Q: We have a Kindle Fire that is approximately 2 years old. It has completely lost its ability to charge. I tried multiple chargers with no avail. I used to be able to tilt the charger upward and get it to charge, but that is no longer working. Is there anything we can do?

A: Bad news Meghan: it’s time for a new tablet. This one is toast. The connection to the battery is probably broken or the battery is bad. In fact, if the power is not getting to the battery properly that can kill the battery anyway. So if you only had one problem before, now you have two problems. And, more bad news, most Kindle Fire tablets do not have replaceable batteries.

Kindle Fires have a standard one year warranty so unfortunately that won’t help you. You might be able to take it to someone to get it repaired, but do you really want to spend money on this? You can get a new Kindle Fire for $119.00 and a previous generation version for only $73.00. You could easily spend that on the repair bill.

If you are feeling really crafty, you can get a replacement battery for about $50, but I’ll tell you, they are not easy to replace.

If you liked your Kindle Fire I would just order a new one, or look at other cheap tablets. There are a lot on the market right now.

Don’t think of it as losing a tablet so much as… gaining a newer tablet? At any rate, good luck!

Image credit: Stephen Jones / WJCT

Beat the summer heat with Deemable Tech!

In this sizzling hour-long radio special, Ray and Tom hear from listeners looking to back up a Mac and a PC to the same external hard drive, searching for ways to open more free space on their iPhone, wondering if their IP address has been hacked and more.

The guys also share some really useful websites for planning your summer vacation, talk about ways to secure your smartphone, and review the Nest “smart” thermostat.

Deemable Tech June 2014 Radio Special

Listener Questions

• Does my smartphone have a virus?
• Why won’t my Kindle battery charge?
• Is my IP address being hacked?
• How do I start a podcast?

Links Mentioned in this Special

• Format an external hard drive to use with both Macs and PCs
• Using the exFAT format
• Lifehacker – Making the most of an iPhone with minimal storage
• Backing up your iOS device – How to backup your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch
• Tips to Hacker-Proof Your Smartphone
• Eight Websites to Help Plan Your Summer Vacation
• Nest Thermostat Review

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!

Q: I’m a writer and working on a new blog, where I’ll post a new article every week. A friend suggested that I do a weekly podcast, too. How do I do that? What kind of equipment do I need, and how do I market my podcast?

I’m not very good at tech terms, so when I looked up this question on the web it just confused me. Is there someone who can walk me through the process and give me a better understanding about podcasts, and blogging in general? I have a “computer guy” but he doesn’t know anything about podcasts.

A: Great question, Karen. Here at Deemable Tech we are actually able to record in a professional studio, but that’s not an option for most people. However, you can still record a great podcast right in your own home.

At the bare minimum, you need a computer and a good microphone. If you have nothing but that, you can start recording a podcast. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Windows or a Mac, both have plenty of software available to do the job. Macs, however, come with the software you need built-in. And, those software programs are a bit easier to use that their PC counterparts.

The kind of microphone you should get depends a lot on your budget, and the amount of time you want to invest in learning about sound production. On the simple end of things, you can get a microphone that plugs into the USB port of your computer for anywhere from 50 to 200 hundred dollars. Most of the major microphone manufacturers make a USB model.

The Audio-Technica AT2020 is one we like, and we’ve always had a soft-spot for the Blue Microphone Yeti.

Once you have a good mic, the next step is to record your podcast. You’ll need some software to do that. As we mentioned before, on the Mac there is a built-in program to do the job – it?s called GarageBand. You can also download a free program called Audacity for Windows or Mac. It does a great job recording, and it is pretty easy to use it to edit your recordings.

Once you have your podcast recorded, you are ready to take the big step of putting it out on the internet.

Now, here’s where it can get nerdy. You’ll need to either setup a website that can host an RSS feed, or you’ll have to use a service to publish your podcast for you. If your blog is a WordPress site, you can just create a new category named podcast, and then you’ll publish all of your podcast episodes in the podcast category. WordPress creates an RSS feed for you, which is the technical term for what a podcast really is. If that sounds too complicated for you, there are services that will set it up for you. One good one is called BuzzSprout. You have to pay for BuzzSprout in addition to your website hosting, but it gets the job done, and it’s really easy to set up.

