Pc Clean Blog: 2012

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Goggling or Googling

Goggling or Googling

PC Clean Blogger, writer, technician, social media instructor

Brought to you by Niall Mulrine, Pc Clean

Much talk on the tech front over the last week about Google’s new product simply labelled Google Glass Goggles. No, it’s nothing to do with swimming on the net!! When an amazing moment happens, you pull out your mobile phone to take a picture and by the time you are ready to shoot, the moment has passed. Simply annoying and frustrating, I know this from personal experience also. With both our very young children, they pull the funniest of faces, or dare to amaze you by their capabilities exceeding your expectation. These are what Kodak meant by “Kodak moments”. Small snippets of time that you will always remember fondly as time goes by.
Google are still in the prototype of a device called Google Glass, which appear as normal glasses on a person’s face to the unsuspecting. Only these glasses are connected to the internet and have a small film of a screen to give the wearer real time information without distraction. The goal of this device is to remove the need of taking out your Smartphone to make calls, send texts, read emails, check reminders and surf the internet.

Google Glasses launch how useful the subway can be

Add caption

(Image source: dailymail.co.uk)
The team behind this project is Google X, the team of R & D that always vision the unimaginable. Not cheap, these glasses are currently going on market to developers for $1500 and ready for delivery next year to these customers. They have named this project, Project Glass. The team hope to have it available for release in 2014 and no price has been guessed at yet. But the glasses will cost more than the average Smartphone. The cost of producing the glasses is in the region of $3,000 at current stage of beta.
Android software developed by Google will be the driving chassis on the glasses for all applications and responses to work on. A built in camera with microphone will have the ability to record live feed and upload to YouTube or feed it live to a website for your friends to watch a live scenario you are part of at that time, so everyone can share the experience. Similar to Google smartphones and Apps, applications and commands can be sent to the glasses by voice, therefore giving the user a total hands free experience. Integration of other Google Apps including Google Maps will play a creative role in how we live our everyday lives. Imagine having the possibility of a GPS Sat Nav built into a small pair of glasses, so when we are on foot we can have arrows on our lenses to give us signposts to what direction to go. Google Weather alerts popping up to say whether it will be a great day or not, helping us ponder on the indecision of taking a raincoat to work.
Google launched a demo video on YouTube to give us a taste of how it can benefit our lives. From watching this, its amazing how all our computer powered applications, mobile phone apps and online platforms can come together to enable us to be a “Computer Wearer”, having our computers in our vision at all times!! With the upcoming and developing application Google Goggles, the scope of what can be done will be second to none. Already Goggles can be found in Android Play marketplace, the software that brings up online information about the item being held in your hand, the painting you stare at on a wall, author biography of a book you look at in the book store and many more facts surrounding all visuals in our lives.
With the positives, there are surely to be negatives. Some say that it will infringe on other peoples privacy when they don’t know if they are being recorded or it will be a distraction to our normal lives, with too much gadgetry. Like all new concepts, it will take the rough with the smooth. All I can say is, bring it on and let me be as Speccy as possible.

To catch up on any missed articles written by Niall Mulrine of Pc Clean, go to www.PcClean.ie

PC Clean for Computer sales and service in Donegal

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Saorview, Digital changeover and no more BBC or UTV

Saorview, Digital changeover and no more BBC or UTV

Brought to you by Niall Mulrine, Pc Clean.

Recently the government gave the people of Ireland the deadline for the digital changeover as 24^th October 2012. What does this mean to me at home with my current setup?

This launch of new technology called the “Digital Changeover” is as mind boggling to many people with home televisions as “The Cloud” is as confusing for computer owners. They are buzzwords that are used too sparsely that they remain buzzwords until someone actually sits down to explain to us what it all means. For this week’s article, I brought in the expertise of a local installer of digital and analogue TV systems C Mc Groarty Ltd trading as Digitel.

Clement Mc Groarty, Donegal Town has been installing and repairing TV systems for homes, businesses, hotels, schools and health institutions all over Donegal for the past 20 years. He has seen so many changes in the TV technology in this time and has always put himself and his team in the forefront of the skills required to keep consumers up to date with what equipment they need to enjoy TV. They recently rebranded the company and many of Donegal motorists can see the newly decorated vans with Bart Simpson labelled on it. The vans have raised lots of interest from people and Donal Brennan from Sign Worx in Ballybofey was responsible for the great art work.

All electrical shops, newspapers, websites, magazines and TV adverts are displaying Saorview capabilities as the sole system to enable the Digital Changeover. Saorview is owned by RTÉ Media Company and will carry both RTÉ channels and NON- RTÉ channels such as 3e, TG4 and TV3. All these channels will be given great picture quality as it moves from the old Analogue signal to the new clear picture of Digital. Also, Irish radio channels will be distributed onto our TV sets for high quality sound with none of the interference we get on our old “wireless” radio.

