FREE! Radio Apps for the iPhone let you listen to KVMR over 3G and wifi

FREE! APPS for the iPhone!
http://www.apptism.com/

Setting The iPhone Free from AT&T
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc2009033_855911.htm?campaign_id=yhoo

Breaking Apple's Grip on the iPhone
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123629876097346481.html

AT&T to sell iPhone without contract for $599 and up
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ATampT-to-sell-iPhone-without-apf-14694320.html

Apple’s iPhone 3.0 Preview
http://www.apple.com/iphone/preview-iphone-os/

How the iPhone 3.0 Will Create a New Mobile Economy
http://mashable.com/2009/03/21/iphone-economy/

How to Enable 3G Tethering in Your iPhone 3.0 Now
http://i.gizmodo.com/5175391/how-to-enable-3g-tethering-in-your-iphone-30-now

iPhone 3G Tethering Now Working for Someone, Somewhere
http://i.gizmodo.com/5175020/iphone-3g-tethering-now-working-for-someone-somewhere

iPhone 3.0 OS Reveals New iPhones, iPods and the Mysterious "iProd"
http://i.gizmodo.com/5175348/iphone-30-os-reveals-new-iphones-ipods-and-the-mysterious-iprod

Titanium Software – FREE & Highly Useful Maintenance Apps
http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs/english.html

gmail contact import for Entourage Users
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=8301

Entourage Contact CSV Exporter 1.4.3
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/27099/entourage-contact-csv-exporter

Crossover – run PC apps on your Mac w/o WIndows
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

Flip for Mac – Watch Windows Only Movies on your Mac – Telestream is a local company too!
http://www.telestream.net/telestream-products/desktop-products.htm

iPhone OS 3.0 Will Turn Your Phone Into a Revolutionary Sex Toy
http://i.gizmodo.com/5172615/iphone-os-30-will-turn-your-phone-into-a-revolutionary-sex-toy

Glenn & Mikail hosted the show. Thanks to Mikail for the above list, and to Glenn for forwarding it to me.

iPhone 3.0 firmware (see above link) to be available around June for a $5 or $10 upgrade.
– It will allow cut & paste of text in any window. Jailbroken iPhones can already do that with an add-on app. This app allows you to work with secure text and allows multiple items in the cut buffer.
– Allows tethering (see above link) to connect a computer to the internet thru the iPhone & 3G network. Jailbroken phones have an app to do this for $29.95.
– Can take a SIM card from a non-jailbroken phone and put it into a jailbroken phone and use the internet services without paying for the voice plan, you pay only for the data plan. <I hope I got that right>
– AT&T reserves the right to charge you for both plans, if it finds out.
– The 3.0 upgrade will work on all iPhones but the stereo Bluetooth and multimedia messaging (like the picture video messaging) won't work with the first generation iPhone.
– More info about unlocking & jailbreaking from previous show's notes, these notes and the above links.

In the developers code for iPhone 3.0 are references to 4 new products. It remains unclear what they are. Follow the rumors at macrumors.com.

The 5-passenger Nano car by Tata Motors of India is mentioned. It's gas driven minimalistic car for about $2000. There's also the .7 liter diesel Smart Car that gets over 100mpg and meets emissions standards but is not allowed to be sold in the US.

Starting this Thursday (3-26-9) AT&T will make non-contract models of the iPhone available in 8gig ($599) & 16gig ($699). These have been available, on Craigslist for example, but you still have to get a contract with AT&T (unless you jailbreak it & use it with T-Mobile). Bottom line is that people who want to use just the WI-FI to save on connection charges will have a difficult time of it.

If you think you'll ever want to jailbreak your iPhone, don't update to 3.0. Apple has found a way to prevent jailbreaking.

