Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss Echo smartspeakers' equalizer, some smartspeaker users use them to avoid screens, Bixby news, unfollowing followers, cybersecurity education, self-driving cars, video shirts and top hats, and rental companies, and more.

Joe in Durham, North Carolina listens on NewsRadio 680 WPTF and asked: "I noticed that when I look at specs for computers and televisions, that some of them are Bluetooth compatible. My understanding was that Bluetooth was only for use with cell phones. What do computers and TVs need with Bluetooth?"

 

Joe, Bluetooth is in no way tied to just phones. Computers and TV benefit greatly from Bluetooth connections too.

Computers and TVs can use it to connect to devices ranging from speakers, to keyboards, to even those phones you mentioned.

Plenty of soundbars made specifically for TVs have Bluetooth inputs, and most modern laptops come with limited ports, but their Bluetooth connections allow mice and keyboards to be connected to them without using any of them up.

There are credit card readers that connect to computer via Bluetooth, computers can be unlocked via Bluetooth by a variety of devices, including smartwatches, in turn they can automatically lock for safety when the authorized user steps away.

Basically, anything that benefits from simple, short distance connectivity can benefit from Bluetooth, and computers and TVs use plenty of nearby devices.

Adam in Windsor, Ontario Canada listens on AM800 CKLW and asked: "I recently bought the Fitbit Ionic. I find that it's a great device but I drive a truck for a living and I find that it counts steps while I'm driving constantly, and it's severely impacting the results of the tracker. Now I know there's a couple workarounds with Fitbit like the "logging driving" activity, but it becomes fairly aggravating. I'm wondering if there's any type of fix so that I can still use the features of the watch and not have it count steps while I'm driving."

 

Adam, sorry but the only solution is the one you already mentioned, logging a “driving” activity and giving it times will remove the steps.

This is a problem that has plagued Fitbits from the start and they don’t seem to able to find a solution for it.

It’s easy to understand how the vibration and motion of driving a car would trigger step counts, but what we find particularly interesting is that we don’t hear these complains from wearers of other brands.

Unfortunately, Fitbit doesn’t have a solution for this issue at the moment, so you’re stuck having to log your drives if you want an accurate count.

Mel in Fairbanks, Alaska listens on 970 AM KFBX and asked: "I have a bunch of VHS tapes and I want to copy them over to DVD. What would be the best method to do that?"

 

Honestly, Mel, for most people the best method is to send them away to have it done by someone else. Even Walmart was offering the service these days.

If you do want to do it yourself, you will need something capable of playing the tape, and something capable of recording a DVD. The issue there is that VCRs are hard to find these days, and so are computers with optical drives, and even after getting your hands on both, you’ll still probably have to buy some hardware to tie them together.

In fact, you may be better off bypassing DVDs entirely, since they’re on the way out too, and going to digital files now, since you’ll likely find yourself ripping those DVDs onto digital files in a few years anyway.

Again, since this will probably require hardware, consider using a service instead.