Leo Laporte
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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday August 9, 2009
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
Tech News
Twitter goes down again. This time as part of a DDOS attack
A concerted effort to derail one particular political blogger in the Republic of Georgia tossed Twitter offline this week, and greatly slowed down Facebook and a host of blog hosting sites. This is easily done by botnet’s, which are computers that have been co-opted and zombied without the computer users knowledge. Suspicion is that it may be the Russian Government that targeted this blogger.
Not only is this telling that targeting one person can derail this, but it’s also telling how poor the infrastructure is on Twitter.
Eric Schmidt leaves Apple Board
With Apple being investigated by the FCC over blocking the Google App for the iPhone, Google Executive Eric Schmidt resigned from Cupertino’s board due to conflicts of interest.
Guests
Dick DeBartolo, The Giz Wiz!
Dick is in studio with Leo today with a whole new batch of gadgets! He just got his first netbook, the Acer H1192. 2 lbs.
Widescreen. Can watch Slingbox. Built in camera and mic. REALLY neat. Spend another $50, and you get the 6L battery for 8 hours of battery life.
Leo says that Colleen has overclocked her netbook to watch Hulu full screen.
Dick also has the Casio EXFS10 digital camera. Hi Rez video, Huge LCD screen. Slow motion. EyeFi compatible. Great Camera. List $349.
Chris Marquardt - Tips from the Top Floor
Leo just picked up the Olympus EP1 and loves it’s retro look and feel. Uses Micro 4/3 frame, about 1/2 size of a full 35mm frame. Still better than a point and shoot and has interchangeable lenses. Doesn’t have a viewfinder, but you can get one to clip on top to the hot shoe. You can even get an adapter to use old OM1 lenses.
Chris wants to talk about Geotagging. Leo brought a geotagger to China which automatically logs as you go. Geotaggers are small devices that logs coordinates and time settings every 20 seconds or so and then you merge that geographic time data with your image in software. Some will even make maps and embed them on flickr. Pretty cool. Geosetter for Windows and Photo Linker for MAC. There’s even geotagging plugins for Photoshop and Lightroom.
The trick, though, is to sync the time between the camera and the geotagger. Some can “offset” so you can adjust as you go. A good trick is to take a picture of a clock with the date stamp of your camera and you know how much to offset in the software to sync it. Leo now uses an Amod AGL Geotagger.
Check out Chris’ Flickr Account here.
Hour 1
Q Angela, Nova Scotia - Geocities
Angela’s husband has a business that uses Geocities for his company website. What’s going to happen? Leo says that Geocities will close October 26th. Likely, he’ll be asked to join yahoo hosting for about $5.00 a month. To save his site and move it, here are instructions on how.
There are other free options out there which are more dynamic and content based. Like WordPress or Blogger. And this is an opportunity for him to go the next level.
Brent has a stereo that he likes the sound of, but his aux channels have gone out. Rather than pay to have it repaired, he’s considering spending that on an MP3 player. He’s thinking iPod, but he has multiple computers and he wants to sync to all of them, which the iPod won’t do. Leo says you want an MP3 player which works more like a hard drive. The iRiver P10 will do this. But Brent wants something bigger. Leo recommends the Archos, as it is the most open media player out there and the Archos 5 has a huge 60 GB hard drive (you can go up to 250gb). The Creative Zen is a good option. But Leo says the Archos is your best bet.
What about the Zune HD? Well, the Zune is a good choice, but the Zune HD doesn’t have an HD screen like the name implies. But unfortunately, it has the same limitations as the iPod in that you can only connect to the Zune software and only connects to one computer at a time.
Q Paula, North Hills, CA - Replacing a laptop
Paula’s daughter got a new laptop with a high end graphics card for graduation. It broke, and Asus can’t replace it with anything but a downgraded model. Recommendations? She’s looking at the HP HDX laptop, but it’s really huge. Leo says that you may have to be at peace with not finding exactly what you had. So prioritizing what you want will help. Hard drive speed isn’t that crucial. Get 4GB of RAM, a graphic card comparable to the GeForce 9400 or an ATI variant. Make sure you ask for a dedicated laptop.
