Sunday 22 July 2007

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Tech News

Once freeing up the 700MHz band in 2009 due to the digital television switch, it will become open for bids. Google has announced that it will make the bid for at least $4.6 billion for the spectrum. However, they made the stipulation to keep the spectrum open.

Duke University was claiming that the iPhone was knocking down their wireless infrastructure. However, it turned out to be a misconfigured Cisco router.

Ask.com has announced a new tool called Ask Eraser which will give you the option to completely delete all your search history.

A team at the University of Albert has officially solved the game of Checkers. They can effectively make a computer play an absolutely perfect game. If you play absolutely perfect with this computer, you will consistently end in a draw.

Guests

Q Paul Thurott - Tips on installing Vista

• Screen during installation shows option to choose which version you purchased
  • Can choose another version if you’d like
• Possible to continue installation without entering product key
  • Gives you a 30-day trial of Vista
    • Then can try out operating system to see if devices work
• If you do not own product key for higher SKU of Vista, Microsoft has option to pay upgrade fee for new product key
• Check out Paul’s book Windows Vista Secrets

Q Ron Rosberg - DataPilot/New LG Chocolate phone/QuickCam Pro 9000

• Has a universal kit to transfer address books from phone to phone
• Very easy to use

• Much better than the original
• Only 64mb of memory built in
• Can put up to 8gb microSD card in
• Only $99 with contract
• Carl Zeiss lens
• Very good in low light
• Has unique mount to keep on top of monitor
• Very high quality

Example of shallow depth of field

Q Chris Marquardt - Depth of field

• Size of the area of the picture that is in focus
• More shallow the depth of field, the less is focused in the picture
• For portraits, you would want to separate subjects by simply blurring out the background
• Aperture, focal length, and
• On a point/shoot camera, get as close as possible to the subject and also zoom in
• The wider the aperture, the smaller the number on the camera

Hour 1

Q MacBook vs. MacBook Pro

• Leo used to have a MacBook
• Switched to MacBook Pro due to weaker video card in MacBook
  • Wasn’t able to play video on 2 screens using Keynote
• New MacBook Pros use new, brighter LED screens
  • 15″ screen 1440×900
  • 2.2GHz
  • 2gb of memory
  • GeForce 8600m GT graphics processor
  • $1999

• MacBooks
  • 13″ screen 1280×800
  • 2.16GHz
  • 1gb of memory
  • Intel GMA950 integrated graphics
  • $1299
• Would want to upgrade to 2gb RAM on MacBooks if you want to run Windows via Parallels
  • Though Parallels will be system intensive
• Apple refurbished store is very good quality too

Q Walter from Tijuana, Mexico - Getting various symbols instead of Roman numerals in Word

• Other problems related to keyboard
  • Keys doing wrong functions
  • Caps lock reversed
• Pretty sure it’s software issue
• Microsoft has technote regarding this exact issue
• Also make sure to turn off Sticky Keys

Q Jim from Caldwell, NJ - Ubuntu on an older machine

• Wants to install Ubuntu Linux on wife’s older computer
• Ubuntu is one of many easy-to-use Linux distributions
• Common older hardware often works best on Ubuntu
  • Most users trying to develop compatibility with it
• For a drive that doesn’t work, try reformatting it so Linux is able to read/write to it

Hour 2

Q Jacob from Ashland, OR - Trying to move website up on Google ranking

• Google makes ranking by the number of pages that link to you
  • Higher the ranking of pages linking to you, the higher your ranking
• Make sure to put content at the top of the page
  • Google indexes first 1500 words
• Put keywords in page title
• Read more about the Google PageRank system here

Q Jim from Lafayette, CA - Getting vinyl records onto CDs

• Possible to do it yourself
• Need turntable and amp
  • Take output of amp and plug into the sound card on computer
  • Then record incoming audio
• Try the free Audacity to record
• Can purchase a USB turntable that will have cleaner sound
• A piece of software called Audio Cleaning Lab 11 that will remove hisses and pops

Q Kevin from Myrtle Beach, CA - Resetting several computers to the same status

• Works for a hotel managing public computers
• Keeps computers running by constantly reformatting
• IT departments keep a version of Norton Ghost on a networked server
• Create a ghost image at the ideal setup and configuration
  • Then every night can run ghost to reset the computers to original status
• Faronics’ Deep Freeze will reset computers to original status at every reboot
  • Then just have to reboot computers nightly

Q Doug from Costa Mesa, CA - Mac malfunctioning

• Maybe hard drive is failing
• Try creating a new account to see if problem limited to your account
• Try rebooting with shift key held down to see if it is an extension that is not working
• If it is an extension or your account, you can do an install of OSX without affecting user information

Hour 3

Q Mike from La Verne, CA - Using a security camera to check on the home via Internet

• Best thing to do would be to DMZ the camera
• Increase the IP to 192.168.1.2xx
• May also be your ISP

Q Chris - The Tornado

• The “thing” in the middle has software embedded
• It basically will do a transfer of software and data from one computer to another
• Almost better to do it by hand
  • Sometimes will copy over old problems from older computer
• Check out these Mac vs. PC parodies that are hilarious at TrueNuff
  • Some not family friendly

Q Dan from Garden Grove, CA - Using mobile broadband in place of DSL

• Sprint and Verizon EVDO is comparable to DSL
• Verizon does have a data cap at 5gb
• Make sure to check the coverage maps

Q Justin from Prince George, Canada - Cannot send email using .Mac

• Gets message that it is timing out at port 25
• Many ISPs block port 25
• Can configure Mail to use your ISP’s SMTP mail server

Q Suzanne from Fullerton, CA - Transferring contacts from phone to computer

• Take a look at Datapilot
• Will connect to almost any cell phone in the world
• Allows you to copy address book data to computer hard drive