Walter writes, “I read a story about a teenager who ran up a $2,000 phone bill because they thought they were using Wi-Fi but they were actually on the cellular network. I didn’t catch the whole story, but I know it had something to do with iPhones. Do you know what’s going on?”

We heard about that story too, Walter, and all we can say is, “Yikes!”

It sounds like it wasn?t entirely the kid’s fault, though. There’s a new feature in iOS 9 called Wi-Fi Assist that was at least partially responsible.

Wi-Fi Assist helps to make sure you have a solid data connection when you’re using Wi-Fi, even if your Wi-Fi connection is really weak. For example, if you’re in a part of your house that is far away from your wireless router, Wi-Fi Assist will automatically switch your phone over to 4G cellular data to keep you connected to the internet.

This is great for people who have unlimited data plans, but it could run up your bill pretty quickly if you have a data cap and you’re not paying attention to how much you’re using.

For tips on keeping your data usage low, check out our other articles here, here and here.

If you’re worried about Wi-Fi Assist eating up your data, here’s how to turn it off:

• Open the Settings app
• Tap Cellular
• Scroll all the to the bottom of that menu
• Tap the toggle button next to Wi-Fi Assist

In the Cellular menu, you’ll also see a list of all of the apps on your phone that use cellular data. Next to each one is a toggle button to turn data for it on or off. It’s a good idea to look through this list to see if there are any using data that don’t need to be, especially ones you rarely use anymore.

Steve writes, “When I’m on the internet, I constantly see things pop up on the screen that say ‘Check for malware now’ or ‘You’re missing drivers, click to update.’ Should I click on it? The way things are nowadays, I’m afraid to try!” 

Don’t click on it, Steve! As our friend Admiral Ackbar would say:

What you’re seeing is a pop-up ad designed to trick you into visiting a spam website or downloading harmful malware.

Internet pop-ups will disguise themselves as all kinds of stuff to get you to click on them. Spammers have gotten pretty good at making pop-ups look like legitimate error messages, so sometimes it can be hard to tell it’s a pop-up until it?s too late. Our advice is to install a pop-up blocker extension for your browser.

Extensions (also known as add-ons) are little programs you can install on some web browsers which give them extra features. There are a lot of extensions for the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers, including effective pop-up blockers.

Adblock Plus is one of the most popular pop-up blockers, and is available for both Firefox and Chrome. It not only kills 98 percent of pop-up ads, but also removes most of the in-page ads from many websites. Try it out, and hopefully you’ll never see another one of those pesky fake error messages again.

But we wouldn’t stop there with browser extensions. You can trick out your browser in a number of cool ways. Some of our favorites include:

• Lazarus: Form Recovery – Remembers what you were typing in an online form, in case something happens while you’re filling one out and you lose everything. (Lazarus for Chome) (Lazarus for Firefox)

• Panic Button – Immediately hides all of your open browser tabs with a single click. We’re not saying that it comes in really handy for when your boss walks by, but we’d have to imagine it would. (Panic Button for Chrome) (Panic Button for Firefox)

• LastPass – One of our favorite password managers. Stores all of your passwords, generates complex new ones, and automatically fills in login fields for you. (LastPass for Chrome) (LastPass for Firefox)

• Honey – Automatically finds coupon codes and sales for many popular online stores. (Honey for Chrome) (Honey for Firefox)

• Google Tone – Google’s experimental extension, only for Chrome, which lets you share links with your nearby friends through sound. (Google Tone for Chrome)

It’s important that you only download Firefox add-ons from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on site, and only download Chrome extensions from the Google Chrome web store. Downloading extensions from other locations could be dangerous.

You may have noticed that we haven?t mentioned extensions for Microsoft?s Internet Explorer browser. The reason is, well, IE doesn?t really support them. That?s just one of its many, many issues. In fact, with Windows 10, Microsoft is officially killing it and replacing it with the new Edge Browser, which will support extensions soon. Until then, we recommend giving Firefox or Chrome a shot.

Safe surfing!

Image Credit: Tap Call

Norma writes, “How do you stop receiving an automated text message? When I got my new phone I started receiving messages from a store telling me about their specials. I’ve tried visiting the website and ‘unsubscribing’ but that didn’t work.”

We feel you, Norma. Like junk mail and spam email, unsolicited text messages are the bane of our existence. Luckily there are ways to stop them.

If you’re receiving texts from a reputable company, there should be a way to unsubscribe from them through a text. Scroll back through the text messages from that number, and you’ll probably find a message telling you to text the word “STOP,” “QUIT,” “END,” or “UNSUBSCRIBE” to stop receiving texts from them. Different companies use different keywords, but most of the time if you text the word “HELP” to them, they will tell you what other keywords work on their system.

If you’re receiving genuine spam texts from a less than reputable source, the best thing you can do is to not respond. This just lets the scammers know that your number is a good one to keep spamming. Your only choice is to block the number sending you those texts.

How to block numbers on iOS

• Open the offending text message
• Tap Details
• Tap the “i” button in the top right
• Tap “Block this Caller”

How to block numbers on Android

• Find the text message you want to block in the Message app
• Press and hold it until a pop up appears
• Tap the “Block it as spam” option

If you’re using a regular cell phone, you’ll have to block the texts through your carrier.

AT&T

• To report spam text messages on AT&T, forward the offending text message to 7726 (SPAM)
• You can also call their customer service at 1-800-331-0500 to report spam

Sprint

• Follow these directions on Sprint’s site to block numbers
• Or call customer service at 1-888-211-4727

Verizon

• Call 1-800-922-0204 to report the spam to customer service

T-Mobile

• Call customer service at 1-877-453-1304
• Or use their live chat to block the number

Joan writes, “I’m running Windows 7 on my laptop, and for the past five months I’ve had a request pending to get the upgrade to Windows 10. Am I supposed to just keep waiting patiently, or is there something else I’m supposed to do?”

Congratulations, Joan, on being way more patient than we are! We’re about to lose our minds just waiting for the next season of “Sherlock” to air.

You should be able to download and upgrade to Windows 10 right now for free, if you’re currently using Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 Most Windows users have been receiving little notifications about the update since July 2015. If you clicked on that notification and followed the directions, it should have upgraded your system as soon as Windows 10 became available.

If you’re not getting those notifications, or that option just didn’t work for some reason, you can go to Microsoft’s website and click the Windows 10 link to manually start the download and installation.

But why would you want to upgrade to Windows 10? Well, it depends on which operating system you’re currently using.

Windows 10 is a much smaller installation than Windows 7. It runs a lot faster, and you’ll see a big performance boost by upgrading, even without changing any of the hardware in your computer.

For those readers currently running Windows 8, you absolutely have to upgrade to Windows 10 as soon as possible. Microsoft dropped support for Windows 8 in early 2016, which means there won’t be any more security updates, software patches or bug fixes.

There aren’t as many differences between Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, but we still suggest upgrading anyway. You’ll get the latest version that should be supported for longer, and you?ll get some cool new features like Cortana, Microsoft’s virtual assistant that is sort of like Siri for your home PC.

Another new feature we really like are virtual desktops, which let you set up multiple virtual workspaces on one computer and switch back and forth between them. It’s like having multiple screens without having extra monitors.

So, Joan, go ahead and upgrade, and see if you like it!

Today we have not one but two related questions from different listeners.

Lenny writes, “Last week I received a call from a guy who said he was from Microsoft. He said they had detected that my computer was having problems. To prove it, he told me how to open my Windows log file, and when I did it was full of errors. So I paid him to fix all the problems and scan for viruses. Now I’m wondering if that was really a good idea.”

Sandra sends us a similar story. She says: “I was checking my email and all of a sudden windows started giving me an error message which said it had a virus. It included a phone number. I called the number and a man connected to my computer and fixed it. But now my computer runs slowly and this guy charged me a lot of money. Have I been hacked?”

Neither Sandra nor Lenny were hacked. They were, unfortunately, the victims of one of the most popular scams on the internet these days.

Here’s how it works: crafty scammers convince people that their computer has a serious problem, and the only way to fix it is to pay the scammers money. In actuality, there is no such problem, and these people are paying for nothing.

This is such a major issue that Microsoft testified about it in front of Congress in the fall of 2015. These scammers love to impersonate major, legitimate companies like Microsoft, Apple, and HP, which can create problems for those organizations.

So, what can you do to make sure you don’t fall for this scam? Remember one simple rule: tech support will never call you out of the blue. You call them first.

And just to be clear, Windows error messages do not include a number for Microsoft tech support. If you see an error message that says you need to call Microsoft or any other company immediately, there is a good chance that you are seeing a fake error message. Maybe it’s just a clever web page, but do not call the phone number.

If you do talk to these scammers, they can be very convincing. They may do things like you show a Windows log file full of errors to make you think there is something wrong with your PC. The thing is, though, your computer’s logs are always full of errors, but they are little ones that are perfectly normal.

Unfortunately, both Sandra and Lenny let the scammers gain access to their computers. All of these scammers, once they have you on the phone, will ask you to run or download programs that let them look at your computer remotely. Do not do this! You should never let someone who you don’t completely trust have remote access to your computer. They can’t get into your computer unless you let them.

If you’re not sure if someone is from tech support, hang up on them, find the manual for your computer, and call the number in there. That’s the real number, the one that you can trust.

Credit: Misbehave / Flickr

Thurman writes, “I have a hard drive that was removed from my old computer before I got rid of it. It has some pictures on it that I don’t have stored anywhere else and some of my old tax returns. Is there anything I can do with it, or is it just a hunk of junk? And, should I be concerned about other people getting into it if I throw it out?” 

You can definitely make use of that old hard drive, and you can get those pictures and tax returns off of it too!

No matter how old your hard drive is, it will still probably work with the latest and greatest computers. If you have a new desktop computer, it might even be as simple as opening up your computer case and just plugging that hard drive in. This can be hit-or-miss since a lot of new desktop computers are so small that there’s no room for a second hard drive.

However, almost all computers have a USB port. All you need is a special adapter to change your internal hard drive into an external one, and then you can plug that hard drive into the computer’s USB port.

External hard drive adapters are available almost anywhere you can purchase computers, and vary in price from $5 to $30. If you’re only going to use it once, or you don?t care if it looks fancy, the lower priced ones will work just fine.

