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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss a judge saying Qualcomm is a monopoly, T-Mobile and Sprint’s merger and the DoJ,
Jesse in North Carolina listens on Newsradio 680 WPTF and asked: “I live in a state that just passed a law – like many other states – that you can’t hold your cell phone while you’re driving down the road. I’ve got an older model pickup truck. Wondering what’s the best way to go. Should I get a speaker system hooked up in my truck or should I go with the old Bluetooth in my ear. I gotta be hands-fee to obey the law.”
Jesse, the Bluetooth is definitely the cheapest and easiest option. Having said that, if you’re willing to get a new radio with bluetooth built in, that will probably save you a lot of fumbling around for your bluetooth earpiece.
There’s also a third option you can consider, if your radio hapens to have an AUX input, you may be able to use a microphone you can place somewhere not too far from your face and use the audio AUX jack to feed the phone’s audio to your speakers.
Those Bluetooth mic kits are very inexpensive, often around $20 or less, and require virtually no installation, just give it 12v power and plug it into the radio.
In that case the hardest part of picking up the phone may be to remember to press AUX on the radio, but there’s no fumbling around for a small Bluetooth device that you may not want to constantly keep on your ear.
Greg in Manchester, Tennessee listens on WTN 99.7 and asked: “I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and my son was still on his computer playing games. So I’d like to figure out a timer that will turn off his computer at a set time so he doesn’t stay on all night and the morning on Saturdays. Preferably free, but if I have to pay, that’s okay We use Windows 10 on a desktop.”
Greg, you don’t need to spend any extra money to achieve this. Modern operating systems, including Windows 10 have this feature built in.
In fact, Microsoft even allows you to set a schedule for an Xbox too.
The process of liming your child’s access is to first create a user for your child and then through parental controls set the limits that you’d like your child to have, for example, the amount of screen time that you deem appropriate.
You can get started at account.microsoft.com/family and follow the steps outlined there.
Like we said, this is part of Windows and there’s no extra cost to you.
Steve in Lake Villa, Illinois listens to the podcast and asked: “I was calling about the “bone-inducting” headphones. I’ve seen them. They seem very pricey. I’m just not sure how well they work. I travel a lot. But I like to know where I’m at in airports, that kind of thing, hear announcements, etc. Do you recommend them?”
Steve, you probably mean bone-conduction headphones. Bone conduction headphones don’t go directly over your ears, just sit sort of next to them and vibrate to conduct the sound.
The purported benefit is that they block the sounds around you less than regular earbuds or headphones. That much is true just because there’s nothing covering your ears, having said that, the difference isn’t really all that noticeable.
What is noticeable is that the sound quality vastly decreases, don’t expect fantastic sound out of these.
Overall, if you don’t mind inferior sound quality for somewhat improved awareness, they’ll probably do the job for you, but frankly they don’t make too much of a difference.
Carolyn in Bossier City, Louisiana listens on 710 KEEL and asked: “I want to know if I can get Prime Video on my desktop.”
Carolyn, there’s nothing to get.
Much like Netflix, HBO NOW, HULU, and plenty of other popular streaming services Prime Video only requires an app on mobile devices.
If you’re using a computer you can just go to Amazon’s website and stream the content straight from there like you would on sites like YouTube.
You won’t be able to download a movie and watch it later like you can on phones, but you should be able to play the content without any more software required.
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