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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Saturday 26 April 2008
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Dick Debartolo - Gotcha Gift Box
The GotchaBox. No, the products aren’t real. But the empty boxes are. Wrap your otherwise forgettable gift in this gift box, and watch as the recipient struggles to feign enthusiasm for a hat-affixed organizer pocket.
Steve Gibson - Bluetooth Security
- The way two Bluetooth devices discover each other, makes one of them discoverable. This makes it respond to unsolicited queries
- Then you turn discovery off… however most people don’t, and it doesn’t do it automatically
- Leaving a phone in discoverable mode, allows people to make calls, copy address books, and suck all the data out of the phone
Tech News
We’re in a recession in the US, and yet the sales of computers are raising. Apple had a 43% Revenue Growth. 2.3 Million Mac’s were sold. 10.6 Million iPods and 1.6 Millions iPhones. They made $1.04 Billion in Q1 2008.
Microsoft also beat Wall Street’s predictions. In 3 months, Microsoft made 3.4 Billion dollars. Microsoft is focusing on ‘mesh’. Microsoft Live Mesh connects devices together wirelessly and over the Internet. Microsoft wants to get into Cloud Computing.
Mesh is Microsoft saying the end of the line for Windows, and our services are online. This is Microsoft’s future.
Hour 1
Q Stu from Leeds, UK - Video Cameras
AVC-HD - No audio. The problem with AVC-HD is the fact it’s a new format. The great thing about H.264 is the fact that it can be compressed and change in quality according to the speed it’s being streamed or downloaded.
A lot of software doesn’t understand AVC-HD. Leo’s suggestion going forward is to continue to shoot in HD, and import it in Standard Definition. Down the road when you have software that understands AVC-HD, you can get the HD content.
Leo imports a 540p version instead of 1080i. It’s half the resolution but the quality is very good. Visual Hub is pretty good at understanding AVC-HD.
Q Don in New York - HD Antenna?
Go to AntennaWeb.org. You tell it where you are, and it’ll help you choose the best antenna for where you are. The ATSC Tuner needs to be good as well. It’s not just the antenna, it’s also the tuner!
You’ll probably want a Yagy antenna. That’s not a brand it’s a type. You’ll probably want to steer it.
Hour 2
Q Ed in California - VHS to DVD 3.0?
It’s $80, which is a bad sign. The fact that it’s USB means it isn’t really fast enough to send good quality video down the ‘pipe’. You’re taking it off VHS, which isn’t great to begin with.
When the device can’t keep up, it takes frames out. These are both the symptoms you get when it can’t keep up. To do it right, it’s gonna cost you about $300.
HP makes a product that is a DVD Writer. It had composit video in. It does hook into your computer, but it’s standalone. You don’t have to do any editing.
It’s the HP DVD 200i, but they may even have a 300i or 400i as the latest models.
Q Kevin in Malibu - Recover files off iPod Touch
Megaphone lets you mount the iPhone and iPod Touch mount as a drive, just like the classic iPods. You need to mount it as a disk to run recovery software.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to run something like TechTools Pro or DiskWarrior.
Hour 3
Q Tim in California - Good UPS?
Leo likes APC. You will have to look carefully at the battery and make sure it’s got enough capacity to handle the amount of electricity and devices you’ll need.
Q Bert in Michigan - View Live Streaming Internet Video
You need to watch it in a browser video. It’s not recordable however. Flash now supports H.264, which is a high definition Codec. Some people however don’t want you to be able to record it, they want you to watch it live.
Q David from San Diego - Big NAS
Network Attached Storage would be great, and Gigabit Ethernet. RAID 5 will allow you to use 4 TB (through 1 TB drives) and have one for redundancy.
Vista works very well for Windows Media, and most NAS Solutions have Windows Media Servers built in.
