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Saturday 12 January 2008
- Show Audio
- Guests
- Tech News
- Hour 1
- Hour 2
- Hour 3
- Missy from Los Angeles - Microsoft Office for Mac Licensing
- Nate in Los Angeles - Handheld TVs in 2009
- Edward in California - Computer locks up on XP splash screen
- Eric from California - Playing MP3′s as Ringtone
- Dewy from California - Multi Sync iPod
- Bret from California - Camera housing for under water photography
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Scott Wilkinson - CES 2008
- CES is still the place to go for TV companies
- Pioneer had a Plasma that was 9mm thick (that’s thinner than the iPhone)
- The new Sony OLED TV which is only 11 inches is $25,000. It’s also low-res
- Hitachi announced a 1.5″ thick which almost looks like a photo frame on the wall, however you need a wireless connection to the TV
- Belkin has a transmitter / receiver package that we’ll see soon… any TV with HDMI will work
- Philips also has a unit that we’ll see in June that will do the same
- 802.11n and UWB will both probably be used, as well as 60ghz which has such a short range, anything will obstruct the beam… however that could fry an egg
- The Kuro concept had perfect blacks
- Panasonic had a 150″ TV
Tech News
This week has been the week of CES in Las Vegas. The only people who go to CES are people who are low in the tech magazines, or the mainstream media who are so clueless they think CES is still important.
The biggest story of the CES time-frame has been the announcement from Warner, who have said they are switching to Blu Ray. That means Blu Ray is the Winner of this decades Format war. The HD-DVD Consortium was going to have a press conference which was canceled, and Microsoft was going to release an XBox 360 with built in HD-DVD… that was also scrapped.
They triple the room rates in Vegas for these big shows. They say that these people don’t gamble, but you’ve never seen a bigger bunch of gamblers than the CES crowd. 140,000 people went to CES.
Leo is going to call the Craptastic Electronics Show, because it’s just junk there at the moment… it’s stuff that you can buy at the back of K-Mart a year from now. iPhone Clones…etc.
The only interesting thing at CES has been TVs. Most of which are too expensive for people to buy or products that aren’t available anymore.
The product lines are changing monthly, and the biggest announcements don’t happen at the trade shows anymore. That’s why one of the biggest consumer electronics companies around don’t even go… Apple.
They wait a week, and have their own, the Macworld Expo. The press pays all the attention to them, and Steve Jobs is the only speaker. CES has 27,000 booths, over 40,000ft.
This idea of a market fair is almost medieval. Leo thinks that CES is only going to last a few more years. Most journalists Leo knows, say “thank goodness I don’t have to do that anymore”.
Gizmodo got banned for life from CES for doing a prank.
Leo took 2270 pictures and over 30gb in Video in Egypt, and Leo will talk about his experiences. The people he went with, from Yale and Harvard couldn’t figure it out!
Hour 1
Q Barbara from West Virginia - iPod only plays 40 seconds of a song
The first thing Leo would try, is restoring the iPod. Usually with that kind of thing, they’ll give you some service right up front.
There may be a little short in the connector. It sounds like a physical issue with your iPod, not the devices.
Hour 2
Q Steve from Los Angeles - My Experience of CES
It was informative for TVs I’ll be buying a few years down the line. I found the Car Hall interesting for sound systems for cars.
There was a company swapping out your Bluetooth headsets for Jawbone ones for free. Friends of mine went to RadioShack buying $10 or $20 ones and swapping them out for Jawbone ear pieces.
Q Chris from California - Upgrading RAM on a MacBook
4gb on the Apple website is almost $1000, whereas on Crucial it’s only $119. If Crucial says it’s compatible, then it will be. Try TransInternational, which should be fine.
The only RAM you should get from Apple is the Mac Pro tower RAM, because that has heat sync.
Just make sure it’s the same speed. If they say it’ll fit, Leo trusts them… they’re a good company.
Q Mike from California - 12 Megapixel Camera?
Leo recommends users to go to Flickr and you can search by Camera make and model which allows users to see how good the quality is, which is an important thing.
Digital Camera Info is a great site and also DP Review.
However you can have an excellent megapixel spec, but you need a glass lens, a plastic one would be awful. Kodak’s are great. Fujifilm’s and Canon’s are both great for SLR cameras.
Q Sylvia from California - I don’t show up in search engines
Getting on search engines isn’t automatic… you need to submit them to search engines.
You can go to Google, Yahoo!, Ask, and Windows Live Search and there’s usually a link to add results.
When you get a domain name, it’s available to anyone who types it in the browser. However that doesn’t mean it’s going to be available in the search results. Your site needs to be found by said search engine, or submitted. If someone else links to you, then Google will eventually find it, or you can manually submit it to Google.
Q Mark from California - Hard drive is smaller than advertised
A 100GB hard drive will usually be about 90+GB for example. Manufacturers will often sell the largest number, the decimal number.
This is a common problem that everyone runs into. Leo wishes that manufacturers wouldn’t do this. Manufacturers say that a 500GB hard drive should be 512,000MB, however really that’s just 500,000MB… The computer tells you the truth and the manufacturers advertise the decimal size.
The number of Gigabytes, divided by 1024 = the number of MBs.
Hour 3
Q Missy from Los Angeles - Microsoft Office for Mac Licensing
When any Office product launches on the Mac, it broadcasts out to the network the serial number it’s using, when you launch it again on another machine, it will say it’s already in use.
Because you have the Student and Teacher edition, you should have multiple serial numbers in the box. They give you 1 serial per machine.
Leo thinks that Office 2008 for Mac will be the first version of Office he doesn’t buy.
Q Nate in Los Angeles - Handheld TVs in 2009
If there’s no other way to get a signal into this thing it’s going to be obsolete. There are inexpensive digital receivers you can plug into a few TVs. The new ones should be capable. You need to look for one that has a Digital tuner.
Q Edward in California - Computer locks up on XP splash screen
It sounds like your system files are damaged. This can be because your hard drive has some lost sectors. The first thing you want to do is get your data off now!
The best solution would be to format and reinstall. SpinRite is $90 and a 300GB drive is also about $90. Sounds like you’re safe as you have your data backed up, and the drive is starting to go bad, so you might want to go get a new drive.
It might be that nothing is physically wrong with the drive. Depends how cheap you want to be. Leo just bought a 500GB drive for $120
Q Eric from California - Playing MP3’s as Ringtone
Record Companies think you should pay to use something as a Ringtone, but the worst thing is the fact that none of it goes to the artists. The easiest way is to use a program called Bit Pim. You need a cable as BitPim runs on your computer, not on your Phone.
Don’t even play LG, it’s Verizon. All you need to do with this is put the mp3 in the right folder and the phone will see it as a ringtone.
Q Dewy from California - Multi Sync iPod
Every iPod is linked to one and only one computer. Once you sync it to one iTunes, it will stop you from syncing with another iTunes, unless it erases it.
The only other way can be copying every music collection to all the computers. Others are having one central location where all the music is kept, and point all the iTunes to that location.
Q Bret from California - Camera housing for under water photography
Pentax makes a great Camera for under water shooting. 60ft is pretty deep down. As soon as you start to built up pressure, you need to get some pretty heavy duty under water housing.
Any point and shoot, like the Canon PowerShot should be fine. Ike Lite’s camera housing’s go down to about 60 meters.
Lulu is a good printing services, and they just print the books to those who order it, so there’s no cost unless the book is sold, and they also allow you to sell on Amazon.