Now, Thurman, you asked if you should be concerned about your data if you just throw that hard drive away. The answer is a resounding YES. You should definitely be concerned about your privacy, as it’s just as easy for someone else to put that hard drive into their computer as it is for you. Even if you delete your sensitive files, they pretty easy to retrieve.

Your computer doesn’t really erase files when you delete them, it just pretends that the space is no longer written on. To make sure that your hard drive is secure and completely erased, the U.S Department of Defense recommends that you write over every sector with new data at least three times (or even up to 35 times, if you really want to be safe). Each single bit of the hard drive needs to be written over with all ones and zeroes.

We know that sounds daunting, but there are a few easy ways to accomplish this. If you have a PC, you can use a program like Eraser or the “Drive Wiper” feature in C Cleaner. If you’re a Mac person, try using a program called Permanent Eraser.

Just plug in your hard drive to your new computer using the USB adapter, run one of the programs to wipe it, and you’re good to go. Just make sure you wipe the right hard drive.

Read Deemable Tech’s live blog from the Apple special press event discussing the announcements of the iPad Pro, new Apple TV and the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus, and the new accessories, Apple Pencil and Keyboard.

Weaponized drones, Ashley Madison, Facebook’s new virtual assistant and artificial intelligence are all in the news this week.

If you?re listening to Deemable Tech on the website, make sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher. And, while you?re there, leave a review. The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

If you have a response or comment for the show, give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

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THE RUN DOWN

Ashley Madison was nothing but a honeypot

Ashley Madison is still in the news. Gizmodo is reporting that hardly any of the real women on Ashley Madison actually used the site. Salon says that the number of fake female accounts is close to 95% which sounds about right from my experience. Like I’ve mentioned on the show a few times most of the women on the site are bots. By most, I mean, I don’t think I ever spoke to a single real person the entire time I was on the site. So, there were only about 5.5 million female accounts, meaning that there were only about 250 thousand real women on the website.

To make things even worse for Avid Life Media, of those 250 thousand women, a very small number of them actually used the site. Only about 2400 used the chat system and 1,400 used the messaging system. Considering the site also had 31.3 million men, and the site billed itself as a place to find women who wanted to have an affair, that is pretty rough for the company. It looks like they didn’t have the product to sell, so they built bots. Lots of the accounts have email addresses like 100@ashleymadison.com.

Ashley Madison CEO gets the “mutual agreement” boot

So, it shouldn’t come as much surprise that Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman, has quit his job as CEO ? “in mutual agreement with the company.”

A company that sold a service so crappy that women barely signed up for it, so the company had to make bots, and the site was so insecure that all of its data was dumped on the Internet. Yeah, I don’t know why they didn’t want to keep him around.

That being said, we are happy to say, this is the last time we are going to talk about Ashley Madison, Established Gentlemen or Avid Life Media, hopefully for a long time.

Facebook launches new virtual assistant “M”

Following in the footsteps of Apple?s Siri, Google Now and Microsoft?s Cortana, Facebook unveiled a new virtual assistant this week that they?re calling ?M.?

M will be built into the Facebook Messenger app. Unlike its competitors, M is – at least for the time being – is entirely text based.

As Wired reports, there is another huge difference between M and the other virtual assistants: M will use a hybrid of artificial intelligence and real people to complete tasks.

A team of employees called ?M trainers? will work alongside the software to make sure every question and request is answered. Facebook says M will offer a true personal assistant experience by helping users book restaurants, pick out and deliver gifts and more.

During internal employee testing, one of the most popular requests for M was to call the user?s cable company so they wouldn?t have sit through long wait lines and automated messages.

David Marcus, vice president of messaging products at Facebook, says they are also looking for a way to partner with businesses that get a lot of requests through M.

Facebook is currently doing a trial run for M with a few hundred users in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Facebook Hits 1 Billion Visitors A Day

Speaking of The Facebook, the Associated Press reported this week that the social media behemoth hit a major milestone as one billion users visited the site in a single day. Facebook hit a billion users back in 2012, but there is a significant difference between having a billion users and having a billion people actually logging onto your site and using it every day. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrated the milestone in a Facebook post, stating that this meant that 1 out of every 7 people on earth had logged onto the site that day.

North Dakota legalizes armed police drones

NPR reports that North Dakota has passed a law legalizing use of drones armed with ?less than lethal? weapons by law enforcement. Less than lethal weapons apparently include  tear gas, rubber bullets, beanbags, pepper spray and Tasers. The bill?s sponsor, Republican State Senator Becker said that the bill was actually intended to require police to get warrants before using drones for surveillance. In order to pass the bill, however, compromises had to be included. Becker says that he hopes to get the weaponization part of the bill overturned in a future session.

Arrrrrrr-tificial Intelligence Predicts Pirate Attacks

Our next story is about the rapidly growing field of Arrrrrr-tificial intelligence. David Nield at Science Alert reports that the Navy has filed a patent for a computerized system that can predict pirate attacks based on previous intelligence, weather, and other factors. Modern day piracy is a real problem, costing the US maritime industry an estimated $16 billion per year. The Navy?s pirate attack computer model would be able to simulate attacks by large numbers of ?virtual pirates? and generate probability estimates of when and where pirate attacks are most likely to take place.

Uber hires Jeep hackers

Regular listeners will remember that not long ago we talked about the two hackers who were able to take control of a Jeep?s engine and brakes through its uConnect system. The hack made such big headlines that it caused Fiat Chrysler to issue a recall. Well Engadget reports that this week Uber announced that it had hired the men behind the hack, Charlie Miller and Chris Valacek, to work at its Advanced Technology Center in Pennsylvania. Like other tech companies, Uber is known to be exploring the possibilities of autonomous cars. Making sure that your driverless car has robust security to keep it from being remotely controlled by a hacker is probably a smart move.

BEM Twitter Account

Just wanted to share a great Twitter account I just discovered: Bored Elon Musk. This parody account purports to be the downtime thoughts of Musk, the inventor, entrepreneur and cofounder of Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX.

Photo credit: “Don’t Taze Me, Drone!” by Ray Hollister is a derivative work of “Project 365 #121: 010515 Attack Of The Drones!” by Pete used under CC BY 2.0.

This week Ray warns us about storing our SSDs in hot places, unless you want to wipe your drives clean. Tom explores the dangers of asking questions on Quora. And Sean finds out why one company is trying to make the food replicators from Star Trek a reality. Plus the guys look at Facebook’s new “instant articles,” learn why Microsoft is saying Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows they’ll release, and delve into Verizon’s purchase of AOL. Then later, Sean acts like Steve Harvey as Tom and Ray play a few rounds of the online game Google Feud.

But first, could we ask a favor of you? If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

SSDs can lose data really fast

You know those amazingly fast SSDs that are replacing hard drives in high end laptops like practically every Mac on the market? Well, there is a trade off. You definitely don’t want to store your wedding pictures on them. Or your tax records. Or your receipts from Best Buy. Because, some SSDs can lose their data in only a few days.

According to Gizmodo, heat is the enemy. The length of data retention is cut in half for every nine degrees of temperature increase. So, if you do like a lot of people Ray has talked to have done, and stick your old computer in a hot storage unit, expect to reinstall Windows on it when you get it out, because the SSD might be blank.

Just another reminder to back up your data!

Man weighing two job offers finds one of them retracted after asking Quora which of them he should take

In the news this week, yet another cautionary tale about being very careful with what you post online.

Last week a San Francisco engineer who was weighing competing job offers from Uber and Zenefits posted on Quora, asking the advice of its users on which to take. The engineer said that he liked what Zenefits was offering but that it didn’t seem as compelling a ?buzzword? to have on his resume as Uber.

The dilemma was presumably cleared up for the engineer when Zenefits’ CEO responded, saying “Definitely not Zenefits,” and retracting the job offer.

While the post was later changed to remove the public job retraction, presumably the damage was done. It was not clear if the candidate, who remains anonymous, had accepted Uber’s offer.

Microsoft representative claims that Windows 10 is the “last” version of Windows

This week at Microsoft’s Ignite conference, tech evangelist Jerry Nixon was quoted as saying, “Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10.” Microsoft confirmed this statement to The Verge, saying that it would be focusing on “Windows as a service,” delivering continuous updates to the system rather than rolling out new versions of Windows.

That is of course until the next time Marketing gets a bright idea in its head and they announce Windows 20.

Facebook rolls out “instant articles” from major news publishers

Starting this week on the iOS Facebook app, some news articles will load much, much faster when you click on them. Facebook is calling these ?instant articles?, and they will be available from a handful of publishers that have partnered with Facebook, including the New York Times, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, BBC News and National Geographic, among others. Instant articles won?t look much different to users, at least at first – they will just load instantly when clicked. In the future, however, Facebook may add auto-playing “video covers” as well.

Facebook will allow new, special interactions with Instant Articles, including audio captions, geotagged photos, and interactive maps. And of course, there will be no ads.

No word yet on when Android users will see this feature.

Israeli company creates Genie, a futuristic appliance that can create instant meals on demand

A new Israeli device called the Genie, which claims its inspiration from Star Trek’s fictional replicators, can turn pods of dehydrated powders into meals on demand. While details are light, supposedly the meals can be customized to personal preference, including specifying whether they should be gluten-, dairy-, or egg-free. The Genie will also work with smartphones and mobile devices.

No word if it responds to voice commands like, “Tea, earl gray, hot.”

Verizon announces plan to buy AOL for 4.4 billion dollars

In a surprise announcement this week, Verizon and AOL announced that Verizon will buy AOL for $4.4 billion dollars. People with knowledge of the matter say that Verizon is looking to acquire AOL’s mobile, video and advertising technology. Verizon may be looking to offer its own streaming video platform which it can sell ads against. It will also acquire popular news site The Huffington Post, not to mention the legacy dial-up service which once made AOL a powerhouse.

Verizon is currently valued at $200 billion dollars, making the four and a half billion in cash they plan to spend on AOL little more than a rounding error.

It’s time to play the feud!

