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Saturday, February 19, 2005

Show #119

Live from Orlando, Florida, coverage from the 2005 PMA Digital Photography Show.

 toc | toc 

Today’s news items

Quick. What country downloads the most TV shows on the Internet? Survey says…. Great Britain. Shows like 24 and Desparate Housewives are so popular in England that viewers won’t wait until their national networks air them. They download them the day they air in the US.

So long to Samuel W. Alderson, dead at the age of 90. Alderson invented the crash test dummy.

Good news, Microsoft is planning to give away its new anti-spyware program, cleverly named Microsoft AntiSpyware. The beta is free right now, and according to Bill Gates at this week’s RSA security conference in San Francisco, it’s going to stay that way. Unfortunately, it only works for XP and Windows 2000. Gates also announced a new anti-virus product by year end and an update to Internet Explorer for Windows XP SP2. IE7 will go beta this summer with improved phishing protection.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is recalling 14.1 million Xbox power cords, saying that there’s a fire risk. The recall applies to Xboxes manufactured before Oct. 23, 2003. I’ll live dangerously.

Former US cybersecurity and counterterrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, also at RSA, when asked his opinion of the new Microsoft security products replied, “Given their record in the security area, I don’t know why anybody would buy from them.”

Jeff adds: With regard to Leo’s global TV lead story, Jeff from San Francisco notes that in an interesting reversal, Sci-Fi’s popular new “Battlestar Galactica” actually premiered in UK in September 2004 and aired 4 months before its run in the US.

To add to Jeff: Like people in the UK download shows such as Desperate Housewives and 24 before they air in the UK, US users can download “Battlestar Galactica” a few hours after it airs in the UK which is before it airs in the US.

11a-Noon

Gary from Laguna Beach - advice on color matching

Gary uses a Canon printer and the final product doesn’t resemble what he views on his monitor
The printed page uses CMYK and this is different from the way your monitor displays color. To match the colors you need to use a spectrophotometer. You make adjustments to the monitor, take a reading from a print, then make adjustments in your photo editor.

The word I was looking for is Colorimeter. That’s an inexpensive version of the spectrophotometer. Both are used to measure colors on the screen so you can adjust your monitor. Colorvision makes relatively inexpensive color matching devices for monitor and printer.

Frank2 from the chat room recommends Color Wizard.

Jaime adds: Xrite also has a great website which explains color management at xritephoto.com.

Loren from Van Nuy – iTunes for Windows problem

Loren uses iTunes for Windows receives an error message upon startup and it isn’t displaying the iPod
Spyware might be causing this problem. First, you should uninstall your current anti-virus program and then visit the Tips section for the links to antivirus and spyware programs. After installing the antivirus and spyware removal programs, don’t use Internet Explorer unless you must; try Firefox from Mozilla. On a PC, first install the software for USB devices, then plug in the device. Resetting your iPod might also help. Make sure the hold button is off. Hold the select and the menu button for five seconds on the newer iPods.

Noon-1p

Jerry in Maryland - Internet phone calls

There are three kinds of VoIP - voice over Internet Protocol

1. computer to computer systems like Skype
2. computer to phone (Skype does this for a fee)
3. phone to phone (Packet8, Vonage, Lingo, AT&T’s CallVantage)

He recommends Dock-N-Talk for using your cell phone as a land line.

Mark in Maryland - first time Mac owner

He just bought a Powerbook G4 and he’s looking for zip, ftp, and divx software. Zip is built into the Mac OS (as it is in windows XP) so you won’t need additional software. There is a command line FTP client (and server) on OS X but if you want a GUI try Cyberduck - it’s free. And you can get a Divx codec free from the Divx folks. I’d also download Microsoft’s Windows media player.

Mitch Adds: I have compiled a list of my favorite Mac freeware here. You can view the list of Mac freeware that listeners have put together here.

Bruceb Adds: For more Mac software recommendations, check out sites like Version Tracker for OS X software in every category imaginable. Also, see if there’s a Mac User Group (MUG) in your area; plan to attend a meeting or two, if at all possible. You’ll get largely unbiased Mac software and hardware recommendations from the MUG members. Though most MUGs are separate from Apple, Apple maintains a free, searchable listing of MUGs which you can get to here: Apple User Groups -bruceb

tssandcfhfan adds:
A great book I found was How to do everything with Mac OS X Panther.
Some great software I found on www.macupdates.com and www.versiontracker.com
All free
Safari Speed = Speeds up web page loading
TextWrangler = text editor for programming
SlimBattery = More detailed battery icon
MacJanitor = It runs the stuff that usually happens
overnight
Nvu = Website Creator Helper

Some websites
A thread I started on Leo’s Boards http://leovilletownsquare.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?Cat=0&Board=macintosh

www.macrumors.com has great board too

Tips and more
http://www.macosxhints.com/index.php

http://maczealots.com/articles/applications/

Loretta from Long Beach – Email Problems

Loretta is having email connectivity problems and is receiving an error message regarding dialer issues, she uses an inexpensive provider
Uncheck the mute button on the dialer to help you diagnose dialer problems; even though the noise is annoying, it can be used as a diagnostic tool. High speed Internet will also cure some of these problems.

Joy in Sunnyvale – digital camera storage

Joy is going to New Zealand and needs to store digital photos while they are there
An iPod is a good place to store digital photos and Belkin makes a device for this called a Photo Wallet. The Archos Gmini 400 will handle this task and allows you to preview the picture and this also insures you that the pictures are there. Joy also runs a web site for Golden Gate Labrador Rescue, Labrescue.org/.

1–2p

Mike from Orange County – DVD look bad

Mike copied some family DVDs that have copy protection and after ripping these movies they play okay on TV, but they look terrible on the computer
The problem is with interlacing and Dscaler.org has a discussion section about this issue. If interlacing is the cause of your distortion Dscaler has a download to work around this issue.

Jesse in Temecula – Remotely connect to another PC

Jesse wants to connect to his Mothers computer and she is using XP Home, he is using XP Pro
If the computer that you want to connect is running XP Pro, you can connect to it from any computer including a Mac. Net Meeting built into Windows will also work for this. RealVNC is a free program that will work for this and although it is somewhat slow, it will work for you. There are commercial products for this like Go To My PC. Log Me In.com is another option.

Nahid adds:

Yes, RealVNC is slow but I found that TightVNC is a lot faster because you can change the compression. It’s comparable to Windows Remote Desktop.

Eric can’t see DVD player

Eric has a Toshiba laptop and installed Windows XP and now he can’t find his DVD player
Use the Device Manager (Start/ Administrative/ Computer Management) to look for a listing of the player, if there isn’t a warning symbol next to the players’ icon your problem could be the burning software. Try Nero for your burning needs.

Jon Adds: Another recommendation for burning software is DeepBurner. It does CD’s & DVD’s and the best part is it’s completely free. There is a Pro version available with more features and a pricetag, but for 95% of people the free version is more than enough.

Eric also wants advice on which browser from Mozilla is the fastest and Leo recommends Firefox for a speedy package and Mozilla for the fuller open source experience.

Tom in LA slammed by Trojan

Even though they are running antivirus protection, Tom was slammed by Trojans after his daughter clicked on a unscrupulous site, how does this happen?
Viruses spread so fast they often kill the antivirus program before the company can issue an update. Try starting in the safe mode to remove your Restore points. SARC has removal tools for specific viruses and they issue virus alerts.

Chat Logs and Show Audio