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Mathew Steel

Technology Today and Yesterday(s)

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Hi, Eagle Prince....

Not being a "Techy", the "Ladies of My Kingdom" (being Wife and Daughter) both use portable chargers for their phones. Neither have had problems. The phones do get "warm", though. They have being using them for around 8 months. I sounds like your Salesperson was selling you a "Universial Charger" perhaps? Unless your portable charger is pumping out massive amounts of amps, I don't think you'll have too much of a problem though.

Hope my "lack of knowledge" in the matter helps :)

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Thanks for helping me with this issue. :)

In fact this is just the kind of help I needed - to see what are experiences of others with those portable chargers. And yes, what he sold me would be something like universal (portable) charger. It's not the same brand is my phone is, but considering specifications it should be good. Later yesterday I tried to charge the phone again from the portable charger it now I didn't have that heating issue. Now I wasn't using the phone much: I wasn't browsing internet over wifi, nor using Viber or any other application which would require some more of phones resources. Also when I tried it yesterday I tried it without the protection mask (the silicon one) so if it was heating a little - it was cooling more easily.

Special thanks and regards to you and ladies of your kingdom from a small country that fought war against duchy of Graph Theory and empire of Universal Algebra. :) The was is going well so far. :)

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I apologise for my inactivity once again, I have just returned from a 2 week holiday and haven't yet had the chance to post.

 

TODAYS TECHNOLOGY

 

The VoIP Service

Voice over Internet Protocol or VOIP, has been around since mid 90's. It's original purpose was to make telephone calls using the internet. It would use the IP system (hence it's value in the term VoIP) to connect 2 people together. Users of a normal telephone would not be able to tell if the person on the other end was also using VoIP or using a telephone also.

 

It has it's advantages such as lower monthly telephone bills or virtual number which are numbers that ring in on a primary number and can be from other areas, even other states. Also, it has disadvantages, the obvious one being it requires an internet connection, today most people have this but back then it wasn't as common. Plus, if the internet connection goes, you cannot use VoIP.

 

Of course, VoIP has been updated and adapted since the 90's. It's still used within companies to make calls from office to office. Companies such as childline use it too, allowing you to ring them on applications such as Skype. Which, leads me to the next point.

 

Programs such as Skype or TeamSpeak all use VoIP. Meaning all you require to talk to friends and so on, is an internet connection. It's also been implemented into a lot of multiplayer games, such as Call of Duty, Battlefield. The new Stronghold was meant to have this option implemented, but later on it was scrapped.

 

This may not seem like an amazing idea, but could you imagine not being able to use these programs?


"Gofyn wyf am galon hapus, calon onest, calon l?n."

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Of course, VoIP has been updated and adapted since the 90's. It's still used within companies to make calls from office to office.

 

I know that lots of radio programs (most of which are done over the internet now too!) accept VoIP or Skype calls instead of just people just using traditional phones. But the wonder is that both can be used!


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Do you crave a life of adventure? Check out our Adventures in the Duchy of Riverborne and apply here to join the action!

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TECHNOLOGY SPOTLIGHT

 

Icy Box Adapter

The IcyBox is a small rectangle box which serves as a holder for a drive (SSD). Most laptop drives are 2.5 inches whereas most desktop drives are 3.5 inches. So what do you do if you want to use a small laptop drive in a desktop? Look no further, the IcyBox is your answer.

 

I, myself, have purchased one of these and I must say it works great! It's a neat design which comes in both metal and plastic casing (I chose plastic since it's cheaper and it had some better reviews). I noticed absolutely no performance decrease through using this product.

 

The product itself cost me about ?10 (or $15.3) and arrived pretty fast. It's easy to use and quick to install. Simply remove the lid, place and connect the SSD. Screw it in through the bottom (screws provided) and place the lid back on. Connect the box with the cable inside the PC and you're done!

 

If, in my circumstance, your motherboard supports ATA not SATA then there are adapters which also fit the box. I'll do another spotlight on those later on this week!

 

61JYWpNoU6L._SX450_.jpg


"Gofyn wyf am galon hapus, calon onest, calon l?n."

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YESTERDAY(S) TECHNOLOGY

 

Bluetooth

A huge majority of the population know or have at least, heard about Bluetooth! It's use has varied over the years as it's been changed and improved. Some of you may remember using Bluetooth to send photos from your old Nokia to someone else's Nokia (ahh those were the days :D). Yet, today, Bluetooth has more uses such as, playing music through a Bluetooth connected speaker, or as a hands-free whilst driving. Regardless of who you are, you'll see at least one advantage of Bluetooth in your life, but...how does it work?

