High Tech Sleuths Are All Around Us

When the US Department of Defense developed and launched the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system back in the early 1980s, I am sure that they did not foresee that this system would some day provide hours and hours of recreation for thousands on people of all ages as they took up the hobby of “geocaching.”

The GPS system was first developed to aid the military to precisely navigate. It uses a series of satellites that continuously broadcast a special radio signal that contains a time signature. Each of the 30 GPS satellites situated in orbit above the earth broadcast the same time signature. If your GPS receiver can simultaneously access the signals from at least three of these satellites, it can plot your current position on earth. The GPS receiver calculates how long it takes for the radio signal to arrive from each of the three satellites. You might remember from High School Physics that radio waves travel at the 186,000 miles per second, so each of the time signatures will arrive at the GPS receiver at a slightly different time. Using this information and mathematic calculations, the GPS receiver plots your current position.

This is the same system that is used in some cars to tell you how to get to Aunt Ida’s house for the Memorial Day picnic. It is also the system that in an emergency is used by some cell phones to tell the 911 Operator where you are located. And it is the system that allows people to take up the hobby of geocaching.

I have to admit I was ignorant of this geocaching phenomenon until my sister-in-law, a person prone to try just about anything, introduced me to its nuances. A number of years ago my wife, knowing that I love all things electronic, gave me a hand held GPS unit for my birthday. We used it sparingly on car trips and a few times on some long distance bike trips, but for the most part it lived a very sheltered life in the glove box of my car. When my sister-in law found out I had a GPS, she borrowed it and has been geocaching ever since.

Beginning in about the year 2000, people began hiding small “caches” throughout the United States. The cache might be a plastic container or a small metal box. Some are as tiny as a 35mm film container or as large as a loaf of bread. Inside the container will be a log for you to sign when you find it and perhaps a few trinkets to share with the kids. The person hiding the cache makes a note of the longitude and latitude of the location using a GPS receiver to find the coordinates. The locations of these caches i.e., latitude and longitude, are then posted on the web site www.geocaching.com .

Some caches have “travel bugs,” that look like dog tags. Cachers are asked to move them on to other caches to see how long it takes to travel to various destinations. Some are called shutter bugs and contain a tagged disposable camera. Finders are asked to take a picture of their group and return the camera to the cache.

If you go to the web site and type in the zip code for Harrison (45030) you will find the coordinates for more than 1000 caches hidden right under our eyes. I am told that they are always located on public property, i.e., parks, school yards, library grounds etc.

This is a hobby for all ages. There are also geocaching clubs. The local one is Ohio Kentucky Indiana Cachers, www.okic.org. Geocaching provides a great opportunity for entire families to get some exercise, practice some math and science and have a great time looking for caches. All you need is time, a GPS receiver, and some good eyes.

Come here Watson, I am confused

When Alex beckoned his colleague in the next room to come and give him a hand, little did he know that his voice carried over that wire would reverberate well into the next century. Since it’s inception in the late 1800’s the phone system and phones themselves have changed little. Sure they got clearer, sported colors (remember that ugly green) and rotary dials gave way to push buttons. Nevertheless the basic system, running separate individual wires (party lines aside) from each phone back to a central phone company office remained the same. We all accepted this with almost blind obedience. In fact many were afraid to even add an extension phone in the bedroom or den without getting permission (and a bill) from Mother Bell.

This all seems quaint now. Wired phones are throw-away items purchased at K-Mart. Phones with caller ID, message recorders and hands-free wireless features can be purchased for far less than a tank of gas.

Many wonder if it is time to sever the entire relationship with the “Good Mother” and sign up for digital phone service from the cable company or another carrier such as Vonage®. Here are a few things to consider:

How reliable is your electric power at your home? It seems that where I live in Harrison Twp., the VCR clock is forever announcing a disruption in Duke’s service. Cincinnati Bell provides the most robust service since they do not rely on the electrical power at your house to provide basic phone service. In a power outage, in most cases your Cincinnati Bell phone line will continue to be operational and the Cable provided phone service will not. You have to decide if this is a big deal. For me, since my mobile phone works just fine at home, I can still place a call even if my wired phone is not working. If I lived in an outlying area with sparse cell coverage this would be a bigger deal.

