Leo Laporte
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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday November 15, 2009
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
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Posted one week after broadcast… | |
Tech News
NASA announces Water Found on the Moon
The “bombing of the moon,” which happened a few weeks ago to great fanfare, has yielded some watering results! NASA has found what they call “significant amounts of water” (25 gallons) that was kicked up as a result of crashing two LCROSS probes into the moon. This is fantastic news for hopes in returning to the moon.
RickRoll iPhone Virus gets attention, isn’t widespread
The RickRoll virus is only going to hit you if you’ve jailbroken your iphone and have install a handful of other apps including SSH. The media is making hay of it, but Leo says it’s much ado about nothing for most who don’t jailbreak their iPhones.
Clicking links in Twitter will cause more trouble.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 smashes all records, even movies
First Day sales Tuesday of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was 4.7 million copies. Biggest opening in history. Gamers say this is the best first person shooter of all time. Sales even eclipse movie or even album openings. HUGE success. There’s a supurb online component which allows for game play with players all over the world.
Google Chrome OS should come out this week
Google is coming out with a new operating system based on their Chrome Browser and it should be out this week. Leo thinks it may be great for netbooks and older computers.
Geocities goes dark forever, upsetting historians
Many internet historians are in arms over Yahoo’s closing of Geocities and erasing a large part of internet history.
Guests
Chris Marquardt - Tips from the Top Floor
Photo composition and taking pictures of food. Chris says that photos getting out of today’s cameras are at 2×3″ these days, but in the real old days, photographs used to be round! The Kodak Box cameras (Brownies) had round pictures. Pertaining to food photography, you’re framing food on a plate - does the rule of thirds still apply? Chris says yes, sort of. You actually have a double framed image by placing the food on a round plate and then that plat in a rectangular frame. This makes for interesting composition choices. Adding more frames (like a place mat, etc) and you can have nearly unlimited possibilities. If you’re not sure how to frame things, imagine the empty frame and even shoot different images with different compositions to see what looks good.
Leo says you can get inspiration from painters who make still life’s. Chris agrees, and also thinks that the best inspiration for shooting food is cookbooks and food magazines. Where you put things and how they interact with each other is pretty universal no matter what you’re shooting.
Hour 1
Q Brad, Lake Forest, CA - Charging iPhone on a plane
Brad is traveling and wants to know if he can use a car charger to charge his iPhone en route. Leo says that newer planes are offering charging stations in seat, but the older planes don’t have that capability. Leo recommends checking out the iGo Everywhere charger. They have tips for just about every gadget you have and they can also be used for your laptop.
What about the USB port found in new card these days. Leo says all you need is to connect it via USB and it’ll not only power your device, but also allow you to play through your radio.
Q John, Los Angeles, CA - Managing Media
Leo recommends downloading trial versions of Aperture and Lightroom. These will help you manage and process what images you take. Leo likes Lightroom, but Aperture is more “macish.” Adobe Photoshop Elements is a great “next step,” for playing with the image and altering it. Should he just go ahead and get Photoshop? Leo says that Elements is great for most people. If you get more serious for photography, Lightroom is a better option.
Managing. If you set the programs not to import the pictures into a separate library, you can. Have an external hard drive to file the images, with date and topic. Then, when adding, make sure not to copy the photo but make a ‘reference’ to it.
Twitter Clients. Britley, TweetDeck, Seismic. All have the ability to expand Bit.Ly links so you know where you’re going before you click.
Q Jerry, Las Vegas, NV - SATA drives
Jerry wants to upgrade to Windows 7 and needs to upgrade his hard drive. It came with scuzzi drives, but will he see a difference in performance with SATA drives? Leo says that SATA is far faster, especially SATA 2.
SATA2 is 3GB per second, MUCH faster thank SCUZZI. You can also get a new SATA 2 card to add to your motherboard if it doesn’t support it. But SATA3 is also coming out, 6GB per second! Leo recommends the Caviar Black and Green drives. Even faster are the new flash drives, they’re pricey right now, but prices are dropping fast.
