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Geekcast Podcast - LiveJournal.com The Geekcast is a technology podcast that is never longer than 20 minutes. Hosted by all-around tech guy and self-proclaimed geek Aaron Crocco, the show has how-to segments, the latest tech news, hacks and all-around geek fun. For users of all skill levels, the Geekcast is a great tech resource.
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 (16mb)
Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:57:03 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #124 
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note:
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Tech news: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Test A Geek: Enjoy a new edition of Test A Geek
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How To: Opt out of unsolicited mail, calls and cookies
The New York Times a while back rounded up ways to opt out of solicitations online, from junk snail mail, to telemarketing calls, to Doubleclick web site ad cookies. Here's a quick list of each type of opt-out:
Phone solicitations: donotcall.gov
Junk snail mail: Direct Marketing Association: http://www.the-dma.org/consumers/offmailinglist.html
Email: "Whatever you do, do not respond to an unsolicited e-mail message when it gives you the option to opt out of receiving more e-mail. That is a trick used by spammers to confirm they hit a live address."
Credit card offers: OptOutPrescreen.com
Doubleclick ad cookies: Ad Cookie Opt-out
Lexis Nexis public database: Opt Out of Lexis Nexis: http://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/privacy/data/remove.asp
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Hack: Hide user accounts from the Windows XP Welcome screen
The Windows XP Welcome screen. Pretty pictures for each user account. What a nice thought on Microsoft's part. The only trouble is - I want to create an administrator account, and not have others tempted to try getting into it while they are on my computer.
When windows XP is not joined to a domain, it displays a welcome screen when it first boots:
The welcome screen displays all of the local users on the system, except the built-in administrator account that was created during setup. If we want to hide a specific user from the list, we need to create a special value under this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList
Under this key you simply create a new DWORD value - the name matches the users name exactly, and the value is one of the following (Decimal format)
0 - Hides the user just from the welcome screen
1 - The user is shown
Before you start putting values in this key, I want to warn you. This tip is particularly dangerous. If you make the wrong move, you could make it nearly impossible to get back into your system. Don't blame me if you hose your system!
To disable the users I want, I browse to the registry key on my system. Now I want to hide all of the accounts except one, so I add each of the accounts shown on the welcome screen, and give them a value of zero.
That's all we need to do. I log off, and now I only see the one remaining account.
Here's the big question. How do you log on as a hidden user? If you are running windows XP Professional you simply need to press CTRL-ALT-DEL twice, and the standard logon screen will be displayed. This has one pitfall - it will fail to work if a user is still currently logged in. If you are having trouble getting it to show, then reboot and press it twice before any users have logged in. Secondly, if you are running Windows XP Home, you will need to boot in safe mode to use the hidden account. The CTRL-ALT-DEL trick does not work for XP Home.
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The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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(13mb)
Wed, 20 Jun 2007 20:06:38 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #123
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note:
Enjoy "I Love My Mac" by Daphne Kalfon. You fan learn more at www.ilovemymacthesong.com Also,these songs are available in the iTunes Music Store, so be sure to check it out.
This will be a short show due to my hectic schedule.
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Tech news:
iPhone updates & Apple TV.
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Test A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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How To: Access wifi on the go
If you've ever been on the road with your mac and needed to find an access point, it can be difficult at times. You could use the airport menu at the top of your screen to check for access points but that is slow and it doesn't tell you the signal strength until after you've connected. An easier way to go is with iStumbler.
iStumbler is a wifi locator for OsX. The program is small but will detect access points wherever you are. The advantage of iStumbler is that it will not only detect wireless internet but you can also use it to detect bluetooth devices and bonjour services that are floating in the air.
iStumbler is small and not complicated to use at all. Once you fire it up, you can see all available networks, their security status and signal strength. The application is clean and blends right into the OsX interface.
Of course, iStumbler is free and can be downloaded at www.istumbler.net
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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(23mb)
Fri, 01 Jun 2007 01:32:03 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #122
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: There are currently no items of note.
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Tech news:
Microsoft announces Microsoft Surface. Microsoft on Wednesday introduced Microsoft Surface, code-named "Milan," more than five years in the making and the first in what the company hopes will be a long line of "surface computers." The Microsoft Surface tabletop PC, for which the company has created both the hardware and software, is controlled entirely through touch with no mouse or keyboard. To paint, people can pick up a paint brush or just dip their fingers in virtual paint cups. Sharing photos is similarly intuitive. A stack of pictures can be easily sorted through and shared. To resize a photo, just stretch two fingers apart. Pivot the fingers and the image rotates. More than one person can be interacting with the computer at a time. Although consumers will be able to touch it later this year, most won't be able to buy a surface computer any time soon. The expensive components required to allow multiple users to touch the device simultaneously give it a price tag approaching $10,000. As a result, Microsoft isn't targeting homes initially, though it hopes consumers can own their own Milan within three to five years. For now, Microsoft is focusing on getting the products into public spaces in the hospitality arena--hotel lobbies, restaurants, and casinos, to name a few.
Apple Introduces 160GB Apple TV for $399. In a press release announcing YouTube videos for Apple TV, Apple also reveals that they will be introducing a 160GB Apple TV for $399. Apple TV, which includes the Apple Remote, is available through the Apple with a 160GB hard drive will be available now for a suggested retail price of $399. The YouTube feature for Apple TV will be available as a free software update in mid-June.
Dell laying off 10% of its workforce. Today Dell announced that they're planning to layoff nearly ten percent of the company's workforce according to the BBC. The BBC doesn't get specific about where they'll be job cuts, but we all hope that the cuts don't come from tech support and customer service departments, as they are already looking bad in public opinion.
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Test A Geek: Enjoy 3 more trivia questions.
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How To: How to Add Music To Your Ipod Without Itunes
Many people I know who are thinking about buying iPod's love the unit but aren't too keen on working with iTunes. While it is a fantastic program, it does use more memory than we would like and the interface takes a little bit of getting used to; especially if you're not a mac user. Many people also believe that it's only for buying music and they have no idea that it's also a jukebox. For anyone looking to go a different route than using iTunes, these programs are for you.
What you?ll need:
First, if you haven?t already, you?ll need to enable your iPod as a portable hard drive. You can do this via startup key commands. Check your manual for more information. Once you?ve got that done, you?re ready to soup up your iPod.
Sync music and movies with Floola.
Floola is a freeware, cross platform application that lets you copy music and videos to and from your iPod from and to any computer. Floola lets you sync both audio and video to your iPod, which is a must for anyone with a video-capable iPod. Floola is actually capable of doing a lot more - like managing your music, playlists, and artwork, finding and removing duplicate songs, integrating with Last.fm, and playing your iPod?s music on a computer.
However, the important thing is that with Floola you can add music and videos to your iPod from any computer, and all it takes is a simple drag-and-drop. That means you?re no longer locked into any one computer or iTunes library. You can add music or videos to your iPod from a friend?s computer just as easily as from your own. And since Floola is cross platform, that means that you can put the Windows and Mac versions of Floola on your iPod and add songs from either a PC or a Mac.
To install Floola on your iPod, just download the OS-appropriate version and drag the app to your iPod. Double-click it and you're ready to go.
Foola is available for free from www.foola.com
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Sync podcasts to your iPod with MyPodder.
MyPodder is a freeware, cross platform program for downloading podcasts directly to your MP3 player. Although Floola claims to support podcast downloading and management, people have reported having trouble getting the podcast feature to work. When dealing with podcasts, MyPodder is by far the more robust solution.
In order to use MyPodder, you?ll need an account with the Podcast Ready web site. Then just follow along with the instructions for installing MyPodder to your iPod. After it?s all set up, you can run MyPodder off your iPod on any computer to update your iPod?s podcasts.
The current version of MyPodder does a great job of adding your downloaded podcasts directly to your iPod as it downloads them, so you don?t even need to use Floola to add those downloaded MP3s to your iPod. You can manage all of your podcasts from MyPodder.
You can download MyPodder at http://www.podcastready.com/download.php
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Play your iPod?s music on your computer with Pod Player.
When you?re not listening to your music on-the-go on your iPod, you can use the freeware application Pod Player to playback your music on any computer you plug your iPod into.
Pod Player is available from http://www.ipodsoft.com/site/pmwiki.php?n=podplayer.Homepage
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Hack: Mac tip: Sync iPhoto libraries across multiple machines.
Please note that the full instructions have edits to them at the end and the commands shown through the steps may not work correctly. Please reference the original article for any updates and corrections. As always, backup your data in case you make a big mistake. Losing digital pictures without recovery can be devastating!
Original article:
http://www.bettnet.com/blog/index.php/weblog/comments/mac_tip_one_iphoto_library_to_rule_them_all/
If you?re a Mac user whose family has several computers and you all want to share all your digital photos, you?ll want to check this out. If you have more than one Mac in your house, sharing pictures can sometimes be difficult. iPhoto has a great feature that allows other users on the network to get at the photos on your Mac. The downside is that the Mac would have to be running iPhoto whenever someone wants the photos.
