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Sunday June 20, 2010

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Posted one week after broadcast…

Tech News

Apple iPhone 4 smashes records, delays shipping

So many people pre-ordered the new iPhone that Apple is now behind on manufacture due to a shortage of retina displays. And anyone who pre-ordered the iPhone after the first day (last Monday), Leo included, won’t get their iPhone shipped until July!

Leo goes to E3

Leo went to E3 and found the Microsoft Kinect. He found it very interesting even though it won’t be available until November. Leo says it’s a lot of fun to play with and thinks people with families or who like to entertain will have a great time with it. Kinect uses a high quality RGB camera and sensors which read your face and distance in order to determine what you’re movements are. It also has facial recognition and will insert your avatar into the game if you’ve created one. Cool. It also has a built in microphone. Kinect acts as your controller which translates what it sees as your movements. But the games will have to be Kinect compatible. Leo also says it’s a lot like the Wii in style of games, only better.

Microsoft also introduced a thinner, quieter XBox 360. And Leo hopes that Microsoft has finally gotten a handle on the Red Ring of Death, which is a HUGE issue with XBox 360s. Leo’s had four of them so far and counting.

Nintendo also announced the Nintendo DS 3DS with Lenticular 3D (works a lot like those 3D covers you see on National Geographic). Leo says it could be cool, but it could also end up being a gimmick since you only get the 3D when you look head on.

Guests

Scott Wilkinson, Home Theater Magazine, @htcgeekscott

Scott is back! Today he’s talking about a very interesting recording session he went to last week. It was at AIX records and they record at High Def Audio at 96K/24hz. Is it noticeably better? Scott says it does when you have a very good sound system. You can really hear the difference over say, CD quality. And when you compress it to mp3, you lose up to 90% of the quality … and now we have an entire generation who doesn’t know the difference. What’s great about doing this (and he does record the band live), is that you end up with “mic leakage,” which is where the sound from other instruments leaks over to another mic in the session. It gives a much more natural recording. He’s also videotaping the sessions (some in 3D even!) and including them in CDs of the recordings. You’ll need a blu-ray player or DVD Audio player to enjoy, but it’s worth it. You can buy them at AIX Records and download at iTrax Online.

Chris Marquardt - Tips from the Top Floor, @ChrisMarquardt

Chris says he takes pictures with the purpose of deleting them later. Often, he just does it to practice his style and shooting much like an athlete who practices his sport. This frees up Chris to experiment, make mistakes and try things he wouldn’t normally try when wanting to take a “keeper.” Then, when it really counts, you have the confidence to get a great shot.

It’s great to practice image framing. It’s all about experimentation, especially when you’re not planning on printing or keeping the shots you “practice” with. Are we better photographers thanks to digital photography? Chris says yes because of the instant results. You try something and you know right away if it didn’t work.

Just a reminder, our assignment this week is “AIR, without Balloons.” Take the image, upload it to flickr tagged with AIR and join it to the tech guy group. We’ll choose three from the group to highlight on a future tech guy show later in the month.

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Hour 1

Q Phil, Urbana, OH - Wiping his old iPhone

Phil wants to wipe his old iPhone clean before he sells it on Gazelle. Leo says that Gazelle will wipe it for you, but if you want to be sure, do a complete system restore through iTunes. It’ll overwrite and reinstall the new OS. Leo also suggests starting fresh with the new iPhone. Doing a fresh start is always better, especially with a fresh phone. Then you can sync over.

Q Steve, Kansas City, KS - Recording in Windows Media Center

Steve is just now updating to Windows 7. Steve has a podcast and he wants to know if he can record in Windows Media Center and then output as an Mpeg. He also wants to record TV and then output snippets. Leo says that it could be a copy protection issue. Leo says to try using Windows Movie Maker to input the video, then you can output to Pinnacle Studio. Update to the latest version at get.live.com. It’ll transcode and could take a little time. Leo also says that Windows Live Movie Maker has really improved and it’s worth spending some time playing with.

Steve’s Blog and Podcast is called Prevuze.blogspot.com, where he makes fun of soap operas! Steve is also on twitter - @prevuzea

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Hour 2

Q Ty, Sacramento, CA - Fixing an old notebook

Ty’s Toshiba notebook has suddenly died. Leo thinks it’s just a dying Lithium Ion battery which has reached the end of it’s recharge cycle life. says pop the battery and keep it plugged in to see if it works. If it does. You know the battery isn’t producing the voltage necessary to power the laptop. If you replace the battery, it should start up again. If you need “codes” for troubleshooting, you can google search the code and probably find out. But in the end, Ty’s old Pentium M notebook is too old to fix and it’s time to move on with a new rig.

Q Sam, Austin, TX - Buying a DSLR

Sam is looking to update to a DSLR. Leo says the good news is you’ll probably be able to translate your older lenses to the new body (at least for manual). But if you’re starting from scratch, the Canon Rebel T2i is an excellent choice if you’re on a DSLR budget. The midrange 50D is great, but not full frame. If you’re really wanna go for it, the Canon 5D Mk. II is the way to go, but you’re looking at a body over $3,000. Which makes the 7D more attractive since it’s half that price for about 80% what you’re looking for. If you buy your entry level T2i and spend money on your lenses, then when you upgrade to a stronger body, you can use the better lenses to their fullest potential. Note though, that you will get a different look if you transition to a full frame censor as the focal length shrinks but up to 60%.

