Show #18 - 02.25.2007

[Download Show #18 as MP3]

News

• Viacom to Sign Deal with Joost [via TechCrunch]
  • What is Joost?
  • What is IPTV?
  • Why Viacom signing deal is big news for IPTV
• Digg to Support OpenID [via TechCrunch]
  • Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, announced support at the Future of Web Apps conference in London
  • We over OpenID last week.
  • Since then AOL has announced support for OpenID 1.1 and is looking at supporting 2.0 when the standard is finalized
  • Digg supporting OpenID helps to continue to add credibility to the technology

Software / Hardware / Power Web Picks

• Web Worker Daily
  • Great resource for internet, self-employed individuals
  • Has tips for telecommunters as well
  • Excellent tips, tricks, and hints on how to be more productive at your home business
• Adobe Lightroom 1.0 Shipping

Penny Pinchers

• The Simple Dollar
  • Tips and Help on Getting Finances in Order
  • Learn how to save money in all areas of your life
  • Excellent reviews on
    

Security & Privacy

• TrueCrypt
  • Encrypts an entire hard drive or storage device
  • Encryption is real time and on-the-fly
  • Why Would You Want This?
    • If you carry personal data on your laptop or USB flash drive
    • You can create virtual partitions to store personal data in
    • Great if you travel a lot and there is the potential to have your laptop lost or stolen
    • Companies where customer data is stored on laptops, run the risk of serious trouble if those laptops are stolen, TrueCrypt offers a free/open source solution to this problem.
  • Free and Open Source
    • Open Source means you can see the source code. Which means you can see what is actually being done to your data to ensure nothing that you do not want happening is in fact not happening.
      

Gamer's Corner

• Surgeons Who Play Video Games Are More Skilled, Study Says [via CNN]
  

Editorial ("Power Up")

• Finish up the Photoshop Website Tutorial
  

Show #17 - 02.18.2007

[Download Show #17 as MP3]

News

• Steve Jobs Has Opinions on Music
  • Apple forced to use DRM by Record labels
  • Apple has a certain amount of time to fix holes in Fairplay DRM or they lose contract to sell digital music
  • Licensing Fairplay would mean Apple would no longer be in complete control of the DRM
  • Getting rid of DRM in music downloads would cause a growth in the sale of digital music purchases
  • RIAA mis-understands the letter, thinks licensing Fairplay is a GREAT idea

Software / Hardware / Power Web Picks

• PDFCreator
  • Free and Open Sourced
  • Adds a "Printer" to your computer called "PDFCreator"
  • To create a PDF version of something, simply select PDFCreator printer and Click OK
  • Simple to install and use.
• 25GB of Free Online Storage
• ErrorZilla
  • Firefox Addon
  • Gives a useful error message when a page can not be loaded
  • Also gives options to see the Google Cached, Coralized Cached, and Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) versions of the page.

Penny Pinchers

• Getting Things Done with Google by starkos (via Lifehacker )
  
  • Getting Things Done by David Allen
  • Utilizes Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Notebook
    • Gmail for ALL email accounts using Mail Fetcher
    • Google Notebook for Action Lists
    • Google Docs for Project Management

Security & Privacy

• Microsoft to Support OpenID
  • What is OpenID?
    • Open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric identification
    • Framework is free to use and utilize
    • A web address is your identity
      
  • How a single ID can be more secure than many
    • One password to remember
    • With only one password to remember, you can make that password very secure
    • Most of the OpenID providers allow you to create profiles
      • Profiles Allow you to decide how much personal data a website is allowed to access
        
  • Some Ways to Get an OpenID
    • MyOpenID
    • Verisign's Personal Identity Provider
    • LiveJournal and Vox (both by Six Apart)

Gamer's Corner

• Sony Making Metal Gear Movie

Editorial ("Power Up")

• Photoshop stuff

Show #16 - 02.11.2007

[Download Show #16 as MP3]

News

• Movie Downloads: Netflix last week, Walmart this week. Movies $10-$12, TV shows $2 with content from Fox, CW and Viacom’s MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Logo and VH1. (Michael Arrington - TechCrunch)
  
  • Will This Be Successful?

