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For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
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Sunday 17 January 2010
Show Audio
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Edited Audio | |
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Posted one week after broadcast… | |
Tech News
Leo defends Google’s Nexus One against Apple Zealots
Leo joins the Woz in saying that the Nexus One is the best smart phone he’s ever used. And while Woz had to back off that claim a bit, Leo’s diggin’ in. But fear not, Mac heads, Leo has an open mind that tomorrow, Apple may reclaim their prize. But for today, the iPhone killer has arrived, and that’s a good thing for both Apple lovers and others. It breeds competition!
Phishing App sneaks into Android Market Place
For a few days, a phishing app. which looked like it came from a credit union was on the Android Market Place and was designed to gain access to user’s bank account. The app has since been removed and Google says all users are secure. But will this cause Google to create a vetting process?
Google pulling out of China?
Google has evidence that the Chinese government has been hacking Google’s (and others) servers in an effort to find information about dissidents operating in country. Google is so outraged, they are demanding China either change their laws regarding censorship of searching and other applications or Google pulls out completely from China.
11 MILLION raised so far by texting 90999!
In less than a week, 11 MILLION DOLLARS has been raised by the Red Cross through text donations. By texting 90999 with the word Haiti, a $10 donation goes to the Red Cross for the benefit of Haiti relief. And what’s cool is that the telecoms aren’t charging text fees for the donation. And T-Mobile is offering free phone calls to Haiti until the end of the month. Good for them.
Facebook flaw can give access to online banking
There’s a misdirected phone cookie through AT&T which can forward you from Facebook to someone’s online bank account. AT&T has announced that they are working to fix the flaw and Facebook has no comment.
Guests
Scott Wilkinson, Ultimate AV Magazine
Starting today, Scott’s Home Theater segment will be on Sundays. Lexicon gets busted for copyright and price gouging customers. Seems they were taking the $500 Oppo Blu-ray player and rebranding it as the Lexicon, charging $3500!
Scott has been doing a lot of testing this week, after recovering from CES. He also took a THx course on audio and video calibration and he says that calibrating audio if far more difficult than doing video because of room acoustics, what the room is built of, etc. Leo asks if you can really tell the difference. Scott says it depends. While there are bass peaks in a room, where the bass works well, there are also “nulls,” which cancel out the bass. And it really depends on the room your audio and video are in. How much does it cost? Video will run about $500, while audio can run into the thousands! Yikes! But movie theaters do it because it really makes a difference there.
Chris Marquardt - Tips from the Top Floor
Today, we finally get to reviewing photos from our last assignment: Iron Photographer, with “ingredients” of Natural light, something round, and texture. Here’s what stood out:
Our first photographer, MSCCOMPcreated this fun one. Note how you get all the directions of light showing at once. It’s gives a lot of texture, but you also see the cause and effect of the light coming from the window.
Next comes this one from PGERHARDT62. Leo says it has some extreme depth of field. And Chris says that the light is casting some great shadow, showing the direction of the light, and bringing out detail all over the image.
Finally, one of our moderators, Orbitgal, created this wonderful image of a spiderweb filled with morning dew. This creates a texture by refraction, rather than reflection. Very nice.
New Assignment: Iron Photographer 2: Heart, Motion, No Red. Shoot and post to the Tech Guy Group on Flickr. And Chris may choose your photo!
Hour 1
Q Devir, New York, NY - getting the word out on his youtube channel
Devir has a YouTube channel where he does videos about tech. He wants to know how he can drive traffic to his channel and get “eyeballs” on his videos. Leo says he’s already doing great by offering constant and excellent content for people to watch. So the next step is to get involved in tech-related communities. Go onto forums and sites like DIGG and SlashDot and participate. And when people get to know you and like what you post, they’ll want to see what else you do and go to your youtube channel.
Devir’s YouTube Channel is at thedevirkahan.
