HOUR 3:
Tech News & Commentary
Andy in North Carolina, called via the Android App,
listens to the Podcasts and asked: “Just heard your interview with Founder of HeyWire. What’s the difference is between HeyWire and Google Voice?”
Heywire is a social networking hub connecting people with free text messaging, even internationally. Google Voice is a receptionist in a box and can serve as your voicemail, taking messages and texting you with the content.
It flags the words it’s not sure of, and if there are too many you can tap the play button to listen. It will send and receive text messages, and allows you to follow your text messaging threads on either phone or computer. It will conference up to three lines. It offers free domestic long distance and very inexpensive international calling.
It has the ability to route incoming calls to one or more phone locations, with filters based on who’s calling, time and date, and other criteria.
Tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast for more details.
“Into
Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Will your next game smell as good as it plays? Christmas 2011, it just might! Also, more impressions of Rift! Tune in this week for details.
Facebook friend Ernest in Washington, D.C. asked: “Hello gang! I know that I’m behind the times as far as technology is concerned, but I just got a Blackberry 8520 Black Smartphone through T-Mobile — model #RCG41GW — and was just curious as to how the tech savvy folks would rate it. Thank you for any comments.”
That phone is one of the “Curve” series, which is the entry level BlackBerry (the Bold, Torch, and Style models are the higher end ones).
As such, it has a 2 MP camera, a 512 MHz processor, and 256 MB of internal memory for apps. Those are the low end of specs for a BlackBerry. If we’re not mistaken, that phone is also a 2G model with no support for 3G data. Which means it can do web and email, but at what are essentially dial-up speeds (approximately 56K download). On a scale of 1 to 10, we’d rate the 8520 as a 3 or a 4. Sorry…
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Facebook Poll: We shared the result of our informal Facebook poll regarding new Tablets and whether our listerners planned to get one or not and why.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guest in this hour:
• Terence Swee, CEO –muvee Technologies
Muvee Technologies develops software and services that help you create and share professional-quality instant home movies out of unedited video, photos and music.
Neil in New Jersey called using the iPhone App (where he also hears our show) asked: “Will the iPhone ever come to Sprint? Any ideas?”
There has not been any news of Sprint even considering the iPhone. However, now that AT&T’s exclusivity contract expired and with the fact that the iPhone 4 is now available on Verizon, anything is possible.
Verizon does not have an exclusivity contract, so that leaves the door open to other carriers that decide they want to carry an iPhone. From what we’ve heard, the CDMA version of the phone that is available on Verizon would, in theory, work on Sprint’s network. This can only mean that Sprint at least has the option of making the iPhone available to its customers if it wants to.
We’ll just have to wait and see. There is a lot of speculation that IF there is in fact an iPhone 5 on the way, that it may be available on multiple carriers. But again, absolutely nothing has been announced officially, so only time (and Apple) will tell.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Nancy in Dorado, Puerto Rico listening on WOSO 1030 AM asked: “Internet Radio: There’s a company called Grace Digital Audio and they have a nice little box radio that you can set presets on. Could I actually buy a radio and preset my stations? and it’s not big, it’s transportable? And could I listen to my Internet stations instead of bringing out my computer.”
internet radios definitely don’t have to be bulky or stationary, in fact anyone who owns a smartphone is one downloadable app away from having an ultraportable internet radio and yes, you can usually set presets (you almost have to considering how many thousands of internet radio stations are available these days!).
Regarding Grace Digital Audio in particular: their models are not too big to carry, the smallest model on their website is 10 x 6 x 5 inches, they’re also NOT super light, they weigh between 5 and 8 pounds, we did find a portable model on Wal-Mart but remember that they are Wi-Fi radios, you will need a wireless internet connection for them to work.
This means you can’t just take one to the beach, or camping, or on your car or anywhere else without Wi-Fi and expect them to be able to tune in to your internet stations, even if you’re using the portable model.
You asked about the presets and we should warn you that the fact that you can set presets for your favorite stations doesn’t imply that any internet radio stations you can access on your computer will automatically be available on your internet radio device as most of these don’t have a way to manually add a stream or station to the list.
If you want to look around, models you might want to consider are the Logitech Squeezebox or the Sonos ZonePlayer S5.
As for Wi-Fi radios specifically built with portability in mind the Revo Pico is probably one you want to take a close look at, it’s small, light and it gives you access to around 11.000 stations, remember it still requires a Wi-Fi network, though.
You can also try the C Crane WiFi Internet Radio, it’s very easy to set up with 99 memory pre-sets and a remote control. It can be directly connected to a router by CAT 5 cable or used with WiFi.
It has an outlet which can feed the audio to your stereo or entertainment system, it even identify the artist for you. The C Crane Wi Fi Internet Radio is available online for about $130.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Joshua in Mineola, Texas listening on 92.1 FM asked us: “I’m wondering if there’s any increases to be had from solid state drives and even in RAID format. I was looking online and seeing that serial ATAs get about about a 3 gig transfer rate. I’m wondering if you’re able to meet or exceed that with solid state drives the way the technology currently is.”
There are increases in speed to be had indeed.
What you’ve probably seen as 3 gigs is the uncoded transfer rate in gigaBITS when you translate from bits to bytes and take out some bandwidth that gets eaten up by other things that need to be transferred along with you data you end up with a theoretical top speed or around 300 megaBYTES per second.
In the real world that means you’ll be seeing 60MBytes/s sustained speeds from your HDD with busts that will get to higher speeds, in some cases much higher speeds, but they won’t last long.
Some SSDs on the other hand can get you sustained speeds of about 120MB/s.
Even if an SSD doesn’t get you twice the speed you’re getting now you’ll see faster speeds than if you were using an HDD.
OCZ has released the Vertex 3, an SSD using the second generation SandForce SF-2000 controller. This drive is allegedly capable of saturating the present 3Gb/s SATA interface and is thus the first drive that benefits from the 6Gb/s interface in the Intel P67 and AMD SB850 motherboard chipsets. The Vertex 3 is available only as a performance preview unit right now, which means it’s going around to all the media sources for benchmarking, but a consumer drive based on this design is right around the corner.
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.
Into Tomorrow Product Spotlight with Rob Almanza
Tablet Update
At CES we saw the introduction of many new tablets like the Motorola Xoom and others … and at MWC we actually played with many of them. Our Mobile Correspondent Rob Almanza shows you some of our favorite tablets. (Watch Video Above)
– By Rob Almanza, “Into Tomorrow” Correspondent
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BlackBerry PlayBook
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HTC Flyer
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Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
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LG Optimus Pad
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This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Improv Electronics: Several Boogie Board Paperless LCD Writing Tablets in a variety of colors and accessories including sleeves with stylus holders & magnet kits.
Intuit: TurboTax Deluxe Online – Several Pre-Paid Codes
Screen Guard: Foam Cleaning Spray with microfiber cleaning cloth to clean all of your electronic devices