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Sunday 23 May 2010

Show Audio

Tech News

News Station Facebook Page disabled after critical over Facebook

Texas radio station, KNOI Real Talk 99.7 had their Facebook page disabled and banned for talking about privacy issues and linking to Leo’s show and Diaspora.

Leo is appalled with Facebook’s reaction to this and believes it is an attack on the free and open nature of the Internet, which he believes is critical to our nation and the world in general.

Leo has also decided to support May 31st as Quit Facebook Day. And it really is a shame, because Facebook is a great social network that has it’s experience marred by it’s tyrannical business attitude.

To permanently delete your Facebook account, check out this article by WikiHow. “Nick” in the Chatroom says he’s everytime he posts about thinking about cancelling Facebook, it gets deleted! “Notice,” also in our chatroom, took Leo’s challenge to post the WikiHow article and it got deleted almost instantly! Lew, from the Chatroom, did the same and it was deleted in a matter of minutes. Wow. Welcome to the Gulag.

UPATE: Seems Facebook has indirectly responded over at the Scobleizer:

Elliot Schrage, Facebook’s VP of Global Communications states: “I don’t know the situation with KNOI and have asked our teams to investigate the reason the Page was disabled. I can state categorically, though, that our policies would NEVER permit us to take down a page because of it criticizes us.”

He goes on to state: “I think it’s irresponsible to repeat an allegation that we begun to censor content — and that we’ve started by targeting the Fan Page of a radio station in Texas.”

Leo has reached out to Elliot Schrage on the show and via email to come on the show and explain stuff. So far, Elliot seems to be happy to just use intermediaries.

Guests

Scott Wilkinson, Home Theater Magazine, @htcgeekscott

Scott Wilkinson, Editor of Home Theater Magazine and host of TWiTs Home Theater Geeks, joins us every week to talk home theater.

Leo wishes he had Scott at Costco with him the othe rday as he bought a Philips surround sound system with wireless Subwoofer. But it sounded horrible! Leo says if you can’t listen before you buy, don’t buy. Scott also says that a giant warehouse isn’t the best for acoustics anyway.

Scott also says that some soundbars can give you a far better surround experience than a set of speakers surrounding your living room. This is largely due to DSP and “head related transfer functions” (how the sound bends and reflects around your ears).

A listener questions:

From Robert Able: They just got a DVR from Cox Cable. What’s the best to get? Leo says it’s almost easier to stay with the cable company because you don’t have to deal with IR blasters or anything. Scott agrees, but you don’t really know what’s good or bad. But two solid options are TIVO and MOXI. Both accept cable cards, which Cox does. Then your DVR becomes your cable box. Leo says don’t get him started on cable cards. The FCC required it and the Cable companies resisted and the FCC rolled over. So good luck there.

Still, the TIVO interface is fantastic. Leo agrees. But the new TIVO 4 UI isn’t that great, sluggish. The Moxi is nice because it doens’t take a monthly fee. But it’s pretty much cable centric, whereas the TIVO will work on all platforms, even broadcast.

Chris Marquardt - Tips from the Top Floor, @ChrisMarquardt

Chris Marquardt of Tips from the Tip Floor is back fresh from Everest. Chris says that what was interesting is that the thin air can wreak havoc with the camera lens. But he was lucky that it didn’t happen to his.

Leo says that the assignment yielded some great photos taken while Chris was away and here’s some for Chris to comment on. The assignment was TIME with no clocks:

Salton Seas Relentless Time is the first one. A time lapse shot which shows the stars moving along the night sky while an old, rusty trailer continues vigil. Leo also says the sepia color adds to the aged concept of the trailer. Well done.

Unwanted, from Badokun, is a good shot of “junk,” that has been left behind. Great lines, clear separation of background from foreground. Strong contrasts.

Finally, Time Travellers, which shows a timed exposure of an airport conveyor belt to give a time tunnel feeling. Showing motion. Nice job.

Our next assignment, Chris was inspired by his Everest trip: AIR with no balloons! Take some shots and post them to flickr, tagging them for “Air” and joining the Tech Guy Group. Maybe we’ll showcase it on the show!

Hour 1

Q Jana, Irvine, CA - iTunes library trouble

Jana has an iTunes Library that’s topping out over 100GBs. But after an update from iTunes, she only sees half of it. What’s up? Leo says it shouldn’t happen, but it sounds like the database wasn’t updated properly. Leo says the easiest thing to do is highlight everything in the library and deleted it - note do NOT toss them in the trash, you’re just deleting the library. Then, start over. iTunes will rebuild your library and you’ll be back in shape.

Q Thomas, North Carolina - Laptop drive encryption

Thomas is the director of a small organization and is concerned with security of his laptop. Leo says that’s a good fear to have. Laptops get lost and stolen pretty regularly. These days, most laptops have Trusted Platform Module chips which will encrypt your hard drive and some even have a fingerprint identification option. There’s also software solutions like BitLocker and TrueCrypt which give you whole drive encryption via AES 256 encryption. Once you log in, your hard drive acts as a normal drive. But if a person can’t log in, the drive shows gibberish. Couple that with off site backup from Carbonite and you’re protected should that laptop disappear.

