POI: Show #53

[Download Show #53 as MP3]

News

AM and FM stations tool to battle with Satellite broadcasters
So far however, here in the US, response has been "lukewarm" at best according to Wired Magazine's article from January 18th of this past year
But it is booming, loud and clear, overseas. The UK's "digital radio" has been popular for sometime now.
In fact, since 1999, more than 4.7 million digital radios have been sold in the UK. Listeners browse station listings in an electronic program guide, pause and rewind content as it's broadcast, bookmark specific programs or songs, and record them using postage-stamp-size memory cards. All things that we've seen with Satellite Radio, but its free and its already occurring. Last May, they turned on the feature that allows you to buy songs as you hear them on the radio, downloading them to computers, digital receivers or cell phones.

Both Gmail and Google Reader have dropped some weight for the iPhone versions and load pretty fast for even EDGE speeds
Some are arguing that because special versions are being made for the iPhone that the Safari browser is different for the iPhone and not a full version
You have to remember that you are still looking at these web apps on a 3.5 in screen. And that is not a lot of real estate, designing sites so they are easily viewable on the iPhone is a great way to ensure your product gets used.

New user interface eye candy with Compiz Fusion, this gives you transparent windows, a desktop cube, and other nifty looking desktop eye candy
Contains the latest security fixes for all included software
Also contains the latest versions of the included software, including a new version of the Gnome Desktop
Printer installation has also been improved.

The latest version of Apple's OSX operating system was released this past Friday (10/26)
Some new features include

This is the equivalent of "Virtual Desktops" in Linux where you can have a desktop for each kind of work you are doing. Have email on one desktop, your word processor on another, and even Photoshop on another.

Boot Camp allows you to dual boot your mac into a Windows installation so that you can run a windows application if you need it

Software / Hardware / Power Web Picks

So, you have a printer in your home office but you are sitting out on the patio with your laptop and you have something you just need to print, what do you do?
Well, you could copy the document across your network to the computer that is connected to the printer, or you could upload the file somewhere on the internet and download at the computer with the printer
But wouldn't it be nice to just hit the "Print" button and have it print on the right printer?
Well there are a couple of ways that you can do this. One requires something as simple as click a few buttons and another method requires to re-setup the printer on at least one of the computers.
Sharing a Printer (Method 1)

Sharing a printer is the easiest way to grant access to a printer to anyone on your network.
To share a printer in Windows XP you simply goto Control Panel, select Printers, right click on the printer you want to share and select "Sharing" this brings up a dialog for you to fill in some information, like the name of the printer and a description. Once you have shared the printer you need to add the shared printer to the other computer by adding a printer and searching for one on the network.

Another option is to buy a print server from a company like Netgear or Linksys that will a allow you to connect a USB printer into a network plug making the printer a networked printer that can be accessed by IP address.
Once the printer is on the network, you can access it via it's IP address and add the printer that way via the "Add Printer" wizard.

Derek and I's favorite web application, Gmail has increased it's storage capacity to 4.1GB as of this past week and has announced that it will be at 6GB by January.
This is great news because more and more people are moving their email to online resources like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Microsoft's Hotmail.
The pay of storage plans are still available

Security & Privacy

Talk about ways to hide/secure the printer you just shared on the network (if you have a wireless connection, you do not want just anyone printing)

POI