Others are copying Apple by starting up app stores. Search for apps, free and pay, at apptism (see the above link).
An app store for jailbroken iPhones called Cydia was mentioned.
<Also see www.RockYourPhone.com> 

To reach Mikail Graham, send email to:
tos at kvmr dot org or tosradio at gmail dot com

A caller got a program called Cribbage but, as a result, was switched over to a different default search engine. This happens often and is not especially malicious, they're just trying to get you to use their service because they make money on it (thru advertising, for instance).
– Uninstall it. Then install it again using custom install, if available, and pay attention for a prompt that asks if you want to switch to a different search engine.
– Just make the change in your browser to your preferred search engine.

Safari version 4 has made improvements especially the javascript engine.

Google's Chrome is a lean browser but Glenn has had trouble saving bookmarks.

Titanium Software (see the above link) has free maintenance software for the Mac for both Leopard and Tiger like Onyx and Deeper.
To keep your Mac respond quickly, repair the disk permissions on a weekly basis; in utilities folder look for Disk Utility.

On the new Mac laptops you can use finger gestures, like on the iPhone, to control your screen.

A caller with a 3 year old Mac Book Pro had someone install the Leopard OS for him but he doesn't see a performance improvement.
– Use the Titanium utilities (see above link), Onyx in particular
– Opinions differ on whether to upgrade to Leopard or reformat the hard drive and do a fresh install, but it's recommended to do the latter.

A caller, new to Mac, wants to know how to create mail folders using the default Apple mail program.
– Mikail offered to help the caller off-air as it will take too long.
– Use Thunderbird
– Use Gmail. It uses labels, which work similar to folders.

A caller uses Entourage and wants to export the address book and use them in another mail program.
– Use the Entourage export (see above links) feature to create .rge file then convert to a CSV file which can then be imported to many mail programs.
– Again, Gmail is recommended because it is available on the net from any location & computer.

A caller warns that Gmail has privacy issues, Google can read your mail. Mikail points out that the same is true of other mail services.
– Encrypt sensitive mail.

Crossover (see above link) for the Mac uses Wine technology to run windows programs without windows installed. But it's only for Intel Macs

To play avi video or windows media video on a Mac there is:

flip4mac (see above link) by Telestream; free version available.

Paul is in Costa Rica and called in using Magic Jack. It's a device that plugs into a computer and allows one to use a standard phone over a broadband connection. For this call Paul's computer is connected via ISDN (the high-speed connection which preceded DSL) which runs a 128 kilobits/sec.

Glenn was exploring how to get to Europe inexpensively. Sometimes it's cheaper to take a more circuitous route than a direct flight.
Paul uses Orbitz & Expedia but check the airline's site for flights that may not be on the travel sites.

Paul is blogging about his trip at tropicaltributes.blogspot.com. Gmail users don't need to create a new account for blogspot.com. It's owned by Google, so use your current login.

Magic Jack is easy to hook up, no drivers to install; works well in foreign countries. Paul did a writeup here.

A caller recommends TV Fool (mentioned in the notes for the last show) for information about TV reception in your particular location.
Also check out:
antennaweb.org
antennaweb.org/aw/Stations.aspx

Paul talked to a guy at Radio Shack and was told that about half of the people in the <Nevada> county will succeed in receiving a digital signal if they get a yagi array antenna and raise it to a higher level.

A caller recommends kayak.com, a travel site aggregator, so you can get travel info from various sites in one place.
EDITORS NOTE: I just read about a simillar site called Tripadvisor.

A caller wants to know if wi-fi or Ethernet is faster for uploading files.
– It shouldn't matter. The bottleneck is the provider.
– Check your end-to-end speed with speedtest.net.

3g cellular is becoming available locally, in the county. It's close to DSL speed.
3gstore.com
But there's a monthly capacity limit (2 or 3 gig).

A caller mentions that Southwest Airlines is not on the travel sites
– Southwest doesn't contract with the travel sites to provide flight info (and maybe not Jetblue either).

The same caller, wants to know if there's a free virtual machine to run Windows NT.
– VMware may have a free version.
– google "free microsoft virtual machine"

The same caller, thinks HD TV requires only the small, UHF antenna not the long yagi, mentioned above.
– HD TV and digital TV are not the same. HD comes in digital but so does regular definition.
– Yagi just refers to the arrangement of the antenna elements and it works for various frequencies. To get a weaker signal you may need an antenna with more elements, in effect, making the antenna longer.

