technology

Smart phone routing lessons from recent road trips

Over the past two weeks, I have taken two long road trips. I purposely and concurrently tried several of the popular and not-so-well-known Android road routing apps, and arrived at some conclusions that may be helpful as we approach the upcoming summer travel season. I found is that what may be an excellent app under some travel circumstances approaches uselessness under other road situations.

shadow

Free digital college textbooks for all

I just returned home from the annual convention of the Texas Community College Teachers’ Association (TCCTA), held this year in Dallas. The decrease in demand for traditional bound textbooks was clearly evident in the exhibit hall of the TCCTA convention.

shadow

Amazon Prime streaming media takes on Netflix

As I type this, the extremely popular streaming media company has in excess of 50 million paid subscribers. Originally known for its mail based DVD rental service, Netflix is currently the world leader in streaming media subscriptions. Once thought of in monopoly terms, Netflix is now facing serious competition from a multitude of sources, including the online retailer Overstock.com, retailing megalith Walmart, and the marketing powerhouse of Amazon.

shadow

Are your Android apps spying on you?

In recent months, I have written several columns about Internet and smart device privacy issues. Apparently, a large number of popular apps for both Android and Apple iOS devices utilize access to personal information of various types for other than the legitimate functioning of those apps.

shadow

Federal agencies post security warnings for mobile phones

Now that the spring semester is starting, it is quite obvious that almost all of my college students have and are using smart phones and other digital communications devices for much more than the traditional calling function. With the near universal use of smart phones and related devices in our daily lives, it is inevitable that crooks and other dishonest people will find a way to illicitly capitalize on the popularity of these devices. 

shadow

My favorite free Android apps

Since announcing in a column here several weeks ago that my wife and I each have a new, high-end Android smart phone, several people have asked me what apps we put on our respective phones.

shadow

Alternative high end smart phones that will cost less

Early last summer in this column, I explained several of the alternative methods of purchasing factory new or refurbished smart phones at deeply discounted prices, without any long-term contracts. One of the sources mentioned was Google and its “Google phones,” which are sold directly by Google from its “Play Store” at play.google.com/store/devices.

shadow

How to recover a ‘crashed’ Windows 7 or 8 system

I recently received a frantic phone call from a distraught individual. He had a fairly new Windows 7-64 desktop PC not covered by warranty, and it would not properly boot up. It would briefly show that manufacturer’s splash screen, and then nothing else; the screen was black. After a period of time, the power saving feature appeared on the otherwise black screen and stated that the computer was going into hibernate mode. Nothing could bring the computer back to life; a full repeat of the “power on” cycle only produced a repetitive black screen and shutdown.

shadow

Nokia releases beta of its HERE road routing app for Android

About a year ago, I wrote about my then new favorite real-time smart phone road routing program Waze. At the time, Google had recently purchased Waze from its Israeli developer for over a billion dollars, a princely sum that the developer generously shared with his handful of employees.

shadow

Technology: Create and store secure passwords with free password managers

Wilsker

Listening to the news can often be disturbing, especially when we hear stories about massive password thefts. Recently, there were widely broadcast reports 5 million Gmail passwords were stolen, and available online to anyone wishing to use them for nefarious purposes (money.cnn.com/2014/09/10/technology/security/gmail-hack/index.html).

shadow