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Episode Links

App My Ride

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BunmobileKeeping your car healthy can help keep it on the road. But you don’t have to log your service visits in a paper notebook anymore, because smartphone apps can replace treeware for that chore now, too.

When you do some searching in your phone’s app emporium, you can probably find one, two of 50 apps that help you keep track of things like oil changes and other regular service reminders, inspection dates, gas fill-ups, miles driven and all those automotive details that come in handy for maintaining a well-running machine.

For starters, consider the free aCar app for Android or the $3 Car Minder Plus for iOS as a general maintenance minder for your vehicle. If your car does need service, the free RepairPal app for Android and iOS helps you find a mechanic in the area, get estimates and roadside assistance and keep track of your car’s service history.

Many automakers re now making their own free apps that offer maintenance and manual information for your particular model. The companies listed below are just some of the many that have their own apps. Check your particular manufacturer’s Web site for online guides, apps and more.

With cars comes…car insurance (and let’s face it, annoying car-insurance commercials). But with a good insurance app, you can do things like check your policy, get ID cards and consult an emergency checklist of things to do if you do have an accident. It’s much easier than trying to find all this information on a wad of papers shoved in the back of the glove compartment. These companies are among those who have apps available for download:

There’s also an app called iWrecked for Android and iOS that lets you log an accident, file an accident report and store important phone numbers.

But hopefully, your driving experience is a smooth one and locating a parking spot is your only challenge. If that’s the case, check out the free Best Parking app for Android to find the cheapest spots around in 55 different cities. There’s also the equally free Parking Mate for iOS, which does a number of nifty things like set a timer for when your parking meter expires or pinpoint where you left the car on a map so you can find it again — which is always helpful.

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Episode 30 News: Gonna Build a LEGO Mindstorm Dalek

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The holidays are over and we’re back to business. While Apple just announced it hit the 40 billion downloads mark for its App Store since it opened for business in mid-2008, it may not be enough to beat Google to the Million App Mark this year, as growth-rate calculations favor the Google Play Store to get there first. Google Play is currently estimated to have 800,000 apps available. Android-based devices are also taking a bite out of Apple’s iPhone sales. ComScore’s November 2012 Mobile Subscriber Market Share Report shows Samsung on top with 26.9 percent of US sales compared to Apple’s 18.5 percent of users. The iPhone also has a Consumer Reports ranking behind Samsung and LG handsets.

Way back in 2010, the Library on Congress signed an agreement with Twitter to gain access to all public tweets sent since the microblogging service went live in 2006. As of last week, the archive now holds 170 billion Twitter messages and continues to grow. If you have an unprotected Twitter account, odds are, you’ve been archived. So remember, tweet for posterity!

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Walmart has enhanced its Vudu To Go app for the PC and Mac and will soon let customers do their disc-to-digital copies at home without having the schlep a bunch of previously purchased DVD and Blu-Ray discs to the nearest Wal-Mart for conversion. AT&T is also dabbling in the streaming business with its new $5-a-month U-Verse Screen Pack, although it doesn’t quite have the massive inventory of Netflix. Still, if you have AT&T U-Verse and want to stream flicks like St. Elmo’s Fire, Hudson Hawk and The Care Bears Movie all month, it’ll cost you less than a movie ticket, even with matinee pricing.

Get ready Lego Mindstorms EV3! The new kit, due out in the late summer/early fall features all kinds of fun stuff for your do-it-yourself robot. The $350 EV3 system includes an infrared sensor, the ability to be controlled by a smartphone or tablet and a Linux-based system for programming the robot. Remember kids, practice your robotics and someday maybe you can build rovers for NASA missions. (Speaking of NASA. The agency has scheduled a press conference at the Johnson Space Center next Thursday, January 17, to preview the next two missions to the International Space Station.)

And finally, Walt Disney theme parks are going high-tech with the new MyMagic+ vacation management system, which comebines a new integrated Web site, mobile app and electronic wrist bracelet called the MagicBand to handle all your scheduling, housing and monetary needs during your stay in the Mouse House. The potential for data gathering and tracking has not gone unnoticed by privacy advocates, but the MyMagic+ system won’t be mandatory. It may be a small world (after all) — but big data is growing.

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King of All Gadget Gatherings

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The Consumer Electronics Show, also known as CES, has been around since June 1967, when it was first held in New York City. It’s packed up and headed west for Las Vegas since then, but over the years, plenty of products first introduced at the show have come and gone (the VCR, the CD, HDTV, Microsoft Bob…)

BunVegas

So what about this year?