Credit: Google Feud

You may have seen the site Google Feud making the rounds on social media recently. This online game combines weird Google autocomplete search suggestions with Family Feud style game play, in which you have to guess the top 10 ways Google autocompletes a specific sentence or question (for example, “Is it weird to _____”). Sean plays the role of Steve Harvey – or John O’Hurley, Louie Anderson, Richard Dawson, or whoever you favorite Family Feud host was – while Ray and Tom guess their way through a few rounds.

This week Tom brings the joyous news that Nintendoland is coming! Ray wants fast passes to the Mario Kart ride. But none of the guys want to ride on a Boeing 787 after Ray tells the guys that some of the planes are turning off… in mid air. Not good. Oculus finally announces a consumer model of the Oculus Rift. People are breaking/not breaking their Microsoft Surface 3 tablets. Twitter broke MS-DOS games, and Tesla just brought the future one step closer to today. All that on this week’s episode.

But first, could we ask a favor of you? If you’re listening to Deemable Tech on our website, would you subscribe to the show on iTunes or on Stitcher? And, while you’re there, would you leave a review and say a few nice things about us? The more subscribers we have and reviews we get, the more people will find our show.

The Deemable Tech Podcast is brought to you by A Small Orange, Homegrown Hosting. A refreshingly different approach to web hosting. On the web at asmallorange.com.

Make sure to share Deemable Tech on the forums, Facebook, Twitter and all over the interwebs.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

THIS WEEK’S RUN DOWN

Nintendo Theme Park

Who is up for Mario Kart in real life? Nintendo announced during an earnings call this week that it is partnering with Universal Parks and Resorts which runs the Universal Studios theme parks to create Nintendo-themed rides and attractions. Nintendo has not announced specific details on which of its properties it would adapt, but it seems like a safe bet that it will leverage long lasting and popular characters and games like Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong. In fact, Universal executive Tom Schroder said pretty much exactly that in a press release: “The immersive experiences will include major attractions at Universal?s theme parks and will feature Nintendo?s most famous characters and games.”

Have you tried turning your plane off and on again?

The FAA sent out a warning on May 1st that Boeing 787s may have some computer problems that could cause your terrible, terrible death. Mashable reports that the administration discovered the computers in 787s have a “software counter” that periodically shuts down all electrical systems, which results in “loss of control of the airplane.” Now, I’m not an aviation expert, but I think that is a bad thing. Am I right in assuming that guys?

Boeing is working out a software update that will eliminate the problem, but until then, they have issued a work around. If you work in the IT industry or have ever worked technical support you are probably familiar with it:

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

Yes folks, it’s the I.T. Crowd fix.

Call Roy and Moss or your plane will crash to the ground.

Oculus announces “Q1 2016” release for Rift

In other news that is sure to have gamers everywhere jumping for joy, Oculus announced this week that the first commercial release of their hotly anticipated virtual reality headset the Oculus Rift will be in early 2016.

The company also released promotional images of the sleek final consumer product after several years of prototypes.

Oculus first made a splash at the E3 gaming expo in 2012, followed by a very successful Kickstarter campaign. They also kicked off a virtual reality race, with other big companies like Sony and Valve and HTC working on releasing their own VR products.

How low can you go?

One of the most interesting tablets to come out, other than the iPad, has definitely been the Microsoft Surface. Sure, it’s had its share of troubles. It came out with Windows RT, which was this weird, stripped down version of Windows. It had two interfaces, the desktop and the “tablet” UI which really confused people. But, it was an incredible design that really changed the market, making it a serious contender for a laptop replacement. One of its signature features was the coveted kickstand that can hold the tablet in one of three positions. Well, now the Verge is reporting that Redditors have discovered a secret fourth position for the Surface 3 kickstand. Apparently, if you keep pressing the kickstand back after the third position it will break away and fold all the way back.

Microsoft said in a statement that the kickstand “contains a safety mechanism unique to Surface 3 to help protect the device, but the mechanism is not designed for use as a fourth kickstand position.”

So it might work once, twice or maybe even a few times, but it’s probably going to ruin your Surface 3.

The lesson here is, don’t play too rough with your toys. Just like a Slinky, once you bend it out of shape, you can’t bend it back, no matter what happened in Toy Story.

MS-DOS games on Twitter update

Last week we told you how you can embed and play classic MS-DOS games in tweets. Sadly, it looks like Twitter has put a stop to that.

It was discovered last week that Twitter users could embed these games from the Internet Archive?s site into tweets using Twitter?s Cards widget (that?s the system that allows videos, images and other media to be displayed in-line in the Twitter stream). But it turns out that embedding interactive media, specifically games, is against the terms of service for Twitter Cards.

You can, however, still play the MS-DOS games at the Internet Archive?s site, archive.org.

Powerwall

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, the maker of powerful electric sports cars recently announced that his company will begin manufacturing batteries for homes. This week Elon Musk announced that demand for their ?Powerwall? batteries was ?crazy off the hook?. He said they have received over 38,000 reservations, a level of demand which could take them up to a year to fulfill. Orders included over 2,500 from companies for their commercial-ready Powerpack.

The Powerwall batteries are designed for a 24-hour charge-and-discharge cycle, which would be ideal in combination with a solar power system that could charge them during the day letting them run the house at night. The batteries are designed to be mounted on the wall and a 7kWh unit starts at $3,000.

Note from Ray: The Powerwall is apparently not nearly as bad as the Power Glove.

If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable dot com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there

The new service will run almost four times faster than Comcast’s current fastest Internet and twice as fast as Google Fiber, but Comcast did not provide any idea of how much it will cost. Credit: Ray Hollister

Florida residents will be able to purchase extremely fast Internet service, starting next month. A handful of Florida cities, including Jacksonville, are among the nation?s first where Comcast is bringing fiber-optic Internet to people?s homes.

The new Internet service called Gigabit Pro is faster than anything currently available in Florida. That means customers could download the equivalent of a feature-length film in about 15 seconds versus the average 25 minutes it takes a current Comcast customer to download the same file.

A Comcast rep declined to give pricing on the service, which launches next month. She did say customers would be responsible for installation fees so Comcast can dig in yards and install the fiber-optic cables. And to get this new service, customers must live within a third of a mile of existing Comcast fiber cables.

A much slower service Comcast offers, called Extreme 505, runs about $400 a month. Extreme 505, runs at more than ten-times faster than what most customers have in the state of Florida but only a quarter of the speed of Gigabit Pro.

While they haven’t developed time travel, the engineers and designers behind the elevators that takes guests to the observatory at the very top of One World Trade Center in New York City have come pretty close. When you board the elevators, you will see a panoramic view of New York City rising out of the underground in the 1500s all the way up through time to the 102nd floor today.

The elevator uses nine 75-inch screens to create the illusion that it is a glass-walled elevator traveling through time.

Along the way, you’ll see the arrival of the Europeans, the Revolution and the rise of the skyscrapers. Inevitably, as time travels through the late-1900s, one of the Twin Towers enters your sight and just as quickly fades away as the 2000s begin. It is a touching, beautiful memorial to the history of the site.

Via New York Times, HT to Sploid. 

Q: How do you defrag a computer running Windows 8.1? I can’t figure out how to do it on my new laptop.

A: For those of us who have been using personal computers for the past 20 or so years, defragmenting your hard drive used to just be part of life. When you defrag a hard drive, you’re basically re-organizing the data on it so that it will run faster and more efficiently.

When your hard drive stores data, it puts it anywhere there is space available, so it may sometimes put pieces of the same file in several different places instead of right next to each other. Imagine opening a file cabinet and just throwing paperwork into it. You would never be able to find anything if you did that, but your computer can keep track of where it put things even if they are all over the place. This works well, but things can become really messy after a while. This will make the computer start to run slow as it searches through your data. Running a defrag will reorganize everything.

Credit: Lance Fisher/Flickr

When we received your question, Neila, we realized that we couldn’t even remember the last time we defragged a computer. Beginning with Windows 7, Microsoft has built automatic defragmentation into the Windows operating system, so you don’t have to worry about running it yourself. However, you can still run it manually if you want. On Windows Vista or 7, look for a program called Disk Defragmenter. On Windows 8, it is called Optimize Drive; you can find it by pressing the Start button on your keyboarding and typing in “optimize drive.”

Apple has built similar automatic defragmentation into Mac OS X, but that operating system doesn’t offer you a manual way to optimize your hard drive. There are third-party defrag programs available, but we don’t recommend them because they often cause more problems than they fix. If your Mac is running slow, you should try restarting it and clearing off space on your hard drive instead.

One last note: if you have a Solid State Drive (SSD) instead of a classic hard drive, we don’t recommend performing a defrag. It doesn’t provide any real benefit on an SSD, and it can actually reduce the drive’s lifespan.

Photo credit: “defrag” by Lance Fisher is used under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Ray Hollister reviews the BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer on Deemable Tech

This week Ray, Tom and Sean talk about how Hilary Clinton used her personal email address the entire time she worked at the State Department. They discussed the announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, (which included the announcement of SamsungPay which is the implementation of LoopPay into the Samsung phones which Ray insisted two weeks ago would not happen!) They also talked about the death of Google+ and Google starting its own wireless carrier. Then, Ray shared his review of the BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer. If you’re just here for the video, make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom.

#74 Ray Likes His Crow Breaded With A Light, Crispy Panko Crust

RUN DOWN

Samsung Galaxy S6 & S6 Edge

This week was the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Spain and Samsung used the opportunity to take the wraps off the next iteration of its flagship phone, the Samsung Galaxy S6? and the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge. That?s right, the S6 will come in two formats – a standard rectangular shape and a more curvy version with a display that wraps around the edge and which can display alerts by lighting up.

Regardless of what you think about Samsung?s latest gimmick, both phones are aimed squarely at the premium smartphone market. Samsung has ditched the removable plastic cases of previous Galaxy S?s for a phone that is completely encased in aluminum and Gorilla Glass, similar to the iPhone. The phone boasts an almost ridiculous Quad HD (2560 x 1440) Super AMOLED. Why would anyone need that kind of resolution on a 5.1 inch screen? Virtual Reality! You can strap your S6 into the latest version of Samsung?s Gear VR for a super-high-res virtual reality experience. Since the screen will be literally centimeters from your face, it has to look good.

