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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday 18 May 2008
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Guests
Ron Rosberg - Gadgets of the Week
A pocket camera with 10X optical zoom Panasonic TZ5
MSRP $349
Internet Prices from $219 (Be sure to check out the merchant before purchasing)
Canon Network Multifunction Laser Printer MF-4690 for small businesses
MSRP $399
Verizon’s Novatel Rev. A EVDO USB Adapter #727
Price with 2 year contract $199
Internet Discount: $50
Net: $149
Tech News
Mom indicted in deadly MySpace hoax - A federal indictment accuses Lori Drew, 49, of O’Fallon, Missouri, of using the social networking Web site MySpace.com to pose as a 16-year-old boy and feign romantic interest in the girl. The girl, Megan Meier, committed suicide after her online love interest spurned her.
Yahoo!’s investors are thinking of getting a new board of directors. Yahoo!’s stock has gone up in price while Microsoft’s hasn’t changed, which just goes to show that Yahoo!’s Board was right… they are worth more than Microsoft offered.
Hour 1
Q Austin in California - BlackBerry 9000 vs iPhone 2
The BlackBerry Bold has an updated operating system which is very nice. It has a real keyboard, which is nicer than using the touchscreen on the iPhone.
It looks very nice. It’s not going to be exclusive to any one carrier, and it will support the new HSDPA (3.5g) standard. RIM is the one company that is giving the iPhone a run for it’s money.
There’s no hard price for the BlackBerry Bold and no set launch date. It’s also much more powerful.
Q Matt in Chicago - Losing data on a hard drive
Unerase programs and SpinRite work because it’s just a software error. If there’s a physical error, then companies can open a hard drive up in a clean room. There can’t be a single spec of disk.
What they’ll usually do is take your platter out and put it in another drive case.
Q Robert in San Diego - Cell phone applications
Most phones use Java. Sites like Handango let you distribute applications to cell phones for money. Freelance sites allow you to hire.
Elance is where a lot of programmers go for jobs, and they will bid on jobs. CodeGuru.com is another.
If you develop for the iPhone, you need to find a developer who can code using the iPhone SDK that Apple released in January.
Q Mary in California - Computer for the kids?
Don’t leave the computer in the kids’ bedroom! Keep it somewhere in the house where you’ll be walking by and see exactly what they’re doing.
Kids will always find ways to do bad things on the Internet if they really want to, and sadly you can’t control that.
Second Question: MP3 Player with WiFi and FM
The newest Zune has all those features. The negative on the Zune is the fact it’s a different copy protection. If you’ve bought stuff from iTunes, then you won’t be able to put it on the Zune.
The Zune has a great screen, so it’s great for watching Video. The Zune store has an “all you can eat” month by month plan for about $10 a month.
Third Question: Wireless N Standard?
Don’t get a Apple Router. They’re too expensive and not worth it. Wireless N gives you much better speeds, and the range is much further on the signal. Linksys and Belkin have the best Draft N routers.
Hour 2
Q Chris in Texas - Distributing Content
There’s a company called Magenta Research, and they sell boxes. You can have Cat5 cables running through to store and that means you can do it at much longer distance.
This supports DVI. This is the high end thing at trade shows, and big box stores use. That’s at Magenta-research.com.
Q Paul in Baltimore - Cheap NAS
Leo bought a 1TB drive from Infrant (ReadyNAS from Netgear). That has a web interface. However if you put an 80GB drive in there with two 1TB drives in there, it thinks that they’re all 80GB. That has 1 Gigabit transfer.
The Drobo is a great choice also and has all the features of RAID 5, but it will take any drives you can throw in there.
Q Tereese in Ontario - Computer Reboots
Leo’s suggestion is to backup your data, and format and reinstall. Take a look at this article at the Microsoft knowledge base: How to take ownership of files in Windows XP.
Q Bob in California - Larger disk only shows as 250gb
It’s because you have partitioned the disk to 250gb. You need to get that other 500gb to show up. Modifying the master boot record could mess it up.
‘Fixmbr’ in the recovery console will re-write the master boot record.
Hour 3
Q Justin in Michigan - Screen goes blank
It’s very common on laptops, for the cables to get disconnected or broken. That’s a hardware problem however, and rebooting shouldn’t fix that.
You might want to get the latest drivers for your video card from the Dell website.
Leo isn’t 100% sure what’s wrong as the problem is being fixed as it is rebooted. You should also plug the laptop into an external monitor and see if the problem still occurs.
Q Mark in Arizona - Email in Wordpress
See if you can send the emails as text with the HTML in it and see if that works. There are ways to do things like textile and markdown, which are pseudo-html languages.
Q Mr Glass in New York - TCP Stack issues
It’s almost certainly your network interface card. It may have a bug in its firmware and it’s crashing the system, which is why you’re getting the blue screen.
You’ll want to swap out that network interface card.
Q Earl in California - MySpace Suicide
The younger generation (Generation M) is much more social, even if they have never met the people their talking to, they have a relationship with them.
