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Saturday 24 February 2007

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Tech News

New Mexico is taking an unusual step to fight drunk driving: talking urinal cakes.

I’m staying away from Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport. They’re testing a new x-ray machine that can see through clothing. Apparently it provides a pretty detailed picture of you naked.

Leo’s Tumblelog is online at www.rathole.tv. You can set up your own Tumblelog for free at www.tumblr.com. Let me know if you do I’ll promote it here. Email leo@techguylabs.com.

Survey says, one in three boys aged 12 and 13 are regularly surfing porn on the Internet.

Canadian music site Puretracks has begun selling copy-protection free music for independent artists like The Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan. Could this be the beginning of the end for DRM?

XM and Sirus want to merge. I think this is good for consumers, and frankly, an economic necessity for the companies. I expect we’ll see regulatory approval by the end of 2007 or early 2008. What happens to your existing receiver? It will always work, each company has its own satellite systems and there’s no way they will scrap those, but shortly after the merger we’ll see dual-format receivers than can receive broadcasts from both systems.

Today’s Contributors

• The Giz Wiz Dick DeBartolo came by to talk about the Toy Fair and a couple products there: including the Action Cam ATC-2k that is waterproof, has a microphone, and also a slot for an SD card. There was also a product from Brainy Baby that produces educational videos for babies to age 5.
• Scott Wilkinson, Video Editor of The Perfect Vision Magazine talked about the newest HDTVs at CES. Pioneer is making dramatic improvements to their plasma screens (when it comes to plasma Pioneer and Panasonic are the best) including significantly better black levels. Sony shows a 27″ OLED display that was a fraction of an inch thick and looked gorgeous. The issue with OLED is short lifespan, but improvements are being made. Rear projection sets are getting thinner and looking better, too. JVC and Samsung are showing rear projection sets that are only 10″ deep. JVC’s D-ILA is one foot thick. Silicon Optics chips may make possible rear projection sets as thin as 5 inches. Panasonic’s new LiFi lamps are projected to last 25,000 hours. Microdisplay is making very low-cost single-chip LCoS rear projector sets for Akai and Memorex. Download your free copy of The Perfect Vision Magazine from www.avguide.com.
• Merlin Mann of www.43folders.com gave me advice on handling email overload. His suggestions: Touch your email less. We’re good at checking it, but not acting on it. Don’t let it pile up. Respond or delete the mail right away. Think of each messages as an electronic request for your attention and respond! Watch his new show on Monday at www.themerlinshow.com.

You can hear Merlin on MacBreak Weekly on the TWiT Netcast Network. That’s also where Dick DeBartolo hosts the The Daily Giz Wiz daily.

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Hour 1

Q Patrick in Huntington Beach: My web server doesn’t work unless users add a slash to the URL

You could use .htaccess to automatically reformat URLs (I do that anyway) if you’ve installed the amazingly useful mod_rewrite module. Here’s what I do on www.techguylabs.com:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^techguylabs\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://techguylabs.com/radio/$1 [L,R=301]

Translation: if you don’t come in with techguylabs.com, reformat the url to http://techguylabs.com/radio/. But the best solution is to properly configure your web server, Apache.

In the virtual server entry for your site in the httpd.conf file make sure you have aliases for both versions. e.g.

Alias /foo /path/to/foo
Alias /foo/ /path/to/foo

Q Scott from Mission Viejo - My control, shift, and alt keys are permanently depressed!

Sounds like it’s a short circuit in the keyboard. To make sure it’s not the OS, try booting one of the live CD versions of Linux (say Ubuntu). If the keyboard works when Linux is running, it’s the Windows driver, otherwise you need a new keyboard or keyboard ribbon cable.

Q Bob in Belgium - The Vista Upgrade Advisor says not to install Vista

I do recommend running Microsoft’s Vista upgrade advisor on your XP system before upgrading. It will tell you about incompatible hardware and drivers, but take the results with a grain of salt. If you have a late model computer with a 1.6 Ghz or better processor, 512MB RAM, and a high end video card Vista should run. More processor and RAM will help.

In my opinion Vista is the way to go if you’re buying a new machine, but it’s not necessarily a good idea to upgrade an old PC. Upgrading from XP is like brain surgery. If XP is running well for you and you don’t have any security issues, it’s probably a good idea to stick with it.

An IBM researcher is saying Vista runs best with 4GB of RAM. Dell recommends a minimum of 2GB. I’ve used Vista with 1GB and that’s my absolute minimum.

Q Katie from Woodland Hills, CA - TurboTax will not install on Windows ME

It wasn’t very clear on the box and she wants to warn everyone - you need Windows 2000, XP, or Vista to run TurboTax. It’s possible that Intuit is worried about security issues, since Microsoft no longer supports (or offers security fixes) for Windows 95, 98, or Me.

Q Mark in Tustin, CA - Office 2007 doesn’t have the Microsoft Office Document Imager

He uses the Office Image Format to print to disk. It’s the way he delivers quotes to customers so they can’t change the document. I recommend using the PDF format for this, instead. It’s also creates secure disk-based documents, but it’s a more universal format. Install one of these free programs and you can print to PDF:

• PrimoPDF
• PDFCreator
• CutePDF

Most users have the free Adobe Reader, certainly more than have Office.