The KVIE audio channel at 87.8 FM will go off the air when we go all digital. Radios that pick up the audio from TV channels will suffer the same fate. (also mentioned in the previous show's notes)

A caller is getting a marginal signal for his iPhone thru the EDGE network and wants to know if it's a good idea to use repeater with an antenna or wait for 3G.
– Paul thinks a repeater might be expensive and the improvement only slight
– Check with Banner Communications, a company local to Nevada City.

A caller using a Mac & the program Fetch for FTP and wants something that does the same on the PC?
– Use the FireFTP addon with Firefox.
EDITORS NOTE: A command line version of FTP comes with XP and has come with many versions of Windows. In XP it's located in C:\WINDOWS\system32:

Jeffrey Hein called to add that there are many FTP clients, including filezilla.
There's also WINSCP for secure file transfer.
JP Hein Consulting helps people integrate technology with their business.
Jeffrey says there's a free version of VMware. Also Virtual Box is free.

A caller is trying to use the Gmail POP service with Outlook Express but keeps receiving old mail.
– Switch to Thunderbird.
– Set Thunderbird to use IMAP. Under settings in Gmail there are instuctions to set up your mail program.
– There's a check box in Gmail settings to "enable this for only mail that arrives from now on".

Paul Patterson (KVMR station engineer) also thinks that the TV audio on FM will go away at the digital transition.

A caller has trouble receiving KVMR in Sacramento and wants to know if putting an antenna in her crawl space will help.
– Use the internet to listen to KVMR.
– Reception in a car is usually better.
– There are FM antennas you can use.
EDITORS NOTE; TV UHF antennas have long been recommended for FM signals.
– The digital radio KVMR signal is not much better than the analog.

A caller asks about a local store to buy a laptop.
– There's no local store but there may be a one in Marysville.
– Try Ebay or Craigslist.

Additional notes 

Worst Moments in Network Security. See the above link.
One example is about Robert Morris who sent out a worm via Sendmail (which is still used). He said he did it as a research project.

Early viruses were sent out infrequently. Now, new ones are sent hourly. AVG updates every 4 hours, just trying to keep up.

Glenn bought a 10" EEPC mini notebook for someone. It weighs 3.2 lbf with a 4-cell battery; a 6-cell battery should run from 5 to 7 hours

Openoffice is mentioned. It's a great alternative to Microsoft office and handles many of its file types.

Glenn found a Targus mini docking bay at buy.com for $23; actually a USB replicator to give 4 USB ports to go with that EEPC. It has an AC adapter, so those are powered USB ports.
Those that aren't externally powered are ok if what you plug into them is low speed & low power, but some devices like mini hard drives can draw 300 to 400 milliamps which can exceed the capacity of the replicator if it's not externally powered.

Paul gives a little lesson about what wears out in computers (besides the obvious mechanical wear in hard drives and such). It's the periodic expansion & contraction of components due to thermal cycling during power up & power down.
There's an old trick for trouble-shooting electronics, which is spraying freon on suspected components after they've heated up and started causing a symptom. If the symptom changes, you've located the problem. These days, use cans of compressed air turned upside down. Fast-evaporating contact cleaner may work too.
The views expressed are those of the speakers only. All imaginable disclaimers apply. Use the above at your own risk. AND, on top of that, be careful, don't freeze your skin.

Paul mentions what he calls "chewing gum stick" with embedded Linux, typically $140.

iobridge (see above link) connects remote monitors, like a weather station or X10 devices, to the net.

Electronic hobby kits have pretty much disappeared. Much has been miniaturized and integrated into more consumer friendly devices.
Even PCI not used much anymore, components are now usually plug in externally thru a USB port.

A laptop wireless card can often be replaced if it's plugged into a mini PCI slot.
Ebay can be a good source of recycled computer parts, like wireless cards.

