Additional Notes

TimeMachine is backup software for the Mac, see above.
It's a good compromise between being easy to use & comprehensive
Periodically check to be sure that you can restore what has been backed up.
With TimeMachine applications are backed up by default and in many cases they can be restored by dragging & dropping. Applications don't usually need to be backed up and you have the option to change this setting.
For a backup drive Best Buy has a 1TB drive for $89.
For the PC there's syncback lite, a free program.

Paul's favorite web app is Joomla which zen.kvmr.org runs on.

Glenn uses Jabra BT500.
Jabra VC5050 has external speaker and rechargeable thru the car adapter.
Note: I may have misheard those model numbers.

One of Glenn's "most fun" tech gadgets is a GPS with text to speech.
Paul hacked into Glenn's Nokia & replaced the GPS software it came with, putting in IGO8.
Current GPS (and cell phone) units tend to include Windows Mobile ver 5 running in kiosk mode.

KVMR is switching to an all digital studio.

GPS & cell phones can be made to launch software other than GPS or phone applications. Paul converted one to a PDA with IGO8 navigator.

About 25% of the iPhones are hacked so they don't have to be used with AT&T. A note on their web site claims AT&T is entitled to charge you the $30 you would have paid if you hadn't hack the phone.

Every cell phone (except a radio telephone) has an IMEI (see above) number that identifies what type of phone it is. Even if you have the EDGE service turned off or don't have the data plan, AT&T can detect you have an iPhone without the service plan and, theoretically, charge you the $30.

Paul thinks Windows Vista is the worst software in 10 years.

A caller can't get DVD Shrink to launch.
Paul uses DVD Decrypter from mrbass.org.
But the caller needs to edit out the extra material to get the content to fit onto 1 burnable disk.
So. use Nero Reencode. The free version may not include the reencoder part (the transcoder) which recompresses the mpeg frames to fit onto a smaller disk.
Listeners are invited to give other solutions.

The same caller subscribes to Netflix and wants to view streaming movies on his TV.
A monitor cable box can be used but that affects the quality.
The Roku $99 wireless device bypasses the computer entirely.
Get a video card that, ideally, has HDMI output to connect to a digital TV. Then the software drivers will let you choose TV or monitor output.
There is also a Roku unit that lets you listen to radio streams.
Rumor has it that some Tivo units will do what the Roku does.

Blender is a suite free tools for 3d graphic creation.

A caller wants to know whether cell phone GPS works thru cell towers or directly with the satellites.
1st & 2nd generation phones work with the cell towers and they can expose your location to your phone company because there is a 2-way communication with the towers. And, out in the wilderness, you may be out of range of towers and won't be able to get a location.
3rd generation only receives data from satellites and is more accurate.
Also, don't depend entirely on GPS units. They can be affected by weather and geographical features.

A caller has a Dish Network DVR that went bad and he wants to extract the recordings from its disk drive.
If it's an IDE drive, you can try hooking it to a computer thru an external USB hard drive enclosure.
Though you may not be able to recover the data, you may be able to tell if the drive is working. If that DVR is a version of Tivo, there are hacks that may allow you to get to the data.
You can send the drive to a data recovery service, but that's expensive.

If you use an antenna to receive your TV signal, and don't have a digital TV, you'll have to prepare for digital TV or DTV. Go to www.dtv.gov to get up to 2 $40 coupons for converter boxes.
People in areas with marginal reception may lose channels because DTV is less tolerant of weak signals.

Additional Notes

Jeffrey Hein joined Paul as today's co-host. Glenn called in from Chester, CA.

Jeffrey Hein runs an IT consulting business that integrates technology into your business.
Phone 530-274-2037
http://www.jphein.com/

For those keeping an eye on the weather, accuweather.com has Doppler radar including an animated mode.

drop.io was mentioned during the Nov 17 2008 show.
Zentech has set up a demo at drop.io/kvmr895.
917-512-7398 ext 54837
Sending files larger than about 5meg or .exe files can be a problem, so use this service instead.
PowerPoint files can be viewed directly a slide at a time; you don't have to have PowerPoint. The etrange file at drop.io/kvmr895 is a PowerPoint file, if you want to see how it works.

For people anticipating power outages, keep in mind computers can be set to come on when power is restored. Check your BIOS setting — you get to it during boot-up.
Cheap generators often don't provide well-regulated power. Better, more expensive, ones do. Laptops may fare better than desktops.
Check in advance what might happen when the power goes out. You may find your laptop battery may not be holding a charge.
Small UPS (uninterruptible power supply) units are not intended to keep your computer working for long, just long enough to save your work & shut down.

A UPS may not charge when the power comes from the generator because it's poorly conditioned and you'll hear the UPS beep. Better UPS's do condition the power.

If you're on a generator and you turn on a high wattage device like a heater, the generator will take time to bring the voltage back up to normal. This can send a pulse to your computer and damage it if you don't have a UPS. Belken 1100BA is used by KVMR.

