0
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.0KB)
Show Notes:
Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | Website: TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com |
**************
Items of Note:
The Geekcast has teamed up with geekBlue.net to spread the gospel of tech. geekBlue is a news site designed to bring up-to-date technology news that’s to the point. So what does this mean for you, the subscriber? Better content. Many of you have asked for product reviews and now that is possible. Also more reliable downloads for each episode along with an overall better experience.
Digg the new GeekCast / geekBlue partnership. Lets gain exposure for the show! Click this link and digg it: http://www.digg.com/technology/Geekblue.net_teams_up_with_The_Geekcast
Thanks to everyone who has donated to the show! Thanks to your contributions, you can now get to all the show notes at TheGeekcast.com
Help support The Geekcast. If you like the show and want to help me do cool things like buy a domain for the show, click here and look for the “Donate” button. It would be much appreciated. Thanks!
**************
Tech news:
**From geekBlue.net**
Google has announced the use of RSS in its Google News service, offering it in either Atom 0.3 or RSS 2.0. An RSS feed was the most requested service from Google News readers according to Google product manager Nathan Stoll. The feed is listed to the left of the Google News page.
Opera introduces Opera Mini. Opera Mini is a Java 2 Mobile Edition Web browser for virtually all mobile phones. The browser enables Web access on more than 700 million low- and mid-tier Java-capable phones around the world, finally bringing mobile Internet into the mainstream. Opera will allow users to access the Web on mobile phones that would normally be incapable of running a Web browser. This includes the vast majority of today’s WAP-enabled phones. Instead of requiring the phone to process Web pages, it uses a remote server to pre-process the page before sending it to the phone.
Microsoft gives up on Windows Genuine Advantage. Microsoft’s attempts to stop people who have pirated copies of its software from getting upgrades has run aground. A few weeks ago it was announced that a program called “Windows Genuine Advantage” would scan users’ computers to see if they had a genuine licence key before letting them have any updates.
Of course within a few hours of WIG going into action hackers had torn it apart using a fairly simple hack. A Microsoft reporter has told the Sydney Morning Herald this morning that Microsoft has sent its designers back to the drawing board on WIG. On an interesting note it has been reported that someone at Microsoft said that the program was not designed to catch counterfeiters or prevent hacks.
**************
How To: Add a delete button to GMail
You love GMail, don’t you? I think we all do. Growing by approx 3.5 mb per-day, our favorite mail service is always adding new features to keep geeks happy and to always be the best e-mail system on the planet. While Google is great and all, there is a key feature missing from GMail: a delete button.
While Google is very strong in their beliefs that we should never delete any e-mail due to the huge amount of storage we are all given, there are definitly e-mails I will never need after a certain time. Orders from Amazon are only useful until you get what you ordered or until after the 30-day return policy expires. What about all those UPS or FedEx tracking e-mails? We don’t need those either. While it’s great to never worry about keeping something (as I always did with Hotmail, especially if there was an attachment) a delete function is still necessary. Google has this in GMail but it is in the “More Actions” menu, which is a drop-down. Not only is it slightly hidden, the function is called “Move to Trash” instead of Delete, so it is even harder to find. I’ve been using GMail for almost a year and it still takes me a moment to find the correct item. How do we make this easier?
Enter the GMail Delete Button. GMail Delete Button is a FireFox extension that adds a Delete button to GMail. The button is the same shape, size and style as the prominent Archive button and sits to its left. The button is fairly simple and works the way you would expect. Select some messages then click Delete and the messages are removed. No muss, no fuss. As with all Firefox extensions, this installs the usual way which is quick and painless. Once you re-launch Firefox after the install, the button appears and you’re set to go.
If you’re ready to go against the Google mentality and actually delete some e-mail, pick up this great extension at http://www.arantius.com/article/arantius/gmail+delete+button
**************
Ask A Geek:
This segment will return on a future episode of the Geekcast.
**************
Hack: Run Linux without running Linux
If you’ve ever wanted give Linux a whirl but you’re not fully ready to commit to wiping your harddrive to embrace the penguin? Well your options have always been limited until recently. There are a number of Linux distributions that now come on what is called a Live CD.
A Live CD is a CD you burn from an ISO file that contains a full Linux OS. Once created, you boot your computer with this CD in the drive. If your BIOS is set to check the CD-ROM before the harddrive in the boot sequence, it will recoginize the CD as bootable and begin loading the Linux OS. Linux creates a RAM-Drive, which is a virtual harddrive made up of the memory on your system. By installing Linux in this way, you don’t touch the existing files on your computer and nothing is lost.
Once booted, you have a fully-functional OS. You can run programs, go online, or anything else you choose. Some distributions support removable media so you can even save things to an external drive such as a USB thumbdrive or other flash memory storage. Currently the most popular distribution is Knoppix, which was the first Live CD of Linux. Suse also has a version which works great and is one of the top ones out there. Each version has its own features that appeal to different users but overall they are both amazing and do a great job of letting you dabble in the open-source world.
After you’re done playing and want to return to windows, restart your computer, eject the CD and you’ll boot directly to Windows, with no changes made to your disk. Overall, these versions of Linux are great but also limited in what you can do, due to lack of read/write ability to a drive. If you’re thinking of keeping Linux, it’s best to add a partition to your computer and create a dual-boot system or if you’re really daring, use Linux 100%.
Linux is free, secure and a good Windows alternative. Check out the Suse version over at www.suse.com
**************
The geek’s view:
This segment will return on a future episode of the Geekcast.
**************
Related Episodes:
E-mail
Voicemail