Try Ultra High Definition TV. Big pixels here – 3840 x 2160 — on big screens with prices that start around $12,000 and shoot way up north from there. Samsung showed off its 85-inch UN89S9 ultra high-def set that floats on its own massive easel. No price announced yet. Want something bigger? There’s The Westinghouse UltraHD 4K TV with 110-inch screen. After the massive price tags that will certainly get cheaper, getting content in native 4K resolutions is going to be the tough part – and storing it, as some experts are calculating that a movie in the full 4K resolution will need just under 10 terabytes of space to store. So we’ll see if UHD gets any more traction than 3D HDTV.

As for smartphones, Sony announced its upcoming Xperia Z LTE phone, due out in the first quarter of this year. It runs Android Jelly Bean, has a 5-inch 1080p screen, sports a 13-megapixel camera with HDR video and runs on a 1.5 gigahertz Qualcomm qua-core processor. It also comes with built-in protection of you get a case of the dropsies. The Xperia Z has anti-shatter glass on the front and back AND it’s water-resistant; Sony claims the phone can stay submerged for up to 30 minutes and still function. As the BBC calls it, it’s a bath-friendly phone.

But aside from big TVs, phones, tablets and the usual stuff we see at CES every year, there’s always the more offbeat gadgets at every show. The memorable oddities for 2013 include:

  • The Fitbit Flex band, a wearable wristband that monitors its wearer’s movement, sleep, and calories burned all day, every day.
  • The Hapilabs smart fork, also known as the Hapifork, is a Bluetooth-enabled eating utensil that that monitors the speed of your eating so you don’t gobble too fast and make yourself sick.
  • The Vuzix M100 Smart Glasses, a tiny screen that hangs out in front of your eye to provides visual access to your smartphone display, basic Web content and other info from your smartphone and applications.

Can’t get enough of CES news? Checkout the exhaustive coverage from CNET, The New York Times and Engadget for starters. And when you’ve had enough, kick back with a nice Elvis movie. It is, after all, the King’s birthday week.

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Episode 29 News: Terms of Servitude

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Diplomacy (or lack thereof) has been getting a real workout this month. After recent negotiations in Dubai, the US refused to sign the International Telecommunication Union global treaty over Internet-freedom issues. Apple, quickly releasing an update to November 29th’s iTunes 11 software, fixed a bunch of bugs and also restored the much beloved Display Duplicates menu item to iTunes 11.0.1.

Google continues to offer its own alternatives to built-in iOS apps, including the new YouTube Capture app for video recording and sharing. It also set forth the triumphant return of the Google Maps app for iOS — which was downloaded 10 million times in the first 48 hours as users fled the native Apple Maps app for more familiar territory.

instarageHulu Plus is up to three million subscribers, but Instagram may be down a few after a Terms of Service kerfuffle that stated the service could basically do what it wanted with its members’ photos, including shilling them out for use in ads. After the Internet became very angry about this and the How to Leave Instagram and Instagram Alternatives blog posts began popping up in droves, Instagram piped up again and said it had been misinterpreted.

Facebook, which owns Instagram now and was already having a banner week in annoying its user base, was also rumored to be readying 15-second autoplay video advertisements on its members’ news feeds next year. Perhaps the other whispers about Facebook doing a new “self-destructing” message app for people who are sending text and photos that maybe they don’t want hanging around after the initial thrill will be better received.

Celebrities sending naughty photos of themselves to their romantic partners may want to consider a self-destructing message app themselves, although the Florida man accused of hacking Scarlett Johansson’s phone to get her naked pictures just got sentenced to 10 years in Federal prison.

DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, wants to create an ultra-fast wireless network that can support speeds of 100 gigabits per second, just like fiber-optic networks can do on land. The agency is also taking submissions from folks who have their own ideas how to make such a boss network, so sign up now.

And finally, IBM is out with its annual list of The 5 in 5 — five technology predictions for the next five years. This time around, the company concentrates on cognitive computing and the five senses of touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell. Hopefully, the same machines won’t get all five senses at once and begin to learn the way humans do, because the next thing you know, they have a plan and they may not be so diplomatic about it.

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(Hopefully) Helpful Hint: Germ Warfare

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The holiday season is upon us, and with it comes travel and the general cold and flu season. Keeping a bottle of hand sanitizer close by and washing your hands frequently can help cut down on the spread of germs, but so can wiping down your gear, says WebMD.

