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Sunday 23 September 2007

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Dr Rick Alber - FloorPlanner.com

This service allows you to represent an area and insert different things in a 2D space. It’s not currently sponsored by any companies like IKEA. If there was however it would be cool as you can buy stuff from IKEA.

IKEA does have an online service that allows you to drop stuff into a “kitchen planner” and then you can stand in the room, and see 3D objects. Floor Planner is limited to 2D however and you look down on the space. The good thing about 2D however is the fact it’s easy to put together and make sure there’s enough room to move around.

It allows you to select your flooring and objects, fireplaces, kitchen elements, bathroom elements. You can design an entire house. You can make sure you have the right distance between them. It’s a fun product to use.

You can also start with a background image, which means you can scan an image and dimention things pricisely. It also allows you to embedd it into a webpage or email it.

It’s written in Flash and RubyOnRails (ROR) and it’s also free if you want to do a couple of projects. It’s all stored on their server. If your a professional designer, you can even put logo’s on there, and pay a few bucks and month and do lots of projects a month.

On the free version your limited to 5 projects total. It is not however limited to the size of the room.

You can find the Floor Planner at FloorPlanner.com and IKEA’s Planner at IKEA Planner Download

Ron Rosberg - Home Phones, and Cameras

Plantronics Calisto Home Phone with multi-function Bluetooth headset

• Works not only on your landline but also on VoIP for Skype and Yahoo calls
• If your on a tight budget and want to start a home or small office, this is a great item that does it all.
• If your on a cell phone call, you will have to end that call to take a VoIP call.
• It goes up to 300ft and has a belt tool.
• You can download your Outlook contacts into a 200 name phonebook

Canon Powershot SD870 Digital ELPH

• 3″ Screen which looks just great and gives you an exact replica
• Image Stabilization
• 8 Megapixel
• Pixbridge and USB
• Goes up to 16.9 Zoom
• Automatically sets the focus, zoom and brightness
• All titanium body

$289

Kodak Picture Frame

• Just take a media card and pop it into the frame
• 10″ 16.9 Widescreen
• Built in WiFi, which means any pictures on your computer it will display
• Also has built in Memory
• 128mb of Internal Memory which you can drag and drop photo’s into

$279

Chris Marquardt - How to shoot pictures of your kids

The problem is the fact kids move so fast, so take as many pictures as you can - this increases your chances of getting a great picture.

Shutter lag - it takes too long for the camera to take the picture and by then they’ve left the building! Have your camera ready! You can’t wait for your camera to boot!

Preset the exposure for outside and inside. Take time to get the exposure right.

Switch off anything that will take time for the camera… things such as the flash takes time to charge, and it draws attention. Take so many pictures that they don’t care anymore otherwise they will pose or hide.

Half press the button where you want it to take the picture. That way it’s almost done with it’s preperation and when you press it fully down, it will be ready.

You can sign up to the assignment at flickr. This weeks assignment is “frames”.

Tech News

Technology has changed over the years. It’s no longer about geeks talking to eachother about things like “How can I get this computer to work with this printer”… it’s more about our favourite websites, programs, tools… It’s more about the content and the stuff you can do on computers.

Services such as Pownce, Jaiku allow you to post short little messages, which people can see and reply to. You get to see what people are talking about, and you can ask little questions.

There was a big conference in San Fransisco this week, TechCrunch40. This is their pick of the top 40 sites. Leo’s not fond of some of the sites that were there, but others were big new websites. Leo likes the idea of Mint.com, which is a money finance site. They ask for your debit card numbers, bank account info…etc. It asks for your information, and then daily checks everything, and balances all transactions. Leo doesn’t feel comfortable with the Privacy information. But it is a scary thing to do. Leo has however done it just to see if it works.

There are programs like Quicken and Microsoft Money that does the same thing, that run on your own computer. Leo wants to be very clear that he is not recommending Mint. You give them all your credit card and bank details. If a hacker see’s this, then they’ll all be going after it.

