by Ron | Feb 4, 2015 | Gadgets
I have a 2014 Subaru Forester.
Previously, I was using an iPhone 4S on iOS 7 and every time I started the car, the phone would automatically connect to Bluetooth. Worked great.
I switched to an iPhone 5S on iOS 8 and that stopped working.
I tried deleting and re-pairing through the radio about a dozen times. Still didn’t work.
Finally, I remembered the audio pairing option available through the steering wheel control. Turns out, I think I had maxed out the number of connected devices there. Apparently, the radio and audio settings don’t interact with each other.
I talked through the BT setup options, deleted all the devices I had installed there and re-paired my iPhone.
Problem solved!
by Ron | Apr 23, 2010 | Android, Gadgets
The Nexus One Car Dock is well constructed and sturdy. It communicates with your phone via Bluetooth.
It works ok, but there is one show-stopper in my book. NO LINE LEVEL AUDIO OUT port. If you want to connect it to your car stereo and listen to audio, you have two options:
- Bluetooth (which most cars don’t have yet… plus wouldn’t be able to pair with a headset for calls)
- The headphone jack (1/8″ Mini) on top of phone.
That means, when you get in your vehicle, you must cradle the phone then plug in your cable to the top of the phone, adjust the volume up (since it’s not line level). To get out of car, unplug the headphone cable, and uncradle the phone. I know, I know… this is not a “problem” experienced in developing countries. But COME ON Google… for $55 I should be able to drop the phone in the cradle, turn on my car stereo and drive.
Worth noting; when charging, the phone gets pretty warm. Not so hot you can’t hold it, but much warmer than my iPhone ever got.
More to come… these are just my initial thoughts.
by Ron | Dec 5, 2009 | Gadgets, Linux
Don’t forget to remount in rw mode:
mount -o rw,remount /
Also, cron needs to be started:
/opt/etc/init.d/S10cron
by Ron | Jun 29, 2009 | Gadgets, Mac
I recently had the opportunity to try out the Elgato Turbo.264 HD encoder/accelerator.
The device does what it claims… it transcodes most any type of video file and produces an H.264 file formatted for your device (iPhone, iPod, AppleTV, BeyondTV, etc.). The processing time is (more or less) equal to the length of the video. e.g. A 60 minute video takes around 60 minutes to transcode.
My only complaint is that it uses 100% of my machine’s CPU while processing. I recall seeing a blurb about this somewhere in the documentation, but I thought it said it used “some” of the CPU. On my Macbook Pro 2.16Ghz, it spiked out the entire time. Obviously, that causes the internal fan to kick into overdrive, generating a good bit of noise.
The older non-HD version did NOT use the host CPU, so the transcode time was longer. But on a laptop I would gladly sacrifice the longer time in lieu of the fan noise. On a desktop, it would be a non-issue for me. A perfect solution would be to have a setting in the software that allowed you to choose how much of the CPU was used.
Some folks in various forums have complained about (and demonstrated) very dark videos from the device, but none of my tests were dark.
Overall, it’s a neat gadget. My only complaint is the CPU issue.
by Ron | Mar 11, 2009 | Gadgets, Mac
Andy Ihnatko has a review of the Air Sharing iPhone app at the My Digital Life Podcast & Blog.
Of particular interest to me… Andy says:
“Music and video are both formats that the iPhone OS can simply view outside of the iPod app. If I just copy it into my Air Share, I can play it with just a tap. I often put whole albums on the iPhone, if I don’t yet know if I want to throw them into my big iTunes soup. That’s a particularly big plus when it’s a 700 meg movie file and I don’t know if I want to burn up that much space on my notebook’s little hard drive by actually importing it into iTunes.”
Only $4.99. Go read the review… good stuff.
by Ron | Mar 2, 2009 | Gadgets, Reviews
The original Jawbone headset by Aliph provides excellent noise reduction.
However, the unit has a design flaw; the charger fits too tight around the back of the unit. In fact, as I recently found out, it is SO tight that it can easily destroy the headset when removing it.
When I contacted Aliph customer service, they were cordial, but unwilling to help since I couldn’t find my receipt.
After some additional research, I found a video tutorial showing the best way to remove the charger. Apparently, this is known issue.
It’s really lame of Aliph to not stand behind their product. I definitely WILL NOT be buying my replacement headset from them.
