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Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note:
A shout out to Terry Ann from Huntsville, AL and also to Jarret from Buffalo, NY! They are just some of the great Geekcast listeners who posted their pushpins on the Frappr map. If you want to get in on the action, head on over to frappr.com/thegeekcast.
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Tech news:
OS X flaw exposes Macs. A serious flaw in Mac OS X could be a conduit for attackers to install malicious code on computers running the Apple Computer software, experts warned Tuesday. The security problem is the third to surface for the operating system in the past week. It exposes Mac users to risks that are more familiar to Windows users: Visiting a malicious Web site using Apple’s Safari Web browser could result in a rootkit, a back door or other malicious software being installed on the computer without the user noticing anything, experts said. Apple is developing a patch for the flaw, a company representative told CNET News.com. “We’re working on a fix so that this doesn’t become something that could affect customers,” the representative said, but could not give a delivery date for the update. The new problem lies in the way Mac OS X processes archive files. An attacker could embed malicious code in a ZIP file and host that on a Web site. The file and the embedded code would run when a Mac user visits the site using the Safari browser, experts said.
Apple teases launch of mysterious, ‘fun’ products. Apple confirmed on Tuesday that it plans to introduce some “fun new products” next week, but declined to say more about what those products might be. In an e-mail sent to journalists, the company merely said the invited scribes should come to Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters next Tuesday to learn more. “Come see some fun, new products from Apple,” the company said in its invitation. Unlike past invitations, which hinted at which product Apple was targeting, the current invitation includes just a picture of a calendar with only the date Feb. 28 on it.
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Test a geek: Greg who has been doing these trivia segments is looking for help with making the show. If you have some geek trivia he can use, please e-mail him at GlitchCast@gmail.com.
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How To: Easily get album art.
If you use a program like iTunes or MusicMatch, then you’re always wanting to keep your collection of files as organized as possible. One part of completing your digital music collection is getting album art for your files. While this sounds simple, it can actually be a pain because not all artwork is easily found. Plus many people don’t know where to look.
One way to get album art is to search Amazon.com for the CD you have. Then by clicking the album art, you will see a bigger, high-resolution file that you can import into your files. This process can be very time consuming. Another method is the iTunes Album Art widget for you mac users. It easily integrates with Dashboard on your mac. When you’re playing a song in iTunes, you can just launch Dashboard and the widget will find what you’re looking for. Best of all, you can tell it to import that file to the entire album instead of just the one song that is playing. You can customize the widget to search Amazon or Google. On top of all this, you can can also give songs star ratings. This widget can be downloaded from Apple’s widget gallery at apple.com
For you PC users, the best way to get the images right now is to use albumart.org. This website will allow you to search for an artist, band, or CD. It automatically retrieves the images and makes it so you can easily cut and paste them into your files.
With these two main methods, you should have no problems getting the album art you desire to make your music collection complete and have great graphics show up on your iPod that displays the art.
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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The geek’s view: Camino 1.0
With Firefox blazing a trail in the Windows world, Mozilla has begun to strike at the Mac side of computing. Last week the Mozilla foundation released version 1.0 of Camino. Camino is meant as a replacement for any browser on OSX, which is a welcome option. While Safari is the browser of choice for most mac users, there is a large majority that still use Internet Explorer. As of 1/31/06, Microsoft dropped their support for IE completely. Additionally, Firefox on the mac is dog. It’s a simple export of the code that is made to run on OSX. Because of this process, it’s not optimized for the mac’s environment and it is a large memory hog.
Camino has been out for a short time but it’s already making waves for all mac users. Mozilla has taken their approach for Firefox’s development and brought that to Camino. It’s been built from the ground-up to be quick, fast with page loading, and include full integration with the OSX environment. When you first open Camino, you see instantly that it’s quick and nimble. Pages load very quickly. The browser itself loads pretty fast in about the same time as Safari. On many comparisons that I ran with memory usage, speed with multiple tabs, and other page loading, both browsers kept close to their times.
Camino currently only supports themes that can be downloaded from Mozilla’s homepage but it the browser lacks the ability to use extensions that have made Firefox so popular. One reason for this may be that these extras that people pile onto the browser make it hefty & it doesn’t work so well when it needs to load so much extra code. Camino sports some useful features such as bookmark importing from any browser including Safari, the ability to block advertising images, and the ability to change your default browser to any browser on your system (previously you could only do this in Safari).
Overall, Camino is a good addition to anyone with a mac. If Safari isn’t your cup of tea, you should seriously consider using Camino for your browsing needs. Camino is completely free and can be downloaded from http://www.mozilla.org
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