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For a couple of months, the audio of today’s show is here. Recent shows are here.
There was no Zen Tech show on 5-30-18

 

Glenn didn’t play intro music. The outro music was by Pentatonix.

 

Glenn was in the studio today and Paul called in.

 

Paul called from Warsaw where it was 10:10pm their local time, a 9 hour difference from Pacific Time. It was 65 degrees & overcast. He got to Warsaw On Ryan Air for $75 return from London.

He and a couple of other people shared an Uber from the airport in Poland and he soon found that his cell phone no longer wanted to use the cellular network.

Paul had previously downloaded about a 60 meg map of the Warsaw area using Google Maps in the offline mode, just in case he lost the internet connection. But offline maps don’t do any routing to an address. He had to arrange a signaling system to find which unit of a thousand units AirBNB apartment building was his rental. The host was to flash the unit’s light on and off & he was to wave at her from down below. He expects to leave Warsaw on Monday.
<In case your phone didn’t come preinstalled with it, the Google Maps app is here.>

Paul talked a bit about his “British” teeth. He’s having his 4th implant done. It costs less in eastern and central Europe than it does in the West — by about a third or half.

Glenn said there was an update for IOS to version 11.4. He had installed it in both his iPad and iPhone. He asked Paul if he’s done the update yet, and that got Paul to talk about his iPhones.

Paul has both an iPhone 5 & 6. The iPhone 6 refused to work in Poland so he took out its SIM card and put it into the 5, which then worked fine. Virgin Media, who I assume is the provider, didn’t have a solution.

Paul said he did the 11.4 upgrade and he was using it in England. “It did seem to improve a number of things”. he said. Glenn said he did the upgrade last night and hasn’t formed an opinion yet.

Over the past 3 or 4 weeks Glenn’s iPad had been giving him trouble. It was freezing up. It wouldn’t restart but would come back to a point where he had to enter his password again. That happened about a dozen times and he hopes the update will resolve the problem.

Glenn thanked contributing supporters of KVMR. <If you’d like to become a contributing member, you can call the business office at 530-265-9073 or go to the KVMR website.>

Paul continued talking about the 11.4 update. The iPhone 6 is the oldest phone that can take the update. The iPhone 6 was the 1st one with the finger print sensor but it had a sluggish response. 11.4 improved the response. He said he uses the sensor mainly when he’s traveling. He thinks it’s the best way to keep the phone secure in case it’s lost or stolen.

Glenn said he keeps his iPhone 6S in a case and it never recognizes his finger print, so he uses a pass code instead.

Chips on credit and ATM cards are only now gaining popularity in the US. Europe has had them for something like 10 years. Now cards are coming out with RFID and you only need to tap the card on the ATM terminal, not insert it. And purchases less than $30 don’t require a signature “or anything” <a PIN>.

But if the card is lost/stolen the villain can make multiple purchases of less than $30. So in Europe, you can login to your account and inactivate the card until you want to use it again. However, Glenn pointed out that you might not realize the card is missing until you try using it much later. Paul said he’s notified his bank to alert him if his card is used for any amount more than 10 cents. He said that someone intending to misuse the card might run the card for $1 just to see if the card is good.

Paul noticed an experimental feature on Google Maps. One of the markers is a human figure with a thumb out. It’s to let people know that there is a hitchhiker needing a lift. He highly recommends Google Maps for not only for finding your way around but also for locating points of interest.

Glenn reminded listeners that questions or comments can be sent to the guys using zen at kvmr dot org.

Paul expanded on the problem of the 3G cellular not working when he got outside of the airport. If you ever have network problems on your iPhone, go to ‘Settings’ in the iPhone & iPad then to ‘About’, and at the bottom you’ll find the option to reset. Be careful about resetting the whole phone, which will “wipe the iPhone like it was new.” There is also another reset for all of the cell and wireless networks, which he said you can try. It didn’t work in his case and it took him 3 days of trying before he did the SIM card swap, as mentioned above.

Glenn asked what the Uber prices were like compared to the US. Paul said Uber quoted $25 or $30 to go 25 miles from the airport to town after midnight.

Glenn read an email from Betsie. One of the main reasons she recently got an iPhone X was to screen music for her DJ work. Her problem is that the ‘recently added’ playlist only goes back a short amount of time and the things that appear after that are her other playlists, not recently added songs. Paul said he wasn’t sure, but it’s likely there’s a setting that needs to be changed. Go to settings and see if there is a setting for iTunes and tell it how recent you want ‘recent’ to mean.

Paul went on to talk about storing photos online. He’s “driven to distraction” by iCloud Photos and refuses to use it. Glenn said he uses iCloud Photos. But due to some trouble he’s had, he had to reset his iPhone a couple of months ago, and every time he has to reset his Mac Mini or iPad or iPhone it messes up his synching. Right now, even though it says things are being backed up to iCloud the synching isn’t happening.

The big problem Paul has had is never being quite sure what’s been backed up to iCloud and uses Google Photos instead. On the iPhone 6 with IOS 11.4, the latest Google Photos has a prominent area that says “back up my photos now” where you give it permission to look at your repository of photos and back them up while counting down as they’re backed. There’s a setting that will let it do the backup only while using wi-fi, not the cellular network. You’ll probably want to use wi-fi only so as not to use up your allotted cellular data. After the backup, Google Photos asks you if you want to delete them from the phone. The program is the first one Paul has seen that tells you clearly what it’s done. At Google you get 15 gigs for free, compared to iCloud’s 5 gigs.

Glenn mentioned Vocre, an app that does language translation. <Find more about it and its developer in the 2-13-13 show notes>. Paul said he doesn’t use Vocre, but Google Translate instead. He used it while in Poland. He pointed his phone at a street sign and Google Translate changed the words to English right in the photo of the sign. Paul was really amazed. He said it can translate words in the photos you’ve taken in the past.
<The Google Translate app is here. And Vocre app is here.>

Paul said he uses the phone so much that he’s using a battery pack with it. The battery pack weighs 3 times as much as the phone. It’s 10 ampHour battery pack that cost him $10 from Amazon.

Paul said he’ll post some of the photos from his drone quadcopter to his Facebook page (not the Zen Tech Facebook page).

Last Updated 12:52 AM 6-14-2018