Once you get it published, then you need to advertise it. The best way to advertise it is to get it listed in podcast directories, like the big one, iTunes. It doesn’t cost anything to be listed in iTunes, but you practically have to be listedthere if you are ever going to be heard. More people listen to podcasts listed on iTunes than anywhere else. But there are other great podcast services like Stitcher and Slacker Radio as well. List your podcast in as many places as possible.

Hopefully that will get you pointed in the right direction, Karen. Another great resource to getting a podcast started is, ironically, a podcast. Download the Podcast app for iPhone or iPod or just open iTunes and search for Podcasting for Dummies. This is the companion podcast for the book Podcasting for Dummies. There’s a lot of great information in the podcast, and it’s completely free.

Check that out and you’ll be on your way to internet stardom in no time.

Q: When ever I go on my computer I get a message that someone else is using my IP address. I am terrified. Is someone else pretending to be me? Please help!!!!!!

A: Linda, first of all, don’t panic: if a hacker wanted to pretend to be you, they wouldn’t steal your IP address. It?s unlikely you are being hacked. What is more likely is that you have two devices on your home network that are conflicting with each other.

Your mysterious IP address thief is much more likely to be a misbehaving wireless printer or mobile device that is using your WiFi network than a hacker. Wireless printers are sometimes the culprit, because some of them have pre-set IP addresses. If the WiFi router hands out that preset address to another computer or device, the router will get confused about who to send data to. Of course it doesn’t have to be a printer to blame, it could be anything that is using your Wi-Fi.

Try disconnecting your laptop from the Wi-Fi and then reconnecting. That should cause the router to assign it a clean IP address. Actually it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do that for every device connected to the Wi-Fi.

It?s possible, though, that this problem stems from either your laptop or another device on the network having a static IP address set. If that?s the issue you will probably need a technician to come out and look at it, as that starts to get a little bit complicated.

It?s also possible your wireless router is having problems, in which case it will need to be replaced. While that can be a pain, the good news is that you aren’t having your identity stolen by hackers!

Q: My smartphone (a Casio G’zOne) displayed a warning yesterday saying that it had a virus. I didn’t do anything as I’ve been told the warning is the actual virus. How can I tell if the phone has virus protection installed? If not, can I download it for the phone?

Image credit: Casio

A: Charles, let us set your mind at ease. It is very unlikely that your smart phone has a virus. What you saw was most likely a scam – a banner ad trying to trick you into buying something or clicking on something that you shouldn’t. Uninstall whatever app you saw that in, and you should be fine.

Smartphones work differently than PCs. A program on a PC basically has the run of the computer and can do anything it wants. But an app on a smartphone gets put in a little sandbox, and it is very limited in what it can do. This makes it harder for a classic virus to be effective on a phone.

That isn’t to say that a smartphone could never get a virus, but we have yet to see any big ones on Android or iOS that users need to worry about. If that ever happens, we will be the first ones to let you know.

If you still don’t feel safe, you can download anti-virus apps that will check for bad stuff on your phone, but recent studies have found that a lot of the free ones are basically useless. They catch very few pieces of malware, and can slow down your phone considerably. There are also paid apps from big anti-virus companies like Symantec, BitDefender and Trend Micro, but these too take up a lot of memory and will affect your phone’s performance.

What you really need to watch out for aren’t viruses, they’re malicious apps. Apps available in the the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store have been screened by those companies, and are trustworthy 99.99% of the time. But if you download and install an app from an unofficial source (this is known as “side-loading”), you run the risk of getting something dangerous. Most people who side-load apps are trying to install free versions of games you normally have to pay for, which is basically like catnip for hackers. Our advice is to never side-load an app unless you’re confident of what it is and know the people who made it.

So, Charles, don’t worry too much about that warning you saw. If you play it safe when you’re surfing the web, and make sure you’re only downloading apps from official places, you should be fine.