Not all of Samsung?s longtime users are excited about the S6. The premium case materials means that the newest Galaxy phones no longer allow for a removable battery or an expandable SD memory card, two longstanding features of the Galaxy line.

Samsung Pay, formerly known as Loop Pay, with its magnetic card swiping technology, is built right into the phone.

Google announced that Google+, its one-time ambitious attempt to take on Facebook and Twitter, is going under the knife.

Google+ Divests

The Verge is reporting that the Google+ social network is getting split up into Streams, Photos and Hangouts. It is also getting a new lead: Bradley Horowitz, a long time VP, is taking over from David Besbris. Besbris had held his position less than a year after Vic Gundotra was let go with little fanfare.

Google+ was originally pitched to be Google?s answer to rivals like Facebook and Twitter. In 2012 it took the controversial step of forcibly assigning every Google user across all of its services a Google+ account. Despite this, Google+ never reached the critical mass of user activity needed to take on the big guys. Google has since backed away from their one-size-fits-all approach.

Google execs are now calling the social network side of the product ?Streams? and considering them to be separate from Photos, home of the ridiculous Auto-Awesome feature, and Hangouts, Google?s free and easy-to-use chat and videoconferencing system.

How to Auto-Awesome your photos manually – AndroidCentral.

While Google has not officially announced the death of ?Streams? as a product, some experts are predicting it could be on the chopping block soon.

Google Wireless

According to Mashable, Google?s latest crazy plan is to become a wireless carrier.

Google revealed this week at Mobile World Congress that it plans to get into the wireless carrier business, offering mobile voice and data service to customers. Google says that it will do this on a small scale, buying wholesale access from Sprint and T-Mobile?s networks and selling them to customers. Google says it wants to ?push the needle? when it comes to features offered to mobile customers, for instance allowing users to seamlessly transition between wifi and cellular connections.

Google was careful to emphasize that it does not intend to compete with AT&T and Verizon and that they have been informed of its plans.

BIG STORY

Hillary Clinton used a personal email account the entire time she was US Secretary of State

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clintons-use-of-private-email-at-state-department-raises-flags.html

Clinton apparently set up an email account one week prior to President Obama’s inauguration, and she did not use an official @state.gov email address.

For comparison, according to NBC News, Former secretary of State Condelezza Rice did not use personal email while she was in office, but she rarely used email at all. Clinton aides have also said that, Colin Powell did regularly use a personal e-mail account while Secretary of State.

A Powell aide confirmed that information, saying, “General Powell used a personal email account during his tenure as Secretary of State. He was not aware of any restrictions nor does he recall being made aware of any over the four years he served at State.”

According to the Washington Post, “Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to have operated in violation of what the White House said Tuesday was ?very specific guidance? that members of the Obama administration use government e-mail accounts to carry out official business.”

Hillary Clinton said on Twitter :

I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.

? Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 5, 2015

REVIEWS

BACtrack MobileBreathalyzer Review

Last year Ray received the BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer, which, unsurprisingly, tracks your BAC or your blood alcohol content. In other words, it’s a mobile Breathalyzer.

It is a really great product. (Disclaimer, BACtrack did provide a sample unit for review.) The BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer connects with your Smartphone via Bluetooth.

It’s pretty comfortable to hold in your hand, and it is very easy to use. You just turn it on, open the BACtrack app and pair it with your phone via bluetooth and follow the on screen instructions.

It keeps track of your blood alcohol level over time while you are drinking, and it calculates how long it will take for you to be sober. In addition to a number calculation of your BAC, it give you an idea of where you should be feeling. It will say things like “You are experiencing slight alcohol intoxication.”

The strangest feature of the device is that it let’s you post your blood alcohol level on social media. I personally never use that feature, but I can definitely see it going horribly, horribly wrong. I can only imagine the legal implications but it could possibly have too. But, it would help to explain all of those wacky drunk pictures.

If you are a frequent drinker, this breathalyzer has a great feature that will let you track when and where you drank. You can choose what you share otherwise it always stays private.

The BACtrack Mobile Breathalyzer cost $99 now. It was $149 when I reviewed it. I feel like it was worth $149, but I think that $99 is the perfect price point for the features it has.

Now, there are other breathalyzers that BACtrack makes that are cheaper. They have a model that uses a different sensor that only costs $49, and they have keychain models that do not connect to your smartphone that are $29.

Personally, I like the model that uses the same technology that the police use to check blood alcohol level, because if I am trusting something to check if I am below the legal limit or not, I want to be absolutely certain it is right!

That being said, this is in no way an endorsement to drive while intoxicated. It’s never safe to drink under the influence of alcohol, and you can be arrested for DUI even if you’re under the legal limit.

The thing that surprised me most about using the backtrack mobile breathalyzer was that I am apparently a cheap date. I was drunk long before the device said I was a legally drunk. Or, at least I felt like I was drunk.

It was crazy to me that at .02, I felt that I could not drive a car, but I was still legal to drive.

Check out the video of the review below:

UNCUT!

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler pushed FCC to vote 3-2 in favor of Net Neutrality.

This week Ray, Tom and Sean talk about how the FCC has finally decided to step up to the plate and defend Net Neutrality, and the rest of the big stories in the tech world. Reddit is finally banning stolen pornography. Apple is holding a super secret press event in March. (SPOILER: It’s the Apple Watch announcement.) Pebble is Kickstarting another smartwatch. Three patients voluntarily had their arms amputated to receive bionic prosthetics. Google bought mobile payment company Softcard. And, we are one step closer to Skynet becoming self-aware, an artificial intelligence played 49 Atari games without instructions, beating the records of human players in 29 of the games.

Thank you to our Redditors who have been helping us decide what stories we talk about on the show. Go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. Deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

Deemable Tech Episode #73 Freedom Is Just A Four-Letter Word

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This Week’s Run Down

Reddit bans revenge porn.

Gizmodo reports that Reddit ? has outlawed porn. Wait, no. Reddit has prohibited unwanted porn. No, that’s not right either. Reddit has banned involuntary pornography. Reddit announced that that it is no longer allowing pictures or videos to be posted to the site without the permission of the subjects.

In a statement on its website reddit said:

No matter who you are, if a photograph, video, or digital image of you in a state of nudity, sexual excitement, or engaged in any act of sexual conduct, is posted or linked to on reddit without your permission, it is prohibited on reddit.

To take the photos or videos down however, you will have to report the offense to reddit. This change in policy is considered to be a direct response to the incident known as “The Fappening,” where a cache of leaked celebrity nudes was leaked online and posted to reddit.

Apple’s Not Super-Secret Press Event

The Verge is reporting that Apple sent out press invitations to a super secret event on March 9th. No one has any idea what it is about. Nah, just kidding, it’s the Apple Watch announcement. The tagline is even “Spring Forward,” an obvious time reference.

At the event, we are almost certain to find out what features actually ended up in the watch ? that will likely only run for 4 hours before the battery dies. The Verge is saying that there have been rumors of a new Macbook air and there may be an update on Beats Music.

Pebble Get Another Kickstart

Speaking of watches, Pebble has decided to rock the crowdfunding universe again. Pebble announced Tuesday it was launching another smartwatch. This one, dubbed the Pebble Time, has a color e-ink display, a microphone for dictation and voice activation, and it’s thinner than the original Pebble and more contoured to fit the wrist.

The microphone only works with Android actions right now, but Pebble is working on getting it to work with iOS soon.

Three Men Undergo Voluntary Amputations To Receive Bionic Arms

Gizmodo is reporting that three men with irreparable nerve damage have had their arms amputated and replaced with prosthetics controlled directly through their nervous systems. The procedure was performed by Oskar Aszmann at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria.

The prosthetic is powered and controlled by a small piece of healthy leg muscle that has been grafted into the patients? arm.

What is perhaps most notable is that the three patients all volunteered to have their arms amputated to undergo this procedure. While their whole arms were previously useless due to the nerve damage, they were intact.

Google Buys Mobile Payment Competitor Softcard

PachydermMcGurts submitted this next story on our sub-reddit page.

Google looks like it is doubling-down on mobile payments. According to a report from DigitalTrends.com, Google has purchased competitor Softcard. On February 23rd Google made the announcement that it had bought the wallet app company Softcard which was formerly named Isis, just like the terrorist group.

Isis started in 2009 as a joint effort by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to get a foothold in the mobile payments industry. Unfortunately, in 2011, the terrorist group then known as the Islamic State in Iraq began fighting in Syria, and started being referred to as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS for short. The group apparently now just want to be called the Islamic State, but it was called ISIS long enough in the media to completely destroy the value, if it had any, of the company’s name.

Isis, the digital wallet app company, announced in September 2014 that it was changing its name to Softcard.

Google bought Softcard and work out a deal with AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, that all new Android phones will have Google Wallet pre-installed on them.

In a very ?Google? way, instead of consolidating the two services into one service. it’s going to keep the two services separate, and wait for this, add a new service.

Rumor has it that Google is going to announce Android Pay at the Google I/O next conference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKdvnhBFvXY

Artificial Intelligence Masters Atari Games

DeepMind Technologies, a tech startup that Google purchased last year, is working on artificial intelligence that will develop human-like problem solving skills. To do so, they needed to put it through exercises that have simple rules and clear standards for failure, yet still present a challenge for most people. They decided that old Atari 2600 games were perfect for this.

DeepMind made the AI play through 49 different Atari 2600 games without giving it instructions for how the various games were played. When it completed the games correctly and got a high score, the AI was rewarded. It eventually beat previous AI records for 43 of the games, and even exceeded the skills of master human players for 29 of them.

A DeepMind Vice President told Bloomberg that this represents “the first time anyone has built a single learning system that learns directly from experience and manage a wide range of challenging tasks,” and that their ultimate goal will be to use this for smart, general purpose tools.

THE BIG STORY

FCC Defends Net Neutrality

The Verge put together a great aggregation of reactions to Net Neutrality from around the net. It’s no surprise, the ISPs are NOT happy.

The FCC voted today, 3-2, to classify broadband internet as a public utility under Title II. This means that, for now at least, the FCC has the ability to regulate broadband internet and enforce net neutrality.