Q Dennis, Marina Del Rey, CA - Getting a new phone
Dennis’ contract is up, recommendations? Leo says that the iPhone is still king for smart phones, but the Nexus One is Leo’s current favorite. The only downside is that it’s T-Mobile. Leo says that every cellphone company has draconian policies and terrible customer service. But Verizon seems to stand out customer service wise. AT&T has improved customer service, but there’s a dropped calls issue and the 3G network is clogged often. Sprint is just terrible all the way around. And everyone who owns an iPhone seems to love it. The iPhone works great, but it doesn’t encode flash - what up with that? But according to Adobe, help is on the way. And for Dennis’ media needs, there’s really no better option than the iPhone.
Hour 2
Q Ken, Sarasota, FL - 5.1 audio problems
Ken can’t get sound out of some of his 5.1 dolby audio channels when he’s watching video on the web. No left/right. Just the headphone jack. Leo suspects a setting in your sound card which is preventing the card from encoding the Dolby signal.
From the Chat room - Getting new realtek drivers can help. Also make sure the wave input is turned up and on. Check your mixers. If you have two sound cards, flash may be picking the wrong sound card. Right click on the flash window and select “settings,” you can change your audio there. Uncle Bic 2 has a fix to try here.
Q Spencer, Alberta, Calgary CAN - TWiT Apps?
Spencer wants to know if there’s an official TWiT app. Leo says there’s a fan made app which works great for getting downloads, streaming and even chat.
And Boxee is making the Boxee Box with DLink which promises to pick up TWiT and other streams so you can watch them on your TV. YOu can also get it on Popcorn, Roku and others.
QJim, Palo Alto, CA - tagging for photos
Jim’s wife has scanned old family photos and would like to tag them for future reference. Leo says that tagging for photos is done via EXIF, but that’s mostly for camera information. There is an extended metafile data format called IPTC which is gaining acceptance and would be ideal for this. Look for a program that supports it. Google’s Picasa, and Flickr both support it.
Check out the Data Liberation Front for some other ideas.
Q Jeremy, Huntington Beach, CA - Improving Audio quality
Jeremy says that MP3 is pretty crappy quality wise. But why can’t they interpolate audio like they do video? Leo says that interpolation doesn’t make video better, it just imagines what’s in between frames to provide more information. It really comes down to garbage in/garbage out and there’s no way to make bad audio anything but bad audio.
There are some program plugins which can clean up a signal, but it has it’s limitations. There’s only so much information stored, and anything outside of that is simply a guess. So the more information you have from the get go, the better. You can always compress down, you can’t really go up. Too much has been taken out.
Hour 3
Q Charles, San Francisco, CA - iTunes problems in Windows 7
Charles was having problems on Vista, so he upgraded to Windows 7 and it solved the issues he was having. BUT. Now he’s got a whole new set of problems. Leo wants to know if he did an upgrade or erased the hard drive and reinstalled. He upgraded. Leo says that bits of the old Vista Operating system may be lying around causing the problems Charles is having.
Charles’ iTunes 8 won’t open on Windows 7, period. Leo says it’s not unusual. The key is that when you uninstall iTunes, you also need to uninstall Quicktime. Then, reinstall both separate (Quicktime standalone first, btw) and chances are, that’ll solve the problem.
Also, another way to check is to create a dummy account and install iTunes there. If it works fine, it may be one of your preferences in your account that’s causing the problem.
The Beer Podcast is called Beer Diplomacy.
Q Larry, Daley City - Carbonite
Larry loves Carbonite, but it takes so LONG to backup all the data he has. Leo says that’s because they work in the background, trickling it up-line until it has it all. Then, after that initial backup, it’s pretty quick from then on out.
Q Christie, Los Angeles, CA - restricting search engines
Christie has created a personal webpage for friends and family, but she doesn’t want search engines to pick it up. Leo says that putting a small text file called “robots.txt” in the root of your website files will prevent search robots from picking up your site. This puts the term “disallow/scan” that tells robots to stop what they’re doing and move along. Another good idea is to create a splash page and password protect your site so that only those with the password can get in.
Q Silvana - Making a photo collage
Silvana would like to make a photo collage but she doesn’t know what software to use. Leo says there’s some great programs like Shape Collage (works on both Mac and PC). It not only does a collage, but you can tell it what shape to put the collage in, very slick.
Have a great geek week!