A caller, who has a Mac with the Parallels Windows emulator, ran a virus check and found many of them in a folder but there were only a few files displayed in the folder's window. Changing the folder settings to show all files didn't reveal any more files.
Parallels can run some Windows applications without Windows being installed, so the recommendation is to uninstall just the Windows system. Check the Parallels web site for software that can run without Windows present. Parallels came from WINE. WINE also runs on Linux.

A caller reminds us that Parallels runs only on Intel Macs. And he asks how a Windows emulator can use serial ports on a Mac that doesn't have any.
You can use the USB port with a USB to DB9 (or DB25) serial ports adapter and use the drivers that come with it. But anything that needs to talk to the UART registers won't work,

Jeffrey mentions mint.com that keeps track of your finances & budget. You are advised to consider just how much information you can trust them with. All the usual disclaimers apply; use at your own risk.

Jeffrey also likes clipperz.com; it's a password manager.
OpenID is another password management system but hasn't been fully implemented.

Google has a business directory at 1-800-goog411.

A caller bought a machine with Vista and wants to know if reverting to XP would require a reinstall of the applications or would they be migrated.
There are ways to migrate the apps but it's not simple so it's best to reinstall them.
First get the free auditing software from Belarc & it will create a profile of your machine including the product keys of the installed applications.

Same caller said he just upgraded FireFox and now it boots slowly.
The suggestion is to reinstall the previous version.

There are more utilities listed in the notes of the Dec 31 2007 show.

Guests are Brenda & Chuck Horton
hware.com
530-268-9495
brendah@hware.com
Specializing in strategic business planning for small business, startups, non-profits and government organizations.
They will be giving a seminar on Dec 15 from 9 to 4pm called Thrival.
Register before 12-12-8 & get a $50 discount.
The seminar is about…
1) How to use technology to grow your business.
2) How to recession proof your business.
3) The emerging green economy, implementing green strategies including decentralized work
4) How to create a blueprint for a business; starting with a vision, then planning and execution.

Mentioned is an example of open source software — open office openoffice.org at version 3, It's suggested make it to read & write in Microsoft Office format, rather than the default setting.

Place independent work, like cloud computing, uses remote applications and stores your data on a remote server. It allows access from anywhere using just a web browser or, sometimes, just a phone. Examples include…
MYSQL, a database for storing structured data.
salesforce.com for storing & managing information about your customers. A Salesforce demo account is available.

37signals.com created the open-source Ruby on Rails, a development framework for creating web applications.

Rich internet applications make the interface to web applications look like a desktop graphical user interface. They update your screen only with that which has changed thereby doing it faster, with less bandwidth and allowing even dial-up users a useful experience.
An example…
Basecamp by 37signals.com is for project management & collaboration.
Gmail is another example as well as docs.google.com
At hware.com, click on Learning Center for open-source (and other) links

The seminar will also cover business social networking to draw more customers to your business.

Making your site usable on a mobile device depends on what the tool you use to create the site.
Webpress can now be used to create web sites and, using plugins, it can be used optimize for mobiles.

Other cloud computing links…
docs.google.com
google.com/apps
When using the google applications, try right clicking to get the context menu.

Google's Chrome browser is mentioned. Not ready for prime time but if you want to try it go to google.com/chrome.

Google makes an application for Blackberry to allow you to search on google by talking instead of typing your search terms.
Another speech to text service, but for business only listings is 1-800-goog411

The seminar will also cover viral marketing to bring in customers.
An example of viral marketing is willitblend.com — videos of various things put in blenders.

Be careful about clicking on links in viral emails, they may lead to nefarious sites. The URLs you go to may not be what the actual text of a message says. Instead, google for, hopefully correct, links by using keywords in the particular subject of interest.

Business should..
Minimally have a web site.
Then do an online newsletter.
Then offer your customers email alerts.
Then blog.
You can create a google website for $10/yr with your own domain.

smarterbroadband.com is available for high speed connection in the Nevada City area.

Supposedly, studies show Wikipedia is as accurate as Britannica. Also, it can be corrected quickly and has an audit trail.

Other business social networking sites:
biznik.com
meetup.com

The Christmas "star" Venus along with Jupiter (& the crescent moon on 12-1-8) put on a show in the Southwest at sunset.

Paul hosted the show, Glenn joined in later from Sacramento.

Paul asked the listeners using Windows what program they use for back-ups. Mail your replies to zen (at) kvmr.org

Using docs.google.com you can upload, store & edit MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint compatible & PDF documents, You'll need gmail account.
It works pretty well with just a dialup connection.
You can share your documents with others who don't have to have a gmail account. You can set whether they can read-only or else edit those documents.
Be careful about exposing your personal information.

Gmail can be set up to provide POP3 or IMAP access to your mail for free. This is where you can retrieve mail from your gmail account using a mail reader like Outlook or Thunderbird running on your local computer; that is without having to use your browser to login to gmail itself. Notes about this from previous shows here. IMAP has the advantage of synching your mail (but not the address book) across multiple computers. AOL also offers IMAP but unresolved is whether you need to have a paid account.

On the last show Glenn mentioned AVG was not updating properly. His solution was to uninstall it and install a fresh copy. The AVG update server is at guru.grisoft.com (not intended for browser viewing).