Now the main component of this hack is to have a spare Mac as a file server. You can keep a duplicate of your photos on the server, run iPhoto on the server, and then others can access those all they wants.
First, you needed a simple way to synchronize the photos from the main Mac to the server. One Mac should be the primary repository for photos. To do this we will use the Unix terminal command ?rsync?.
(Warning: If you?re not familiar with the Terminal program, take some time to familiarize yourself with some simple tutorials online. It?s a powerful program that if misused, can do damage to your data. You?ve been warned.)
Your first stop should be an excellent tutorial at Lifehacker.com which covered using rsync when backing up files between a Mac and a PC. Here we?re doing something a little different.
Open the application ?Terminal? in your ?/Applications/Utilities? folder. At the command prompt, type the following:
rsync -azv --delete --exclude '.DS_Store' /Users/domenicbettinelli/Pictures/iPhoto_Library_1/ dombett@10.0.1.187:/Volumes/Neptune/Pictures/
That is the rsync followed by a series of switches and parameters. The exact syntax doesn?t matter, but here?s what some of it means. In the block of -azv, the first time you run the command, you change the ?v? to ?n?, which sends it as a dry-run, telling you what files would have been sent and/or replaced if it had been an actual sync. The --delete parameter tells the server to replace any changed files on its hard drive with the files from the primary Mac. The --exclude '.DS_Store' ignores those invisible little OSX files that are in every folder and don?t need to be copied.
The parameter /Users/(your name)/Pictures/iPhoto_Library_1/ is the path to the original iPhoto library on my primary Mac and dombett@10.0.1.187:/Volumes/Neptune/Pictures/ is the path to the folder on the server.
(This bit?dombett@10.0.1.187:?is found by opening ?System Preferences? and selecting ?Sharing? then clicking on the ?Services? tab. Now select the check box next to ?Remote login? and you will have enabled ssh, which I explain below.)
The first time you run the rsync command with the -n switch, you should look to make sure everything appears correctly.
*******Make sure that you do not have any spaces in your source or destination addresses. This could cause rsync to delete lots of data.***********
When you run this command, you will be asked for a password. This is the password for the ?dombett? account (or your equivalent) on the server. Remember it.
Now, once you?re sure everything is good, run the rsync command again, but this time replace the ?n? in ?-avn? with ?z?. At this point, the sync will begin and depending on how many photos you have, it could take some time. Be patient. The first time is the longest and after this, it should go very quickly unless you add tons of photos or makes lots of edits to your primary iPhoto library.
The next step is to automate the rsync to update every night. For this we use a built-in Unix utility called cron. But to put a nice easy-to-use face on it, download a utility called Cronnix. It offers a means by which we can have the Mac run a regularly scheduled action, whether it?s opening an Applescript or launching an application or, in this case, executing a Unix command.
Click on ?New? and then on the ?Simple? tab. Paste the rsync command you?ve been using into the ?Command? box. Then put in the time you want the command to occur. If you want to happen every day, click the check boxes for ?Day of month?, ?month?, and ?Day of week?. The checked box means ?every?, as in ?every day.? For hours and minutes, enter the time you want the command to be executed each day (using a 24-hour clock). In my case, I want the sync to occur each night at 11:30 pm.
Click on the ?New? button, then click ?Save? and quit. Now every evening at 11:30 pm, my iPhoto library will be synchronized with the server.
Passwordless ssh logins
There?s one problem though: Every time it runs, it will ask for the server password, meaning you would need to be there to enter it. Don?t worry; we have a solution in the form of passwordless ssh logins.
For the purposes of this tutorial, this is what ssh is. Entering that command in the terminal allows you to take control of another computer as if you were sitting in front it instead of your own, which is what we?re doing with the rsync command. Pretty powerful stuff, which is why they don?t make it easy for you to let just anyone come in and muck about in your system?s innards without being an authorized user. So what we?re going to do is tell the server that when it sees an ssh connection from this one computer, to accept it without demanding a password.
Here?s how to do it. In Terminal, type cd ~, Return, then cd .sshand Return. Next type ssh-keygen -t dsa and Return. Assuming you?ve had no error messages so far, at the next prompt type scp id_dsa.pub dombett@10.0.1.187:~/.ssh/Palantir_dombett_id_dsa.pub, replacing dombett@10.0.1.187 with the ssh info for your server we got up above in the rsync section. As for Palantir_dombett_id_dsa.pub, you can replace Palantir_dombett with your primary Mac?s hard drive and your user account. This is the public encryption key file for ssh.
At the next prompt, type ssh 10.0.1.187: (use your server?s IP address) and Return. Your prompt should change slightly to reflect the fact that you?re now in control of your server. Type cd ~, Return, cd .ssh, Return, cat Palantir_dombett_id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys (replacing it with the name of the actual public encryption key file you just generated.)
To quit the ssh connection to your server type ~. (tilde-period).
At all prompts for your password, enter your server password. If you?ve come this far without errors, you?re now set up for passwordless ssh logins. The next time the rsync command runs, it won?t ask for a password.
Automating iPhoto on the server
Of course for all this to work properly, iPhoto must always be running on the server, but when a sync occurs iPhoto needs to be restarted to recognize that its library has changed. It would be a real pain to automate everything else, but have to remember to go to the server everyday and quit and relaunch iPhoto. Happily, this can be automated too.
Open a text editor on the server, whether TextEdit or TextWrangler or TextMate or BBedit or what have you. Type the following into a new window:
#!/bin/bash
osascript -e 'tell application '"iPhoto"' to quit'
osascript -e 'tell application '"Finder"' to delay 20'
osascript -e 'tell application '"iPhoto"' to activate'
What this little file does is run a batch of Unix command that call Applescript from within the Unix environment to quit iPhoto if it?s running, wait 20 seconds to give it time to quit, and then restart it. That?s it.
Save the file as ?restart_iPhoto.sh? to your /User folder and then open Terminal. You need to turn this text file into an executable script so type chmod u+x ~/restart_iPhoto.sh and hit Return.
From the prompt, type restart_iPhoto.sh and Return. This should quit iPhoto (if it?s running), pause, then launch it again. Now to set up a schedule.
You could download Cronnix to this computer too, but here?s the Unix way of manipulating cron. In another text file, type the following:
#minute hour mday month wday sh
30 01 * * * sh /Volumes/Neptune/restart_iPhoto.sh
Substitute your own path/to/file.sh. Save the text file as ?restartiPhotocron?. Now, back in Terminal, type crontab /Volumes/Neptune/restartiPhotocron and hit Return. Type crontab -l to make sure that it went in correctly and you?re all set. Now, ever day at 1:30 am, the server will quit and restart iPhoto. Because this will run two hours after the rsync, this gives plenty of time for all the copying to be finished first.
Final steps
The last step is to turn on Sharing in iPhoto on the server. First, you need to open a hole in the firewall for iPhoto to see through, so open up ?System Preferences? on the server and then click on ?Sharing?. This time, click on the ?Firewall? tab. Check the box next to ?iPhoto Bonjour Sharing.? Quit ?System Preferences? and switch to iPhoto.
Click on ?Sharing? and then select ?Share my photos?. In my case, I chose to share all my photos (may as well since you copied them all over there), and then set my shared name to ?Server?s photos?. You can require a password for access if you want.
Go back to your other Mac, open up iPhoto, and if you have ?look for shared photos? set in your preferences, you should see ?Server?s photos? in the source list.
You?re done!
Epilogue and final thoughts
With a little experimenting, I?m sure this method could be adapted for iTunes and other programs that keep a library of files and share them out.
I?m also sure that some of these steps are a bit of kludge and that an experience Unix and/or scripting guru could clean my method up a lot (after he shakes his head in disgust at this mess). On the other hand, I had fun figuring this out on my own and learning quite a bit in the process, which is half the reason I do it. (The other half is that great feeling of satisfaction knowing that you were able to go from ?I wish I could?? to ?I did it!? )
Any comments, questions, and most importantly corrections and advice would be greatly appreciated in the comments below.
Update (Apr 9, 07 11:20 pm): I think the rsync command I'm using needs to be adjusted a little in order to ensure that it's syncing everything in the folders of the iPhoto library. This should work: rsync -azv --delete --exclude '.DS_Store' /Users/domenicbettinelli/Pictures/iPhoto_Library_1 dombett@10.0.1.187:/Volumes/Neptune/Pictures. You have to take the trailing slashes off the source and destination. The other problem I've encountered is if a user is still sharing the library, the program on the server won't quit. I need to find a way in Applescript to make it quit, which I'm sure is possible even if I have to resort to the brute method of a kill command.
Update (Apr 10, 07 5:14 pm): Jason advises in the comments that we should add the -E attribute to the rsync command in order to make all the proper Mac OS X metadata gets copied as well so that it would take this form: rsync -azvE --delete --exclude ?.DS_Store? "source" "dest"
http://www.bettnet.com/blog/index.php/weblog/comments/mac_tip_one_iphoto_library_to_rule_them_all/
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The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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(24mb)
Tue, 22 May 2007 22:57:08 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #121
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: Please note this is a corrected version of the episode. The original had minor audio issues.