Verizon and Comcast released statements stating that they were disappointed with the ruling, while AT&T issued a more ominous statement hinting that the FCC might be overruled by congress or the courts.

Some Republican lawmakers have threatened legislative action to overrule the FCC. The FCC vote did fall along party lines, with the three Democrat board members voting for net neutrality and the two Republicans voting against.

Tech companies were almost uniformly ecstatic, with Netflix, Kickstarter, Microsoft and Tumblr all chiming in.

At the heart of the new classification are rules banning the blocking or throttling of traffic, as well as paid prioritization, and a requirement that ISPs disclose network management practices.

—–

Next week we are going to be tossing in some app and gadget reviews like we’ve been promising. If you have a suggestion, or just have a comment for the show. Give us a call and leave us a voicemail, 1-888-972-9868 or you can send us an email to feedback at deemable.com.

And, don’t forget to help us to decide what stories we talk about on the show, go to our subreddit page and submit a story, and vote other stories up or down. deemable.com/reddit will take you there.

Photo credit: “Tom Wheeler – Caricature” by DonkeyHotey is used under CC BY 2.0.

If you’re like us, you probably got a shiny new smartphone or tablet for the holidays. Here are our tips for keeping that device looking brand new, and few ideas for what you can do with your old one.

Protect Your New Device

An iPhone 4 in an Otterbox Impact case. Image credit: gisuser / Flickr

The first thing you should do with your new device is put a case on it. We can’t stress how important this is. It breaks our hearts to see people with gadgets that came out not even a month ago, and they’ve already broken the screen.

There are a ton of different kinds of cases out there. If you’re really concerned about protecting your device, we recommend a hefty case from companies like Otterbox, Lifeproof or Griffin. Both brands offer cases that are rated for protecting against drops from normal heights and have material to keep your screen scratch-free. Some of them even claim to be waterproof.

If you don’t want to hide your fancy new smartphone or tablet, a number of companies sell thin, clear plastic cases. These will not offer the same level of protection as an Otterbox case, but they will be better than nothing. Look around online or head to pretty much any store that sells electronics to find one that best fits your needs.

If you decide not to get a case (or even if you do), you should seriously consider buying an extended warranty for your device. For most electronics, we don’t feel like extended warranties are worth the money. However, they are a godsend for smartphones, especially if they cover accidents

Whether you get an extended warranty or not, take the time right now to figure out how long your warranty will last. A year is pretty standard for a new smartphone, but be sure to double check. It also helps to mark that date on your calendar or set a reminder. If your device starts acting funny, you can make sure to get it taken care of before that timer runs out.

With a good warranty, the device maker will often send you a new one before you mail back your old one so that you don’t have to be device-less for any longer than necessary.

What to Do With Your Old One

If you’re not planning to keep your old smartphone or tablet as a backup or for archival purposes, you should consider selling it or recycling it.

To get the best price, you’ll want to sell it on Craigslist or eBay. The downside to Craigslist is that you have to meet strangers from the internet in real-life. The downside the eBay is that you have to go to Post Office or the UPS store. You can try searching through other auctions and online for a good idea of how much your device is worth in the condition it is in.

If you have a fairly new gadget like an iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy 4, you could also check out places like Amazon and Gazelle. They will buy your phone online and pay you fast. Or you can trade in your iPhone at the Apple Store, Best Buy, Game Stop and Target. You won’t get as much selling your iPhone or Android phone to the big companies, but you’ll get rid of it fast and get your money fast. So, if convenience is what matters to you, that’s the route we would go.

If you have a smartphone that you think is too old to sell, or you just want to do something nice for others, there are a lot of charitable organizations that can make good use of your old device.

If your phone can at least still make phone calls, you can drop it off at any Verizon Wireless store and they will get it into the hands of someone who needs it. Through their program HopeLine, they collect phones and give them to victims of domestic abuse.

If your phone is completely dead, there are charities that accept electronics that can recycle them and get money to go towards their efforts. As always, make sure that you trust the charity you are giving to.

Also, many cities have e-waste recycling centers for computers and other electronics. Try looking on your city’s website to see if there is one near you.

No matter what you decide to do with your old device, you need to make sure you wipe its memory and reset it to factory default if possible. The last thing you want is for your personal information to fall into the wrong hands. Your device should have come with instructions on how to reset it. We’ve got full details on how to do it for iPhones, iPads and Android phones in this article.

Have you ever had a hard time keeping your resolutions for the new year? There are plenty of iPhone and Android apps that can help you out.

Image credit: christmasstockimages.com

The University of Scranton surveyed Americans earlier this year to find the top 10 most popular New Year’s resolutions. Here are some of our favorite apps for helping you keep them throughout 2015.

1. Losing Weight

• MyFitnessPal Calorie Counter (Android, iOS): This free app has a huge database of food so you can look up the calorie count on almost anything. It also lets you set a daily calorie goal, track your weight, and even share with friends for mutual encouragement.

• LiveStrong My Plate Calorie Tracker (Android, iOS): Thiss app free on Android but will run you $2.99 on iOS. The nice thing about this app is if you have an account on LiveStrong.com this will link up to it.

• My Daily Plate (iOS): My Daily Plate is an app that can help you make good nutritional decisions throughout the day. It costs $.99, and is only available on iOS.

2. Getting Organized

• Evernote (Android, iOS) and Google Keep (Android): These are both great free apps that let you quickly type out or even write a message to yourself. You can also take pictures of things and save them for later. And they are both cloud-based, so you can write a note to yourself on your smartphone, update it from your tablet and check it later on your home computer.

• Google Now (built into most new Android devices; included in the Google Search app for iOS): This app is wonderful for setting creating reminders for yourself. If you give it permission to do so, Google Now will actually scan your Google calendar and even your email to find upcoming events. If those events have a physical address associated with them, Google Now will even tell you when it?s time to get in the car and head out!

• Any.do (Android, iOS): Any.do combines checklists with reminders. You can quickly enter a task by either typing it or speaking it, and then set when the task is due: today, tomorrow, or in the future. When the appropriate day rolls around, Any.do will pop up a helpful reminder.

3. Spending Less Money and Saving More Money

• Mint Personal Finance (Android, iOS): Mint is a free app from Intuit, the makes of Quickbooks. Mint lets you keep track of all of your financial accounts in one place, and set a budget and stick to it. On the website and the app, you can see all of your debts like student loans, car notes, credit cards and mortgages, and you can see all of your money like checking accounts savings accounts, money market accounts, and CDs. Mint gives you a snapshot of what your financial situation looks like, and gives you advice how to make it better.

4. Travel More

• Expedia (Android, iOS) & Kayak (Android, iOS): Book flights, hotels and  rental cars on these apps for popular travel sites Expedia and Kayak.

• Hipmunk (Android, iOS): We’ve discussed Hipmunk’s website, which rates flights based on aspects like layover time and whether or not they offer Wi-Fi, in an earlier article. The app also offers this helpful tools, but it also shows you listings from AirBNB and HomeAway, services which let people rent a room from somebody for just a couple of days.

5. Staying Fit

• Endomondo Sports Tracker (Android, iOS): This apps allows you to track your running/biking/skating workouts and set challenges for yourself. The pro version is $4.99 and includes features like a pedometer so it will work indoors.

• Active.com’s Couch to 5K (Android, iOS): Like its name suggests, the Couch to 5K training app will gradually get you ready to run your first 5K race over a period of about six weeks.

• Zombies, Run! (Android, iOS): This run tracking app helps to motivate you by disguising your workout as a game – a horrifying game. Imagine this: you’re out for a run, when all of a sudden you’re being chased by zombies! You put your headphones on, and as you run you’ll periodically hear orders from your fellow survivors to outrun zombie mobs.

6. Learn to Play a Musical Instrument

• Piano Teacher (Android only): This app has a Guitar Hero-style interface that lets you learn songs by hitting the right keys as notes fall down the screen. You can even purchase a USB adapter to use this app with an actual Midi keyboard.

• Piano Tutor (iOS only): Piano Tutor teaches you how to read notes and rhythms on sheet music, and how to to learn to play by ear. It also supports the use of a Midi keyboard through a USB adapter.

• Ultimate Guitar Tabs (Android, iOS): This app has a huge searchable database of guitar tabs (notation that shows you instrument fingering instead of sheet music notes) for popular songs. It also shows you how to fingering for chords and more. Ultimate Guitar Tabs is $2.99 on both Android and iOS.

7. Quitting Smoking

• QuitNow! (Android, iOS) & LiveStrong MyQuit Coach (iOS only): These apps both keep track of the time since your last cigarette, how many cigarettes you’ve avoided since quitting and how much money you’ve saved in the process. You can also set health goals and create motivators to help you quit.

8. Helping Others

• Feedie (Android, iOS): Feedie lets all the foodies who take pictures of their meals to finally do it for a good cause. For every food photo taken at a participating restaurant and shared via social media, 25 cents will be donated to the app?s nonprofit parent company, The Lunchbox Fund, which provides meals to students in rural South Africa.
• HTC Power to Give (Android only): By downloading the app, plugging in your Android phone and connecting to Wi-Fi while you sleep, your phone?s spare computing power becomes part of a huge grid that provides power to a scientific project of your choice, like researching cures for cancer, Alzheimer?s disease, AIDS, or understanding climate change, or searching for extra-terrestrial life.

• DonorReminder (iOS only): If you like to donate blood, this app keeps track of when you last donated and when you can do it again.

9. Falling in Love

• Tinder (Android, iOS): Tinder has gotten a lot of press in the last few years because it’s based entirely on looks. It’s like HotOrNot but you can date the person if they find you hot too. You open the app and see pictures of potential dates that are near you. You swipe to the left if you’re not interested, and swipe to the right if you are interested. If your crush finds you attractive too, Tinder lets you both know, and you can chat.

• Down (Android, iOS): If you’ve always wondered if one of your friends was interested in dating you, but you never built up the gumption to go and ask him or her, you can now do it in a more anonymous way. With Down, you can scroll through a list of your Facebook friends and swipe up if you’d like to date them, swipe left if you’re not interested, and swipe down if you’re interested in, to put it in polite terms, “spending a night with them.”

• OkCupid (Android, iOS): Just like OkCupid’s website, this app offers a free dating service that feels most similar to a social network.