So if you decide to sever your relationship with Cincinnati Bell, should you go with Time Warner Digital Phone or one of the other providers like Vonage®? Well for sure the easiest, if you already have cable service from Time Warner, is to go with them. They take care of setting everything up and making the changes to your wired phones in your home.

Vonage®, apart from having that catchy jingle on the TV, provides a good service but it requires a bit more “work” on your part. You need to buy the equipment which is easily obtained from several electronic retailers. You must already have a broadband connection to the Internet at your home. You need to make the connections in your home, severing the wires from the Cincinnati Bell line and connecting them to the new Vonage® box. I think you get the picture…all the stuff that Time Warner will do for you, you end up doing for yourself. I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but if you are adroit with all things electronic, go for it. You will save a few bucks. If you don’t want to, or feel confident, messing with these things, go with the cable company.

One last thing, make sure that if you move from a hard wired Cincinnati Bell line that you make sure you set up the 911 options. Time Warner does this for you but the Vonage® service requires you to do some configuring.

Will you save money? Once all the signing discounts and other incentives go away, a single line from Cincinnati Bell runs about the same as one from Time Warner. The savings come from signing up for a package deal, i.e., TV, home and mobile phone service and Internet access. By my calculations the Bell and Cable services end up costing about the same. You need to compare for yourself based on your needs and calling patterns.

Why does Max have a blue tooth?

Just when you think you have a handle on all the technical jargon it seems that a bevy of new words and acronyms surface. Time was when these terms were relegated to the pocket protector set. Today, newspaper and TV ads, signs in stores and casual conversations at the coffee shop can be peppered with strange words. This week we will look into three terms that seem to come up often. They are: WiFi, WiMax and Bluetooth®.

Let’s start with WiFi, a system that transmits data through the air over short distances to and from a computer or other digital device using radio waves. It essentially works the same way that your wireless home phone works. In the case of the phone, there is a base station that plugs into your “Ma Bell” phone line that has a small low power transmitter/receiver that sends and receives the phone conversation to and from the phone handset. Similarly, WiFi allows you to use your computer on the Internet without hard wiring it to the computer modem. The signals can travel only short distances so you can’t be more than about 200 ft. or so from the WiFi transmitter. In most cities and towns there a several WiFi spots including the coffee shops, libraries and gas stations. With a WiFi enabled computer or other device you can sip your coffee and email your kids at the same time. Some WiFi services are free; others require a subscription or hourly fee. With WiFi several people share the same high speed Internet connection. Many people have home systems set up, the grist for a future column.

WiMax is an emerging technology that offers the same features as WiFi, but has a much wider coverage area. Unlike WiFi, transmitters that have coverage over an area of about 200 ft radius, WiMax signals can cover several square miles. This technology promises to be a real boon to wireless computer use. While not truly WiMax, several companies like Verizon and Sprint offer a wireless service for your lap top or other digital device that provides fast connection to the Internet but these speeds are only about one third to one half the speeds possible with WiFi and WiMax. Also many have "dead spots" in coverage.

The more colorful term Bluetooth® refers to wirelessly connecting digital devices over very short distances, only a few feet or so. The most popular are the “Borg-like” wireless head phones that are increasingly found hanging from the ears of people walking on downtown streets seemingly talking to themselves. In the olden days we thought these people were just “a few fries short of a happy meal,” now we spy the little ear piece and we know they are just “cool.”

You can find Bluetooth® enabled devices in cameras, allowing you to wirelessly connect to printers, in cars connected to mobile phones, and in a host of other applications where wires just get in the way.

For sure as we to continue on this digital highway more and more devices will be released from the tether of wires and rely on these and other wireless technologies.

If he is wearing a tie, relax!

Now that spring is upon us it is a good idea to pay closer attention to the weather since many of us in western Ohio and eastern Indiana remember all too well how storms, winds and tornados can develop rapidly and cause devastation, injury and death. Storms in the Ohio valley are not to be taken lightly.

While the various sirens and warnings are certainly valuable and important, their seemingly intermittent and arbitrary use has caused some of us to essentially ignore their wail and cry. Also, many of us live outside of earshot of these warnings.

I suggest that you consider getting an inexpensive “Weather Radio” for your house. These special radios can pick up broadcasts from the National Weather Service and let you know in advance with an audible alarm tone if dangerous conditions exist. They also have added the broadcast of information about other dangers such as chemical spills and even have added some AMBER alerts. The neat thing about these radios is that many of them can be programmed to give you only the information you want and need.

