Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Tech News & Commentary
Ray in Niagara Falls, New York listens Online asked: “I have a Motorola Q, one of the first ones. I took pictures with it, but I cant figure out how to get pictures over to my SD card or onver to my computer. i plugged it into my computer but it doesn’t recognize that it’s there.”
To copy photos from your Q to the memory card, press your home key and go to applications. Under applications you should be able to find “My Files”.
My files will let you view everything that is on your phone’s memory, to find your pictures, you need to go to a folder called DCIM, and inside that folder open the one that’s called Camera.
From there all you have to do is select the pictures you want to move to your SD card by tapping the menu button and selecting more and then copy. Then just open the SD directory and press paste and all of your pictures should be moved there.
Once you have them on your SD card your computer should be able to see them and copy them.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
“Into
Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager
Channing in Pocatello, Idaho listening on 690 KBLY asked: “TV Size … What size do you need to go from 720p to 1080p? And the refresh rate, when 120hz is necessary, and when 240hz is necessary. Everyone I talk to at TV stores like Costco never have a good answer.”
If you’ve been trying to get an answer out of employees at stores like Costco, that’s your problem right there. We always say, if you want reliable information, go to a store that specializes in TVs and other electronics. You want a specialist. You can’t always trust an answer from someone on an HDTV that was just selling somebody else a 20 pound bag of frozen chicken wings.
As far as the resolution, it’s really a matter of preference. Most people say they can’t tell a difference between 720 and 1080 on TVs smaller than about 42 inches. If you’re going with a set bigger than that, you may want to look into the higher resolutions. But, keep in mind that a lot of TV networks still only broadcast in 720p, as opposed to 1080i, although more and more a moving to the higher resolution. None that we know of are broadcasting in 1080p because it takes twice the bandwidth that 1080i does. Really, the only place you’re gonna get 1080p resolution from right now is a Blu-ray player.
As far as the refresh rate, it all depends on the content you are watching. Normal everyday TV-watching should be fine at 120hz. But when you start getting into the faster motions of action movies and sporting events on larger screens, the 240hz refresh rate can really make a difference. The “hertz” is the number of times the picture refreshes itself every second. What that means is a 240hz set will refresh 240 times per second, twice the speed of a 120hz, making the motion on screen smoother.
You should also keep in mind that a faster refresh rate, in and of itself, is not a guarantee that the rest of the TV has good enough performance characteristics to take advantage of it. If the pixel response time is not quick enough, the resulting HDTV blur can be aggravated by a higher refresh rate. As always, the best judge is your own eyes. Don’t buy an HDTV that you haven’t either seen personally or one where you’ve read a review source you respect and trust.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Gloria in Nashville, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 FM asked: “How can I connect my husband’s iPhone 3G to our wireless? It shows up on WiFi, but never asks for a password. Thanks!”
Your husband’s iPhone should only need to ask for a password the first time it connects to a new network. If it’s not asking for a password and showing up as connected to WiFi, it seems to be doing what it’s supposed to do.
If you mean that your home network shows up on the phone and it still won’t connect to it or ask for the password it needs, the phone may be remembering the wrong password for that network and not asking for the correct one for some reason.
You can tap on the network that’s not working from the list of WiFi networks and then hit “Forget Network”. That will make the phone forget the password for that particular network, but it will retain the rest of the network configuration.
If that doesn’t work, you can go to Settings, and then “Reset Network Settings,” but keep in mind that doing that will clear all of your network settings, not just the settings for this one particular network.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Donald in Erie, Pennsylvania listening on WPSE 1450 asked: “I’m an old Windows computer user and I was wondering what is your idea of the best way to avoid viruses and things of that nature?”
Your best bet to stay safe from viruses is to have an up-to-date antivirus on your system. There are plenty of free ones that will give you good protection, and to make sure that what you’re doing online is relatively safe in the first place.
For example, don’t go to dubious websites to get questionable software. Stick to more mainstream sites, and don’t click on any links on emails unless you know them to be safe. Anything coming from your friends, a bank or anything else, may actually be coming from someone who hijacked the computers or copied the design of their emails.
Pirated software and even movies a lot of the time contain viruses, so if you can steer clear of those, you’d be more likely to be safe.
A lot of malware today makes it onto your system by simply lying and tricking you into thinking that there’s something wrong with your computer and they can fix it for you. Be suspicious of any company offering that advice without you asking, and double check with a reputable source.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Guests in this hour:
Sherry Chapman, Director of Marketing – Dane-Elec
Looking for some fun and unique USB flash drives? Dane-Elec has a fun new line of products based on popular super heroes.