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Tech news:
iPhone Pre-paid may be available. BoyGeniusReport.com has posted screenshots from AT&T's accounting system revealing new account codes for three versions of iPhone sales: PostPaid, "Pay As You Go", and "Pick Your Plan". While most phones are more expensive without contracts, Apple's iPhone is rumored to have tossed this business model out by not allowing the phone to be subsidized. This remains unconfirmed, but this means the $499 & $599 price should be the same with or without contract. This would mean that iPhones would be sold without contracts and it would be easier to allow users to buy and unlock their iPhones for use on other networks.
Music industry offers deal to small Webcasters. News.com reports that while facing an outcry over imminent royalty fee increases for Internet radio operators, the music industry has attempted a peace offering. SoundExchange, the nonprofit group that collects fees, said it would give "small" Webcasters the option of paying "below market" royalty rates on the songs they play. These rates are essentially the same as they are under a 2002 law called the Small Webcaster Settlement Act. "The net result of this proposal is that small Webcasters would be guaranteed no increase in royalty payments for 13 years, from 1998 to 2010," SoundExchange general counsel Michael Huppe said in a statement. Webcasters that fall in the "small" category would be required to pay 10 percent of all gross revenue up to $250,000 and 12 percent for all gross revenue above that amount. Those rates would hold until 2010 and be retroactive to 2006, SoundExchange said.
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Test A Geek: Enjoy 3 more trivia questions.
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How To: Remove your phone number from Google Search
Concerned about your privacy? One proactive step you can take is to remove your phone number from Google PhoneBook.
As you may know, typing a residential phone number into a Google Search bar (though not the Google Toolbar) performs a reverse lookup that lists your name, address and even a link to a Google Map of your address. Fortunately, Google gives you the option of removing all your residential listing information. All you have to do is fill out a short form and wait 48 hours.
Google Phonebook Name Removal: http://www.google.com/help/pbremoval.html
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Ask A Geek:
Frank asks: Is there a program to "fix" youre computer? I'm running windows XP and the problem started when i could not hibernate my computer. Then then i get an error with the explorer that keeps telling me to send or dont send an error to Microsoft. I already tried defrag and recovering but that doesn't seem to help.
Answer:
To go through these types of errors is usually difficult. On XP you can try the following:
1. Attempt a System Restore to a time before the problem happened.
2. Think back to when it began and try to see if you installed any new programs or hardware around that time.
3. Fully update your virus scanner and spyware scanners. Run full scans on your machine.
4. Scan and clean your registry with a fantastic little tool called TweakNow! You can get it at tweaknow.com/RegCleaner.html
5. You can use Hijack This! to try to restore settings on your computer back to factory.
6. I'm sure you did this but run Windows Update.
7. Try disabling hibernate mode and re-enabling it. Sometimes toggling it could work.
8. Verify your sleep settings to be sure that they're set correctly to allow your computer to hibernate.
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Hack: Top 10 Tweaks, Tips, and Tricks for Windows Vista
1. If you?re annoyed by Internet Explorer?s incessant barking that you?ve lowered your security settings, launch ?gpedit.msc? from either the Run command or Start Search field, navigate through Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Internet Explorer. In the rightmost pane, double-click ?Turn off the Security Settings Check feature? and set it to Enabled.
2. If Internet Explorer?s Information Bar also annoys you, you can turn it off (again) in the Group Policy Object Editor (gpedit.msc) through Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Internet Explorer / Security Features. In the rightmost pane, double-click ?Internet Explorer Processes? and set it to Disabled. Hallelujah!
3. There?s a Group Policy Settings Reference spreadsheet available on the web to tweak more.
4. Read the Background on Backgrounds (http://shellrevealed.com/blogs/shellblog/archive/2006/10/28/The-Background-on-Backgrounds.aspx) if you?re a performance junkie. Don?t set your wallpaper through Internet Explorer ever again. Now that Windows supports JPG wallpapers, there?s absolutely no need for using BMPs anymore.
5. If you insist on keeping UAC (User Account Control) turned on for yourself, you might care to make the elevation prompts a bit less visually jarring. Launch the Local Security Policy manager (secpol.msc), and navigate through Security Settings / Local Policies / Security Options. In the rightmost pane, scroll to the bottom and double-click ?User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation.? Disable it, and you can keep UAC turned on without the Aero Basic theme.
6. Vista can send you emails! The Computer Management tool can still be accessed by right-clicking ?Computer? and selecting ?Manage? from the menu. However, now you can attach a task to any event. Try navigating through System Tools / Event Viewer / Windows Logs / Application. Now, go ahead and select an event - then look to the rightmost pane and click ?Attach Task to This Event.? Name it whatever, describe it however, click through the next step, then in the Action step, you?ll see the ?Send an e-mail? option.
7. The Windows Task Manager gives you a lot more troubleshooting information in Vista. Flip to the Processes tab, and in the View menu, click ?Select Columns? and add Description, Command Line, and Image Path Name. Moreover, when you right-click a process, you can select either ?Go to Service(s)? or ?Open File Location.?
8. Open up the Date and Time Control Panel applet. Flip to the ?Additional Clocks? tab. There, you can configure two more clocks from different time zones. They?ll appear in the tooltip when you hover over the Taskbar clock. No additional software is necessary.
9. Applicable in other versions of Windows, create a shortcut to RegSvr32.exe in your SendTo folder. To get there quickly, enter ?shell:sendto? in the Run command dialog or Start Search field. Now, when you want to register a DLL or OCX file with the system, you can select it/them and ?Send To? the RegSvr32 shortcut.
10. It doesn?t beat Picasa, but the Windows Photo Gallery is better than nothing. Once it?s indexed all your photos, click the icon next to the Search field and turn on the ?Table of Contents.?
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Bonus Second hack:
How-To: play DivX and Xvid on your Apple TV
The two biggest Apple TV limitations are the lack of codec support (like XviD, DivX, etc.) and not even having the ability to do basic surround sound like Dolby Digital 5.1. These issues were resolved almost immediately after the Apple TV was released, although the hacks were somewhat less than practical. Something as simple as getting your Apple TV to, say, sync and recognize your XviD movies as playable was no simple feat. Thankfully, that's no longer the case.
Warning: you're about to potentially void your warranty!
First download the following files via: http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/10/how-to-play-divx-and-xvid-on-your-apple-tv/
Download - ATVFiles plugin.
Download - Perian, the swiss army knife of QuickTime codecs.
Download - A52Codec, an AC3 codec.
Download - Custom ssh.plist file to start sshd automatically.
Optional
Download - Fugu, a nice OS X GUI to transfer files to the Apple TV.
Download - WinSCP to a nice Windows GUI to transfer files to the Apple TV.
Download - If you don't have an Intel Mac, you will need this Intel version of sshd.
Materials needed:
A Mac.
We are going to do this in two steps. For those who do and do not already have SSH enabled. So if you've got SSH running on your Apple TV, skip ahead to the next section.
Enable SSH on the Apple TV (requires a Mac)
Remove the drive and plug it into a Mac, then launch Terminal. Our first command is going to copy the Intel version of ssh daemon from our Mac to the ATV drive. If you are on a Intel Mac copy it from your sbin directory to the ATV's OSBoot/usr/sbin/ directory. If your browser causes the line to wrap be sure to enter it on one line in the Terminal.
sudo cp /usr/sbin/sshd /Volumes/OSBoot/usr/sbin/
You can also copy it from your downloads directory:
cp /Users/Engadget/Downloads/sshd /Volumes/OSBoot/usr/sbin/
Make sure sshd is executable
sudo chmod +x /Volumes/OSBoot/usr/sbin/sshd
Backup the original ssh.plist to our home directory:
cp /Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist ~
Now copy the new one from our downloads directory to the Apple TV drive:
cp /Users/Engadget/Downloads/ssh.plist /Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/
Before we dismount the drive to reinstall into the Apple TV, let us see if we need to clean up after Spotlight again. Perform these command and check if the .Spotlight files are on the partitions by typing:
ls -a /Volumes/Media
and
ls -a /Volumes/OSBoot
Now, if you do see those .Spotlight files, use the following command to remove them. But be careful, this is the dreaded rm -rf command, which has the potential to ruin everything.
sudo rm -rf /Volumes/OSBoot/.Spotlight-V100
or
sudo rm -rf /Volumes/Media/.Spotlight-V100
Now dismount the drive and install it in your Apple TV. From here on out you can use a PC on this if you so choose.
Test it by signing in via terminal. (The password is frontrow.)
ssh -1 frontrow@AppleTV.local
That should get you in. Now we can install the programs.
Adding additional QuickTime components.
Before we can start copying files we need to ssh into the Apple TV and mark the volume as read / write. A few times we will use sudo (as in sudo make me a sandwich) and a password will be requested; it's also frontrow. From the terminal, ssh to the Apple TV:
ssh -1 frontrow@AppleTV.local
Now remount root as read / write. (Enter frontrow for the password.)
sudo mount -o remount,rw /dev/disk0s3 /
At this point you can use Fugu (our scp file transfer frontend) if you prefer. Otherwise, use the commandline scp to copy the following files to the Apple TV. But before you can preform this step you need to mount all the DMGs you downloaded and uncompress ATFiles so you can have the necessary files handy.
