Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Tech News & Commentary
Willy in Columbia, Missouri listening online asked: “I have a Macbook Pro and I just recently upgraded my software to the Mountain Lion. I was running Parallel on there so that I can run my Windows 7 program as well. it was working well until I downloaded Mountain Lion. Wondering if you guys know anything about the conflicts there because I’m getting the message that my Parallel is now dysfunctional. It’s pretty strange that Apple doesn’t give you that information before you purchase those products.”
Actually, Parallels released the information a while back. For Parallels to work under Mountain Lion, it has to be updated to version 7.0.15104, that long version number was released before Mountain Lion so that users wouldn’t suffer any disruptions. You can still download the file.
You usually won’t get notices about issues like these from the makers of the OS, you’ll get them from the individual software makers simply because there are thousands of programs that will run on a given OS, and the company that puts it out can’t test them all, instead they distribute early betas of the operating system so that companies can test their own software and adjust it.
You should know that if you download this file, running the installer will re-install Parallels, but it will not affect your virtual machines, so everything should still be there after the installation finishes, even if your computer says it’s reinstalling Parallels.
If you want to be extra sure, just copy and paste the virtual machine to another directory and keep the copy until you’ve verified that your old virtual machine still works.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Bruce in Los Angeles, California asked: “I have an ASUS Transformer tablet, I also have a G tablet that I’m not happy with. On both tablets I’m having trouble playing back videos. I may have an hour video and it randomly plays 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 5 minutes, never the same, but it always plays only partially and then it stops. I can restart and go back to be beginning, it doesn’t save the last position. I’m using ArcMedia Pro, I’m wondering if there’s a better program that is compatible with my tablet. Again, it’s a Transformer that’s running Ice Cream Sandwich.?”
If you want to try a different app, we’ve heard good things about MX Media Player, it’s been recently updated to support Ice Cream Sandwich and it can play a wide variety of formats including: avi, divx, flv, mkv, mp4, mpeg, mov and many others, so you should be able to find a lot of videos that will play in it.
It also offers multicore optimization, so videos should play very smoothly on your dual-core Transformer.
Another really popular app is QQPlayer, it’s not really all that optimized for tablets, and it doesn’t feature the dual core optimization, but it has a lot of fans and plays a lot of formats, so you may be happy with it.
The good thing about both MX Media Player and QQPlayer is that they’re both free, so you won’t have to spend any money to try them out.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Dave asked: “Is there a wireless IP Camera available that doesn’t require computer for a wired setup? For example, I am traveling without a computer and stay in a hotel room that has public Wi-Fi, I’d like to be able to take out my wireless camera (programmed with my FTP info, or email info) and just plug it in and have it start sending images.
It seems every camera requires wired setup with a computer at that location? How come none of them will work by themselves on a free public Wi-Fi without a computer?”
It doesn’t work that way because in order for the camera to access a wireless network, free or otherwise, it needs to be configured to connect to that particular Wi-Fi network. Every camera is a little different. However, they all generally need to be configured via a computer on the same network as the camera.
On a computer, it’s easy to just click on the name of a network and have it connect. It’s not so simple for these cameras. You need to be able to go into a setup menu and tell the camera which Wi-Fi network to look for, and input any network keys, if it’s a secured network. Once you do that and the configuration is saved on the camera, you can usually unplug the network cable and use the Wi-Fi.
You mentioned trying to use it at a hotel, while you are traveling. A lot of hotels (and public hotspots) require you to log into the Wi-Fi by clicking something in your browser, even if it’s a free network. Sometimes all you need to do is click an “accept” button and then you are connected. Unfortunately, in these cases, you won’t be able to use these cameras, as the camera, obviously, has no way of clicking any buttons. There’s also the issue of adapting your network to your camera. A lot of cameras require that you forward a port to them so you can access them remotely.
You won’t have access to the settings of a hotel router, so you won’t be able to forward any ports or change their configuration in any way. In fact, even the hotel might not have access to the router if they’re using a third party to maintain their network.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
James in Cleveland, Ohio asked: “We have a wireless home network and I just bought a new laptop. We both access, my wife and I. But she’s having problems on her Gateway with Windows XP since I connected. Her question is, is my laptop causing her problems or not?”
