Into Tomorrow Quickies

Peyton asked: “I’m building a computer. I’ve already put some good stuff in it, but all my games are running slow on it. What would you suggest I do, or add?”   A gaming computer’s performance is a mix of processor, memory, hard drive speed, and graphics processor. Mark’s Into Gaming feature this week was discussing his own brand new custom built gaming computer and he had lots of information on its components plus a couple photos of its tempered glass case. Before we could tell you what’s causing the slow performance, we’d really need to know what “good stuff” you’ve already put in it. As a rule of thumb, for value-priced gaming components, right now we’re recommending a 6th generation Intel i5 or i7 processor. You can spot these by the model number following the processor type, for example i5-6400 or i7-6700K. If that second number starts with a 6, you’re good to go. we’d really need to know what “good stuff” you’ve already put in it We would also recommend, for value priced gaming, either an AMD RX 480 video card or an NVIDIA GTX 1060. Yes, there are better, faster cards, but we’re talking a value build here. 16GB of memory is a good amount, whether you have DDR3 or DDR4 memory doesn’t matter as much as the elitists say it does, but DDR4 can run at higher speeds than DDR3. That’s really the big difference between them, the maximum potential speed, plus the DDR4 chips will have a bit lower latency. And make sure you get an SSD for your system drive and games. You’ll want a data drive also, so you don’t use all that expensive, high speed SSD storage for pictures of the cat. If you combine an SSD with 16GB of RAM, a modern video card, and a 6th generation i5 or i7, you’ll have plenty of gaming performance.

Jack Saugus, Massachusetts listens on WRKO and asked: “How do I reactivate my Apple ID?”   If your Apple ID has been disabled for security reasons, you can just reactivate with your old password, or change it to a new one. To do either you can just go to iForgot.Apple.com and type in your user ID or email and your password. That should do it! If you use two-factor authentication, you may have to authenticate from a trusted device, but if you don’t have one around Apple will give you a way to bypass that by answering some questions about your account to prove you are who you say you are.

Joe asked: “I am looking for a dash cam for my car and I wanted your recommendation on which one to buy.”   Joe, no one has really emerged as a strong leader in the dash cam segment, most products are fairly comparable: they’re almost all high def, with collision sensors, parking sensors that turn on the camera when they sense bumps, auto saving features to preserve accident footage, but the quality varies. The main problem people seem to face with dash cams is that they just stop working, which is understandable, they actually take quite a beating. They’re left in boiling hot parked cars in the summer, in mobile ice cubes in the winter, they’re constantly being shaken, but they’re only actually useful if you can rely on them. The main problem people seem to face with dash cams is that they just stop working Since the problem is reliability, you may be better off going with one of the few name brand options, at the very least they’ll have to stand by whatever warranty they’re willing to offer with their devices. Both Cobra and Garmin sell dashcams. Either company is probably worth a look because they’ve been making rugged gear for years, Cobra radar detectors face the same challenges dash cams face, and Garmin makes action cameras and plenty of other tough gear for cars, planes, boats, and sports in general, by now they’ve figured out how to make reliable devices. Frankly, both brands are overpriced, but then again, the less expensive cameras seem to stop working. Your choices seem to be either to overpay for better known brands that do much more than just cameras, or try your luck with less expensive brands that are unknown outside of a specific camera.

Christopher in St. Cloud, MN listens on 1450 KNSI and asked: I got 16mb speed on my Internet. There’s some speakers from Samsung that go with my Samsung sound bar, the HW7500. I’m really concerned about, do I really have enough Internet speed there ’cause it’s Bluetooth and you gotta use your phone to set it up. I’ve heard a lot of mixed things. Want to know what you guys think. Should I buy those extra speakers? Is it gonna add that much more sound to my system? Is it gonna come through without getting hiccups?   Christopher, your speakers don’t care about your internet speed at all. The Bluetooth chip on your phone actually has a range of about 30 feet, and does not need access to the internet, it exists to make simple, short distance connections. Now, if you’re worried about streaming music or videos from the internet, 16MB should do, high def content would do better with a faster connection, but your speakers won’t care. If it’s playing, it’s playing, and speakers don’t care if you’re streaming from the internet or playing from a local source. As for whether or not the soundbar will add much more sound to your system, well, it depends on your system. If it’s just a TV: Yes. Modern TV speakers are tiny and very bad, the soundbar and paired subwoofer of the HW7500 will sound much better. If you already have a sound theater system, probably not so much. Traditional home theater setups with multiple speakers sound better than standalone soundbars, they’re just more of a hassle to set up and hide so they don’t stand out too much. Traditional home theater setups with multiple speakers sound better than standalone soundbars, they’re just more of a hassle to set up If you find that you’re having trouble playing streaming music from your phone over the Bluetooth soundbar, the issue might  be the fact that some phones don’t seem to do two things at once as well as they should. We’ve heard of phones that can stream music just fine and can play music over Bluetooth speakers just fine also, but when you combine the two they can’t seem to keep up. To test if this is the case, download a song or three to your smartphone and play those on the soundbar. If they work and your streaming playback doesn’t, then you might have one of “those phones.” Larry in Japan asked: “I tried to download the Into Tomorrow Android app, from Google Play and cannot find it. It’s very confusing because you’re always saying to download the “Into Tomorrow” app. Hmmm…. Second item. I have an ASUS X202E laptop. I want to use an external mic. It has the port that says headphones/mic. I tried to put in an external microphone. It does not work. I have gone to several sites to make this happen. The instructions to make a NASA rocket are much easier than the instructions I received. Do you have any way that is relatively easy to make an external mic work on my Asus laptop?”   We aren’t sure what was preventing you from finding the Into Tomorrow app in the Google Play store. We just tested it before this show and when we selected Apps and searched for Into Tomorrow, it was the fifth app listed. We think it should be first, of course, but that’ll happen as more of our loyal listeners download and use it. The issue with your laptop is that the microphone jack on the side is really designed for a headset microphone. When you plug your external microphone into the jack, you should be able to pull up your Realtek audio control panel and double click on the graphic down the right hand side of the app window, which is representing your audio inputs and outputs. With a laptop it might only be a single port, labeled “Analog.”

