Tag Archives: Battery

PTJ 295: Smokin’!

The year is winding down, but the movie selection at the local cineplex is heating up with several sizzling releases this month. Also in the hot seat: Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, who got to have his belated chat with Congressional members, and social-media companies who missed the massive amount of misinformation spread across their platforms in 2016 and beyond. And for those don’t want to burn a lot of cash on wireless headphones, El Kaiser has a a review for you.  Fire up Episode 295!

Links to Stories Discussed on This Week’s Show

The El Kaiser Hardware Review

PTJ 262: Waiting In the Sky

The Space Race is back on — and Elon Musk’s own cherry-red Tesla Roadster is the pace car of the 21st century, having been shot into orbit around the sun by its owner. This week, El Kaiser and J.D. discuss the SpaceX test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket on February 6th, 2018; check out the video below if you missed the Roadster-flinging launch. Elsewhere in the show, El Kaiser shares his opinion about the idea of R-rated a Star Wars movie and J.D. offers tips on how to find online streaming videos with overdubbed audio descriptions for the blind and those with limited vision. For all this — plus a roundup of the week’s tech news — just blast off Episode 262!

Links to Stories on This Week’s Show

Technology + Accessibility

PTJ 261: DISCOVERIES

On this week’s episode. El Kaiser shares his thoughts after a binge of Star Trek: Discovery and J.D. explores a new way to find things that interest you on Instagram. A roundup of the week’s tech news includes a discussion of Twitter’s fake-followers problem, Amazon looking for new ways to provide employee healthcare and Google’s attempts to root out — and boot out — bad apps from its online Android store. All this AND porgs on Episode 261 of PopTech Jam!

Links to Stories Mentioned On This Week’s Show

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint

PTJ 256: Age/Old Problems

As the tired old year of 2017 limps toward the exit, it seems fitting that age discrimination is in the news this week — both for smartphones and human job-seekers. El Kaiser and J.D. sort through two weeks’ worth of headlines, share their musings on Star Wars: The Last Jedi and offer up a warning about using browser extensions.

It’s been a crazy year in many ways, but Pop Tech Jam returns in early 2018, just in time to make fun of the weirdest products at the Consumer Electronics Show. Spin up Episode 256 here and look for us in a few weeks. Happy Holidaze, Jammers!

Links to Stories Discussed on This Week’s Episode

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint

PTJ 221: Watching and Waiting

On this week’s episode, El Kaiser and J.D. discuss the collision of the technology industry with the government, smart television sets that watch you, the ongoing battle with fake news and the demise of the message boards on IMDb.com. Get out of the winter weather and fire up Episode 221!

Links to This Week’s News Stories

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint: Fight the Burned Out Battery Blues

You’ve had your smartphone a few years, but let’s face it — that battery just ain’t holding a charge like it used to. Lithium-ion batteries do have a limited lifespan and after a certain number of charge cycles, they start to lose their capacity for power.

If your phone isn’t that old, it may not be the battery’s age that’s making you drag out the charger more than once a day. Make sure environmental factors like exposure to cold, power-draining Android or iOS apps or manufacturing problems — like the unexpected shutdown issue with the iPhone 6S — are not the culprit.

However, if you have to face reality and deal with a tired old battery, here are four options to keep your mobile phone mobile and functional:

  1. If you have a smartphone with a removable battery — not an iPhone, obviously — check your phone specs, find an appropriate replacement battery on the web (or at an electronics store) and pop it in yourself.
  1. If you have a sealed battery, consider your options. You could replace it yourself using parts and instructions from iFixit or a similar repair site. This does put your phone at risk is you don’t know what you’re doing, but it can be educational.
  1. You can try an authorized service provider. Best Buy, for example, can fix a lot of gadgets. (Apple even sends people that way if there’s no Apple Store or other authorized provider in the area.) You could also contact the phone’s manufacturer about battery- replacement services. Apple and Samsung are among those who offer a battery swaps for less than $100.
  1. You could punt and get one of those extra-life battery cases like the Mophie Juice Pack, or an external battery to connect to your ailing phone. Not an elegant solution, but you don’t have to crack open the Precious and risk inadvertent damage. You may just feel like Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie when he had to drag around that car battery to stay alive.

Whatever approach you choose, it will hopefully buy you another year or two with your phone until it’s time to upgrade. And then you’ll have a brand new phone with a brand new battery again — and life will be glorious.

PTJ 208: Safety Patrol

The crisp fall air has returned to the Northeast, as do memories of sipping apple cider in front of a roaring fire. Unfortunately for some, the only fire around was coming from their replacement Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones…

On this week’s episode, El Kaiser and J.D. wrangle the week’s headlines, including the latest from the aforementioned Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Inferno, a new coat for Microsoft Paint and Sprint’s efforts to close the digital divide for low-income high-school students. El Kaiser discusses proper electronics safety and J.D. has a (Hopefully) Helpful Hint on how to find out what other household products might be problematic. Now, where are those marshmallows, Hershey bars and graham crackers?

Lithium-Ion Battery Information

Battery University
• Why Lithium Batteries Keep Catching Fire
• How Lithium-Ion Batteries Work

Links to This Week’s News Stories

PTJ 205 News: Grab and Go

fireexWell, it’s a week later and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 problem continues to grow.  Two government agencies have now issued warnings about using the new device. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is urging all Galaxy Note 7 owners to stop using the phones and to power down and stop charging them. And the Federal Aviation Administration is strongly advising passengers not to charge, turn on or even pack any Galaxy Note 7 devices in checked baggage. Samsung, for its part, is stepping up efforts with a quick-fix Galaxy Note 7 over-the-air patch designed to stop charging batteries form overheating by limiting the maximum charge to 60 percent. (And a quick correction to last week’s, it’s not just 1 percent of phones affected by the recall, it’s all of them.)

Could Google be working on a new 7-inch Android tablet to replace the retired Nexus 7 line? Several tech blogs are reporting that’s the case. (“w00t!” say we all!)

Google has also been doing some software updates this week as well. The company updated the iOS version of its Google Photos app to include a feature that turns iPhone Live Photos taken on a 6s or later into animated GIFs that can be shared more widely. And there’s also a new iOS version of the Google Cardboard Camera app for taking 3D 360-degree virtual-reality photos that look cool in your Google Cardboard Viewer. Of course, an Android version of the app has been out for awhile now.

cardboard

Facebook has also updated its Messenger platform to be much more an e-commerce engine. One of the company’s blogs has announced that the site was quote “starting to roll out ads in News Feed that drive people to chat with your bot on Messenger.” You have been warned, people.

Apple doesn’t seem to be sitting still while Facebook takes all the advertising dollars, though. The iMessage app in the iOS 10 software that arrived this week now has its own app store where users can purchase things like stickers and games.

instagramInstagram announced this week that it was adding keyword moderation tool that allows users to block comments using specific words from appearing on posts.  Twitter, are you paying attention?

But speaking of Twitter, The Verge and other blogs are reporting that the bird-themed microblogging service’s previously announced plan to stop counting links, polls and other media in the 140-character limit will go into effect on September 19th.

In Windows 10 news, Sling TV has an official Windows 10 app available in Microsoft’s Windows Store. The app allows the streaming TV service to work with Windows 10 and the Cortana virtual assistant to organize one’s television watching on the PC.

Blue Origin, the space exploration company owned by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, showed off some new rocket designs to the public this week. The designs were very nice.

And finally, NASA is working on that problem that another asteroid may smash into the earth and wipe out more than dinosaurs this time around. We need more knowledge on the topic, so last week, the agency launched a robot explorer craft called Osiris-REX (short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) toward the asteroid Bennu, where it will orbit for two years. Before they part ways, Osiris-Rex will use its robot arm to reach out and take a piece of the rock before it turns around and comes back to each with the sample in tow. Talk about your takeout…

PTJ 205: Throwing Sevens

After a week to process the big iPhone 7 announcement last week, technologist Don Donofrio returns to the show to discuss the good, the bad and the stuff Apple skipped this time around. In the news segment, El Kaiser and J.D. bring updates on the increasingly combustible Samsung Galaxy Note 7 situation, rumors of Google doing another 7-inch tablet and plenty of other non-Apple news from the geekosphere. Let’s roll the dice!

PTJ 147: Who Doesn’t Crave a Little More Power?

This week J.D. has tips on how to squeeze as much battery life out of your mobile devices as possible and El Kaiser has issues with a an article about podcasting in the latest…issue…of the venerable Popular Mechanics.

In the news, pop music star Taylor Swift takes on Apple; Jay Z’s music service Tidal loses another CEO; Verizon completes deal for AOL; Facebook’s face recognition algorithm is frighteningly accurate; and Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan knows a thing or two about a certain web-slinger.