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Items of Note: Please note this is a corrected version of the episode. The original had minor audio issues.

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Tech news:

iPhone Pre-paid may be available. BoyGeniusReport.com has posted screenshots from AT&T’s accounting system revealing new account codes for three versions of iPhone sales: PostPaid, “Pay As You Go”, and “Pick Your Plan”. While most phones are more expensive without contracts, Apple’s iPhone is rumored to have tossed this business model out by not allowing the phone to be subsidized. This remains unconfirmed, but this means the $499 & $599 price should be the same with or without contract. This would mean that iPhones would be sold without contracts and it would be easier to allow users to buy and unlock their iPhones for use on other networks.

Music industry offers deal to small Webcasters. News.com reports that while facing an outcry over imminent royalty fee increases for Internet radio operators, the music industry has attempted a peace offering. SoundExchange, the nonprofit group that collects fees, said it would give “small” Webcasters the option of paying “below market” royalty rates on the songs they play. These rates are essentially the same as they are under a 2002 law called the Small Webcaster Settlement Act. “The net result of this proposal is that small Webcasters would be guaranteed no increase in royalty payments for 13 years, from 1998 to 2010,” SoundExchange general counsel Michael Huppe said in a statement. Webcasters that fall in the “small” category would be required to pay 10 percent of all gross revenue up to $250,000 and 12 percent for all gross revenue above that amount. Those rates would hold until 2010 and be retroactive to 2006, SoundExchange said.

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Test A Geek: Enjoy 3 more trivia questions.

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How To: Remove your phone number from Google Search

Concerned about your privacy? One proactive step you can take is to remove your phone number from Google PhoneBook.

As you may know, typing a residential phone number into a Google Search bar (though not the Google Toolbar) performs a reverse lookup that lists your name, address and even a link to a Google Map of your address. Fortunately, Google gives you the option of removing all your residential listing information. All you have to do is fill out a short form and wait 48 hours.

Google Phonebook Name Removal: http://www.google.com/help/pbremoval.html

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Ask A Geek:

Frank asks: Is there a program to “fix” youre computer? I’m running windows XP and the problem started when i could not hibernate my computer. Then then i get an error with the explorer that keeps telling me to send or dont send an error to Microsoft. I already tried defrag and recovering but that doesn’t seem to help.

Answer:

To go through these types of errors is usually difficult. On XP you can try the following:

1. Attempt a System Restore to a time before the problem happened.
2. Think back to when it began and try to see if you installed any new programs or hardware around that time.
3. Fully update your virus scanner and spyware scanners. Run full scans on your machine.
4. Scan and clean your registry with a fantastic little tool called TweakNow! You can get it at tweaknow.com/RegCleaner.html
5. You can use Hijack This! to try to restore settings on your computer back to factory.
6. I’m sure you did this but run Windows Update.
7. Try disabling hibernate mode and re-enabling it. Sometimes toggling it could work.
8. Verify your sleep settings to be sure that they’re set correctly to allow your computer to hibernate.

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Hack: Top 10 Tweaks, Tips, and Tricks for Windows Vista

1. If you’re annoyed by Internet Explorer’s incessant barking that you’ve lowered your security settings, launch “gpedit.msc” from either the Run command or Start Search field, navigate through Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Internet Explorer. In the rightmost pane, double-click “Turn off the Security Settings Check feature” and set it to Enabled.

2. If Internet Explorer’s Information Bar also annoys you, you can turn it off (again) in the Group Policy Object Editor (gpedit.msc) through Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Internet Explorer / Security Features. In the rightmost pane, double-click “Internet Explorer Processes” and set it to Disabled. Hallelujah!

3. There’s a Group Policy Settings Reference spreadsheet available on the web to tweak more.

4. Read the Background on Backgrounds (http://shellrevealed.com/blogs/shellblog/archive/2006/10/28/The-Background-on-Backgrounds.aspx) if you’re a performance junkie. Don’t set your wallpaper through Internet Explorer ever again. Now that Windows supports JPG wallpapers, there’s absolutely no need for using BMPs anymore.