For more on the new Office 2007 user interface listen to my Windows Weekly podcast episode 15. We interview Jensen Harris of the Office 2007 UI team..

djRob2007 points out that the free, open source, OpenOffice has very good support for exporting documents to pdf format and reads and writes Microsoft Office formats.

Chris from Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada sent me an email to tell me Microsoft does offer a PDF print driver for Office 2007 as a free download.

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Hour 2

Q Jimmy in Plainfield, NJ - Looking for digital camera buying advice

His Nikon Coolpix 950 camera broke and he needs a new compact camera. He’s also worried about shutterlag. I like the Fujifilm Finepix F30 and Canon Powershot SD600. Both are very snappy. If you travel, look for a camera that will uses AA NiMH rechargeables - that way you can use regular batteries in a pinch.

When it comes to shutter lag digital SLRs are the fastest - I like the relatively low cost Canon Digital Rebel XTi.

I recommend Digital Camera Info.com for excellent reviews and ratings - they also tell you how fast the camera is.

Q Robert in Beijing, China - Dell XPS M1210 vs a Macbook Pro… and what about system cleaners

I own both the Dell and Macbook and love them both. They’re very comparable in terms of hardware (well the Dell has a 12″ screen so it’s more portable, but there’s an XPS 1710 with a 17″ screen), so you’re really deciding on which OS you want. I’m a fan of OS X, but if you need to use Windows programs like Framemaker you might need to stick with XP. With the improved security of Vista choosing between OS X and Vista is a matter of personal preference more than technical superiority. I do like the fact that Macs can now run OS X and Windows using Apple’s free BootCamp or the $80 Parallels.

He uses Iolo’s $50 System Mechanic to clean his system. I don’t recommend any of these programs that claim to “clean your system.” They’re of dubious value and can cause more problems than they fix. If you’re really having troubles with your Windows machine, it’s more effective to reinstall.

Q TJ from State College, PA - Yikes! I dropped my Macbook Pro!

It dented pretty badly. Those aluminum cases are very soft and dent easily. You might want to try the very cool looking Speck plastic hard shell case or the MacTruck to protect your Macbook Pro in future.

Q Keith in San Diego - cell phones for children

He wants to keep track of his 9 and 10 year old boys using the GPS in the phone. Verizon offers a cell-phone based tracking service, but it won’t work if the phone is off (or indoors). Verizon’s Chaperone service will keep track of your kids, or even alert you when the kids leave a specified area.

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Hour 3

Q David from Hemet, CA - should I re-up with Norton?

He’s on dial-up. You’re just as susceptible to viruses and spyware on dial-up. Read my five rules for safe computing and follow them.

It’s a good idea to have an some security software but I do not recommend Norton. Download Microsoft’s free anti-spyware utility, Defender. Use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer; it’s dumber so it’s safer. And you do need an anti-virus. There are several good free choices:

• AVG Free
• AntiVir
• Avast

You’ll get a more accurate anti-virus if you pay, however. I recommend the lightweight NOD32 antivirus (disclaimer: they’re a sponsor of my show on KFI in LA).

Q Howard from Portland, OR - killing duplicate songs in iTunes

On the Mac, I recommend the free iDupe from Wooden Brain. I’m still looking for a similar Windows program. Email me if you’ve got a good suggestion.

My favorite shareware directory for the Mac is www.versiontracker.com. For Windows I like www.snapfiles.com.

Q Samuel in Los Angeles - removing the date stamp from pictures

He’s already taken pictures with the date stamp - now he wants to get rid of it. Of course you can use Photoshop, but most imaging editing programs will do a good job. Use the “heal” or “clone” tool. If you don’t have Photoshop, use Paint.net - it’s free.

Q Susan in Boulder, CO - repartitioning a hard drive

Dividing a single physical drive into multiple virtual drives is called partitioning. Windows and OS X come with destructive partitioners -they can reorganize the disk but it deletes all the data on the drive. You can partition non-destructively with the excellent Partition Magic.

She has an older version of Partition Magic and is worried it won’t work with XP. It should work fine with XP - you don’t need to upgrade to version 8. There is a free open-source partitioner called gPartEd. To use it, download and burn the Live CD version. I’ve had good results with it, but if it doesn’t work you could lose everything on your drive. Backup before you give it a try.

Q Dennis in San Diego, CA - Vista won’t boot

He’s tried all the usual recovery techniques including System Restore and reinstalling, but the install gets stuck. Sounds like the hard drive has problems. I’d run Spinrite to check and attempt to fix the disk.

Q Ed in Santa Barbara, CA - Why does TV look so bad when I go full screen in Windows Media Center?

It could be a settings issue. This word document from Microsoft covers optimizing video quality in Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Q Rick in Torrance, CA - using the iMac as a TV

Should he buy a 24″ iMac and use it as a TV or buy a smaller iMac and and separate TV set? If space is an issue you can turn the Mac into a TV, but it’s usually easier to have separate TVs and computers.

To turn the iMac into a TV and Tivo (including HD reception and recording) use the EyeTV from El Gato. Miglia and Hauppauge also make USB TV tuners for the Mac.

If you get a Mac and a TV you might want an AppleTV to move TV shows and movies from your computer to your TV.

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