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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday 27 January 2008
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Dr. Rick Web Alber - Ning Social Networking Platform
Ning is a Do It Yourself website
Best for affinity groups like clubs, political groups, hobbyists, personal
Less useful for commercial websites or very large social networks.
Free with upgrades like
- Google adsense/ad suppression for $20/month
- Domain name hosting for $5/month
Claims to power largest number of social networks on the Internet
Granted up to 5GB storage and 1000GB bandwidth/month
Many themes to choose from
Configure your network
Public/private
Drag and drop modules to build interface
text boxes
graphics
RSS feeds
photos
videos
forums
blogs
various widgets
badges for viral marketing
Standard tabbed sections for
Main My Page Members photos videos
New members can be prequalified via custom questions
Groups of members can be defined with various access rights
The Good:
- Good performance - Akamai distribution of rich media
- Very complete online FAQ
- Privacy settings at object level - photos, videos, blog posts, etc.
- Moderate photos and videos before posting
- Can move network and content off Ning
The bad:
- Can’t complete control interface
- Signup box not movable
- About Ning box not suppressible
- Requires HTML and CSS knowledge for precise interface control
- No local version available for your server but you can backup all data locally
Ron Rosberg - Gadgets of the week
Internet Radio WFR-20
Price $299.00 (on Internet as low as $249)
Sangean Waterproof Radio for your shower or for your boat H 201
Price $75.00 (check Internet for best prices)
Griffin Technology’s Evolve Wireless Sound System for your iPod
Video of the Evolve Wireless Speakers
Price $299
Tech News
There’s a great article in the New York Times of the “coming of gadgets that you can talk to”. Leo has never been able to get anything that has speech recognition to work right. Is it just Leo?
Speech Recognition is something a 2 or 3 year old can easily do, but a computer cannot do. Our brains are made to understand speech, and we can fill in the caps. There’s two words that sound the same that can be spelt different, for example Night and Knight, or Red and Read.
The creator of Numenta.com thinks that computers in their current design can never understand how we speak or write. Numenta is creating chips that works more like the human brain.
Artificial Intelligence has never worked, and won’t work even if we throw more horse power behind the computer. We’ve got more memory than we did in computer 10 years ago… The excuse was things like “when he have more memory, speech recognition will work!”, yet here we are with usually about 2gb of RAM and it’s still not working much better than it did when we had 32mb of RAM.
A woman posted a request on Craigslist to hire a hit man to kill a woman who was having an affair with her husband. This isn’t the first thing that’s happened on Craigslist that has been a little strange. A person was evicted, and posted a message on Craigslist letting anyone to take anything in the house.
Hour 1
Q Al in Los Angeles - Analog to Digital Music Conversion
Sadly ADS have never decided to support Vista for their older devices. Sadly you can’t force them to make a Vista compatible driver for your Instant DVD +MP3 device.
This is one reason not to rush to update to Vista. This advice is getting stronger and stronger. If your happy with XP, stick with XP, but if your buying a new computer that comes with Vista, it should be fine.
No company is obligated to upgrade to Vista. More than half of PC buyers last year bought Windows XP.
Q Dan in California - Problem with HDTV
If you can get HD over the air you should be able to get most the HD stations. The HD Stations should look better than DVD, but not as good as BluRay.
Also you need to tune into their Digital channel not their standard channel. A good up converting set (like your Samsung) it should still look good.
Q David in California - Icons not saved on Desktop
Right click on the desktop, click view and make sure you have “show desktop icons” turned on. You might also want to turn on Auto Arrange incase it’s saving off the screen somewhere.
You should also make sure you are actually saving to the desktop.
Google not loading:
You may have a virus… try going to Symantec’s Website or McAfee’s Website and check if you have a virus.
You may also want to go to your host file at C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc and then there’s a little file called host. Make sure Google’s not messed up in there.
You can also clear the DNS Resolver Cache by clicking start, typing CMD in the start search box and starting Command Prompt, and type IPCONFIG /flushdns
You might also want to try HostsXpert which will make it easier for you to manage.
Hour 2
Q Alfred in California - I have Spyware
If Spyware attaches itself to system files, no anti-spyware tool is going to remove it because it will break the system. You need to backup your files and reinstall Windows.
You should also Google the name of the spyware and removal to see if there is something to remove it.
Q Erin in California - Mobile Internet
Leo could help you with a system in the US, however outside of the US, it’s going to be limited. It’s going to start costing you a lot of money.
If your going abroad you’ll need AT&T or T-Mobile. You’ll need to sort out an International Data Plan with them and you’ll want a phone you can use as a data modem.
Q Tim in California - Screen Reading & Backup
Jaws needs to be able to read Windows not text. You need to be able to right click on files and folders with Carbonite and it puts a little GUI app in the system tray that continually backs up and you can control, again by right clicking.
It backs up unlimited files for $50 a year. You’ll have to call Jaws to find out if it will work with Carbonite.
Hour 3
Q Kevin in River Side, CA - Audio Issues
What’s happening is, Ventrilo takes over the audio port and as a result iTunes can’t play music because Ventrilo has control. You should be able to close Ventrilo and it should then work.
You may need to go into your mixer and fix it manually.
Q Dan in California - AutoCAD issues
It may be the fact that your using Windows XP Home Edition. You will need to upgrade to XP Professional Edition or go to a lower version of AutoCAD
Q Ellie from California - Lost files
First thing you’ll want to do is not panic. In the Applications Folder, you’ll find a folder called Utilities, and then Disk Utility. That will show you all the drives attached, and you’ll see your drive.
If you don’t see that, it could either be the USB cable, or the power. If it does show it, you’ll want to click on it and click Mount. The other thing you can do is use First Aid and verify the disk and verify the permissions.
If you have another friend with your Mac, plug it in there and see if their computer can see it. Try Disk Warrior if it doesn’t work.
Once you have it back, make another copy of it. You’re gonna get this fixed.
Q Jason in California - Program for WoW
You’ll need to learn a programming language. You can run the software on your Mac if it’s an Intel Mac.
Parallels allows you to do this for about $80. You could go onto eBay and then get a copy of XP. If you could find the source code, you would only need to re-write the User Interface.
This program need to look at your World of Warcraft playbacks, which may be very Windows specific. Find a site and see if there are other Mac users who want to port it.
Q Gene in Manhattan Beach - Message Tag in AOL
Leo doesn’t like the idea of Message Tags. Your user has to use HTML emails and it embeds a little tool in there to send a message back to a server telling it that it’s got the email.
You can however make a receipt for the email that people can respond to make sure they got the message. As much as you’d like to know if someone has read your email, it’s something that’s an invasion of privacy.
It should show up as a standard USB device in XP. Normally these show up as a standard Audio device and don’t need any drivers.
For some USB Turn tables, you may need a disk. You could call the manufacturer and they can provide you with a disk. You may also be able to download the drivers.
Their website is available at StantonDJ.com.
