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Sunday March 14, 2010

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Posted one week after broadcast…

Leo broadcasts live from South by Southwest (SXSW) today in Austin, Texas!

Leo’s having a great time. Check out this video of him “crowd surfing” during a DiggNation Live event at Stubb’s BBQ.

Tech News

Leo does seminar on keeping kids safe online

Last week, Leo was a keynote speaker at a conference on keeping kids safe online. Leo not only shared some insights, but also learned a lot about not only growing up online, but being safe doing it.

Leo says that if you have conversations with your kids, and teach them, then their best Internet filter will be in their heads.

Privacy and online expectations topic at SXSW

Is privacy dead as Scott McNealy proudly proclaims? That was the topic of a keynote at South by Southwest this week. And although privacy is not dead, what today’s kids perceive as being private and public are a bit different. There’s a great book about this called Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.

Happy PI Day Everyone!

March 14th (3–14) is national Pi Day!

Guests

Scott Wilkinson, Home Theater Magazine

Scott wants to talk about our caller last week who used a midi trigger on his drum set. It’s an Alesis DM5 Drum to midi converter. Scott says that what he needs to do is plug it into a “drum brain” midi interface which plugs into USB.

Another listener question: Does the Sony XBR9 LCD TV have dodgy consistency in blacks? His isn’t very good. Scott says that it’s almost universal for LCD TVs that the black is inconsistent. It’s a limitation of the technology. LCDs work with a light source behind them and that light passes through the LCD panel of pixels. It’s inevitable due to this design that when black pixels are attempting to block that light, that it will differ from pixel to pixel and as such, you get inconsistent blacks across the screen.

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Hour 1

Q Neil, El Segundo, CA - Virus trouble

Neil says something has taken over his computer. He gets a popup that says he needs to buy software to fix his computer. It’s a virus. Leo says not only should you not give them a dime, but keep your computer shut down and off the net because chances are, it’s doing some nefarious things in the background.

Leo says that this is a new twist in virus design where they extort money from you. Your choices? You can bring it in to Best Buy or some other computer place and ask them to clean up the virus, but chances are, there’s way more viruses that have been “invited” in and taken root. The only certain way to fix the issue is to backup your data, wipe your hard drive and reinstall your OS from a known, good source.

From the Chatroom - don’t rely on the system restore either because viruses are now attaching themselves to that as well. Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.

Q Matthew, Alberta BC CAN - HDTV recommendation

Matthew is going to be putting a new HDTV down in the basement. Which is the best for that kind of conditions. Min. 40″. At 40″, it’s not very big for big screen TVs. Unless you’re sitting a few feet from the TV, you want a larger screen fro that home theater experience.

There are 42″ plasmas out there, but LCDs are probably going to be where you’re headed. Plasmas are typically heavier than LCDs, but their color is dramatically better in dark light. At 40″, the Sony V5100 came out on top in Scott’s testing. And it’s last year’s model so you could end up getting a spankin’ good deal on it. But act quickly, it’s about to be replaced with a newer model.

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Hour 2

Q Brad, Tampa, FL - Google Site Summaries

Brad gets frustrated that when he surfs search results that many pages don’t match the site summary Google uses. Leo says that does happen and it may be a deliberate inaccuracy that Google needs to be made aware of. It can also be out of date. Google updates as often as it can, but it’s not accurate from day to day, only when Google indexes the site.

Q Craig, Valencia, Spain - Switching to MAC

Craig podcasts about English as a second language. He has a partner who does the technology and they’re now doing video casts as well. He wants to move over to a Mac and wants to know about compatibility from his comptuer to his partner’s. Leo says there really isn’t that much difference between Windows and Mac anymore save security and gaming issues. And most programs that live in both worlds are quite compatible. There is a difference in line ending formats between mac/windows. Windows uses both (CR/LF), whereas Mac uses CR.

Craig uses Word, Audacity, and Premiere Pro for his podcast, Leo says the good news that all three are cross platform. Your biggest worry here is going to be the cost of buying the Mac overseas. About a 100% premium. Leo also encourages using a text editor like Notepad Plus Plus which will format it properly. Word can toss in odd characters that can throw off the

Q Cathy, Mobile, AL - Upgrading and reinstalling her OS

Cathy has an laptop and needs to nuke it and reinstall her OS. Will a recovery disc work? Leo says yes, recovery disks are safe because the viruses can’t write to a disc. Leo says it’s a good time to reinstall Windows. Should she upgrade to Windows 7 or just get a new one? Leo says you could get a new laptop, but Leo says that recovering your computer will put it back to the way it was the day you first got it. Then update the OS with Windows update and you’re good to go. And then, if you want to upgrade to Windows 7, that’s a good move. Also, check the Windows 7 compatibility checker, just in case.

