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Sunday, August 14, 2005

Show # 170

 toc | toc

Today’s news items

AOL is giving away a Hummer2 and $100,000 worth of gold bars? They’re from a 20-year-old spammer that AOL prosecuted. As part of the settlement AOL got the goods, and now they’re having a drawing to give them away. Ends August 19.

(the sign up is here but I’d sure like to see a privacy policy before I give them my email address and phone number.)

A mobile phone virus infected the stadium at the World Athletic Championships in Helsinki.

Phishers are now turning to faxes to lure the unsuspecting to reveal financial information. Do we call them Phaxers?

11a-Noon

Helen in Mission Viejo - networking Dell and iMac

there are many issues that can keep computers from seeing each other on a network, but you should know that windows and Mac can coexist beautifully.

Read the instructions at Mac-connect for details.

I recommend turning off firewalls on both sides if you have a hardware router.

you can also turn off simple file sharing on windows for a more secure connection.

Mark in Santa Ana - recording marital conversations

He wants to record “conversations” with his wife to avoid the he said/she said syndrome. Interesting idea! The solid state iRiver MP3 players hqve good mics as do the Olympus solid-state voice recorders.

Henry in Riverside - phishing experience

Check the archives at the Anti-Phishing Working Group for a look at actual phishing emails. It’s a good idea to familairize yourself with these so you don’t fall for them.

Beth in Fontana - removing Norton Internet Security

It’s big, bloated, and ineffective. I agree she should remove it. Follow Symantec’s instructions then replace it with better security programs like the NOD32 anti-virus, anti-spyware programs like the free Microsoft AntiSpyware or Pest Patrol, and use a router for a firewall.

Mike a Listener says to try Removing your Norton program using SymNRT.exe Symantec Norton Removal Tool Symantec Document ID: 2005033108162039 Last Modified:08/10/2005.

For Australian listeners, Computer Associates in Australia make a product called Vet Antivirus. It is really small and very reliable. HEAPS better than Norton Antivirus bloatware.

Noon-1p

Ara in La Crescenta - ibook screen repair

Apple charges $1000 - that’s as much as a new iBook!. I’m trying a service that only charges $400 - www.techrestore.com. I’ll let you know how it works.

Might just be a lose cable or connector. You can, carefully, open up your iBook and check.

My interview with Ara is on his site: www.dotuplink.com

Jeff from Rockville, MD - PC crashes randomly

He’s reinstalled Windows and tested the RAM. Check for overheating. Make sure the heat sink and fan are properly connected to the processor (use a dab of thermal compound). If you’ve tested the RAM and swapped out all the other components it’s probably the motherboard.

Deuce says: “I would suggest replacing the power supply, if it is a name brand computer like Dell or HP then check if the power supply is the same as a new one off the shelf with a volt meter(if the prongs are diffrent you could fry the mother board), but a bad power supply can make a computer shut down randomly or do other wierd things.”

Chuck in Huntington Beach - Windows 2000 install is looping

It never completes - it keeps rebooting. Hmmmm.

I had exact same problem trying to install XP Pro on a machine at work. I am an IT guy that does this all the time, and encountered this particular issue for the first time the other day. Anyway, I removed the hard drive & put it into a different computer, ran the Windows disk again, and it worked!

Tony added:

Make sure you are not booting to the cd over and over. After it runs through the first file copy dialog, and it boots, hit the delete (or whatever gets you to bios), and select boot to whatever drive you installed to. You probably did this, but something to try.

Hey Chuck,
You said you reset the jumpers on the hard drives from master to slave & slave to master. Did you also unplug the drives from the IDE cable and switch them around too? For the IDE cable is also wired with the end connector as the master, and the middle connector is the slave�.

Dennis in Columbus, OH - how do I make a podcast

You need three things:

  1. A way to record
  2. A site to host it
  3. A way to publicize it.

Recording is simple. Any PC with a microphone can do it. I recommend a free program Audacity for Mac, windows, or Linux, for recording, editing, and mixing your show. Any headset mic will do - I recommend the USB headsets from Logitech and Plantronics. If you want more than one person on the show you’ll need a mixer.

Free podcast hosting is available from many sites including www.audioblog.com, www.typepad.com, www.libsyn.com, and www.blogger.com. These sites can usually automatically generate the appropriate RSS feed you’ll need for people to subscribe to your podcast, or use Feedburner to automatically generate an itunes compatible feed.

