Leo Laporte
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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday 7 September 2008
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Tech News
Apple’s new event coming September 9th. Let’s Rock!
Leo gets his Apple invite. Speculation is running rampant that Apple will announce a new iPod Nano with a larger widescreen to watch 16×9 film downloads.
Also iTunes 8 will be coming out as well. Will it go subscription with all you can eat music downloads for a monthly fee? There’s certainly interest in that, Zune, Yahoo, Napster. All have gone subscription, but with mixed results. So Leo suspects not. It’d be a pretty good deal though, except that once you cancel, your music collection stops working. So maybe Steve Jobs is right that people want to own their music.
There may be other stuff. Updated iPhone. Maybe a new sub notebook - MacAir? Only time will tell.
Here comes SPORE! Finally!
From Will Right, of SIMS fame. Leo’s excited about SPORE because it isn’t a “kill em all and let God sort em out” kinda game. It’s like the SIMS or Civilization, only that you create a creature and watch him evolve all the way to being a space fairing creature.
Available in PC, Mac, even iPod! There’s the Galactic Edition, Regular edition. You can preload the PC edition in advance and it will automagically activate tomorrow at midnight. Very exciting!
Privacy issues drive concern over Chrome
Google Chrome is a new browser which Google says is designed “Cloud computing.” It’s for web based applications like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheet. Based on WebKit, an open source browser engine. Nifty feature is that you can take any webpage and make an application out of it. Fast java. Will only crash tabs, not the entire browser.
The real reason, critics say, is that they can improve feeding us adds by watching how we surf the Net more closely. Even German Internet officials are flat out warning people from using Chrome due to security and privacy issues. The EFF is concerned that Chrome’s “auto suggest” feature is like a defacto keystroke logger.
Mack Kutz blogged about it, and he learned from Google that only if you search from the address bar will it be saved by Google. You can also turn off the Auto Suggest in the “Search Engine settings.” By default, only optional anonymous search results will be sent, and only after being approved.
The reality is that your ISP is probably saving more personal search history (per the FBI and Carnivore) than Google does. Chrome checks a list of phishing sites every half hour, updates every 25 hours. So there’s alot more to rely on than there is to be concerned over.
Still, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Hour 1
Q Roseanne, Los Angeles, CA - Trouble accessing her pictures
She has an old Mavica pocket disc camera. She wrote on the CD that saves it and now she can’t download her pictures. Writing on the reflective layer renders it damaged and unusable. You could try going to PCInspector and get both FILE RECOVERY and SMART RECOVERY. They may be able to read the information and get it off the disc for you.
Q Eileen, Los Angeles, CA - Photo to digital converter
She found a Photo to Digital converter on Hammacher and wants to know what Leo thinks. The bottom line is that Hammacher has some great stuff, but it isn’t the greatest quality in the world.
Leo says you’re much better served just buying a regular scanner. The Epson Perfection V500 Scanner. You can also then take the images to ScrapBlog and create virtual scrapbooks from them.
Q Scott, Los Angeles, CA - Laptop Recommendation
He wants to be able to enjoy the MAC, but also play PC games online. Leo says definitely doable. Walt Mossberg calls the MAC the greatest Windows PC of all time. Using BootCamp, you will be able to boot into one or the other. But understand that laptops have less powerful video cards than a desktop. So heavy graphic games will tax it pretty good. So check your tech specs for a game before buying a new laptop.
Q Mike B - Jersey - Our Chat Moderator - Got Spore
He got it last night and it activated at midnight. Like nothing he’s ever played before. You decide up front if you want to be a herbivore or carnivore. Then you make other choices as you evolve. You have two main goals 1) advance to the next stage 2) meet other species and several other sub goals to advance. Cross platform game so you can install on both PC and MACs. And you can interact with other creatures online.
Hour 2
Q Ian, Monroe, MI - Universal docking station for laptop
Leo doesn’t know of a universal docking station and recommends just going with one from the maker of your laptop. Belkin makes a universal docking station though, which also features “ExpressCard” technology.
Ian also wants to add a legacy USB feature. Legacy USB gives USB to devices that don’t have it. Leo says you don’t want to have it on all the time otherwise it may interrupt the USB capability of other devices like your keyboard or mouse.
