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Steve is trying to right click on an item but the right click is freezing. Leo says this is due to contextual menus which have features added to it by the program and it has a bug in it. Unfortunately, if you can’t figure out what is hanging up the right click, then it requires a registry edit, which is not for the faint of heart. Back up your registry first. Search for Shellex in the registry and search for contact menu handlers. You may not want to edit it, but it will give you an idea what programs are doing it.

Q Will, Glendale, CA - Video player stops playing …

Will suspects that Nod32 was slowing down watching video using a Fox video player. He installed the new Nod32 and now he doesn’t have Internet access! Leo says that this can happen when a Firewall prevents video from coming in on port 80. Also, it’s possible that a virus had attached to a system file and removing it damaged your access because the file it needs was removed. Leo says you should contact Eset and have them help troubleshoot the issue. You could also just disable Nod32 and “don’t do anything dumb” to reinfect yourself until you can get help from Eset.

That’s it for today, have a great Geek week!

Today, Chris will review photos from the Tech Guy group on Flickr with the assignment “silhouette.” A silhouette is pretty easy by having no light in the foreground with a strong backlight. Leo’s was of Henry looking over the french countryside.

Polar Bear Creations’ Aquarium 16 shows jellyfish. Chris likes it. Nice features, repetition. Leo likes that you can see some detail still.

Rosemary Risdale’s Ironing Board is simple and a perfect example of a silouhette that you don’t have go find, but is right in front of you.

Leo says that shooting silhoutte makes a photographer focus on geometry and also helps with establishing the rule of thirds when composing a photo.

Our next assignment … OPPOSITES!

Q Steve, CA - Right Click creeping

Steve is trying to right click on an item but the right click is freezing. Leo says this is due to contextual menus which have features added to it by the program and it has a bug in it.

Chris Marquardt - Tips from the Top Floor

Today, Chris is from the Tech Guy group on Flickr:

Q Adam, Bronx, NY - Adobe/Apple Flash for the iPhone

Adam calls in to talk about Apple and Adobe’s decision to work on flash for the iPhone. Leo says that’s exciting and means someday you may be able to watch YouTube or Hulu on the iPhone. But Adobe is also saying that it really isn’t that easy to get flash running on the iPhone. If they can play it back in h.264, it’ll run great. Only time will tell.

Q John, Playa Del Rey, CA - Excited about the Sony Vaio P

John just got confirmation that his Vaio P is shipping tomorrow. It costs as much as a full notebook, for the size of a netbook. But does it have a dual core processor and will it have trouble with Windows 7? Leo says no. It probably has an Atom Processor at 2Ghz. Plenty of power. Win 7 runs in less space. Anything that runs Vista will run Win7. So it’ll run fine.

Q Erin, Palo Alto, CA - JAWS answers

Not that JAWS. Erin heard about the caller who had trouble using “JAWS” which is stalling upon installation. Erin says rebooting the computer and just leaving it along for a really long time until it finished updating and installing got it. It takes extreme patience. For more information, go to the JAWS Users Group at http://www.jaws-users.com. There’s a tips and tricks page, links to the email subscription list, etc.

Q

Q Loren, Los Angeles, CA - Attachment he can’t open

Loren was having trouble yesterday talking to Leo because his Blackberry Storm was muted. We’re talking a bad design here. Can he disable the mute feature? Leo says not likely, but that he bets that RIM fixes that in the next version.

Loren also gets an email with a .CDB and can’t open it. Leo says it’s a clipboard file, but it could also be a cards can database. It could be comma delimited text that you could import into Excel or Open Office. Maybe even google docs. But if it’s a clipboard file, it may be tough to open. Try opening in Notepad and see what you can see. Perhaps you can clean it up.

Q Ryan, Malibu, CA - Thoughts on the super capacitor

Ryan says that a super capacitor, will aide in renewable energies like Wind and Solar which have start and stops in providing energy.

Q John, from the Chat Room - what about the MSI Wind?

Leo says it’s a nice little computer and for $10, you can get double the memory for it. It can run OSX (frowned upon by Apple, of course) Leo took it off after proving it can. It can also run Windows 7. Less than two pounds. 10″ LCD screen. Leo’s very bullish on them. Other good models include the HP Mini and the Dell Mini. Asus, which created the category, continues to put out good quality netbooks.