Now, copy the ATVFiles plugin, Perian and AC3 QuickTime components to the Apple TV. (As always, depending on the location of these files your command will differ.)
scp -1 -r /Users/Engadget/Downloads/ATVFiles-0.2.1/ATVFiles.frappliance/ frontrow@AppleTV.local:~
scp -1 -r /Volumes/Perian\ 0.5/Perian.component frontrow@AppleTV.local:~
scp -1 -r /Volumes/A52Codec\ 1.7.2/A52Codec.component frontrow@AppleTV.local:~
If you have the MPEG-2 QuickTime component then you can copy that too, but otherwise it's probably not worth the $20.
scp -1 -r /System/Library/QuickTime/QuickTimeMPEG2.component/ frontrow@AppleTV.local:~
Now we need to use ssh to move the files to the proper directory so QuickTime can find them.
ssh -1 frontrow@AppleTV.local
sudo mv ATVFiles.frappliance/ /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns
sudo mv Perian.component/ /Library/QuickTime/
sudo mv A52Codec.component/ /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/Components/
sudo mv QuickTimeMPEG2.component/ /System/Library/QuickTime/
Now we need to restart Finder so it will load the plugin, you could pull the power (easy way) or you could run a couple commands (slightly less easy way). Here those are, if you're paranoid about unplugging your unit; find the pid to kill:
ps ax | grep Finder
This will return a line with the pid for finder.
Now kill Finder's pid. (Ours was 512 when we wrote this.)
kill 512
After Finder restarts we will see a new menu item named Files, which allows us to play movies stored in /Users/frontrow/Movies on the Apple TV. So we'll copy a movie there, shall we? (Again you can use scp, or Fugu if you prefer.)
scp -1 ~/Movies/Gothika_480p_XviD.avi frontrow@AppleTV.local:~/Movies/
All you have to do is select the clip to play from the files menu.
You're AppleTV is all set now!
Full instructions w/ pix are available at: http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/10/how-to-play-divx-and-xvid-on-your-apple-tv
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The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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(100mb)
Tue, 08 May 2007 00:55:40 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast Video Review #2
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: Enjoy a video review of the new iPod game iQuiz. It costs only $0.99 and is available from the iTunes Store.
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Tech news: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Test a geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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How To: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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(14mb)
Sat, 28 Apr 2007 00:26:29 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #120
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: There are currently no items of note.
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Tech news:
Apple rumored to be working on iWeb Pro. According to an unconfirmed report via macrumors.com, Apple is working on a higher end web authoring application to complement iWeb. "iWeb Pro" is said to offer an easy to use web authoring interface for small to mid sized companies. While the current version of iWeb is more of a complementary tool to .Mac, "iWeb Pro" is said to be a complete stand alone product.
Vista sales propel Microsoft's profit to $4.93 billion. Microsoft Corp. posted a 65 percent rise in quarterly profit, topping Wall Street estimates from better than expected demand for the Windows Vista operating system.
"The strength of Vista is really driving this," said Kim Caughey, analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group. She added that the company had set "manageable expectations for the full year 2008, which generally allows them some headroom."
March NPD sales data shows Nintendo beating competition. The Wii has dominated hardware sales in January and then performed a repeat performance in February. Nintendo has gone three in a row, as they dominated the competition for a third straight month with both the DS and Wii. The hardware sales break down to the DS selling 508,000 units and the Wii selling 259,000 units. This brings the Wii to a total of 2.1 million consoles. In comparison, the PS3 sold only 130,000 during the month and its total is almost half of Nintendo's at 1.2 million consoles. The Xbox 360 sold 199,000 during the month, for anyone keeping track.
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Test a geek: Enjoy 3 more trivia questions.
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How To: Get Vista Taskbar Thumbnail Previews in Windows XP
It was only a matter of time before people started cloning Windows Vista features and adding them into Windows XP. One of the more favorite Vista features is the thumbnails that popup when you mouse over the taskbar. And now you can use them in XP as well.
The utility used for this is called Visual Tooltip, which is a hybrid dock / thumbnail applicaton. With a few tweaks to the settings, we can make it work just like Vista thumbnails.
To make your thumbnails look the same as mine, just follow these couple of steps.
Download and start the application, and open up the options from the tray icon.
Increase the size of the sliders to make the thumbnail bigger, and then uncheck the option for ?Size proportional to the target window?.
Click on the Display tab, and then uncheck the ?Show window title?
That?s all there is to it.
Download Visual Tooltip 2.1 at http://chsalmon.club.fr/index.php?en/Visual-tooltip-about
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack:
MAC: Make Skype video larger, for free.
Skype video is great but if you want to get a bigger picture, it's not so easy. Luckily with a few small changes to configuration files, you can make your video instantly bigger.
You need to upgrade to the latest Skype release (2.5.0.85 or later for mac and 3.0.0.216 for PC), quit Skype, and then edit the config.xml file in your settings directory ("~/Library/Application Support/Skype/[skypeusername]/" in OS X).
You should see an entry that looks similar to:?
Modify that to read:?
When you've finished, your contacts will be seeing you in glorious 640x480 instead of the standard 320x240.
PC:
Install the latest public version of Skype 3.0 or newer for Windows.
Open config.xml in Skype settings directory. Find the (13mb)
Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:46:51 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #119
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: There are currently no items of note.
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Tech news:
Only 244 copies of Genuine Windows Vista sold in China. Microsoft spent millions of dollars advertising its next generation OS 'Windows Vista' in China. However after 2 weeks (Jan 19 to Feb 2) from launch Microsoft managed to sell a mere 244 copies of Windows Vista. Software piracy is rampant in the country and a pirated version of Vista sells for a mere $1 on the streets. The following numbers were reported by Windows Vista chief distributor in Bejing.
Last-Minute Payers Swamp Tax Servers. Intuit's TurboTax software hit a roadblock yesterday as their servers were so overloaded, people could not file their taxes. Some people were sitting for hours, waiting for a confirmation after hitting submit. Intuit has contacted the IRS but there's been no official word whether people unable to submit their taxes by the midnight deadline will get an extension. The Washington Post reports further that as the midnight filing deadline approached, the problem got worse. During times of peak demand, Intuit was processing 50 to 60 returns per second.
BlackBerry e-mail outage. Research In Motion is grappling with a widespread system failure that left the network for its BlackBerry devices unable to handle e-mails. "A service interruption occurred Tuesday night that affected BlackBerry in North America," according to a statement from RIM. "E-mail delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service on BlackBerry handsets was unaffected." This is likely due to a backlog of e-mails stemming from the service outage, which was first reported around 5 PM on Tuesday. Because the problem concerns the BlackBerry network, all cellular carriers that support BlackBerry devices have been affected, though it is believed that they were still able to make regular cellular calls through their carriers.
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Test a geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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How To: Speed up Safari
Being the default browser installed with an operating system has its advantages; just ask Internet Explorer. Today, Apple's browser of choice is Safari, based in part on the open source KHTML codebase and enhanced regularly through Apple's WebKit project. It's a fast browser but sometimes, Safari can slow to a crawl depending on a variety of factors.
Here are some ways you can speed up Safari and take it's speed to the next level:
Remove cached files in ~/Library/Safari, particularly the cached favicon data files.
Remove the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist preference file (implicated in slow launch times).
Turn off AutoFill to improve browsing speed on pages with many text forms.
You can shorten the names of bookmarks to improve bookmark loading.
The original article from MacFixIt.com has many more tips including using the Activity Window (available under the Window menu or via Command-Option-A) to monitor individual page elements as they load and enabling Safari's Debug menu to reveal an option for examining some of Safari's internal caches, including its JavaScript cache.
To read the entire article and speed up Safari even further, check out the full text at
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070416000657464
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack: Boost your wifi signal with an asian strainer
When working on your computer and borrowing open wifi, you may need to boost your computer's ability to pick up signals so you can get your things done. You can make a common WiFi Thumbdrive into a beefy wifi extender with little work and it's an easy setup. Currently one of the better ways to make a parabolic antenna is with an asian cooking strainer. People have reported 20% better wifi with this little hack.
Items you need:
a) Cooking strainer from Asian food market. The strainer must be parabolic and have a tight mesh. A wooden handle on it will help with mounting.
b) USB Wireless Thumb Drive (g or b/g)
c) USB extension wire
Building the unit:
1. Using cutters or snips, cut out a hole JUST big enough for the USB extension cord in the middle of the strainer.
2. Squeeze the tip of the USB cord through hole.
3. Adjust everything so the thumbdrive is at the FOCAL POINT of the parabola.
4. Fasten the USB cord in to place.
Testing the Signal Strainer:
1) Find your favorite access point.
2) Get as far away as possible while keeping line-of-sight.