The reason is he wants a more centralized storage server on his network. He wants to add a central drive. Leo recommends the ReadyNas. Great for RAID, or even just plan central storage. It also has built in media servers, so you can enjoy music, video, and all over Wifi. Nice.
Q Joe, Redondo Beach, CA - Router problems in XP
Wants to use a FIOS router. But his settings are messed up. Leo suggests going back and run the FIOS installer again. You may also need to reinstall Windows. Start from scratch. Also, make sure you have the latest motherboard drivers (especially the ethernet), which are important to connect to the FIOS router.
Q Tamara, Los Angeles, CA - Audio recording trouble
She wants to record audio live talk radio and then put it on her iPod. But IRecord Music is missing a LAME mp3 encoder. Leo says Tamara is having Codec issues. Codecs compress and decompress the audio. If you record in AAC or AIFF, you won’t need LAME. But if you want to make them MP3, you need a LAME encoder. If you want to make it WMA compatible, you’ll need Flip4Mac.
Leo also recommends putting all the radio stuff into it’s own category while setting them up in iCal, otherwise your iCal will stop working for anything else. If you don’t want it displayed, just uncheck it and it won’t be viewable. It’ll still work though.
Q Kurt, Los Angeles, CA - Networking his home
He wants to network computers in his home to share files, share printing, etc. Does he have to use Windows? Leo says that unfortunately, you have to stick with Windows. However the Network server capability has really improved under Vista. Check out Practically Networked for tips on how to solve networking issues.
Hour 3
Q Aaron, Orange County, CA - Storage options for archiving
Aaron has a ton of papers from school he wants to archiving. Leo says a good page scanner will work just great. If Aaron has a stack of binder type paper, get a “sheet feeder” and scan it. Small tiny slips of paper, those need a hand scanner like “Neat Receipts.” There’s also the PlanOn Docupen, but Leo doesn’t recommend it. You have to do multiple scans, you have to guess distance, and the scans aren’t all that great.
EVERNOTE is a great utility for storing it all online.
Q Jack, Petaluma, CA - Complains how difficult screens can be seen
Jack is an older geek and he hates how hard it is to read screens on just about any gadget these days. Black on black. Silver on silver. Tiny buttons and letters on the screen. Leo says that most technology is probably designed by kids in their 20s. Leo also points how that most gadgets do offer a high contrast mode which helps some. And it’s not just gadgets. Websites are getting hard to read for older folks as well. Which is rather foolish.
In the Chat Room, iDoc Mark reminds us that the MacBook is very good on “Zooming.” Almost infinitely. Leo also mentions the Jitterbug, which is a great phone for older folks. Large buttons.
Q Mark, Palo Alto, CA - Protecting a Mac from bad websites
He uses Tiger, but his daughter went somewhere she wasn’t supposed to. Leo says that Leopard has fantastic parental controls (on the Windows side, so does Vista). As for third party filtering software, it’s not a perfect science. OPT-IN internet options work much better. Leo also says that changing your DNS settings to Open DNS will help protect you as you can add internet filtering and block bad sites. It also let’s you to time internet use, hide profanity in the dictionary.
Q Lucas, Los Angeles, CA - Ripping audio cassettes
Lucas has a bunch of lecture cassettes and he wants to rip them. If you have a cassette player you can input from minijack out to minjack in on your sound card. Press play and then record in your software (we recommend Audacity - it’s free).
Needs a foundation to help getting computers into their classrooms. The Christina Foundation is a great foundation for taking old technology and making it available to kids in need. Also, contact a local waste roundup organization about taking those computers off their hands.
Q Rick, Rancho Santa Martguerita, CA - Backing up computers
He has several computers with multiple hard drives. Needs to backup. Leo recommends DROBO which you can network to the computers and backup. Or, you can use ESATA. Buy a cheap ESATA connector and then use an external sata drive to backup.
As for backup software. Leo suggests making an image of the hard drive. It makes a mirror image copy of the drive and you don’t even need an OS to install. Great way to set up your computer perfectly and then make an image of it. Norton Ghost is the best known, but Leo prefers Drive Snapshot.
Rick is also frustrated with one of his websites that don’t work on Firefox, only IExplorer. Leo hates that and suggests getting a better hosting service or designer.
