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Saturday 20 October 2007

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Scott Wilkinson - High Definition

• People are sticking to DVD. HD-DVD and BluRay aren’t taking off properly.
• Studio’s are worried at the fact consumers aren’t running to high definition disks
• Lots of people claim that DVD is good enough
• When you can get a DVD player for under $50, but your looking at spending $300 for a high definition player, DVD is more attractive
• The format war also pushes numbers down
• Only 60% of people who own a high definition TV are even considering buying HD Disks

Steve Gibson - Firefox Password Manager

While the password manager in Firefox is convenient, have you realized that anyone with access to your computer can easily see your passwords?

Just fire up Firefox and click on the “Tools > Options” menu item. Now go to the “Privacy” tab and click on the “Passwords” subtab. If you click on the “View Saved Passwords” button then click on the “Show Passwords” button after that, Firefox will display all your passwords!

To fix that, Close that window and return to the Options window you opened a few seconds ago. Click on the “Change Master Password” button. Just enter your desired password, preferably something strong - random numbers and letters, and make sure it’s something you’ll remember without having to write it down (that’s not usually safe ).

Click “OK.” Although you don’t have to, it’s recommended that you restart Firefox. Now you must enter the master password before you can view that list of passwords. Also, Firefox will ask for your master password before automatically entering your passwords on websites.

Tech News

Mona “The Hammer” Shaw took matters into her own hands as she was fed up with the support she was getting. She’s a 75 year old woman who asked Comcast to help with their phone service. No one turned up. Two days later, Comcast engineers turned up, and only half completed the job. She goes to the Comcast offices and they say she will get support in an hour from the manager. Two hours pass by as she sat outside in the hot August sun, and the support person leaned out the door and said that the manager had gone for the day.

On the Monday after, Mona asked her husband for his claw hammer, went down to the Comcast offices, and smashed a keyboard, computer and monitor as well as a telephone. The police then arrived and put handcuffs on them. She then got her phone service from Verizon.

Apple’s new version of Mac OSX, named Leopard will be released Friday. It will include 300 new features. Leo is going to be very interested in iChat as the quality is going to be much higher as it’s using AAC-LD, and it offers built in Audio and Video recording.

There’s also new features in Mail. The feature that will make the biggest difference is the fact it’s now optimized for multiple cores. There’s also smaller features like being able to look up addresses with Google Maps. The new preview feature will be pretty exciting. The cover flow that’s included in the newer iTunes, iPhone’s and iPod Touches will now be built into OSX. Leo will give a detailed review next weekend.

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Hour 1

Q Jacob from Utah - Not seeing track backs

Google is one of the first engines to allow you to block track backs. You just need to type this code when embedding links.

(rel=“nofollow”)

If you look at the blog or page that’s looking at you via the Page Source, then look at the code, see if you can find the nofollow rule.

You can find more information about this here.

You will need to ask users to make sure their not using the nofollow rule.

Q Nicole from Tennessee - Wants a PDA Smartphone

You’ll want Windows Mobile for sure. You might want to take a look at the Verizon Q. The TREO 6700 is a HTC based handset, that both T-Mobile and Verizon sell. It has a full keyboard. It’s Windows Mobile 5, but this is the best they’ve got.

It does have Wi-Fi which means you don’t have to use the cell network for your Internet access. The WX is the third option. You should also consider a Blackberry, but if you want Windows mobile, then really the TREO 6700 is the only choice for you.

The Samsung i7060 is the state of the art, best phone offered by Verizon. It does have a slide out keyboard. It’s possibly the nicest phone from Verizon at the moment.

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Hour 2

Q Tom from California - Constant Buffering

It’s not just the line’s bandwidth, it’s also the computer. The computer needs to receive the data in real time, unpacket it and play. There is a setting to check.

You should check if your friends computer takes longer to start up than yours. Almost all players will grab a bunch of packets ahead of time. The more they buffer and the longer it takes to start up before playing. That means even if the packet arrives 59 seconds after it’s due, it will still play ahead. Check how long you buffer for initially.

