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Sunday, March 20, 2005
Show #128
It’s the first day of spring! Celebrate with me at 1–800–520–1534. And keep the phones ringing from 2–4p - I’m taping a show for air on April 9 during my vacation. Thanks!
toc | toc
Today’s news items
RIM gives in. Research In Motion Ltd. has agreed to one of the biggest patent suit settlements in history to avoid losing the US market. RIM will pay $450-million to NTP, a “patent-holding firm” in Virginia to license its technology. One more reason software patents are a bad idea.
Ebay may be forced to drop the “Buy It Now” feature in the US thanks to a court decision upholding another software patent. Buy it now accounts for about one-third of Ebay sales.
American families with teenagers have increased their use of Internet filters according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. More than 54 percent of Internet-connected families with teens now use filters, up from 41 percent in 2000. The number of families with teens using Internet filters has jumped to 12 million today from 7 million at the end of 2000.
The FCC has a new comish. Republican Kevin Martin has been named as the agency’s new chairman to replace Michael Powell. Martin is a sitting commissioner so no congressional approval is required. He’s expected to continue Powell’s support for VoIP and deregulation.
Visit Google today if you want a Gmail account. About 1 in 20 Google users are randomly being offered Gmail accounts.
A German supermarket chain is letting customers pay by fingerprint.
11a-Noon
Jeff from San Francisco went to Google’s Home Page and just snagged a free GMail account! Thanks Leo!
Darlene in Sun City - camcorder recommendations
She’s buying a camcorder for her daughter and her husband - they’re especially interested in good low light recording. I have recommended the Panasonic PVDV53 - it’s very inexpensive and great in low light (I own one), but getting harder to find. Look for a camcorder with larger CCD sizes - check the ratings at CamcorderInfo.com for camera with CCD’s that are bigger than 1/6th inch.
Chicagoan - Bill in Irvine writes: Darlene,I hate to sound like a Sony shill, but they have a line of relatively inexpensive HandyCams - the HC40 is a nice compromise - which will produce a beautiful picture on big screen TV when played direct, permit the editing of video on a computer (all cables are included), have small size, rechargeable battery, and many nice options.
Rick in Anaheim - VHS to DVD recorder
His wife bought a GoVideo VHS to DVD recorder. She’s finalizing the discs but still having trouble watching them on their standalone DVD player. Make sure you’re using DVD-R or DVD+R disc - not RW. They’re the most compatible. Try a different disc.
Carrot Kid writes: Rick, This probably is not the case but did you, by any chance, put stickers on the disks that you printer from a computer? If so, many DVD players have trouble reading disks with stickers on them becuase it thickens the disk.
Another listener writes: Rick, DVD recorders such as Go Video, Lite-On, or even the major brands will produce DVDs which play in most players which are less than 2 - 3 years old. (Costco has Sony player for approx. $64 and Toshiba for $49 which will play just about anything - I bought the Sony last Summer for the very reason you called). Self recorded DVDs will play in most computer DVD drives, but older PC DVD players also choke on self recorded DVDs.
For DVD Recording, the disc type is important, but another thing to consider is DVD-rot. If a disc is manufactured with low standards, or is too thin and is flexed. The seal between layers may have a gap and start to go bad (even in storage). Stay with a disc brand that is higher quality, especially if you intend to put important things on it like home movies. Maxwell is good brand.
Read Andy McFadden’s DVD FAQ for some good
William in Arizona - broadcasting video to branch offices
Branches are Mac and some are PC. He wants to broadcast training and other video. That’s easy. Get the Videolan Client. It’s free and can stream video to and from nearly every kind of computer.
Charles in Boston: Videolan can also be used to stream video from networked Replay DVRs using DVArchive.
Mark in Santa Ana - Series 1 Tivo video extraction
Tivo2Go uses a mostly compatible MPEG-2 format. Series 1 Tivos also store their video as MPEG-2, but it can be encrypted. That’s just one of the issues in lifting the files from your Tivo for playback elsewhere. Read up on video extraction on the Dealdatabase forums.
Linda in Long Beach - she had same problem with the GoVideo recorder
She used the blanks she bought at Costco and they didn’t work well with her DVD player, but Maxell DVD-R blanks worked fine. Make sure you try different brands of discs, before you consider you DVD player ‘broken’
Another listener writes: From my experience with DVD-Rs Maxell makes the best quality media. They usually use Taiyo Yudens or their own Maxell brand which are known for being the best you can get. I can throw those discs in any player and they’ll work every time. FujiFilm discs are also excellent since they also use Taiyo Yuden discs. Maxell and Fuji are the only two brands I will use.
Noon-1p
Steve in Idaho - Loves his Snapserver
Snapservers from Snap Appliance are network attached storage or NAS. You might have heard these kinds of devices called Media Servers or File Servers. It’s all the same thing. Basically they’re hard drives with ethernet ports that can plug into your network to provide centralized backup and data storage. I just ordered an Iomega BOSS - 250GB for $341. It’s a router, too with built-in FTP and VPN.
In Steve’s case, the Snapserver is sitting inside the router. He wants to enable the built-in FTP server, but how to do it securely? There are two ways: punch a hole in the router’s firewall using “port forwarding” or put the Snapserver in a DMZ - that is, expose it to the Internet.
