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Sunday July 18, 2010

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Posted one week after broadcast…

Tech News

Jobs dubs iPhone problems AntennaGate, blames the media

Blaming the media for over blowing the antenna problems with the iPhone, Steve Jobs called the issue “Antennagate” and vowed to give every iPhone 4 user a free case to solve the problem or take the phone back with no restocking fee. Leo says that what’s happening here is Apple is reeling from the tremendous competition thanks to a variety of Android based phones and the iPhone is just getting “long in the tooth,” and the new antenna design simply hasn’t worked. In fact, Bloomberg has reported that Apple has known of the antenna issue for a year and simply decided to live with it because they love the design.

After two days and 5 dropped calls, Leo said he’s had enough of AT&Ts poor phone service and won’t be using the iPhone 4 again. He recently got the Droid X and simply LOVES it. So there are many, many great choices out there.

Leo says that we have returned to being able to choose the carrier first, and then having great choices from a wide variety of great smart phones. So now, if you want a smart phone, you don’t have to settle for AT&T, especially if another carrier is stronger in your area.

But in the end, in spite of Nixonian posturing, Apple has done the right thing and it’s time to move on.

Windows 7 SP1 due out

Leo says that SP1 is a roll up of a bunch of fixes and if you’ve already been installing all updates every second Tuesday, it’s not a big deal.

Scott Wilkinson, Home Theater Magazine, @htcgeekscott

Listener Questions!

Ryan Knopp wants to get a 54″ Panasonic VT25 3D HDTV. Scott says it’s a great TV that’s “future proofed” for 3D and it’s 54″ size is great for that. Ryan also wants to get mid range receivers for now but the salesman says that could damage the high end speakers. Scott says that’s a load of crap from the salesman. However, the lower the impedance of the speaker the more power the speaker tries to draw from the amp. And if the amp doesn’t have a lot of reserve power, it could be damaging to the speaker. So keep an eye on the impedance rating of the speakers you’re looking at. And if the speakers are rated at 6 or 8 ohms, you’re okay. But it may not sound as good as it would with a better amp.

The Chat Room wants to know about “budget stuff.” Scott says that Ultimate AV Mag covers high end stuff. Whereas their sister site HomeTheatermag.com is more mainstream and covers other options, including budget options.

Steve Albright has an 82 year old father who has a hard time listening to TV shows. Because he’s hard of hearing, he’s having trouble filtering out dialogue from sound effects and music. He tried the Bose Noise Canceling headphones and they work to a point, but not completely. Scott says that most home theater receivers have individual level control on all channels, so you can boost the center channel and lower the other channels to pick up the dialogue. Course, that unbalances the sound for everyone else, which is why headphones are a better option.

Mike Polk wants to know if Receivers need to be “3D ready” in order to pass the 3D signal along. Scott says no, but it may need a firmware upgrade. 3D broadcasting has a better chance of being passed through since it uses the same bandwidth regardless, but Blu-ray uses a wider pipe and as such, you may have trouble.

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Hour 1

Q Naomi, Fullerton, CA - Prepaid cellular

Naomi wants to know what prepaid cellular phone is best for when she needs it. Leo says that almost all carriers do a pay as you go plan. The AT&T Go Phones are a good choice. No contract, prepaid limits. Decent phones. They used to offer an iPhone Go Phone, but they don’t know. Leo’s mom uses a Cricket, simple phone with big buttons, has a prepaid plan. So there are great choices out there for people who just want a basic phone. Leo says that in Fullerton, Verizon is a great option. And in the US, it’s best not to refer to the coverage map, but to ask your friends what results they are getting.

Q Brendan, Upland, CA - Paypal donation

Brenden has several projects in the works and has put up a Paypal donation link so people can help out. Leo says that’s a great idea and the projects Brendan are doing (space related, weather balloons and digital photography) are cool. But can Brenden do a subscription button? Leo says that Paypal has a subscription feature, and it’s a tad more complicated because it requires callbacks to the website, but it’s completely doable. Leo also says don’t do yearly because people forget they subscribed a year ago and demand a refund. Go month to month.

Follow Brenden’s adventures at Brendengeary.com.

Q Don, Corona, CA - Reinstalling programs

Don’s computer has died and he has taken his drive and placed it as a secondary drive in another computer. Are the programs lost? Leo says that most are. Some applications may be able to, but most Windows programs install stuff into the registry and once you lose access to the OS (which happens in this regard) you lost the ability to run the program and must reinstall.

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Hour 2

Q Logan, Mojave, CA - Video game trouble

Logan is having trouble playing Lego Indiana Jones 2 on his grandmother’s 5 yr. old Dell computer. Leo says that it’s usually a video driver issue that plague’s a computer’s video game performance. So, you’ll need to upgrade the drivers. Go to the Dell website and find the Dell driver. Enter the ticket number of the computer and the Dell Site will provide you with the driver directly. Another issue could be overheating. Overtaxing the graphics card could be overheating the game to the point that it just can’t go on. A good blowing out of the computer to free it of dust, can help it.

But please don’t break grandma’s computer trying to update the drivers!

Q Dave, Merced, CA - Cloud computing

Dave has terrabytes of photographs and video and he’s concerned about backing up those to the cloud. Leo says that amount of data requires broadband with high speed both up and down. And storing all of the data in the cloud simply isn’t realistic. Just focus on the stuff you’ll want to work on from another computer, or photos and videos you want to share. The rest keep on a backup solution at home. A good solution is the PogoPlug for that. It creates a kind of home server that you can access from the Internet anywhere in the world.

Dave is also using iTunes and editing tags. But the issue he has is that the tags aren’t being exported. Leo says this is a very important flaw in the iTunes setup. They store that, along with album art, to a separate XML file. So if you move your music, that information is lost. So you want to back up the XML and the ITL files so you don’t lose that data.

