Author: Damian

First things first, what’s an MVNO?  I’ll let you look into that more, but think of the big four wireless companies as limo companies that shuttle around flash drives in a limo.

Sometimes, the big four have space in the trunk, and sell it to a Mobile Virtual Network Operator.  The MVNO buys trunk space and resells it to you, sometimes at a steep discount.

Now imagine the limosines are cell towers, the trunk space is spare bandwidth, and the flash drives are your calls, texts, and data transfers.

Try one sometime, you might like the savings, can often keep your phone, and might be able to keep your number.  I’ll let you know more when I try one out this weekend, so stay tuned.

Chances are if you have been on Facebook, you may have seen a friend broadcast live video of an mma fight on Facebook, or you yourself may have done something similar.  Most people I’ve seen do this simply use their cellphone to capture the video, and it can be very cheap to make something worthy of going viral.

You will need a few things.

1. A Facebook account.
2. A computer with internet and a spare usb port.
3. A video capture card.
4. OBS Studio.

What you need to do is take the input from your video source, and connect it to the capture card, and then connect the capture card to the computer.  Then, obs studio will hopefully detect the video stream from the card.  Then, goto live.fb.com and login to your Facebook.  Then follow the prompts and enter the appropriate information into the OBS Studio server settings.  Now you can go live on Facebook.

 

You can also use OBS Studio to stream your computer desktop, a webcam, or stream to any rtmp server.  That includes YouTube Live and Twitch.

 

Remember, if you need any help for as little as $15, we can get you up and running.  Just call 410-600-3456, order a support package online, or email support@s579766863.onlinehome.us

You may have heard of the deliberate and dastardly attack on your cellphone which will live in infamy.  Apple decided to slow iPhones with older batteries down through the use of a poison pill update in the iOS updates.  A poison pill update is any update, that when applied to the system, significantly negatively impacts the performance without the user being told so before the update is applied.

Apples intentions were to increase the lifespan of a phone with a degraded battery were not unnoticed.  When you pay $800 for a device you rely on every day for everything, nobody should be able to restrict your usage whatsoever and defiantly without your knowledge.  Features should only be added with updates, not removed with updates.

The Sony Xperia line of phones is as every bit polished as an iPhone, and does have battery saving features built in from day one, but you can activate them or deactivate them at any time.  The battery on my old Sony Xperia Z3 was rated for 18 hours, and performance could be restricted to the bare essentials of calling, texting, and other basics.  This extreme mode allowed for up to 20 days of usage.  I supported this, because I was told in advance of this and could decide to do it or not, and my decision was reversible.

I highly recommend that for people in the Baltimore, Md area that you go to Beyond Electronics in the Whitemarsh Mall.  Their prices are fair, they have been in business over ten years, have parts on hand for major models, and can get you up and running in the same day. They’re not a kiosk, and in fact have grown so much, they had to get a bigger storefront in the mall.  Their selection of accessories and used phones is unmatched.

$150 for a new battery is cheaper than $20 a month for 2 years for a new model, so breath new life into your phone by letting these guys do phone cpr.

 

You may hate your chip card.  Constant confusion over chip or swipe.  Card read errors.  Longer authorization times.  But trust me, it’s worth it.  Chip cards are not as easily skimmed or cloned as magstripe cards.  You can buy a magstripe reader and blanks for less than $50 on ebay.  Chips can’t be cloned as easily, since the data on the card is better encrypted, and some of it changes with each transaction, rendering any potential clone useless.  In addition, the liability changes with the use of the magstripe when the card is also equipped with a chip, but the chip is not used.

After Oct. 1, 2015, in-store counterfeit fraud liability shifted to the party who had not adopted chip technology.  So it you use one of those phone card reader dongles, you need to have both magtripe and chip versions, and use the magstripe version only as a last resort.

 

Let’s say you want to make a website.  Here are a few things you should know / look for when getting hosting and a domain.

•  cPanel.  cPanel is an web hosting control panel that provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site.  This makes it easy to setup WordPress or any other content management suite.
• Who-is privacy.  When you register a domain, you must provide personal information such as your name, address, and phone number.  Unless you buy who-is privacy, people can look up your who-is record and spam you.
• A good price in exchange for a one year fully paid up front contract can save you big time.  You may be able to pay less than $50 for the whole first year!
• Unlimited storage and bandwidth.  You should get these in case your website becomes huge and needs it.

Bendy Computers is here to walk you through this process at a fair price, from finding the right service provider, to helping with web design.

Have you ever dropped your smartphone, or it just simply won’t hold a charge?  Well if you go to your local cellular retailer, unless you have insurance, you may be in for some serious sticker shock.  A new flagship phone may cost at least $700, up from the old days when carriers gave you a discounted or even free phone in exchange to being on contract for two years.  Now, unless you can afford to outright buy a phone, you finance it at 0% interest for two years.

Apple care charges about $130 for a screen replacement, if you have apple care.  This is in addition to the purchase of the apple care plan beforehand.  Most phones cost no more than $150 to repair the screen, and about $100 for a simple battery swap, assuming that the battery is non removable.  If you can remove the battery yourself by removing the cover, it is significantly cheaper of course.

We do not service phones here at Bendy Computers, or repair hardware of any kind, but are more than happy to refer you to someone who can.  In Maryland, Beyond Electronics at White Marsh Mall is a full fledged store offering repairs and used phones that we recommend.  I have personally used them, and can attest to their quality workmanship.

Open Office is an open source suite of productivity software. It is made  by the same people who make the very popular Apache web-server software.  It includes a word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation program, graphic design program, and database program.   Not only is it 100% free, it is light on system resources, can save in Microsoft and PDF formats, in addition to it’s own format.  Why pay for an office subscription forever when you can get the same thing for free?  https://www.openoffice.org/  If you need help setting it up, we can do that remotely for $15 for you.