Leo Laporte
The Tech Guy
2–5p ET Sat & Sun
- Home
- Saturday Show
- Sunday Show
- Past Shows
- Audio Archives
- Stations
- Chat
- Watch Live
- Forums
- Tips
- FAQ
- Glossary
- Contact Leo
Sponsors
- Angie’s List
- Carbonite
- DSLExtreme
- ESET NOD32 Antivirus
- GoToAssist
- GoToMeeting
- GoToMyPC
- Make It Work
- Stamps.com
Leo Links
 |
For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
|
|
Saturday 15 March 2008
Show Audio
|
Edited Audio | |
Guests
Scott Wilkinson - Black Bars
- You can use Zoom Mode, but that will cut off some of the right and left
- 4:3 shows black bars each side, and if you stretch 4:3, it’ll make everything look fat
- If you watch nothing but 4:3, then it may burn in a shadow of the black bars
- It’s not that much of a problem these days
- Many Games have a static Pause section, it may burn into the plasma
- Every year at CES someone shows Wireless HD, it’s certainly coming along pretty well
- Belkin are just about ready to release a wireless HDMI Solution called FlyWire
- They claim 45ft of Range, using 802.11n
Dick Debartolo - Gadget of the Week
Ion USB turntables transform your treasured vinyl LPs into convenient MP3s for use on your computer or player. Then burn your new files to disc and create old favorites on CDs. With a USB record player, it’s easy! Buy one of these LP turntables with USB ports today and give your classic records new life!
Tech News
An interesting study by Dr. Biederman who, first showed a collection of photographs to volunteer test subjects, found they said they preferred certain kinds of pictures (monkeys in a tree or a group of houses along a river) over others (an empty parking lot or a pile of old paint cans).
Today we can find in the course of a few hours online more than our ancestors could find in a lifetime. Male Gamers showed more neural firings, showing it felt different and more stimulating playing computer games to guys than girls.
Robert Scoble can’t stop reading RSS Feeds. He loves them. He can’t get enough information. His brain is tuned to this constant flow of information.
If your easily bored, and need more interesting things popping up everywhere, then the Internet is for you. Are our kids different to us? Are our children’s brains adapting to this?
Hulu.com has launched this week providing free shows from Fox, NBC and Viacom supported by advertisements. They also have movies on there for free.
Hour 1
Q Sandra from Studio City, CA - Dog Slobbers
You’ve got to make sure that the slobber isn’t going down the cracks of the TV. You have to be very careful. You might want to try Klear screen. It leaves a little coating behind for anti-static.
You could raise the TV up a little. There’s a comical video of a Pug dog licking a screen going around the Internet.
Q Rick in Carson, CA - Getting rid of Black Borders on TV
Movies are shot in 16:10, whereas the TV is 19:9. There are ways to zoom, or stretch the movie.
We’ll ask Scott Wilkinson when he comes on.
It sounds like the screen has been hit pretty hard and is actually damaged. The way a screen works is a light behind the screen, and then Liquid Crystal will make up an image.
The bulbs can die, but that would just make it go darker. It sounds like someone has damaged the liquid part.
Q Dianna in Bloomington, CA - Computer will not shut down
Usually when the computer won’t shut down it tells all the programs to shut down and tell it when it’s done. It’s very possible that your new cable company has installed some security software that doesn’t want to quit.
Hour 2
Norton Ghost backs up the hard drive bit by bit. Leo recommends Drive Snapshot. Both of these allow you to get your hard drive exactly back to that point.
Once you’ve started using the system, you want to only backup stuff that you don’t have other copies of. Don’t backup Windows or Office, you already have a copy of that.
Services like Carbonite backup over the Internet automatically. With an external drive, you can just copy across what you need. You can use sync software to make sure that everything that’s on your main drive is backed up.
Leo uses Second Copy. Microsoft also gives away “Sync Toy”. What if you had a fire and you lost everything including your external drive.
That’s where off-site backup comes in. That could just mean copying to disks, and giving it to your mom.
Q Reka in California - External Drives?
You’ll eventually want to go to Intel Mac, but for now, that’s fine. Stick with that Mac and buy some external firewire drives. You can put your big stuff like Music and Video on there.
Just tell places like iPhoto and iTunes where the folder is from the advanced preferences. Firewire may be a little more expensive, but it’ll be as fast or faster than the drive inside the Mac.
Q Tom in Nashville - Ubuntu and Wireless Card
Go to Google and type in “Ubuntu” and your wireless card name. It’s likely someone will have figured out how to use it.
There’s also the Ubuntu forums where there are people who will try to help you. The community will help, but the manufacturers don’t write drivers for Linux.
You should also take a look at this thread on the Ubuntu Forums.
Q Alan in California - Desktop drops an inch
Microsoft has this idea, called Active Desktop that would allow you to put web pages on your desktop. They only hid it however, they didn’t take it out.
You need to open your display properties, open the desktop tab, click the customise tab, and get rid of the Web option.
There’s a toolbar of some sort taking up that space. That toolbar is crashing at some point after boot, and you can’t move your mouse into that space. It could Earthlink, or a Toshiba toolbar.
You need to disable that toolbar.
Q Scott in California - Can’t access Hotmail Account
You’ll just have to scrap it. You might want to email Hotmail Support, however they may not be able to help you.
The Hotmail cookie may have been over-writen with a Windows Live Cookie. A system restore may restore those cookies, or if you have a backup.
Hour 3
Q Mike in Misouri - Computer constantly reboots
There could be so many things that could be wrong with it. When a laptop won’t start, sometimes it’s just the battery. The problem is, when the battery stops working, the computer won’t get power. Pop the battery out, and see if it now works with just the power cable.
There’s a driver on the system that’s crashing the system. There’s a virus that has this exact behaviour. The Sasser Worm will reboot your system every 15 seconds.
As soon as the system boots, press start, click run, and type “Shutdown -a” (without the “quotes”). You could just reinstall the operating system. Just pop the disk in and reboot the machine.
Q Jim in Rialto, CA - Moving iTunes Music to New Machine
Make sure you deauthorise the old machine, and then just move it to a new machine. You can then authorise that machine.
You just need to copy and paste that iTunes library. Once you’ve done that, as soon as you try to play a purchased song, it’ll ask you to authorise and log in. That’s all you need to do.
Some of the features you have with the current service your using for your website won’t be replaceable. Leo recommends that you continue to use the current service, but run your own site along side. You can then link to the other.
Q Brett in Ohio - Logging onto a Hot Spot in Linux
There is a web browser in the PS3 which you can use to do this. However on the XBox 360, you will need to setup Internet Connection Sharing on the laptop, and then connect the XBox 360 to the ethernet.
You could also find the MAC address of the XBox, and then on your laptop your going to clone that address. You then log in with the laptop, and the XBox should work.
The Cradlepoint Personal Hotspot allows you to plug in an EVDO card, and that’ll allow you to connect via the cell network. You plug it into the personal hotspot, and you’ll then have WiFi on the road.
It’s not free, but it’ll work.
