Additional Notes

Editor's comments delimited by < >

Zentech is approaching its 10th anniversary.

The audio of a Nigerian-like scam was played, see the links above:

Barbara called to thank Paul for solving the problem with the Celtic Festival web site.
The solution involved the HTML directive Pragma: no-cache which makes ones web browser use the actual web page, not the version in the cache, every time that website is accessed. This is desirable when the web page changes often and insures the viewer is looking at the latest version. The PRAGMA is not recommended for static pages as it slows the display of the page (it's not coming from the cache).

Coryon Redd is introduced. He'll be talking about internet marketing.
<Coryon's business is Batteries For Less>

The US does not have Labor Day on May 1 like the rest of the world.

Coryon talked about getting traffic to your site thru pay-per-click advertising.
<2 ad services were talked about Adword & Adsense>

Adword:
Use it if you're a business that wants to get traffic based on keywords related to what you do (as a marketer).
You can use Yahoo, Google or MSN. But Google, with Adword, is the most popular.
You first create an account at Google and then bid on keywords.
"Do not bid or put anything out there on the content network"; put it in the search network only. The 'content' is not the words people enter into a search engine but what's on a web page or in a Gmail email (Google Gmail searches inside your email). If you're in the content network, you may get traffic that just 'stumbles' upon words you used in your web page and that may be a less focused target than someone who gets to your site due to your more carefully selected keywords that they entered into a search engine.

Coryon explained organic searches as those that resulted from keywords you, the advertiser, did NOT pay for. These are the Google search results that are displayed below the sponsored links. <Supposedly he mention this concept on a previous show>

Keep an eye on the ROI (return on investment). Don't spend more on your ads than the money you make on the results.
It's easy to set up a Google Adwords account with a minimum deposit. Then you start bidding on the keywords.
You can exclude certain keywords like the word "cheap" if you sell only high end products.
Do some research before you spend money for something like Adsense.

Adsense:
With Adsense you syndicate Google's content and get money using your web page. You give Google your web page address and some info about it. You can then carry ads for other related sites on your web page.
You make a small commission of a few cents when someone clicks on those ads.
You need significant amount of traffic to your site to make much money using Adsense.

Social sites are not especially good for the advertising already mentioned. But there is another realm called social media marketing involving Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, blogs (Blogspot.com) and forums. As an advertiser, you have a lot of control over which sites show your ads.

Paul mentioned the Small Business Administration, which offers assistance.
They gave him some of the top reasons businesses fail. One reason is inability to adapt to change. What people buy & how they find out what to buy keeps changing.

Google Analytics helps you find out how your web pages are doing and where are you losing the viewer.
The service is free and you don't have to use Adwords to benefit.
<previous shows on internet marketing:
8-11-8
11-3-8
5-4-9>

Bettsie called to ask if you have control over how your Adwords account gets charged.
– Coryon says yes, you can set a limit at which Adwords turns off.
– He says keep an eye on what keywords attract customers vs. those that get customers to buy.

Win7 is mentioned as being better than Vista, the previous, panned operation system.
Coryon says if you buy a computer with Vista at this time, you'll get a free upgrade to Win7.
Snow Leopard has been released for the Mac.

Elmer Elevator (aka Bruce Stone) called to say if you have XP, why change.
Coryon says Dell now only sells computers with Vista. He also says that major software packages are dropping support for XP. Paul says that the tools Microsoft provides developers to create their programs are what limit the XP support. The software company may have less control over this than you think.

The disclaimer: views & opinions are those of the show's hosts only.

Paul mentions a couple of ways you can still install XP.
– Install a copy whose key has already been used. When XP checks in with Microsoft it will complain but you can, at that point, pay for a new license.
– Go to Overstock.com and search for Optiplex. You can get a refurbished 2.5GHz machine with 1yr warranty and with XP for $159.
– The caller says there are refurb units with XP for less than $100 at computer-show.com.

Dave called to say he's thinking of getting a 13" Powerbook Pro and wants to be able to run Win7.
– Paul thinks it likely will be able to do it.
– But he asks why do you want to run Windows? Some people only need to run specific applications like Internet Explorer. In that case you can use Crossover from codeweavers.com. Then you don't have to buy the windows operating system and you'll save money — Crossover is only about $49.
<see show notes for more info about running Windows on a Mac:
7-27-9
8-10-9>
– If you're doing training, as the caller does, that involves different applications of ActiveX and not just going to a few predictable sites, then Crossover may not be suitable. The full Windows OS should work better.
– There is also an ActiveX addon for FireFox . <I think this is the right one>

The same caller said some versions of Win7 will have a way of running XP for those applications that need it. Paul thinks it's just an emulation but will reserve his opinion until he has a chance to have a closer look at Win7.

Paul says that either MacBook or MacBook Pro does not have Firewire. It's useful when you've used up your USB ports. And you can string many devices on one Firewire port.

Coryon says that OpenOffice is available for the Mac and he uses it. And he thinks there is an upgrade package that gives you Snow Leopard and has iWork for about $100. Paul says Snow Leopard only works with Intel Macs.

Coryon will be holding classes about internet marketing.
 A beginner's class is Thur Sep 17 6-8:30pm at Nevada County One Stop.
The intermediate class is about link building, pay-per-click advertising and social media marketing. It's on Thu Sep 24 6-8:30pm
For more info go to sedcorp.biz.
530-823-4703
Coryon has a column in the Union every other Monday. When you get there, search for "coryon" to find the articles.
You can contact Coryon at:
coryon@gmail.com

At the business listing of Google Maps you can provide your business info so you can be found thru the mapping service as well.

Additional notes 

Editor's comments delimited by < >

Tor Pack (the link is above) provides a peer-to-peer network with other Tor Pack users. It splits your internet traffic among the other peers <so it doesn't look like it's coming/going to one place> thus providing some anonymity. However it slows down your browsing by about 1/3 for all the routing it does.

The NSA has a premium for anyone who can figure out how to snoop on Skype communications. Skype is anonymized thru a closed-source security protocol <presumably encryption>.
eBay spent a lot of money for Skype but didn't get full possession, it was only a sub-licensing agreement.

Yubanet had an interesting article (see link above) about how people tend to walk in circles when lost and don't have visual cues.

At one time Glenn helped someone whose machine wouldn't boot. This was a case where there was a defective floppy disk in the drive. Removing the disk solved the problem. A similar thing can happen if your machine is set up to first look at the CD drive while booting and the CD has faulty data.

If you have a Mac and you can't eject a CD, hold the (left) mouse button down while booting. That will force an ejection.
On a Mac Mini there is a small hole where you insert a paper clip to force the ejection. The hole is on the right side of the CD slot itself.
Also don't put mini-CDs into a slot loading Mac.

Mikhail called to confirm the tip about holding down the mouse button to eject the CD.
He mentioned sources for info about local music events:
– nevadacitymusicevents.com
|- Pioneer Magazine
– The Nevada City Advocate newspaper
– Yubanet's calendar page

RSS feeds are mentioned. You can subscribe to a feed and have information about new content (articles, audio, video) pushed out to your reader or to an aggregator, such as Google Reader, on the web.

Mikail uses his iPhone to receive RSS feeds with a program from golden-app.com called RSS Runner.

Mikail asks about a program called MP3 Rocket for the PC, it downloads and plays mp3s. He was helping someone use it but couldn't actually play mp3s that were received outside of this program. <No solution was given, but…>
– Use something less proprietary, like Bittorrent, to get the music and then use a common player like iTunes <or Winamp> to play it.

Mikail also mentions that many PC laptops allow you to hit just one key and switch over to an external monitor. But there doesn't seem to be anything similar on the Mac. That would be handy if the built-in screen stops working.
– If an external monitor is connected when the Mac is started, the Mac MAY try to use both monitors simultaneously. But that may be true only if it's in 'mirror mode'. You may have to reset the PRAM.

PowerPoint has a way of using the built-in monitor of a laptop to present the list of slides while the external monitor displays the slides themselves.

Mikail says there is an app for iPhone to control the program called Keynote on the Mac. Keynote is similar to PowerPoint. Use the word 'keynote' to search for that app at the app store.

Paul talked about the difference between Ad hoc and infrastructure connections.
An ad hoc connection is machine to machine.
An infrastructure connection means all the machines are connected to a common peer point like a gateway.

The disclaimer: views & opinions are those of the show's hosts only.