Several companies make cleaning products designed to get the germs off mobile phones, where moist hands can spread those microbes around. This is where the whole concept of the wipe — the pre-moistened disposable cleaning cloth — fulfills its potential. Someone out there somewhere has a wipe product for just about anything, including babies, automobile interiors and even ferrets.

Celluwipes is one such moist-towlette product for your smartphone. A pack of 10 costs $3 from the company’s Web site. ZAGG sells its similar ZAGGwipes in packs of 15 antibacterial gadget-cleaning cloths for about $5.

Wireless Wipes, which are a pack o’ 12 for about $3, are made to clean cell phones, PDAs, and laptops. If you want minty-fresh hardware, these are probably the wipes for you, as rosemary peppermint is one available scent; you can also opt for pomegranate citrus or green tea cucumber.

RabbitWipes

If you work in an office where the landline is shared and more than a little grody, Fellowes sells a pop-up dispenser of 100 Phone Cleaning Wipes for about $11 at Staples and other office supply stores. You can also find cleaning kits for computer mice and keyboards that in addition to maybe killing a few germs, make the equipment all sparkly and much nicer to use. (Cleaning putty can also get in those hard to reach parts of a keyboard and other devices, plus it’s totally cool to play with.)

And when you get done cleaning, sit back and visit the Moist Towelette Online Museum to see the history of such an important product.

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5 Low-Tech Geek Gift Ideas

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Need a holiday gift for the technology enthusiast in your life, but you’re not sure what platform to buy for? Want to skip the whole iTunes/Amazon/Red Lobster prepaid card thing? Overwhelmed by the sheer number of phone and tablet cases out there?

Here are some suggestions, in no particular order:

1. Tablets are great for reading ebooks or watching videos in bed, but who wants to hold the darn thing up the whole time, especially when trying to relax? The $33 Peeramid Pillow is great for propping up your tablet — or even a hefty treeware tome — when one is inclined to recline.

2. Crazy weather and power outages can happen anywhere and you know how we get when our phone batteries slip into the red zone. If your gift sense leans toward the practical, consider a deluxe combination USB charger/radio/LED flashlight powered by solar panels or hand cracking; the $60 Eton FRX3 fits the bill — and you can also connect an MP3 player to pump out some tunes in the dark. The company makes several other charger models branded by the American Red Cross as well.

3. If you’ve got a radio lover in the family, consider a portable Wi-Fi model like the Mutant Innovation M-Wavio, which you can pick up online for around $80 from sites like NewEgg and Amazon. Once connected to a wireless network, this little baby can pull in streams from about 12,000 radio stations around the world, including those from the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio France and other international broadcasters. You can also tap into college radio stations from around the country, specialty streams and some Internet-only stations. And if the power goes out, flip the radio over to the regular FM band to get live news and make sure the zombies haven’t gone all apocalypse now.

4. For those young learners and engineers-to-be, check out the many educational kits from Radio Shack, like the $15 Tin Can Robot, the $13 Velleman Traffic Light Kit and the $70 Electronics Learning Lab. Science is the most fun when you can do it yourself and see it in action.

5. If the programmer on your list eschews the traditional can of Red Bull for a more stately approach to caffeine consumption, there’s the $20 Star Wars Death Star Tea Infuser, designed to brew up that cuppa with Imperial flair. And if you’re not shy about mixing movie franchises, you can back-order a $15 tin of officially licensed Star Trek Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. — which should be back in stock from ThinkGeek around January 4th. (Hmmm, January 4th. Why does that date seem so familiar? Oh…yeah.)

 

 

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Episode 27 News: OMG!

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As the International Telecommunications Union works to update to update a telecom treaty, representatives from companies like Google and Mozilla are among those voicing objections to the closed-door treaty process—and what more government control might do to Internet freedom around the world. The ITU, however, says it affirms the right to freedom of information online.

Google also found time to launch a new version of its Maps API and update the Gmail app for Android to version 4.2.1. The standalone Gmaill app for iPhone and iPad also got a redesign. Meanwhile, Apple finally delivered iTunes 11.

Also this week, Yahoo acquired a startup company called OnTheAir and Tumblr acquired a nasty worm. Oh, and Nexflix acquired a new deal with Disney.

If you like gaming on the big screen, Valve’s Big Picture mode is out of beta. If you like video on the small screen and used Verizon’s V Cast service…be prepared to say goodbye, as Verizon plans to shut it down. V Cast joins The Daily, News Corp’s designed-for-the-iPad electronic newspaper, in the digital dustbin on December 15th.