3) Use software like NetStumbler to see the signal strength.
4) Adjust your Signal Strainer where necessary.
Overall you should get better signal strength and see the difference in NetStumbler. You also may pick up access points you never knew were around!
Check out the entire how-to along with pictures at http://www.instructables.com/id/EC0S9C3F0HPZCGN/?ALLSTEPS
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The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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(24mb)
Mon, 09 Apr 2007 23:20:12 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #118
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: Enjoy I Love My iPod by Daphne Kalfon. You can learn more about Daphne at http://www.ilovemyipodthesong.com or get your own copy on the iTunes Music Stores.
Enjoy a fun retro ad I created in GarageBand.
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Tech news: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Test a geek: Enjoy another edition of Test A Geek on this episode.
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How To: Find royalty-free pictures for your projects
When building a website or writing an article for a publication, it is very important to have pictures to use for your projects. Normally when newspapers or professional builders need an image, they use a subscription to one of the many wire services out there such as Getty Images. These services work great but if you don't have a large budget to work with, your options may be limited. A couple of websites have cropped up within the past few years to offer royalty-free images that fall under the Creative Commons license.
The first website is www.everystockphoto.com. This website is an aggregator used to search the web for all creative commons photos. The site targets designers, developers, photographers and other media publishers who want better, easier access to license-specific media on the web. Everystockphoto.com takes your search and returns results that allow you to use the images as you see fit while working within fantastic rights management guidelines. The site features an integrated search, allowing users to bookmark their photos with private and public tags. The site is also working on other social networking aspects such as rating systems and recommendations. The site is easy to use and returns very relevant results. You can try it for yourself at http://www.everystockphoto.com/
A secondary site that you will definily want to check out is the Stock Xchng. This site is one of the many searched by Everystockphoto.com and comes up near the top of most searches. This site has tons of content that should please even the obscure searches. In addition to search you can browse through the categories of their huge gallery containing over 250.000 stock photos by more than 25,000 photographers. The pictures are high quality and clearly show the rights you are allowed to use them with. In addition to supplying pictures there is a forum as well to get answers to whatever questions you may have.
Both of these sites are free and allow you to get great pictures. You can check out Stock Xchng at http://www.sxc.hu/
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack: Replace the hard drive in your iPod
With Apple announcing today that over 100 million iPods being sold, there are plenty of people out there who have older versions that need some upgrading. As time goes on your drive will wear down and could need to be replaced. Other people may just want more space on their player. The following is an excerpt from a fantastic tutorial I found online.
Read the entire hack at http://www.command-tab.com/2007/03/11/upgrading-ipod-hard-drives/
What to Buy
Which hard drive to buy depends on your specific iPod model, so like any half-decent attempt at an upgrade, a little research will be necessary before purchasing. The main factor that will affect your decision is the height, or thickness, of both the iPod and hard drive. Since day one of the iPod launch, Toshiba has produced all the hard drives employed in the full size iPod lineup. As technology advances, however, the capacity of each platter increases while the dimensions remain fixed. This is good news for iPod upgraders ? the longer you wait, the more you can store.
Apple?s iPods are fairly easy to find a matching replacement/upgrade hard drive for, as you can generally tell which thickness drive you need just by holding the device in your hand. If your iPod was the thicker of the series when you purchased it, it takes the thicker, two-platter hard drive (examples include the higher capacity models such as 40 GB iPod and 60 GB iPod photo). The thinner models (like the 15 GB iPod and 30 GB iPod photo) take the thinner hard drives.
The new iPods with video capability are a different beast, as the drive technology and space requirements have demanded smaller hardware. With that in mind, Toshiba engineered a new connector on recent drives that is vastly smaller than the previous models. These new drives sport a Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) connector, which, unlike the older iPods, requires no pressure to connect the cable. Simply holding the hair-thin ribbon cable in place and folding down a clamp-like lock will secure all 40 pins in a staggeringly small ? and fragile! ? connector. The connector on the new iPods? logic boards is now no wider than your thumbnail, and it, too is quite delicate. Such is the way of ever-shrinking consumer electronics.
Tools of the Trade
Before you decide on a hard drive, you?ll also want to purchase a few tools to ensure the job gets done right. While you?re able to pry most iPods apart using a tool as simple as a butter knife, the professionals use the following to make entry, upgrading, and close-up as seamless as possible.
Apple?s ?black stick?
This nylon-based pry tool is key to almost any iPod upgrade, as it provides a strong lever to get into the edges of the case, while its plastic properties leave next to no marks or chewed-up spots along the edges. Best bought from Stanley Supply & Services.
IC puller or hemostats (both available at your local RadioShack)
A straight razor blade (for 5G iPods)
Picking a Hard Drive
Depending on your iPod thickness and model, you can choose from the hard drives in the article. You can find many of the drives on eBay and online retailers, but the most prevalent ones will be models used in iPods that shipped in the past.
Opening the iPod
1G through 4G iPods aren?t as tough to open as the newer 5G and later iPods, and can be popped open by pushing the metal backing one way while pulling the plastic front the opposite way. In doing so, you create a small gap where you can slide in the nylon pry tool and undo the five plastic clips along one of the two longer sides. The inside top and bottom of all iPods are not secured. Other World Computing has some detailed take-apart videos which should help give you a good idea of exactly how to get inside.
To open a 5G or later iPod, try the first technique above, and use a razor as a last resort. Once the tool is in and has a little room to work, carefully remove the razor and set it aside. Use the pry tool to work the rest of the side open.
The Switch
After cracking the side of the iPod open, carefully disconnect any audio jack or battery ribbon cables attached to the back panel. Undoing these connectors often requires the use of the nylon pry tool again, or careful pulling with hemostats. The hard drive is then exposed. Install the new hard drive in the same direction as the old one, making sure all pins and plastic guides line up perfectly. Move the metal back panel close to the iPod and reconnect all the cables you unhooked to get into the device, and snap the panel back onto the plastic clips.
Restoring in Disk Mode
Pressing any button will power on your iPod, and you should be able to hear the new drive spin up. Unless the drive is preloaded with the correct software you will get a ?sad iPod? face. This is OK. Reset your iPod and immediately hold the Disk Mode keys as soon as the screen blanks for the reboot. After it?s detected, iTunes will load the proper software onto your iPod, and it will be as good as new and with more capacity!
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The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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(39mb)
Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:34:24 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #117
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: Welcome back to The Geekcast!
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Today's episode features a conversation between myself and Phil Zaninni of Mac Nation. Visit Mac Nation at http://www.macphilly.com/wordpress/
As per the show, here is the code if you want to use XPad:
Name:
xPad User
Email:
support@getxpad.com
Code:
X6893-2055-5686-9378
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(6mb)
Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:52:03 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast Announcement 3/22/07
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
I'm still here, just no new shows due to that pesky life thing.
(6mb)
Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:34:21 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #116
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: I'm not feeling so great today, so this will be a short episode.
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Tech news:
Tech news will return next time.
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Test a geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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How To: Manage duplicate songs in iTunes
iTunes has many useful features that make it one of the best music managers out there. Even better is that both mac and PC users can take advantage of it's feature set. One of the hidden utilities in iTunes is the ability to view duplicate files. The reason you may want to do this is if you have CD's from one artist that perhaps has the same song on both. Duplicate songs take up extra space and also can throw off any smart playlists you have if you're constantly alternating between which version you're listening to.
To view all duplicate files, click View, Show Duplicates. At this point your library will only show the duplicate files. You can now go through the files and delete anything you have that isn't needed. It's recommended to listen to the tracks first, just to be sure you're not removing a song that has a live version or an alternate version you like. Some songs can be named the same thing but sound different when listening.
By going through this area, you free up space and keep your library neat and organized.
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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(15mb)
Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:05:58 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #115
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: There are currently no items of note.
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Tech news:
AT&T/Cingular May Give Away 18 Months of iPhone Service. Jim Cramer from RealMoney.com has notes from AT&T regarding their plans for the iPhone. His column suggests that AT&T will be using the iPhone to aggressively target customers and implies that they will provide significant discounts in service. He believes a strategy is coming where the iPhone's $500 price is preserved but the service contract is greatly reduced.
Dell Begins Selling Desktops Without Windows Pre-installed. The n Series Desktops come with a Pentium D or Athlon X2, and an unformatted hard drive ready for Linux, BSD, or any other free OS. Dell advertises that their new open-source n Series desktop solution provides customers with a DimensionTM E520, E521 or C521 desktop without an installed or included Microsoft OS. An added benefit to this program is that it will help reduce the price of this system. Dell's n Series will ship with a copy of FreeDos.
One in five Windows installs are non-genuine. Microsoft disclosed Monday that over one in five Windows installations were deemed non-genuine through the company's Windows Genuine Advantage program, which requires users to validate their operating system before downloading updates from the company. Since WGA launched in July 2005, over 512 million users have attempted to validate their copy of Windows, Microsoft said. Of those, the non-genuine rate was 22.3 percent. 56,000 reports have been made by customers of counterfeit software, which grants that user a free replacement copy of Windows. While high, that number is less than the average software piracy rate around the world, according to the Business Software Alliance. The BSA reports that 35 percent of the world's software is pirated and a Yankee Group study noted that 55 percent of organizations report instances of counterfeit or pirated software.
