Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss the WiFi 6 standard, Alexa's new patents to read how you're feeling, Waze carpool, Google Maps re-routing, Instagram and online bullying, tech and the shopping experience, and more.

 

Doug in Stevensville, Michigan listens to the podcast and asked: "I have a question about the GoBe2 wearable fitness band with the automatic calorie tracking. How in the world does it know what I'm putting in my mouth and how many calories are in it? "

 

Well Doug, it doesn’t. We actually reached out to Healbe on your behalf, but they wouldn’t give us an answer. Luckily, we have a great team of researchers that were able to hopefully help you out.

What Healbe says their device does is track the side effects of converting food into glucose and absorbing into the body. Supposedly the tracker will track the water release and other things related to that.

Whether it works or not, who knows? In studies it’s been found to have an error rate of about 15-20%. If true that would be pretty impressive, but those are studies supplied by the manufacturer.

The tracker will also record who much you walk and your water intake too, but those things won’t help it figure out you had 3 glasses of wine, a large burger and fries, and a slice of cheesecake in one seating as opposed to a salad with no dressing, the real value is whatever proprietary technology it uses to figure out caloric intake and that’s their own trade secret.

If they really are tracking things like the water relased by cell when they process glucose, it’s impressive, especially since we also drink water and sweat, so it’d be surprising if it really worked well, but they’ve been around for a few years so maybe it does!

John in Mountain View, California asked: "Is there an objective review of all the antivirus programs that qualifies their capabilities and lack of capabilities? Would be very good to have to make sure you select the best one."

John, frankly, no.

There’s a great number of antivirus programs and they’re constantly being updated so reviews are never complete and don’t stay up to date for very long.

Your best bet is to try to read as many reviews as you can when you’re looking since things change so much, but keep in mind that there isn’t a clear winner because they’re for the most part relatively similar and there isn’t a clear standout that is miles ahead.

Andrew in Canada listens on AM800 CKLW and asked: "I just came across your program recently and really enjoy it. I have a 10 year old Mac Desktop which is still going strong and i have all updates etc on it. IN 3 weeks my norton security is up for renewal and I am wondering with all things changing etc as I have had norton for awhile if there is another software out there that is better suited for my Mac or is better than norton for firewall, antivirus etc. Also if i do change and get a new one I take it I should uninstall norton before I install the new one."

 

Andrew, Norton is good choice but if you’re looking for a change any of the big names have antiviruses for Mac.

You can find good options from Avira, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, Sophos, Bitdefender, basically any of the big names.

Since you’re paying, you should know that there are plenty of free options around, so if your concern is the amount that it’s costing you, there are plenty of free versions that are probably worth a look.

You asked if you should uninstall Norton before installing another antivirus and you definitely should. If you don’t one of the antiviruses may actually identify the other one as a potential virus.