Most Viewed Technology Blogs (217)

My work computer is rebooting... It stays online 24/7 and I only reboot when necessary.
The video refresh hasn't been right for a few weeks now and I went to the manufacturer of the video board to install new drivers.
Almost done. We shall see.

I will say the reboot process has improved since I switched to Google Chrome, as all my resources come back online after the reboot. Email, Calendar and business apps via Streak and Asana.

The subject is Obstacle avoidance. I was reminded about this feature as the Kobe Bryant crash on Sunday January 26 killed all nine aboard a Sikorsky S-76B aircraft.

If I had to do a quick list of advances in consumer drones, I would split them into generations. We're probably in the 4th generation. The 1st generation had simple drones. The 2nd generation added camera drones. The 3rd generation added drones with GPS and had detection on landing where the drone would stop it's descent if it sensed the terrain were higher than where it initially started from.

The latest generation of drones have obstacle detection from the front, rear and below. If you steer one of these drones into some trees, it will halt at a distance established in the avoidance setup menu. Let's say, 10 feet is the setting and you are moving toward a building, the drone will stop at 10 feet away of any unknown obstacle.
Once technology like this was only available on drones costing a few thousand and now the feature is standard on drones down to the $500 price range.

Kobe's multi-million dollar Sikorsky didn't have any obstacle avoidance equipment, nor did it have a 'black box' flight recorder. Regarding the crash, there are several different stories but the official report probably won't be released for 12 to 18 months.

The pilot flew in foggy conditions that were so bad, several police departments in the area grounded their helicopter operations.

There seems to be some politics going on with app stores Apple and Google and their relationship with Twitter. Maybe a threat or dare if those stores no longer support the Twitter app.

Elon Musk dreams up manufacturing his own alternative phone if "...there is no other choice"

Google says there are over 200 million smartphones in America... Does Elon think introducing a new phone to support Twitter to be a viable enterprise?

What percent of America would run out and buy an "alternative" $700 MUSK phone that isn't compatible with all the existing Apple and Google apps just to run Twitter?

Elon, take a hint... offer your own app that supports Apple and Android, available via Twitter. That's got to be a viable solution as manufacturing and distribution of an entirely new product could be light years into the future!

Earlier this week, I read a story about looters in California who broke into a car dealership and stole luxury and sports cars worth millions of dollars. Tonight, it appears it's happening again. Storefront windows are smashed, locked key boxes are broken into and they match a key to a car and drive away!
I'm curious if these high-end vehicles have Lo-Jack and if so, it's only a matter of a few hours before the cars can be tracked.

I went to the Home Depot site, typed in a selection and before I could choose from the options, the drop-down menu got in the way and I had to back arrow and start again.

Local weather channel has a hair-trigger drop down menu that takes a few seconds to release to let you make a selection from the main page.

One of the helicopter retailers has a series of 'land mines' that drop down with pop-ups that force the user to wait before making selections. Crossing your mouse over a menu opens other (unwanted) menus that lock waiting for graphics to generate. Sometimes it's quicker to close the page and open a new one bypassing the delay in the system.


Today's annoyance: Drop Down Menus...

I bought a new cell phone a couple of weeks ago. My old one was going out on me as far as the screen goes. The screen started fading and doing some weird stuff. My old phone was a LG Stylo 5. I got it last year when my other LG Stylo 5 phone went out on me since I just made it before the one year warranty went out on it. This time I just missed it by about three week over. I'll never buy a LG phone again.

My new one is a Samsung Galaxy S13. So far I'm happy with it. We'll continue seeing how this one will go....

My recent trip to Dayton, Ohio has markings everywhere as reminders of the Wright brothers being the first to have a powered aircraft successfully take a man into flight. I got to see a reconstruction of their workshop, wind tunnel for airfoil testing, some of their original aircraft and videos of some of their failures and successes.
The desire they had was great, but they were by no means great designers and it took a few years of testing and retesting to get a engine powered plane to fly more than a few seconds with control.

I've started watching a few YouTube videos about their work, the secrecy as they learned others globally were attempting the same thing. They had a patent in the United States for the design, but that means nothing in Europe and other experimenters were right behind the Wrights.