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Hour 1

Q Phillip from New York City - Can’t write to external hard drive on Mac?

The Mac can’t read NTFS. You could network it, that wouldn’t be a problem. You wouldn’t be able to use it directly from the Mac as it is.

Another thing you could do is copy all your files off, format it to Fat32 and then put the files back onto it. XP and Vista can do that.

What you’re really looking for is Network Attached Storage (NAS). It’s a very good way to do centralized backup. A variety of companies make devices, and Microsoft has partnered with some OEM’s to make the Windows Home Server. You could also use an online service such as Carbonite. The more copies you have, the more secure you will feel.

All hard drives do fail. Backup now.

Q Tollie from Florence, Alabama - Can you use a regular cable with an iPod?

No you have to use a special cable from Apple. They wrote some software into the iPod becuase people figured out they could just use any cheap AV cable.

This isn’t illigal becuase Apple isn’t a monopoly. But it’s not right that they can just put a chip in and force people to spend more money. Are Apple becoming a bad company? The iPhone really made people stand up and wonder, becuase their really locking it down heavily.

Q Ken - DSL Modem is flaky.

You need to call AT&T and get them to send you a new one. You need a more stable modem.

There’s a few ways to figure out if it’s the modem or your computer. Make sure you have the latest modem firmware. It could be the router, the modem, or the computer. You need to find out which one is dropping you.

The modem is the simplest one in the chain so it’s probably not that. Absolutely check the routers firmware. Try turning the router off and see if that refreshses it.

There’s many reasons this could be happening. You should also look for any dropout settings in your modem and change the dropout time to never. It’s reasons like this Leo really likes broadband routers such as the Linksys, Belkins and Netgears. DSL Providers use something called PPPoE. Maybe this is what is happening to Ken.

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Hour 2

Q Alan in Westminster CA - What’s a good PDF compatible smartphone

You really need to make your own decision to what you prefer. The Palm is becoming a little out-dated now.

Windows Mobile 6 is very much like Windows, it works well and syncs well with Windows, especially Vista. It has the office suite and is very open to new apps. It does however crash from time to time, and that’s extremely frustrating.

Seeing as your moving from a real phone to a smartphone, you will need to prepare yourself for these kind of things.

AT&T have a good selection of SmartPhones, and in order to keep you, they will offer you a free phone on a contract. Usually you can get a pretty good deal. They realise they could loose you otherwise.

The HTC25’s are the best Windows Mobile devices out there. You get a better keyboard, bigger screen…etc but it’s a bigger phone. You should go to an AT&T store, and try a couple out.

The third thing you should also look at is the Blackberry phones. The Perl and Curves are very good devices. The Blackberry 8800, and 8700 all have very good keyboards. The Blackberry is really good at mail. They are very good PDA’s. The Blackberry is a cleaner, slicker and more reliable device. It’s not however a good Media device for Camera’s and Music. Leo is a big Blackberry fan.

Q Kieth in Redwood CA - Hard Drive problems

1. NT Loader is missing - how can I save my outlook files?

It sounds like the section where your Outlook TLP file was, is now damaged. You can have a file system error (which this sounds like) - these are all at the system file level. Generally Leo doesn’t recommend saving it… just use them to get the files off there.

There are tools that work at a lower level, such as Spinrite which Leo recommends…. what this does is check each sector of the hard drive and if a sector fails, it moves it to a good sector and tells the hard drive not to use that sector anymore.

That sector on the hard drive may have failed. There’s a third kind of damage, Physical Damage. If there are gouges on the disk, the head is bent…etc. In this case, you need to go to a service like Drive Savers, who open the drive, take the platters out and put it in a working mechanism who will save the data for you. These do usually cost thousands of dollars although.

It sounds like the hard drive just has dead sectors. You should give SpinRite a try and see if it works, it doesn’t work in all cases, but when it does work, it really does wonders.