Universal and Sony prohibit Zune sharing for certain artists. Sony Music and Universal Music Group are marking certain artists of theirs as "prohibited" for sharing, meaning that certain tracks you've purchased from the Zune Marketplace will not be able to be transferred to another Zune via it's highly-touted sharing feature. It looks like it's roughly 40-50 percent of artists that fall under this prohibited banner, and the worst news is that there's no warning that a song might be unsharable until you actually try to send it and fail.
Music industry divided over digital future. With global music sales down for a seventh straight year, the talk at an annual industry meeting in Cannes, France, has become heated over how to develop digital sales against competition, particularly illegal downloads. Global sales are expected to be down again for 2006 despite digital sales almost doubling to $2 billion and the popularity of music being as strong as ever. Critics of the major players in the industry argue that they have been distracted by the fight against piracy and in doing so, hindered the growth of the legal business. In response, the accused argue that they had little choice.
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Test a geek: Enjoy another edition of Test A Geek on this episode.
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How To: Send anonymous text messages
If you've ever wanted to send a text message to someone and you didn't have a cell phone, this website is the place for you. AnonTxt is a simple website that allows you to send a text message to anyone's cell phone in only 3 easy steps. The advantage of using AnonTxt is that the message is sent anonymously so you don't need to worry about anything being traced back to your phone. The website is straight forward and simple to use.
The first item you fill in is your name or an alias. It's important to remember that AnonTxt appends their name to any message they send, so be sure to remember this before you send it. Once you put that in, place a subject into the second spot. Finally, enter their 10-digit number. Once you're done, hit send and it's off to their phone. You can have some fun with your friends and send them some funny messages using this service.
As always, AnonTxt is free and can be found at www.anontxt.com
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack: Recover missing Address Book data in OsX
A person's address book is one of those items that is very hard to replace. With these databases carrying all our data, we don't remember phone numbers anymore and it's tough to keep track of everyone we come in contact with in our lives. It's important to backup the data in your address book but unfortunately, many of us don't backup. Luckily for all OsX users, you can recover lost data from your address book even if you didn't back it up. BTW, to back it up the folder you'll want to include is ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.
Recovery of your address book is simple if you didn't do this. Here's what you can try:
Address Book is smart. It keeps a little backup of its own in a AddressBook.data.previous file inside the directory mentioned. To restore it, all you need to do is quit Address Book, delete the dead AddressBook.data file and rename the backup to AddressBook.data.
At this point when you re-open the application, your data should now be back. Good luck!
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The geek's view:
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(11mb)
Thu, 18 Jan 2007 22:52:54 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #114
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: There are currently no items of note.
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Tech news:
Apple posts profit of $1 billion, sells 21 million iPods. Apple said Wednesday that results for its fiscal 2007 first quarter ended December 30, 2006 included record revenue of $7.1 billion. "We are incredibly pleased to report record quarterly revenue of over $7 billion and record earnings of $1 billion," said Steve Jobs. "We've just kicked off what is going to be a very strong new product year for Apple by launching Apple TV and the revolutionary iPhone." During the quarter, Apple shipped 1,606,000 Macintosh computers and 21,066,000 iPods, representing 28 percent growth in Macs and 50 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.
Apple to air 'special' Super Bowl ad on Feb. 4. A deal between Apple Inc. and Apple Corps to bring the legendary music catalog of The Beatles to iTunes could see an announcement in the form of a Super Bowl commercial, according to a report published Wednesday. Citing "sources with knowledge of the project," the Toronto Sun said remastered tracks from the Fab Four's catalog are slated to be made available for downloading from Apple's iTunes Store as soon as next month. The Sun also reported that the arrangement between the two Apples is for an exclusive three-month restricted distribution deal through iTunes that would likely prolong the release the actual remastered CDs.
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Test a geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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How To: Save money on college textbooks
The idea: sell cheaper books to students, bypass the textbook monopolies?and make money
Anyone who's bought textbooks from their college bookstore knows the frustration of how much the books cost. Even more frustrating is the ridiculous buyback policy the stores have. The phrase "a new edition is out" is the worst thing to hear when selling back to the store. Nothing is more useless than an outdated Calculous book.
Now a group of small Web sites is trying to provide students with a cheaper alternative. One of the up and coming sites is called Chegg.com. Chegg allows students to buy and sell used textbooks and other school-related goods and services for free. It's a huge market, generating $11 billion in revenue and $3 billion in profit a year.
Chegg provides goods at lower prices than traditional campus outlets. While the margins on used textbooks are often as high as 40%, a $100 textbook that might be resold at the campus bookstore for $70 would go for about $50 on Chegg. This is a deal for the buyer and more money in the pocket of the seller. Users of Chegg say they can cut their expenses by a few hundred dollars.
To use Chegg, you simply register for an account and list your books. The listings are campus-specific so that you aren't mailing heavy books through expensive shipping services. Once your books are listed, people on your campus can search for books and find what you're offering. If you list your book for less than the store but more than the buyback, it is a win-win situation. Once someone locates your books, they send a payment via the site and you deliver the books in person.
Chegg is a simple concept that can save lots of money for all involved. It's a free site and can make the life of a student much easier. Check it out at www.chegg.com
Parts from businessweek.com
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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The geek's view: Snap
Snap is a small program that runs in your Windows system tray. To keep all your windows organized, Snap takes all windows and causes them to snap to each other and the desktop while moving/sizing. You can hold down ALT while sizing/moving to toggle off snapping. The program is small, works extremely well and is one of those utilities that just does its thing and leaves you alone. It's a fantastic little program and of course is free.
Check it out at: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~iheckman/allsnap
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Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:04:48 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #113
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: Welcome to 2007. Today is coverage of all the new goodies announced at MacWorld 2007.
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Tech news:
Mozilla brings in $53M in 2005. In 2005 the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation combined, had revenue from all sources of $52.9M. The huge numbers were broken down into the following: The bulk of this revenue was related to search engine relationships, with the remainder coming from a combination of contributions, sales from the Mozilla store, and more. These figures compare with 2003 and 2004 revenues of $2.4M and $5.8M respectively.
Skype unveils yearly long distance package. When Skype announced free long distance Skype-to-phone calls for the US and Canada in May of 2006, the result was an explosion of new Skype users. Even though the promotion would end at the end of the calendar year, seven months of free long distance was enough to entice scores of people to sign up. Skype has begun a month-long promotion of $14.95 for one year of long distance. The promotion will also include 100 minutes of SkypeOut for International calls and over $50 worth of coupons for purchasing Skype-certified hardware products. After January 31, the yearly fee will increase to $29.95.
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MacWorld 2007 Coverage:
Hardware Announcements:
iTV will be called Apple TV. The unit features a 40 gb hdd, 802.11 b/g/n wireless, 720p, usb2, ethernet, wifi, component, and hdmi outputs. The unit will stream music, movies and picture from up to 5 computers. You can also use iTunes to sync movies from your Mac to Apple TV on its local disk. It uses the apple remote, which is becoming more common in Apple products. You can stream trailers directly from Apple's website as well, which has potential for expandability. Apple TV will retail for $299 and ships in February. You can pre-order one beginning today.
iPhone is announced. The iPhone was announced, which is the long-rumored phone. This is also the long rumored widescreen iPod that has been talked about for over two years. The iPhone has a full screen touch interface with 'finger gestures'. By moving your finger in certain directions or patterns, the iPhone will know what you want to do while not accepting and accidental input from being in your pocket. The iPhone will run OsX instead of a watered down version of an OS and will not use a stylus or have any buttons. The iPhone will sync with iTunes just like an iPod would.
The iPhone sports a 3.5 inch screen with 160 pixels per inch and the device is 11/16" thin. The only button on the device is the "home button" on the front. There is also a 2 megapixel camera, headphone jack, sim card slot, microphone, bottom speaker, ambient light detector and iPod connector. One innovative feature is that the iPhone has a proximity sensor so when you hold it to your ear, the display and sound turn off. The device will know if it's being held in landscape or portrait and automatically changes.
The phone portion's main feature is visual voice mail. Visual voicemail allows you to go directly to the messages you want to hear, where they are in a list. This allows you to not have to listen to messages just to get to the one you want. The phone specs are GSM + Edge connections. Wifi & bluetooth, and quad band.
The internet communicator side will use Safari, feature widgets google maps, and a full IMAP & POP email client. It will switch automatically between edge and wifi. Apple also announced a partnership with Yahoo, so all iPhone customers where they will get free IMAP e-mail, which will be a push system just like on a blackberry.
The iPhone will retail for $499 for the 4gb version and $599 for the 8gb model and it will ship in june. The price includes a 2 year agreement and the only US carrier will be Cingular.
Software Announcements: There were no software announcements during MacWorld '07
Other Announcements:
Apple is changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc to Apple, inc.