But what about a MAC? Leo says, if you bought the MAC, you’d be out of the store already if there was an issue. It’s pricier, but in ad agencies, everyone uses MAC. Cheaper computers use cheaper parts and eliminate support options. Leo says that sometimes, it’s a “foolish economy” to get a computer that’s cheaper. When you consider the actual cost, there isn’t much a difference other than MAC uses superior hardware, is more secure in it’s operating system, and replaces defective hardware really fast. Why do graphic artists use Mac? Leo says that it’s largely cultural. Looks good. But the experience is also more positive.
But in the end, if you’re dealing with a limited choices for a free replacement, you gotta do the best with the choices you’re given.
Hour 2
Q Gary, Knoxville, TN - Organizing photos
Gary has a ton of photos and videos and he wants to know the best way to organize them. Leo says it’s called Digital Asset Management (DAM) and it’s a universal problem. Peter Krogh has written a great book called The DAM Book. Google’s Picasa is a good place to start and it’s free. Then comes Adobe Photoshop/Photoshop Elements. On the Mac, iPhoto Album. A little more serious is Expression Media by Microsoft. Find out more at Microsoft Pro Photo. You may not be a pro, but the issues you face are similar.
Q Darren, Pennsylvania - Upgrading to Windows 7
Darren made “The Switch” in a huge way. But he has one Windows computer left to update and he wants to put Windows 7 on it. Leo says the Microsoft made the upgrade chart very difficult to understand. Check out ZDNet’s simplification of it. But even if it says you can’t upgrade after March, that’s not entirely accurate as you may be able to do a simple text edit to allow the upgrade.
But make it easier on yourself. Do a clean install. Backup your data, format the hard drive, and install it cleanly.
Q Christian, Meadville, PA - Tethering an iPhone
Christian wants to tether and iPod Touch or iPhone to his PC so he can use his data plan to access the Net. Will the new iPod Touch have bluetooth? Leo says nobody knows, but there’ evidence it’ll have a 10″ screen as well. But how far away is it? It could be next year. The nice thing about a Touch is that you can have the iPhone experience without the phone. Verizon doesn’t really allow tethering though. You can get their MiFi EVDO card which has an EVDO modem and router in it. $60 a month, 5GB data cap.
Q Chris, Anaheim, CA - Makin’ the Switch
Chris is going MAC and DSL. What should she get, the Mac Pro or iMac? Leo says that the MacPro is twice as much as the iMac when you add a nice monitor. It’s very powerful and would be great for graphics pros. For home users, the IMac is the way to go. Elegant, simple. All in one.
Q Frank, Los Angeles, CA - Yahoo Mail
Frank is getting error 999 when accessing his email. According to Murrary’s Binary Bit Bot, this error happens if you’re accessing your email too often. It’s designed to prevent DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. Try clearing your cache and cookies and log back in. Follow the other steps in the link above to clear the error.
Hour 3
Q Chris, Virginia - error message
Chris is getting an error on his computer called a “G socket data lookup” while in Internet Explorer. Some people say it’s an incompatibility with the Google Dessktop Sidebar. It’s an error message for a programmer and really means nothing to you as you can’t do anything about it. Disabling Google Desktop is known to solve the issue.
Q Elle, Honolulu, HI (GiantDolphin) - Updating to the new Macbook Pro
Elle wants to upgrade to the new MacBook Pro with the Unibody design. Leo loves his. He likes how sturdy it feels. You gave to get used to no thumb button, but you do pretty quickly. And get the cheaper one without the dedicated graphics card. Leo’s tested them and sees little difference.
Q Mike, Hisperia, CA - Keyboard malfunction
Mike’s keyboard isn’t working right. Keys aren’t functioning. He tried another keyboard. Same trouble. That means it isn’t he keyboard. Leo suggests trying to boot into another user account. It could be that Windows is damaged and all you need to do is run restore from your Windows disk and run repair. It may also be a USB driver issue. You can also delete the USB devices in the Device mananger and then reboot. Windows will then recognize the USB devices and reinstall them. You may have also altered the keyboard definitions.
Have a great geek week and don’t forget to back up!