Q Antonio from Texas - What would Leo buy? Blu-Ray or HD-DVD?

Antonio really thinks it’s the best Smartphone he’s ever had. Leo believes it’s a landmark phone.

Leo has both becuase he has an XBox 360 and a Playstation 3. Quality wise they are very very good.

Look at the studio’s that have signed up. If you want Disney films, then Bluray, if you want the Matrix or Universal films, then HD-DVD.

Leo thinks it’s going to be a disaster for the movie companies. DVD is 87% of the quality of HD-DVD and BluRay so many people are sticking with DVD. There are some dual format players but are pretty expensive.

Leo thinks you sound like a BluRay guy.

Second question: Whenever you use a public wifi network can you bridge it into your home securely?

The thing you need to remember is the fact it is public and your constantly broadcasting.

When your talking to your bank or shopping on amazon, it is encrypted and safe. However when your using a spycam or sending email, then it’s sending the login and password to the server… which means until you change your password, they can access your email or server.

It’s tricky, possibly but you can’t use Bridge mode. You need to use DHCP. The first router is setup to get onto the internet. The second router is just seen as a computer to the first router. Then use WPA to make sure it’s scrambled.

It may still not be secure although. Open WiFi is very risky. The most secure way to do this is use Virtual Private Networking. One service is HotspotVPN. A listener also setup V for VPN which is $4.95 a month. This creates an encryted tunnel for your use.

Q Steve in Colorado - Issues with VoIP Phone service from Comcast

You should still keep a standard phone service becuase if it drops out your stuck. It’s a very important issue.

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Hour 3

Q Danny from New Jersey - System Process is using 90% of the CPU?

The System Idle Process is supposed to be busy, if you haven’t done anything it should use about 90% or more. The System Process however shouldn’t be using alot of your CPU and that is a little worrying.

Nod32 won’t use up many resources. It’s not unusual for security software to hook into the system, and it sounds like something has hooked into your system. If it has survived a format, then it’s probably not a bad guy.

Leo doesn’t think this is normal, but becuase you have installed software like Firefox, and maybe it’s becuase it’s indexing your hard disk.

It’s got to be some software you have installed. Here’s what you want to do: get a program to look at processes. Take a look at Sysinternals Process Explorer from Microsoft.

Q Josline from New Jersey - XP Home network access dropped off

It’s usually common when you upgrade to Vista becuase of the Vista security features.

Take a look at Practically Networked.

The first thing you should check is that you have a physicall or wireless connection. The first thing that happens when you connect to a wireless network is it grabs an IP address. Also check that his Vista location is set to Home not Work or Public.

Q Kate in California - Parallels can’t see external hard drive

Take a look at this article at OnMac.

There are a few things you can do is assign the USB port to Parallels and then it will only show up in Windows. You have to tell Parallels to grab the drive… it won’t by default.

Another thing you can do is network it, and map it as a network drive from the Mac to Windows. To do this It’s pretty simple - all you need to do is share the drive in MacOSX and then go to “My Network Places” or “Network Connections” inside Windows… then you right click on the external hard drive, and click “Map as network drive”… then it will be in My Computer on your Windows install.

Q Matthew from California - Techs from AT&T can’t fix his slow speeds

Leo thinks it’s their central offices that is causing problems. You need to contact them.

Q Richard from California - Should I wait to buy an iPhone

Leo think there will be a second generation iPhone very soon. There’s lots of things like missing third party apps, there’s no todo lists. You can crack the iPhone now, but there’s still a chance Apple could suddenly change the firmware and brick it.

It’s expensive, and you were smart becuase you saved $200. Leo doesn’t think you will see a second generation iPhone before the end of the year, but he does think within the next 6 to 8 months.

The keyboard isn’t as good as it is on a Blackberry or a Treo. There’s also no flash which means alot of the websites don’t work very well.

Take a look at Shooby’s guide to unlocking it at his blog

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