Sunday, August 27, 2006
Tech News
Apple has begun a massive battery exchange program because of the recent situations with batteries lighting on fire.
Intel’s Core 2 Duo Mobile chip is to be released tomorrow along with a slew of Core 2 Duo Mobile-based laptops.
Toshiba has announced that they are going to be manufacturing Microsoft’s Zune player.
eBay has banned the sales of teachers’ editions of textbooks.
11a-Noon
Q Roger from Mission Viejo - Put pictures on CD/DVD and play through a TV
What you want to do is make a DVD slideshow. Just make sure that the DVD is not going to be a backup of your pictures. Ulead makes a piece of software called CD/DVD Pictureshow. You’re essentially making a DVD movie of a slideshow.
Q Mark from Timecula - Does not understand video settings for streaming
Quicktime does something called hinting that is designed to help people with different speeds. If you have the choice, you want to choose H.264. Make sure hinting is turned on. Encoding video is a black art. You never need to set video higher than 1 megabit. Uncompressed DV video is 1gb per 10 seconds. There is no magic setting; people usually play with sliders until the video looks good. Alex Lindsay, on Macbreak has put together a great tutorial. Set the fastest speed you want to stream, largest size you want to keep the video.
Q Ivan from West Covina - Wants to control a camcorder on the computer
He does not want to install Premiere or any other software. However, these pieces of software, I recommend Adobe Premiere Elements, should do it. That’s the easiest way. The jogging features are rather basic.
Q Alan from Glendale - External hard drive that constantly makes backups
Any external hard drive will do it. I like the Western Digital MyBook. Microsoft’s synctoy can do backups regularly. For a new laptop, I like Dells, Fujitsus, Lenovos, and Sonys.
Noon-1p
Q Steve from Anaheim - Striped RAID setup broken
Only Windows can fix this one for you. Once the stripe is broken, I don’t think there’s a way to recover the data.
Q Al from Victorville - Worth it to go from 3mbps to 5mbps Internet?
I don’t think it’ll make any difference in your gaming. The difference comes in when you download large files.
Q Cali from Texas - Video not showing on some computers on video podcast
She’s setting it the normal codec in Quicktime. Very frequently it’s a codec issue. I’m not sure why it’s working sometimes. Probably the codecs are corrupted. Delete the codecs and then reinstall. I will ask Alex Lindsay on your behalf.
Meanwhile, I recommend deleting the Quicktime folders in the Library and User/Library folders and reinstalling Quicktime. (I suspect corrupt or missing codecs.)
Cali is the brilliant host of GeekBrief.tv.
Q John from Hollywood - Possible to use Verizon EVDO card in a desktop?
Of course this is possible! There are PCI adapters in which you can put the PCMCIA card. To share the Internet in your home, you can use the WiFi card in your laptop by putting it in ad-hoc mode. The Kyocera KR1 router has a slot for a PC slot.
Q Michael from Orange - Looking for a tablet PC/Mobile phone
My favorite tablets are the Lenovo X Series. Right now they’re using the Pentium M. However, they should be starting to use the Core 2 Duo anytime soon. For mobile phones, I love the Blackberries.
1–2p
Q Renee from San Diego - Saw KRZR phone, how long till it’s in the market?
She saw the KRZR in a store. The technology is not so different between all the phones. The brand new phones cost a lot more. For bluetooth technology, to me it’s not essential unless you want to use a Bluetooth headset. You may also use Bluetooth once to transfer contact data. SIM cards don’t hold many contacts, but can nonetheless. Ideally you can put all your contacts on a SIM card and your entire address book is with you whatever phone you use. However, I like the current RAZR V3.
Q Wiley from San Diego - Windows Genuine Advantage not working
Here’s the scenario that could cause problems. The store you bought the disc from probably used the disc and activated Windows. It’s not so much a problem for you because you have the disc itself. Call up Microsoft and ask them to unlock your disc.
Q Sergio - Windows shutting down
You want to update to service pack 2 ASAP. A rebuild of the operating system would be a good idea. You’ve got to do that! Your system is vulnerable if you don’t. Be careful about what you reinstall.
Q Pablo from Monrovia - SIM card is a mess
His SIM card memory is messed up. To sync the MDA to the Mac, there is a program called The Missing Sync which you can use to sync your contacts. However, you cannot restore anything from the card. You can live with 3 copies of every contact, but make sure you don’t erase the card!
Q Riley from Oregon - Erasing a non-working drive
You could run a large magnet over the drive. Chances are that if you can’t read it, they can’t either.
Chat Logs and Show Audio
27 August 2006
13:10 by anonymous.
first eze
What are the odds of the IRC server for the chat for this show to accept connections on non-standard IRC ports? I’m behind a firewall here on campus and cannot access the chat. =-( (Port 7000 is my usual work around.)
Take care!
Leo, thanks for all the great shows. Lately my Powerbook has been showing a news feed from apple even when I have turned off the screen. Are they pirating my screen time and using up my resources? How can i prevent that from happening again?
13:27 by anonymous.
The Verizon EVDO laptop card is nice, but the Verizon PDA vx6700 is better. Does the same thing, (for $40 per month instead of $60), and connects via USB, so it can be used on any PC, not just a laptop.
Plus all PDA functions under Windows Pocket PC, plus a 1.3 MB camera with Zoom and Macro. Plays MP3’s thru Media Player and streams your Show thru Internet Explorer.
13:30 by anonymous.
The Kyocera KR1 router with evdo slot retails for $299.00 !!
13:36 by anonymous.
Where do you get the Verizon PDA vx6700 ?
