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Sunday, January 16, 2005

Show #110

1 Today’s news items

The State of Texas has filed its first lawsuit against spammers. Two men, claimed to be behind the fourth largest spam operation in the world, have been charged under the 2003 CAN-SPAM Act and the State’s Electronic Mail and Solicitation Act and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

A new Windows virus lets users play Tetris while the program searches for other computers to infect.

The FBI said Thursday that it probably will scrap nearly all of a $170 million computer program that was being designed to help agents share information to stop terrorism — because it doesn’t work.

Ebay has announced pricing changes that will increase charges to sellers by 60% in some cases. Starting Feb. 18, eBay said the monthly subscription fee for people who operate `Basic eBay Stores’‘ will increase from $9.95 to $15.95. The fee for a standard listing of 10 days will double, from 20 cents to 40 cents.

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2  Mike_B’s trivia question of the day

What is a “blue box”? ¹.

a) A device created to defeat long distance call charges
b) A program that connects bluetooth devices
c) A connector that connects various devices to a computer
d) A type of box used in states that voted for John Kerry

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3 11a-Noon

3.1 Mike in West Hills - Better audio CD burning software

He’s using Windows Media Player to make mix CDs but is looking for something better. I recommend:

• iTunes - it’s free and offers excellent organizational tools

You might also like:

• Music Match
• Nero

and for better organization try the Godfather - it’s free and very powerful.

If storage size is not an issue and you plan to make audio CDs with these it’s best to use a lossless compression technology like FLAC. iTunes supports Apple Lossless Audio.

3.2 Roy in San Bernardino - custom ring tones

He has a Motorola i730 phone with Nextel. Getting a custom ring tone depends on several things. Of course you have to have a phone capable of polyphonic ring tones - most new phones are. You also need a way to copy files to the phone, either via Bluetooth or a custom cable specific to your phone. Then you need some software on your computer that lets you communicate with your phone. In some cases, it’s a simple as copying an MP3 or WAV file to your phone (that’s how it works on my Sony-Ericsson P900), in other cases the phone or carrier try to block you from doing this so they can make some money selling tones. Search Google for “ring tones” and your phone to see what options are out there.

3.3 Michael in NY - scanning negatives with his Epson 4180

He wants to know what the optimum resolution is for the scanning. His scanner can do a whopping 4800 x 9600 optical resolution. I think that’s a little high, but do scan at 1200×1200 - the more information you store the better the quality, and disk storage is pretty cheap these days.

His podcast is at http://www.mab631.blogspot.com

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4 Noon-1p

4.1 John in Tustin - how do you know if Windows updates are installing?

You can trust the update tool - if an update is not installed it will let you know. He received the Malicious Software Removal tool but it has no user interface. That’s correct - it does not. It checks for common infections like Sasser, Blaster, and MyDoom and removes them automatically.

If you go to Windows Update and click on ‘View installation history” You can view a list of installations and related actions that you’ve performed and more. The status column lets you know if a particular feature was successfully installed or not. The date of the action is also listed.

4.2 David on the 86 - looking for free registry cleaner

There’s Microsoft’s regclean, of course, but it’s not very agressive and no longer supported by Microsoft. I usually recommend Regcleaner from Macecraft’s jv16 PowerTools.

Any other recommendations for registry cleaning programs?

Scott Jacobson in Chicago Writes: You can also try RegSeeker it is free and works really good.

4.3 Byron in Ventura - iPhoto problems

He dragged photos into the iPhoto library and now it won’t open. In all likelihood it’s just the database index that’s corrupted. iPhoto does not modify your originals - you’ll find them all in the Pictures/iPhoto Library/ folder organized by year, month, and day - so you can always rebuild your library by moving the photos out and reimporting them, but I’d try deleting the database indices first.

A great site for Mac info is Mac OS X Hints. You might also check the MacMerc.com Forums for iPhoto help—register and post under “Software”.

4.4 Mick in Ohio - long time Internet user

He uses 14 X10 cameras to monitor his vast real estate empire!

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5 1–2p

5.1 Elizabeth in Studio City - boyfriend has G4

but it’s slow rendering in Final Cut Pro, Maya, and After Effects. He’s reluctant to buy a new G5 because he’s afraid of reliability issues. Don’t be. My dual G5 Mac is the most reliable machine I’ve ever owned. And the G5s are much faster.

5.2 Bob in Simi Valley - using circuit design software

parallel port copy protection - but his new laptop doesn’t have a parallel port. I’d check with the software vendor to make sure this will work but you can buy a PC card that adds a parallel port to your laptop

Jeff in Santa Ana writes: The guy with the ancient, copy-protected copy of PSPICE needs to forget PSPICE and get a free copy of LTSPICE (aka SwitcherCAD III) from Linear Technology. It is maintained by Mike Engelhardt of Linear Technology. You can get help on Usenet at sci.electronics.cad, also available thru Google Groups.

A listener who knows writes: Don’t bother with the USB LPT Adapter. As a former designer of those hardware dongles, don’t waste your time with using a USB adapter to use a parallel port dongle. The software that is used for these dongles is specific to the LPT ports, and will not work on ‘virtual ports’. There are USB dongles available, but they require that the vendor of the software support them (which obviously will not be the case with an older program).

Marditti says: Bob, I am a former user of PsPice as well, now retired and live in the east end of San Fernando Valley (not far from you). I may have some suggestions on this subject. If you wish, please contact me at marditti60@hotmail.com.

5.3 John in South Pasadena - Mozilla shortcut problem

He was saving the pages instead of making a shortcut.

5.4 Russell in Long Beach- GotomyPC crashed his system

It’s not GototmyPC - any time you install a program there’s the potential of crashing your system. In this case the registry was damaged.

Other remote access choices include:

RealVNC
Windows Remote Desktop
Symmantec’s PCAnywhere

5.5 Susan in Arrowhead - teacher with $2500 grant from Bestbuy

she’s planning to scan in photos with 8-year-old students. Get a 17″ iMac - upgrade to 512MB RAM. She already has the scanner but I’d get a good photo printer like the Epson PictureMate. She might also want to get some better speakers like the Thundersticks and an iSight or digital camera for taking pictures of the kids to add to the scrapbooks.

John from San Jose writes: Unfortunately Best Buy does not sell Apple Computers only PC’s.

Scott Jacobson from Chicago writes: BestBuy does sell mac products.
Apple iMac G5 with 17″ Display & DVD-R/CD-RW SuperDrive at BesyBuy
Apple iSight Web Camera at BestBuy

5.6 Jimmy in Baton Rouge - doesn’t want to pay monthly fees on his DVR

Tivo and Replay both charge monthly fees - I was mistaken about Replay. There’s no way around this without hacking the boxes and stealing service. There are some PC-based digital video recorders that use free TV guide services, but I don’t know of any standalone boxes that do. The Pioneer Tivo/DVD-R box offer a free limited directory service - I don’t know if those are available on other units - but it’s not nearly as useful as the paid version. I think it’s limited to just a few days ahead.

rallenr in OC writes: The Panasonic “Showstopper” (the original Replay machine) is a free download, presumably from the same service the current Replays use. The machine’s so old that I assume this was a selling feature to move people into DVRs. The setup just asks for your local phone number, then gives a selection of numbers in your zipcode to dial nightly for schedule updates. I have three of them and they work perfectly from 714. The best news is they’re regularly available on eBay in a $150–300 range. Only caveat is that their remotes aren’t very robust and need to be regularly cleaned (or they’re easily replaced with clones).

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¹ Answer is a) A device created to defeat long distance call charges. More information at the Wikipedia. (↑)