Additional notes

Editor's comments delimited by < >

Google is coming out with Wave which, among other things, will combine instant messaging & email. More info is at wave.google.com .

How do you know if your spam filter is doing its job?
Send the following text — http://spamassassin.apache.org/gtube/ — to yourself and your spam filter (using Bayesian filtering) should flag it as spam.
If you go to that web page, you'll find a similar test for your anti-virus program.

Paul has a client who uses Outlook. Outlook attaches a file called winmail.dat that a recipient's Outlook program knows what to do with. Those not using Outlook will just see the attachment and not know what it means.
– Ask the sender to turn off message formatting e.g. RTF (Rich Text Format).
– Google 'winmail.dat defeat' or 'disable winmail.dat' for more info. <Disclaimer: use any software you find at your own risk>

There is a Mac version of Outlook called Entourage but it doesn't know how to handle winmail.dat.

You don't have to use the email portion of Outlook but that limits functionality like Outlook users mailing meeting appointments to each other.

If you install Thunderbird for your email it asks if you want to import Outlook stuff. Installing Thunderbird on a Mac with Entourage doesn't give you that choice, but see the above instructions, which are also echoed here.
More about exporting Entourage data in the show notes of 23Mar09.

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

A caller says he bought a HP media center computer but when he had problems with it, he received a loaner computer that had Vista instead of XP. He wants to know how to transfer the image of his original hard drive to the loaner.
– This may not be possible because the loaner machine has different hardware components that don't match the original computer.
– Using Maxtor OneTouch you may be able to install the OneTouch software and selectively restore just your data without restoring all of the XP operating system.
– Complain to your retailer that you were not given a comparable replacement computer.

The same caller wants to know how to digitally store the messages from his answering machine.
– Connect a microphone to your computer and hold it up to the answering machine.
– Use an ADA device. That's what's used by people who are hard of hearing and provides a line out which can then be connected to the line in of your sound card. Also known as ALS (Assistive Listening Systems)
– Use a Voice Over IP (VOIP) service, like Vonage.com, Lingo.com or Broadvoice.com, which normally store in digital format.

Brenda Horton is introduced. She owns and does the marketing at Hware, which develops and sells business tools (software). You may sign up to beta test some new software at Hware.com. Other shows featuring Brenda here and here.

Brenda talks about social media, which is different from email in that it's instant. It allows one to form personal and business relationships efficiently. It's like broadcasting to a network of people and unlike email, a response is not expected. Examples are Facebook.com, Myspace.com, Twitter.com.

On Facebook you can set up a profile page and a fan page. Search engines "love a fan page" and this is what's recommended for business use.
Scout out where your likely clients hang out and build your social network there.

Though some people do business on Twitter, mostly it's for informal socializing and building your network.

6 tips of what to do after you sign up on a social network site:
1) At first just hang out and get used to what the service is like. Don't push your product.
2) Be a helpful "solution provider" to build trust.
3) Provide some free, valuable or amusing content like 'will it blend', Such content may go viral, thereby reach many people.
4) Then you're ready to offer your product message.
5) Let go of control of your message. Let the online community decide what they like or dislike about your product and use that feedback to improve the product.
6) Use search engine optimization strategies like starting a blog so search engines can find you.

Also mentioned are the sites fixya.com and knol.google.com where questions are asked and when solutions are offered, the community rates them.

A caller bought a camera and a thumb drive to store the pics. He doesn't have a computer and wants to know how to get the pics onto the thumb drive.
– A library may allow you to hook up your equipment to their machines
– Buy another card <presumably of the type that came with the camera> rather than using a thumb drive.
– Buy a portable hard drive. There used to be one where you can plug a flash card into directly.
– Ask a friend to use their computer or go to a cafe that rents computer time.

Wolfram Alpha is a knowledge based search engine that's supposed to make sense to syntactic queries. <Its focus is on extracting answers from data sets. Visit the website for more info. Also, it supposedly has Mathematica running in the background so it is possible to use Wolfram Alpha as a CAS (Computer Algebra System).>

Additional notes

Editor's comments delimited by < > 

Startpanic.com (see above link) uses design flaws in javascript to reveal what's in your cache and allows a website to see where you've been on the web. Startpanic is supposed to be a demonstration, not an actual fraud site.

Laptops can typically drive any external display. Results can vary, as some don't support the higher resolutions, which can be true for the netbook class of machines.
Also current displays are tending to the 16:9 (width to height) aspect ratio. Older displays have a 4:3 ratio.
Intel makes the Atom CPU for the netbooks, which is fine for web browsing but is not powerful enough for video games.