Thomas’ charity is called “Ears to our World,” where they give teachers short wave radios so they can have access to information from all around the world. What a great idea!

Hour 2

Q Chris, Long Island, NY - Billing by eMail

Chris got a call from his auto insurance rep telling him that they will be handling billing of his insurance via eMail and if you don’t do that, you pay 10% more. Leo says that’s a foolhardy way to do business since eMail is far from safe. Leo understands not wanting to do paper, but then use a secure website and handle the transaction electronically and protect user information. But by email? Don’t do it. But if the bill is just an electronic notification that you’re bill is ready to view and provides a link, that’s okay.

Chris also heard that Google reads Gmail accounts email. Leo says that nobody personally reads it. That would be impossible. But they do use a computer program to read your email looking for keywords so they can insert ads to pay the bills. It’s not really understanding or cataloging the email. Just looking for keywords.

Q Lisa, California - Video Camera recommendation

Lisa wants to get an HD video camera for making fun videos of her friends. Leo says that young people like pocket sized camcorders like the Flip Mino HD. Leo loves the Kodak ZI8 because it gives you an external microphone jack and it gives you great results. Easy to use, easy to copy over. But remember it won’t really look like a Hollywood movie. But it’ll be pretty good. More higher end, is the Canon Vixia HF10. But understand none of these are truly hiDef. It’s video that has been upscaled to 1080p. Still, it’ll look good. Import it to 540p and it’ll look really good and save half the space.

Q RushNevi - Los Angeles, CA - MySpace

Rushnevi is curious as to why MySpace has crumbled. They have great music options, great social users. But why did it get trampled. Leo says that MySpace is still a great place for indy bands and Facebook users are moving back to MySpace in small numbers. But Facebook was instrumental to MySpace’s demise and MySpace hasn’t really been a credible alternative until now. There’s a reason people left MySpace, and they certainly have an opportunity here. But will their seize it?

Q Ron, Mira Loma, CA - Trouble getting help from HP

Ron has been having trouble with his HP computer and is getting little good help from HP. He’s had trouble with a wireless printer, then HP rep went into his PC and then he couldn’t use it at all. The bottom line is he’s getting no respect and now HP is saying his warranty has expired and they don’t have to help him.

Leo had an HP engineer in studio who stated that “everyone who works at HP represents HP” and handed Leo his card. Leo also said that Ron should still pursue it. Technically, they’ve been dealing with the same issue from the original warranty and since it hasn’t been fixed, they should be obligated to do right by you. Write to the CEO Mark Heard. Mention talking about it on Leo’s show and that you are not happy. You won’t get a respond from him, but someone from his office will respond to you.

But it also sounds like it could be a Windows issue and if that’s the case, it’s a Microsoft issue but this just underscores what happens when you have an issue which could be denied by both companies.

Hour 3

Q Ray, San Francisco, CA - Registry cleaners

Ray has been using C Cleaner to clean his registry and he’s getting a bunch of suggestions. But how does he know which one delete and which one will kill his OS if he does? Leo says that C Cleaner is one of the best out there, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make him nervous. It does. Leo’s not a believer that a registry needs to be cleaned. Cause if you get rid of something you need, you can break your OS. The registry is not designed to be edited so err on the side of caution and just say “no.”

Q Chuck, Riverside, CA - DRM with textbooks

Chuck is a student at DeVry and his text books are electronic files which require MyScribe as a reader, which “isn’t very functional” to be nice. Leo says that publishers are terrified that if they don’t lock down the book, that it’ll get pirated. But it won’t print. Leo says that’s another DRM measure. And what does copy protection really do? It teachers law biding people how to be pirates.

Q Mizbah, Torrance, CA - Facebook

Mizbah created a page on Facebook criticizing Facebook called “Mark Zuckerberg is cynical.” And it’s still there! Leo says that there are indeed many pages criticizing Facebook that are still there, but there’s no denying that some are being censored.

Q Pablo, Anaheim, CA - Vlogging

Pablo has a website and wants to create a daily video for it. He’s got the Kodak ZI8 , he wants to avoid buying another mic and wants to know how can he use his USB Snowball to it? Leo says you’re kinda going the opposite direction there to go from digital to analog. Is there a way? Not really a big market for that. Leo recommends the Rode stereo video mic. It’s about $100 and records in stereo. A lav mic would be good. One thing you could do is record your audio on the computer directly and just sync it up in iMovie. Might be tricky, but for a short video, just “clap” at the beginning to give you a spike in the audio to pin the audio to in the edit line.

Q Randy, Costa Mesa, CA - Issues watching DVDs on his new plasma

Randy got a Panasonic 58v10 plasma HDTV. But the his older 42″ Plasma is crisper, cleaner, sharper in every way. Leo says it may be you’re seeing more defects because of the larger screen. It may also be an upscaling issue when you’re playing regular DVDs. Best thing to do is get a good HDMI Upscaling DVD player. That’ll solve the problem.

Have a great geek week!