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Sunday 20 April 2008
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Indaba Music Winner
The Winner for the Indaba Music Tech Guy Theme Tune Remix competition has been announced. MdL Productions made the winning theme tune, and it will be used as the main theme tune on future shows.
You can listen to the other entries and even download the sound files to make your own at Indaba’s Tech Guy page.
Thanks MdL Productions!
Tech News
Authorities have unearthed a California woman’s plot to steal the identity of the recently deceased. She executed her alleged criminal undertaking by first employing Internet genealogy software to reap the Social Security numbers of dead individuals, and then using the numbers and other information collected on the Internet to convince credit card companies to change the mailing addresses associated with the accounts to the addresses of her rented mailboxes.
Sharon Sarmiento knew it was time to unplug when she realized she was blogging in her dreams and hearing imaginary instant messages. She’s going to unplug for 48 hours. For Ariel Meadow Stallings, it was the hours lost while surfing the Internet that left her feeling like she had been in a drunken blackout.
Guests
Chris Marquardt of the Tips From The top Floor podcast
We review submissions in our latest assignment: “CALL”
Call for 2 by Leo Lui
call by n2cameras
Mikkel Works The Phones by Leo Laporte
Ron Rosberg - Gadgets of the Week
Does your SLR screen need cleaning? Check out Delkin Devices SensorScope Screen Cleaning Kit
MSRP $149.95 - Internet price for entire kit (save $50.00) above $99.95 thru Amazon
Need more juice and a comfort grip case in one package for your iPhone?
Try the Juice pack by mophie
Amazon pre-order sign up
Need computer Help and Leo isn’t around check out Support.com
Price range depending on what service you select: FREE to $199.00
Hour 1
Q Frank in Los Angeles - Radio YourWay?
You’ll want to go to C. Crane, which is a place for anything radio. You will be able to get a recorder there but there’s nothing as compact as the Radio YourWay.
Q Debbie in California - Viruses?
Norton, Trend Micro and McAfee are all really bloated, as they kept adding features. That made them slower and slower. ESET Nod32 is an excellent antivirus, and is very quick.
The first thing you’ll have to do is get rid of the virus. Sadly that means reinstalling Windows. You need to reformat the drive, and reinstall a fresh version of Windows from a known good source (eg. the Dell install and recovery disks). Backup all your data.
Q Ken in North Hollywood - Leopard can’t network print
Leopard has changed a lot of Network settings. There’s a lot of different solutions to this. It’s usually firewall issues. Bonjour (Zero Config in Windows) is usually to avoid these issues.
Do a Google search for ‘Leopard Printer Canon’ and try the different solutions. A lot of people have had this issue. It sounds like it’s the computer that you’re trying to share from that’s the problem.
Q Martin in Orange County, CA - Can’t load Task Manager
This is a feature of Policy Editor. That allows an IT department to lock out certain features because they may be dangerous. Click start, then Run and type ‘GPEDIT.MSC’ and then press enter. Once that’s done, you can see the “Group Policy” list and look for the one that blocks off Task Manager, and enable it.
Q Joe in North Kingston - New Smartphone
The Tilt is a great device, and AT&T has a great range. Since you’re a Windows and Office user, you’ll probably want to stick with Windows Mobile.
Q Leonard in California - Flash Video Problems
The slow frame rate is usually a CPU speed issue. That wouldn’t cause a crackling sound however. Leo has no idea what it is, but it sounds like a short circuit… you should take it somewhere to get it checked.
Hour 2
Q Roger in California - Signal problems in RV
Their going Digital a year from now, so the analog signals won’t work for you. Analog would just degrade the signal, but with digital, you either get the content, or you don’t get it at all.
AntennaWeb is great resource for information about the equipment needed. It’s really not the shape as the design. dtvmax.com has a do it yourself section and great advice about the different DTV Tuners.
It really is the antenna and your location. AntennaWeb has a map telling you what’s available in general areas.
Q Alan in California - PDF Printer?
There’s a couple of free PDF Creation tools out there. CutePDF has a great tool for it, and you can “print” your document to a PDF document.
NicePDF does compression and you can also improve the quality yourself.
Q Lynn in California - Can’t access websites
Try temporarily disabling your security software. If that fixes it, then you know that Trend Micro is the problem, and you should call them.
Q Ed in San Diego, CA - Capturing IP addresses of website visitors
Every web server records in the logs. You can run a stats tool like AWStats if your website host allows you to. They may also have their own stat tools. You can also query the time and date that the IP accessed the site.
Google Analytics is free and gives you a tiny little bit of JavaScript code that you insert on the website, and it gives you reports of what’s going on. It even gives you heat maps.
It won’t however work if people block JavaScript.
Q John in California - Enable WPA2
You don’t need to use MAC address filtering as you need to know the MAC address of each device trying to access your wireless network. However it’s completely ineffective as people can spoof the address.
The only form of any wireless encryption that does anything is WPA.
Hour 3
Q Mark in California - Read Only USB Hard Drive
It’s a common problem. Generally this is a flaw in the way USB works. It’s possible for this disk has been changed to a read only file system. The best thing to do is format and start over.
Right click on My Computer, select Manage, and then under Storage select the disk. It’ll also say it’s a read only file system. You might not want to partition it, but you’ll certainly want to format it.
Q Dave in California - iTunes & Audio CDs
You’ll want to go to iTunes, and go to the preferences menu. Then go to the advanced preferences. There’s a burning tab buried in there. You can chose between Audio CD, MP3 CD and Data CD.
Choose Audio CD, and you can also tell it to do other things like change the gap between songs, and normalize the levels.
Q Steve in Canyon Country - Can’t download Windows Updates
You have basically blocked updates. You can’t install any updates until you fix that. There is a Microsoft Tech Note that may be able to help you with this issue.
Q Scott - Mail Washer Problems
Mail washer can cause problems as it’s going through your mail, and checking it all. When you uninstalled it, it didn’t change your Outlook settings back to the standard settings, it continued to go via its own server.
You need to go to your Mail provider and follow their instructions to change Outlook back. Mail Washer is generally a good program. You may want to contact Mail Washer’s technical support.
Q Maria in California - Wireless Problems
You want to go to Start, Run, type ‘MSCONFIG’ and look for the Wireless Zero Config and disable it. It’s Wireless Zero Config that is causing the problems.