Glenn asks if it's true that AT&T won't help you find a missing or stolen iPhone unless you subscribe to MobileMe for $99/yr.
– Yes, but it's Apple not AT&T. Mobile Me is an Apple service.

Glenn wonders if the IMEI number is used to disable the phone, can the IMEI number then be cloned and the phone used again.
Mikhail doesn't think so, he hasn't heard of it being done.
Paul says the IMEI number is reported to an international registry when the phone is lost or stolen and it can't then be used on a network. He also says that some people have been able to change the baseband of the phone. That's the software that actually communicates with the cell network.

Mikail says there is a version 3.01 update for the iPhone to patch the security hole in the text messaging (SMS) system. The virus will infect without the user doing anything. One only has to be sent an text message. The virus can attack not only the Phone, but the Blackberry, Android and MS Mobile series. See this article.

He says many of the apps for the iPhone are able to communicate with their creator to pass on data about how it's used. Some people are upset about this so now there is an app called PrivaCy for jailbroken iPhones to turn off that communication. More info about PrivaCy here.
Mikail says the way Apple has things set up, app developers have no contact with people who use the apps.

A caller installed FoxFire 3.52 and wonders if the addon Microsoft Net Framework Assistant should be removed.
– No, it should be safe.

She also asks about the add-on "Clickone Support"
– Since it's grayed out, it's not active anyway.
– Glenn quickly checked it out and found that it's legit add-on, it allows Clickone applications to use the .NET Framework.

Greg called in to say he has a Mac Mini that keeps spitting out the CD.
– Try a different disk, it may be defective. Greg says he's tried that.
– The drive may be defective.
– Try a cleaning disk first.
– Try carefully blowing it out with compressed air.

Jerry called to ask what old operating system he can use in his Titanium Power Book.
– 10.5 Leopard, if it runs over 1GHz. Jerry says it only 664MHz.
– Paul says, in that case the latest version that'll work is 10.4

Bill called to suggest filehippo.com <I think that's what he said> for old version of FireFox and other software.

He also says he's looking for an alternative to Wild Blue and was looking into Verizon's Aircard.

– You can try the Aircard for its 15 day trial period to see if it works for you. It has about the same performance as satellite.

Additional notes

Editor's comments are delimited with < > 

Telephony thru Google was discussed. See the link above. It's still under test. You have to apply for an invitation at that address. Be sure to pick a local number.
You can configure it with an out-going message. And when people call that number, you can have any phone or combination of phones will ring at the same time.
Google Voice can send a fairly accurate transcription, of voice messages left at that number, to your email.
The transcription service does seem to censor some profanity.

Google Wave is a service that tries to merge email, instant messaging, texting, voice mail and video messaging. It's supported by ads whose content may be determined by the content of your communications.
And beware, this is the sort of thing the NSA might take advantage of for eavesdropping.

Glenn uses Google Voice to call any phone number and then have the phone, at his current location, be called to complete the connection.
Paul's Google Voice number is 362-8052, which is local to Nevada City.
When he calls that number and hits *, he can enter his PIN number and then he can the originate calls using that number.
It does not port numbers, though that's coming.
Porting a number is where you tell a phone provider, other than the one you normally use that number with, to use that number on your behalf with their service (in this case, Google Voice).
More about Google Voice from their blog here.

The disclaimer: views & opinions are those of the show's hosts only. Use at your own risk

Since you want to pick a local number for Google Voice, dial 0 and ask the operator if a number is local to you or go here to look it up on the net.
There's also a table near the beginning of the white pages that shows local numbers.

Britain has a service called TalkTalk where you pay a flat monthly rate and call anywhere in that country and not contend with local and long distance. KVMR has ported its fax number to My Fax so faxes now arrive as .pdf files.

When you port a number, be sure that number doesn't have some other service you use, like DSL.

Google Voice can be made to block calls; in which case it says "this number is out of service"
With Google Voice you can also block unidentified calls.
There are 2 types of caller ID situations:
1) The caller ID is not provided like with foreign calls where that information is not part of the call.
2) The caller has blocked their number from being revealed.
You can configure Google Voice to respond differently in each case. If the number ID is blocked, you can have it ask the caller their name and then tell you who's calling.