Karl asked: “Interested in getting more information on place shifting. In particular, want to get my off-air signal from my living room to a different room, using my iPad. I’d also like to pickup the off-air signal and watch it at a different location using my Macbook. I have ITV software on my desktop Mac, not sure if it’ll do it. I’m also looking at Tablo, Slingbox and Sage open source software. Some ideas, please.”   If it’s over the air TV only for you, then you’re going to need a product like a TiVo Bolt, a Magnavox OTA DVR, or a Tablo. None of these are perfect solutions. The TiVo products are oriented toward subscription services. Yes, they’ll handle OTA recording, but they really want to work with your cable or satellite provider via CableCard, and TiVo themselves will charge you a service fee. You buy the box and still pay for the service. The Magnavox OTA DVRs are interesting. They do one thing (record over the air TV and play it back, including place shifting) and they do it pretty well, but that’s all they do. No smart apps in the devices themselves at all. If you want Netflix, look elsewhere. There are three models coming out this fall, all of them pricey, with the difference between them being one model includes a DVD burner while the other two differ in the number of tuners supported. If you want Netflix, look elsewhere. Tablo’s box handles the OTA DVR and place shifting just fine, but it doesn’t have any video output of its own. So you can’t connect a TV to it in your primary location. Everything is place shifted, you’d need another streaming media console that would work with the Tablo. If all you want to do is place shift and you don’t care to watch content at the device itself, it’s worth considering. All of us like Slingbox products here, but Sling Media won’t confirm or deny their new AirTV product that may or may not be coming soon. In the meantime, Slingbox works with your existing subscription services. Sling TV, their streaming service, would be an interesting alternative, but you’re back to paying for the content.

Kenneth asked: “How do I keep icons on the bottom of of the screen. On the ZTE Avid Plus. When I turn the phone off, and back on they disappear.”   Kenneth, you’re probably doing everything right already! They most likely issue is a little obscure. You may have noticed that some big name manufacturers go back and forth about whether or not to allow SD cards on their flagship phones… you just stumbled onto one of the reasons why. Apps on SD cards have a number of downsides, among them: SD cards are slower than internal storage, if the card is damaged or removed the app disappears but the rest of the phone seems to run without issue, and the card needs to be mounted. Until it is, the phone cannot read the information on it. Some big name manufacturers go back and forth about whether or not to allow SD cards on their flagship phones… you just stumbled onto one of the reasons why What this means for you is that until the phone is done preparing to read the card and actually reading it, it thinks the app is gone. Since the app “is gone” as far as the phone is concerned it removes it from the dock at the bottom of the screen. Then it finds it and think “Oh great! New app! I’ll add it to the app drawer” and it shows up as one of your many apps. The easiest solution is to open your settings and go to the apps you want to keep at the bottom of the screen and ask your phone to move them to internal storage. After you do that, they should stay through reboots. If that also doesn’t work, remember that Android does let you use alternative launchers, so worst case you can install a different one to get around the problem, but that’s a more extreme solution, try to move the app to internal storage first.