Q Lynnette, Dayna Point, CA - Learning about computers

Lynette wants to know if there’s a book out there to better understand a computer and how it works. Leo says the first thing is to be easy on yourself. A computer is the most complicated thing in your life so cut yourself a break. Leo recommends to learn your OS. Books: Windows The Missing Manual by David Pogue or the Visual Quickstart Guide for Windows.

Leo says you could take a class, but a computer user group may be a better choice. Often they have a new user hour before meetings so you can get some quality one on one help.

Q John, Palm Desert, CA - backing up

John is using Carbonite and wants to know if he needs another option. Leo says having at least two backup option is a good idea - one off site and one on site. And what should he backup? Leo suggests sticking to document and media files, not applications. This will filter out any potential viruses which have come on board.

Should he use AVG? Leo says the advantage of AVG is that it’s free, but the disadvantage of AVG is that it’s free, as well. No support, a little slow. Leo suggests NOD32 because it’s faster, smaller, lighter. Now as a disclaimer, they’re an advertiser, but Nod32 is very effective using heuristics.

Q Kurt, Camarillo, CA - ISP AVS protection

Kurt noticed that ISPs are advertising anti virus protection. So why does he need to buy an AntiVirus program? Leo says that ISPs only protect you against incoming viruses. But they won’t protect you against email attachments, website hacks that grab you or trojans. They will also filter out traffic that comes from rare ports that viruses frequent. If you choose to go to a suspect site, the ISP can’t help you and so you need an AVS for protection. So make sure you apply all patches and keep your AVS up to date if you choose to walk on the wild side.

He’s also having trouble playing his DVDs on his computer. It has trouble on the spin up. Leo says it’s copy protection that’s preventing you from playing the DVD in your computer.

Q Rick, Stephenson Ranch, CA - building a new PC

Rick is building a new PC using Intel’s latest Quad Core chips. He wants to know if he should use a solid state flash hard drive. Leo says they are getting faster and larger, but there is some concern flash drives can wear out.
For the capacities you want, the drives are too pricey at the moment. Perhaps later in the year, but for now, Leo recommends the Velociraptor Hard Drives. You could get one solid state hard drive for booting and apps, and then one spinning drive for data storage.

Leo says there’s an advantage to solid state drives in laptops because of their lighter weight and boot speeds. But they don’t save any appreciable amount of energy, which is ironic.

Windows 7 Ready to Roll Out?

Leo was reading the Windows 7 Development Blog and it looks like the development group is jonsin’ over how well 7 is running now. Leo agrees and wants Windows 7 out now!

Leo says that operating systems are so mature now that there’s no real “fins” to add to the structure, so Microsoft, and Apple for that matter, are tweaking the OS and making it run better. There’s an idea.

Guests

Q Olmer, CA - Energy Storage Technologies

Olmer wnats to know more about alternative energy storage that Leo was talking about in a recent podcast. Eestor is a company that has made a patent creating a super, or ultra capacitor. If it works, it could revolutionize how energy is used and stored. The device is essentially a kind of “super battery” which stores a huge amount of energy and recharges in seconds. Could this be the smoking gun the auto world needs, or more like is afraid of? But not just electric cars, but everything that holds a charge from cameras to laptops and beyond.

This morning, every single result from Google was flagged as Spyware. It was down for an hour and basically sidetracked most of the net as a result. Google’s story is that a “typo” brought them down. Leo got the news on Twitter. A simple “slash” on a list of bad sites caused every site on the internet to being listed on the site. It took and hour to fix the issue. It’s not the first time it’s happened, and makes Leo wonder if Google has too much power over the Internet.

Cellphones becoming more like computers

There are 6 billion people in the world, and 3 billion cellphones. With Smart phones like the iPhone, Google Phone or the upcoming Palm Pre, will they be the future of computing?

Google goes down …

This morning, every single result from Google was flagged as Spyware. It was down for an hour and basically sidetracked most of the net as a result. Google’s story is that a “typo” brought them down. Leo got the news on Twitter. A simple “slash” on a list of bad sites caused every site on the internet to being listed on the site. It took and hour to fix the issue. And it’s not the first time it’s happened.

Sunday February 1, 2009

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