Weekend of October 14th, 2011 – Hour 3

HOUR 3:

Tech News & Commentary

Brandon from Jefferson City, Missouri listenins on KLIK asked: “Hi Dave, I am into the aviation aspect, battery saver energy, more memory, and antivirus-free apps for my Sprint LG Optimum S. What could you recommended for my phone?”

For a battery saving app, give Juice Defender a try. It has more aggressive and less aggressive settings that try to extend your battery life by turning off features when it thinks they’re not needed.

Juice Defender can, for example, turn off your mobile data network when the phone is on standby and only allow it to access the web periodically. On certain phones, it can turn off 4G or 3G networks and use 2G instead when the screen is off. It can also turn off GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi when they’re not being used. Juice Defender has a lot of fans that swear by it, so you might want to give it a shot.

For more memory, have a look at “Apps 2 SD“, it searches through your installed apps and tells you which apps are installed on your phone, which ones are on your memory card and which ones are on your phone but can be moved to your memory card. The big problem with Android phones is not that they run out of memory, it’s that they run out of internal memory, and this app can really help.

For antiviruses, you can try many of the same brands you would see on computers: AVG, TrendNet, Norton, Kaspersky and plenty of others have branched out into Android apps, just pick your favorite.

As for aviation related apps, that’s more complicated. If you’re a pilot yourself, you can download pre-flight checklists, aviation weather radars, airport guides, flight plan templates, even false cockpit instruments.

If you’re interested in aviation, but are not a pilot, it depends on what you like or would find useful. You can get apps that will let you monitor air traffic control communication. Most airlines have apps for their frequent travelers. There are apps that will give you landing times and gate numbers for flights, it all depends on what you need.

For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.

“Into Gaming Update” Weekly Feature with Mark Lautenschlager

Guests in this hour:

Wayne Irving, II, CEO & Founder – Iconosys

How many times has someone you know been a victim of cyber-bullying? Technology is helping fight cyber-bullies.

“IFA History Feature” brought to you by Messe-Berlin

When the DVD was introduced mid 90s it was first used for data storage, as its capacity was five times higher than that of a CD. In 1997 the first DVD burners for PCs came to the market, followed by the first consumer DVD players which had their world premiere at the International Funkausstellung 1997, worldwide known as IFA. Movie content was protected by regional codes and copy protection and the quality was perfect even in multiple copies.

That’s this week’s IFA Update brought to you by Messe-Berlin. Be sure to visit IFA-Berlin.com.

Victor in Spring Valley, Illinois listening on our podcast asked: “I have an old router, three computers hooked to it, two wired and one wireless. I have a Vizio that downloads Netflix a little slow. So I think I need a better, stronger router, so my boy can get the Internet next door, also. What do you recommend?”

A new stronger router can help you extend your signal next door, but it’s probably not the reason your Netflix is a little slow. To put this into perspective, let’s assume that Netflix is accessing the internet wirelessly since that’s usually a lot slower than a wired connection. With any half-modern router you’re looking at 54Mbit/s or more of wireless speed, now that figure accounts for everything that is transmitted, there is some overhead that will make your actual connection slightly slower, but still, are you paying for close to 54Mbit/s internet? Very probably not!

We checked and the average Internet connection in Illinois where you live is a little over 7Mbit/s, more than enough to use Netflix, but nowhere near the limits of your router. To improve your Netflix experience, have a look at the speed you’re supposed to be getting and talk to your ISP, it’s probably more of a questions of service than hardware that’s making Netflix slow. Now, the WiFi signal is a different story, you may be able to benefit from either a better router with a better antenna or, like we had to do here at our studios, multiple routers.

Over here, one router wasn’t enough to keep everyone connected at all ends of the building, so we had to add more routers and configure them to expand the network instead of creating a new different one. If you do that, you could have one letting you connect at home, and another one either at your boy’s home next door or at yours. But, do it at the closest point to his house, that way the signal might be able to travel all the way to his without a lot of obstacles in the way.

That being said, it is possible that you could be experiencing some latency problems relating to your wireless connections. You didn’t say if the Vizio used a wired connection or not, but we’re going to assume that it is. Wireless connections often have more delay in the back-and-forth sending and receiving of data packets. That’s called “handshaking” and on a wireless connection it can be as much as ten time slower than a wired connection. Now, once the connection is sending data all in one direction, then you’ll pick up speed. Most benchmarks measure that, and not the kind of back-and-forth chatter that is often used when you’re navigating a web site, or working through menus on your TV.

The other part is, new Vizio TVs have 802.11n wireless. With a compatible router, that can reach speeds of 150 megabits per second. The previous standard 802.11g topped out at 54. Now we’ve already noted that your Internet connection is likely to be around 7 megabits per second, so you might think that either one has MORE than enough capacity to handle your theoretical maximum. And it does, but there is more to it than that. 802.11n uses something called MIMO, or Multiple-Input Multiple-Output antennas. That technology enables the router to lower latency and also to avoid frequency conflicts with other devices.

So your best possible outcome will probably come from buying an extended-range (sometimes also called a “high-gain antenna”) 802.11n compatible router. Be sure and look for features like separate radios for both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Some models advertise three antennas per band also, as this allegedly increases maximum throughput. Prices vary widely depending on features, but be sure to take advantage of owner reviews at places like Newegg.com.

For more information, tune in to Hour 3 of our podcast.

If you have any questions about any of this week’s show info,
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This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners

Energizer: Several Weather Ready 2 LED Flashlights

Logitech: Tablet Bluetooth Keyboard for iPad

Otterbox: Several protective cases, including: Defender for iPhone 4 & Defender for Motorola Xoom Tablet

Philips: Sonicare AirFloss (interdental cleaner) … Experience a microburst of clean in-between.