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Saturday, October 15, 2005

Tech News

Apple’s new iPod for Video changes everything. Not because it’s such a great video player, Archos, Creative, and others make better devices, but because everyone who buys a hard drive iPod from now on will automatically have video capability. That means millions of people will have video players in the next year. And with Apple selling video on the iTunes Music Store a whole new business has been created.

Scott Adds:
Get free content for the viPod FreeiPodMovies.org

Chuck (from Markham, Canada): a free audio/video podcast intro course on computers and the internet from Harvard:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~cscie1/
will be up till end of semester…worth more than $1.99?

11a-Noon

Amy in Clairmont - Skype vs GoogleTalk

I think Googletalk works better for those folks with lots of bandwidth. But you should try them both - they’re free:

• Skype
• Google Talk

John in Oakland - copying video to the vipod

The iPod with Video (as Apple calls it) can play back video in two formats:

• H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per second
• MPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per second in .m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats

You’ll have to convert your videoo to one of those formats. Quicktime Pro has presets for iPod video.

p0wermac suggests this tutorial for John’s DVD to iPod quesion. http://diveintomark.org/howto/ipod-dvd-ripping-guide/

ZK Adds here is how to take a dvd and put it on the ipod with windows it can be found here

Larry in Bell - converting WAVs to MP3s

Use CDex for batch conversion of WAV to MP3 (or other formats).

In future, if you want to store CDs on your hard drive without any loss of quality use a lossless codec. I recommend FLAC, but Windows users like Ape, and iTunes users on Mac and Windows can use Apple Lossless.

Another good converter is AltoMP3 Maker. It converts WAVs to MP3, Ogg, and MP3 to WAV.

For Linux, you can use GRip for WAV to MP3 conversion. Also, for copying your mp3s over to your iPod in Linux use GTKPod. Both are free and open source.

Noon-1p

Josh in Palmdale - viPod is good news for indy filmmakers

You bet!

Mark in Washington - do I have to buy all new software for Mac?

Unfortunately you do. Adobe at least will make you buy all new Mac versions of Illustrator and Photoshop even you have Windows versions - you can’t even get an upgrade price.

To remove the iTMS copy protection from songs use Jhymn. NOTE: Jhymn does not currently work with music downloaded using iTunes 6.0.

[Nik from Australia]
I found when upgrading from Adobe Photoshop CS to CS2, the Asia Pacific store gave me the option to chose either Windows or Mac. I dont know if it will work for US residents, but its worth a try.

Michael in Valley Village - upgrading to a mini

OpenGL performance will only be adequate on the mini, but it will still be much better than his 500mhz G4.

Alan Somers adds: I know I’m late to this discussion (darned podcast lag), but one possibility with the mini to speed things up is to use a fast external Firewire drive as a boot drive, which will actually be faster than the internal drive. A colleague of my wife did this when replacing a too-loud dual 1 GHz G4 tower with a mini.

Rob Knight adds: There is always the temptation to suggest buying a whole new system. However, I’ve managed to add a lot of zing to my 466Mhz G4 by updating the processor to an OWC Mercury Extreme 1.2Ghz processor and 1.5GB of RAM. It has been 2 years and I run all of Apple’s Pro Apps without issue. This system will do me fine until Intel switch. http://www.macsales.com

Keith in Brea - keeps losing connection

His Netgear router drops the connection at least daily. Resetting it fixes the connection. I think a firmware upgrade is your only resort. If that doesn’t fix it, buy a new router.

John Trainer comments the problem may not lie within the router, but may actually be a problem with the cable service itself. I personally have been experiencing a problem with my cable ISP and, like you, resetting my router seems to fix the problem. This is misleading in my case, however, because the real problem is that the signal I receive from my service provider is not good enough. I would not be surprised if Keith is experiencing the same problem. If you upgrade the firmware and see no difference, and before you spend the money on a new router, you may want to call your service provider and ask to have your signal checked.

Doug comments I also believe that the problem lies with the ISP. The router needs to be reset in most cases because the cable has lost connectivity and the IP provided to the modem has changed. The router must then be reset (either by turning off, or resetting within the config utility) to obtain a new IP address. The installer who just installed a new commercial line for our new office (cable modem) mentioned that the actual modem can make a difference because some modems respond better to weak signals and packet loss than other modems do.