Hour 2
Q Ken, Suisun City, CA - Anti Virus question
Ken has a pair of Dell Laptops and McAfee is about to expire. His ISP provides free McAfee, good idea? Leo says that’s fine, but Microsoft Security Essentials is the way go to moving forward, and it’s free.
Q Rob, San Diego, CA - Cellphone dropping calls
Rob says that dropped calls drive him nuts because he has no idea the call has dropped and you’re talking to dead air and don’t know it. Leo agrees and thinks Nokia’s old “beep” when a call is dropped should be brought back.
Rob also wants to pick up a voice recorder. He wants fast startup with long battery life. Leo says the dedicated Olympus Digital Recorders are your best bet.
Rob also says preview.tinyurl.com/ will show you what the entire URL is before you click through.
Q Dillon, Cincinatti, OH - Heat problems with his computer
Dillon is concerned that his computer is overheating. And it’s causing rebooting. Leo says over heating is definitely the culprit there. As a computer gets older, cooling gets degraded with dust. Clean it as thoroughly as possible and verify your fans are running properly. Make sure there’s “flowthrough” where you’re using it. But age can also play a part in this.
Q Bob, Los Angeles, CA - New Macbook Pro recommendation
Bob wants to buy a new 17″ Macbook Pro, but isn’t that product due for a refresh soon? Leo says that the 15″ was recently refreshed and the 17″ was redone last January. It could be that Apple may announce new Macbooks in January, but Leo’s of the mind that the iSlate/Tablet will be the focus of Mac’s annual product announcements in the first of the year. But certainly within the first quarter Mac should be updating the 17″ Pro.
Hour 3
Q Jack, San Diego, CA - External Hard drives
Jack wants an external hard drive that can run on USB 1.1 “bus power” without an ac adapter. Leo uses Mercury on the Go. 750GB $199.
Q Doug, Overland, MS - Booting into XP
Doug has a homebuilt PC and his hard drive can’t find XP unless he puts the CD in. How bizarre. Leo suspects that when the installer installed XP, it’s looking for a driver that’s on the CD, not the hard drive. The Chatroom suggest checking your BIOS settings for the boot order being correctly assigned to the hard drive first. Also, it may be a corrupted master boot sector. Boot CD into command line and type “fix MBR.” This will fix it should that be the issue. Also check if your NT Loader is working. Leo suspects it may be corrupted. Can he upgrade to Windows 7 by upgrading to Vista first? Leo says go for the clean install. Run it from XP, the machine will see it, wipe your hard drive and then install to Windows 7. Trying to upgrade to Vista and then Windows 7 is asking for a world of hurt. Clean installs are always the best way to go.
Q Mike (MikeB), NJ - Psystar losing to Apple in Court
Psystar recently was nailed on violating the DMCA, with the judge granting Apple Summary Judgement and giving Cupertino just about everything they asked for in the decision. This means that Psystar will have to stop making Mac Clones soon, not to mention pay hefty damages. Is this the end for the Mac Clone movement? Leo says that Apple won in every respect in their suit against Psystar, saying that Psystar vioated the Copyright Act for reselling OSX. Leo says that Psystar may have been a trial balloon to see what the outcome would be for making a Mac Clone. No matter, the handwriting is pretty much on the wall.
Some were hoping Mac would lose the case, but Leo said that this is what was expected. Apple has a right and only if Psystar fights it to the Supreme Court, the outcome is pretty definitive.
Mike is one of our chatroom moderators and he’s always amazed how busy the chatroom is no matter what time of the day or night.
Q Rob, Santa Cruz, CA - Upgrading RAM or Buying a new PC
Rob has a Dell Dimension 8200 running XP. He needs to boost the RAM in his computer. He’s using “Rambus” RAM, which is quite expensive. Leo says Photoshop runs better with 2GB of RAM and it would be cheaper to actually buy a new Netbook than boost the RAM in that computer. But you really need something more powerful than that.
Time to get a new computer. You’ll not only have a faster more power computer than what you have, but will also be running Windows 7, which is a leaner, meaner and faster operating system. You can get Windows 7 professional and run XP virtually if you need to.
Have a great geek week!