No, you’re in the clear here… WiFi networks are designed to be able to handle far more than 2 devices at the same time, even if they’re right next to each other, and don’t require the user to do much to make the devices play nice with each other either.
The only way you could really be causing a problem for your wife is if you had both manually set your computers to use the same IP address, but typically, if you know enough to manually set IP addresses, then you’ll know enough not to set two machines on the same network to the same address, if you don’t know enough, then you’ll let the network assign you an address automatically.
Assuming you didn’t touch the IP settings for both computers, her problems should be unrelated to your computer being on the network, in fact, her computer may just be getting old, XP Professional came out over a decade ago!
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guests in this hour:
Jake Sigal, Founder & CEO – Livio Radio
Want to make your car even smarter with entertaining apps? Check out how Livio Connect can help.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
Television first got color in 1954 in the US with a shadow stripe mask using the NTSC standard. (jokingly referred to as “Never The Same Color”). Germany had just started TV broadcast in black and white as the allied forces had to authorize the use of TV, and no more than 4.000 TV sets had been sold in 1952, with the not so impressive screen size of 9 x 9 inch. Much later in 1963, first shown at IFA, a European color technology was introduced with the PAL system, which solved the problems of NTSC using phase alternation, invented by Prof. Dr. Walter Bruch.
Dane in White Bluff, Tennessee listens on 99.7 WTN asked: “I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 computer and having problems with it running slow. Was wondering what would be a quick and easy way to maybe free up some RAM and maybe do some cheap tricks to get rid of some of the stuff on it.”
From what we can find, the Inspiron 8200 is a 2.2 GHz Pentium 4, 9.3 lbs “laptop” with a 60 GB hard drive, that can take up to a maximum of 1GB of RAM… no matter how much RAM you try to free up, it may always struggle with newer software (the computer in front of me is using 5.6GB of RAM and still has plenty of unused RAM to spare…).
You can try to uninstall anything you’re not using, sometimes software leaves services running in the background to look for updates, or perform background tasks while the main program is not running, getting rid of software you don’t use may also get rid of some of those services.
You can download software like Free RAM Optimizer that will kill all the software that’s residing on your RAM and apparently dormant.
The easiest way to free up some RAM and generally make your computer ran faster may just be to stick to software that it can run, if the recommended specs for the software you want your computer to run exceed your laptop’s capabilities, then it will either run slowly or not at all.
Try to run as few things at the same time as possible, close any programs that you’re not using, so that the ones you are actively using have access to the most RAM they can get.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Luke in New York listens online asked: “When will the 3-D Blu-rays go down in price?”
They may not go down in price any further for a while. A few years ago, Hollywood realized that Blu-ray really wasn’t becoming a very popular standard, and it wasn’t replacing DVDs at all, so they lowered Blu-ray prices to about $5 more than DVD prices, and so far that’s where they have stayed.
$5 over the price of DVDs is probably not too bad for Blu-Ray users considering the better quality. The real threat to Blu-rays are digital downloads and as those become the norm, we may see Blu-rays drop in price to compete. For now, though, Luke, they’ll probably stay around the same.
Unless, of course, you mean Blu-ray players, in which case the prices are declining on those all the time. You also mentioned “3D,” one of Hollywood’s great hot buttons right now (although the bloom is coming off that rose). Right now you pay a premium for 3D content and 3D players. When will that come down? We can’t say. But it will. Remember that the players add some additional hardware to support 3D, so until there is simply NO market for players without that hardware, someone will charge you more for having it.
But the premium you pay for the movie discs themselves is evaporating, and soon 3D Blu-ray movies will cost the same as standard ones, which will always cost slightly more than standard DVDs.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info, please email us here.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
AT&T: iHome Portable Rechargeable Mini Speakers
C.Crane: Senta Forty Premium Wooden Headphones
Microsoft: Copies of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2013 Software
NQ Mobile: Activation codes for NQ Mobile Vault (Premium Version) – An Android app that keeps your text messages, pictures, and videos safely hidden from prying eyes.
StrikeForce Technologies: Several Download Keys for GuardedID – anti-key logging software