10. Spending Time with Your Family

• No app recommendations for this. Just put away your phone and talk to them!

Did we miss your favorite app? Send us an email to questions@deemable.com and let us know.

Every once in a while we like to take a few minutes to cover something everyone should know. This time, we want to talk about the website everyone loves to hate… Facebook!

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

If you are honest with yourself, you are probably on Facebook because it is kind of unavoidable, but you don’t love it. A lot of time it’s just full of stuff you don’t care about, like that friend-of-a-friend who posts a dozen posts a day about her dog, or your high school friend who is always starting political arguments.

But the fact is that you have more control over what you see on your Facebook feed then you think you do. There are things you can do to greatly improve that. And there are some ways that you can make sure that when you post something, it gets noticed.

Before we dive in, let’s explain what we mean when we say “Facebook feed”. Basically, we are just talking about the homepage of Facebook, where you see all the updates from friends and from pages you?ve liked. That is referred to as the “news feed” or just the “feed” for short.

The Facebook feed doesn’t show you EVERYTHING your friends post, however. Most people on Facebook have 300 or more friends, and if you saw everything every single one of them liked or posted you would be swamped with information. So Facebook employs an algorithm to decide what to show you.

The real question is how this algorithm works. The actual algorithm is top secret, but just from experimenting around with Facebook we know a lot about it. The Facebook algorithm is more likely to show you stuff from people it thinks you care about and from pages it thinks you really like.

Every time you like a post or comment on something someone wrote or visit someone’s profile, Facebook notices that, and it will start to move that person higher up in your feed. So if you’re always checking out someone?s profile, Facebook will show you more posts by that person.

Some people have said that Facebook knows that two people will start dating several days before it actually happens, supposedly because those people will start liking and commenting on each other’s posts much more frequently. Now, we don’t know if the secret algorithm really knows, that, but it feels like this would be the case . The more you interact with someone, the more Facebook knows that you like that person and want to see more posts by them.

Okay, but what if there?s someone who you really don?t want to see in your feed that much? Is there anything you can do?

Absolutely. A lot of people don’t realize this, but you can explicitly tell Facebook that you don’t want to see a post. You can try this out yourself by bringing up the Facebook home page on your web browser. Pick a post in your feed. At the top right of that post there should be a faint gray down arrow. You might have to hover over the post to see it if you?re on a computer. Click it.

You will get a pop-up with some options like ?I don?t want to see this,? and ?Report this.? Click ?I don?t want to see this.? Don?t worry if you actually do want to see it, on a computer you can undo your choices.

Now it should say that the post is hidden, and there should be a link asking you why you don?t want to see it. Click the link. You will see the options, ?It?s annoying or not interesting,? ?I?m in this photo and I don?t like it,? ?This shouldn?t be on Facebook? and ?This is spam.? Clicking any of those will give Facebook some useful information about what you want to see in your feed – and what you don’t want to see. Now if you click out of that box and then click “undo” in the gray box that tells you the post is hidden you will get that post back.

There’s another trick you can try also. Do you feel like many of your Facebook “friends” are more like “acquaintances”? You can tell Facebook that. Just over to a friend’s profile on Facebook. Up at the top you will see the “Friends” button – click that. In the drop down that pops up you should see the word “acquaintances”. If you click it, it will add this profile to a special friends list called “acquaintances”.

Acquaintances are still friends in Facebook?s world, but Facebook won?t show you very many posts by acquaintances. In fact, it will only show you posts by them that either have a lot of comments or that are about major life events. So if you made someone an acquaintance then you’d see if they got engaged or got a new job, but you wouldn’t see the three posts they made about what they had for lunch yesterday.

Before we go any further we should mention one important thing about your feed. You may have noticed that your feed isn’t strictly chronological. Stuff your partner or best friends post stays at the top of the feed for a day or two sometimes.

If you want to see a more chronological view of your feed, you can click the down arrow next to “news feed” in the bar on the left of the page, and then select “most recent”. That will make your news feed more or less ordered by date rather than how much the algorithm thinks you like stuff.

We should mention that if you are in the Facebook app on a tablet or smartphone, you won’t have this option. Actually, the app has a lot fewer options in general. So if something we’re talking about here isn’t working for you on the app, you may need to log in to Facebook on your home PC to change it.

Alright, time to get down to brass tacks. How do you make “the algorithm” show your friends YOUR posts? How can you be Facebook cool?

Well there’s no sure-fire way to be the most popular kid on the news feed, but we know that there are some things that Facebook likes and that it will factor in when deciding whether or not to show your posts to your friends. Facebook likes posts with pictures and links more than posts that are just updates. So if you link to a website or post a pic, you’re more likely to get noticed. The exception, of course, is if you post a link or a picture that people don’t like. Remember we talked about how you can hide posts? If a lot of people are hiding something you posted, Facebook is likely to downgrade that post. So you want to steer away from controversial topics if your main concern is Facebook popularity.

For instance, cute animals are always a big hit. Facebook also loves “positive” posts. It probably searches posts for keywords like “happy”, “engaged”, “married”, “pregnant”, “kitty”, “love” and so on. Facebook likes happy posts because they are more likely to be shared. Happy links are more likely to be clicked on. And when people click links, Facebook is usually making money.

So if you’re happy and you know it, tell Facebook!

Following these tips will give you much more control over your Facebook feed. More control, but not complete control. At the end of the day, the secret Facebook algorithm is still deciding what it thinks you should see. You may be wondering, is there a way tiycan have total control over my news feed?

There is only one we know of: switch to Twitter.

If you are a small business owner wondering if there are any apps out there that can help make your life easier, wonder no more! These days you can practically run your entire business through a tablet or mobile device. Your device can handle point-of-sale, time tracking, invoicing and much more.

Here are a few of our favorite apps for small business owners:

PayPal, one of the first online transaction companies, got into the mobile payment game with the PayPal Here.
Image credit: PayPal

Point of Sale

You’re probably already familiar with Square, the little plastic card reader that plugs into a smartphone. But Square is no longer the only card reader in town. Here are a few of the card readers currently out there:

• Square
• PayPal Here
• Amazon Register
• Intuit GoPayment

You can get all of these for essentially free (for example, the Square reader is $9.99 at retail stores, but it comes with a $10 mail-in rebate). The card reader companies make their money off transaction fees, which vary by device. You can read more about credit cards readers in this article.

Let’s talk about a different type of cards: business cards.

Business Card Readers

There are apps that will allow you to photograph, scan and store the information from people’s business cards, creating a digital Rolodex. There are two major apps. Abbyy’s is the tried-and-true original, Evernote’s is the new upstart:

• Abbyy’s Business Card Reader ($4.99 on Android and $5.99 on iOS)
• Evernote Hello (free)

Bookkeeping

A good bookkeeping app will not only connect to your various accounts and allow you to create invoices, but will categorize your expenses and income for tax purposes. There are a number of cool bookkeeping apps out there:

• Freshbooks
• Quickbooks
• GoDaddy Bookkeeping (formerly Outright.com)

Most of these charge monthly or yearly subscription fees. There is also a newcomer called Wave Accounting whose website is free to use. Wave also does payroll management for $4/month for the first 10 employees (and $1/employee after).

Productivity

You have two major options for productivity software. The first is Google Drive, which includes Google Docs and Google Sheets. This is free, but not as fully-featured as Microsoft Office. You can also get Microsoft Office 365, the cloud-based (read: online) version of Office. One user is $6/month.

Also, this is not exactly an app but we would be remiss if we didn’t mention Google Apps for Work. Do you want to have your own, custom email address that still uses the Gmail interface? Google Apps for Work can give you that. For instance, Ray@SmallBusiness.com could be accessed through Gmail and would also have full access to Google Drive.

Google Apps for Work is $5/user/month or $50/year.

Every once in a while we like to cover something everyone should know, and this time we wanted to talk about securing your personal information – on your smartphone.

Image credit: Kelvinsong / Wikimedia

If you own a smartphone, you probably keep tons of personal information on it: your address book, emails, passwords, maybe even credit card data. Your phone knows where you work and where you live and who is texting you. It’s a gold mine for everyone from phone thieves to advertisers to hackers.

Many smartphone owners would be surprised at how easy it is to learn some basic hacks which allow you to extract data from someone else’s smartphone. But there are a few simple steps that they can take to make it much harder.

We want to emphasize that it’s probably impossible to completely hacker-proof your phone. If government spies are trying to break into your phone, they are probably going to get in. But you can stop your run of the mill identity thieves.

Tip #1: Lock your smartphone!

It’s so simple, and yet so effective! Why should someone bother hacking into your phone when they can just pick it up and see everything on it? You need a lockscreen with a password or an unlock pattern or a fingerprint scanner. Using a password is the most secure technique, and the more characters you have to enter, the better. But even a simple pin code or unlock pattern is better than nothing.

Most Android phones support unlock patterns. If you use one, though, you should take one extra step for security: wipe down your phone?s screen frequently! This way a thief can’t simply follow the smudged fingerprints on the screen to determine your unlock pattern.

Here’s another lock screen tip for those of you with iPhones: by default, iPhones allow you to do a few things without unlocking your phone, like voice dialing and previewing texts. You can disable this, though, and you should. Unless you like the idea of a stranger at the coffee shop reading your texts!

Tip #3: Don’t connect to open Wi-Fi networks!

Avoid that free coffee shop Wi-Fi if it doesn’t have a password! Any device, whether it?s a phone or a tablet or a laptop, which is connected to an open Wi-Fi is a hacker?s dream. With some basic software installed, a hacker can see almost everything anyone on the Wi-Fi network is doing – sending emails, logging into Facebook, etc.

The good news is, people are wising up to the fact that having unsecured Wi-Fi is not a good idea. Some places still offer it, though. If you don?t have to ask for a password to get in, it?s probably not a good idea to use that Wi-Fi.

Speaking of Wi-Fi: if you got your iPhone from AT&T it has an interesting extra feature. Any time an AT&T iPhone detects a Wi-Fi network called attwifi, it will automatically try to connect to it. That’s a problem, to put it bluntly. A hacker could just setup a network, call it attwifi, and wait for people?s phones to automatically connect to it so they can extract information. The good news is, this is a feature you can turn off on your iPhone, and you should. Just open the Settings app, tap Wi-Fi, and tap the check box next to ?Ask to join networks?. And contact AT&T customer support and tell them that you don’t approve of them making their customers’ phones vulnerable in this way.