Google Gmail can be used offline and you don't have to download anything special.
It uses AJAX which allows context sensitive right mouse clicks; the right mouse click gives a menu relevent to what you're doing on Google, not the usual menu you get for your browser functions.
To activate the offline feature, in Gmail go to settings -> labs -> turn on the feature you want (e.g. offline mode).
EDITORS NOTE:
There are a couple of modes when you 1st login to Gmail.
If you don't see the "Labs" label under "Settings" and…
If you're using the "Set basic HTML as default view" or "Older version" (top of the screen), you'll have to "Switch to standard view" or "Newer Version", depending on which screen you get.
There's more Gmail Offline info here:
A side note:
Google Docs also has offline capability; see here:

Glenn got a Lenovo $300 at buy.com with web cam, microphone, 80gig hard drive, 512 ram, XP and Atom processor.

The movie Slumdog Millionaire recommended. The major part of the story is about knowledge and how it's acquired.

Talk about Google labs continues…
Google will sometimes offer new features for testing to a subset of their users, but Gmail Offline should be available to all.

A caller asks about how to delete temporary internet files. He's not on the web but bought a used computer and the files are taking up a lot of space.
– Use Ccleaner

A caller installed a DTV converter box, but keeps getting the response "weak signal".
– DTV reception is normally poor when the transmitter is far away. There's not much you can do but subscribe to cable or satellite.
– Glenn suggests the booster, which the caller has, on his antenna is only good for analog signals and may actually attenuate the digital signal.
– A new digital TV may not help if the problem is a weak signal.
– Get your TV free over the internet if you don't mind it not being live.
– Use services like hulu.com or graboid.com.
A side note:
– You can check what reception to expect at your location:
tvfool.com
antennaweb.org
antennaweb.org/aw/Stations.aspx
– Other DTV antenna sites I haven't checked:
hdtvantennalabs.com
antennasdirect.com

A caller says her flash player is prompting to upgrade, is it ok?
– Yes. You can't run Flash independently and have it check for updates because it's a plugin for the browser and you just have to trust it to do the upgrade.

The same caller has a Mac G5 and wants to know if anything else but broadband is needed to watch video online?
– No
– To watch a YouTube video on dialup you can launch it and hit the pause button until the progress bar reaches the end, then press the pause button again and watch the video. It will take a long time to download the video, but it is possible.

The same caller also asks if the audio from KVIE (TV) that you can hear on FM radio at 87.8 will go away when the digital switch takes place.
– No, it should remain.
– EDITORS NOTE: It's my understanding that the signal at 87.8 is the actual broadcast from KVIE and not a separate broadcast. So, I expect (and I've heard as much) that it will vanish at the switch over. I'll miss it too. It's interesting that the most informative content seems to be in the audio (as it also is with community radio) rather than the video.

Additional notes 

Paul mentioned that there is a trojan going around in the iWorks suite for the Mac. See the above link.
Difference between a trojan, virus and worm.

People who meet certain qualifications will be able to file their state taxes for free. See the above link.

URLs that end in .gov are government websites and you have some assurance they're not nefarious (as far a governments go).

Go to donotcall.gov and sign up to prevent unsolicited phone calls.
This site initially came online a few years ago and the records are due to expire, so remember to reapply periodically.

The DTV switch was pushed forward to June 12. Originally it was on Feb 17 which is also the date dedicated to St Claire, the patron saint for television.
People who receive the TV signal by an antenna can get a $40 rebate coupon for a converter.

Ellen called from Auburn. Her email in Outlook Express inbox disappeared. How can she retrieve them?
– This can happen when the emails take up too much space — around 2gig.
– Start using Thunderbird. It will import the Outlook Express emails.
– Use Google with the search term "Outlook Express repair inbox", there are 3rd party programs to repair the Outlook Express file containing all of the inbox mail.
– There something called Inbox Repair Tool.
– In Outlook Express, 'deleted' mail is not actually gone until you purge or compact it.
– When exploring with ways to recover, 1st make copy of the OUTLOOK.PST file so you can put a copy back to the original location and continue exploring. It's IMPORTANT to do all this copying & exploring while the Outlook Express program is closed. More info from a previous show here.
– Sometimes Outlook Express encounters a malformed email and chokes, so do a CHKDSK on the file.

A caller has put together a machine with an external RAID 1 array, he wants to know if the software tool (that came with the drives) for marking bad clusters, has to be run on each drive individually.
– If the drives are controlled by a hardware unit (not by software), chances are high that the formatting utility in the external box will do the marking and the software tool is unnecessary.
– A good RAID array should understand SMART monitoring and give detailed information about disk behaviour.
– If clusters continue to be marked bad over an extended time, that's a degraded drive and SMART should report that to you.
– Mapped out bad clusters are tracked by the hardware unit not the operating system

A caller has a trojan on his Vista machine. His anti-virus program removes it but not completely, it keeps coming back and his protection programs stopped updating themselves.
– Try Spybot or Hijackthis. Go to download.com and get Spybot 1.6.2 (supposed to be the current version as of this date). Do any updates for Spybot and then check (and finally fix) the errors.
– Run Vista in safe mode using the F8 key. Then run AVG in safe mode.
– It may be a rootkit (see previous show here) and AVG can't deal with. Use Fsecure's Blacklight to detect (only) a rootkit. If you find a rootkit make a backup of your data. Boot from the latest version Ubuntu CD (a version of Linux which will write/delete on a NTFS (windows) hard drive). Then you'll be able to delete the troublesome files.

The Microsoft program for rootkits that Paul had trouble remembering is RootKitRevealer. For an example of a rootkit, symptoms to look for and what to do go here.
Additional tools from the Sysinternals suite here: 

Listeners are encouraged to give feedback on the show by email to zen at kvmr dot org.

Support for XP is due to end in a few months. Desktop systems are no longer sold with XP, for the most part. Dell may still have them.
– You can get XP on a small laptop called a netbook.
– If you try to install XP on a Vista machine you may have trouble getting XP drivers for the newer hardware that came with the Vista machines.
– You can install XP on a newer machine and then call Microsoft to transfer the license. But you can only do this if the copy of XP you have is not an OEM version. OEM implies it's a version that is installed by the manufaturer of the computer it came with.
– Put some non-OEM version on the machine anyway (all appropriate disclaimers apply). It will complain that it's an unauthorized copy when you try to activate it and give you an option to buy the license, currently $149. Do this only on a machine that's not critical (e.g. not used for business).

A caller has DSL thru AT&T and a wireless modem with Airport connecting both a Mac & Windows but it stopped working. She tried her neighbor's modem and it worked.
– She reset her modem so she'll need to re-enter the login information.
– A flashing red light or no light implies a fried modem.
– A flashing green light means login info needs to be re-entered
– Toss your modem and share the neighbor's wireless connection

Max from Fair Oaks called and says he was able to get XP on his new Dell Inspiron when he bought it in Oct 2008.
Max also says he bought Spellex (I guess this is it) but it wouldn't work. The company says 1 in 10 installations don't work so he sent it back for refund.

Paul notes that Office 2003 works fine with Vista.

It's never too late to become a subscribing member of KVMR at kvmr.org

Manufacturers of hard drives for the Macs are the same as those for the PC, i.e. Western Digital or Maxtor and are expected to go bad at the same rates for both systems. Make periodic backups if you value your data.

In the past, when installing a hard drive, one would have to set the value for heads, cylinders and sectors.

24th of Jan was the 25th anniversary of the Mac computer. The first Mac had only 128k of RAM and was price at almost $2500.

Paul notes that the Space Shuttle is still using a 286 or 386 CPU, which are very reliable.

Alan Stahler called in to say that when communications in space are at a low power, data speed has to be kept slow or the noise can compromise reliability.
The Mars rover Opportunity had a flash memory problem (first found on Spirit) early in its mission. The RAM would keep filling up after each reformatting.

Alan's question involves his parents who got a new computer with Vista. The default for shutting the computer down is to make it go into sleep mode rather than a true shut down.
– One suggestion is to push the power button once and briefly, but close any running programs first. Don't hold the power button for a longer time as it will force a "power off" which is undesirable.

Alan also asks for a way to change the resolution on the Vista machine to get everything to fit on the screen (to avoid scrolling left/right) but without reducing the font size.
– Use Google to search for "vista font size".
– Also, using Internet Explorer (and some other applications), holding the control key while turning the scroll wheel will zoom a window in and out (on the Mac this key combination will zoom the entire screen).

Alan's show Soundings will discuss antibiotics and germs, and germs producing antibiotics. What's that all about? Tune in 12pm Tuesday on KVMR to find out.

A caller needs to recover data from his hard drive's D: & E: partitions, which he can't access anymore.
– Determine if it's a hardware problem or a "file error". If it's a hardware problem, you can be losing data the more you try to use the drive because the head may be scraping the surface.
– Data recovery shops can charge $500 just to look at it & determine if anything can be recovered. The actual recovery can cost $2500 to $5000.
– Try using chkdsk from the console mode (command prompt).
– Try using an autoboot Ubuntu CD, If Ubuntu can't read an NTFS partition, nothing will.
– Using OpenBSD you can try the cp -a command (copy with archiving).
– Speedfan can do SMART diagnostics, which checks the condition of the hard drive controller.
Again, backup your data.

Caller Eric Tomb of Booktown can't use Audacity on his Mac because the Lame plugin won't work, so he's not able to produce MP3 files. Instead, he has to use Amadeus, which has a tendency to crash.
– The Audacity/Lame issue is to be resolved off air.
Booktown shares the same time slot with Zentech but on alternate weeks.

Listeners can send questions (to zen at kvmr dot org) if they don't mind waiting up to a week for a reply.

Eric also asks about FTP programs for the Mac. CuteFTP for the PC is mentioned. As a side note, Windows has come with an FTP program since Win95, I think.
– FireFTP is an addon for Firefox to do FTP transfers directly from the browser instead of using a separate program. It will work on a Mac running Firefox.

Eric also wants to find a program to edit MP3 tags.
– Use iTunes to edit MP3 tags

Feb 2 thru 8 is the KVMR pledge drive.

A caller says his Vista PC won't update using Defender (an anti-spyware product). The error code leads him to believe he has a trojan.
It might be a rootkit which is worse than a virus. Fsecure Blacklight Rootkit Elimination Technology is free software that will only detect if you have a rootkit installed. If a rootkit is detected, call back for further instructions; rootkits can be difficult to get rid of.

The same caller got AVG anti-virus and was prompted to get rid of other anti-virus programs and he wonders if that's necessary.
– It's a good idea, but Defender can remain.
– Spybot is recommended as an anti-spyware program, but not for rootkits.

Mark (Top Ramen) called in. has a Mac with OSX 10.3.9 and wonders if his 1gHz 512meg laptop can run a new OSX version.
– Yes. Leopard should install fine. An upgrade to 1gig RAM is recommended.

He also asks where to get the newer OSX version.
– Go to an Apple store or ask another Mac user for a copy. There's no activation required as with Windows.
– Try Ebay, but be careful of pirated copies.

And he asks where to get a laptop cheaply.
– Search for "off lease laptop" on Ebay, but check the seller's feedback score to see if they're trustworthy.
– Check with Apple for refurbished units.

The best free backup software is Syncback The best-purchased backup software is Syncback SE.
More about backup software from a previous show here:

A caller wants to know how to synch a new TV with a Mac.
– There may be a converter to take DVI from a Mac to an analog TV.
– On Ebay you can buy a DVI to VGA converter for a few dollars; also get a VGA to composite converter. This, again, is for an analog TV.
– DVI and HDMI are voltage compatible, so there is a DVI to HDMI adaptor for under $10. Check if your TV has an HDMI input.
– And some TV's have a DVI input, so you can connect the computer's DVI directly.