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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Saturday 8 March 2008
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Scott Wilkinson - Sony Line Show
- Pioneer has announced that they will discontinue making Plasma TV’s
- They will however still be sourcing them from someone else
- Sony has announced the 350 and 550 Blu-ray Players
- Both of these can be connected to the Internet and get content online
- Both of these require at least a GB of Memory, but you will have to plug in a 1 GB lash Drive
- The 350 will not come with one, you’ll have to buy your own
- The 550 will ship with one
Mr Excel - Mr Excel Book
- The sales haven’t gone down, they’ve actually gone up
- People want a physical book they can read
- 10,000 Rows of Data, and you enter a formula, and you want to get to 10,000… just double click on the little square block and you’ll be able to set the number of rows.
Tech News
Apple have announced an SDK for the iPhone, which allows anyone to develop software for the iPhone. However all the software that goes on the iPhone, all the apps need to go through the App Store from Apple.
Some Apps will be free, others will cost money. From the developer point of view, there’s no way to distribute it other than using Apple’s App Store. Apple then take 30% of the cost.
Apple also announced compatibility with Microsoft Exchange servers using a modified Active Sync.
Hour 1
Q Jan in California - Encrypted Bluetooth
No one is listening in on your Bluetooth connection. Plus you’re going to be in a moving car, so they would have to drive up next to you. A wired headset is a conductor from the cell phone into your ear.
There’s a new Bluetooth specification comping out. Bluetooth Spec 2. The Plantronics Voyager 510 is a good headset, and is very low powered. The BlueAnt clips onto your car, so isn’t even close to your head. The BlueAnt Supertooth Light should be just fine for you.
Make sure the phone isn’t set to auto-authorisation. You phone shouldn’t be broadcasting it’s Bluetooth either. Bluetooth uses AES encryption, and there are attacks but it’s very hard.
Q Bob in California - Business Website
Homestead provides easy templates to create websites, they provide the hosting and there’s a free trial as well.
If you want to completely do it yourself, you’ll want to use Adobe Dreamweaver. Once you start using something like Microsoft Frontpage, or Apple iWeb.
It’s a very vast playing field. If you don’t want to learn web technology, then Homestead is easy.
Hour 2
Q Lynn in California - Bad service from Verizon
These companies seem to think that they are the only provider around. These companies don’t want you to talk to a human because it’s expensive. The only way to really get through to them is go public and tell everyone of your problems.
Leo doesn’t recommend the bundled solutions from companies like AT&T and Verizon. You should go with local companies if you can. Writing a letter to the FCC and the PUC will help. Write to every regulatory organisation that you can. Go to the BBB.
Q John in Arizona - Recording live radio?
Radioshark from Griffin puts a little antenna on your computer, and comes with software that lets you record. The Radio Your Way is another solution, that looks like an iPod.
Q Marvin in California - Computer powered on but not working
There’s a sequence that every computer goes through, and it’ll load each device as it boots up. Usually it will beep to tell you what’s wrong.
The juice is going to everything, but nothing is happening. It could be a bad processor. At one point, putting an IDE cable backwards, it wouldn’t work. It’s not even powering on at self-test.
It sounds like the processor is the problem. The processor gets hot almost instantly… you may need to look at your heat sync.
Q Paul in California - Cannot launch Office for Mac applications
Try creating a new account, and see if the problem persists. If it does, then it’s a system wide problem. If not, then it’s a problem with your account.
Q Mark in California - DRM Problems
Copy protection is an annoyance. You can’t put your music on different devices, you need to have a key to play it… etc.
MP3, OGG, and other formats do degrade the audio quality. The larger the file size, the better the quality. If you buy it unprotected via Amazon or iTunes, it’s 256kbps. If your ripping a CD, you can set the quality very high, or use a loss-less format, and it’ll sound exactly as good as the origional.
Hour 3
Q Tanya in California - Recording Voice in Garageband
Garageband is going to record as an uncompressed WAV file, so it’ll be just fine. It’ll be just as good as any other audio recording software.
Second Question: VHS to Digital?
You need a way to hook up an analog VCR to your Mac. There are inexpensive devices that use USB. You’ll want to look for one that’s firewire.
You may need to spend about $200, but at that point you can digitise anything. If you go to the Apple Store, you’ll want a Video Capture Device.
Q Casey in California - Voice Dictation
Dragon Naturally Speaking is the best solution. It won’t transcribe as well as if your dictating. The problem with pre-recorded stuff is a couple of things: The speaker isn’t thinking about dictation, and may be slurping words, and also the fact that there’s noise in the background.
You may need the professional version (that’s $200). You can get a trial version.
Q Tim in California - Ethernet or Wireless?
You should use Cat5E Ethernet, which is the successor to Cat5. Most people use a Wireless Network as they don’t have the luxury of having Ethernet everywhere in the house.
It’s quicker and more reliable.
Second Question: PC or Mac for clients?
Leo’s general rule is PC for Business and Mac for Home. Mac’s can do the basic office stuff just fine. If your very comfortable with PC’s then you could stick with PC’s.
Q Ben in California - Keeping Windows on Top
It’s really program specific, and you could tell the Windows to stay on top. You can use Always on Top Maker which is a free program.
You can also use Quick Shell 2.1
Q Mark in Louisiana - Converting to NTSC
The Mac will play PAL and NTSC. They are different frame rates and resolutions. Your outputting PAL from the VCR, and the Video Capture device will need to be able to see PAL.
