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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss Amazon’s 48 hour Prime Day, Amazon’s delivery drivers, surveillance as a service, Samsung Fold’s comeback, and more.
Cathy in Windsor, Ontario listens on AM800 CKLW and asked: “I would like to put all of my photos on digital. A lot of us seniors or “just about” seniors have paper photos. I’d like to scan them and get them on digital. I’m just not sure how to do that. I think something about a scanner that I can buy – a photo scanner. Just wondering what you can recommend.”
Cathy, you can buy a scanner, there are even photo scanners that will grab your pictures from a tray and scan them automatically for you so you don’t have to keep opening the lid and putting a new one in, but it may not be worth the investment.
Instead of spending the money on a device you will only use once and then spending the time on the manual labor on top of that, you may be better served by using a professional scanning service.
You can find those online with services that will get a box of your pictures and return them scanned, but there are often also local services from box big name corporations like Walmart and CVS to smaller mom and pop places.
Typically, what those services charge will be less than the cost of the scanner and you won’t have to put in the work to get this done yourself. You also won’t have to work with software you don’t know to get the pictures to look normal and correct for odd colors or any aberrations, so the end results may be more pleasing too.
Joe in Gladewater, Texas listens on KTBB and asked: “Can you tell me about noise cancelling headphones?What are the best ones out there? And do you have to spend $300 dollars on bose headphones or can a cheaper set up work?”
Joe, you don’t need to spend $300 for noise cancelling headphones. For example, we are giving away $120 Mixcder headphones with active noise cancellation as part of our own summer giveaway.
Most already well known options are around that high $300 price, some are even higher. Sony offers an interesting noise cancelling set of headphones for $250 in the WH1000XM3 (they were around $400 when they first came out), they’re well reviewed and feature an AI engine can figure out what the noise around you is and adjust for it, so for example, it may cancel out noise but turn the cancellation off is someone speaks to you or if there’s an announcement at the airport.
Models sold to frequent flyer like the Bose sets you mentioned are usually tuned to block out engine noise which can help make a flight more pleasant, but don’t think you won’t hear anything at all.
Another option worth considering for most people is passive cancellation. Good padding or the right fit can go a long way in blocking out most noise without the expense of an active noise canceling unit.
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