My wife and I are just back from a trip to one of this country’s great national parks, which I’ll write about it a few days. This morning, I want to tell you about a couple of cool tech things I discovered.
In the middle of the national park, there was no cell signal, which meant if we had a medical emergency — likely me losing my balance while walking through the woods or down some not-so-sturdy rocks — we couldn’t call 911. But when I looked at my iPhone, in the corner where there’s usually a signal strength indicator, it had instead a satellite icon and the letters SOS. That meant that even if we couldn’t stay on the grid by connecting through cell towers, we could use Apple’s built-in Emergency SOS feature to text for help via satellite.
Fortunately, we didn’t need it, but I tried the demo (under Settings on the iPhone) and was able to make a connection, give my location and status, and answer questions about what my problem might be. I was impressed. Getting help — even roadside assistance for car problems — from space while otherwise off the grid is amazing.
If you want to prepare your iPhone now just in case you need the service (which is free) in the future, click here for more details.
The other cool tech thing occurred during our flight home last night. I wanted to watch the Jets-Patriots game on Amazon Prime, but I knew that in-flight live TV services don’t include that streaming service (nor Netflix, Hulu, etc.). I had downloaded some other video to my iPad for just this reason, but at one point, I looked over at the guy sitting in the window seat of my row and noticed he had the game on his laptop. I guessed he had paid the airline’s extra wi-fi fee and figured out how to connect to Prime through that. I was about to do the same until something occurred to me.
Every game that streams on Prime is also available via broadcast outlets in the teams’ home cities. When airlines offer live TV, the signals are supplied by Dish, the satellite TV service. In addition to ESPN, CNN, and other cable networks, they use New York City stations as the feed for NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox. Since the Jets were one of the teams playing, one of those outlets might be carrying the Prime feed. Sure enough, there it was on the New York Fox affiliate, WNYW.
For free! Beautiful!
I don’t want to say the Patriots were in trouble from the opening kickoff, but I bet they wish they could have used Emergency SOS.