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Saturday 19 July 2008

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Show Audio

Edited Audio

Posted one week after broadcast…

Tech News

E3. Broo-chee.

Leo says that the annual E3 gaming convention isn’t all that exciting these days. It’s only press conferences about game sequels with very little innovation. But in general, game sequels are just the opposite of movie sequels. Game sequels get better thanks to technical advances. That makes them more profitable as well.

Social gaming is getting bigger. The PS3 needs some serious games.

Check out game trailers here.

Yahoo back in play … AGAIN

Carl Icahn may try a hostile takeover in order to gut Yahoo like a fish. Microsoft wants the search biz and Icahn wants to break up the rest. Yahoo keeps saying “no.” And it’s looking to be a big showdown at the next shareholder’s meeting.

More iPhone problems

Activation problems have been plaguing the new 3G iPhone release giving Apple a black eye. But that’s albeit over now, leaving most of the problems being availability as most stores may be sold out.

Check out the Apple StoreFinder to see which stores have iPhones and which are sold out.

Leo loves the Drobo.

Leo got a Drobo Automated Storage Array and now, thanks to cheap 750GB hard drives, has several terrabytes of storage. But Steve Gibson says larger drives can fail easier, so hooking them into a RAID 5 array is prudent.

Guests

Scott Wilkinson, Ultimate AV Magazine

Re: Scott’s Blu-Ray burner question. Scott thinks you may be able to burn Blu-Ray HD on DVD - although the space would be limited, and you’d only be able to play it on a SONY Blu-Ray player. Sony records in AVCHD/H.264 so you’d need to burn in that format in order to achieve it. It’s pure speculation, mind you, but worth an experiment.

LED LCD-TVs. Most have a light behind the panel that is florescent. But now we’re starting to see LED lights replacing them. This allows for “local dimming” where LEDs can be dimmed/brightened independently. This improves color, contrast, and really amps up the “blacks.”

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Hour 1

Q Mark, Santa Ana, CA - Printing problems, Word for Mac

He doesn’t get all his document when he’s printing. He uses the HP OfficeJet 7310 on a network. Leo thinks it’s not getting end of document commands. Could be a faulty driver set. Check for an updated driver at HP.Com, and update Word - there was a recent huge Office update which addressed alot of issues.

Q Dave, Bimington, NY - Starting a show at Talkshoe.

Dave is concerned about copyright issues playing music on this show. Leo says you can’t really play signed bands. But the good news is that there’s a lot of podsafe music on the net. Leo likes independent artists, anyway, so it’s no real big loss that you can’t play Madonna or any other big name label artist. Check out Creative Commons Audio, MagnaTune, Podsafe Music.

Q Ed - Advice on building a gaming computer.

Is into MMO gaming and wants to build his own gaming computer. MMO games aren’t super demanding as they have the Internet to work with. There are some positives and negatives. Pros - you get to choose your components and know exactly what you have. Cons - you won’t save money and you are your own tech support. Who do you go to if your PC goes down? But it is a very satisfying experience.

You’ll also have to buy your OS. Which will be more expensive than, say, an OEM copy. Go with Vista 64 bit as you can use more memory. Downside is that your games may not be able to use that. So check the program requirements first. Consider going with a Quad Core or Intel 6600 processor. 4GB RAM.

Install the OS. Have a hard drive for your OS and a secondary drive for your swap file and data. Divide that second drive into three partitions. Swap, data, and programs. Install all updates. Then image that drive. Check out DriveSnapshot.de This will be your recovery disk.

And if something wrong, go to ultimatebootCD.com

Q Skip, Irvine, CA - Video from his memory stick can’t be read.

How can he make a HiDef DVD without burning to Blu-Ray? You need a Blu-Ray burner for hiDef video. Period. Good news is that the burners are dropping in price and sooner or later, so will the media … eventually, which is about $25 a piece.

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Hour 2

Q Clayton, Los Angeles, CA - Programming tools for kids?

Turtle Graphics is a good tool, that’s also web based. Also, check out Squeak. Based on “Small Talk,” which is what brought us the Windows interface. Squeak is also good for teaching logic, design, and more. Great for kids! Older kids would like Alice.Org. Xipester.

Also, Clayton wants a video conversion encoder for AVI files. Leo suggests Tsusnami TMPGenc.

Q Eva, Studio City, CA - Worried about identity theft online.

Porn sites overseas are creating websites in her name. Personally, there isn’t much you can do. You can appeal to ICANN if you’re a business or celebrity, but for normal people there isn’t much you can do. If the host is in the states, you could approach them about pulling the site down because of defamation of character, but with overseas sites, you’re screwed.

But check out claimID.com. They may be able to help you. It’s free and you can publically declare what’s your online presence and what isn’t.

Q Sean, Camarillo, CA - how to stream video from XBox 360?

