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Saturday 29 September 2007

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The Giz Wiz - FurReal Pets

Dick has bought the Squawakers which is life size and it does multiple things.

It has a thing called Hangout mode built in, that when you walk past it lets out a parrot sound.

It repeats things and you can speak to it. It learns.

You can find Dick & Leo’s podcast at TWiT.tv

Tech News

Apple has done something that has done something that is imorale and absolutely wrong. Leo isn’t telling Apple how to run their business, but he is defending consumers. There are plenty of people defending the company, but Leo is the voice of users. He wants Apple to keep making products for the consumer, and he likes Apple products.

He thinks that many people have Stockholm syndrome. People are being held hostage by the tech industry, the cell phone industry and the computer industry. A lot of us use the cell phone companies, not because we like them, but becuase that’s the way it is.

People agreed to the 2 year contract with AT&T. Along comes White-Hats who unlocked the iPhone. Apple even agreed that people don’t mind people using Apps on the iPhone. It’s legal to unlock any cell phone owned by you. Apple later warned that this could be damaging to the iPhone and said they would not support users. The iPhone 1.1.1 Update bricks the iPhone. It makes it unusable. You have a $400 paperweight.

It’s possible that technically there was no other way, but it’s highly unlikely that it was the case.

When you put protection on something. Music, Cell Phones, PDA’s…etc. When users buy something, it’s their property. They should be allowed to do whatever they want with it.

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Hour 1

Q Bob in California - Not all the files have been copied accross

What you want to do when you copy files is not just a file copy, but a sector copy. Depending on your purpous like a backup, then it’s better to use something like Norton Ghost or Drive Snapshot.

Leo thinks you probably got everything that was on the drive. The extrea few gigabytes could be a swap file, a non-emptied recycle bin…etc. There are tools you can use to compare the two, you could try that.

Q Howard in West Los Angeles - Cannot listen to KFI stream

You may need to contact the station to get support. They do change the URL quite regularly, so you should check to see if they have an updated stream URL.

Q David in San Diago - Wants to take seperate video events and save Video’s to individual files

The way to do it in most video tools like Windows Movie Maker is to take the whole video and just trim it down to a small clip and keep doing it for multiple clips.

That’s the benefit of Digital Video. They are saved into seperate files. You can’t just leave video on Analogue tapes, they die in 10 years or so.

Q Jeremy in Long Beach, CA - Windows and Mac OS on a PC

If your having problems with Drivers, then you have to spend some time on Forums.

Leo doesn’t think you should steal from Apple but this is how computers advance. This is the true spirit of computing. Leo is blown away that you can now install OSX on a beige box.

Q Brett - Thoughts on the Blackberry 8320

Brett really likes the new Blacberry. Now even if you have bad cell signal, so long as you have access to WiFi then you can use VoIP. They can either take it out of your monthly minutes, or you can get a monthly subscription for about $9 and get unlimited calls.

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Hour 2

Q Justin in Riverside CA - Halo3

Justin is sad at the end of Halo 3 becuase it shows that it is officially over. Leo’s supprised that Justin finished Halo 3 in 2 days.

But Leo thinks that if it is anything like the origional, it’s not about the story game play, it’s about the multiplayer gaming like Capture the flag and playing at LAN Parties and over the internet via XBox Live.

Q Tony in California - Why would I want to run Windows if I’m getting a Mac?

You don’t… from what you’ve said you sound like you don’t need to!

The iSight cameras are great and the machine is gorgeous. Intel are making these great low power, very fast chips. Their faster, you can get them in Core Duo’s and you can even get them in quad cores.

Leo doesn’t recommend Parallels anymore, he really prefers VMWare Fusion which has been a long time competitor but he really thinks it’s much faster.

Q Peter in New Zeland - Can I still crack the iPhone?

You can still crack it, just don’t update it! They haven’t started selling them with Version 1.1.1.

You can get a guide at Shooby’s site which has full instructions and links to crack it. Just when iTunes asks you to update it, click No!

Q Jason in North Carolina - Mint.com and Wesabe.com

Leo really doesn’t like Mint.com. He doesn’t trust it. What it does is check all your accounts and gives you some advice and tips.

