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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday February 8, 2009
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Tech News
AMBER McARTHUR IS A MOMMY!
Amber has had a baby boy and she Twitter’d it for all to know. Mommy and baby are doing fine and we congratulate her and her husband on a great bundle of joy!
Broadband access part of the stimulus package
Leo doesn’t usually like to talk politics on the show, but he thinks that spending billions on bringing broadband access to those who don’t have it is good governance - much like the Tennessee Valley Authority was in bringing electricity to rural areas. And it could bring a half million jobs.
MySpace & Facebook blocked?
The Maryland State Government is beginning to block Facebook and MySpace much to the chagrin of legislators who are using them to keep in touch with their constituents.
Congress votes to extend digital conversion to June 12
With over five million households being unable to watch TV after the upcoming
digital TV switchover and money running out for converter box vouchers, Congress has voted to push off the date until Jun 12th to give people more time to prepare for the switchover.
Guests
Chris Marquardt - Tips from the Top Floor
Today, Leo and Chris are talking about “light.” Specifically, direct and indirect light. Light coming from a particular direction and casting shadows can cause fits for the light meter. Great contrasts can cause trouble as well. So try and take your subject into an area (like the shade) where the light can be diffused and the contrast lessened. Try something different.
Leo says the “magic hour” like twilight or early morning light can diffuse direct light. Chris says it can cause long shadows, which bring out texture and be quite dramatic. A trick that a photographer can use to help identify the problems in direct light is to squint. Squinting eliminates detail and allows you to focus on light and shape.
Chris’ workshops are coming. Here in the US - he’ll be teaming up with Chef Mark, in Brooklyn, New York and they’ll be doing a cooking/photography class. Space is limited to 10 cooks and 10 photographers. For more information, check out http://chrismarquardt.com/
Hour 1
Q Chris, Wilmington, NC - Settings forgotten on his MAC
Chris is having trouble with his computer settings being “forgotten” on his MAC. Leo suggests to Repair Permissions. Open “Disc Utility”, click on the hard drive and select “repair permissions.” Sometimes can get changed due to installation or by accident. Then, go into terminal and change dimensions to 80×24 and click on “settings as default.” Also, delete the com.terminal.plist. This is the preference file and it’s probably been corrupted. Lastly, try logging in as another user (and empty non used admin). If it works, then you know your user settings are corrupted.
Q Connor, Toronto, CA - Backing up his Mac
Connor backed up his MAC but now he’s getting a library damaged error message in iTunes. It made him a new library and now he has duplicates of every song he has. Leo says that the index file (ituneslibrary.xml)is probably damaged. You can delete it, but you’ll have to get the album art back. Then, you need to remove the duplicates. You can have iTunes show duplicates, but you’ll be stuck removing them one at a time since they’ll show the originals as well. There are programs out there that can handle it like FixTunes. Then, you need to rebuild the library. Uncheck the “let iTunes organize your music.” This will prevent duplicates in the future.
Q Jill, Pittsburgh, PA - Music Jukebox software
Jill wants software that will automatically play her music. Leo recommends WinAmp or Media Monkey. You choose your music, create a playlist and select play and walk away.
Q Bob, Lafayette, CA - Back up solutions
Bob is reformatting his hard drive, but can’t get his encrypted files. Is there a program for that? Leo says that encrypted files can be made invisible to the OS or be seen as gobbledygook. Leo says make sure you aren’t turning on the feature which causes it to be invisible. Leo says that Microsoft’s built in encryption has a certificate and if you don’t backup the certificate you can’t un-encrypt the file. For backing up, Leo isn’t much a fan of software. But he does recommend SyncToy by Microsoft. It’s free. Other options are SyncBack. Unison. Second Copy. And, of course, having an off site option, like Carbonite, is important because just one copy of a file isn’t really a reliable backup. If you don’t have two copies (one on site, one off) then, as Alex Lindsey puts it, you don’t really have it backed up.
Bob also needs help backing up this Thunderbird email and settings. How can he merge his new email and backup email? Thunderbird stores mail in standard format, so you can import your old mail fairly easily. Just be sure to import the index files as well.
Hour 2
Q Jordan, LaVerne, CA - Delay using his game platforms
Jordan is noticing that there’s a delay when he connects his older Sega games to his LCD TV. Leo says the delay is due to conversion of an analog signal for older game platforms. Check to see if there’s a setting that allows you to turn off up sampling. Also, set your TV to a lower resolution like 480i. If your platform supports it, use an HDMI interface.
