HOUR 3:
Tech News & Commentary
“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
It’s the World of Goo, oozing on to a screen near you! This indie charmer is big fun and earning its two developers a big profit.
Group discussion: Online Backup Storage, do listeners trust it or not. How about if they offer instant access to your files from anywhere?
On our 2/4/11 show, Dave asked our audience what color is their cell phone and if the color matters. We shared some listener answers including a call Frederick in San Angelo, TX and several comments from Facebook listeners.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest in this hour:
• Abbas Mehdi, Product Manager – iolo Technologies
Rekindle the love with your PC!.
Jim in State College, PA listening on WRSC 103.1 FM asked: “I would like to watch Netflix on my laptop. I have a cable that runs from a 1/8″ stereo jack (from my laptop) to 2 RCA jacks on the back of my amplifier, but I get a buzz. Like a 60-cycle hum. I want to know how to eliminate that hum.”
There are a couple things you can try. First, if your laptop power supply has three prongs, use a ground lifter (That adapter that will turn it into a two-prong plug) Many times, the noise you get comes from a grounding issue. Lifting that ground may clear that up. Chris always carries several on all our Remote broadcasts.
You can also try different cables. sometimes when it comes to audio and video cables, you get what you pay for. Try some higher-end cables. (but keep your receipt. If it doesn’t solve your problem you could always return them to the store.)
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Arty emailed us and asked: “Other than the price, what are the draw-backs and advantages of an SSD on a PCI Express card?”
The advantages of SSDs are clear, super fast read access, no moving parts for improved reliability, low power consumption. The disadvantages are usually less known, the one everyone knows about is the one that you mention: price, SSDs are much more expensive than hard disk drives, another well known disadvantage is capacity, SSDs are usually not nearly as roomy as HDDs and the larger drivers bring us right back to price: large capacity SSDs are expensive…
There are lesser known disadvantages though, and some of them are important.
The first one we should mention is the slow write speed, while SSDs are much faster when it comes to reading but some of them are actually slower when it comes to writing data. The other big, important problem is that, unlike HDDs, SSDs have a limited number of write cycles.
What this means is that after you write on your hard drive an X amount of time it’s sectors start to become unusable and it dies.
It sounds pretty bad, huh? Let’s try to put it into perspective… even under relatively heavy use your solid state drive will almost certainly outlive the usefulness of your computer by years, so it’s the limited write cycles are not as big an issue as they seem to be, and if you look at portable computers in particular a solid state drive has the added advantage of not having moving parts that can get jammed when dropped or moved roughly.
Overall SSDs present a huge performance gain and we’re going to see them more and more.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
John in Monroeville, PA listening on WMNY 1360 AM asked us: “Is it possible to get local radio stations on the iPad from — like say Pittsburgh, PA; Richmond, VA; and your station?”
Our show can be heard anytime – 24/7 – by downloading our FREE Into Tomorrow app that works great on your iPad. There is a button that will allow you to listen to our 24-hour stream. We repeat the last 5 shows, so there’s never a shortage of Into Tomorrow. Our new show streams every Sunday from 2-5pm Eastern time.
As far as local radio stations, that all depends on a couple things. First, who owns them. A lot of broadcast companies have apps that will allow you to listen to any of their radio stations. For instance, Clear Channel has an app called “iHeartRadio” that will let you listen to any Clear Channel Station. Beasley Broadcasting has one called “iRadioNOW”.
Browse through the App store and search for “radio station apps”. You’ll probably find what you’re looking for.
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
Radio Shack: Several Weather Alert Clock Radios with SkyWarn
RCA: Several travel chargers with surge protection
Intuit: TurboTax Deluxe Online – Several Pre-Paid Codes.