Trying to stream movies over his XBox 360. Getting video error. Heard his graphics card may need to be updated. But he’s encoding in everything he can think of and can’t get it to work. Normally, Windows should be able to stream WMV files. This may be a copy protection issue. Leo suggests trying something that isn’t commercial. If that works, then you know you’re running into transparent DRM.

Also, from the chatroom - download ORB. It’ll stream to ANYTHING!

Q Carla, Fontana, CA - Notebook running S-L-O-W-L-Y

Should she upgrade? Leo doesn’t think you need just because of that. Carla has spyware or even a virus. Leo recommends running the system recovery disc. But before doing that, backup your data, photos, etc to CDs with your burner. The System Recovery will erase the hard drive and get you back to the day you bought it. Then, run updates for Windows Update to make sure your protected. Install good AntiVirus software like Eset NOD32 or AVG and anti-spyware programs like Microsoft Defender or AdAware.

Then follow Leo’s tips for good internet behavior.

Q Jori, Ontario, CA - Hard drive trouble.

He got one of those Hitachi 750GB Hard drives and it’s giving him fits. Corrupted sectors, disk errors. Can’t even run check disk. It may be simply a bad/failed drive. Run SpinRite to see how bad it really is. Hard drive tend to fail either right away or after a few years. So it’s not unusual to have a bad drive.

Q Dave, Youngstown, OH - New drive for 1st Gen MacBook Pro?

Wants to upgrade the hard drive in his MacBook Pro. Can he do it himself or will he void his warranty? Leo says you will void the warranty if you open up the MacBook Pro. If you have Apple Care, there may be some wiggle room on that. Leo also says that the harder it is to get to a drive to replace, then it’s wised to take it to a Genius and have them replace it.

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Hour 3

Q from Twitter - Setting up a Stickam account?

Very easy to do. Setup a free account and then take the player and embed it with Stickam’s code into any webpage.

Q Reb, Los Angeles, CA - Looking for a network calendar solution.

Cross platform. Cellphone. Network. Wants to modify from any location or platform. Suggestions? Leo uses Google Calendar. Very powerful and you can tie it into MobileMe. Leo also says BusyMac - the app is called Busy Synch, which will turn on LAN for iCal. You can set all of it up and it will synch with all three. For synching notes check out EVERNOTE. Has auto OCR, Audio notes. etc. Lives everywhere from PC to MAC to your iPhone. And it’s free!

Also, how can Reb trust the application reviews for the iPhone? Read the customer reviews on the iPhone App Store.

Q Paul, Los Angeles, CA - PC keeps dumping his memory

The memory dump is a behavior that’s set in XPs system control panel under advanced system properties. It happens when you suffer a crash. And it’s rather useless unless your a programmer. Just turn it off.

Has a search engine suggestion - http://www.searchme.com. A visual search like Uzi or Coverflow. Leo’s jonsin’ on it.

Q - Question about voltage overseas on his iPod.

Traveling and worried his iPod will get bricked if he charges it on his laptop. Voltage is different overseas. We’re 110 here, they’re 220v in Europe. The USB Plug will step it down, but how much? Your best bet will be to get a USB adapter converter in the country your traveling to. But Apple also sells them. Travel companies like Magellan sell them as well. They’re pretty cheap. Amazon has a 150 country adapter.

TwitCommander says that his iPhone travel charger supports 150 countries around the world. It should say that, dontcha think?

Q Ben, Santa Monica, CA - How many gigabytes in a terrabyte?

There are a 1,000 GB in a terrabyte, but that isn’t the entire story. Computers work in binary, not decimal like us. As such, it counts differently. As such, the right answer is that it’s smaller than that.

Ben also is having trouble with his XPlane flight sim. The graphics are dead and he can’t fly the program. Reinstall the hard drive is recommended by the Genius Bar. Leo wants to be sure he has Open GL and that his video card is OpenGL compatible.

Leo says reinstall the OS. That’s what the genius really means. It’s a driver issue, chances are. And reinstalling drivers on a mac is a tricky affair. So, replace the OS clean. But before you do, delete all the preferences for XPlane. Repair the permissions. Reboot holding down the Shift Key. That’s Leo’s 3 step voodoo process for mac.

Q Mark, Thousand Oaks, CA - Universal remotes. Harmony worth it?

Wondering if the Logitech Harmony 880 is a good choice for a universal remote control? Harmony is “THE” universal remote to have. You can program it off the web, it learns from your habits, and it works automatically.

Q Joe, San Diego, CA - Loses Data when he burns CDs for another PC.

There are two different ways to burn to CD. UDF (packet writing) and Write It Once burning. With UDF, it’s a drag and drop. But it isn’t a native format for Windows and you need a driver to do it. You must convert it (or close it) but you can never write to it again.

Find a packet writer driver and install it on the other machine to read it.

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