Weekend of August 16th, 2013 – Hour 2

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Tech News & Commentary

Jenny in London Ontario, Canada and listening via the Podcast asked: “I just have a question about home theater projectors. A couple of my friends are getting married and several of us want to get together and buy them a home theater projector. We were thinking about spending $1600-$1800. Are there any good websites to go for reviews for reliable information about the projectors? As well as, if you guys have any tips or suggestions as to what are the key points to look for. Thank you so much.”

There are plenty of sites with reasonably reliable reviews of projectors. PCMag,com, a regular contributor to our TechNewsLetter, has a section dedicated solely to projector reviews.

So does Cnet, though you might be wise to remember what happened at CES between them and Dish when judging their objectivity.

ProjectorReviews.com and ProjectorCentral.com specialize on projectors, so they might be good places to go to find reviews from people who know their stuff, rather then by jacks-of-all-trades.

HomeTheater.com also has a section on projectors, and since you’re looking to buy them a home theater projector rather than a working office projector, they may be a site with some useful pointers that fit your specific needs.

If you’re interested in specific models, then maybe Amazon.com is a good place to look too, you’ll find reviews from current owners that may clue you in to day to day problems with the devices that wouldn’t be evident after short term testing.

For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.

Apple is not making their operating systems more business friendly per say, but there is a ton of software that will likely meet your expectations. First of all, if you have a scalable business where you want to have multiple users login to their accounts on different machines, then apple has their server app. It has some very rich features like user databases, web-servers, mail & file servers that work across all of the iOS and Mac platforms, and much more.

We have had hands-on experience with making the Mac OS X operating system adapt to businesses using the Server app and it has worked great. Best of all, it’s less than $20. If you are looking for apps that will let you create documents, presentations and spreadsheets, than the iWork suite for Mac and iOS is great, your documents sync automatically, you have a huge choice of templates and styles, and it makes the end product look very professional.

Or you could have a look at FileMaker, it’s easy-to-use database software. You can create forms, reports and labels and share all of your files on a network or over the web.

We aren’t quite sure what you’re asking about, honestly, bc if Apple does anything well, they certainly have their own devices working together. iCloud will keep the data backed up from your MacBook, iPad, or iPhone, and it will synchronize email, calendar, contacts, notes, reminders, etc.

Typically when someone criticizes Apple for not being “business friendly,” they are upset because Apple computers won’t sign in to their Windows server using Active Directory. And that’s true, they won’t. Apple requires that you have a Mac running OS X Server. Your Macs authenticate to that, and the server authenticates them to the Active Directory. So there are a few more hoops to jump through.

Also remember that Macs can run Microsoft Office in order to share documents with Windows users. The current version of Office for Mac is 2011, which is a bit older than the 2013 version for Windows, but still perfectly serviceable in a business environment.

Now as to the blanket statement “Apple needs to do a better job,” we would respond with the generalization that no company is perfect, and all of them certainly could do a better job.

For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.

Tom in Albuquerque, New Mexico and listening via the iPhone App asked: “I want to thank you for the information on the streaming video question I asked last month. I picked up a Roku HD and have enjoyed it a lot. Have even found how to put YouTube onto the tv thru another app as well as stream video from my laptop to the tv over wifi.While I can rant and rave about Apple not giving us the option to add more memory like I did a few months ago, I’m not going to.  Instead here is my question.  Can you guys recommend an external battery back for an iPod touch 3rd gen? I have seen the mophie juice packs for the phone and want to get one for my iPod since I drain that battery like no tomorrow.  Oh I saw the V-moda DJ style headphones mentioned on last week’s show and they look amazing.   How was the sound quality?  I might like to order a pair.”

You’re in luck, because there are more external battery packs available for the iPod Touch 3rd Generation than we have time to talk about, even if all we were going to do was read the names. Your real challenge here will be in determining which KIND of external battery pack you want.

The Mophie iPod Touch Juice Pack is available in a model that fits the 2nd and 3rd generation iPods. The Juice Pack fits around the entire iPod Touch like a case, and it doubles the battery life of the iPod Touch.

The two other major types both connect to the bottom of the iPod Touch. They break down into ones that have the iPod Touch specific 30-pin connector and attach to the bottom of the device seamlessly, making your iPod a bit longer, and those who are smaller in size and use a cable to connect with the iPod.

In the case of external battery packs, size does matter. The larger the battery, the more juice it can provide. So if you want the maximum run time, then a product like the Mophie Juice Pack is what you want to look for. If you want something that isn’t locked in to YOUR device, but can easily move between iDevices, then one of the others will probably be best.

Doing a little research at Amazon.com, we found over a dozen units rated four and a half stars. So there’s a lot for you to choose from.