Early rechareable batteries were nickel/cadmium type and would become limited in the amount of charge they could hold if you kept topping them off. The above link gives more details.
Warranty for the battery is sometimes different than for the computer itself.
It's best to keep the battery at 80% charge and as cold as possible without freezing.

The battery in the laptop acts like a UPS to prevent loss of data when the power goes out. So it's not necessarily a good idea to keep the battery stored in the refrigerator when you're using power from the wall socket.
The views expressed are those of the speakers only.

A caller has an iMac and feels sick after playing Scrabble for a while.
– Take periodic breaks
– If using a CRT type monitor, try increasing the video refresh rate so the screen won't flicker.
– Try changes the color scheme of the game, if possible.
– Discuss this with your eye doctor.

There is an English survey (see above link) about how the radio spectrum is being used. Some devices, like baby alarms, may be imported from foreign countries and use that part of the spectrum that's also used by Wi-fi. The Wi-fi receivers may not discriminate well enough and experience interference. If you suspect as much, you can try using software from netstumbler.com.

Glenn reminds people to do their backups.
Be careful when the word "recovery" is used. Doing a recovery may put your computer into the state it was in when you first bought it and you may lose all of your data. Get professional help if you have to when you get the message that your operating isn't working.

On a Mac with at least a 800mHz CPU, get the Leopard operating system (10.5) and use TimeMachine, which comes with it, for your backups.
For both the Mac & PC you can also get the Maxtor OneTouch drive.

A caller wonders if he can use the iPhone with a T-Mobile card <presumably he means the SIM card>
– Yes, but it has to be both unlocked & jailbroken <mentioned in this previous show>.
– Unlocking them may (or not) be illegal. Be aware of this risk. The views expressed are those of the speakers only.
– Used or refurbished iPhones are likely to be unlocked & jailbroken.
– Go to zen.kvmr.org and put "iPhone" in the search window to find other shows that talked about unlocking & jailbreaking..
– macpwn & winpwn is software to unlock the iPhone.

A caller asks for pointers on learning to start a business.
– This is the worst time because of so many scams.
– For what ever product you want to promote, look for the opposite of what you believe in to get a broader perspective of what others think.
– Be pragmatic & educate yourself. Be aware of others trying to talk you into something.

A caller keeps hearing a "zapping" sound on her radio.
– There's likely to be a cell phone in the vicinity
– On the front page of KVMR there's a link to info about getting better reception and dealing with interference.

A caller has a Mac (OS9) & external hard drive he uses for back up. He just got a new Macbook and wants to use the same external hard drive for its backups.
– The external drive has to be formatted as HMS+ to be able to use TimeMachine that came with the Macbook.
– If you have to reformat the drive (using OS10) there is a check box which allows it to install drivers so an OS9 machine can use it.

The same caller tried to repair permissions and was told some files could not be repaired.
– There are third party utilities that are more thorough than what came with the Mac OS.
– Use the original OS disks to boot from then try the repair.
– If Apple says don't worry about it, then don't.
– <More about the Mac & disk permissions here.and here>

Thumb drives lying around in a parking lot of a business may have malware on them. A form of social engineering, it plays on a person's tendency to put one into their computer.

Additional notes 

As the audio for today's show is due to be posted in the audio archives soon, these notes will be sparce.
The show was more a running narrative than topical so it's difficult to convey in brief notes. Please listen to the audio.

It's the 20th birthday of the World Wide Web. A link to the world's 1st web page is at the top.

It's also the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit. See the above link.

With regard to privacy on the internet, Britain has had problems with their national identity system and private information has been misused.
An amusing sound clip from the ACLU was played. It satirizes the lack of privacy. The link to the clip is above.

Co-host Coryon Redd is introduced. He will be talking about social media marketing and how to get people to come to your web site
It's presumed you already have some sort of business and a web site.

There are 2 other shows on internet marketing with Coryon Redd:
Aug 11 2008
http://zen.kvmr.org/content/view/68/11/
audio: http://zen.kvmr.org/archive/ZenTech_Aug_11_2008.mp3
and…
Nov 03 2008
http://zen.kvmr.org/content/view/75/11/

Coryon's business is Batteries For Less

The idea is to find, on the internet, people who'll be interested in your business.
He mentioned the social networking services Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin as well as going to forums & blogs.

Find people in these communities who are most active and join them in sharing your expertise but don't hawk your product.

Find places where you can generate links back to your web site.
Page Rank by Google gives an indication of quantity & quality of links to your web site.

Twitter is a growing area of social networking useful for marketing.

A clipping service helps you determine when your business gets mentioned in the news (blogs, periodicals, newspapers etc).
Use Google alerts from news.google.com (you have to create an account).

Coryon is willing communicate by email to help people with this subject.

Coryon will be teaching classes on internet marketing, sponsored by Nevada County Economic Resources Council.
They'll be at the Nevada County Board of Realtors on Mon May 11 and Tue May 19 at 7pm to 9:30pm.
For more info, contact him or go to ncerc.org.

Businesses just starting up are advised to put contact info or web link in your blog, printed material, the signature of your email, etc.
Use a collaborative spreadsheet at Google Docs to share ideas among your staff for promoting the company.

Google page ranking will give you a measure of the response to your promotional efforts.
Google webmaster tools:
 The linking report — tells you what web sites link to yours.
 The query report — shows which keywords are working for you.
Google Adwords is a paid service, which is also useful.

Brenda Horton with Hware discribes how she's using Linkedin, Facebook & Twitter.
The call was dropped but she calls back a few minutes later.

A caller with an arts group wants to know how to use Facebook for promotion.

Finishing out the show, Brenda Horton called back to continue her conversation. She also thinks video at Youtube will displace text as the primary way to get the word out.

Additional notes 

Editor's notes are delimited by < >

Paul is hosting the show. Glenn joins in later by phone.

Web site for optical illusions mentioned. See above link

The earliest effort for cable audio was the Telharmonium. It was designed by Thaddeus Cahill to send music by telephone to subscribers. See the above link.

Paul talked about the Conflicker worm. There are now variants A thru E. It keeps getting modified and always stays ahead of anti-virus programs. See the above link.

The "AutoDrive/AutoRun, Risks and Precentions" link above tells you how to disable the Autorun feature. It was meant to make the appropriate application run when a disk or flash drive is put into the computer: E.g. run Media Player when an audio CD is inserted, but can be used by malware to infect the machine and propagate itself.

Glenn found an iPhone clone from China for around $100. It's not a true clone but does much of the same stuff. It's unlocked and works on the 4 principle cell phone frequencies so you can use it with various providers by using the appropriate SIM card.
It appears to be 2G (EDGE) only.
There's a link above to someone selling the phone on Ebay.

A topic that often comes up is how to boost your cell phone signal.
– Some cell phones have a special connector for an external booster or passive antenna.
– "Booster Stickers for Cell Phones" do not work, never have.
– Active boosters do work but are expensive. They work for both GSM CDMA networks.
See the links above.

Cell phone towers can handle only a finite number of calls and the weakest signals are usually dropped in favor of those most likely to have a satisfactory connection.

Paul observes that though people may be concerned about personal info being harvested by commercial interests, they gladly give away, on sites like Facebook, far more info than they would allow to be taken from them.

Glenn joins in from San Jose in Costa Rica using Skype Out. He talks quite a bit about the environs. He has with him the Idea Pad by Lenovo: an XP machine with a 80Gig hard drive.
Skype Out minutes "expire in 90 days unless you use and then it expires in 90 days from your last use".
So far it's averaging $.021/min.
With OneSuite he couldn't get a local phone number or a toll free number to call out from Costa Rica. He installed something called a 'soft phone' <I think that's what I heard> which he thinks might work if he weren't on a wireless router (it can't authenticate it's proxy). Bottom line, Skype is easier to use and is cheaper: OneSuite charges would amount to about $.08/min, Glenn surmises.

Glenn says he'll post photos from his trip on zen.kvmr.org

Glenn is now using the Picassa software from Google. It's a picture editing & managing program. He tried it before but wasn't happy because it kept re-indexing his photos. Picassa 3 works much better.

Paul mentioned Adobe Photoshop Elements 7. He thinks it's a good program but it can loose track of where your pictures are if you move your folders around.

Paul also suggests Paint Shop Pro
<Learn more about Paint Shop at these sites:
tcc-pub.com/workshop/205/psp.htm
www.youthpastor.com/2000/index.cfm/A/2Kpsp.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_Shop_Pro
Paint Shop Pro is now a Corel product but earlier free versions can be found. I got my copy here.>

Paul bought some Irish Stout that comes with a "widget" aka "cat toy". It's a sphere in the can with pressurized nitrogen, which gets released when you open the can, giving the stout a creamy head.

Rich called in. He want's to get involved with digital video. He has an HP Media Center computer but doesn't think it's adequate.
– All versions of XP come with Windows Movie Maker which is pretty effective. Paul's Costa Rica videos at tropicaltributes.blogspot.com were made with Movie Maker.
– < On my PC I have Windows Movie Maker located at:
in the All Programs menu and also in All Programs -> Accessories -> Entertainment>
– Most people, with a PC, use Adobe Premier Adobe Premier Pro. It also comes in a "light" edition.

Mikail called in using the Comcast digital phone plan and a plain old telephone. Paul says the Comcast router has battery back up so the phone should still work for a few hours if the power goes out.

The reason Mikail called is to say the coming new iPhone is rumored to do HD video. He also says the new Apple notebook is rumored to have a 10" touch screen and cost $400 to $600.

Additional Notes

Glenn & Paul are in the studio. Mikail called in from Crete.

Fstream is an app for iPhone that allows one to listen to streaming radio.

4-5-9 was Google's 5th birthday.

Google Earth is mentioned. It shows aerial pictures of many locations & allow you to zoom in. Find it at earth.google.com.
There's an app for iPhone that lets you do the same thing.

You can have Google handle email addressed to a domain you own and you don't have to have a gmail account.
The free service; can have mail to your own domain delivered to Google's system. Plus, you can manage your mail at Google. See the link & comment at the top of this page.
To sign up you have to have access to the domain naming system.
Google will verify that you're the owner of the domain and require you to change the MX records (the DNS entries that indicate where the mail is to be delivered).
The standard disclaimer applies.
The views expressed are those of the show's hosts only.

Mikail called in from Crete using the new skype app on the iPhone and a satellite internet connection.
The Skype Out service lets you call an ordinary phone and costs about 1 cent per minute.

There is an unreleased app for the iPhone which allows one to switch a cell phone connection to wi-fi without losing the connection.

A jailbroken version 2.2 iPhone doesn't work with the Skype app. You have to have ver 2.21. See the above link

Tethering (look for "tethering" in the previous show's notes) will officially come with version 3.0 of the iPhone. For jailbroken phones there is a tethering app for $29.95 at Cydia.
Tethering means using the phone to connect your computer to the internet.

The 2G iPhone uses EDGE which is barely fast enough to be useful.

The current iPhone protocol is 802.11h. The new iPhone will use a new processer and 802.11n which is significantly faster, Mikail says.

Mikail says Airport cards in Mac computers built around 2003 and earlier have died. The hardware is no longer supported. One has to upgrade to an Airport Express base station.

If you use Boss Prefs on a jailbroken iPhone, in system preferences you'll find a kill switch that
Apple can use to disable any app you bought and installed. Boss Prefs can be used to disable that kill switch.

There are some indications that future iPhones will be able to do video recording & editing, and have an FM radio.

The new Skype for iPhone only does voice & text, not pictures.

The 3G tethering to the pc (mentioned above) uses wi-fi, not blue tooth.

Mikail says jailbroken iPhones can send video streams with a special app.

A caller asks if Magic Jack (Paul's write-up)has security issues.
– "There are security issues with anything you plug into a computer".
– It's very easy to set up and the quality is quite good.
– $19.95 to purchase and $19.95 per year subscription.
– You need a broadband connection.

There doesn't seem to be a delay in Mikail's audio with his satellite connection; Paul is incredulous.
There should be a delay because of the distance to the geostationary satellites.

Using Skype to call another Skype user is free; Skype Out is cheap but minutes expire.

A listener called in saying he can't receive windows updates.
– Malware is suspected
– It might possibly be a rootkit.
– Some malicous sites may say you need an update to your anti-virus software to get you to click on a link, but then send you malware instead.
– Paul invited the caller to email him & resolve this off air.
– Black Light Anti-Rootkit can possibly find the rootkit. Also, see notes from a previous show.
– Back up your files before trying to eliminate malware.
– Passwords may have already been stolen; check your bank account, etc.

Listeners are asked to go to kcra.com & vote for KVMR as the best radio station. You can get the exact link on the kvmr.org page.

A caller with Mac Book Pro followed Mikail's suggestions from the last show regarding fixing disk permissions but keeps getting a warning that some files "will not be repaired".
– Mikail suggests backing up & reinstalling the operating system

Check out Paul's Costa Rica blog tropicaltributes.blogspot.com