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Sunday February 28, 2010

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Posted one week after broadcast…

Tech News

Apple admit child labor used to build iPhones & iPods

After investigating their manufacturers in China, Apple has admitted that up to a dozen children under 15 years old were being employed in China under substandard conditions and pay scales. Cupertino goes on to say the “children” are no longer being used and that child labor practices have been discontinued. Leo says that there’s plenty of room for blame to go around in that our demand for high tech items at a cheap price are part of the problem which drives towards sub-standard conditions and pay.

Leo says that many of these workers are living at the factory and choose to be indentured in order to send money back to their families. What is the answer? Do we have a social responsibility as consumers of technology to make sure workers who build that technology are protected and paid properly?

Guests

Scott Wilkinson, Home Theater Magazine

Scott Wilkinson chimes in to let people know that Home Theater Geeks will be preempted tomorrow for personal family reasons. He’s helping his mother move into an assisted living home after living in the same house for 60 years. But Scott will be back next week with reps from HDMI Licensing to talk about the future of HDMI.

Scott also found a new evaluation disk for HDTV. You may remember HD Basics by Joe Kane, and HD Benchmark disks. Now, there’s a third from IDT called HQV. Why does a consumer need HQV? There are several places in your signal chain where various signal processing occurs. Should your blu-ray player do it or your TV? One is going to do it better than the other and this disk helps you determine which does a better job. The disk will also test your HDTV setup to make sure your HDTV calibration is at it’s best. It’ll make sure your blacks are as black as they can get, give detail in images as fine as snow, etc. Cost is $24.99 for Blu-ray, $20 for SD, or you can get both in a set for under $40.

Chris Marquardt - Tips from the Top Floor

Chris wants to talk about getting your colors right today. When you shoot images where color is important - like flowers - or if you don’t get the skin tone right, you need to balance out the white balance to get it right. It’s all about color temperature. Here’s a few tips - 1) manual white balance. most cameras have a white balance setting where you can change the white balance to sunny, indoors incandescent, cloudy, etc. This will get you in the ballpark for color accuracy and is usually good enough. If you want to get more accurate, you can get a gray card for a few bucks at a photo shop and do a custom white balance - telling the camera that the gray card is “neutral.” This is also valuable for calibrating the colors on your monitor in your photo editor as well. But neutral white balance can actually kill the mood in your picture, so be mindful of that.

There’s also the Colorchecker Passport. It costs about $100 and it has a bunch of color patches on it. Take a picture of the card in the same light and software like Adobe Lightroom will create a color profile from it. Would it work with Apple Aperture? Chris says not yet. Although it should. Don’t expect it for different platforms for the near future.

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Hour 1

Q Jose, Zephyr Hills, FL - iTunes installer problems

Jose bought a new iPod Touch and now he has an error message on Windows pertaining to iTunes. Leo says that iTunes and Windows is a bad mix and it’s in Apple’s interest to support it better for Windows users. Leo says that the culprit is usually Quicktime. Leo suggests uninstalling all Apple programs, including Quicktime. Then, install Quicktime separately. Get the iTunes for Windows 64bit version. And Leo also suspects that your Windows installer may be broken. Leo says that you may also need to backup your data and reinstall your OS. But first, run your Vista installer and look for a repair option. Select repair and Vista will take a look at what’s going on and repair any corrupted files.

Q Susan, Boulder, CO - crashed hard drive/data retrieval

Susan has an external hard drive that’s gone belly up. She tried using Spin Rite to revive it. But unfortunately, her PC can’t see the drive. Leo says that Spin Rite will only work if the drive is seen by the PC. So if it doesn’t show up, then chances are there’s a hardware issue. But she plugged it into her Mac, which saw it. Interesting. She copied as much of the files as possible, but there are some files that she can’t read. Leo says those files are probably on bad sectors, which is what Spin Rite is designed to fix. It’ll read the data over and over until it gets it all. Leo says that Spin Rite doesn’t work well via a USB interface. So put it into a computer as an internal drive and Spin Rite should be able to see it and fix it. Is there a Spin Rite clone for the MAC? Leo says no, there isn’t because how Spin Rite works, it can’t access the same technology on the Mac (interrupts).

Is there a 32 bit version of Windows 7? Leo says yes, there is and from the chat room, they say that both 32 and 64 bit versions are in the same package.

What about changing hard drives with Time Machine? Not sure, but the consensus in the chatroom seems to be that Copying the files to the hard drive “touches them,” thereby changing it. Time Machine will probably see it as a new version and back it up. It’s possible TM gives it a drive ID.

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Hour 2

Q George, Houston, TX - Strange files on his hard drive

George has found more files on his hard drive than he thought should be there. Leo says you can see how your hard drive is used graphically called Windirstat. This will be able to let you know what those files are being used for and why.

Q Ryan, Minnesota - AppleTV

Ryan is a fan of the game Crossfire, which is kinda like World of Warcraft for the military. Like Counterstrike. Leo is curious if Diablo 3 is going to be cool. Ryan says he’s looking forward to it, along with Starcraft 2.

Ryan wants to know if AppleTV is going to be upgraded or even hackable. Leo says that Apple has always considered AppleTV as a hobby project and hasn’t really given much attention to it. It’s too bad, too, because it has tremendous potential. Sadly though, even with Rumors that Apple would even expand it to a real TV with AppleTV built in, but it never came about. Check out WeakKnees.com though. They have Apple TV upgrade kits.

Ryan’s Crossfire forum is at cfclans.com.

Q Bruce, Windsor, CA - partitioning a hard drive

Bruce wants to know if he can un-partition a drive without destroying the data. Leo says that Apple doesn’t provide for non-destructive partitioning. There are some third party options, but Leo’s tried them and didn’t have much luck. GPartEd is a Linux utility that will work on OSX HF File system. Backup first though.