    Walmart has had mixed results in their online initiatives. They’ve completely bailed out of the movie-rental-by-mail market when they couldn’t make headway against Netflix. In this case, however, there is no established player to try to kill. The movie download market is in its nascent stage and anyone can win.

    CinemaNow and MovieLink should be particularly worried. They operate on very low margins, are being attacked by iTunes and others already, and now have to contend with Walmart. It’s unlikely they’ll have the staying power to make it, and it doesn’t look like any of the major sites are looking to buy in this space. It’s cheaper to build a Windows-based DRM-laden player and do deals with studios directly.

    However, iTunes still has the only service that works cross-platform, plays on an iPod and now on the living room television with Apple TV. And they already dominate the television download market. Walmart will not be able to easily hurt iTunes in the short term.

    And don’t forget that Netflix has already released a very, very good free(ish) movie and television download service, and Joost is another service coming soon. None of these companies are going to lie down in the face of competition from Walmart, and they know that Walmart will bail out of markets that they can’t dominate.

    All of this is good for the consumer, but prices are still too high. Movie downloads are still more expensive than simply buying a DVD.

• Would you trust your car to being parked by a robot?
  • That's the question facing New Yorkers as the city's first robotic parking garage opens in Chinatown. With new software and enough laser and radar sensors to make Fort Knox jealous, it's believed that the new facility — which can squeeze 67 cars in space that would otherwise hold only 24 — will not suffer the kind of glitches that caused the nation's first robotic garage in nearby NJ to drop and trap cars.
• Who Really Won the Superbowl?
  • And the other winner of the Super Bowl is...Coke
  • That's according to brain experts, who for the second time in two years, have studied the neurons firing inside people's gray matter while they watched Super Bowl commercials.
  • FKF Applied Research, with the help of UCLA's Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, said that Coca-Cola's "Video Game" ad--a 60-second animated spot that promotes random acts of kindness--scored this year because it elicited the most positive emotions in subjects' brains.
  • "Coke's ad did well because it engaged a full range of emotions, including the mirror region, which is associated with connection and empathy," said Joshua Freedman, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at UCLA and co-founder of FKF Applied Research.

Software / Hardware / Power Web Picks

• Google Releases New Link Reporting Tools to Webmasters
  • Current saeching for all links to your website only picks the top few
  • New service for verified / registered webmasters allows many more.
  • You can even download this list for offline use.
• Ubuntu & Wireless, Better Than Windows?
• For years, Linux has had a reputation of being notoriously bad for wireless access, whether through access points, ad-hoc, whatever. But the new KWirelessNetwork applet thats included in the new Kubuntu beta is just incredible.
  

Penny Pinchers

• 10 Things You Should Never Buy New (Liz Pulliam Weston - MSN Money)
  • Few people really enjoy wasting their hard-earned money, but many of us do it every day by buying new. We could do our pocketbooks, and the environment, a big favor by opting to be the second owner of some of the stuff we buy. But lots of other stuff depreciates quickly while still having plenty of useable life left. Here are 10 items where the cost vs. use equation strongly tilts toward buying used.
  • Books
  • DVDs / CDs
  • Little Kids' Toys
  • Jewlrey
  • Sports Equiptment
  • Timeshares
  • Cars
  • Software and console games
  • Office furniture
  • Hand tools
• 181 Things To Do On The Moon [The List in PDF] (Nasa)
  
  • If you woke up tomorrow morning and found yourself on the moon, what would you do? NASA has just released a list of 181 good ideas.
  • Figure out what happens long term to life.
  • Establish support services.
  • Lunar power generation.

Security & Privacy

• Mac vs. PC Commercials - Vista Security
  • Play commercial for listeners
    

Gamer's Corner

• CDX (BBC / preloaded / Adobe) Cinematic Flash Game
• Its Broadband and a bit slow because of some recent press attention

Editorial ("Power Up")

• Photoshop Tutorial - Designing a Web Page in Photoshop
  
  • During the last show we started a new document and filled the background a solid color. In this show we're going to make the navigation area, and in the next show we'll make the buttons that go on that navigation.
  • Now with your document open, pick a new color in the foreground color for the background of your navigation.
  • Select the square tool and draw two overlapping squares, one down the left side of the screen for the navgiation, and on across the top for the logo and page title.