You can “tell” the radio where you live and thus only get warnings and information that relate to your area. This keeps the radio from sounding the alarm if the storm is in the general area but really posing no danger to you. While I am sure that we all wish our neighbors in Dayton no harm, we really don’t want to be rousted from our sleep at 3 AM with a message on the weather radio that a severe storm is headed for the Dayton Airport.

The radios can also be programmed to ignore certain conditions that are not relevant to you personally even if they are happening in your area. For example, I live on a hill and as such I really don’t need to know in the middle of the night that there might be a flash flood on the Whitewater River. I do want to know that a tornado has been spotted on
New Biddinger Road.

While not all radios can be programmed, most of units, beginning with the mid-priced models on up, have these features. They can be purchased at many locations. Radio Shack® has a Midland™ model for about 40 bucks that is very popular and has the programmable features. It even has a battery back up built in. You can also find hand-held models for camping, boating and hiking at Bass Pro Shops® and many of the leading electronic retailers.

Now, if all of this fails, you can use another method to predict when you need to take cover in the basement. I have been working on this theory for several years. I call it the “The TV Weather Man’s Clothes Hypothesis.” (Sorry, this does not seem to work if the TV weather reporter is a woman.) Here is how it goes. If you are watching any of our local TV stations and the Weather Man is talking about severe weather and he still is wearing his coat and tie and looks as dapper as ever, you can relax. If however the tie is a bit askew, pay a bit more attention. If the coat disappears, the top shirt button is undone and the tie seems even looser, pay closer attention. If you see him with his tie gone, shirt sleeves rolled up and hair tussled, go to the basement immediately. Check me on this next time we have storms in the area.

Seriously, the price of a weather radio is really a small one to pay to help make you and your family safe. Think seriously about getting one this weekend. It might save your life.

Back to the Future....

In this era of ever expanding complex technology it sometimes feels like the world is getting really mixed up big time. It was not too long ago that most phones had to be hard wired into the wall and most TV’s could get all the programming over the air. Today more and more of us are jettisoning our wired Ma Bell phones and using our wireless mobile phones almost exclusively. Many “twenty-somethings” are shocked to hear that a TV can actually work without being connected to the cable or satellite dish. It is in this vein that I share the following true story.

A colleague of mine told me that over the Super Bowl weekend she received a call from her brother in Connecticut. He had recently purchased a new HD TV set but he had yet to decide if he was going to sign up for a high definition service with his cable provider or go with one of the satellite services. Well to make a long story short, he was very disappointed because his procrastination had resulted in not being able to watch the Super Bowl in High Definition on his brand new HD set.

“Why don’t you just pick it up over the air from Channel 3, the CBS station in Hartford,” my colleague inquired of her brother. A long pause ensued.

“You mean that I can get High Definition programming over the air …Channel 3 broadcasts in HD?” he asked incredulously.”

As it turned out she walked him through the rather simple process of attaching a regular “rabbit ears” antenna to the new TV set and, voila, it worked. He was nothing short of amazed.

I don’t think that my colleague’s brother is the exception as evidenced by the sheer wonder found in the eyes of many when they see TV actually coming to their mobile phone, Palm Pilot™ or video iPod™ through the air. Marconi got a Nobel Prize for developing this process in 1909.

Who knows, over –the-air TV broadcasting may have a second life with HDTV.

If a tree falls in the forest…

With all the “whiz-bang” high tech developments gaining attention in recent years, one seems to have escaped the notice of many. Perhaps it is because it is looked at as an old technology. Perhaps it is because the devices for using it are expensive and hard to find. Or perhaps it is a technology that just doesn’t offer enough new benefit. Perhaps it is because of all the above. The technology is HD Radio™.

HD Radio™ is the moniker used for the technology developed by iBiguity Corporation to digitally transmit audio and data on the current FM and AM radio bands. Right now most radio in the US is broadcast with regular analog transmission technology that has changed little since the first regular radio broadcasts began in the early 1900s. The FCC has adopted HD Radio™ as the standard for digital broadcasts in the United States. However, unlike digital TV, there is no FCC mandate and no deadline for stations to begin digital transmission.