We haven’t had personal experience with the V-Moda headphones yet, but from the reviews we’ve read we can tell you that the sound quality is well regarded, but keep in mind that it comes at a fairly steep price so you may want to try them before you buy them and see what the alternatives are like. $300 for headphones is a big expense and you should probably make sure that they’re good enough for you, before you let go of the money.

For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.

Guest Segment:

Sal Carrabba, Founder and President – Salamander Designs

John in Milton, Delaware and listening via Android App asked: “I have been looking for an app that uses the flash feature of my Galaxy S3 as a ringer instead of the buzz of the vibration, or the song ringer. Many times I’m in a situation where I need to keep the phone on silent, but I can keep it where I can see it. I’m just looking for an app that can do that; I’m looking for one that does its job without mining me for every bit of data I have.”

We should probably point out the obvious first, the S3 does have an LED at the front that will alert you of pending notifications, but if you want a brighter alert you have some options to chose from.

Flash Notification + is currently on sale of 99 cents, and it will let you select what specific apps should get to use your flash.

If you just want to be notified of calls and texts though, Beacon LED is simple to use, it has 7 different flash patterns for your notifications and it costs $1.29

For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.

Casey in Salem, New York and listening via Stitcher Radio asked: “I emailed a little while back about the pebble watch; I received it and loved it immediately, but I do have a question, When I am on the go, I usually use my Mophie Battery. I never took into consideration the output and only paid attention to the battery capacity. The battery seems to overheat very quickly, I use a Galaxy Note 2. I was browsing through some solar powered external batteries and I don’t see anything good. I don’t know, just let me know what you think.”

I also use a Galaxy Note II and it pulls at most 10 watts of power from the charger, whether that is a battery or a wall charger, having said that, USB is a pretty smart standard and power doesn’t just flow because you made a connection, USB devices talk to each other in a sense, and as long as the voltage is 5V the battery pack and the phone will agree on an amperage they can both handle.

That means that if you plug your phone in using a 5W charger, it will just draw 5V and 1A, if you plug it into it’s standard charger it will draw 5V, 2A, it will never exceed what the charger can do. Your battery is probably just getting hot because it’s being used and electricity is running through it, not because the phone is overtaxing it, the USB standard takes that into account and prevents it from happening, that’s why you can charge your Note 2 using standard USB ports on a computer, the ports on most computers are 5W ports, not 10W ports like the one on your phone’s charger.

As for Solar powered batteries… you may want to skip those unless you’re actually going to be away from the power grid. Solar chargers work, but they way they work is by using solar energy to charge a battery …that then in turn, charges your phone.

The problem is that depending on the output of the charger, it may need anywhere “from 2 to 6 hours” of direct sunlight to charge your phone… that doesn’t sound so bad, but that’s not for your phone, your phone has a large battery and, most importantly, focus on the word “direct,” if they charger isn’t or can’t be aimed just right, that’s not direct sunlight, if the weather is cloudy, or the temperature is too low or too high, that won’t do for the fastest charging either. On top of that, the chargers that only demand a pretty reasonable 2 hours are not compact, they’re made up of arrays of solar panels and they all need to be aimed in a way that gets them direct sunlight.

If you’re going camping for a while, that’s great, solar chargers will get you power and you don’t have to worry about your batteries running out, but if you’re just looking to keep your phone charged throughout the day, battery packs like the Mophie are probably an easier choice for you.

For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.

Mike in Wyoming asked: “I’m working with my Samsung Galaxy S3 on my Gmail app and I wanted to get rid of the spam and trash folders. There’s quite a lot of files in there, and don’t know of a way to get rid of them without opening each and every single one.”

Unfortunately this question is very easy to answer, but we’re not gonna give you the answer you want: you can’t easily empty the trash or the spam folder from the app.

The full gmail website, has an empty trash button that you can use, but that hasn’t made it onto the app so far.

We do have some good news for you, those messages aren’t really taking up any space on your phone, they’re never even really downloaded onto your phone until you manually open them, so if you’re worried about wasting space and not just about keeping your email account tidy, you can stop worrying.

Even the empty trash button on gmail is new, so there’s a decent chance that it will eventually make it onto the app too, for now though, it’s either living with deleting messages one by one, living with leaving them alone, or living with having to use the site. No solution involving the app is too good.

For more information, tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.

This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners

Akitio: Neutrino Thunder Duo – 2-bay Thunderbolt Hard Drive enclosure

V Moda Headphones: a variety of styles of the DJ Inspired, Hollywood Designed Headphones

Ventev: An assortment of tangle-free USB cables and battery cases for iPhones