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Sunday, January 2, 2005

Show #106

Today: a look ahead at tech in 2005.

VoIP will become more common in the home, and explode in business
Viruses and spyware will get worse before they get better
Spam will decline as email authentication takes off
The Motion Picture Industry will expand direct distribution online
Online music sales will match CD sales
Biotech advances will create major uproars
Still no flying cars, but hybrids will become much more common

Your thoughts?

Mike_B thinks 2005 will be the year of the fiber. With Verizon’s deployment of their FTTH (Fiber To The Home) product, known as Fios, fiber connections will no longer be for the large company. This deployment is not a pilot, its a full fledged product.
Fios web site and qualification page.
“Welcome to Fios” brochure.
Fios thread on Broadband Reports with speed tests, deployment schedules, and feedback from real, non-Verizon employed, subscribers.
Verizon FTTP Deployment Center—site developed by FTTH enthusiasts to track deployment (complete with state by state and county by county deployment maps).

You mentioned in the opening that you see Apple’s share of the market increasing. Your friend John C. Dvorak doesn’t appear to agree in this article:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1745930,00.asp

Next week: Reports all weekend from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. We’ll hear from Robin Liss of www.Camcorderinfo.com, Alex of www.Digitalcamerainfo.com, Scott Wilkinson of www.ultimateavmag.com, and Patrick Norton of www.pcmag.com. Watch for more.

 toc | toc

Today’s news items

Mike B’s trivia question of the day

Which Microsoft software, after its release in 1983, became the best-selling PC game of all time? ¹.
a) Flight Simulator
b) Golf
c) Halo
d) Reversi ‘83

Noon-1p

Mark in Redondo Beach - two hard drives died within a week

Sounds like a JPEG based virus. Make a bit-for-bit copy of the drives using Ghost or another imaging program, then run Spinrite on it to check for low level drive problems. Finally use a high level disk recovery program like Norton to try to recover the data.

Caroline in Orange - editing DVD files

The DVD contains VOB files that are really just MPEG-2 files, but you need to convert the format. Read how on these pages:

Leo and Caroline, I used the Sony Vegas video editing software. The lastest edition seems to allow you to drag and drop the VOB file directly into the editor. VOB files are going to be fairly large but you should be able to edit it from that point. You’ll still have to save it as an MPEG-2 to keep the DVD quality.
-Paul Tully, Del Rio TX

Mike in New Jersey - converting iTunes purchased music to MP3

I recommend Hymn and iOpener.

See this caller’s question here for a lengthy reply. -tollie

Mike likes the Google and WeatherFox Firefox extensions.
What are your Favorite Firefox Extensions?

Try AdBlock, at adblock.mozdev.org. It allows the user to block any unwanted web content, such as banner ads, flash based ads, and the few types of popups that Firefox’s popup blocker can’t block. Blocking ads this way is also safer than blocking images from third party sites, since doing that can break many websites.

Tollie likes Sage. It’s an RSS reader that keeps it simple but sufficient.

Snipershome likes weatherfox/image zoom/ieview. With weather fox it gives you a weather symbols at the top of your browser as well as a pop-up in the lower right hand corner once you open your browser. Image zoom is great for when you wanna see in more detail of a image or just to make the picture bigger so you can see what it is. And Ieview well thier are just some pages that you just cant view in firefox yet so instead of starting ie to go view that page all you do is right mouse click and click on view this page in i.e. and thier you go.

1–2p

Brian in LA - DVD player for the blind

For the person who needs an easy way to play DVDs for the sight impaired, please send an email to the following temporary email address by 1/3/05 - dvdplay@rothrock.net. I have an application I can modify. The only prerequisites are you must have a DVD player installed which registers itself and Wimdows Media Player 10. I have an app I can modify that uses the WMP 10 API.

Another possibility is “AnyDVD”, which is a (pay) program available from http://www.slysoft.com/en/.
It’s mainly designed for decrypting commercial DVDs “on the fly” (it acts as a driver, allowing you to use the DVD as you would any storage medium). However, one of the options is to disable the “PC Friendly” autorun “feature”, and (most importantly) to jump directly to the main movie, bypassing any of those annoying “forced” ads at the beginning of all too many DVDs. Well worth the price, just for that one option (and there are many more)! You may download a fully-functional version for tryout (21 days before you have to pay for it, I believe).

How about MPplayer? (http://www.mplayerhq.hu).
It’s mostly Linux based, but the windows ports are quite good. MPlayer does not support DVD menus so all navagation is done by skipping chapters. This might work better for you.
If you don’t need any video, you can use MPlayer to rip the audio to a wav (or mp3) file and burn that to a normal CD. Then playback the CD in any CD player.

Another possibility is VLC Media Player (http://www.videolan.org) which offers two modes for DVD disc playing, one interactive with menus, and the other which just auto-plays all the VOB files directly. You can jump forward and back through each file using VLC’s controls. It’s 100% free and open-source, too!

trmaier responds:

Not exactly a DVD player solution, but have you come across www.listentoamovie.com. This site does exactly what it says, allows you to listen to the audio portion of a movie. Two possible drawbacks, 1)you cant download for listening at a later time - you have to stream the audio, and 2) the audio is not exactly the highest quality. But still, the site offers quite a few movies and is a possibly useful for your situation.