In NASA news, the Mars Curiosity rover is down in the dirt, while Voyager 1 is headed out on the magnetic highway— hopefully with the windows rolled down and Steppenwolf  shredding the stereo.

Happy 20th birthday to text messages! The handy short communication form hit the big 2-0 on Monday and will be old enough to buy its own beer next year. And who knew the popular SMS shorthand “OMG” was at least 95 years old and once showed up in an epistolary exchange with Sir Winston Churchill?

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iTunes 11: Everything New Can Look Old Again

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After a month’s delay, Apple finally released iTunes 11 last week. Macworld and Ars Technica are among those sites who have weighed in with reviews and Macworld has even rounded up some cool tips and tricks for using iTunes 11, as has iLounge.

If you’re an iTunes user, you’ve probably been playing around with the program since Apple released it into the wild on November 29th. While the new interface is a fresh look, some people may find it another piece of confusing disorientation in a season that has already brought the less-than-universally-beloved Windows 8 and Apple Maps.

iTunes 11 has moved some stuff around, ditched some features (buh-bye, iTunes DJ) as most major program updates tend to do, so you may need to take some time to explore.  But if you absolutely HATE HATE HATE the new visual look, you can mostly retrofit iTunes 11 to look a lot like old-school iTunes, back when it had the vertical pane of info on the left side and even a bit of color on those little icons.

Let’s visit the View menu, shall we?

  • To restore that vertical side panel that listed all the stuff in your library, choose View > Show Sidebar.
  • To add back the line at the bottom that tells you how much stuff you have in your iTunes library, choose View > Show Status Bar.
  • If you really liked that multi-pane column browser in Song list view that showed the Album, Artist, Genre, Grouping and Composer lists, click the Songs button and choose View > Column Browser > Show Column Browser and pick what you want to see in your iTunes window.

Later, if you decide you want to try out the new iTunes 11 look after you’ve had some time to think about it, you can always revisit the View menu and reverse course.

No matter what you make your iTunes 11 window look like, though, the Up Next feature is still pretty handy if you want to queue up a lot of tracks fast (and seems to be a replacement for the aforementioned iTunes DJ). Soon enough, many people will get used to iTunes 11 in its default form and just get on with the music —and expect a few who will complain how great it was when iTunes 12 arrives.

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Episode 26 News: The One Where We Just Blogged It

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And now, some news!

Microsoft, in the midst of taking a swipe at Google for what is says are suspect ranks for shopping searches, says Windows 8 is selling just fine, thankyouverymuch. Not everyone’s convinced, though. Some sites like InformationWeek would like, well, more information about the numbers.

The manager for Apple’s misbegotten Maps app is probably looking for new directions himself after getting fired earlier this month, and Tony Fadell, the man known as the Godfather of the iPod does not seem to be too broken up about Scott Forstall — another previously released Apple exec — getting the sack. Apple itself is said to be working with TomTom to make the iOS 6 maps app better, while map fans wait in hope for a standalone Google Maps app for iOS. At least iTunes 11 finally showed up this week.

Google has had about enough of anonymous trolling on app reviews in its Google Play Store. Reviews must now be accompanied by the user’s Google+ name and profile photo. The move should cut down on the number of astroturfed reviews for an app, and trolls will just have to drive up Google+ membership stats with fake accounts if they want to continue fragging apps in public forums.

Hoping to get its buzz back, Research in Motion is showing off a new BlackBerry in advance of its new BlackBerry OS 10 system due out early next year. And while not exactly fresh news, AT&T is still hanging out in the basement of the Consumer Reports customer satisfaction survey for US wireless carriers; the company’s 4G LTE network got better marks. Verizon Wireless was tops among the major national carriers.

But enough about tech, how about some pop? With the big summer movies now landing on Blu-ray and DVD for the holidays, director Christopher Nolan has some thoughts on the ending of the The Dark Knight Rises. Now, if they can just get Hugh Jackman jacked in to the X-Men: Days of Future Past with the rest of the gang…

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Information: Technology

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Need a holiday gift for the gadget, game or physics enthusiast in your life? Check out Mad Science: Einstein’s Fridge, Dewar’s Flash, Mach’s Speed, and 362 Other Inventions and Discoveries That Made Our World, edited by Randy Alfred. As discussed on this week’s show, the $20 book collects a year’s worth of entries from Wired’s This Day in Tech feature in one convenient place. The nicely compiled book makes for quick, informative reading on those topics dear to geek hearts: math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries…