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– They're tagged with #Zentech.
– When what's said is unclear to me (or I'm unfamiliar with a topic) I tend to quote (" ") verbatim.

Glenn was in the studio. Paul was in the Bay Area but didn't call in.

Hugh called. He recently went on to Google Earth and found he couldn't access Street View, as he had been able to before.
– Use Google Maps to access it instead.
– Glenn did a search using the Safari browser on his iPad and found a discussion on Google groups dated Oct 8, 2012 where it said "street view is no longer available on older versions of Google Earth, so you may need to upgrade". So, upgrading may be the answer

Glenn made a pitch for membership to KVMR.

Neil called in with a networking problem. He has computers in both his shop and house which has a printer attached, and both are using wi-fi. He had to reinstall the XP operating system on the shop computer and now can't get it to use the printer in the house.
– At this point Buzz, an engineer at KVMR, joined Glenn in the studio,
– "Search for that computer on the network and then once you find the computer, find out about its shares".
– <Using the Control Panel> Go to 'Printers and Other Hardware' -> 'Add a Printer' and checkmark "A network printer or a printer attached to another computer". Neil said he tried that and it couldn't find a printer.
– That being the case, Glenn suggested, find the name of the printer and enter it where it says Connect to this printer.
– Buzz said, make sure both computers are in the same workgroup, which he thinks is the default condition.
– Glenn said he'll be in the KVMR office after the show and suggested that Neil call him for further trouble shooting. The office phone is 530-265-9073.
– After Neil hung up, Buzz said make sure both computers are using the same router.
– Glenn added, if the router has a printer port, connect the printer to it directly. Or use the printer's wireless connection, if it has one.

Glenn noted that, sales-wise, tablets overtook cell phones as gifts last Christmas.

That led Buzz to wonder about ChromeBooks. Glenn said a recent caller had a ChromeBook and was asked to call again, after he had formed an opinion, to give a review. That was a stripped-down model costing $249. He asked listeners who have a ChromeBook to call in.

Ross called in to say he's heard of legislation making it illegal to unlock a cell phone.
– In the past the carriers were under no obligation to unlock, until about a year ago.
– Since about April or May of this year, AT&T will unlock your phone after your contract expires or if you're going abroad. You have to call AT&T or do it on their website; It takes 24 to 96 hours for them to complete the process.
– Glenn thought the legislation might have something to do with jailbreaking a phone. If you jailbreak a phone, there are then 'unlocks' available for that phone.
– Buzz said there is the right way and wrong way to unlock a phone and the carriers don't want stolen phones being unlocked (the wrong way).
<A Right to Unlock Cellphones Fades Away>

Buzz went on to say that jailbreaking allows you to get root access to the phones operating system to do things the manufacturer didn't want you to do. As an example, he said a lot of phones have an FM chip inside but it's not built to receive radio signals. In some cases, jailbreaking can allow you to activate it.

Ross then asked if there's a website where one can find out what these hidden features are for various phones. He thought it would be good to know the full potential of a phone when shopping for one. Buzz said he didn't know of such a website and that it would probably take a lot of searching. He found out about the FM chip at radio-discussions.com. Buzz said things change so quickly that a lot of hacking information becomes obsolete or unreliable and that he wouldn't choose a phone on its hidden features.

Ross wondered of it's possible to ruin a phone doing these hacks. Glenn said it's possible though it typically would not.

Ross thought the companies engage in planned obsolescence. Glenn said they don't want you to be able to do something that a carrier can charge you for. For instance, if you activate the FM chip, you wouldn't buy an app that lets you receive internet radio and you wouldn't use, and pay for, the carrier's network.

Glenn said most phones have the ability to be a personal hotspot. Setting up a hotspot can be done thru jailbreaking or you can pay the carrier to set it up and then be charged a monthly fee to use the hotspot.

Joshua called. He prepared a presentation using Keynote and now the pictures are missing, there are only box outlines where the pics are supposed to be.
– Glenn thought that Keynote, like many programs, uses aliases (also known as a shortcut) to reference the pictures and that something got moved. Aliases just point to the pictures but are not pictures themselves. So Glenn thought something got moved so the aliases are pointing to the wrong location.
– He suggested that Joshua go back into Keynote and there might be a place where Keynote can be made to locate the pictures.
– He said give that a try and if he needs more help to call the office after the show.

Peter called to talk about he ChromeBook 5 (the 2nd generation, not the current one). He likes it.
– It's light.
– It comes on instantly.
– It can access most of the things he wants to do.
– One drawback is the battery is built-in so he can't take it out when using AC, He use to do that with his laptop to prevent the battery from wearing out. Built-in batteries seem to be the trend with a lot of portable devices.
– Glenn asked if it's a tablet or a PC. Peter said it's a clamshell PC.
– It's like a PC with the Chrome browser always open. But it still allows you to open some types of files.
– It has a 16gig solid state hard drive and a SD card slot.
– Unlike his iPad, it does run Flash content.
– It opens .pdf files within the browser.
– It can open Excel and Word files if they're not too complex. He writes academic documents and cross references and footnotes are problematic.

Marilyn called. She had data recovered from old hard drive that crashed. She had been moving the recovered files to a new computer but didn't want those files to overwrite any new files she's created on the new machine. She heard about a program called Ztree. It's supposed to be able to prevent overwriting. The recovered data totals 83,000 files in many subdirectories and wondered if Ztree is up to the task.
– Glenn looked up their website and noticed they have a tutorial that might help her.
– In the future look, for a backup program that does incremental backups where only the part that changes gets backed up, not entire files. But Marilyn said that was the type of backup program she was using and when she tried to retrieve the files, their names were just numbers and she couldn't relate them to the names she used when she first created the files.
– Glenn asked her to email him so they can deal with it later…Paul might have some suggestions.

Ed called. He has Mac. Any folder he tries to open has a random selection of photograph icons on the top bar. He doesn't know how they got there or how to get rid of them.
– Glenn thought he has the computer set to display thumbnails when there are pictures in the folder.

Ed also asked about how file sizes are displayed when he burns a CD. When he drags a file, the alias is reported as being about 3K but the running total reflects the actual size of the file (20meg, for instance). He wanted to know if the actual 20meg file will be burned, or only the alias.
– Glenn thought the real file would be burned, as expected. He should give it a try: at worst he'll waste just one CD.
– He suggested Ed call him after the show.

James called. He uses a HP laptop and his Firefox browser won't open. When it does, it works for 3 or 4 days and then stops.
– Glenn speculated it might be a hardware issue, but didn't have enough time to continue. James was asked to call after the show.

Last updated 10:24 PM 1/30/2013