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Tech News & Commentary
Charles in Tyler, Texas listening on KTBB 600 AM asked us: “I have a question about an app– I am not real tech-savvy, but I would like to know if there is an app where you can just push in the GPS coordinates. That is what my company uses to send us from place to place…and use that app. I don’t know the name of it, or anything like that, I just wanted to know if there is one out there.”
Charles, There are a few apps out on the market that may suit your needs in terms of using coordinates to map your next stop, while you are on the job. For example, there’s an app simply named “GPS Location” which is derived from U.S. Cop, an app specifically used by police officers working the streets, that allows anyone to enter coordinates to find locations. The only downside to the GPS Location app is that it does not allow you to copy and paste, which seems to be the main complaint from it’s users.
You may also want to look into an app called “Map Coordinates” to suit your needs as it works similarly, but seems to garner far less complaints from it’s users. Map Coordinates also boasts it’s ability to show users different types of terrains, depending upon preference, and seems to have much more capability in terms of coordinate representations.
Either way, both apps are completely free and do not seem to push users into paying for other capabilities; which is especially appealing, considering how many apps SEEM to be free until you try to use them for something useful.
If you have an iPhone, check out Commander Compass Lite. Commander Compass is a GPS toolkit for outdoors and off-road navigation. It serves as a milspec compass with maps, gyrocompass, tactical GPS receiver, waypoint tracker, speedometer, altimeter, Sun, Moon and star finder, gyro horizon, and coordinate converter. It saves your custom places and waypoints, navigates precisely to them later, shows them on maps, displays detailed GPS info, measures distances, angles, and does a lot more. The Lite version is free in the iTunes App Store.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Richard in Detroit, Michigan listens on CKLW 800 asked us: “I want to know if I get something like an iPad or Kindle Fire or something like that, and I want to use it in public wifi, can I just take it out of the box to do that or do I have to pay to register or an activation fee?”
Richard, If you’re looking to access the internet while using an iPad or Kindle Fire on public WiFi you won’t need anything special.
Every iPad and Kindle Fire comes with WiFi built in, and all of them can connect to public WiFi networks. The procedure to get online will change slightly but it just involves opening WiFi settings, finding the WiFi network, tapping on it and, if needed, typing the password. It shouldn’t be hard at all to do and, again, all iPads and all Kindle Fires can do it, even the cheapest ones.
Just keep a look out for that glorious sign in the window “free wi-fi” and you should be all set! As always, we need to remind you that surfing on an unsecured connection in a public place can be dangerous, so be careful about connecting to bank accounts or entering credit card information while using that sort of a connection. Checking email and surfing basic websites to read articles or watch video shouldn’t be a risk, however.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
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Mike Zammuto, President – Reputation Charger
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
Dorothea in Farmington Hills, Michigan listens and is calling in on the FREE “Into Tomorrow” App – we love you Dorothea! asked: “The disparity between the hardware that comes into the house – the lines, the service, the strength of the service – and the devices we have in our house; The ever upgrading TVs, technology and so forth are really not in-line with each other. I’m finding that out the hard way right now. The infrastructure, unless you are in a big city or a highly populated area, is really not there to support these nice new shiny things we can buy. Any comments to that?”
Dorothea, The only problem we’ve ran across in terms of the infrastructure truly not being able to keep up has been with internet speeds in really rural areas.
If there aren’t a lot of potential clients nearby, building the infrastructure required to provide high speeds is usually not worth the initial investment to internet providers, so those people tend to be stuck with satellite which can be adequate, but sometimes is not that great.
Other than that, the infrastructure shouldn’t be giving anyone too much trouble, modern devices use a lot less power than older ones used to, for example, a modern Smart TV can easily use a 3rd of the power a similarly sized CRT used to need, that difference alone is enough to make up for a smartphone, a tablet, and a laptop put together, so even account for a WiFi router and other extra devices we tend to have at home these days, your power demands have probably gone down.
If you do mean internet speeds, most people can access at least adequate speeds that should let them access services such as Netflix or Pandora, even those living too far out in the country to have access to standard infrastructure.
The available infrastructure is concern for those manufacturing new products. For example, in 2011 at IFA, Sharp was showing two different future standards for televisions, 8K and even a boring 4K. They told us that 8K wouldn’t be out anytime in the near future because there was no way to distribute 8K content, it just needed too much bandwidth. Now we’re preparing for 4K, and companies seem almost ready to really start distributing 4K content, but the infrastructure is nowhere near ready for 8K, so it’s just not being pushed for now.
Where are you running into trouble? Short of people complaining about satellite, or about not having the gigabit speeds they’d actually want but don’t really need, we haven’t ran across any cases of the infrastructure crippling service.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Leonard in Raleigh, North Carolina listening on WPTF 680 AM asked us: “I have a Sprint HTC phone, an older model. I also have an iPhone. I want to transfer my apps from the HTC phone over to the iPhone. Is that possible?”
Leonard, Unfortunately you won’t be able to transfer your old apps.
Android and iPhone run on different systems and don’t understand each other’s apps, and even when an app is on both systems, they’re on different stores and neither one is going to give an app away for free to someone who paid a competitor’s app store.
On the plus side, most apps are free and paid apps are cheap, so if you already know there’s an app you use regularly, paying a dollar or two may be acceptable, at least by now you know which ones you used to use and not use on your old phone.
The good news is that many apps can share information between iPhone and Android, so if you’re using the correct version of the app for each phone, you could still share data. But you will have to have separate Android and iOS versions of each app.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
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