 

Bluetooth uses very small ranged radio-frequencies to send data from one device, to 1-8 devices at a time. Products have to agree on when bits are sent, how many will be sent at a time and how parties can be sure that the message received is the same message sent! (This isn't a physics lesson and I don't have a huge understanding of Physics, if you're not sure what a radio frequency is, perhaps this page will help :P - https://www.techopedia.com/definition/25871/radio-frequency-field-rffield).

 

The advantages of Bluetooth and why it has been developed so much is that it's wireless, inexpensive and automatic, making it easy to use (user friendly, if you will). Most smartphones, tablets, laptops, even desktop PC's come with Bluetooth today (although PC's are less likely to come with an integrated Bluetooth chip).

 

There are different version of Bluetooth:

 

v1.2:

- Backward compatible with v1.1

- Data transmission speed up to 721 kbit/s

 

v2.0:

- Backward compatible with v1.2

- Sniff sub rating, reduces power consumption

- Uses SSP (secure simple pairing) to improve pairing experience

 

v3.0:

- Backward compatible with v2.1

- Theoretical data transfer speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s

 

v4.0:

- Backward compatible with v3.0

- Provides faster speed in data transmission than the earlier version

- Greatly reduced power consuming (this was a huge problem for earlier devices as the battery was only designed for screen display and small applications such as calculator)

 

 

Here is a small bit of trivia on Bluetooth. The name Bluetooth was named after a tenth-century king, Harald Bluetooth (king of Denmark and Norway).

 

 

Bluetooth Logo:

1435757077_Bluetooth_w170_h170.png


"Gofyn wyf am galon hapus, calon onest, calon l?n."

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Nice text about Bluetooth, it did deserve an article for itself. :) It's still the best mean of sending files from one phone to another, although I have noticed that some people simply send images via email, but that doesn't make much sense to me... :rolleyes: I mean, instead of using Bluetooth which is free one decided to use email which consumes data and reduces quality (in order to consume less data). On the other hand, this thing with pairing devices (two phones) may overcomplicate pretty simple thing... But of course, it's not too complicated now, it's only one more step to do, but it could be simpler to do - see the devices, pick to which one to send the file, he/she accepts it and receives it. On the other hand, it may be necessary in these days when we can install lots of applications on our phones, and some of them could be harmful to others, although I don't see how does this thing with pairing help with that...

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See the devices, pick to which one to send the file, he/she accepts it and receives it

 

That is basically how Bluetooth works :P maybe I didn't make that clear enough (my bad).

 

Simply send images via email

 

I personally send images and so on through apps such as Facebook messenger or something similar. However, this doesn't give the option to send files, like with e-mail. Until then, I don't tend to use Bluetooth myself (much).


"Gofyn wyf am galon hapus, calon onest, calon l?n."

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I agree, although there were situations where I didn't want to share something like facebook account with the sender. In the particular case those were my high school students who took a picture of while giving a lecture, and I asked them to send the picture to me. Now, the issue was they those are kids and they don't have much of data available or credit (mostly parents don't give them postpaid SIM cards), and most of schools here don't have wifi for students.

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Interesting article about Bluetooth.

I had known about the Danish King Bluetoot and always wondered why the system was named after him. The logo even looks like an old viking rune.

 

Anyone got any ideas or knowledge about this?

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Anyone got any ideas or knowledge about this?

 

Perhaps this may help :P? ?-?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55OOz5nRVyU

 

Not my video, but it really does explain a lot more!

Edited by Mathew Steel

"Gofyn wyf am galon hapus, calon onest, calon l?n."

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I grew up in (at the time) the largest city in the world... London,England.

At our house we had gas lights. Later when I was about 8 we got electricity, lights bulbs in all the rooms and a radio (BBC).

One day a laundromat opened nearby and I saw a washing machine. Still later when I was 11 years old I saw my first television... it showed the Queens coronation. When I was 13 I got an electric record player - one that I did not have to replace the needle every two or three records, nor did it need winding up to play.

 

When I was 14 I got a six transistor radio and that was the greatest new technology I saw until I worked at a place with a IBM mainframe and a year or two later built my first computer (Altec) from a kit and learned how to program it - no storage, you have to reprogram it every time you turned it on. When I was 17 I saw my first color TV.

 

?Then along came consoles like Coleco for Pong and Atari that used a TV and let you play Space Invaders. And the greatest of all a Z80 from Sinclair. Cheap and the perfect machine to learn BASIC (Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code)

That led me into Apple ll, Commodore etc, I opened a computer school, taught kids to program with BASIC, adults how to use word processing and spreadsheets and the rest is history... now I only have an older computer - I don't even own a cell phone!

 

LS

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