Tip #4: Turn off location tagging on your smartphone’s camera

When you take a picture with your smartphone, it adds the GPS coordinates of the place where you took the picture to the image file. Later on, that can help you remember where you took the picture at. That’s convenient, but many times when you upload that picture to a website or email it to a friend, the GPS coordinates remain embedded in the file. Anyone who has that picture can figure out where you took it. And if it’s your house, well, now they know where you live. And that?s no good.

You can turn this feature off on Android phones, although the details depend on what phone you have. You should be able to find instructions with a Google search. On an iPhone, go to Settings, and then privacy, and then Location services and then you should see an option for the camera. Switch that to off.

Tip #5: Require a password for purchases

This is something we’ve talked about before, but it?s worth repeating: both Android and iPhone allow you to set a password on the phone that must be entered before you can make purchases on the phone. Stopping kids or others from running up charges on your phone is always a great idea.

Tip #6: Disable third party cookies

Everybody likes cookies, right? Well, maybe not if they are cookies on your computer which can allow advertisers to track what websites you visit. For those readers who don?t know, a cookie is a small text file that a website places on your computer or smartphone. They can be used to help websites remember to automatically log you in, which is great. But they can also help advertisers to track you which not everybody likes.

On the iPhone’s Safari browser you can stop this. Safari lets you disable ‘third party cookies’, which are the kind of cookies that many people don’t want, the kind that help advertisers offer targeted ads. Most browsers now offer a ‘DO NOT TRACK’ option as well. It’s a good idea to turn this on. Now here?s the thing, the ‘do not track’ option is not universally respected. There are some advertisers that will ignore it and track you anyway. But it can?t hurt to have it turned on.

Tip #7: Wipe your personal data before you return your phone to the store

Occasionally you may need to take your smartphone somewhere to get it repaired or to swap it for a working model. Before you do this, it’s a really good idea to wipe all of your personal data from your phone! What you need to do is reset your phone to factory defaults. Your smartphone should come with instructions on how to do this. Of course you should backup all your personal data before you do this as it WILL be erased!

So these are just a few tips that will help you keep the personal data on your smartphone more secure from thieves, from hackers and even from advertisers. And if nothing else, you should always, always –

LOCK YOUR PHONE.

It’s officially summer – the kids are out of school, the weather is fine, and for many of us it’s time to travel. We here at Deemable Tech are planning vacations of our own, and we’ve got some really useful tools to help make things easier.

Image credit: Atlas Obscura

Here, in no particular order, are some of our favorite vacation planning websites:

OptionsAway.com – Sometimes when you’re looking to buy an airline ticket, you might find a price you really like early on but aren’t quite prepared to buy. For a fee, Options Away lets you put a hold on that price for up to 21 days and buy it later, even if it has increased on other sites. Fees start at $4 for holding the price for a day to about $20 for 21 days. We should note that they currently only offer their services for flights within the continental U.S. and Canada.

Peek.com – Peek mainly focuses on offering curated packages for attractions in selected cities like Paris, London and New York City, but the reason we included it on this list is their Perfect Days section. Here, users can submit their “perfect day” in a city with a day’s worth of suggestions activities. For example, a user might suggest visiting a certain cafe for breakfast, taking a bike ride along a particular river, shopping at local boutique, etc. It’s a great free way to plan a vacation day.

Tingo.com – Have you ever booked a hotel room online only to see the price drop a few days later? When you book through Tingo and the price drops, they will actually refund the deference to your credit card. Tingo also offers free upgrades, so if you pay for a room and a better one opens for the same price they will automatically give you that upgraded room. We’re not entirely sure how the site makes money as no fees are listed, but we love the idea.

AtlasObscura.com – If you like to travel but don’t like tourists, Atlas Obscura is a good way to get off the beaten path. The site is sort of a Wikipedia for the sights most travelers won’t know about; simply enter a city to find nearby stuff you would never thought to look for. You can also use Atlas Obscura to come up with great staycation ideas for when you want to try something new at home.

Booking.com – Finding a hotel room in a city where a major event is happening – like San Diego during Comic-Con – can be practically impossible. This doesn’t stop Booking.com from finding vacant rooms, though, even just days before the event and for rates comparable to other sites. We don’t know how they do it, but our bet is on some kind of black magic.

Hipmunk.com – There are dozens of sites for booking airline tickets, but Hipmunk is one of the few we’ve seen that realizes that price isn’t the only thing that matters when you fly. When you search, Hipmunk displays the results in an easy to understand grid that shows the length of each of flight, how long any layovers are and even whether or not the plane has WiFi (it also, of course, shows the price). We’re also intrigued by the fact that it lets you sort those results by “agony” – direct flights are listed first, then ones with longer and longer layovers. It doesn’t hurt that the site has an adorable mascot as well.

BeFrugal.com’s Fly or Drive Calculator – An important thing to consider when you’re planning a trip is whether you should fly or if it would be cheaper to drive to your destination. Be Frugal’s Fly or Drive Calculator not only calculates your trip using the price of gas and the cost of an airline ticket, but also takes things like car rentals into consideration.

Twitter.com – OK, OK. We know Twitter’s not really a travel site, but we wanted to include it because it can be helpful when dealing with travel companies. For example, most airlines have whole customer service teams that just monitor Twitter for tweets about their flights and complaints from passengers. We’ve heard many stories of someone tweeting an airline about something they’re not happy about (like the plane being too hot) and the customer service team contacting that individual flight to resolve the problem.

Did we miss your favorite vacation planning website? Let us know in the comments!

The Nest Thermostat is a learning, programmable thermostat.

If you’re like most people your eyes just glazed over. I mean, those are two of the most boring words in the English language: thermostat and programmable. Thermostats are something that people use because they have to, not because they want to. They are boring gray boxes that go on the wall somewhere in your house. And, only nerds like to program stuff. I mean who enjoyed programming the time on their VCR?

What should be the most boring thing in my house is actually my favorite device in my house. Okay, let me be fair, maybe it’s my third favorite device after my Macbook and my iPhone. Let’s start with aesthetics. The thing is beautiful. It’s round, and has a glass front, and brush steel ring around the outside. It blends in and compliments every wall it is on because it reflects the colors of the wall. It doesn’t look like a gadget, It looks like a piece of modern art on my wall.

The interface is incredibly intuitive. It’s a thermostat, so to turn it up, or make it warmer, you turn it clockwise, to turn it down or make it colder, you turn it counterclockwise. Just like the old-fashioned thermostat that used to be in every school-house and home. When the AC is on, and the house is cooling, the screen is blue. When the heater is on and the house is warming, the screen is orange. So it gives you a visual indicator of what you’re heating and cooling system is doing. And, I’ll tell you, if that was all that it did, it would be a really nice thermostat. It would still be better than almost everything else on the market.

But, that’s not all that it does. One of the features that I love is that the Nest detects whether you are in the house, and if you’ve been away for a certain time, it goes into “auto?away “mode. You don’t have to worry about making sure that the air is turned down when you go on vacation anymore! Or when you go away just for the weekend.

Another great feature is that the nest thermostat connects to the Internet via your Wi-Fi network, and you can control it from the web and from your iPhone or android device. That way when you’re on your way home from your vacation, you can turn the AC back on, and it will be nice and comfortable when you walk in the door. The inherently lazy part of me also appreciates that I don’t have to get out of bed in the middle of the night when my wife complains that it’s too cold, Lord do I have to get off the couch in the middle of a movie marathon because it’s too hot. Nest Labs recently announced Works with Nest, which essentially turns a Nest Thermostat into a hub for your home automation. Companies like Whirlpool, Mercedes-Benz, and Jawbone have added integration with the Nest Thermostat into their products to make them more convenient and energy-efficient.

At this point, you probably noticed that I haven’t said anything about how to program it. Well, that is really one of the greatest things about it. You don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is use it for a couple of weeks, and the Nest thermostat just figures out how long it takes your house to cool down or warm up, and it figures out how you like the temperature in your house to be and when, and sets your schedule based on how you use it. So, for instance, if you like it to be kind of cold when you go to bed but warmer when you wake up, and you always set it to 72° around 10 o’clock and 78° when you wake up at 6:00, after a couple of weeks, the thermostat will automatically set itself to cool down to 72° by 10 PM and warm back up to 78° by 6 AM. And, if you always leave the house to go to work at about 8:15 AM and get home by 6:30 PM, your house will start going into auto away mode automatically at 8:15, and it will automatically turn back on in time to have the house cooled back down by 6:30.

Americans waste a lot of energy running our our air conditioning units all the time. Most people forget or just don?t want to turn their AC up when they go to work. If you don’t think that matters, just think about this, half of most home’s electric bill is controlled by the thermostat. If you have a properly programmed thermostat, you can save 20% off of your energy costs.

Finally, the Nest Thermostat is ridiculously easy to install. It took me a total of 20 minutes. Most of that time was me reading over the instructions 4 times because I was nervous that I would mess something up. The instructions are super easy to follow, and if you have a “complicated” old thermostat like I did, all you have to do is take a picture of your old thermostat, send it to Nest, and they will email you back a custom wiring diagram. All you have to do is remove the faceplate of your old thermostat, apply the included labels, and then plug them into the Nest Thermostat base plate. Everything you will need is included in the box, including a screwdriver. But if you really don’t think you can do it, or you just don’t want to do it, Nest has certified installers that will be more than happy to take your money from you to install a Nest thermostat in your home.

The Nest Thermostat is available for $249 at Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, Google Play, The Home Depot, Lowe’s, and of course, Nest.com.

This is our first day at One Spark. We haven’t seen any creators yet. But what we did is we searched through the One Spark website to see which creators we definitely wanted to check out while we were here. Now, this is in no way saying that these are the best tech creators here at One Spark, but these are the ones that got our attention.

Verti Bluetooth item finder – Urban Grind Coffee Company (50 N Laura)

This is similar to the Tile you may have seen advertised on Facebook. This is a small bluetooth device that you can attach to your key ring, or stick to something. If you lose your item, you can open the app on your iPhone or android smartphone, and find the item.