He also wanted to warn folks about an Ebay phishing scam email he’d just received. Never, ever, click on a link in email. Read about phishing at the Anti-Phishing Working Group Site. The archives are especially interesting.
Greg in Simi Valley notes: Also check your HOSTS file. I have run into some phishing scams that change your HOSTS file so that even if you manually type www.mybank.com the hosts file will override the URL and send you the fake site. It’s getting really bad lately. I have had at least 5 phishing scams from banks I don’t even have an account with.
JohnDgeek says: I created a similar situation with my net dive. Check them out here http://www.ximeta.com/
Don in Santa Monica - Nikon 8800
Looking for digital camera user groups. Check our user groups listings here.
Lola in Glendale - creating a flyer in Word
It looks different on other computers - in particular it’s a one page document on her system, two pages on others. There are many possible causes. Make sure you’re using the same printer on both systems - Word changes the formatting depending on the printer’s capabilities. Your best bet is to create a PDF of the file on your system. Try CutePDF Writer (free) or PDF Creator (also free) if you don’t have Adobe’s Acrobat Distiller. In general, I prefer Publisher for this kind of job, but there’s no free reader, alas.
Edgar in Woodland Hills: Try pdf995, a very cheap alternative to Adobe Acrobat. Free to try or very cheap to buy, less than $10.00. I use it all the time. Dan adds: PDF995 has adware and watermarks and isn’t as good as the free CutePDF, avoid this one.
Jeff in MI adds: You could also try (free) Go2PDF.
Dave in SCV adds: Two free PDF alternatives: (1) OpenOffice has a built in PDF writer. download www.openoffice.org (2) Online - goto http://www.gobcl.com/index.htm - upload your Word doc and you’ll get back a PDF file via email in about 1 minute.
Howard3rd adds: a simple way … do the flyer in publisher, then drag the curser all the way around the objects and ‘group’ them. Then right click on the group and save as a picture… jeg., gif., or what ever. Then send as a picture.
quantumBlog in Santa Barbara, CA adds: You may also want to try PrimoPDF. It’s free and functions just like a printer driver. When you’re ready to print something out in PDF, just choose this driver instead of your usual printer. Quite useful and keeps the paper clutter to a minimum, and it won’t put an annoying watermark on the printed result.
1–2p
Sarah in Huntington Beach - Putting DVD’s on the PSP
She’s got her new PSP reserved ($300 at www.Walmart.com - hmmmm tempting). You need a program called 3GPP_Converter. I’d read up on the how-to at PSP Jungle.
Zkay Addes that there is a program made just for the PSP to do the same thing it is called iPSP and it is for both Mac and PC
She’s also having trouble installing Panda Titanium on her new HP PC.
Dean in Apple Valley - converting audio books to CD
As with converting any cassette to CD you’ll need a cassette player. Connect it to the mic or line in port on your sound card then use a program to record the audio (Music Match will do this, for example.) I’d record as WAV files then burn them to audio CDs - audio not data. Since Dean has Nero use that. It can both record and burn.
Douglas in Encino - making songs any length
He’s a magician and would like to create audio clips of exactly the right length to match each trick. It’s tough to do this well with existing songs - you’ll just have to fade them out. But you can use loops to create complete songs of any length (that’s what Pinnacle’s SmartSound does for video editing). Garage Band on the Mac is one perfect example. On Windows I recommend Sony’s Acid. Pinnacle can also be found with the USB movie box for $99.99 at Tigerdirect.com Search for item P121–3024 “Jim in kansas” adds Try Jet Audio look for it here→ http://www.jetaudio.com/index.asp At the bottom of the Page. It is great and FREE it will cut out all of the dead space between songs. IT also burns CD’s Rips CD’s And can record from many streaming sources I use it to record LEO’s Shows.
Edward in Thousand Oaks - playing slide shows on TV
He wants to get the digital shots from his laptop into a slide show on TV. You could buy a TV converter, but the easier way is to burn a CD or DVD slide show with Ulead Picture Show.
Jeff in MI adds: I don’t know anyone who has used one of these, but a company called “Card Media” makes a few memory card readers with video out. Simply plug in your memory card in and watch it on your TV!
Mike also adds: To point out that you could also plug into your VCR and record a slide show. If you get a cable to go from camera to Video in. I have one and it is a mini jack to RCA cable esentially. As an added bonus if you turn on your camera while it is plugged in to the TV/VCR you could use it as a video device, that is until you hit the take a picture button it is viewing moving pixels.
Richard in Santa Margarita - Toshiba tablet PC for architectural sketches
Toshiba has a new Tablet PC coming out, the Satellite R15-S822 - he’s wondering if that will work. Toshiba makes excellent notebooks, but my main concern would be whether Tablet PC in general would give you enough control of your drawings. It’s primarily intended for handwriting and annotating documents - not fine art. On the other hand, the digitizing engine in many tablet PCs is based on Wacom’s excellent Cintique technology but it may lack features that tablets intended for drawing have, like pressure sensitivity and high resolution. I’m not sure what your requirements are but I’d definitely try one before you commit.
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