Leo doesn’t mind the fact that it gives you advice, but he doesn’t like the fact that you give them all your bank and debit card information.

All these services are a terrible terrible idea. They do have elaborate information and protection, but in every contract it says “subject to change without notice”. At some point someone could come along and say I’m going to give you $4 billion for your company, I just want all the information.

There’s also the chance that they could be hacked. Which means hundreds of users will have your information.

Leo recommends Cha-Ching for the Mac as an alternative to Quicken.

Q Tom in Arizona - Can the routers be linked?

Really what you will be doing is adding a dumb-router. You will bridge it with the first and just tell it that it won’t be handing DHCP or anything else like that. It’s just taking the data and passing it around.

A Switch will also be a great solution, what it does is eliminate collision and segment the network.

You can get an OEM version of XP on newegg or eBay.

Q Joe in New Mexico - Vista is slow despite great hardware

It’s supprising that it’s slow… Leo recommends restoring the system. If it’s been bad from Day 1 then you may need to take it back. If there is a hardware issue like a flaky hard drive, then it may slow the whole system down.

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Hour 3

Q Mitchel in California - Could a virus corrupt the boot sector?

The easiest thing to do is connect one up to the master jumper and then put a Windows install disk in and reformat the drive.

If you can’t even boot from the CD then there’s a problem with your controller. The good thing is, you can go and buy an inexpensive controller. Make sure your jumpering properly, so try a new cable.

If you can’t boot from CD then it’s definately not the drives. And you certainly shouldn’t buy a new drive.

Q Jeff in Texas - Will Windows Home Server work with a mac?

Yes. You just need a Windows machine to configure the Home Server, and once that’s all done, you just connect to the shared drive on your mac, and get the mac to auto backup to it.

There are other Network Attached Storage devices that work as great devices for Autobackup, can act as Media and iTunes servers…etc.

Q Rob from Palm Springs, CA - How can I copy data from one laptop drive to another?

You can just unscrew the drive, pull it out, put the new one in and do a restore to it. What you then do to the second drive is get an external case for it and then just copy the data off it.

These are pretty cheap for one time only uses. Another possibility is to use a desktop, hook both the drives up and do a bit by bit copy.

Q Brian in Victor Ville, CA - Flash editor crashing

Could be an error in Flash 8 and you should check with Adobe if there’s updated versions of it. Becuase your working within Flash. It could also be a video driver issue.

Sometimes older hardware and software does have compatibility issues. When your working with Hardware and Software within Vista it works very well.

Q Carlos from California - Problem with Windows Media Player sound being muffled

The first thing you should check is you don’t have any 3rd party sound apps like Dolby Digital Surround enabled.

If your still having problems then you could try a different DVD player like Cyberlink, which has a free trial or VLC which is free.

Q Isabelle in California - Backed up data is damaged

If you used backup software to do it, then you will need to reinstall that software back onto Windows for it to be able to see the data.

If he looks at the drive and there’s nothing on it, then something went wrong, and now the data is gone. You have to be careful when you do this kind of stuff. It may be that he copied it and he pulled the drive out too soon, then it may have damaged the data.

Leo doesn’t like Backup software.

Q Sarah in San Dieago - No sound on XP

Make sure that the sound is set to Stereo Speakers not Headphones and make sure that the sound isn’t muted. Alot of laptops have dedicated sound buttons or it may be a function key.

Also turn off Virtual Sound. Just make sure you have sound routed to the right place. You can accidentally mute it on a laptop. Look for any buttons that may be mute on the laptop, on the keyboard or the side.

Q Lyn in South Carolina - Can you get rid of a software firewall?

Yes if you have a router, then you don’t really need a software firewall in Leo’s opinion. Once a bad piece of software is on your system then it can do whatever it wants.

The router is the first line of defense against bad guys in the outside internet world.

Leave the Windows firewall on.

Q Cathy from California - Can’t login to XP

Your computer account has been locked. What you need to do is download a program called the Emergency Boot CD which is free.

You just boot from that CD and you can clear all the passwords.

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