Tag Archives: Dropbox

PTJ 371: RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES

As August winds down and product announcements are scarce, El Kaiser dives into Season 1 of Only Murders in the Building for a properly depicted New York City apartment-living experience. In the meantime, J.D. reads up on the latest in drones ‘n’ cloud headlines, as well as news of the continuing nostalgia for the Atari 2600. All this and more on PTJ 371!

“Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu)
Walmart and Wing set to expand drone delivery together in Dallas metro (Wing blog)
A.I. Brings the Robot Wingman to Aerial Combat (The New York Times)
Updates to our storage policy on Dropbox Advanced (Dropbox blog)
Apple Bets on Revamped iPad Pro to Reignite Sluggish Tablet Sales (Bloomberg)
‘We’re Winning’: Apple Formally Endorses Right to Repair Legislation After Spending Millions Fighting It (404 Media)
Max To Offer 24/7 Live News Streaming Service With “CNN Max”
Launching On September 27 As Part Of An Open Beta In U.S. (Warner Brothers Discovery Press Room)
Amazon Luna and LG Electronics team up to launch Luna on LG Smart TVs (Amazon Luna blog)
Atari launches replica 2600 console to go with all its replica 2600 cartridges (Ars Technica)

PTJ 333: ‘MYST’ E-Memories

As much of the United States drifts into its second month of lockdown to help stop the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus, El Kaiser and J.D. discuss the joy of playing old predictable games in decidedly unpredictable times. This week’s episode also includes a roundup of the past week’s technology news and a sharing of feelings about the Titans show on DC Universe. Spin up PTJ 333 to hear it all!

Links to News Stories Discussed on This Week’s Show

Retro Games for Uncertain Times

PTJ 304: Singing Backup

On this week’s episode, El Kaiser and J.D. work through the recent headlines — the good, the bad and the completely horrible — and offer a few tips for backing up personal content you’ve posted on social media. Because it’s not like any of those free services can be trusted to DO IT FOR YOU. Spin up PTJ 304 right here!

Public Service Announcement: Protect Your Social Media Content

PTJ 246: What’s the Frequency, Siri?

After a two-week summer vacation, El Kaiser and J.D. return to the studio to catch up on the week’s technology news: Facebook ‘fesses up to a chunk of Russian ad buys during the election, Amazon looks to expand its corporate footprint, researchers have discovered a way to hack most of the popular voice-activated assistant programs by sonic frequency — and the headlines just keep on coming. El Kaiser also previews two new pieces of gear from OWC and Anker for ultrabookers who need to pack their own USB ports and J.D. reports on a couple of scams gaining steam around the Internet. Summer’s over, folks! We’re back to work here on Episode 246!

Links to Stories Mentioned in This Week’s Episode

EL Kaiser’s Gear Preview

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint

PTJ 239: Leak Week

June is Internet Safety Month, but it hasn’t been very safe for the personal information of 198 million people, which got exposed by sloppy data handling. The notoriously private Apple got trolled as well when a top-secret meeting about stopping data leaks got, er, leaked. After wading through the tech headlines of the week,  El Kaiser and J.D. discuss the merits of RAID, as well as how to turn your smartphone into a handy magnifier for those annoying moments when you actually have to read the fine print. Episode 239 of Pop Tech Jam awaits you.

Links to Stories in This Week’s News Segment

Tech Term

RAID levels explained (PCMag.com)
Digital storage basics, Part 2: External drive vs. NAS server (CNET)
• 
How to configure a cheap, secure RAID backup system (Macworld)

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint

PTJ 215: Death Patches and Death Stars

If you’re still clinging to a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 — even though the highly flammable device has been officially recalled — Samsung is coming for you with a phone-bricking update in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, the bacon emoji has arrives in iOS 10.2, Netflix is getting all up in the virtual reality and you can now use Dropbox from your Xbox. Also in this week’s episode, El Kaiser presents his Tech Term of 2016 and J.D. has a (Hopefully) Helpful Hint on replacing your smartphone battery. Just press Play!

Links to This Week’s News Stories

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 186 News: Twist of F8

Microsoft, now Facebook, then Google and Apple: The developer conference season is in full swing. Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference took place in San Francisco this week, complete with live streaming sessions and announcements about 360 degree video — as well as bots, news distribution and marketing tools for its Messenger app.

Lots of Facebook/Messenger-related news was announced as well:  The Dropbox blog said this week that you can share files stored on Dropbox directly through and without leaving the Facebook Messenger; Ticketmaster says it will soon start selling tickets to concerts and other events directly on Facebook; and Fandango sent out an email blast about a new ticketing and movie-discovery bot for Facebook Messenger.

fandango

Speaking of that popular movie site,  Fandango completes its acquisition of the Flixster site this month, alerting users that the deal was done with an update to the privacy policy. Fandango agreed to buy Flixster, which comes with the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregation site, last February from Warner Brothers.

Less than a week after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced it on Twitter, images purporting to be of the new Kindle Oasis e-reader popped up briefly on the Tmall.com website.

The Yik Yak social site, popular on college campuses for its easy anonymous posting ability, is said to be having some financial problems due to a slide in popularity, and this has generated an interesting post on the Medium site. It’s a good read  about what makes one app succeed and another app flop.

Microsoft seems to be makingWindows Blue Screen of Death errors easier to deal with, at least if a recent Windows Insider build of Windows 10 is any indication. Beta testers there have noticed the appearance of handy, scannable QR code on the Blue Screen of Death messages that when zapped by a smartphone QR app, takes you to a Microsoft help page to begin your troubleshooting journey.

bsod

The 9to5Mac site got a peek at a note from an investment firm that predicts Apple Watch shipments will drop by 25% in a year-on-year comparison with 2015. Time to developer that killer app now…

If you like making graffiti or ever had fantasies of being a football TV analyst where you get to draw on the video playback, Periscope has something for you. A new beta version of the live-streaming app owned by Twitter includes a tool that lets you draw on your video feeds.

After a series of unfortunate events including an exploding rocket on a resupply mission, SpaceX is back on track with both its cargo deliveries to the International Space Station — and its ability to reuse its rocket boosters. While the payload took off for the sky, the Falcon 9‘s rocket booster made a successful vertical landing on an ocean platform without falling over.

Its Dragon cargo capsule docked with the station on April 10th and brought with it 7.000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts stationed up there — including lettuce seeds, mice and an inflatable room called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, for short.

BEAM1

Ransomware — malware that encrypts all the data on your computer until you pay up —has been making a comeback this year thanks to social engineering and the usual tricks, but the white hats are fighting back with a a decryption tool that can unlock files held hostage by the Petya ransomware. The decryption tool is a bit technical and probably not for the novice, but it’s a good punch in the fight against crime.

The State of New York is getting serious about distracted driving. A bill in the New York State Senate would require drivers involved in collisions to submit their phones at the crash site for analysis to see if they were texting while driving.

Also in New York, the U.S. Attorney’s office notified a federal judge in Brooklyn that the government plans to move forward with its request to make Apple help them unlock an iPhone related to a dealer in a local drug case. Encryption Wars, Round II.

Google is beta-testing its Voice Access accessibility feature that lets users open apps and navigate screens without using their hands. The beta test is full, but stay tuned.

And finally, while Google Glass may have bombed as a consumer product, the Internet-empowered eyeglasses have found fans with neuroatypical kids. Stanford University’s Autism Glass Project is using the Google specs as a learning aid for autistic teenagers trying to learn social interactions, emotions, recognize facial expressions or even make eye contact. Stanford researchers have created special software to use with the glasses and early results have shown improvement in social acuity for some participants. Perhaps Google Glass has found its mission at last.

stanford

PTJ 170 News: Duck and Cover

Technology plays a part in all modern wars, doesn’t it?  The recent uptick in violent terrorist attacks around the world has politicians looking at the situation with Internet in mind. While the hacktivist collective Anonymous has been having a go at Islamic State for months now — and has even declared December 11th to be a trolling day for online hassling — presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wants American tech companies to join the battle. And, over in France, the police forces there are asking for more powers during state of emergencies. According to a report in Le Monde, French law enforcement has asked to block free and shared Wi-Fi connections during an official state of emergency and also outlaw communications over the Tor network.

Several companies around the techsphere are making little tweaks and changes to their services. Google announced that it was turning on its protective Safe Browsing warning system for Chrome users on Android so it can warn mobile users about malware and phishing sites just like it does on the desktop. The company also blogged that you can now set up Reminders in Google Calendar alongside your scheduled appointments.

Dropbox and Facebook are both pulling a Google in terms of shutting down certain underperforming apps and services. Dropbox announced this week it was giving its standalone Mailbox and Carousel products the hook and Facebook closed the door on its Creative Labs division.

AT&T continues to roll out its GigaPower gigabit Internet service around the country and said this week is was bringing the fast fiber to 38 more cities around the country. Metro areas getting the glass include LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Indianapolis, Pensacola, Louisville, St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Memphis, Milwaukee and several other locales. Google Fiber, meanwhile, is flirting with Chicago and Los Angeles.

gigapower

Mozilla is helping out iOS users who are getting pummeled by web ads. The company released its free Focus by Firefox content blocker this week. The app works with the Safari browser for iOS 9.

Apple seems to have hear the pleas of those with extensive music collections and has now upped the number of tracks matched by iTunes Match from 25,000 songs to 100,000. The increased capacity is rolling out slowly, so if you don’t have the extra space yet, just keep checking. The company also released a $100 Smart Battery case for the iPhone 6 and 6s that claims up to 25 hours talk time or 18 hours of LTE data-surfing time on a charge.

