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(Part 6of7)
PREMIERE DATE: 9/29/2004
Jeff Moss, “Smart Clothing,” DVDs on Your PocketPC
Top O’ the Show
Kevin and Alex began by giving an update on their experiences with freeipods.com, the seemingly too-good-to-be-true website that supposedly sends you a free iPod (or gift certificate) if you sign up for one co-sponsored online service (like Blockbuster’s movie service) and induce five people to register for the site. While Kevin received his $250 gift certificate, Alex’s iPod is still pending after a month.
To find out how this scheme works, the guys called freeipod.com’s CEO, Rob Joel, and talked with him on the air. He said that his company, GratisNetworks, actually has several similar freebie websites that have distributed four million products in four years. The company makes its money through new-customer referral fees paid by sponsors, he said. So how is this different from a multi-layer marketing scam? “We do not require entry fees,” Joel said.
Alex was especially curious about the delay in receiving his own personal iPod. “We’ve shipped 4,000 iPods and we currently have 1,000 pending,” Joel said. “But we’ve made huge strides — we’re working on a same-week turnaround.” Alex claimed a feeling of some relief, but stay tuned for further updates.
In tech news, Microsoft plans on releasing a slimmed down version of Windows XP for the Indian market to fight rampant piracy. The Starter Edition costs less and but comes severely crippled: the user can only open three windows or apps at any one time. Also, there are no home-networking abilities or multiple-user options. Price: $36.
“Seriously, if I have to pay $36 for that piece of poo, I’d rather go to the street corner for the $6 copy,” Alex commented. (He was speaking figuratively, and does not personally condone purchasing pirated copies of software.)
TSS Live Calls
Darin from Reno, Nevada accidentally deleted an extremely important Word document from his PC. What can he do to recover it?
Alex said the first thing he should do is to stop writing on his PC. Then Darin could try several different data recovery programs: Restoration is free, R Studio has a free demo that limits the size of the recoverable file, and VirtualLab is a pro app that charges about $99 per gigabyte of recovered data. Note: It’s always best to save files to a drive other than the one they being recovered from.
DVDs onto Your PocketPC?
One of our faithful viewers, Cindy in Dubuque, Iowa, has a Dell Axim with a large memory card, so she asked us how to go about putting DVD movies onto this PocketPC. Our managing editor Robert Heron offered a solution, though he wasn’t very pleased with it.
His preferred recoding tool, Nero’s Recode 2.1, doesn’t yet offer a PocketPC plug-in. Consequently, he searched the web and found in its place DVD-to-Pocket PC and Pocket DVD Wizard.
“These are some of the worst apps I’ve ever seen,” Robert said. “The quality sucks, the options suck.”
“Great! Let’s show our audience!” suggested Alex.
Robert said that these programs are really just front-ends for the Windows Media Decoder, and they don’t work well. The claimed two-click process is more like 10 or 12. “You’re just hurting yourself having to reset the program 20 times to get it to work,” Robert said.
If you want to DIY, you should strip the DVD copy protection using DVD Decrypter, convert it to MPG or AVI (using your favorite converter), and use the FREE Windows Media Encoder to make it into a WMV file optimized for Pocket PC (typically 320×240 4:3; 10-30fps; MPEG4 AAC audio). For more tips, go to videohelp.com.
Going on a Dark Tangent
Jeff “Dark Tangent” Moss, founder of the hacker convention Defcon, came by to discuss his annual Las Vegas hoe-down.
“Originally, it was all about bringing people together,” he said. “This was pre-Internet, so if you wanted to learn something you had to ask somebody to teach you.”
As the convention has grown, so has its interest to the Federal authorities. Not only do they like keeping on eye on the hackers, but they keep tabs on all the spies sent by other countries.
“Other countries send intelligence agents to watch us,” he said. “So our government sends our spies to watch their spies to watch us.”
For another look at Defcon, read this article by our very own Sean O’Rourke.
High-Tech “Smart” Fashion
Now you can not only dress smart, but also wear smart — “smart clothes,” that is. Our Screen Savers staffers modeled the most cutting-edge attire available (or soon-to-be available) in our first fashion show. (”It’s my dream finally realized!” said a pleased Sarah.) The looks were dazzling and the technology impressive: Solar panels! Built-in MP3 players! Anti-perspiration technology! Click on the links below to visit fashion from the future:
Sarah’s Download of the Day: iPod Agent
Author: TTVRewind
Keywords: TSS The Screen Savers Techtv Tech TV zdnet Kevin Rose Alex Albrecht Sarah Lane Yoshi DeHerrera Dan Huard Robert Heron
Added: April 17, 2008
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