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Test a geek: Three questions, three answers. Enjoy a brand new edition of our quiz segment.
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How To: How to back up your media in iTunes
iTunes 7 offers a new way to back up your iTunes library, playlists, and iTunes Store purchases for safekeeping. The Back Up to Disc feature saves your media to a blank disc and once backed up, iTunes can use your backup disc(s) to automatically restore your iTunes library. To reduce the number of discs needed for a backup, iTunes can perform incremental backups (only items added or changed since the last backup).
To create your backup disc do the following:
1. From the File menu, choose Back Up to Disc.
2. Select the option you want from the resulting dialog and click Back Up.
3. The two options you can select from are:
? Back up entire iTunes library and playlists
? Back up only iTunes Store purchases
4. Whichever of these two options you choose, note that you can also choose "Only back up items added or changed since last backup" to perform an incremental backup.
7. Insert a blank disc (CD or DVD) into your computer's optical drive. iTunes will scan the disc and begin burning.
8. Note: If the disc you insert does not have enough space to hold all of the media you will be backing up, a dialog will appear asking whether you wish to backup to multiple discs. You can click Data Discs to continue.
iTunes burns the number of items that fit on one disc and then asks you to insert subsequent discs to continue burning the remaining files. Don't eject a disc while a backup is in progress.
Spoken programs purchased from the Audible.com website are not backed up.
Discs you create using the iTunes backup feature can be used only to restore; they can't be played in a CD or DVD player.
Restoring from a backup disc
1. Open iTunes.
2. Insert your backup disc.
3. iTunes will ask whether you want to restore from this disc. Click Restore.
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Wed, 27 Dec 2006 18:17:13 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast Special Annoucement
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: This is a quick note to tell you that the show will be back in full force on 1/2/07 or 1/3/07.
(44mb)
Wed, 22 Nov 2006 20:59:14 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #112
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: This is a quick edition of The Geekcast. Enjoy a little tech and an easter egg at the end of the show.
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Tech news: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Test a geek: Three questions, three answers. Enjoy a brand new edition of our quiz segment.
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How To: Free up space in GMail
GMail is fantastic in the amount of storage space you have but at times you want to clear it out. There are filters you can use to help delete messages off of GMail but not delete something important.
1. Start big and narrow down. The trick that works best is to first delete stuff that you absolutely know you would never miss and then narrow down deletions to stuff more on the borderline. It's both safer and faster.
2. Add labels to certain senders to avoid losing important emails. You know there are people whose emails you want to keep about 99% of the time. Create a filter that only shows messages that are from that certain group of people. You can use Gmail's advanced search operators to do so using the "or" (|) operator. For example, From: john | paul | ringo | george returns all emails from either John, Paul, Ringo or George. Set your filter to label those messages with a good, safe name. I used "nodelete."
Careful: Although the OR operator should include all messages from everyone included in the search, it acts a little quirky and sometimes leaves out messages that should, in theory, be included. Since you're doing this for the sheer purpose of protecting your messages, it might be safer to create your filters one name at a time. Now you can exclude all messages in this label from your upcoming search and destroy missions.
3. Eliminate heinous offenders. Although the has:attachment search operator yields a good list of space-hogging messages, it does not give you the option to sort by file size. So, with 2.7GB of email to sort through, it's pretty worthless. But, you can search by file type and narrow down file sizes a bit that way. You can use the following search phrases:
filename:wmv -label:nodelete
filename:mov -label:nodelete
filename:mp3 -label:nodelete (this one can be weak since MP3 is common in text)
filename:doc -label:nodelete
filename:pdf -label:nodelete
For each of those phrases, go through the message and decide what to delete. This is the most time-consuming step, but it's not that hard. Remember that if you press shift while selecting two messages, Gmail will select all messages in between. That's useful for big chunks of messages to go.
4. Delete stupid forwards. You should have a filter to label all Fw:, Fwd:, Forward:, etc. emails with a Forwards label. Create such a filter by simply specifying the common forward subject lines listed above. Then, use this search string: label:forward -label:nodelete and start deleting manually.
5. Delete emails from people that send you nothing but junk.
6. Carefully delete emails from those people in your nodelete label.
7. Empty trash and delete spam. Gmail does not do this automatically, so don't forget to throw out the trash when you're done and go ahead and empty your spam while you're at it (even though spam doesn't affect your quota). This also gives you one last chance to give your deletions a glance to see if you deleted anything you didn't mean to delete.
Tip via lifehacker.com
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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The geek's view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Wed, 08 Nov 2006 21:54:55 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #111
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: There are currently no items of note.
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Tech news:
Microsoft Vista Goes Gold. After five years Microsoft has said that development of Windows Vista is complete. Windows chief Jim Allchin said Microsoft signed off on the code less than an hour ago. "It's rock solid and we're ready to ship. This is a good day," Allchin said in a conference call. Allchin said Vista will go on sale to consumers Jan. 30. He said that Microsoft is releasing Vista in five languages. The French, Spanish, and Japanese versions were actually signed off on before the English version. The software maker has scheduled a November 30 press conference to announce the new operating system, along with Office 2007. The release of Vista will mark the first full fledged update since Windows XP in 2001.
MacBook's get Intel Core 2 Duo Processors. Apple has released new MacBooks featuring the Core 2 Duo. The newest member of the Apple portable family comes in three configurations: white 1.83 GHz and 2.0 GHz, and black 2.0 GHz. Apple claims these new chips give up to a 25% boost over the previous MacBooks. The top of the line model also features a 1GB of RAM standard, a double layer SuperDrive, and 4MB shared L2 cache (as opposed to 2MB in the other models). The entry level machine starts at $1,099.
Don't Want to Get Sued by the RIAA? Just Disable Wi-Fi Security! OUT-LAW.COM has reported that Tammie Marson of Palm Desert, California responded to a file-sharing lawsuit from the RIAA by stating that her wireless network was not secure, and that therefore the file sharing seen on her network could have been from any passerby. The defense worked, and the RIAA dropped the case. As an El Reg article points out, "If this becomes a popular defense, it could seriously hamper a huge number of file-sharing lawsuits taken in the US against individuals. It also looks to be a trend in defense against movie file-sharing lawsuits."
Microsoft plans to shut down its MSN Music Store this month. A report on CNet's News.com claims that the store originally launched in a doomed attempt to battle iTunes will soon begin directing music fans to either the Zune Marketplace or RealNetworks Rhapsody websites. This is poor news for Microsoft's existing hardware partners, as it clearly shows that for Redmond, support of the 'Plays for sure' program is waning as the company applies its muscle into its Zune player. While MSN Music says that people who have already purchased songs in the WMA format will still be able to use their songs, it clearly also shows the threat proprietary standards expose users to, should parent companies decide to withdraw support for them in future.
TWIT Lives On. In response to all the postings about the possible death of the TWIT podcast, Leo Laporte has posted on the TWiT.tv website saying the show will continue. He writes:
"I had no idea what a storm my little sentence would generate. Hey, I was tired, dispirited, and trying to figure out how to do a show without any contributors. I really didn't mean to scare you! Thanks so much! I've exchanged emails with all the TWiTs and we've agreed to keep the show going, with some new systems in place to reduce burn out (including my own) and keep the shows fresh."
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Test a geek: Three questions, three answers. Enjoy a brand new edition of our quiz segment.
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How To: The Windows File Shredder
When you delete files from your computer, the file itself is not deleted. You only delete it's entry on your harddrives 'table of contents'. This is how people like the FBI can recover files from a computer. If you have sensitive data that must be fully deleted, there is a way to have a file 'shredder' on your system that will not just delete it's TOC entry but also overwrite the file itself with 0's and 1's so that the file is gone forever.
The shredder consists of two items: The SDelete utility, freely available from Sysinternals, and also a small batch script that you will write in Notepad.
First, download SDelete onto your computer and save the SDelete.exe in your C:\WINDOWS\system32 directory. Now we will create a batch script that will make our shredder. Open Notepad and enter the following:
@echo off
echo .* * *W A R N I N G * * *
echo .
echo .The File(s)/Folders(s) Will Be Permanently Deleted!
echo .
echo .Press CTRL-C to Abort and Terminate Batch Job Or...
echo .
pause
sdelete -p 4 -s %1
pause
Once you have this in your document, save the file as shred.bat on your desktop right next to your Recycling Bin. Now any time you want to delete a file, just drag and drop those sensitive files onto the icon to make them disappear forever! Please keep in mind that this will do the job for most people but if your data is extremely sensitive, you may need an alternate solution. Also please note that any file you 'shred' will almost certainly be gone forever, so be sure you want to delete it.
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack: How to Save a Wet Cell Phone
Ever dropped your cell phone in the sink, or even worse the toilet? Did you ever leave it in your pocket and run it through the washer? It usually means you have to replace your phone, but sometimes if you're fast you can save the phone.
Before we begin, please note that this WILL void your warranty and this may make the phone even worse. Please know that you take all responsibility by performing the steps below and I am not responsible for your phone or any injury you may sustain from this.
