Leo Laporte
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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday 11 May 2008
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
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Posted one week after broadcast… | |
Guests
Ron Rosberg - Gadgets of the Week
Breville Die-Cast 2 and 4 Slice Toaster
Chris Marquardt - Tips From The Top Floor
Tech News
The definition of technology is something that wasn’t around when you were born. For some that may be an ATM machine. Leo remembers when ATMs first came out and the queues were long as people would stand there for ages trying to figure out how to use them.
Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails released his latest album for free, and stated on his site “this ones on me”. The previous NiN album ‘Ghost’ was also free.
The RIAA say that DRM (Copy Protection) is living strong. If you are a band you might want people to give their music away. If you are a record industry, you might not.
Hour 1
Q John in San Diego - 800 Numbers Database
A database of numbers is great, especially for hard to find numbers.
Leo uses three different CMS (Content Management Systems). You can create a static web page for each individual page, and that’s fine for just a few pages, but when you want them to be interactive, and start having lots and lots of pages.
The web server calls a program (the CMS) and gets the information of the page and then marries it with the design of the page. They get merged and then the page is displayed.
Leo uses Drupal for TWiT.tv. He also uses Wordpress for his blog.
Joomla is a very good CMS. Joomla is a spin off of Mambo. Drupal is very very flexible.
Rocket Theme is a great source for Joomla templates.
Q Mark in Santa Ana - Web Services?
PHP and MySQL are the standard and most Content Management systems rely on them. However there are alternatives like PostgreSQL. Most CMS do deal with a few different web services like PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL and IIS.
Online reviews are a good source of information and personal preference when it comes to TV’s and the Digital TV transition.
Consumer Reports have some reviews of the DTV boxes.
Q Bob in Louisiana - Music on a BlackBerry
You can get a MicroSD card pretty cheap these days. Leo has a 2gb card in his BlackBerry. You should be able to play music quite easily on it.
Q Al in California - Bad Install CD?
Some Install CDs can be bad! Also if the drive is a little out of alignment, then that could be it. It’s possible that the CD reader is just out of alignment. If you still have trouble with other disks down the road, it’s an easy and inexpensive thing to fix.
Hour 2
Q John in California - Formatting a drive
Preparing a drive for use is a two part job. Firstly you partition it and then format it. You can right click on My Computer, and click Manage, click on Storage, and then you can delete partitions in that menu.
Leo suspects that there’s a problem with the way the partition was setup. When you repartition, you’re deleting everything.
Q Ian in California - Virus Problems
You could probably get rid of some of the bad software by hand, however you cannot be sure that you have gotten rid of all of it. To be sure your computer is clean, backup your data and reinstall Windows with the CD that came with your computer.
You can find some removal tips at Spyware Tutorials and Info
Hour 3
Q Newell in California - Local Networks
While Dish Network offers a local channel package for more money, which does not even cover all of the local networks, you can get these free over the air with an antenna.
However, if you do not have a digital tv, you must get a digital converter box by February 2009. More into at DTV.gov
The Zenith converter box is considered the best converter box on the market at the minute.
Q Milo in Fresno - Spyware infecting PC from Mac over network
It is possible for a Mac to transfer a piece of malware over the network to a PC, however worms like this have not been written yet as far as we know.
Q Heather in California - Vista and 32bit
Vista was not meant to run only on 64bit computers. There are both a 32bit and 64bit version. Most people run 32bit, however most of the hardware on the market now is 64bit compatible.
The Main advantage of 64bit Windows is RAM access over 4gb
Q Madardo in California - Security cameras
You can get network enabled cameras which you can view anywhere from a web browser. Axis Communications provides some of these types of camera.
Also, you can use a webcam and a piece of software on your computer, but you have to leave your computer on if you want to access it, and it requires more configuration on the user’s end. Webcam32 is a good piece of software for this.
Q GJ from Ventura - SP1 Update
GJ grabbed the drivers for the newest HP tablet which was similar to his, and SP1 was then installable.