Arlene in Vista - can’t user her sound card

It claims that the front speaker is attached but she says it’s not. Mark (our next caller) says that there’s a jumper on the motherboard to indicate which output to use, front or back. Check the jumper. She also mentioned that she had lost a couple of hard drives with the mobo - Mark says that’s probably a leaking powersupply putting voltage on the bus - a big problem. Get a new motherboard!

Dorian responds:
To protect your hard drives, you could install another power supply. Also, to make sure the mobo is not leaking some stray volatage into the I/O signals, use a PCI ATA controller like Promise Technologies’ controllers. That way it will act as a buffer between the hard drives and the mobo. Also, try power conditioning with an APC UPS if you can. Also, make sure your hard drives are receiving proper cooling - I personaly run a exhaust fan in front of the to keep temp down (two 7200RPM together tend to get a bit warm).

Mark in Santa Ana - wireless spycams and web design software

He wants to put one into his 3-year-old’s room to keep an eye on her. D-Link makes some great ones that contain web servers so you don’t have to connect them to a computer. We use an Axis to give people a behind the scenes look at Call for Help.

I recommend two free programs for web design: HTML-Kit and Matrix Y2K.

Mitch suggests Nvu, a free html editor that is very similar to Dreamweaver that runs on Linux, Windows, and OS X. The software is based off of the Mozilla Composer code, but it is much more powerful. You can get it at www.nvu.com.

Andrew writes: City Desk 2.0 is a highly acclaimed WYSIWYG Editor for the web that widely renowned for its usability. Its creator also writes www.joelonsoftware.com and was one of the architects at Microsoft when they first created the Excel project so he had made sure usability in this program is paramount.

2–3p

Ed in San Juan Capistrano - Protecting your system

Ed is a tax guy and financial advisor who wants to protect his clients’ information. He has a mirrored hard drive for backup - that’s fine but it doesn’t replace regular backups. And I’ve heard some horror stories about mirroring with consumer RAID cards. You often have to jump through some serious hoops to recover the mirrored data. He does backup regularly, so this is just insurance. He’s also running Firefox whenever possible, but using Internet Explorer when he has to. Fortunately he’s protecting himself by using spywareblaster to secure IE. In fact, it sounds like he’s doing everything right. When McAfee runs out, I recommend upgrading to Eset’s NOD32 anti-virus. It scores 100% on Virus Bulletin’s tests and uses only 4% of system resources while running.

Clay in Irvine - best way to store digital photos long term

I think CD-R and DVD-R is just fine. Despite what you may have heard, these media should last 100 years if stored in a cool, dry, dark place. I would make multiple copies, of course, and make sure to keep an eye on changes in media formats. It won’t do any good to have a working CD if you can’t find a CD-player to play it on, or if future operating systems don’t understand the current ISO-9660 disc format. Just tell your kids and grandkids to keep that in mind and continue transferring the data to newer formats as they emerge. The good news is that those digital images will never degrade.

I got an interesting note from a Poway company that makes archival CD blanks. Dave McGhee of Delkin Devices writes:

 I enjoyed listening to your show yesterday.  A couple of your callers
 were inquiring about the longevity of CD’s as a storage medium. It’s an
 interesting topic that is gaining more attention, as more people are
 shooting digital pictures these days. It’s generally assumed that data
 and pictures on CDs will last indefinitely, but we believe that is not
 the case.

 Here’s a couple of papers on the issue that may be of interest.

 http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-6462-7431
 http://www.delkin.com/pdf/user_guides/archivalgold_whitepaper.pdf
 http://www.delkin.com/delkin_news_press_release.php?id=37

 Our company is one of few that is distributing an archival quality CD.

Of course, how can you really test longevity claims for a CD?

Martini in Hacienda Heights - Can’t get DSL or cable modem

Is Speakeasy a good ISP? I’ve heard good things about them, but check www.broadbandreports.com for reviews. I’m not sure whether they’ll be able to provide DSL if your phone company won’t provision it.

“Matt The Geek says:”
A little info on Satellite that may help Martini and others decide if that is an option. I have Direcway satellite and have had it for just under a year now. I live in rural Michigan where other big pipes are not available. The newest hardware, the DW6000 is an ethernet router built in so it can go right into your existing home network, including into a wireless router or access point (I have it hooked up to 6 or more computers all the time). I have also worked with the older USB based system and the new one is not only more flexible but much easier to troubleshoot and seems more reliable. The speed is not where DSL or cable are, but I generally get about 100KB (or 800kb) download speed-not great, but worlds beyond dial-up, upload speed is crappy but it doesn’t really affect the things that I (or many other people do) on the internet. Very bad weather, ice and snow will sometimes interupt service but it is mostly reliable. Another bit of advice-find a local retailer/installer that you like and can hold accountable for your install, if you contact direcway directly they will send you whoever they want and a good install is very important for the reliability of the system.
GEEKS RULE!!!

David in Irvine - spyware infections from account to account

Boot into Safe Mode, run the spyware removal tools, then log into each account and do the same.

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