Jeff asked: “About 2 or 3 weeks ago you had someone call asking about HD radio. You mentioned one – I don’t know if it’s one that y’all have or something – that you could hook up to speakers. Just wondering what radio that was and what other portable HD radios that you know about.”   The ones we mentioned are our own portable “Into Tomorrow”-branded radios, but we have given them all away to listeners already. If you want to look at that particular model, those were Sparc portable radios, but there are plenty of other options too. The $50 Insignia NS-HDRAD is portable, and also has a jack if you want to plug in speakers for better sound. Sangean makes the $100 HDR-16 portable model with a handle, and several smaller units without a handle like the $40 PR-D18BK. What you get is usually always the same: AM, FM, and HD. The real extra here is the HD stations. If you want to find out what that means to you in particular, you can head to HDRadio.com and see what HD stations are available in your market. In our area HD Radio will give the user access to 39 extra stations and that includes both talk and music stations.

Rich asked: “My 10 year old son has been going to Internet sites he shouldn’t be visiting. He’s created his own accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other sites without my permission. I’ve tried using Microsoft Family Safety, Circle, and OpenDNS, but none of them give me full control over my son’s Internet activities. Most services expect me to give them control while others treat the whole family the same. Do have any recommendations for an Internet filter that allows parents to set white and black lists for their kids? I’m willing to buy a new router if necessary.”   Rich, if you want to give different users their own preferences, and those services didn’t work for you, you will probably have to go for that router, but first check the one you have. Many routers, even the ones that ISPs give out to their customers, have parental controls, and most include blacklists and the ability to exempt certain computer’s MAC addresses from the restrictions you set. You should also be able to keep certain users offline at specific hours, if you want to make sure your son gets a break from his internet habit. If your router doesn’t, almost any you buy will, but don’t assume they’re all the same. Some routers actually have what is considered an added benefit: OpenDNS as parental controls. Since you’ve already tried OpenDNS and don’t want it, you want something far simpler, just a whitelist and a blacklist, that should be easier to find. We suggest you double check that you’re not getting something fancier that won’t meet your needs. Any gateway to the internet that bypasses your home connection won’t be controlled by it As always, keep in mind that any gateway to the internet that bypasses your home connection won’t be controlled by it, so if your son has a cellphone with a data plan, a router or any services will not help when he’s using that data plan. Honestly, the big issue here is how tech savvy is your 10 year old son? For instance, if your home firewall allowed you to create rules that controlled incoming and outgoing traffic, you could then write a rule that blocked all traffic on port 53 (that’s DNS) not going to OpenDNS. The kids learn the trick of putting Google’s public DNS on their phones and computers, but if they’re using your WiFi, it wouldn’t work. They would HAVE to use OpenDNS, and suddenly your filtering is more effective. However, if your 10 year old is extremely tech savvy, he might know that if he enters the IP address numerically, so the system doesn’t need to run a DNS query, that gets around OpenDNS. Or he might know how to create a local hosts file on a Windows computer and supply the IP addresses of the domains he wants to access. OpenDNS combined with a router/firewall that allows you to block any DNS requests not going to OpenDNS is probably the best filter. We’d really need to have some more specifics regarding exactly how the filtering systems let you down. We know that Circle, for instance, can fall a bit flat if you’re running both 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi networks. So perhaps we can give you some better advice if you give us some more details. For now, we’ll say that OpenDNS combined with a router/firewall that allows you to block any DNS requests not going to OpenDNS is probably the best filter. However, as we already mentioned, if your son has a data plan on his smartphone all he has to do is turn off WiFi and connect to the cellular network, and he’s skating past all your filters. Not much you can do there except take away the phone. OpenDNS’ Umbrella service that covers mobile devices also is an enterprise-level offering that requires corporate control ...

Dave asked Nick Bayerque, CEO  of The Gone App about their app that to buy and sell second-hand electronics

Dave talks to Raefer Gabriel, CEO of Delvv about the growing problem of information overload among smartphone users and its health implications.

Dave talks to Brian Hastings, Author at Sterling Publishing Co.  & Chief Creative Officer of Insomniac Games about the newest game from Insomniac Games which ties in book empowering girls in the STEM field

 Tech News and Commentary The Team discusses Pokemon Go, keeping an eye on what apps a child downloads, a less expensive way to do VR, downloading all of your Facebook albums, trying out Windows 10 before installing it. Our guest this hour: Joy Deep Nath, Co-Founder – Splash Math – Program that helps kids master math skills on iPads, laptops & desktops     When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … these are among the prizes you can receive this week: GoGo Inflight Internet: Several codes for free In-flight Internet on participating airlines OtterBox: Defender and Symmetry series cases for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 Kountable: Helping you grow your business: T-Shirts, Pens & Coffee Mugs SmartWater CSI: Thieves beware SmartWater CSI has a way to protect your valuables with their forensic coding system. Mota: Power Bank External Battery stick to charge your smartphone or tablet Catalyst: Waterproof cases and floating lanyards for iPhone and iPads AND the BIG prize from Sector 5:  We have a 65” UltraHD 4K TV!  – 60 Frames per Second  – With DLED – their Direct LED, as opposed to the usual edge lighting, this 4K TV has 16 diffused LED panels directly behind the screen  – the effect is truer blacks, better contrast and an overall crisper image. – Built-in Sound Bar – Lots of Inputs! All CALLERS — using the AUDIO option on our Free App or 1-800-899-INTO(4686) from now thru the end of August – automatically qualify – in addition to the other items you win automatically when heard on the air. Use the AUDIO option on the free “Into Tomorrow” App or call 1-800-899-INTO (4686) anytime.

