Sunday 25 March 2007

Show Audio

Tech News

Leo is addicted to Twitter. There, people simply post what they’re up to. Then Twittervision came along. It is a mashup between Twitter outputs and Google Maps. It jumps around the world constantly with different updates.

Justin.TV is a place where a kid named Justin wears a camera all the time, and that means, all the time.

Guests

Q Ron Rossberg: Whole House FM Transmitter/Blackberry 8800

• Whole House FM Transmitter
  • Transmits 150 feet
  • Works flawlessly
• Blackberry 8800
  • More like the Blackberry Pearl
  • On Cingular
  • Keyboard isn’t all that great
    • Too cramped
  • Doesn’t support HSDPA

Hour 1

Q Christy from the Mojave Desert - Wants to create feedback page

• Has site: Shelterwatch
• Wants place for people to post about bad shelters and such
• Wordpress blogging software can let people reply in quotes
  • Has excellent spam protection built in
• A message board would also be great choice
  • Spam problem there
    • Make sure people activate accounts via email activation
    • Here’s an article regarding spam in forums
    • Could appoint moderators to keep spam under control

Q Tom from Redlands - Wants to start Windows XP from scratch

• Wants to reformat and reinstall
  • Just throw in the Windows XP install disc
  • Should give an option to reformat the hard drive
    • Delete all partitions on drive, then install
• Can also completely wipe hard drive with DBAN before installation
• After install, immediately turn on Windows Firewall and update like crazy
  • Get Service Pack 2
    • Possible to download from Microsoft and install from a CD

Q Jamie from Culver City - Emailing videos to people

• Wants to know about compressing video
• Don’t send videos via email
• Can use something like Yousendit
  • Will allow you to upload up to 100mb
  • Will send recipients an email with the link
• Will have to choose a codec (compressor/decompressor) to compress videos
• DivX is a great codec
• An open source encoder, Dr. DivX is open source (meaning its free!)
  • Play around with the settings
  • Can reduce the frame size (320×240 sounds likea good size)
  • Anything less than 30fps can be jerky, 24fps is a good compromise
• Also possible to upload to a service like VideoEgg or YouTube

Hour 2

Q Brian - Recording what’s coming out of the sound card

• The soundcard must support “full duplex”
• Older soundcards cannot support that

Q John from Huntington Beach - WiFi not working on Ubuntu

• You just need the right driver
• Ubuntu Forums have threads about Broadcom chipsets
  • Configuring cards with Broadcom chipsets in Ubuntu
  • How to: Broadcom Wireless cards
• Chart available of Linux Wifi support

Q Dustin - Carbonite for the Mac

• Carbonite is working on a beta for the Mac; you can sign up.
• Nothing similar on the Mac
• You can use iDisk (only 1gb)
  • Backup critical data there
• Leo usually backups by hand for the Mac

Q Jeff from Orange - Controlling network traffic

• Wants to control corporate environment
• The iBoss Pro will do that

Q Ron - Dual booting Vista and XP

• Wants to play with Vista and eventually phase out XP
• When dual booting, boot loader on XP partition
• Maybe installing Vista again?
• SU182 in the chatroom says it is possible

Q Don from Irvine - How to make a CD that will play in the car/Recording audio

• Most programs will take mp3s and allow you to burn an output
  • Can use Windows Media Player
• Put all files in a playlist and burn
• Make sure you specify an “audio CD”
• Cars will not play “data CDs”
• Make sure programs can see the mic input
• Audacity is a great recording program

Q Brett from Los Angeles - Multiple LCD screens on the wall

• Wants to run different things on multiple LCD screens
• If computer can output to more than one screen, should work

Hour 3

Q David - 64bit Vista

• Vista requires signed 64-bit drivers
  • A lot of drivers are not signed and 64-bit
• Also uses “Patch guard” so antiviruses do not work
• Only advantage of 64-bit is to address much more memory

Q .mobi domains

• Internet Explorer thinks he wants to download a file when going to a .mobi domain
  • There is a resolution however

Q Randy from Minneapolis - Windows Vista “mini dump” and reboot

• May be a “spoof” blue screen
• Reliability/performance monitor available
  • Read reports about failure
• Most probably a hardware problem

Q Dave - Recording audio from another device

• Don’t use line in
• Get a small USB interface: like the iMic
  • From there, you can record from the USB input

Q Tony - Connecting to a home computer for content

• Our advertiser GoToMyPC will do this
• LogMeIn is free, but doesn’t have such a vast feature set

Q Phil from Ft. Lauderdale - Inexpensive MP3 player to bookmark podcasts

• All iPods do this
  • iPod Nano
  • iPod Shuffle