Here’s a great article from iLounge on backing up your iTunes library including meta data. The author also goes into pretty good detail about where the files and folders are and what those files mean and why they are in a separate file.

Also, go to file, library, then backup to disc command. But if it all won’t fit onto a DVD, you’re kinda out of luck. Leo also recommends copying the iTunes folder to an external backup drive. Check out CoverScout to get the album art with your music. Other options include Media Monkey and Double Twist.

Leo believes that companies should give you the ability to manipulate your data in and more importantly OUT of any utility. Especially when there is room in both MP3 and AAC files to include that information. But with Apple, that doesn’t work. Check out Google’s Data Liberation Front, which has as it’s mission statement just that.

Q Ben, California - Backing up Android Apps

Ben wants to backup his Android apps to his computer. Leo says some phones from Verizon come with backup built in. If not, you can go to the Android Market place and get a backup app to backup the APK files to your SD card. Also, you may want to check out AppBrain. App Brain knows what apps you have, recommends similar apps and can install apps remotely. Very handy.

And you can also make it social, following others at AppBrain to see what they run. Check out Leo’s AppBrain here.

Ben also just got the Droid X and loves it! Leo says it’s great with 4.3″ screen. Loves the 8MP dual flash camera with zoom. There’s a lot to like. Leo also says that Motorola’s Blur isn’t all that great - apps are alphabetic (Launcher Pro fixes it, but it’s unmovable). And for $20 more a month, you can get 2GB tethering. Ben also says that Easy Tether allows you to tether for only $10 via USB.

Q Doug, No. Carolina - AT&T and the iPhone

Doug says that the real reason Apple is having trouble with dropped calls is because AT&T hasn’t upgraded it’s network and it’s overloaded. Leo says that AT&Ts CEO has promised to move heaven and earth to improve their network, but Leo wants to know when it’s planning to start doing it. Leo also wonders if the design of the new iPhone is a challenge for AT&T.

Doug is also concerned with security with the Android phone since it’s open. Leo says it’s not really an issue so long as you are careful about what you install. It’s certainly not less secure then the iPhone.

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Hour 3

Q Don, Florida - AVS recommendation

Don is looking for a good anti-virus utility. Leo says that our sponsor, Nod32 by Eset is his favorite. Very light, but very effective. Keeps your system running fast and secure. And you can try before you buy.

What about anonymous searches? Is StartPage a good option? Leo says that you can search anonymously just by logging out of your Google account and Leo thinks that chances are, StartPage is probably getting their results from Google anyway. But there’s nothing wrong with it.

Don is also concerned that Uncle Sam may be peaking in. Leo says that TrueCrypt can help with that by encrypting your traffic.

Q Burt, Rancho Cucamonga, CA - PC rebooting

Burt’s PC shuts down and reboots and his desktop has no icons, etc. Leo says it’s possible that the computer may be showing Burt the second monitor as the main monitor. Go into the display settings and reset it. You may also want to disable the motherboard video card. You may also have turned off your icons. R/C desktop and turn them back on. Also, see if you’re logged in as another account that has no icons. Log out and re-log back in. Outside of that, you may want to try a system restore point by restarting and pressing F8. It’s a new feature of Windows 7.

Q Chris, Tampa, FL - backing up website servers

Chris has a website called We, The Candidates. And since he started, he’s been attacked, had his server and database destroyed. He wants a good off-site backup tool for his database. Leo says what a terrible thing to have happen and anyone who runs a website can have this happen. Backing up a web server is difficult, especially if a company is hosting it. You can probably pay extra for a vault service which backs it up. If you have command line access you can use JungleDisk to back it up. But it requires shell access. And backing up to a web server is no good at all since once it’s compromised, the web server backups get knocked out to boot. They need to be backed up to a different server and if they don’t offer that, it’s time to get a new host.

Q Dick, Silverado, CO - The Bottom line on the iPhone antenna

Dick is an antenna engineer and he says that a small whip antenna are far better than those fancy iPhone antennas. No matter what you do, when you hold it, it will change the capacitance of the antenna and detune it. Period. You want good reception, you keep those pull out antennas.

Leo says those phones were also analog and analog signals degrade gracefully, while digital antennas just fail. Was it an error to put the antenna outside the phone? Dick says it’s not a good design. It’s like a car with square wheels!

Steve Jobs says that all cellphones have this problem. True? Dick says yes, that’s correct. But the iPhone having the antenna external makes matters worse because you’re touching it.

Q Doug, North Carolina - Smartphones

Doug just got the iPhone 3GS after returning another phone and paying the $35 restock fee. He complained and AT&T not only waived the fee, but credit his account $100 because he was a long term user. Leo says that Phone reception will vary depending on where you live.

Leo says that customer service is going to matter as people choose carriers first from now on and customers now have choice and no longer have to put up with lack luster cellular service because they like a phone. Great Android and even BlackBerry phones are giving the iPhone a run for their money and in Android’s case, they’re BETTER.

Q Stan, Woodland Hills - Broadcast HDTV

Stan has great reception in HDTV because he’s placed a high antenna on his roof to pick up the broadcast signal and it’s free. Leo says that broadcast HDTV is the best kept secret out there if you are close enough to the towers. Stan also said that Congress should allow for building new towers so people in marginal areas can get better reception. Unfortunately the bill that was put up for that didn’t pass.

Q Mike, Torrance, CA - Popups in eMail

Mike gets popups for “Dr. Watson debugger,” when he sends email. Leo says you’ve turned on that feature in XP and you can disable it. Start-Run-DrWtsn32 click OK. Go into the settings and say “stop bugging me.” You can’t do anything with it anyway. Leo recommends stop using Internet Explorer and going with Firefox. Or just reinstall IE8.

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

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