Show #15 - 02.04.2007

[Download Show #15 as MP3]

News

• Windows Vista Released this past Tuesday
• OEM Version available at places like Newegg.com
• Allows Upgrades On-The-Fly to 'Ultimate' or higher versions
• Home Basic vs Home Premium vs Ultimate
  
• TurboTax Has Built-In Upgrades Like Vista
  
• Bush no longer a "miserable failure" on Google
• Adobe releases not only the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) code to open source, but also the PDF 1.7 specification to ISO
• Sony Corp., the world's largest maker of video-game players, may report third-quarter profit fell 50 percent after its flagship PlayStation 3 lost market share to Nintendo's Wii. Sony may still exceed its full-year profit target because of a weaker yen, sales of Bravia televisions and growth at its movie unit.

Software / Hardware / Power Web Picks

• 7-Zip Archiver
• Zip, Cab, Tar, Gzip, Bzip
• 2%-10% Better Compression than Winzip
• Integrates with Windows just like Winzip
  
• Free & Open Source (Winzip Standard $30)
• Free SDK for LZMA compression format (Used in their own 7z Compression format)
• Getting videos/files on to your PS3
• Setup a Web Server: Red Kawa Media Center
• Convert Your Files for your PS3: PS3 Video Converter

Penny Pinchers

• Environmental Impact of iTunes Store

Security & Privacy

• Securing Your Wireless Network
• Why Secure Your Wireless Network
• Ways to Secure Your Wireless Network
• Stop Broadcasting SSID
• WEP/WPA Key Encryption
• WEP = Wired Equivilant Privacy
• Less Secure
  
• WPA = Wifi Protected Access
• Newer Technology, More Secure
  
• Limit Connectivity by MAC Address
• MAC Address = Unique Network Card Identifier
• If MAC Address is not on a list of approved cards, no access is granted
• Steps to find / get to your router
• You need to find its IP address:
• In Windows press the Windows Key and R at the same time
• Type "cmd" and press ENTER
• At the command prompt type "ipconfig" and press ENTER
• Look for the words "Default Gateway" and for the number next to them
• Open a web browser and put that number at the top with a http:// in front (e.g. http://192.168.0.1) and press ENTER
• Figuring out how to login to your router
• If you know the username/login and password type it. If not look in your user guide, online, or simply try "admin" and "password" for the login and password.
• If all else fails, reset the router and use the defaults in the book or call customer service for your router.
• Once logged in
• Change your password to something other than the default.
• Find the wireless settings and rename your network to something other than the default (often "linksys" or something).
• Do one or more of the following:
• If not using wireless at all, disable it completely. Ultimate security.
• Use a WEP password of your choice. You will need to type it or share it once with each computer you plan to use on the network, after typing it once on each device it should not ask again (unless you tell it to).
• Disable broadcasting of wireless network name (SSID).
• Use MAC Address filtering to prevent unauthorized MAC addresses from connecting. This is a somewhat advanced task.
  

Editorial ("Power Up")

• Photoshop Tutorial - Designing a Web Page in Photoshop
  
• Open Photoshop
  
• Go to the "File" menu and select "New"
  
• Make a document the size of the intended webpage (try 1024 x 768 if you're not sure)
  
• Decide on your background color and select it by clicking on the color selector at the bottom of the tools palette, it looks like to squares usually black and white sitting on top of each other. Click the one in the background (known as the background color). Select your background color here.
  
• Click on the "Edit" menu and select "Fill..."
• Choose "Background Color" from the drop down list.
• Click "OK" to fill the background of your document with the background color you choose.
• Stay tuned next week as we cover quite a bit more in this tutorial. Leave us a comment if you need help or would like us to upload some example PSD files.