Here's what you have to do:
1. Remove the Battery. This is one of the most important steps. Cutting power to your phone is a crucial first step in saving it, then remove your SIM card, some or all of your valuable contacts could be stored on your SIM.
2. Dry your phone. You need to remove as much of the water as soon as you can to prevent it from getting into the phone. Use a towel or a paper towel to remove as much of the water as possible.
3. Allow the phone to dry. Since you do not want to ruin your phone or lose all the numbers in your phone book, you need to allow the phone to dry. Also, ringtones and graphics stay with the phone, not the SIM. Also, don't try putting the battery back on to see if it works as this would risk damaging the phone with a short circuit. Leaving your phone in a bowl of dry rice will help to expedite moisture evaporation.
4. Heat your phone. Apply enough heat to your phone to cause the water to evaporate without water-logging your digital screen. One of the best things you can do to save a cell phone is to set it on the back of your computer monitor or TV screen over the heat vents. This is usually the perfect amount of heat to fix your phone. The convection action of the heat vents will help carry away the moisture in your phone. Leave the phone on the heat for at least 2-3 days.
5. Test your Phone. After you have waited 3 days, make sure everything is clean and dry looking and re-attach the battery to the phone and see if it works. If your phone does not work repeat step 4. If it still won't work, try taking your cell phone to an authorized dealer. Sometimes they can fix it.
Alternative Alcohol Soak Method:
1. Soak your phone in Alcohol. Alcohol attracts water and it will dissolve all the water in the phone, which will then pour out of the phone with the alcohol. Any remaining alcohol will evaporate. Alcohol will not harm your phone but may mess up glue from stickers and the like. Use 95% alcohol, not the regular 70% rubbing type. Do it outside!. Be sure to remove your battery first. When done, leave your phone outside for a day or two to dry.
Warnings:
Don't heat the battery or it could leak acid. If you use an oven or hairdryer, make sure to remove the battery first.
If you use alcohol make sure to do so outside, and do not apply heat in any form, not even the gentle heat of a monitor. Do not hook up the battery till the alcohol smell dissipates.
Do not apply too much heat to your phone as mentioned above. You don't want to melt or burn your phone.
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The geek's view: Hacking Democracy
With election season here, and just passing, it was interesting that HBO decided to run a documentary about electronic voting and its flaws. The movie is an hour and a half long and follows a woman who is an advocate against electronic voting.
The movie begins with the findings that a woman was able to download the source code of the Diebold voting machines and then see that it is not secure. The process for the machines allows for only the company manufacturing it, to know how it works. Auditing companies, government offices and the public are not allowed to know how the software works, due to it being a trade secret. As flaws in the software are found, the woman begins trying to get answers to how this could happen and to make sure elections are not rigged.
Diebold is represented in this feature, being seen giving a presentation to a local government to get them to by their voting machines, along with footage of a California hearing about their alleged fraud. The experiences of the involved parties are very interesting, ranging from a Florida office illegally throwing out 1-week-old voting audit records, to Ohio recounts that look fishy, to the exact way the machine can be hacked and not show up on any audits.
Hacking Democracy is on HBO. Check your TV Guide, TiVo listings or the link below for more information.
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/index.html
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Tue, 31 Oct 2006 19:46:37 GMT Author: geekcast@gmail.com (Aaron Crocco)
The Geekcast #110
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note: There are currently no items of note.
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Tech news:
New .Mac Interface is Live and Available Now! The next generation of webmail for .Mac users has gone live. Apple has unveiled it's latest web interface for .Mac users that was long overdue. The new .Mac webmail looks just like Mail application on a Mac's desktop, featuring a whole new look. Looks aside, the heavy use of AJAX allows for some great usability, including: Drag-and-drop functionality, A message pane, Quick Reply, Address Book integration, Message previews, Message flagging, and Keyboard shortcuts. On top of all this good stuff, .Mac's mail is IMAP which is a big plus over other webmail services.
Odeo Bought Back From Investors. Odeo as we know it is gone. After announcing itself in February 2005, the company raised a $5 million venture financing with Charles River Ventures and other investors. After a private beta period, the company launched in July 2005. It?s now a little over a year later and Odeo now faces dozens of competitors, including iTunes. Founder Evan Williams has spoken publicly about the company?s mistakes, has shut down one service and has launched another. Instead of a dramatic business change along with a new round of financing, Odeo has kicked out its investors and is going it alone. Evan Williams along with Biz Stone and all other current Odeo employees have created a new company called Obvious Corp. This new company has purchased the assets of Odeo, Inc. (including Odeo and Twitter) from the investors and other shareholders.
Windows Defender for Windows XP Released. It's been officially announced by Microsoft that the Redmond security software is ready for release. Its out of beta and is a free program that helps protect your computer against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software. It features Real-Time Protection, a monitoring system that recommends actions against spyware.
TWiT On the Way Out? TWiT, one of the most popular podcasts on the planet may be at the end of the line. For a two week period there will be no new episodes and Leo Laporte's frustration is evident from his blog posting:
"It's about 80 degrees out - in all likelyhood the last nice day of summer in Northern California - so all the TWiTs decided to play hookey... I'll decide what happens to TWiT, the show, but at this point it looks like it's on life support and the heart monitor is flatlining."
Speculation surrounding the downfall of TWiT is that it is a group effort, so when two or three people don't want to do the show, no show gets produced. We'll see what happens.
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Test a geek: It's been WAY too long! Three questions, three answers. Enjoy a brand new edition of our quiz segment.
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How To: Speed up Dashboard.
Over the course of the past few months, Dashboard can become painfully slow for mac users. Sometimes it can take 10 to 20 seconds to load, depending on the number of widgets you have active. On slower mac's like mine, it can be even more frustrating when I'm just looking to see the temperature or quickly add some numbers. The slow load time hinders the entire point of Dashboard. The goal of this feature is to be in and out as fast as possible. There is a way to speed it up and it's a quick fix.
If you take a look at the ~/Library -> Caches -> DashboardClient folder, you'll find that the Dashboard cache can be very big. Some users report that their cache can be in excess of 20mb, which is not needed and these files are what hinder the performance of Dashboard. To speed it back up again, delete all the files in the DashboardClient folder. Dashboard now loads almost instantaneously and will have a noticeable performance boost.
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Ask A Geek:
Sam asks:
Hey Aaron, ive been working on a pc platform for ages, but I'm really looking to buy a mac now. I was wondering which mac you thought would work best. I'm gonna be doing mostly web authoring but some audio, image and video manipulation.
Answer:
When it comes to buying a mac, your tasks are the first thing you should check into. The fact that you're going to be working with a lot of media and crunching numbers with rendering, dictates a lot. If you are going to be doing this semi-professionally, a mid-range or high-end iMac should do the job. If you're going to be working with mostly video then you'll want to get as much processor speed and RAM as possible. A big harddrive doesn't hurt either. In this realm, you'll want to go for an iMac stuffed to the gills with add-ons or bump up to the Mac Pro. Your best bet is to head into an Apple Store and speak to a specialist. Unlike many stores, they will not try to up-sell you to a system you don't need and you'll get exactly what you want. Don't forget to use the student discount!
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Hack: Cleaning your keyboard.
Cleaning your keyboard falls into the hacking category because many people just wipe the surface of their keys and that's it. Today we're going deeper. We're going to go under the keys and not give up and replace the keyboard.
Every year or so, you'll notice there are spots on your keyboard where some grime has built up. Additionally, all the crumbs, dust and hair around your computer gets under the keys as well. We'll want to get our keys back to factory condition and have a nice clean surface for our fingers. Before we begin, a few things:
1. This may void your warranty or damage your keyboard. Proceed at your own risk.
2. NEVER work on your keyboard while it is plugged into your computer or with the batteries in it if it's cordless.
3. You will need some paper towels, a flathead screwdriver, windex, and if you have some, a can of compressed air.
The first thing we'll want to do is make sure we can reassemble the keys in the correct order. You will be surprised how hard the layout of the keys can be when you don't have a reference. Your best solution is to take a quick picture on your digital camera and get the picture on your computer, so we have a map later on.
To remove the keys, take the screwdriver and place it under the key on one side. Gently pry the key up. It will easily pop off. All the normal square keys should come off within a minute or two. The rectangle keys and the spacebar can be a little more complicated. Some keyboards have metal bars or additional support for these keys, so be sure to pay attention to how the key is attached before you remove it. Take notes if you need to.
Once the keys are removed you'll want to empty the board of the junk in it. Flipping it upside-down over a garbage pail works great or you can use a vacuum, being careful not to suck up a loose part or damage the board. This is when the compressed air can be handy.
Once the board is clean, we can clean the keys. You should spray a paper towel with Windex and wipe each key clean. NEVER spray anything into your keyboard!!! Wipe down each key. Be sure to use a cleaner that is not abrasive or will remove the letters on each key. Allow each key to fully dry.
After everything is clean and dry, it's time to reassemble. Load up the picture we took at the beginning so we have a point of reference. Take a key
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