WED Sep 8 2010
SHOW MOVES TO ALTERNATE WEDNESDAYS FOR NOW! after 10 years of Mondays!
Free SPECLAB PC based comprehensive SPectrum Analyser for Audio Signals
PAC MAN on a Voting machine! (Thanks JB!)
Controlling a helicopter with an iPhone!
Misleading senses of SECURITY with Passwords, and more.
Opensource Cell Telephone System: As USed at Burning man
Flash Cookies! Not your Mother's Cookies. They come back like zombies.
FileHippo: useful repository
ITUNES now at Version 10 no problem,, But the IOS 4.1 released today should be avoided!
GOGOLE Unveils Instant Search
Additional notes
Notifications of new show notes and edits are tweeted at: twitter.com/ddhart
They're tagged with #Zentech
Editor comments are delimited by < >
Paul was in the studio and Glenn called in while on the road headed to Yellowstone Park.
Max called to ask for a recommendation for OCR software.
– Paul's first choice is software by Nuance. He said there are various ways of getting it free. It can read PDF files.
Max said he was looking at Abby Reader, which starts at $49. Paul said that was his second recommendation, as he's used it and didn't have much trouble with it.
Paul added that Nuance, known for its speech recognition software, <mentioned on the 8-9-10 show> recently bought Omnipage, an OCR software maker, and its software starts at $149. There may be a demo version that does one page at a time.
Some inexpensive scanners, like Canon or Brother, come with OCR software.
Higher-end OCR software has more features but it's not necessarily better at the recognition process. Some will scan pages with rows of numbers and output to a spreadsheet and some can generate forms, that can be filled in, in a PDF format.
Paul said he's seen recognition accuracy of about 98 or 99 percent.
A caller said he gets the message "fatal error was detected the application must be terminated" on his XP computer. He said this happens when he turns it on.
– Boot in safe mode. Hold down the F8 key when you turn it on. Use the arrow keys to go down to where it says safe mode and hit return.
– If you have access to another machine, look up safe mode on the internet.
– When safe mode is running, go to the start menu -> run and type in msconfig. You'll then see an option called diagnostic startup and use that. The goal is to prevent Windows from starting the application that's causing the crash. When you find what it is, you can uninstall it.
– Paul asked if there was more to the error message and the caller said it additionally said — assert: hUiresource ! NULL. Paul tried googling that but didn't come up with anything useful.
The caller also asked if playing internet Backgammon is a security risk.
– There's nothing special to playing Backgammon but, no matter what you're doing, you can be coerced into clicking a malicious link.
Someone, Glenn thought it was Marilyn, called to ask if Zentech is permanently scheduled for this new time.
– Paul wasn't sure but there will be a notice on the web site when more is known.
The caller went on to ask about a problem she has when she has several Word documents minimized. When she clicks on one, they all maximize.
– Instead of running Word multiple times, try opening multiple documents within just one instance of Word. Run Word once, then under file, use the open command multiple times, as needed, to open other documents.
– Glenn thought she may have "group similar items" turned on (in the taskbar). Right-click Start -> properties -> taskbar tab then uncheck "group similar taskbar buttons". This should apply to other programs, not just Word.
– Glenn also suggested right-clicking on 'open', while in Word, and choose open in a new page or window.
Paul asked Glenn about his GPS. When he bought it, it came with a service that provides traffic info, and Paul wanted to know how well that works. Glenn gave it a thumbs up.
– Paul said he believes the traffic data comes from terrestrial AM & FM stations and warns the user about traffic congestion, etc. Normally this is a charged service, but Glenn is using a version that's supported by advertisement.
Paul mentioned Speclab for audio enthusiasts. It's a spectrum analyzer for audio signals that come in over your PC. It monitors the signal quality and is free to use. Paul is impressed with it. See the above link.
He also said a voting machine has been hacked to install the Pacman game. Again, the link is above.
Sam called. He's using XP Pro 64 and his HP all-in-one printer won't run on the 64bit machine. He called tech support said they said they don't have 64bit drivers.
– You can use just the printer without the additional functions.
– They do have drivers for 64bit Win7 so switch to Win7 if you insist on using a 64bit machine.
Sam was also thinking of using an external hard drive with 32bit version of XP and "running his printer thru that".
– Paul tried to dissuade him. It's very difficult to do that from an external drive. You'll have to run a driver from an operating system that's not already running, in order to access the hard drive.
Paul mentioned running a radio-controlled helicopter using an iPhone. Link is above.
From the above link, you can learn that Mac users can be lured into a false sense of security. You can become a victim of social engineering.
Thor called to say the Zentech web site looks good. It's an older version of Joomla and Paul would like to upgrade to version 1.5 but didn't want to lose the accumulated content.
Glenn said this week's Fleamarket will not be transcribed but the audio should become available.
KVMR is community supported volunteer radio, so support it.
Joe called. He's redesigning a web page and would like to use Flash but the Apple mobile devices don't support it. He wants to know if there's another way to do something like a slideshow.
– Use Javascript or HTML5. Google "javascirpt photo album" or "html5 photo album" to find some free code to do the job.
– Apple computers can use flash but not their mobile devices, which have touch interface.
Bonnie called to say she has Sony Vio laptop. <the audio became very bad and I missed some of what she said. It sounded like her keyboard went bad>. She asked if it's cheaper to replace the keyboard, hard drive and motherboard, as a worst case, than buying an new laptop.
– Glenn said replacing all 3 would not be cheaper.
– If it's just a keyboard problem, you can try an external USB keyboard.
– Getting parts for highly proprietary laptops is usually very expensive.
– You can try to find a used or junker machine from which you can scavenge parts. Search on eBay for Sony Vio keyboard and you may find someone parting out their machine.
– Since it's only 2 years old, your credit card may have extended the warranty. Also, see if there is a recall on this model.
Last updated: 6:46 PM 9/8/2010