Clement Mc Groarty commented on the amount of confusion regarding the systems the public are having since the government announcement. “Our office has been inundated with phone calls from our customers and members of the public asking what the Digital changeover means and what do they need to do before October 2012? We are informing the people of their situation and asking what current systems they have in place”. What people did not know is that they may lose all their UK terrestrial channels such as BBC, UTV and Channel 4 depending on the area they are located. To get these channels may involve extra systems and cost, especially for those that have more than one TV installed.

To get help and advice on what you need to do, contact Clement or Tania and their team on 074 97 22966 or 087 2250599. If you quote “Donegal News” when placing an order, the first 15 orders will receive a Digital MP3 player. Follow them on facebook.com/digitelireland

Highland Radio breakfast show this week will be running a competition with a prize of converting one TV to Irish Digital using a High Definition Saorview box, along with a full home survey to ensure you are digital ready.

To catch up on any missed articles written by Niall Mulrine of Pc Clean, go to www.PcClean.ie

Created by and uploaded by

Niall Mulrine, Pc Clean, Navenny, Ballybofey, Co. Donegal, Ireland
www.pcclean.ie
sales@pcclean.ie
086-2377033 Pc Clean for Computer repairs, Laptop Repairs, Virus repair and removal service, callout services, network issues, printer problems in the Stranorlar, Letterkenny, Donegal Town, Lifford, Castlefinn, Donegal Area. Computer Training, Social network for your business, online marketing, it security,computer protection, child safety software,restricting websites, internet security, antivirus,microsoft, IT Support Donegal, Laptop Screens repair

Friday, January 20, 2012

No Space left on my phone?

No space left on my phone??

Brought to you by Niall Mulrine, Pc Clean.

We all know the feeling when we are at a special occasion such as a concert or a party and we want to take a precious memory home with us to keep. How do we take that special moment home? It used to be in the hands of our digital cameras. But, what we all reach for now, whether it’s out of our pockets or handbags; is the mobile phone. Gone are the days of the mighty “brick” that was used commonly to communicate with our friends, whilst away from our stationary landline phone at home. Yes, we thought we were in Doctor Who or Back to the Future with the large Motorola and Ericsson phone, using large buttons and a large LCD screen with the plain black text much like a calculator. Some of us may remember a snipe taken by the creators of “Only fools and Horses” over the so-called ‘mobile phone’. The episode of Del-Boy trying to sell the “Executive mobile phone” to Michael, the owner of Nags Head. They demonstrated the irony of a mobile phone that was too large for a jacket pocket. But it was not only Del-boy who believed that they would be millionaires this time next year. Phone manufacturers such as Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia were the market leaders in mobile phones in the 1990’s. Their products did make them millionaires again! They answered the prayers of mainly business people that were consistently on the road and could only be reached by their employer when they reached a certain appointment. To the employee’s dismay and eagerness to try the new technology, they accepted these large mobile phones and marvelled at how they could communicate while 100’s of miles from any phone line, with the help of the satellite in the sky.

Today, phones are micro slim and come with more complexity than any modern computer system. The ability to make a phone call is the last request on a buyers question list. Has it got music player, Bluetooth, Facebook, Email, video player and camera. If these are not standard, then the buyer will move along to a phone that has all the bells and whistles. Not only must we have call ability (which is used less than the other functions today), but we must have real time access to our online status whether it’s social networks or emails. Can we take photos of our friends and send them to other friends within seconds?? Have we got a mini jukebox in our hands with all our favourite songs? What about some videos of the party last week? All these songs can be transferred from our music library at home onto our phone using a cable from the computer. What happens when the time comes sitting on a bus for 4 hours and the songs on the phone are all overplayed? We used to sit there and either listens to them again until we get home to our computers for different music or turn it off!

With the help of online cloud storage, more products are bringing the concept of having our music come with us from home always. How can I have my 40GB hard drive full of music stored on my mobile phone with storage of 8GB? Most of the storage is taken up with videos recorded on the phone. The hassle of connecting cables and changing the music library seems like a chore and is rarely seen as an enjoyable experience, sitting at a computer not knowing what songs we will listen to, tomorrow or next week. It normally depends on the mood at that particular time.

A San Franciso company called “Popoplug” have come up with a service to give the consumer what they want, when it comes to sorting out instant access to a large music, video and photo library. A small networking device called the “Popoplug Mobile Device” is connected to the owners broadband router at home. This can attach any amount of storage whether is a 1TB external hard drive storage of 1GB SD Memory card with photos and stream directly to the user’s mobile phone via Popoplug software. The customer does not download any music from the Internet or home, but instead streams small amount of data at regular intervals to give video, music or photo slideshows on the phone instantaneously over any 3G network. No disk space on the phone will be full by streaming the files. Some data is stored for short period of time.

The customer has still the same empty space on the phone to take more photos and videos. No law is being broke, as the customer is accessing their own personal music library via an internet signal. Not only has the software this feature, but also, every time a new photo or video is recorded on the phone; it is directly backed up to the “Popoplug” device at home for safe keeping.

This is just an example of how our want of having our homes with us at all times is being achieved in the technology world.