Q Pete, Santa Rose, CA - photo editor recommendation

Pete need and affordable photo editor that will show him dimensions when he crops an image. Leo says that Adobe Premiere Elements is a good choice, but at $99 it’s not all that affordable to those on a budget. Free options include - Picasa. Paint.Net, Irfanview. From the Chatroom, Aviary is an amazing online option as is Pixlr and Picnik.

Picasa shows in pixels, and Paint.Net will do it if you turn on rulers.

Q Joe, Santa Clarita, CA - Low disc warnings

Joe’s computer is giving him a low disc warning with just Windows on it and it won’t even boot. Leo says that it’s possible that the hard drive is dying. They fail after awhile and the first symptom is flakiness. Leo recommends getting a newer, faster, larger hard drive.

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Hour 3

Q Wayne, Clearwater, FL - Protecting his computer

Wayne wants to know what’s the best option for protecting his computer, he’s been using Windows Defender. Leo says that times have changed and Microsoft’s Security Essentials is the best free option to protect your computer against viruses and spyware (and these days, there’s not much difference). Commercially, Leo recommends our sponsor Nod32.

Thing is though, software won’t protect you against your behavior. So you need to be sure to practice Leo’s Six Tips for Computer Safety. Keep your computer updated. Don’t click on strange attachments or opening files you don’t know where they came from. Don’t click on links from Twitter or Facebook, or even YouTube. Don’t install programs from strangers who solicit you.

Q Gene, Modesto, CA - Old macs

Gene just got a Powerbook G3 used. What can he do with it. Leo says not much. It’s so old. Leo says don’t put a penny into it. You could put memory into it, but it’s not worth the cost considering it’s going to be so slow. But getting a new macbook isn’t cheap. So if you’re on a budget, you could get a Mac Mini. That’s what Leo would recommend. You could get an iPad or even go get an Asus eeePC 1201N Netbook running Windows.

Q Dave, Los Angeles, CA - migrating Outlook

Dave just got a new computer and has moved everything over but Outlook. Leo says look for your outlook.pst file and copy it over to the new machine in your user account and then you will need to tell outlook where it is so it can access it. The only real good thing about Outlook is that it puts everything in on big furball of a file, so it’s easy to transfer over. The bad thing is, if that file goes bad, you lose EVERYTHING!

Q John, Kennowick, WA - Google Page rankings

John wants to know how does he get his website to show up higher on Google. Leo says page rank is affected by how many sites link to you. The best way to get people to link to your site is using social media to engage others. Talk to sites that have similar topics and post to their blog in the comments. Participate. The more you participate, the more people will engage and link back to you, the higher your search ranking will climb. And the better your content, the more people will come to you.

Q Dean, Long Beach, CA - restoring his data

Dean is the caller from yesterday who got bit by a virus from a phishing site that looked like youtube. He nuked his computer and reinstalled his OS. But now he’s ready to restore his data and wants to know if he should scan it first. Leo says that’s a good idea, but it isn’t critical. Data is just data and unless there’s a vulnerability - like JPGs have - that can embed something nasty, you really can’t get nailed.

Also, it’s a good idea to once you get your computer OS reinstalled, AND UPDATED, then run an image of it. Leo likes Easeus ToDo Backup. This will take a “snapshot” of your hard drive and then if this happens again, you restore the image and you’re up in minutes, rather than in hours reinstalling the OS.

Q Angelo, Rancho Cucamonga, CA - Organizing photo and movie files

Angelo has been digitizing his family’s photos. Now he has thousands of files. How can he keep track of them all? Leo says that Picasa 3 has facial recognition now and it’s very good at organizing by subject. It’ll even work with video.

But if you’ve scanned your images, they will be organized by the date you scanned them, not the date you printed them. So you’ll need to input that information manually.

And it’s free!

Q Michael, Los Angeles, CA -

Michael uses a SansaDisk 8GB player using Rhapsody. But he’s got problems that it keeps track of the information alphabetically, rather than by the Disc. Leo says that Media Monkey will help you organize and batch rename your music to keep track of it.

Q Joe, Miami, FL - Taping radio shows

Joe wants to tape satellite radio shows in stereo and burn to CD. A TIVO for radio, as it were. If it was broadcast, Leo would’ve said that the Radio Shark is the ideal solution. But you have to use a Sirius Device that does this since the radio signal is encrypted. A low tech way would be to connect a VCR to it if there’s speaker plugs.

Q Ray, Corona, CA - Playing Quake on a MAC

Ray can’t play Quake across multiple user accounts. Leo says you could try and use a different user account, rather than change your user in Quake. If it won’t, then it’s just “shockingly bad design.” Sorry, Ray!

Have a great, geek week everyone!

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