In NASA news, the International Space Station hasn’t had a Fresh Direct delivery in months thanks to a couple of failed cargo missions earlier this year, but a supply capsule launched on Sunday finally reached the station this Wednesday. NASA’s involvement with the International Space Station could be winding down in the next decade or so, however, as an agency official at an advisory council meeting this week said NASA plans to get out of the low-Earth orbit business as soon as possible as it looks to the moon and beyond for its explorations. And father out in space, high-resolution images of Pluto taken during the July flyby of the New Horizons spacecraft are arriving back here on Earth.  A sample:

plutoHiRez

Twitter announced this week that it’s going to stop cropping photos posted in tweets. The next time you post a photo or see one in your feed, you should see it as the photographer took it and not some weird little detail of a lather image. Also in the Twitterverse…it’s December, so it must be time for the Top Twitter Trends for 2015.

Also looking at trends: Sandvine’s Global Internet Phenomena Report, which is out now. The report, which crunches data from more than 250 communications services around the world, takes a look at just how people are using their Internet connections.

hellobarbieAnd finally, it’s the holiday season, and tech toys for children are hot this year. As one might expect, interactive toys, like drones and robots, are very popular this season. Toys that talk back to your kids through a combination of voice recognition and networking are also getting a lot of attention, and even seemingly old-school categories are getting a tech upgrade. Hello Barbie and Edwin the Duck, interactive versions of the unrealistically shaped tiny woman and the yellow bathtub waterfowl respectively, are two such items putting a spin on the old analog formats and opening up new worlds. But, with the recent VTech hack, general privacy concerns and the state of Internet security in general, make sure you know the risks — as well as the rewards  — with Internet-connected toys. It’s the season of giving, but you don’t want to give away anything to hackers and data stalkers.

(Hopefully) Helpful Hint: This Space for Rent

If you use one of the popular webmail services, odds are you have a few gigabytes of online storage included for storing your messages, photos and documents. But the longer you have the account, the more you’re likely to fill it up. Then you either have to delete stuff — or whip put the plastic and pay money for more storage space from the provider.

Unless you’ve gotten warnings about running out of room, you may not have had to check your current storage situation. But do you know what types of files actually count towards your storage total — or ways some sites give you way to earn free additional storage? Read on.

First off, Yahoo Mail users: You get a get a free terabyte of space for your mail. So unless you’re running an enormous mailing list or have a digital hoarding problem, you’re going to be okay for awhile.

If you use Google products to store your life online — Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ Photos — you get 15 gigabytes for free to divide up between the three services. Your Gmail attachments count toward this limit, as well as the files you’ve stored on your Google Drive — unless those files are Google Docs, Sheets or Slides files. Files that have been shared with you also don’t count, and neither do photos smaller than 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos longer than 15 minutes. (Brevity is the soul of wit, and it has other perks, too.)

googlestorage

If you think you may be getting close, check your Google Storage page to see how your 15 gigs are carved up between the services you use regularly. Google occasionally offers a free gigabyte or two, as it recently did for users who completely a security checklist on their Google accounts, so keep an eye out for those types of things. But if space gets tight, an extra 100 gigabytes is about $2 a month, a terabyte is $10 a month — and you can even get more if you need it.

officeonlineMicrosoft OneDrive also provides 15 gigabytes of free storage when you sign up for an account or use it with your Outlook.com mail or other Microsoft service. As a perk, you also get to use Office Online. As an even bigger perk, Microsoft will double your overall storage locker and give you another 15 gigabytes of space if you use the OneDrive app on your iPhone, Android phone or Windows Phone to automatically back up the photos you take on the mobile device. You can get another 500 megabytes of space if you refer a friend to OneDrive — and the friend gets 500 megabytes, too. (You can refer up to 10 of your pals, which gives you a max of 5 extra gigs you can add on through referrals.) Still need more? Microsoft has plans: 100 gigabytes for $2 a month, 200 gigabytes for $4 a month or a whole terabyte for $7 a month — and you get Office 365 with that big TB.

icloudIn comparison, Apple’s iCloud is quite stingy, perhaps in the hope that you’ll fork over some bucks to upgrade your space. The five starter gigabytes are divided up between your iCloud mail, online backup, iCloud Drive and iCloud Photo Library.

Need more? To get a total of 20 gigs, you pay Apple a buck a month. And there are other plans — a total of 200 gigabytes costs $4 a month, 500 gigs is $10 monthly and a terabyte is $20 a month. If you buy a lot of content from iTunes, though, you don’t have to worry about those purchases eating up your space — all those items don’t count toward your iCloud total.

dropboxAnd last but not least. Dropbox starts you off with two gigabytes with your free account, but gives you all kinds of ways to add extra space to your storage total. If you use the company’s new photo gallery mobile app, Carousel, you get an extra 3 gigabytes of space. You can also earn extra storage space for linking Dropbox with its Mailbox app, referring your friends, sending feedback to the company, connecting your Dropbox to your Facebook and Twitter accounts and following the company on Twitter. If fact, Dropbox has a whole Get More Space page you can visit to learn all the ways you can add on to those original two gigs if you start running low. And if you still need more, you can always upgrade to Dropbox Pro, which starts you out at a terabyte of storage space for $10 a month.

To keep up with demand, these companies seem to be adding server racks left and right to store the bits and bytes of the world. In that regard, it seems like this sort of space isn’t the final frontier after all.