XP Anti-Virus 2009, see previous notes here, is very ingenious. It keeps updating itself from the net, thus morphing and evading anti-virus software. So, run your AVG in save mode (f8 key at bootup); version 8 of AVG can be run in safe mode unlike earlier versions.

drop.io allows you to send files of up to 100megs for free, bypassing the problem normal email may have with large files. You just upload your file to drop.io and you'll be given a link that you give to those who will be downloading it. It doesn't require any personal info so it can be used anonymously. Again, be careful what data you place on the net, this site may be run by a malevolent government, or even a foreign one, trying to gather incriminating evidence. Encrypting your files may just draw attention to you.

Most internet connections are asymmetrical — you can download much faster than you can upload, there's often about 6 to 10 times difference.

A new version of Open Office is available at openoffice.org. It can read & write MS Office compatible files.

Use checkip.com, see previous notes here, to find out what info about you is known to web sites you visit.
Use domaintools.com to find out about the sites you visit.

Paul uses fake info when he registers for various things on the net. Just don't forget what you tell them.

A caller asks whether the mic input connection on a laptop is mono or stereo. It's usually stereo. To test it, plug in a stereo mike and record sound coming from the left & right while viewing the level meters in a program such as Audacity (a free sound editor), see previous notes here,
Built-in mics may pick up the noise from the hard drive.
It's best to avoid putting a line-level signal into the mic port thru an attenuator because the quality can be degraded.
For computers without a mic input, search on Ebay for "usb audio" or "usb sound" for a USB device (about $5) that has a mic input & headphone output.

A caller wants his accountant to be able to carry the data between his client and the accountant's own office; will an external hard drive work? Yes, but it can be important for the accounting software be the same (and upgraded to the same level) at both locations.

Also, as the data file grows large, performance may suffer as with earlier versions of Quickbooks. The solution is to get a later version that uses SQL to access records. But with the SQL version the data is NOT portable and can't be carried between machines, as above.

To try Migration Wizard on an XP, at the command prompt; type migwiz. It's "supposed to take a snapshot of everything on your machine, permitting it to migrate onto another machine"

A message from a listener claims the HP Pavilion laptops have a mono mic input and no line-in. And the USB audio device mentioned earlier did not work with Microsoft Vista.

Mentioned is a leaked document for AT&T customer support personnel that has suggestions for countering customer complains.

Additional notes 

Paul's Guestt is Coryon Redd. Glenn is homeward bound and checks in from the Sac airport, later in the show.

Coryon is teaching a class on internet marketing
Nov 18, 6pm to 8:30pm
Sponsored by Sierra Economic Development Corp.
560 Wall Street Suite F
Auburn, CA.
530-823-4703
sedd.org

It covers basic internet marketing and how to get your web site found by Google using free or nearly free tools.

The previous show on marketing with Coryon:
notes — http://zen.kvmr.org/content/view/68/11/
Audio — http://zen.kvmr.org/archive/ZenTech_Aug_11_2008.mp3

The focus of this show is using social networking sites, e.g. Facebook.com and MySpace.com, for marketing. Offering your expertise on such sites helps promote your products & web site.

Google uses sophisticated algorithms to devalue link farming but favor legitimate blogs.

To find a suitable forum in which to participate, google using the keywords for your product and add the word 'forum', e.g. essential oils forum. Then look for those forums with high usage.

Yahoo Site Explorer
siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
Enter the URL to the forum of interest or a competitor's web site to see who links to that site to find other relevant web sites.
2 settings in the pull-down menus are important:
Set "except this domain" to see only links coming from external sites.
Set "including all the pages" to see links to any page in the domain, not just the home page.

Webmaster tools were mentioned in the previous show.

To optimize your web site; google "keyword tool" for a free tool to find out how much people search for different phrases. Then add the relevant keywords to your web page.

Wordtracker, a tool (free trial, then a monthly subscription) looks at the content of well-rated competitor web sites and recommends keywords to use.

Other marketing resources:
Searchengine World; search engine optimizing, seoptimizing.com, selfpromotion.com

Glenn at terminal A of the Sac Airport says there are now kiosks to accommodate USB powered devices.

He also mentions trouble updating AVG anitvirus. It's suggested that the AVG company temporarily disabled that to give themselves time to correct problems with false positives involving system files. Also, the update sites themselves are sometimes targets of denile of service attacks.

MicroAV Antivirus 2009 is bogus antivirus virus. It runs a Flash animation that appears to do a virus scan and then warns people that they have an virus just to get them to click on a link which will then compromise their machine. Beware of any attempt to get you to click on a link.

Windows Xp Antivirus 2008 is another one to watch out for; it works the same way. This, and Smitfraud, were mentioned in the Aug 25, 2008 show notes

Spybot Search and Destroy has been updated to 1.6; get it at download.com. When there, type in the full name Spybot Search and Destroy and look down past the sponsored links. Same thing for "AVG" or "AVG free". AVG now has built-in spyware detection. Also, see the show notes for Dec 17, 2007 for links to antivirus, antispyware and other useful tools.

Mentioned in the previous show is the book on web site usability "Don't Make Me Think" by Steven Krug. And also the tool Google analytics.