Sunday 2 September 2007

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Tech News

Rumor had it that there is going to be an Apple event on September 5th for iPods. Turns out that right after Leo’s show MacBreak Weekly concluded recording, Apple did release a press invite entitled, “The beat goes on.” Rumors have it that new iPods are set to release. Exactly 2 years ago, Apple announced the iPod Nano. It also seems that the Beatles may begin to sell music on iTunes finally. “The Beat Goes On” was the exact name of the Beatles’ final press release.

Leo’s theory is this:

• One or both of the surviving Beatles will be on stage
• Ringo and Paul McCartney are both on iTunes
• Sgt. Pepper iPod
• New iPods
  • Hopefully with the same iPod interface as the iPhone
• New iPhone software
• Fat iPod Nano
• Maybe Apple moving away from hard drives?
  • Flash will allow for thinner iPods and better battery life

Hulu is set to be a site for hosting TV shows funded by NBC Universal and News Corp. Leo thinks this is a terrible idea, all the way down to the name. There’s no way to download it to an iPod; you have to watch video on your computer. Apparently, Rupert Murdoch purchased the domain from a 7-year old girl. The site used to be a place where a family hosted pictures of their daughter.

Guests

Chris Marquardt - Using Light

Don’t forget our assignment. Take a picture illustrating the concept careful then upload it to the Tech Guy group on Flickr

Ron Rosberg - The iPhone: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

• Ron was once a salesman for 18-pound briefcase
• Apple has refurbished iPhones for $100 cheaper than retail
• Ron owns the domain thephonecompany.com

The Good

• Kudos to Apple for their wake-up call to the rest of the phone manufacturers regarding
  • Nokia actually has made a clone of the iPhone
• The sleek, slim device is the best looking phone ever
• Best portable photo viewer other than the iPhone is around the price of the iPhone anyways
• Very good camera in low-light
  • Needs a flash though
• One button takes it back the main page with all 16 pages

The Bad

• HSDPA network isn’t widespread enough
  • So Apple didn’t put an HSDPA radio into
• Battery isn’t removable
  • Who knows how long it will last before the battery itself dies
  • Battery life though is decent
• Ron doesn’t like iTunes for transferring music
  • Feels it’s almost too complicated

Summary

• Ron doesn’t think it’s worth it yet to go and cancel your current contract
• Wait till the 2nd or 3rd generation

Iogear 85mbps Powerline adapter

• So you don’t have to wire your entire house
• $129 on Amazon
• Plug one unit near your computer and the other near your router
• Ron thinks it is very reliable

Hour 1

Q Mark from Santa Ana - Wiki software/iBoss/SpinRite

Wiki

• Wants to be able to control everything, but wants to define a certain section
• Wikis are collaborative sites that allow people to work together to create and edit content
  • Wikipedia allows anyone to edit
    • But they have editors and a community to moderate it
• Almost any Wiki software will allow you to do that
  • Leo uses PMWiki
    • PmWiki allows you to set passwords on certain pages
• Wikipedia uses MediaWiki
  • Much more powerful
  • Harder to configure
• Number of hosted Wiki solutions like PBWiki
  • Have paid versions as well

Web filtering solution

• Needs something to filter a school’s Internet service for students
• iBoss will do filtering on the entire network
• Monthly service costs covers monthly updates
• iBoss allows you to customize blocked pages
• Can blacklist or whitelist
• No blocking technology is perfect
• Additional features
  • Can unblock certain IPs

SpinRite

• Getting several seek errors/seek retries in SpinRite
• All hard drives have errors
• What SpinRite is looking for is sectors that don’t work
• Those seek errors are part of SpinRite’s work
• If it has trouble reading a section, it will move the data off, reformat that portion, and put the data back

Q Laurie from Austin - Computer cannot see another machine on network

• Trying to map a folder on another computer
  • Windows will let you “map” a drive or folder on a different machine on the network
    • And then lets you show that drive or folder as a drive on your own computer
• Eventually works, but takes a while to load (30–60 seconds)
• May be network collisions
• Ethernet’s designed to be robust in bad conditions
• Seems like it’s a problem in the physical cabling
• Practically Networked is a great site for network troubleshooting
• Also make sure to look at the settings for your ethernet card
• Almost certainly a cabling or hardware issue
• Networking is often referred to as a 7-layer cake
  • Basic hardware level all the way to the software level

Q Jim from Austin - Solution for Laurie

• Jim from Austin says it’s a resolution issue
• Windows is using DNS to resolve the computer name
  • DNS is the domain name resolution system
    • For example, you type in Amazon.com and you will use the DNS in order to find Amazon’s IP address
  • So Windows is using this technology to find the computer
  • Eventually Windows is timing out
• What will happen is that if the machine cannot find it in DNS, it’ll look into WINS settings, and then begin to look for broadcasting computers
  • That whole sequence is taking 30–60 seconds
• If she knows the IP of the other machines
  • Add it into the hosts file
  • There is an hosts file in the Windows system32 folder where she can add the IP of the other machine
    • Location: c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Q Robert from Fallbrook - External computer brick?