 Tech News and Commentary The Team discusses a hip, cool, cringeworthy Microsoft bot, a Dish remote that listens to you, DC Emergency Services want to send you an Uber, transferring your Xbox 360 data to the Xbox One, and simple video editing software. Our guest this hour: Rick Perez, President – South Florida Security Group – Provides security officers and customized mobile patrol services When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … these are among the prizes you can receive this week: GoGo Inflight Internet: Several codes for free In-flight Internet on participating airlines OtterBox: Defender and Symmetry series cases for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 Kountable: Helping you grow your business: T-Shirts, Pens & Coffee Mugs Mota: Power Bank External Battery stick to charge your smartphone or tablet Catalyst: Waterproof cases and floating lanyards for iPhone and iPads AND the BIG prize from Sector 5:  We have a 65” UltraHD 4K TV!  – 60 Frames per Second  – With DLED – their Direct LED, as opposed to the usual edge lighting, this 4K TV has 16 diffused LED panels directly behind the screen  – the effect is truer blacks, better contrast and an overall crisper image. – Built-in Sound Bar – Lots of Inputs! All CALLERS — using the AUDIO option on our Free App or 1-800-899-INTO(4686) from now thru the end of August – automatically qualify – in addition to the other items you win automatically when heard on the air. Use the AUDIO option on the free “Into Tomorrow” App or call 1-800-899-INTO (4686) anytime.

 Tech News and Commentary The Team discusses an Irish man using his drone to rescue a friend, Pokemon Go and drones, Tesla’s Autopilot crashes, a new planet, a motherboard swap’s effect on a Windows license, uninstalling OneNote, and a 2-in-1 modem router combo or standalone units. Our guest this hour: Nick Kyriakides, Chief Operating Officer – netTalk.com – Ultra-low cost home phone and smartphone communications     When you participate on the show – anytime 24/7 – and we HEAR you with any consumer tech question, comment, help for another listener, tech rage or just share your favorite App these days … these are among the prizes you can receive this week: GoGo Inflight Internet: Several codes for free In-flight Internet on participating airlines OtterBox: Defender and Symmetry series cases for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 Kountable: Helping you grow your business: T-Shirts, Pens & Coffee Mugs SmartWater CSI: Thieves beware SmartWater CSI has a way to protect your valuables with their forensic coding system. Mota: Power Bank External Battery stick to charge your smartphone or tablet Catalyst: Waterproof cases and floating lanyards for iPhone and iPads AND the BIG prize from Sector 5:  We have a 65” UltraHD 4K TV!  – 60 Frames per Second  – With DLED – their Direct LED, as opposed to the usual edge lighting, this 4K TV has 16 diffused LED panels directly behind the screen  – the effect is truer blacks, better contrast and an overall crisper image. – Built-in Sound Bar – Lots of Inputs! All CALLERS — using the AUDIO option on our Free App or 1-800-899-INTO(4686) from now thru the end of August – automatically qualify – in addition to the other items you win automatically when heard on the air. Use the AUDIO option on the free “Into Tomorrow” App or call 1-800-899-INTO (4686) anytime.

Steven asked: “I’m currently with Cox communications for Internet and am currently renting a modem from them. It’s a 2-in-1 modem/router. I want to buy my own. Would you suggest a get a 2-in-1 modem/router or separate dual band modem and router?”   Generally speaking, a standalone router is usually better. You can get away with a combo unit for home use, though. A standalone router will usually have better security settings, and often times more QoS (quality of service) and other options than combo units. Having a standalone router would also make it easier to upgrade if you’re interested in the higher speeds of a future generation Having a standalone router would also make it easier to upgrade if you’re interested in the higher speeds of a future generation, since modems evolve more slowly than routers do. Having said that, most people just set up a router once and forget it exists unless it stops working, so if you’re one of those people, you may be able to save some money by using a combo unit instead. Our in-house gaming nerd has a second home in Cox territory and Mark reports good success with the Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 24×8 WiFi Cable Modem and Router. The Netgear model number is C7000-NAS100. It’s fully supported by Cox Communications, installation was nearly painless, requiring one short online chat with the Cox support people, and the performance is blazing fast. If you’re wondering about the online chat before the modem was installed, Mark explained that he used his smartphone as a hot spot to chat from his laptop while setting up the modem. That particular Netgear model runs around $220, so be sure to figure out how long it will take you to recoup your investment, but we’re confident you’d be happy with how it worked.