Q John, Nashville, TN - Podcasting & iTunes
John uses MyPodcast but he can’t get his ID tags to work right with iTunes. Leo says you can thank Apple for that. They reworked the RSS standard with arbitrary fields which aren’t part of the spec. Leo thinks that My Podcast just hasn’t added the iTunes extensions. You can create your own RSS. There’s a few programs which do that.
Going with a different hosts, like LibSyn which also create the proper ISS for you. They are cheap and offer unlimited downloads. It’s great.
Leo also suggests using Wordpress that you can put a link of your MP3 on MyPodcast and then Wordpress will create an RSS feed that you can pass through Feedburner which will turn it into a podcast feed. And now you have a searchable webpage.
John’s Podcast is called Medicine for Everyone. Check it out on iTunes.
Q Tom, Victorville, CA - Going to Windows 7
Tom has upgraded to Windows 7. Leo says that Windows 7 is fantastic but cautions that it’s still in BETA. The best way to upgrade Windows is to do it when you buy a new computer. Vista is now a solid OS platform, and Windows 7 is essentially Vista simplified and cleaned up.
Tom says that creating a second user but he’s having trouble with it in Firefox. Windows don’t close or resize. Leo says that is a rendering error and it could be a bug in the beta version of Windows 7. Leo says there’s a workaround and install your software in “compatibility mode.” Right click on the setup.exe file and choose what version you want to install it as.
Q Adam, New York, NY - Backing up
Adam just got a new eSata external hard drive for backing up. Can sync programs let you customize what folders to send data to? Leo says that all sync programs let you decide which files and folders to back up to. Leo recommends SyncToy by Microsoft. Other options are SyncBack. Unison. Second Copy. All free. And, of course, having an off site option, like Carbonite, is important because just one copy of a file isn’t really a reliable backup. If you don’t have two copies (one on site, one off) then, as Alex Lindsey puts it, you don’t really have it backed up.
Q Carlos, High Desert, CA - using Twitter for his business
Carlos has a business selling beef jerky on the internet. He wants to use Twitter to get he word out. Leo says that Twitter has exploded but many are spammers. Twitter can be a useful tool for business (see Zappos), but only if you are social about it. Make friends, talk about your life, and toss in business details from time to time. People want to do business with those they know. There is a book called that says that new business is conversation. But if you treat your twitter account as a spam vehicle, people will block you and you’ll just be wasting your time.
Q Tom, Glendale, CA - Changing disk partition size
Tom wants to change the size of his OS disk partition. Leo says that you can do it with Partition Magic. It uses a process called “non destructive partitioning” to do it without killing the OS. To be safe, you may want to make a snapshot of your hard drive using Drive Snapshot and then do it just to be safe.
Hour 3
Q Jason, Palo Alto, CA - Cleaning out your registry
Jason uses Clean My PC to clean out his registry and keep his PC healthy. Leo’s experience is that registry cleaners can do more harm than good. Overzealous cleaners can make changes to the registry can render your OS unbootable. So, whatever you do, back up your registry first (RegEdit can do it) before you clean your registry. Leo suggests simply starting over and reinstall WIndows every 6 months to a year.
Q Daniel, Los Angeles, CA - Trouble with shutdown
Daniel is having trouble with his PC shutting down. Leo says that Microsoft has a Shutdown troubleshooter that can provide technotes on how to troubleshoot your shutdown problems.
Q Chris, Fargo, ND - Trouble playing WMAs in WMP
Chris bought some WMAs and it won’t play on his Windows Media Player. Leo says that DRM is in play here. Leo hates copy protection. In order to play those, the program you bought the songs in usually has to run. Leo recommends converting them using the Analog hole - burn them to CD and then rip it back to strip the DRM. It’ll degrade a bit, but you won’t really notice all that much and it’s a far cry from that DRM hassle.
Q Thomas, Riverside, CA - he’s Vista, she’s XP. Any hope?
Thomas has a new dual core PC running Vista. His GF is running XP Home. The irony is, that her computer is faster than his. What is up with that?
Leo says that all the Symantec software is slowing him down. He should remove it. Leo suggests starting over. Back up your data, reformat the hard drive and reinstall. In fact, it may be a good time to try Windows 7.
Q Jay, NC - Cell Phone recommendation
Jay is worried about AntiVirus 2009. Will the popup itself hook into his PC? Leo says, not yet. The pop-up is an enticement designed to scare users to install the AV2009 virus. Think of it like a vampire that must be invited in to wreak havoc. On the other hand, if you don’t have all the Windows updates installed, you can go to a bad website and get malware installed without your knowledge. Also, turn off scripting (download “noscript” by Firefox).