13:56 by anonymous.
vx 6700 is available at the Verizon stores, call first to see if in stock, or at the www.verizonwireless.com website, under the Business tab.
in left column, open Products and Services menu and select Phones and Devices. (click Go) then select PDAs/Smartphones
13:57 by anonymous.
actually called “xv6700″ … I always get that backwards…
14:16 by anonymous.
Thanks for the info.
15:56 by .
For Mark in Temecula, the problem with h.264 as a codec in quicktime is it’s processor intensive. It takes a long time to render even on a dual proc g5 w/final cut pro HD. Or dual proc. Intel Xenon.
Try doing it in mpeg4. For streaming it works pretty well without hammering you cpu. I use either quicktime time pro or premiere pro 1.5 for rendering.
For Roger from Mission Viejo:
Regarding your question about viewing photos from a hard drive or digital camera. I simply convert them to .jpg and copy them to a cd. Most modern DVD players can play jpegs. Make sure it says so on the DVD case or box. When I put a CD full of pictures in my DVD, it presents them as a file menu, similar to Windows Explorer. I can then select one and use the forward/reverse buttons to view them. Or I press play and it it wil show them in order like a slide show. No special program needed.
28 August 2006
Another thought for helping Cali to debug the video problem is to try using VLC (VideoLan Client - www.vlc.org) to play the video file on the Mac that has a problem. Since VLC uses independent codecs which are built into VLC (not the Quicktime ones), she can confirm the problem is not in the video file or in the Mac’s ability to play the file (on the off chance it is not a QT problem).
She may also want to look out for a corrupted QT preference file, as I have seen those lead to strange problems as well. Of course replacing QT, should also replace these files as well.
Sorry for the bad link in the last post. The VLC player can be obtained at www.videolan.org, not the bad link I accidently provided. It is a Free Software Foundation project so there is no charge for it.
MicroSD has actually been around for more than two years and is now quite widely used on cell phones. It was developed by Sandisk and was originally called TransFlash. They changed the name after the SD standards group approved the format. MicroSD cards are compatible with standard SD Cards. All MicroSD cards come with an SD adapter that you slide the micro card into then put it into a standard sd card reader. This way you don’t need a special reader for it.
You can use the kyocera evdo router, but be careful. Verizon’s unlimitedevdo service is not unlimited. If you move more than 10GB/month of data they will cut you off. There terms of service explecitly prohibit using their service for anything basic browsing and e-mail. They want people to pay for the service, but they don’t actually want them to use it. They don’t actually have enough network bandwidth to support large scale use of evdo, which is why they keep the price artificially high, and even then limit the unlimited service.
What a shame the cell phone business is replacing computer info on the show.Verizon must be happy.
@Sergio,
The error message you are getting comes from windows whenever a program replaces a windows core system file. The easiest way to resolve this is to reinstall windows.
For Roger, in the Nero Suite, the program that’ll make slideshows on DVD’s is NeroVision or NeroVision Express.
the ODEO Question From Saturday about cleaning the Laptop Use a Shop Vac or Compressed air and it will do the Trick But DON’T Use OVER 35# of air Pressure
Hey mac fan Boy My nero StartSmart OEM 6.6.1.4 has the Slide Show for DVD’s
Waldo, all StartSmart does is load NeroVision Express when you select DVD slideshow. So you’re right but same difference.
Secondly, I should’ve listened to the show before commenting on SpinRite.
for Cali, http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30400 says that this most likely a problem with bad h264 codec, but she said it was updated, so the last bit says
In Mac OS 9 or earlier, this symptom could also occur if a limited amount of memory is assigned to MoviePlayer, QuickTime Player, or your QuickTime playback software. Increase the available memory to the movie playing software.
30 August 2006
pablo, if you want to keep using your mda, but dont like how it works, you can tweak a lot of aspects of it. a great site for that is http://www.mdaTweak.com
Also, t-mobile released a new rom for the phone that really improves the reception and sound of the phone. Think about upgrading, it really helped my phone
13:50 by Tim?.
for Cali, I have the same problem only it plays fine on my PC, but not my iPod, sound only. The iPod is only a few months old, but I updated its software this week without affect.
Pablo from Monrovia - SIM card is a mess issue..
I heard on the broadcast that Pablo put his SIM card in a Razor phone and is now seeing duplicates of his contacts. This is because the Razor phone book needs one record for each phone number, where the phone he had previously could have one record with multiple phone numbers. In my Phone I have two or three records for each person. Example:
Alan Home
Alan Cell
Alan Work
It really sucks that you can’t add multiple phone numbers for one record. Hopefully the next one you will be able to.
31 August 2006
03 September 2006
Help! I have a emachine t2200 (yeah I know)Sometimes when I touch it I get a little shock. This can happen even if it is off and unplugged. Today I unplugged a usb cable from it, to use it elsewhere. I must have touched the metal tip of the cable, and it shocked me. Pc has original specs, except, I replaced original power supply, after it failed. And I installed an Nvidia pci video card. I also am using a pci usb2 card, as it only came with usb1. This is not static electricity. Where is it coming from if pc is unplugged? How can I fix it?
Thanks in advance.
Move the PC away from the Tesla coil! Seriously, if all the peripherals are unplugged and have been for a few days, its not on carpet, doesn’t move, stands clear on plastic risers—then its not the PCs fault—has to be static or other charged introduced by outside forces. The fix is to only poke it with a stick!
08 October 2006
Most DVD Authoring programs like Nero or even DVD Decrypter for example will tell you the type of disc you’ve inserted.