There are three major improvements offered with HD Radio™. First, the quality of the audio is enhanced. While the quality is not that much better than good current FM broadcasts, e.g., WGUC/ 90.9, WARM 98, or WEBN 102.7, the audio quality (if not the content) on AM stations is greatly improved. In fact, you will be hard pressed to hear the difference in the quality of music played on AM or FM using HD radio™.

The second major benefit of HD Radio™ comes in its ability to offer multiple programs on a single channel. For example, if you tuned to WGUC 90.9 using an HD Radio you will find not only a commercial free classical music service but also be able to hear jazz programming 24 hours a day. Other local stations that are transmitting HD Radio have decided to use the second or third “channel” in a variety of ways.

HD Radio™ has a third feature that many will find useful. Some receivers will have small screens on which can be displayed information about the program being broadcast. This is somewhat akin to the on-screen TV guide on your cable. The display might be the name of the performer or catalog number of the musical recording being played.

There are cuurently 15 stations in the Cincinnati area broadcasting in HD Radio™ format. Unfortunately that is also about the same number of radios in the Cincinnati area that are able to receive the broadcasts. That is an exaggeration, but not by much.

Auto makers have been slow to provide HD Radios™ in the new models. It is easy to forget, but it was in large part the standard offering of AM/FM radios in cars that propelled FM broadcasting from the poor “step child” to the prominent and even dominant player in radio broadcasting. That has not happened for HD Radio™ as the car manufacturers have embraced the satellite radio pay services.

The radios are not cheap and up until now not easy to find. The large national electronic stores may have one or two models on the shelf for home and car. RadioShack® stores offer two models for home or office use but they are pricey in the $200 neighborhood. Like any other electronic device, as sales increase the price will go down. But that is yet to happen. Last week’s announcement by the retail behemoth Wal-Mart® might jump- start sales but even their announcement was cautious in predicting demand.

Frankly HD Radio™ is an enigma. It is a good service. It is free. It is available anywhere. It provides more listening options, e.g. a real jazz service in this market. But it just has not taken off. I have been watching it for years and really don’t have an opinion when or even if it will replace traditional analog radio. Perhaps it will require the FCC the do what it has done for TV, set a sunset date for analog radio transmission.

No this is not another Y2K!

The upcoming change in the date for the beginning of Daylight Saving Time in the United States will cause some minor problems for many computers. If you are running Microsoft Windows™, our good friend Bill Gates has built in a little program that automatically changes your computer’s clock at the beginning and end of Daylight Saving time periods. Of course Bill could not know that in 2007 those dates would change expanding Daylight Saving Time by some four weeks. Not to worry. The sky will not fall on March 11th at 2 AM! Do not stock up on toilet paper and milk! Put away the extra flashlight batteries. Take a deep breath.

There are available on the Internet various “patches” to address this problem. A “patch” is a little program that fixes your computer’s operating system when something malfunctions, either because of a mistake in the program, or as in this case, changes in the dates. I wouldn’t bother with a patch. I have an easier way.

For those of you who use Microsoft Windows XP™, there is a simple fix that you can do in 30 seconds. When you have time on Sunday, March 11th just fire up your computer and RIGHT CLICK on the time display at the lower left corner of your screen. When the menu appears, LEFT CLICK on the “Adjust Date and Time” item. Another screen with a calendar and a place to set the “Time of Day” will appear. Go ahead and set the time ahead by 1 hour. At the top of the box you will find a TAB marked “TIME ZONE.” LEFT CLICK on that and you will see map of the world and below the map a little box that is most likely already checked with the words, “Automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes.” By LEFT Clicking on that box you will disable Bill’s little handy dandy program so it will not add another hour in three weeks nor will it subtract an hour in November.

For those of you who use Windows 98™, you will find the little daylight saving box as soon as you click on the time in the lower right side of your screen. As for VISTA™, the process in similar to XP™ but you actually can have multiple Daylight Saving settings.

For Mac Users, there are patches available on the Internet and some Macs connected to the Internet will “Call Home” to Apple to get the correct time. Again, I would suggest that you manually go into your clock settings and set the time ahead by one hour. Don’t forget to un-check the box marked “Automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes.” No big deal.

You are all set until Sunday November 4th when you will need to set the clock back an hour. See, no need for extra milk, toilet paper or extra blankets and flashlights! Isn’t technology wonderful!

PS. A few weeks ago we discussed DTV. For those who want more info on the Digital TV, the FCC has a neat web site: www.dtv.gov