“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin
The IFA in 1979 broke all records: 525 companies from 23 countries showed their products, 630,000 attendees were counted. Video 2000 home video recording was finally introduced with eight hours recording time, and teletext was demonstrated – most manufacturers displayed TV sets with built in teletext capabilities. Blaupunkt introduced the 100 Hertz technology, doubling the sampling frequency to raise the picture quality.
Kathy in Nicholasville, Kentucky listening on 1250 WVKY asked: “I have a wireless printer, brand new. I’ve paid for tech support and gotten the printer people on the phone. Sometimes it prints from my laptop and sometimes it doesn’t. Nobody seems to know what the problem is. Do you have any answers?”
Without knowing what printer you’re using, and what operating system, there’s not a lot we can tell you, at least not a lot that can help you solve the problem. It could be a driver issue, for example if your printer came with drivers for XP that are not compatible with your computer that’s running Windows 7.
It could be a network issue that is totally unrelated to the printer itself, for example, you may have a router with a bad DHCP server that occasionally refuses to renew the printer’s IP address, so the computer and the printer can’t talk to each other. It can even be network interference, for example, if your neighbors are on the same WiFi channel, or if you have other electronics around that use the same frequency as your WiFi the signals may be interfering with each other and the information might be getting lost before it reaches the printer.
It could be that you actually have a bad printer that need to be replaced, wireless cards on printers can break just like they can with computers, or you may need to update your printer’s firmware if this is a known software issue that was fixed at point by the manufacturer.
But again, without knowing more, we can’t really address other problems that affect your particular model and give you a more complete answer.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Tom in Albuquerque, New Mexico listens to the Podcast asked: “I just watched the tech video on the Kingston Wi-drive device and wanted to find out the results of your testing. I am thinking about purchasing one and had a couple of questions. How is the Wi-Fi signal and battery life? Is this device only broadcasting one way? Would I be able to say take a photo on my iPhone and then save it to this drive or is it just from the Wi-drive to the device I am watching video or music on?”
Kingston claims the battery will last about 4 hours, and that seems to be fairly accurate, so it won’t last you through a lot of hours of continued use, but considering you can watch a couple of movies straight from the device, that’s not too bad either. Keep in mind that being on WiFi for 4 hours straight will also take a toll on your iPhone’s battery, so odds are you won’t want to use it that way very often.
The WiFi signal is excellent. Remember this is not on your WiFi network at home. The Wi-drive creates its own wireless network so that your smart phone or tablet can communicate with it.
The Wi-Drive does not only work one way, you are able to both sends and receive files both from a computer or from a mobile device as long as you’re using the apps. A slight downside is that you won’t be able to copy files to your iPhone and access them from, for example, the regular media player. You will always have to go to the app to access the files you downloaded.
For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.
Julie in Hartsville, Tennessee listens on WTN, calling in via the App asked: “I have a question about uploading video to YouTube, I have a Panasonic camcorder that’s not the newest, but when I upload my videos onto YouTube they become squished, I’m recording them at the 16:9 aspect ratio and I don’t think YouTube asks me any questions about how I wanted uploaded, but if you could help me I’d appreciate it.”
YouTube supports 16:9 aspect ratio for their videos, what your camera is calling 16:9 though, may actually be anamorphic video (especially if it’s old), which will look fine if you play it directly, but it won’t when you upload it to something like YouTube or most of the other video-sharing sites. YouTube considers pixels to be perfectly square, so sometimes sources that claim to be 16:9 don’t show up as 16:9 in YouTube.
An easy fix for that is to add “yt:stretch=16:9” to your video’s tags, that will force the video to show in it’s intended aspect ratio.
In the future, if you import a video from your camera make sure that you use something like 640×360 or 853×480 as your resolution, and if you see an option for setting the “pixel aspect ratio” make sure it’s either 1.0, 1:1 or “square,” all of those will give you square pixels and they should work well with YouTube.
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
Corrosion Technologies: Several bottles of CorrosionX — A few squirts of CorrosionX clean contacts & connections & keep them protected for months (in salt spray environments) to years.
Dane-Elec: Several 8GB USB Flash Drives from Marvel’s The Avengers Collection
Ergotron: A Universal Tablet Cradle — This accessory converts a monitor mount to hold a tablet or eReader. Works with most popular tablets and eReaders, including Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook and Amazon Kindle.
iolo Technologies: Copies of System Mechanic 11 – PC Tune-up Software
SMS Audio: “Street By 50” Wired headphones in black or white. We brought ’em back from 50 Cent and our interview in Berlin.