Generic top level domains were talked about. See the link near the top of this page. They are different from political domains often associated with countries, like .im, which refers to the Isle of Man. See the link about tr.im above. To find out more about these domains put nic. in front of the letters — e.g. nic.im.

For companies that want to sell their product in a foreign country it's suggested to…
1) Register for a web address in that country like mycompany.br for a Brazilian domain. Go to nic.br to find out how to do that.
2) Translate your pages to the language of that country. Apache server has an easy way of making pages come up in the language of the visitor. If you name a page for example index.html.br, if it's being seen with a Brazilian language browser, it will come up in their language.

The best place on the net to learn about a country is cia.gov.

To shorten a really long URL go to tinyurl.com. Now the service allows you to personalize the short link you are given. See the kvmr895 example above.

Wikipedia pays just under $9000 for their bandwidth.

Twitter has recently been hit with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack because of a Georgian national who was saying some unfriendly things about Russia. Twitter blocked that user to alleviate the attack. See the above link about "joejob".

Carylon called to say the British have a service called Freephone that allows their users to call the US for free.
Skype is another option for free phone calls.

Verisign was engaged in a con known as frontrunning where they preregister a domain name and then try to get a customer to pay more by claiming the name was already registered. See the above link for more info.
Facebook has also been doing something along those lines, drumming up business by encouraging people to sign up with them before certain names are taken.

Caller says she heard of a search engine that doesn't compile information about what people are searching for. She didn't have further info.
Paul says there is some software that distributes your click request thru different servers, but didn't name it.
Also you can use a proxy server (anonymizer website) that takes your search request and makes it look like it came from them, not you. But do you trust the anonymizer?.

A caller asked about Omsoft's phone number.
530-758-0119 omsoft.com

Another caller asked if Omsoft is the company mentioned that protects your privacy.
– It's the customer records that are protected.

He also asked for a recommendation in buying his 1st computer.
– For someone just starting out, Apple is recommended.

And he wants to catalog a music collection. So he wants to know what software, which was mentioned before, that will supply all information about a track.
– iTunes can do that. It can also rip your CDs and help digitize vinyl records.
– Winamp does something similar, but it's for the PC not Mac.

Then he asks if he'll be able to do "anything PC" with the Mac.
– The biggest sticking point is that the Mac will not run Internet Explorer 7 which is needed in some limited situations — some realtors need it. But you can get the Codeweaver;s Crossover software to do that. It was mentioned in the previous show's notes.
– You can also run something like Parallels that lets you run Windows. But then you'll be subject to Window's vulnerabilities.

A caller just moved to an area where there's no high speed internet. He's tried an AT&T Aircard but the connection is slow.
– Smarter Broadband is recommended.
– Hughsnet providing satellite internet, is another option. They used to be affiliated with Direct TV. You'll pay $60 to $80 per month typically. The uplink is directly to the satellite, not thru the phone line. But there is a slight delay because of the distance to the satellite, so VOIP may be less than satisfactory.
– Before the warranty on the Aircard is up, experiment with different antennas and such.

Peaches called. She has a Dell Latitude D820 and wants to know how to connect it to a stereo & TV with HDMI.
– Determine which connector the computer & TV have in common.
– The TV likely has a VGA port so try using a VGA cable (the connection normally used for the computer monitor). You'll also need cable for the sound, likely involving 3.5mm connectors.
<See the notes from the 7-13-9 show for more about this topic including the EVA 9000 media server by Netgear> 

  Nice Internet Speed Tests
New One May 2009: http://testmy.net
SpeakEasy is here ! also another is HERE and Motorcycle Michael suggested these too:
http://www.bandwidthspeedtest.com
http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html
http://www.wugnet.com/myspeed/speedtest.asp
http://www.bandwidth.com/content/tools

I liek this one http://www.speedtest.net

Additional notes 

Editor's comments delimited by < >

It's not so easy to use an iPhone as a disk storage device as last week's show implied.
You can use an ipod ripper to get data off an iPod, iPhone, or iTouch.
There's also an app to show you what data is on your iPhone here.

Glenn tried using Cycorder to record videos with his iPhone but iTunes did not recognize any of it.

Paul played audio from zug.com that points out our cell phone records are not safe:

US debt clock mentioned. See above link.