5. If you insist on keeping UAC (User Account Control) turned on for yourself, you might care to make the elevation prompts a bit less visually jarring. Launch the Local Security Policy manager (secpol.msc), and navigate through Security Settings / Local Policies / Security Options. In the rightmost pane, scroll to the bottom and double-click “User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation.” Disable it, and you can keep UAC turned on without the Aero Basic theme.

6. Vista can send you emails! The Computer Management tool can still be accessed by right-clicking “Computer” and selecting “Manage” from the menu. However, now you can attach a task to any event. Try navigating through System Tools / Event Viewer / Windows Logs / Application. Now, go ahead and select an event – then look to the rightmost pane and click “Attach Task to This Event.” Name it whatever, describe it however, click through the next step, then in the Action step, you’ll see the “Send an e-mail” option.

7. The Windows Task Manager gives you a lot more troubleshooting information in Vista. Flip to the Processes tab, and in the View menu, click “Select Columns” and add Description, Command Line, and Image Path Name. Moreover, when you right-click a process, you can select either “Go to Service(s)” or “Open File Location.”

8. Open up the Date and Time Control Panel applet. Flip to the “Additional Clocks” tab. There, you can configure two more clocks from different time zones. They’ll appear in the tooltip when you hover over the Taskbar clock. No additional software is necessary.

9. Applicable in other versions of Windows, create a shortcut to RegSvr32.exe in your SendTo folder. To get there quickly, enter “shell:sendto” in the Run command dialog or Start Search field. Now, when you want to register a DLL or OCX file with the system, you can select it/them and “Send To” the RegSvr32 shortcut.

10. It doesn’t beat Picasa, but the Windows Photo Gallery is better than nothing. Once it’s indexed all your photos, click the icon next to the Search field and turn on the “Table of Contents.”

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Bonus Second hack:

How-To: play DivX and Xvid on your Apple TV

The two biggest Apple TV limitations are the lack of codec support (like XviD, DivX, etc.) and not even having the ability to do basic surround sound like Dolby Digital 5.1. These issues were resolved almost immediately after the Apple TV was released, although the hacks were somewhat less than practical. Something as simple as getting your Apple TV to, say, sync and recognize your XviD movies as playable was no simple feat. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.

Warning: you’re about to potentially void your warranty!

First download the following files via: http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/10/how-to-play-divx-and-xvid-on-your-apple-tv/

Download – ATVFiles plugin.
Download – Perian, the swiss army knife of QuickTime codecs.
Download – A52Codec, an AC3 codec.
Download – Custom ssh.plist file to start sshd automatically.

Optional
Download – Fugu, a nice OS X GUI to transfer files to the Apple TV.
Download – WinSCP to a nice Windows GUI to transfer files to the Apple TV.
Download – If you don’t have an Intel Mac, you will need this Intel version of sshd.

Materials needed:
A Mac.

We are going to do this in two steps. For those who do and do not already have SSH enabled. So if you’ve got SSH running on your Apple TV, skip ahead to the next section.

Enable SSH on the Apple TV (requires a Mac)

Remove the drive and plug it into a Mac, then launch Terminal. Our first command is going to copy the Intel version of ssh daemon from our Mac to the ATV drive. If you are on a Intel Mac copy it from your sbin directory to the ATV’s OSBoot/usr/sbin/ directory. If your browser causes the line to wrap be sure to enter it on one line in the Terminal.

sudo cp /usr/sbin/sshd /Volumes/OSBoot/usr/sbin/

You can also copy it from your downloads directory:

cp /Users/Engadget/Downloads/sshd /Volumes/OSBoot/usr/sbin/

Make sure sshd is executable
sudo chmod +x /Volumes/OSBoot/usr/sbin/sshd

Backup the original ssh.plist to our home directory:

cp /Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist ~

Now copy the new one from our downloads directory to the Apple TV drive:

cp /Users/Engadget/Downloads/ssh.plist /Volumes/OSBoot/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/

