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Sunday 6 April 2008
Leo is live today from Hobart, Tasmania in Australia thanks to Sea FM! Read about his travels on his blog, follow him on Twitter, and look at his pictures on SmugMug.
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Ron Rosberg - CTIA 2008 Wrapup
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BlueAnt V1 Voice Controlled Headset
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Tech News
A western Pennsylvania couple has sued Google, saying pictures of their home on its Web site violate their privacy and devalued their property. They say it’s an invasion of their privacy as the road is a “Private Road”.
Images of the home Aaron and Christine Boring bought in the Pittsburgh suburb of Franklin Park in October 2006 appeared on Google’s “Street View” feature, which allows users to find street-level photos by clicking on a map.
Yahoo Inc has three weeks to accept Microsoft’s $31-a-share cash-and-stock offer or Microsoft may lower its bid and take its offer to Yahoo investors, Microsoft said on Saturday.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in a letter dated April 5 and addressed to Yahoo’s board of directors that “now is the time” to negotiate final terms of a deal, which, valued at more than $40 billion would mark the biggest-ever takeover in the high-tech industry.
Hour 1
Q Sharron in California - Cannot open PDF’s
Adobe has really jumped the shark with Adobe Reader. They drive people crazy with the updates. You might want to try getting it from Adobe directly.
Go to Adobe Reader’s Website and download the full version. Don’t patch or update it, download the full package.
You should take a look at the tech note on Adobe’s Website that will help you uninstall Adobe Reader.
FoxIt PDF Reader is a free alternative to Adobe Reader. It does however lack some features.
Q Harry in California - Flock Browser
There actually is a legitimate browser called Flock. Firefox is the one Leo generally recommends. Flock is basically Firefox with extra features.
There’s some great locations for Google Maps that can be found at Google Maps Mania. There’s also some great locations on the Google Maps Wikipedia Article.
Q Edward in California - Email Program problems
It sounds like the emails you are getting are HTML emails that haven’t had closed tags. The email seems to be telling your program to keep everything like that.
Shutting the entire program down and starting it back up should be fine. MSN should be smart enough to stop this. It’s basically a mistake in the way MSN is written.
You could turn off Preview, and HTML email. The only solution really is closing MSN and restarting it. Also tell your friends to knock it off.
Hour 2
Q Steve in California - Which Camera?
The Canon HD10 is a good camera. Tape is really being phased out. Some cameras record to flash media, while others record to hard drives.
They will record tens of hours of videos, but you really need to take a laptop with you to get them off. They use a format called AVCHD which is slightly more compressed than a tape camera.
Leo chose the HD30 as he found it a pain to offload it every time. The tapes are always there as a backup.
Q Danny in New Jersey - Extended Monitor?
Extended on a Laptop and Desktop means you get two screens. If you have a mirrored monitor, you’ll have exactly the same thing display on both screens.
You need to get the output of the program to display on the second monitor, while you have the editor of the program on the first monitor.
Q Casey in Tennessee - Black Gradient on Video and Pictures
It sounds like it’s on the CMOS Pickup. When your switching to HD Mode, it’s going to widescreen, it’s cutting off that little gradient in the corner.
You really do have to send it in. It’s probably nothing you did, they can die. You’ll have to send it back to Sanyo or just record in HD Mode. When you import, import it in as 540p instead of 1080i. It’s much easier to edit and it’s a much smaller file size.
Hour 3
Q Barbera in California - Which GPS to buy?
There are handheld GPS devices for walking around, but it sounds like you want a device for the car.
You want to look for one that has turn by turn directions. If you want street names, you might have to go for a more expensive one. You can get some GPS devices that have traffic information. They have an XM Radio built in.
It sounds like the best would be the Garmin Nuvi. That’ll be about $500. They have points of interest in, and you can get it to tell you where the nearest parking is, or the nearest Starbucks.
You’ll want to make sure you can add maps to go, then if you go somewhere like Europe, you can load the CD.
Leo recommends the BlueAnt Supertooth Light. You press the green button to answer and make calls. It’s about $120 and it’s an excellent Hands Free device.
Q Lilly in California - Palm Centro?
The Centro is the cheap Treo 750. Palm is losing a lot of money due to phones like the iPhone. What your company is doing is trying to give you a new phone for free, but their giving you a cheap phone.
If you accept the offer, you’ll be locked in for another 2 years. You can just stick with your 750 if your happy. The minute you change your plan or get a new phone, your locked into another 2 year deal.
No other business is allowed to extend your contract if you want to give them more money, and no other business is allowed to charge you to leave them.
Q Greg in California - Computer Training
You can get the same education without the certification a lot cheaper. A bunch of old Windows boxes will be fine for training. You’ll also want to learn about UNIX and Networking.
Don’t stop with A+. If you have one or two old PC’s, your set. Leo doesn’t recommend you learn Q Basic. Visual Basic is only for Windows. You should take a look at Python which is cross-platform and free. PHP is similar to Python and is great. Java is widely used, but less important.
Learning to program with Microsoft, C# and Silverlight, and with Adobe, Air and Flex on the web sides.
Q Tony in Manhattan Beach - Aweful Static on Phone
It’s very possible that your titanium hips are causing this. If your getting that with the Plantronics, then you may want to look at a different one.
Leo likes the Plantronics 510, and he’s had great audio from that. The most popular is the Jawbone Headset. The Jawbone is very good and also has noise cancellation.
Q Jim in Colorado - Testing a Mac
If you want to spend some money, Techtool pro will test all the subsystems. Leo recommends you reinstall the operating system, and then all the software issues will go away.
Put it on a black screen and white screen so make sure there’s no dead pixels. Make sure that all the keys work, make sure the screen isn’t loose. See if the Kernel panics when you handle it.
You will want to open the energy saver preferences, and see how long you’ll get out of a full charge. It should be about 2 hours, and if it is much less than that, you’ll have to get a new one for about $90.
You should look at refurbished Mac’s from Apple, as you’ll also get a warranty.
Bring it to the Apple store, and bring it online at the Apple store. If a Mac is stolen, and it signs on at the Apple store, then they’ll stop you. Theres even software that will upload pictures of them and email it to you.
Q Jonathan in Phoenix - Updating the firmware on a shuttle
You got a bad shuttle. You should get another PC, download the shuttle firmware and put it on a bootable CD. You can then refresh the firmware that way. It sounds like the firmware is screwed up.
Make sure it’s the right firmware for your shuttle.
