Leo Laporte
The Tech Guy
2–5p ET Sat & Sun
- Home
- Saturday Show
- Sunday Show
- Past Shows
- Audio Archives
- Stations
- Chat
- Watch Live
- Forums
- Tips
- FAQ
- Glossary
- Contact Leo
Sponsors
- Angie’s List
- Carbonite
- DSLExtreme
- ESET NOD32 Antivirus
- GoToAssist
- GoToMeeting
- GoToMyPC
- Make It Work
- Stamps.com
Leo Links
 |
For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the
|
|
Sunday July 4, 2010
Show Audio
|
Edited Audio | |
|
Posted one week after broadcast… | |
Tech News
Lost bars does not equal dropped calls with the new iPhone
Although people are noticing bars dropping when they hold the phone, are there more dropped calls? Maybe not. The bottom line is that the new antenna is helping for fewer dropped calls even if attenuation of the antenna is caused by how you hold it. And the only way to fix it is to put a case between you and the antenna. Luckily for Apple, they have a rubber case on sale for $30! THIRTY BUCKS?! But Leo admits, it works.
Meanwhile, Anantech agrees with Apple that in spite of the lost bars while holding it, it is the best antenna ever. And Apple says we should be ignoring the bars because they have been using an inaccurate method to calculate reception anyway!
Leo also says that the 5MP camera is easily the best camera on the smart phone market.
Guests
Scott Wilkinson, Home Theater Magazine, @htcgeekscott
Scott is back from his trip to New York for the CEA Lineshow. HOw was the World Cup in 3D? Scott was underwhelmed, and that’s key since live sports was the main selling point of 3D. But he also says he thinks it’ll get better as broadcasters learn how to shoot for 3D. Another issue they have to work on is that the horizontal resolution (done side by side) is cut in half since they have to send two images.
A few listener questions -
1) how to watch Home Theater Geeks live? Tune into live.twit.tv from 1:30–2:30PT on Mondays. How to submit questions live? Join the chatroom at irc.twit.tv, submit a question and pass it on.
2) From Matt - Matt noticed that most projectors don’t have accurate color temperature and contrast (gamma). Well, it’s more than that. Gamma is how the display changes the brightness from frame to frame as the signal changes. Scott says that this is what causes “shadow detail” in the better TVs. This is where you see subtle details in shadow and Gamma helps display those. In the old days of CRT, there was poor linear response and as such, an “inverse gamma curve,” was used to film content. And that needs to be compensated for an some TVs do that better than others. And it can be subjective as some like it to come out of black faster than others. Scott says the ideal is between 2.2–2.5. As for Contrast ratios, the bigger the better. Backlit LED HDTVs are the exception, however as they can be dimmed locally, giving you a real high natural contrast ratio.
Chris Marquardt - Tips from the Top Floor, @ChrisMarquardt
Chris is back to talk about doing vs. reading/listening when learning about photography. Photography is an experience and as such, trying new things is really the best teacher. And the great thing about digital photography is that it’s easy to experiment. This enables you, as a photographer, to get a feel for the medium - how light plays on the subject, how distance affects focus, perspective and how it affects photo composition.
Chris is building an app called “Pocket Chris,” which will help budding photographers to learn by doing.
Don’t forget your assignment - AIR - NO BALLOONS! Take a shot illustrating this and upload it to flickr, tagged and joined to the Tech Guy Group. If Chris and Leo like it, we’ll feature it on next week’s show!
Hour 1
Q Becky, Healburg, CA - Calendar apps in Android
Becky just got a new Droid to replace her old Palm Trio. She’s noticing that the keyboard is larger so she can’t type with one hand. Leo agrees and noticed that the keys are a little harder to type as well. But all in all, she really likes it. But she has a problem doing repeating calendar events. Leo says that the Android Calendar is based on Google Calendar. So you can set up your calendar on GooCal and create it there. But what if she needs a specific day (like every second Tuesday and Thursday). Leo says go to weekly, then check repeat on the specific day.
Hour 2
Q Bill, Santa Barbara, CA - SPAM
Bill’s Hotmail account is getting bounce back messages that his account is sending spam. Emails can be “spoofed” to make it look like it comes from just about anyone and it’s a very popular tool that spammers use to protect their identity. The other way is when a user’s account gets compromised and the hacker is using their account to send spam or even phishing emails. Just in case, Leo recommends changing your password to something complicated (random combination of numbers, letters and punctuation) that can’t be guessed with a brute force attack. Leo recommends RoboForm, LastPass, GPG and other password generators which also serve as a reminder of the passwords. Spoofing, however, there isn’t much you can do.