The one thing I read/saw was they based some of the steering in wing bending that was evident in soaring birds. A competitor had a fixed wing and used adjustable flaps called ailerons to control the steering. Fortunately for the Wright brothers, their documented flights were the first.

Probably the smartest thing the Wright brothers did was to avoid a flapping wing design as it proved to be the biggest flop in mankind attempting to fly like a bird!

I came across this video of such disasters in the early days of manned flight.
Funny now, but I'm sure many were injured and killed in their attempts.



It's amazing how many 'test pilots' wore suits and ties.

I'm a half mile from the clubhouse of a golf course. On top of the building is a small weather station with a siren to alert golfers of lightening strikes.
It's pretty standard in South Florida where bad weather can jump up in minutes. I've read many of these systems are networked to larger weather centers that use sophisticated lightening detection systems and weather radar. When lightening strikes are detected, the siren blasts out a warning for the golfers to seek shelter.
Typically, I've got the windows closed, a/c on and louvers closed, so I'm not distracted by what's going on around the condo... but I do know it's going to rain when I hear the lightening siren.

I considered purchasing an amateur weather station when I lived in Miami and had a 60' high tower with a string of radio antennas. That must have been 20+ years ago when I was available as a first responder using 2-way radios to assist when a hurricane hit, power was out, phone lines down and no cellular service.

Life and interest changes for me that I'm no longer in a radio club to offer public service. There are many more resources now, so let someone else invest the time and money for weather stations and inclement weather alert systems.

They are all around my area so I don't have to look too far to find one:

For the benefit of those who don't know, Photoshop is a brand name for one of the first digital editing software suites. It incorporates dozens of filtering controls that people use to create artistic effects and alter or retouch existing photos.
Famous models, movie stars, singers use Photoshop to enhance their appearance, remove wrinkles, turn mediocre photos into masterpieces.

Fans who 'know their stars' are quick to complain when a perfect photo comes online to someone who is less than perfect. Kim Kardashian is a good example of a Photoshop queen who

Today, I was searching images and came across 26 year old Canadian YouTube star Jen Brett who was the subject of Photoshopped photos. This case it's the OPPOSITE.

Someone Photoshopped her 'chunky-butt' and reduced the size, digitally smoothed with the appearance of zero cellulite.



Shadows were reduced and proportions changed to give her a thinner body.

Part of the complaint was, the guy who did the photo retouch told Jen she should cut off the extra weight!


Story link:

I was a Sprint customer for many years and when I started working for a company that had a metal roof on their building, my phone reception (inside the building) became non-existent. Some of my coworkers were Sprint customers and would stand outside to make calls. This was before phones could switch to Wi-Fi calling.
I purchased a signal booster that had 2 antennas, one outside for picking up the nearest tower signal and the other inside that relayed the phone signal. It worked pretty good for about 50 feet from the antenna. When I switched to T-Mobile, I didn't require the signal booster and gave it to a friend who was having the same trouble in the building he worked at.

Now, I'm at a place with the same problem. All the bars lit outside and inside I often had a 'no signal' error message. Switching to Wi-Fi calling wasn't reliable as I missed lots of calls and text messages weren't outgoing. They would snag and I often had to reboot the phone to get things to work again. Several calls to customer service only had technicians remotely checking my phone telling me to change the settings and make Wi-Fi the main method of communication and not cell service. One tech walked me through the settings to be sure everything was good. Rebooting the phone and trying that for a few days didn't work well. that was enough to call them and complain.

I was lucky to get someone who knew of a low power cell site device that connected directly to the network where I'm located (and not an antenna style booster) so they sent me one and I connected it. Instructions said it could be a few hours before the device would download updates and register with the T-Mobile service. Later that night, I received a text message the unit was online. When I got to the office the next day, I had 'full bars' without having to switch to Wi-Fi.

The new mini-cell site works great and 2 of my coworkers who are also T-Mobile customers are also benefiting from this device. It's just sitting on the corner of my desk right now, but I'll mount it on a wall up high for maximum coverage.

My private cell site...