Finally, you need to promote it. I’d use the very effective technique used by the hosts of Skepticality - instead of promoting it on Podcast direcotries like www.podcastalley.com and www.podnova.com go to your natural audience. They posted messages on astronomy message boards.

Michael added:

Check out the Podcast About The Podcast. I posted this once before when people were looking for podcast equipment and recording guidance. Dennis made a comment about wanting more than just a basic setup - hopefully this will be helpful.

Scott added:
check out the Podsafe Music Network for music to use in your podcast Podsafemusicnetwork.
PS My Podcast

1–2p

Cheryl in Whittier - Mac won’t shut down

Dave in Pasadena - data storage service

Xdrive AOL
Drive
algotec

Tony added:

I toyed with this idea for sometime, and I have about 70gb’s I have to have backed up off site. Because of the cost of offsite backup services, I just spent about 20 bucks for a removeable drive bay that you can just put any size hard drive in, and use automatic software such as “Second Copy 2000″ (Leo uses this, and it only takes a minute or so to update your drive), and I just pull the drive and take it to work, and bring the drive that was at work home, and repeat this process. This way, I always have a backup if either location is destroyed (fire etc).

If you need access to these files remotely then setup ftp server at either location, and you are set. I leave my machine on at home, and on at work, so by running gotomypc, or other remote solutions, your data can be available to you anytime, anywhere.

Cheers :)

Dan in Fullerton - how do I read my backup data

Ed in Manhattan Beach - free PDF software

Cute PDF
Primo PDF
PDF995

Free to home users http://www.pragnaan.com/paperlessprinter/

I’ve used CutePDF since it was recomended on a TV show on TechTV.
http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp No Watermarke

Jeff in Santa Ana adds - We were just talking about this on a forum.

   Program           Download size
 Go2PDF              261kB
 PDF Creator         600kB
 CutePDF             1MB
 Paperless Printer   9.2MB
 PrimoPDF            9.8MB

Previous coverage of this in the ShowNotes.

John in the Bay Area — nearly free PDF

These aren’t free, but for a small amount of money ($50 is what I paid), ClickToConvert does the PDF conversion, and also converts anything to HTML. So, for the price, you can also turn documents into web pages.

Richie in Trinidad West Indies

You may also try PDFcreator which is opensource and available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ This program has more features and options than CutePDF

Keith in Indiana -

PDF995 - Has editor too and MANY other features. Check it out! Free version has pdf995 pop-ups when you create a document. Little price to pay for a great software with endless features.

Kevin in San diego - spammed to death

Spambayes is a free spam filtering program that works quite well.
I like server side solutions, too. Ask your ISP if they offer Spamassassin and use it if they do.

Or you can subscribe to www.cloudmark.com. Businesses check out www.mailroute.net - I use them and they stop over 1 million spams a month from hitting leoville.com.
http://mailroute.net/

recommend your favorite spam solution:

Say you want to sign up to see an article on the
New York Times instead of giving them your email you just make something up
for example joenyt then add the http://www.tempinbox.com
domain. So the email you give
out is joenyt@tempinbox.com. Then if you need to click a link to confirm the
email you can just go to and enter joenyt at tempinbox.com to see the email
and click the conformation link.

Neat huh?

ChrisS1563 writes:
If you have run your own website, I suggest you never post your email address (example: ChrisS@aol.com) because search bots look for this. I usually insert a hyperlink and link it to mailto: xxx@xxx.com If someone wants to email you, it should bring up your mail composer automatically

Tony added:
Chris, that method will also show up in email searches. I know because I have tested that method with actual email scanning software. The most secure way to allow direct email without getting added to spam lists is to not do it. If you must, then I suggest a form field with a backend on the server side. That is techno babble, but it might help someone. I noticed that Leo just boldly posts his email address as I do, but he gets hundreds of emails per day as I do. I just filter spam at my mail server as Leo does using spam assasin. This has been covered on the show several times.

Cheers :)

SparkieInParadise writes:
I have been using the inexpensive email forwarding service www.pobox.com for years. They have recently added spam filtering. I catches about 99 percent of my spam before it gets to me. You can get a daily summary of what it caught in case you want to whitelist a sender. Highly recommended.