Before we dismount the drive to reinstall into the Apple TV, let us see if we need to clean up after Spotlight again. Perform these command and check if the .Spotlight files are on the partitions by typing:

ls -a /Volumes/Media

and

ls -a /Volumes/OSBoot

Now, if you do see those .Spotlight files, use the following command to remove them. But be careful, this is the dreaded rm -rf command, which has the potential to ruin everything.

sudo rm -rf /Volumes/OSBoot/.Spotlight-V100

or

sudo rm -rf /Volumes/Media/.Spotlight-V100

Now dismount the drive and install it in your Apple TV. From here on out you can use a PC on this if you so choose.

Test it by signing in via terminal. (The password is frontrow.)

ssh -1 frontrow@AppleTV.local

That should get you in. Now we can install the programs.

Adding additional QuickTime components.

Before we can start copying files we need to ssh into the Apple TV and mark the volume as read / write. A few times we will use sudo (as in sudo make me a sandwich) and a password will be requested; it’s also frontrow. From the terminal, ssh to the Apple TV:

ssh -1 frontrow@AppleTV.local

Now remount root as read / write. (Enter frontrow for the password.)

sudo mount -o remount,rw /dev/disk0s3 /

At this point you can use Fugu (our scp file transfer frontend) if you prefer. Otherwise, use the commandline scp to copy the following files to the Apple TV. But before you can preform this step you need to mount all the DMGs you downloaded and uncompress ATFiles so you can have the necessary files handy.

Now, copy the ATVFiles plugin, Perian and AC3 QuickTime components to the Apple TV. (As always, depending on the location of these files your command will differ.)

scp -1 -r /Users/Engadget/Downloads/ATVFiles-0.2.1/ATVFiles.frappliance/ frontrow@AppleTV.local:~
scp -1 -r /Volumes/Perian\ 0.5/Perian.component frontrow@AppleTV.local:~
scp -1 -r /Volumes/A52Codec\ 1.7.2/A52Codec.component frontrow@AppleTV.local:~

If you have the MPEG-2 QuickTime component then you can copy that too, but otherwise it’s probably not worth the $20.

scp -1 -r /System/Library/QuickTime/QuickTimeMPEG2.component/ frontrow@AppleTV.local:~

Now we need to use ssh to move the files to the proper directory so QuickTime can find them.

ssh -1 frontrow@AppleTV.local
sudo mv ATVFiles.frappliance/ /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns
sudo mv Perian.component/ /Library/QuickTime/
sudo mv A52Codec.component/ /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/Components/
sudo mv QuickTimeMPEG2.component/ /System/Library/QuickTime/

Now we need to restart Finder so it will load the plugin, you could pull the power (easy way) or you could run a couple commands (slightly less easy way). Here those are, if you’re paranoid about unplugging your unit; find the pid to kill:

ps ax | grep Finder

This will return a line with the pid for finder.

Now kill Finder’s pid. (Ours was 512 when we wrote this.)

kill 512

After Finder restarts we will see a new menu item named Files, which allows us to play movies stored in /Users/frontrow/Movies on the Apple TV. So we’ll copy a movie there, shall we? (Again you can use scp, or Fugu if you prefer.)

scp -1 ~/Movies/Gothika_480p_XviD.avi frontrow@AppleTV.local:~/Movies/

All you have to do is select the clip to play from the files menu.

You’re AppleTV is all set now!

Full instructions w/ pix are available at: http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/10/how-to-play-divx-and-xvid-on-your-apple-tv

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The geek’s view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.

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Related Episodes:

1. The Geekcast #122 – iPod Without iTunes
2. The Geekcast #57
3. Geekcast #20
4. The Geekcast #58