Try changing the buffer time in Windows Media Player and WinAMP. You generally set that in the player itself.

Q Scotty from Orlando - I think I broke my Mac

Copy everything that you need off the internal drive using your external drive.

You should get the mini considering you have all the parts. The mini’s are also pretty fast with the Core 2 Duo’s. The only thing that slows them down is the fact they have a laptop hard drive inside of it.

The new iMac is very nice, it’s quiet and looks good, and it’s also pretty fast. The Mini’s could disappear, Leo speaking as someone who bought a cube the day before it got discontinued.

Q Danny from New Jersey - Good podcasting Mixer?

You can send the audio back to the callers using the mixer and that won’t be a problem. To run multiple Skype clients you will need a powerful computer with lots of bandwidth.

Q Brent in Los Angeles - Vista only seeing 2.5gb of the 4gb of Ram

You should call the factory where it’s made, and tell them that the system is only seeing 2.5gb instead of the 4gb they sold you.

There could be a problem with the motherboard. There are lots of different reasons it can’t be seen.

Vista x64 is much more compatible and useable than it was, but it still causes problems. The biggest difference between 64bit and 32bit is the amount of memory it can address, and the amount of data it can handle. 64bit is only for people who are doing lots of work on high bits of data who have lots of needs.

You should take a look at this article for more help with your problem.

Windows can’t see all that RAM because it is using some of that Address space for the Video RAM. It cannot address both the Video RAM and the Memory. The System RAM and Video RAM can only add up to 4gb all together. Vista x64 would actually improve that and you should be able to see all 4gb of that memory.

The good news is the fact that with Vista Ultimate you get both the x64 and x86 operating systems.

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Hour 3

Q Richard in Long Beach - Looking for a Laptop under $800

You should look at the Dell XPS M1330. However the lowest version of that is $1200.

The lowest model they have is the Dell Inspiron 1500. That starts off at under $500, and you can configure that to have a faster CPU speed and a better battery life.

Q Gary in California - Best file type to embedd on website for Video podcast

You should definately look at H.264. However that does require Quicktime. Short of Flash, the only real option is H.264 and Quicktime. The great thing about H.264 means that you can hint how the quality should be depending on the speed.

Q Sherry from California - Using a Nokia 810 Tablet for Skype

The bandwidth is certainly there, but you need to look at the processing speed of the device. As long as wifi is available you can have it notify you, or you can do it manually. It’s essentially a cell phone minus the cell capability.

It doesn’t yet support the 3G network, but you will be able to use it for Skype providing your near an open WiFi network.

Definitely wait for the 810, coming in November. It runs on Linux. It’s certainly an interesting device if you travel alot for making VoIP calls or surfing whithout a laptop.

Q Tim - Using one Sprint card with two laptops

You need to setup Internet Connection Sharing. You set the source of the Internet as the Sprint card, and then you set the output device as the wireless on your laptop. You then create an Ad-Hoc network on the laptop. You go to the other laptop, connect it to that Ad-Hoc network and it should be able to connect to the network.

You should take a look at this article which shows you how to setup ICS.

Q Chuck from California - World wide Wireless Internet card

The network in Israel have a different sort of network than ours. However you can buy a 3G card in Israel and it will be cheaper than getting one in the US.

Take a look at Cellcom in Israel.

You should also take a look at this article

Q Jim from California - Blue Screen of Death comes up randomly

It sounds like a Video crash. Check if there’s an updated Video driver for the laptop. There may be several driver updates for it.

You should also call Fujitsu as it’s still under warranty.

Q Carol from South Bay - Beach Ball of Death on Safari Launch

If it’s just Safari then you old down the Option key and click the Safari icon which will force quit it.

Browsers tend to crash more than other programs. Safari is usually very reliable. Leo suggests you clear the cache from Safari’s menu bar. Theres also a button there that can Reset Safari. That will set it back to as if Safari was brand new.

You can also delete the preference file. Also you may have installed an add-on.

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