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Saturday, June 11, 2005

Show #151

 toc | toc 

Today’s news items

Next three news items added by WilliamInArizona:
From CNN.com: Computer Hackers are sending a virus via e-mail with the subject line “Re: Suicidal attempt-Last night, while in his Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson has made a suicidal attempt,” The e-mail has a link which goes to a webpage which installs malware on the clients computer. The page itself displays the words “Too Busy” and installs the code. suck it suck it suck it suck it

WinXPNo#1 adds: Here is an artical on Trojan Spreads in Michael Jackson Spotlight by Tim Gray at website.

Disposable Digital Video Camera is available from CVS drug stores. The product developed by Pure Digital Technologies Inc in San Fransico costs $29.99. The device is capable of 20 minutes of video storage and has a 1.4 inch color display and saves the video on a memory chip, video can also be deleted. After the customer is done they can drop it off at a CVS store and the video will be placed on a DVD for viewing($12.99 processing).

A listener writes: Leo, there is a coupon to get the camera for $19.99 here. And HACKADAY is promising a hack to get the video off the camera without having to go back to CVS tomorrow.

PS3 Will run Linux but does not come with a hard drive. Gamespot reports that the PS3 will run linux but will not by default have a Hard Drive. Sony says that no matter how much capacity they put on a PS3 it will not be enough. The idea is that you will buy a hard drive to the capacity of your liking and add it on. Obviously the more games you play and the more you hack it the bigger a hard drive you will want. This is contrary to Xbox360 which will ship with a mandatory 20GB Hard Disk Drive.

11a-Noon

Mark in Santa Ana - Outlook forgets passwords

You need to fix the registry. There’s a detailed discussion on the Tech Guy forums.

Dennis in Santa Monica - AOL vandals

Are other services as bad? No - AOL 1. is BIG 2. has lots of kids (this kind of stuff is the 21st century equivalent of prank phone calls) 3. Attracts more predators because AOL customers tend to be less sophisticated. There’s vandalism all over the net, but it’s not as bad as AOL.

Drew in North Carolina - TV show phone calls

He’s got a public access TV show but they take phone calls the old fashioned way, by putting the call on a speaker phone and sitcking a mic next to it. You can buy an inexpensive phone interface from Radio Shack that will work better. You can even use your PC as a TelePromPter with the right software.

Here are a few devices that may help:
AutoHybrid - $175
Inline Patch - $270
(-tollie)

Michael in Ontario - Playstation on a laptop

He has USB and Firewire in, so he can use an external TV tuner to connect the Playstation to the laptop and watch it like he’s watching TV. Look for one with composite video connectors like the Hauppauge WinTV. Note that it is best to investigate your tuner of choice first; some tuners (like the ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0) have display lags that preclude precise control.

Noon-1p

Tommy in Tallahassee - Getting movies of his DVR

Check the DISH hack groups on Yahoo!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dishmod/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dishrip/

Fred in Hawthorne - digital voice recorders for podcasts

He’s looking at the Olympus and Sony digital voice recorders but he wants the ability to make podcasts with it too. That means he needs high quality recording as WAV or MP3, USB connector so he can get it to a PC, and stereo recording. I would look at the recording MP3 players like the iRiver instead - many podcasters use these.

If you want a truly professional rig try the setup I use for my podcasts:

I use the $335 Sennheiser HDM-25 headset mic (I use it for the radio show, too.) Beause it’s a headset mic, you don’t need to do any soundproofing, and it sounds good even in an noisy environment. The built-in headphones make it easy to monitor the quality of the recording while you’re doing it. For recording I use the $500 Marantz PMD-660 compact flash recorder.

Carol in Rancho Cucamonga - digital pictures lost

SD card is damaged. Try the free Smart Media Recovery.

BenListening adds: Pictures stuck on a memory card. I have a 64MB Kodak SD card that was giving me 3–4 symbols of gobblty-gook instead of my pictures. I recovered the pics from the card in Windows XP Home. With the card connected or otherwise mounted in your device & connected to the PC, look for the card represented as a drive in “My Computer”. For me it’s the “F” Drive, but for you it could be a higher letter depending on how many devices are connected to your PC. In “My Computer” right click on the drive that represents your camera card, select properties, select the “TOOLS” tab, and select the “Check Now” button in the “Error Checking” box. In the little applet that opens check both boxes & hit “Start”. When this tool works, you will see your files on the card….but the names & file extensions will be wrong. Get them Moved to your picture folder & then rename them with the same extension as your other good pictures & you should be able to view them. Next, close all the little applets, right click the camera card again and select “Format”.
I had to Format my card, from my PC, a bunch of times about a year ago and then it started working fine, no probs for a year.

TGal adds : I have used and highly recommend Digital Picture Recovery from WinUtils {dot} net. http://www.winutils.net/digital_picture.html

Anthony in Oceanside - MP3 Pro files won’t play in Windows Media Player

Try Winamp. It’s free.
Some of my files were encoded as MP3Pro - until I learned that it was causing some problems for people. I no longer use it - but if you’re having trouble listening to a file in my Audio Archives let me know and I’ll replace it.

MP3Pro format is fine if you’re going to use it solely on your own computer and don’t expect to be doing a lot of “sharing”. Here’s a link to a simple MP3Pro player/ encoder:

http://www.mp3prozone.com/

adds: I have found that Zinf, formally freeamp, is also a great choice for playing the popular audio media formats. It’s also a free application that is open source so anyone can help improve it.

1–2p

Jeff in San Francisco - podcasting microphone

Even an inexpensive USB Mic like the Plantronics DSP-100 will work well. In general you don’t want to use the analog mic ports on your PC. Buy a USB or Firewire mixer like M-Audio converts the audio to bits before it enters the computer for a cleaner sound.

If you dont mind having a conventional microphone, the I recommend the ShureSM58 or ShureSM86 - both of these micropones have excellent sound quaility and are widley used in many different applications.

Troy in Ventura - PDA Phone

If you want a more compact phone I like the Audiovox Smartphone. If power is a priority, then the HP iPAQ 6315 is a very good choice.

You may also want to consider a Blackberry phone.

(Tim from Torrance adds) The PalmOne Treo 600 or 650 will interface with Word, Excel, and Power Point as well as let you see JPEGs by using Documents To Go. I love the Palm interface and you don’t have that stupid START button to deal with. Also all the functions in the PDA are accessible while you are talking on the phone. The builtin browser is great and with Sprint you are not charged extra for the internet using these phones/pdas.

Chris in Chicago - firewall for dialup

Use the Windows firewall and leave it at that. Dialup users are just as much at risk as broadband users, but it’s not worth spending the money on a hardware firewall.

Sygate also makes an excellent software firewall which is free. I know Leo has recommended it on several occasions.

Yaz990 adds: The Sygate Personal Firewall is free and I use it flawlessly with broadband even. For dialup, it should be a piece of cake.

Judy - web site design

A web site is not a brochure - it’s software. So you should get a designer who understands that. And make sure they ask you about your business and customers. You’re the expert on that. For more information on usability issues read Jakob Nielsen’s great books, Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed and Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity for really practical tips.

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