Juan comments *This is the FIX* I had this exact problem with 2 different Chicago Comcast broadband connections. I used a Netgear router on my connection and a Belkin Pre-N router on a family member’s connection. Both would lose connectivity at the exact same time every other day/week(s). Being a tech junkie I would be online late at night and would lose my connectivity around 2am - 4am. This would occur right after Comcast would run the periodic Emergency Broadcast Cable Tests. Every time these tests would run I would lose my connection permanently until resetting my cable modem. I called Comcast and they said there was nothing they could do. My FIX for this is to put a night lamp timer on the cable modem. I bought a digital one with 2 on/off settings (i used digital to minimize down time to one minute). I set the timer to go off/on for one minute at 2am and again at 5am. This has worked great and have not lost connection in over a year.

Dale in Palmdale - gaming on the mac

www.macgamestore.com is a good place to see what games are available. The mini would be fine for Warcraft or WoW, but many PC games never make it to the Mac.

1–2p

Brandon in Corona - Xbox drive is locked

He has a modded Xbox. The motherboard is fried and he wants to use the upgraded drive on another Xbox (all his games are on it!). Problem is the drive is locked. www.xbox-scene.com has an article about unlocking the drive. If that doesn’t work you’re on your own.

There is a way to recover your locked hard drive. It’s called the AFF repair station. You can download the application which will check to see if the drive is locked. Then you have to pay $49.50 for a 1 time license to unlock the drive. Many people have used this successfully.

A listner writes I’ve had great results with File Scavenger 3.0 download.com has it as a free download but free copy is limited to 64K file size. License is $45. Try the free download & if it works, pay the fee. No harm, No foul!

He also says that he had a problem with router drop out because the router conflicted with the router in his cable modem. Good point - if your cable modem is configurable from the browser make sure it doesn’t have the same 192.168.x.x IP address as your router.

James in Indiana - gaming video card for $150

I think you can get a Radeon X800 in that price range - and it would be fine for Battlefield etc. Check www.pricewatch.com or www.pricegrabber.com

I just bought a Dell with a Radeon X800 and it has plenty of power for games with details on full.

Ed in La Palma - recommendations for fax answering machine software

He’s using Windows 98. Any thoughts

MightyFax works with Windows 98.

Chris adds: For voice mail and FAX software check out BVRP Software at, http://www.bvrp.com/ENG/products/home_fax_telephony.asp Prices range from $30-$80.

Marteen from MD writes: if he uses VoIP (and the VoIP provider supports it) he can use an IP phone that supports fax. It’s called Kapanga (www.kapanga.net) and it works great.

Steve in Ventura - recovering drive space

His C: drive has 31GB of stuff and is running out of room. Run Disk Cleanup to empty the temp folder, empty the trash, compress programs and data you rarely use. You can also search for large files to see if there’s something taking up extra space. Finally, consider moving the Windows pagefile to your D drive. Open the System Properties control panel, click the Advanced tab, press the Settings button under Performance, then click the Advanced tab. Press the Change button. You can turn off swap usage on C and move it all to D. Use 1.5x the amount of RAM.

Also consider down-sizing the recycle bin. windows sets it @ 10% of your H.D. volume but under properties, you can manually change it to a lower percentage ie 3% or whatever/

Sal adds: Make sure to clear your windows temp folder and the temp internet files folder. I ran into a similar situation and clearing both of these folder, cleared about 8 gigs of harddrive space for me.

Also it’s a good idea to use the windows disk cleanup utility and clear the system restore points(Except for the most recent one) These tend to take up quite a bit of space as well.

A listener adds: Try the free version of TreeSize from Jam Software to figure out what is taking up all the space. I have always found it odd that this type of functionality isn’t built into Windows.

Another listener adds:
Also try this link (sorry about the name, but that’s what it is) for a primer on “Microsoft’s Really Hidden Files”:
http://www.f***microsoft.com/content/ms-hidden-files.shtml (replace *’s with the obvious)
Those hidden files can account for hundreds of megabites that Microsoft doesn’t want you to bother your little head about.

Take a look at Space Hound 32. Get a 30 day full blown evaluation copy # download.com it tracks down to 1k size but is settable. after 30 days you pay.

Brad in San Diego adds:
Another good way to check out disk space is with JDiskReport from JGOODIES:
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/index.html
It shows a pie chart with the percentages taken up by each folder on your hard disk (including all subfolders and files). You can look in the biggest folder, and its biggest subfolders, to help find places on your hard drive which contain files that might be large and unnecessary. Free, for Windows/OSX/*nix.

A Listener adds:
I frequently use a a free program called SpaceMonger http://www.werkema.com/software/spacemonger.html when my Hard drive becomes too full to find the files that are taking up the most room.

Chat Logs and Show Audio

08 November 2005