Check out this article by Scott Borne at PhotoFocus.com.

Should Sam wait for the 90D? Who knows when that’ll be out? Leo says that the 7D is a nice compromise that balances features vs. price.

Q Ryan, Agoura Hills, CA - Building a website

Ryan wants to create a website for his business and needs recommendations of where to look and how to build it. Leo says the current way to create a site is to use a content management sytem (CMS) which is built separately from the content itself. Themes are used and then you just create the content. Leo likes Wordpress, Squarespace.com, and upper level users can use DruPal, but that requires a professional hand. As for hosting, Leo recommends using a company that can offer both hosting and content management. Like Squarespace, Typepad.com, and Wordpress. All three have a “try before you buy” offer. So check them out.

Q Willie, Maryland - Recovering a computer after a blackout

Willie has an HP Pavilion computer and after a thunderstorm, his computer doesn’t work. Leo says that often during power outages, you get a power surge which can wipe your computer. You need a surge protector to guard against it. Leo also recommends an uninterruptable power supply to protect again brownouts as well.

Leo suspects that as the computer went down during the blackout, it wrote random data across the hard drive making it unreadable. You’ll probably have to reformat your hard drive and reinstall the OS. It may be possible to recover the hard drive using SpinRite to recover it and make it usable again.

Q Shreyas, Lakewood, CA - App development

Shreyas wants to get into App development, but all he has is a Windows machine. Leo says unfortunately, the only way you can develop for the iPhone or iPad is to get a Mac. Android, development, however, you can use to develop for Android Platform.

What about DragonFire SDK? Leo says that Apple has recently changed their terms of service which require Apple developers to use a Mac. But it may be possible since Dragonfire recompiles in Objective C, the language used to power the Apple platform. And Dragonfire is mostly for 2D games, so chances are, it doesn’t support the entire Apple interface. Other tools include Unity.

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Hour 3

Q Joseph, Santa Clarita, CA - System Mechanic

Joseph is interested in using the program System Mechanic. Leo says you need to be careful with it or any other “registry cleaner” as they can render your OS unusable. And some of the features are completely unnecessary in a modern operating system. It’ll defrag and repair the registry, though, and it could just make your computer unbootable if you’re not careful.

But isn’t a clean PC a happy PC? Leo doesn’t agree. A few errant keys in your registry isn’t going to hurt it, but taking out the wrong one, most certainly will. Leo says the best way to tune up your computer is to back up your data, then format your hard drive and reinstall from a known good source. And all it will cost you is your time.

Q Keith, Florida - Recovering a partition

Keith just created an Intel RAID for backing up all his music. But now it’s gone! Leo says that while the partition is gone, the good news is that the data is still there. Get a partition recovery utility. You may not have names for the file, but you’ll have the file that you can rename. Leo recommends EasUS. Another from the Chatroom is called Test Disk. And it sounds like it would be a great utility to put on a Boot CD disc. Often though, on a one time basis if you’re very nice and plead with them, iTunes will allow your to recover all your tunes if you’ve lost them. Just backup afterward!

Q Dillon, Cincinnati, OH - Making money with podcasting

Dillon has been running a podcast for three years and wants to know how you make money at it? Leo says that it’s nearly impossible to run a podcast to make a living. Leo says he charges by the listener (CPM) and is based by the number of people who download the podcast. Leo uses PodTrac for keeping track of that. Leo’s TWiT network charges $80 per 1000 listeners. That’s about $800 a week per show based on 10,000 listeners. And that’s high.

It really isn’t easy to make a living at it unless you bring an audience with you. 99.9% of podcasters don’t make anything, so do it because you love it or because it supports your existing business. A better option may be to charge micro payments or ask for donations. Use the PBS model and use a “tip jar” on the website. Or you could find a company to underwrite it if you’re doing a podcast for a specific industry.

Q Gil, Los Angeles, CA - Lost hard drive

Gil’s drive got overwritten. What can he do? Leo says that hard drives do die or have bad sectors and he recommends trying Test Disk and Spin Rite to test and recover it. This is a crucial reason to backup, backup, backup!

Q Frank, Los Angeles, CA - printer issues in 64 bit

Frank moved up to 64 bit XP Pro and now his prints on regular paper are terrible. Nice on photo paper, but on regular paper it stinks. Leo says that most inkjets won’t really give you a photo realistic print unless you use photo paper. But if it worked before, you have a driver compatibility issue. You need to update your driver to the 64bit model, you can get it from your printer’s website.

Q Karen, Malibu, CA - stalled security updates

Karen keeps getting bothered to install security updates for Office 2003 and she doesn’t have that! Leo says using the Microsoft Technote #304498 will give you some tips to troubleshoot the issue.

Q Kenny, Texas - Cellphones for the disabled

Kenny’s looking to get a new phone and is trying to decide iPhone or Droid? Leo says that Android is not very good at offering accessibility options. The iPhone, however, has a great reputation for being accessible to the visually impaired. Leo recommends going to an Apple store and talking to someone who can walk your through it and allow you to test it out.

Have a great geek week, and don’t forget to backup!

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