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Sunday 14 October 2007

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Dick Debartolo - Gadgets of the Week

• Grocery List Organiser - SmartShopper

SmartShopper is an easy-to-use electronic device that helps you make your grocery list. Adding an item to your list is easy. Simply press record and speak the name of the item or items you wish to add. Press Print, and SmartShopper prints your list categorized by grocery departments such as “frozen foods” or “produce”. It’s that easy!

You press record and say what you want, and when it’s time to go shopping, you press print and it prints out a list for you, in categories.

Ron Rosberg - Gadgets of the Week

Sprint’s Palm Centro for as low as $99.99 with rebates

• Ability to watch Sprint TV
• Google Maps
• Bluetooth
• Video and Audio
• Internet and Wireless
• Available in both Red and Black from November
• EVDO Access

The Treo Mobile Comedy Film Festival for more information and ticket sales, visit their website. Roosevelt Hotel October 18, 2007 6:00–10pm

iTouch Leather Case by Belkin

Tech News

Bill Gates was denied visa to Nigeria this week. They denied him on the premise that he would not set down in Nigeria and cause a strain on social services.

The Google Search Blog did a blind taste test to try out 3 different search engines. Google has just over half the market. 35% said they preferred Windows Live Search and 30% said they preferred Yahoo’s results.

The single mom who was fined $220,000 has said she is going to fight the fines. She’s being given free legal support. The latest figures show that pirating is up every year. In the UK, legal downloads have risen by 80% since last year.

Al Gore won a Nobel peace prize, and Apple put him on the front page of Apple.

Storm Worm which spreads on the Internet and takes over your system is now using YouTube’s “invite your friends” function and it then tricks users into downloading the worm. Hackers are also targeting XBox 360 users claiming they have won a free version of Halo 3.

90% of people think they have antivirus protection, whereas in reality, only 50% actually have an updated antivirus. That means of all the people listening to the show, millions, 50% of Windows users don’t have an antivirus.

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Hour 1

Q Hulio in NY City - Do I need the software that came with my camera?

All cameras come with software, but you don’t need to use that software. Leo recommends you stick with iPhoto. If you do want to move up, then try Adobe Lightroom. It’s not quite photoshop, but it’s a great program.

It’s pretty expensive, but not as expensive as Photoshop. It’s a great piece of software from Adobe and is about $300.

Q Frank - Does partitioning improve performance?

No. Partitioning is taking one hard drive and splitting it up. Normally when you install an Operating System, generally you have the entire operating system and the documents all on the same drive.

The problem is, if you want to reinstall the OS, then you also lose your data. So it’s a good idea to split the OS and your files. Unfortunately the way Windows works, it’s much easier to keep the applications on the same drive as Windows.

The best solution is have a drive for your operating system, and then have an even bigger partition or drive for all your data. Also make a partition on your first drive of about 8gb for your swap file. You can also have a smaller partition for the temp files, and finally have another drive for your media, such as music, video’s and large images.

Linux and other operating systems like Linux do a lot of partitioning automatically.

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Hour 2

Q Tom from Tustin - Dual boot XP Pro x86 and Vista x64

Because you have a version of each, you just need to modify the boot manager.

There’s a great boot manager called gag. This replaces the boot manager that’s already on the system.

You can also use Microsoft’s command line BCDEdit to modify the Vista boot manager itself to include XP. Microsoft documents the program on TechNet. Neosmart’s EasyBCD provides a GUI interface.

Q Bill - How can I record a web seminar?

There are a few programs you can use to record the screen itself. Camtasia is very expensive, but quite powerful. You might also want to try Hypercam, which will also capture video from your Windows screen and save it as an AVI.

Because it’s going to be 3 hours, you may want to stop it every 30 minutes to cut down the sizes your dealing with at any one time.

The only catch on any of these technologies is the fact that some stuff runs in overlay mode. When stuff is running through overlay mode, the screen capture software won’t be able to record it. All you’ll get is black video. If you do get black video, then you can go into your graphics settings and turn off Hardware Acceleration.

QCarol from San Fransisco - Safari constantly crashes

Safari is a very robust browser, and clearly something is wrong. Try booting from an OSX CD and see if Safari works from the OSX CD. Does Safari work with all the extensions turned off?

Because you did a clean install, then it doesn’t sound like there is any problem. Leo has to think it boils down to the accessibility program you have running.

Safari 3 is actually much less stable than the previous versions of Safari. Try updating to a newer version of Java. There’s a site called MacFixIt that has a database of problems, that you should take a look at.

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Hour 3

Q Diego from San Diego - Vista thinks that USB 2.0 ports are USB 1.1

Make sure you have the latest device drivers from the manufacturer and make sure they are Vista compatible.

Check for updates. It’s often with Audio and Video and sometimes USB that Vista has issues with. Leo thinks it’s your device driver.

If anyone has any idea’s, then please email Leo.

Q Larry from California - What is a good Podcasting microphone?

The best thing to do is go out and get a good USB headset, the same kind you would use for Skype/VoIP.

The Plantronics headsets are now available as cheap as $40. It’s not a studio grade mic, but for what your doing, it’ll be just fine.

If you wanted a guest you would now need a mixer with two mics going into that Mixer. If you get multi-track recording software and a Firewire multi-track recording device then you would use that to channel several sound tracks into the software.

Q James from Waterloo, Canada - How can I map a network drive on a Mac?

Sharepoints from Hornware is free and will do exactly what you want.

It’s a great piece of software that’s easy to use, and it also does alot of other stuff.

Bruce Brown writes:

Besides Sharepoints from Hornware, here are some links to additional ways to cause a network drive, Windows or otherwise (or other kinds of external or remote drives) to mount on a Mac at bootup or at login.

Note that these methods do NOT require Sharepoints or any additional software to be purchased or installed:

Automount SAMBA (Windows) share points at boot [on a Mac]
<http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031022164821984>

Bombich.com: Automounting Sharepoints at Startup
<http://www.bombich.com/mactips/automount.html>

Thanks, Bruce!

Q Brian from California - Should I wait for the new OS on the iMac?

Yes, it will be coming out on the 26th of October. They are beautiful systems, it has great cooling built in, just watch the screen issues.

Also how do I transfer all my documents from my PC to my Mac?

• If you have Firewire you can do it that way
• You can use Ethernet from your Mac to Windows
• Otherwise get an external drive, and copy the files onto that, you’ll want it for backup in future anyway - you will have to format it to Fat32

Q Chris - Network printer not available

The ability to scan over the network is uncommon, however Printing should be fine considering your able to print a test page.

Check the security software on your PC and the firewall to check if it’s blocking the port you need for the printer.

Since it’s just the HP software that won’t print to the network printer, then try another piece of software like Google Picasa. You could also try Vue Scan.

It’s free to try and works with a number of MF devices.

Q Steve from California - Replacement browser for Blackberry?

You might want to try Opera Mini which you can download for free. That will allow you to surf sites as if you were using a standard computer.

The Safari browser on the iPhone displays the page excellently, but of course there are missing features, such as Flash and Java.

Q Randy from Texas - Skype supernodes?

Users cannot connect to you and use you as a supernode only if you don’t have a router. Skype will not open ports, but for best results, you should open ports. Make up a high number bellow 65000. Leo uses 44444.

Skype is secure, doesn’t put spyware on your software and is all encrypted.

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