• Wants to know if anyone makes a brick with external processors and memory
  • Eventually make
• Firewire and USB probably aren’t fast enough for processors and memory
• You would need software that is aware enough to use the cluster
  • Lots of advanced graphics software allows you to use processing power on a cluster of computers
• Microsoft Longhorn Server 2008
  • You’ll run that on this computer brick

Hour 2

Q Roger from Fullerton - What is HD radio?

• HD stands for Hybrid Digital
  • Simply means that the signal is digital
• You can find more information at HDRadio.com
• You have to get a special tuner for your car in order to listen to HD Radio
• Leo bets that the digital signal would keep you from recording
• It’d be a good idea to check how many stations are in HD in your area
• Most of the HD radios available in the market right now are desktop? or car radios
  • There is one “movable” HD Radio for sale on Amazon for $200

Q Dennis from Oakland - No audio port on SATA DVD drive

• The only reason you had audio ports on old CD drives was to hook it up directly to the speakers
• The DVD audio will be done completely through the data cable
• HD audio and video playback is not supported in XP because of copy protection
• Sometimes HD video will not play because your monitor is not HDCP-compliant

Hour 3

Q Todd from Los Angeles - New email server

• Leo’s preference is to use IMAP
• Traditional email comes via POP
• IMAP allows you to have all computers sync’d to the account
  • All sent, received, read, unread email will appear exactly the same on all computers checking the account
• Some ISPs have IMAP services
• Leo uses Fastmail for his IMAP services
  • He feels that they are the premiere IMAP provider
  • Island Email has great spam blocking technologies
• With a provider like this, you don’t have to keep changing your email domain address
  • And frankly, it sounds more professional

Q Brad from Irvine - Monitor for Xbox 360

• It is an HD gaming system
• Make sure to get a monitor that supports at least 720p (1280×720 resolution)
• Response time is a critical factor too
  • Response time is the time it takes for LCD pixel to completely turn on and off
  • The lowest possible would be great
  • 7–10 milliseconds
• DVI and HDMI are the best connections
  • The Xbox 360 Elite has an HDMI port
• Component is analog, but it’s very good quality

Q Jack from Morgan Hill - Wife keeps seeing what gifts he’s buying her in browser history

• Your wife is seeing the drop-down for web history
• All web browsers have an option in the preferences to clear browser history and cache

Q Eric from Simi Valley - Audio USB output on computer stopped working

• He has already tested the speakers on other computers
  • So speakers themselves work
  • Speakers are USB
• More likely to be software drivers
  • Test it with another operating system
  • Try a bootable Linux disc like Ubuntu
• Can go to the Toshiba site to download drivers
  • Including those for sound

Q Marie from Vista - Haven’t received any Windows Updates since August 15th

• There were 31 hotfixes so far that she has missed
• When she goes to Windows Update, she is in a constant loop of authentication
• Problem may have occurred in July even
• Installation of older updates may have failed
  • Blocking you from newer updates
• Microsoft Knowledgebase article 906602 has numerous scenarios that may be yours and fixes
  • Installation fails for an update is probably your problem
• Ultimately will probably have to find the broken file and delete it
  • Then retry the update

Q Isadore from Los Angeles - Cannot access any file on the computer/Cannot view overlayed video

• Something nasty has occurred to the system
  • Probably a virus or spyware
    • TrendMicro HouseCall is a great online virus scanner
• Computer is very damaged
  • Past a certain point where you will have to reinstall Windows
• Try to back up as much information as possible and reinstall Windows
• Overlayed video was used when computers were not powerful enough to handle video
  • Video card processed video and simply blasted it to the screen
• Go into your player settings and turn off video acceleration
  • “Acceleration” means use overlay video

Q Joanne from Apple Valley - Fiber optic Internet service

• Wants to know of any problems
• Excellent service at a good deal
• Giving you very, very high speed Internet at a very cheap price
• There have been some outages
  • Still in the early stages of development
  • Rolling it out slowly
• Leo absolutely encourages it

Q Jim from Rightwood - Wants to use an old SCSI scanner in a G4 Mac

• Leo has no idea if that will work
• Everything’s been replaced by USB
• You will have to use a SCSI-USB adapter
• Make sure Nikon has a driver for the Mac however
  • If not, you’re out of luck