to still be tied to an office.
8×8 and RingCentral should let them transfer their business line and forward calls to multiple numbers, and both would probably work for them.
Our personal choice for our studios’ VoIP needs is a company called IsleCall that does for us what your wife needs plus some other features like phone extensions, autoattendant, forwarding voicemail to email, and more, and it’s been working very well for us, and with much more than two phones. We’ve even used our phone numbers from abroad with no problems.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Delroy sent us the following question: “How do I connect my Dell 968w AIO to a Macbook air, running OS X version 10.8.5?
Delroy, The Dell 968w doesn’t really play nice with anyone, it may be time to consider a replacement. Mac OS X was never a supported OS from the start, but the printer also does not support Windows 8, and had issues with Windows 7 64-bit for a while.
Some people seem to have tricked it into working by making it use Lexmark drivers, and you can always try and see how it reacts to generics as well, but the truth is, the printer wasn’t designed to play nice with Mac OS X, so you won’t ever find standard drivers for it.
That’s the bad news. The good news is, there’s never been a better time to purchase an all-in-one printer, scanner, and copier. Most models cost under $100, and even a high end one with separate ink tanks will cost less than $200. They have stellar print quality, they’re excellent scanners and copiers, they’re quite fast, and most of them are supported on a Mac.
We’ve had personal experience with the Canon Pixma series of all-in-ones and can affirm that any recent model in those lines support not only Mac computers but also offer AirPrint support for your iPhone and iPad to be able to print directly to them.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Other World Computing (OWC): Power2U – AC/USB Wall Outlets in Almond, Ivory and White.
Phone Halo: StickR TrackR — Find any object you attach it to with your smartphone
PURE: Jongo Wireless Adapters — Allows you to stream all your music wirelessly to your home audio system.
Tylt: A plethora of USB charging cables for iPhone and Android phones and iPhone battery cases.
“Into Tomorrow”: Microfiber Screen Cleaning Cloths with Dave’s cartoon on them, for all your smartphones, tablets, TVs, camera lenses and computer screens!