The above link about CD ROM drives explains why it's difficult to get them to spin faster and thereby transfer data faster.
Early drives were required to have a speed of at least 150k bps to qualify as a multimedia drive in the early version of Windows. That's just fast enough for audio. The top theoretical speed is about 52 times that original speed.

Smartypig.com (above link) is a place to get a higher than usual interest on your savings. It also lets you to set up savings goals for yourself & others (like your children).
Check it out at Bank Rate using the above link.
Caveat emptor — use it at your own risk. Check with fdic.gov if you want to be cautious.

The disclaimer: views & opinions are those of the show's hosts only.

A quote from Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867 is read (see above).

Network Solutions has been infiltrated by credit card fraud. See above link.

There's more information about why we get viruses if you follow the link in the first part of these notes.
There are 2 camps, those who write the viruses and those who from botnets. It's mostly a criminal enterprise now.

The above link, concerning the Kindle unit, is about Amazon's rescinding the sale of 2 ebooks because of copyright issues.

Learn about your CPU, memory type and graphics by going to cpuid.com (see the link above). The utility you download from there does not need to be installed, just run it.

Belarc Advisor is a similar utility.

There is a utility for Mac that shows how the disk space is used.

Grandperspective from Source Forge uses the TreeMap algorithm and also groups the files by type (like .jpg). WinDirStat does something similar for the windows users. See the above link where there's also a link to explain TreeMap. Treemap is a way to graphically present large amounts of complex information.

Mikhail emailed to say iPhone also has a kill switch — similar to what was said about the Kindle — to delete data from the iPhone. A jailbroken iPhone can have the kill switch disabled

A utility that comes from Cydia called boss prefs allows you to turn off the iPhone kill switch. switch (also see show notes for 4-6-09).

Glenn mentioned Google Mobile for the iPhone so you can talk to the phone instead of typing. More info about it here.. Paul mentioned 2 apps he likes — Shazam (identifies music you play into the phone), and Red Laser <supposedly this is the link to it, I don't have iTunes to check it out so beware>. Red Laser lets you scan barcodes and identify products.

Glenn wonders if the iPhone has image stabilization, because he was getting such clear images, but Paul thinks that was because he was in a well lit place and the phone was using a high shutter speed.

A caller suggests using memtest86 as another utility to check out your machine.
The machine has to be booted from separate media like a bootable CD, floppy or flash drive.

A caller has a continually rotating hourglass icon and can't access his firewall settings.
– Paul thinks it may be Symantec that's hogging the CPU time.
– Get AVG www.download.com or free.avg.com and after installing it you can then…
– Uninstall the Symantec product
– Some of the current browsers (Firefox 3.5.1 and IE8) already warn you of nefarious web sites, thus doing some of the work of Symantec. So that, AVG and the built in firewall of your operating system should be all the protection you can reasonably expect. But note you can never be 100% protected.
– Spybot is also mentioned but the browsers & AVG also check for spyware.
– Go to popuptest.com to check how well your popups are blocked.
<Other useful utilities are listed in the show notes for Dec 17, 2007>

A caller using a Mac wants to know if using Parallels to run Window means he should use an anti-virus program.
– Yes, get AVG

One of the reasons for using Windows on a Mac is that some sites require Internet Explorer 7 or 8 <if you avoid them, maybe they'll get the message>. Some realtors because of the Paragon system are required to use one of the latest versions of IE.
An alternative to using Parallels and a Windows operating system is to use Crossover. <Also see the Mac iPhone show of 3-23-9>, which is based on the open source program called WINE. Crossover will run some but not all Windows programs without using Windows itself. Check the Crossover web site to see which applications it can run. Crossover is cheaper ($40 for standard, $70 for professional) than the Parallels and Windows combination.

A caller wants to convert her cassette tapes to digital files.
– Connect the tape deck using the red & white RCA jacks.
– Get the Audacity software to control the recording/
– Audacity is avaliable for both the PC & Mac.

Happy birthday Bugs Bunny, link above. Groucho Marx inspired the character.

A caller wants to know what software to use with an MP3 player that's not an iPod.
– Winamp allows you to manage the MP3s on a player that is neither an iPod nor a Zune.

jkdefrag is much better than the built-in Windows defragger and is now at version 4.11, the link is above. The built-in Mac defragger does a pretty good job, no need to replace it.