Q Brendon, California - Trolls
Brandon has trouble moderating comments on his site. Leo says “welcome to the Internet!” Thanks to the anonymous nature of the Internet, many get their jollies by posting inflammatory comments meant to ruffle feathers. They’re trolls. The best way to handle them is to ignore them and ban them. It’s like weeding a garden, actually. If you’re not vigilant about it, they can take over. Leo also says that using a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, etc., will enable comment approval options which will enable you to screen comments before they are posted. There are really good plugins called DISQUS and Echo from JSKit. The best guard is participation. A popular site builds community and guards against trollish behavior.
Brendon’s Site is called brendengeary.com
Q Mark, Santa Ana, CA - .me trouble
Marks phone is having “dotme” trouble with MobileMe. Leo says that in your iPhone settings you can sync various settings over MobileMe, but it can be turned off (Leo uses Google to sync and as such, it’s disabled). Mark killed the MobileMe account and now all the contacts are gone! That’s the downside of syncing, when you delete an account, it’ll sync out anything that’s missing from one side or the other, including your desktop. So you want to be sure you disable the Mobile Me syncing. Also, you can restore to a previous version. This is always a good idea to backup your address book in the Mac. If you can get one good copy of the address book, then you can populate that to other places like Gmail and Mobile Me so that it’s not only synced properly, it’s backed up.
AddressBook in the Mac already makes automatic backups of your contacts, so all is not lost.
Mark also has a ton of TWiT podcasts he’s going through, but he can’t listen to them double speed. Leo says you need to actually turn them into podcasts in iTunes in order to free up that feature.
Hour 3
Q Corey, Desplaines, IL - Simple cellphone
Corey just wants a phone that makes calls. He doesn’t want internet, he doesn’t want apps, and he certainly doesn’t want to spend $100 a month to make phone calls. Are there any normal phones anymore? All he really needs is voice dialing. Leo says T-Mobile has good voice only plans. One limitation may be the voice dialing. You can use Bluetooth, but maybe not voice dialing.
T-Mobile has many feature phones to choose from. You’d think that since most states require hands free use, that voice failing would be a regular feature. From the chatroom (web180) - phonescoop.com has a phone finder which helps find a phone with the features you need.
Q Andrew, Orange County, CA - Thoughts on Android vs. Apple
Andrew says that Sony Ericcson feature phones support voice dialing. Andrew also loves the new Droid phones. His company gave him the iPhones and he’s found them quite easy to use with Microsoft Exchange thanks to the new iOS4. Andrew says that he finds IOS4 a more secure environment than Android as well.
Q Logan, Placentia, CA - Ubuntu Linux & Wireless networking
Logan put Ubuntu on some old school machines he called about a few weeks back. He says it can see wireless networks, but when he tries to connect, it won’t. Leo says Linux does struggle a little with wireless networking. The reason is more that most manufacturers don’t make Linux drivers, so you have to rely on the community to develop drivers for it. The good news is that since Ubuntu can see the network, that it’s probably a driver issue only. Leo recommends “googling” Ubuntu and the model of your computer. You’ll likely find a workaround you can use. Another possibility is that the encryption you are using may not be supported.
Q Mark, AUS - Syncing birthdays in calendar/address book
Mark is calling the show via Skype using his iPad! Yes, his iPad! He’s decided to put his data in the cloud and so far, everything is fine except syncing birthdays to the Mac address book. Leo says the nice thing about Google Calendar is that birthdays will appear as a special event. The issue is if you can get them to populate. Leo thinks that you can automatically sync your address book/calendar in Snow Leopard. You need to add a birthday field to the template. Once that’s done, it should grab the data.
Q Ellie, Honolulu, HI - Facetime and the iPhone
Ellie says that the update to the iPhone for voice-over has really improved. Users can now do touch typing with voice-over, very cool. But how does the iPhone do Facetime? Leo says that you need WiFi, and if you have a person in your contact list that has an iPhone 4, you’ll see a Facetime button that you can press. The other way is to press a FaceTime call in the middle of a regular call. And Facetime doesn’t cost you anything because it uses WiFi only. Wouldn’t it be cool if Google had a voice app running in Android?
Ellie’s website is at GiantDolphin.com
Have a great geek week!