Q Don, Anaheim, CA - Geostamping photos

Don wants to geostamp his photos and wants to know if PhotoMojo is a good option. Leo says it sounds like it’s similar to the Eye-Fi Explore SD card which does the same thing. There are GPS dongles like the Photo Trackr, which logs a GPS track every 10 seconds and then you marry that information to the photos in software. Leo also says that this is the future of photography as more and more cameras are coming with GPS built in.

Q Gino, St. Louis - podcasting hardware

Gino would like to do a podcast for his store, but doesn’t know what hardware to use. Leo says that what you use is greatly determined by what your podcast is about. If you’re going to show products, then obviously you need video. Leo recommends the Canon HV40 - the last Canon with firewire. You’ll need a Mac Laptop to edit with. If you have a PC, that’s fine, but Leo recommends Adobe Premiere Elements over Windows Movie Maker. You’ll also need good audio. Leo recommends a BeachTek XLR to minjack adapter. This will attach to your camcorder and will allow you to use quality microphones with XLR connections. The Shure SM58 is a great, affordable microphone for about $130. And some cheap lights. You can do a podcast for near free by Libsyn, for about $30 you get unlimited bandwidth. Posting on YouTube would be a great idea as well.

Q Jim, Dayton, OH - Cellphone recommendation

Jim wants to know Leo’s opinion of two dual sim cellphones. Both run Android. But they don’t run the latest OS. The Motorola DSTL or The Acer DX900 uses Windows Mobile 6.1. The downside of the DSTL is that it doesn’t use 3G, only EDGE, and T-Mobile. Leo says that EDGE on T-Mobile is SLLLLLOOOOOWWWW. And the Acer, looks clunky. Leos says that the Acer DX900 is probably your best bet since it runs the 3G network.

Q Bob, San Diego, CA - syncing data on smart phones

Bob has nearly 7000 contacts in his Palm PDA. He’s tried the new Palm Pre, but he can’t migrate his contacts. He tried the HTC Hero, no dice. Leo says if you can get it into Google Contacts, you can get it into just about any smart phone. Leo says that a phone doesn’t have a lot of memory and with that number of contacts, it’s going to be hard pressed to find one to handle that volume of data. A netbook may be your best bet. And it’s a good idea to move away from Palm as they are not long for this world.

Q Gene, Chino, CA - Burn in with his Mac?

Gene has noticed some “burn in” on a page he has been watching streaming video on his iMac. It goes away over time, but he’s really concerned it’ll ruin the monitor. Leo agrees with Apple that it’s normal. It’s called image persistence as the LCD crystals have a memory. But it won’t be permanent.

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Hour 3

Q Lenka, Nevada City, CA - Podcast advertising

Lenka has done a podcast for the disabled community and wants to know how to get sponsors. Leo says that the key thing is to build an audience. Advertisers need numbers. They need to know how many people listen to your show to know if they’re advertising dollars are well placed. And even with a good solid amount of listeners, the ad revenue may not be all that much (i.e., don’t quit your day job). But build your community, give them constant content, have a forum and website that drives traffic. Facebook. Twitter. Video’s via Youtube. You get it. Also, participate in other communities so people get to know you and what you do. You can talk to advertizers now. Leo uses PodTrac.

Check out this book - Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk. It talks about why now is the time to cash in on your passion.

Check out Lenka’s site at Mydisabilitycommunity.com

Q Claire, Lincoln Hills, CA - PC sound problems

Claire has to boot his PC more than once in order to get his sound working. Leo says it could be a power issue, or a driver that only loads intermittently. But if the power supply is weak, then it may be taxed when it comes to supplying power to the sound card. Think of it like priming the pump before the water actually flows. The other problem could be a “cold solder” on the card itself. This means that the sound card may need to “warm up,” to get it working.

But if the card is new, then that points to a software issue. Leo recommends going to the website of the card manufacturer and update the drivers. Go into the device manager and look at your sound card. If there’s a “!” mark next to it, that means the driver didn’t load. Also, from the chatroom, a Windows update a few months back caused a similar problem.

Q Vince, Redondo Beach, CA - Remote access of PC

Vince wants to access a USB drive from home when he’s somewhere else. Leo says the POGO Plug is the device that offers that connection. But you can also use the remote access function from a site like GoToMyPC.com which can access your PC when your away.

Q Louise, Tampa FL - Scanner trouble

Louise has an HP Scanjet that suddenly the computer can’t see. Leo suggests the first thing you try is to go to HP’s site and download the latest drivers. Remove the old drivers, reboot, and unplug the scanner (this is important because that’s how HP rolls). Reboot. Then reinstall the software and plug your scanner back in. Go into the system control panel and look under the hardware tab/device manager to see the list of all the hardware you have installed. Your scanner may have an “!” or “X” next to it. Delete it from the device manager. Then reboot and let the computer reacquire the scanner.

Leo also recommends changing the cable. Cables do go bad from time to time.

Q Nick, Indiana - Hosting a website from home

Nick has a spare computer that he would like to use as a server to host a family website. Leo says it can be done, but you need to publish the address in the domain name master directory. You need to run web server software and open your network to incoming traffic (risky). Also, bandwidth will be an issue as most ISPs offer small upload bandwidth, and most ISP terms of service specifically restrict you from running a website from your page. But you can do it. XAmp for Windows. You’ll also want to use a DNS that will keep track of your dynamic IP - DynDNS is what Leo recommends.

But if all your going to do is put up pictures and such, why not just post everything to Flickr or PicasaWeb? Let someone else deal with the hosting headaches.

That’s all, have a great geek week!

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