What makes the Verti different is that it has a button on it. So, if you lose your phone, you can press the button on the Verti and find your phone. Also, according to the creator, the Verti will have a much larger range 200 feet instead of the normal 50-100 feet. It also has motion detection so you can tell if an item has moved.

What I want to know is if you can replace the battery. A lot of these Bluetooth finders have batteries that cannot be replaced, Which means you have to buy a new one every time the battery dies.

Park Genius – North Bank Riverwalk (341 South Hogan Street)

Instead of replacing the existing parking meters with electronic ones that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, their idea is to just augment them with a mobile app. All the city has to do is put a sticker on the parking meter that tells parkers that they can pay on the iOS or Android app, and the parking enforcement can check on their mobile device to see if you paid or not.

Marbel – SunTrust Building (76 N Laura Street)

Ultralight electric skateboard that can travel up to 10 miles with a top speed of 20 mph, and only weighs 9.9 pounds. The coolest part is that it also has an iOS app that you can use to control the ride! My inner twelve-year-old boy is thrilled.

Bucketwish – Jacksonville Bank Building (100 N Laura Street)

Bucketwish is a social network where you can post your wish list. It gives a fun way to share the crazy dreams and wishes that you want to do with your family, friends and strangers, and they can contribute to them and help make them happen.

The idea is, it’s kind of like Make-A-Wish or Dreams Come True, but not just for kids with life threatening illnesses.

The idea behind Bucketwish sounds odd. Who would want to pay for you to live out your dream, but honestly Kickstarter would’ve sounded insane just five years ago.

We’ve seen this kind of thing happen on crowd funding sites, where someone will do it for someone else, Like what happened with the bus driver who was being harassed by the students. Someone saw that terrible video and then turn around and raised enough money for her to go on vacation. There was such a huge response, that he ended up raising over $750,000.

WaZINIT – SunTrust Building (76 N Laura Street)

WaZINIT is an app that lets you scan the bar code of food products to see if they contain anything that you are trying to avoid. So, if you are allergic to peanuts, or you just don’t like artificial sweeteners, WaZINIT would let you know whether to avoid it or not.

It reminded me of an app that we talked about on our show one time called secretly vegan. Secretly Vegan lists common supermarket products that are vegan. WaZINIT takes it one step further.

Brash – The Jacksonville Landing, 2 Independent Drive

A universal gift card that is randomly filled with money throughout the day by various stores. But the money is only on the card for a limited amount of time.

The example they give on their profile page really explains it best. John Doe would get a text message saying “Hey John, you just received a $23 gift from Kohl’s! Hurry, that money is only good for 72 hours. BTW Kohl’s has 20% all coats this week!” John goes to Kohl’s and uses his Brash Card like a normal gift card. But, if John doesn’t spend that gift in time, that $23 goes directly back to Kohl’s. Merchants are guaranteed nearly full return on marketing investment, consumers get a few extra bucks.” Everybody is happy!

Alert The Boss – Visit Jacksonville (208 North Laura Street)

Alert the Boss is a text messaging service that allows customers to interact with businesses before they post a negative comment or complaint on a site like Yelp or Urbanspoon.

Evan Diamond from Alert The Boss was on Deemable Tech last year to talk about it before One Spark last year. At the time, Alert The Boss was really still just a concept. They were literally still working on the prototype right up until we started recording the podcast. In the year since then Alert the Boss has grown tremendously, and is a really great service.

SwitchTick – The Jacksonville Landing (2 Independent Drive)

Switch take is a website that allows you to exchange items with other people. So, for example if you had a microwave that you no longer need, but you need a new recliner, you could trade someone for a recliner on SwitchTick

#crtfreejax – South Laura Street

This is something that we’ve talked about on our radio segment and on our podcast before, you cannot just throw out computers, especially computer monitors. #crtfreejax wants to fabricate a machine that can recycle the Cathode Ray Tubes, which are the most difficult and dangerous part of computers.

Two projects that aren’t tech related that we have to mention:

Dawgtown – Icon Boutique (108 East Adams Street)

Dawgown is a hand-drawn animated movie by my friend Justin Murphy about a pitbull that is trying to escape the world of underground dogfighting. And, Al Letson, the host of State of the Re:Union is the voice of the MC in the movie.

Chomp Chips – Chomp Chomp (106 W Adams Street)

Curry. Potato. Chips. That’s all I have to say. If you haven’t had them… you haven’t lived. In fact, I have to wrap this up so I can go get some right now.

Q: How do I switch my iTunes account from an old computer, which is broken, to my new computer? I’ve downloaded iTunes onto the new computer, but, of course, it doesn’t recognize my account. The real problem is my iPod. I have all my music on it, but now I am not able to add to it to iTunes.

A: Well, first of all, Phil, your new computer should recognize your iTunes account. If it doesn’t, you have a problem that you need to contact Apple about. You may have to reset your iTunes password. Hopefully you still have access to the e-mail address you gave Apple for your account. Once iTunes does recognize your account, you need to authorize your computer. Sign into iTunes, then click the Store tab at the top and click “authorize this computer.” You should now be able to re-download any songs you purchased through iTunes. However, any songs that you ripped from CDs, or acquired through other questionable methods, are still trapped on your iPod. Apple made it this way so people couldn?t use their iPods to transfer illegally shared music between computers. But in this situation, their safeguard is a real hassle for you.

Regardless of how you acquired your music, and we are not here to judge, your music isn’t trapped on your iPod forever. You can transfer it to your computer, but it takes a little work, unless you are willing to pay for an app. We’ll show you how to do it the hard way first, then if you decide that’s not for you, we’ll include a link to the app at the bottom. Here’s how to do it if you have a Windows PC.

Transferring your iTunes library from an iPod to a new Windows PC

When you plug your iPod into your PC, you need to stop it from auto-syncing. To do this, hold down Shift and Ctrl while you plug in your iPod. Then, you can open your iPod like an external hard drive, by going to My Computer and double-clicking the iPod.

However, if you double-click on the iPod and you get an error message asking you to format your iPod, stop! Your iPod was formatted for a Mac. If this is the case, you’ll need a program called MacDrive to see your Mac formatted iPod on your Windows computer. But hopefully this won’t happen to you.

Once you get it open, you need to reveal your hidden files. Each version of Windows has a slightly different way to do it, so if you’ve never revealed your hidden files before, just search Google or Bing for “Show Hidden Files Windows” and whatever version of Windows you have “XP, 7 or 8” Click on the first search results that are from Microsoft. Follow those directions, and you’ll be able to see your hidden files on your iPod.

Now, once you have your iPod open, look for a folder called “iPod-Control.” In there, you’ll find another folder labeled “Music.” Copy that folder to your computer. Now, open iTunes, and click File and Add to Library. Navigate to the Music folder you copied to your desktop, and iTunes will import everything. Your files will have random four letter names, but as soon as they are imported to iTunes, the song titles and artists will be restored.

Transferring your iTunes library from an iPod to a new Mac

If you have a Mac, it’s a little more complicated, but you’ll do basically the same thing. However,  unless you buy an app, you will have to go into the Terminal. Hold down Command and Option while you plug in the iPod. Then you will launch Terminal, and enter “defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE” and then enter “killall Finder” Now you’ll click on the iPod in iTunes, click the Summary tab and check box next to Enable Disc Use.

Now, open Finder, open the iPod, open the folder iPod-Control and copy the Music folder to your Desktop. Then, open iTunes, and click File and Add to Library. Navigate to the Music folder you copied to your desktop, and iTunes will import everything.

Transferring your iTunes library from an iPod with an app

If you’ve read the instructions above, and you are completely overwhelmed, there are two other options. First, you could buy an app that will do most of the heavy lifting for you. If you have an iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad, DiskAid will do the trick. With DiskAid you can copy music, video, text messages and your contacts from your iOS device. If you have a iPod classic or Nano, PodTrans Pro will do the job for you. PodTrans Pro will also convert incompatible file formats for you so you can watch Windows Media files on your iPod. Both DiskAid and PodTrans Pro work on Windows and Mac. If the only thing concerning you is diving into the Terminal on your Mac is concerning you, you can download Houdini for Mac which will make your hidden files and folders visible.

The other option is to have someone do it for you. Most IT service companies can transfer the music files for you, and they usually won’t charge too much for the job. Check out our business directory for some good companies that should be able to help you out.

Spring semester is in full swing for college students around the world and the Class of 2014 will be entering the job market in mere months. Unemployment rates are still scary at 6.7% but there are ways to improve the likelihood of landing an interview. If you are planning to enter the job market in the coming months, here’s how to position yourself on LinkedIn:

Create a profile.

Use a permanent personal email account. You can add your work or school email after you’ve set up your profile. LinkedIn will suggest you import your email contacts each time you add an email address. Be aware if you do import your contacts, LinkedIn may send them a connection request. This can be a problem if you do not update your contact list. It’s better to connect with people on an individual basis rather than en masse.

Upload a headshot.

A picture is worth a thousand words and yours should express your personality while appealing to employers in your industry. You can improve your personal brand by using the same picture across your social media accounts. Your Twitter account with thoughtful posts about industry trends can confirm to potential employers that they’ve found the right person.

Craft an SEO-approved headline. 

LinkedIn gives you 120 characters to sell yourself. Use that space to squeeze in some industry keywords. Are you actively seeking employment? Consider starting your headline with “Seeking Employment As [Insert Job Title].”Now that you have started setting up your LinkedIn profile, adjust your privacy settings. Turn off broadcast of your activity while making frequent changes to your profile. You can turn this feature on again when you are ready to announce new positions or skills.

Explain your personal brand in the Summary.

Use this space to introduce yourself to future employers or clients. You have 2,000 characters to present your story. Keep it professional and remember to use keywords common to your desired profession.

Add current and previous positions.

LinkedIn allows you to add as much of your work history as you desire. Focus on the jobs you enjoyed most and the ones that showcase skills you want to utilize in the future.

Now you’re ready to start adding connections. Not sure how to build a strong network? Check back for Part 2: Building a Solid LinkedIn Network.