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Brian Cooley gives us the scoop on the LA Auto Show, we help you recover songs from a crashed iPod, and Bonnie Cha reviews the BlackBerry Storm.
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Things We Crave
Hands on with the new Xbox 360 dashboard
2010 Lexus RX gets update, new Remote Touch controller
First Look
Best of the Web
SearchMe and Google Voice Search.
Quick Tip
Stop MSN or Windows Live Messenger spam
Your video calls
Iyaz sent a video about stuttering problems in OS X Leopard. Brian Tong noted that many other users reported this problem on Apple's message boards. Some say they fixed it by downgrading from OS X 10.5.5 to plain old 10.5. Some even resorted by downgrading to 10.4. BT noted that some folks have found that switching from the audio jack to digital and back temporarily solves the problem.
Your calls
Our caller had some 40,000 slides to scan in. Using ScanCafe for example, that would cost over $9,000 if you send it to a service. WikiHow has a tutorial with eight different ways to attack this problem, including using a video camera. You could also adapt a flatbed scanner to scan slides, or a buy a scanner just for slides.
OS X can read files on NTFS hard drives but it can't write to them. Use Macfuse to make OS X capable of writing to NTFS hard drives.
To recover files off a dead iPod, you can try some revival methods. If those don't work, take the hard drive out of the iPod and put it in an enclosure. You'll need an enclosure for 1.8-inch Toshiba Drives, like this one. You could also buy an old iPod off eBay that has a good battery but a bad hard drive, and then transplant the good hard drive into it. Then if the drive is damaged, use some free software to recover the files. My favorites are photorec or PC Inspector.
Looking for a PC alternative to buying a MacBook? Take a look at our 5 Best laptops.
Our caller with the dead Audiovox LCD TV screen probably needs a new TV, but if he's willing to try to fix it himself, here's some guidance on fuse problems that could be helpful.
Holiday Help Desk!
Don't forget to watch the Holiday Help Desk, Friday, November 28 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT, at CNET TV. You could win an iPod Touch.
E-mail us!
Whether it's a regular text note, or a recorded video question, you can send it to cnetlive@cnet.com. Keep your videos to 15 seconds or less, post them to a Web site like Youtube, and then e-mail us the link.
Here are links to the art masterpieces we counted down in our high-tech public art Top 5.
Of course, you can watch the Top 5 to see what order they were in and get a brief overview of each. Then come back here for links to investigate more about the ones you like the best.
Diller and Scofidio, "Brasserie"
Electroland, multiple projects
Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, "Moveable Type"
David Small and Howard Ben Tre, "The Hall of Ideas"
Recently, I accidentally grabbed my wife's iPhone and plugged it into my MacBook Pro. No big deal, right? Nothing bad happened. But after that: iTunes refused to sync my calendar, contacts, e-mail, or bookmarks.
I found a fix on the Apple discussion boards suggested by StephenDunn2. Be warned, Apple specifically states you should NOT mess with the SyncServices folder. As if it were a swarm of bees, they say you should avoid it.
OK, I get the picture, but at a certain point, if you're frustration surpasses your bee fear, you may want to try this. It worked for me. Here's what I did.
1. Quit iTunes and, if necessary, Mail, iCal, and Address book.
2. In your home directory, find Library, then Application Support, then SyncServices.
3. I moved the SyncServices to my desktop as a safety.
4. Then restart iTunes.
5. Go to the info tab and reset your sync preferences.
6. Then sync.
If this works, you should no longer get the sync warnings, and you can delete the old folder off your desktop.
Remember, this worked for me and plenty of people on the boards, but not every single one. And Apple certainly doesn't like it, so there's no guarantee.
I've just entered some pretty awesome company! I'm going to have a regular column on WowOWow.com, a site for Women on the Web that was founded in part by Lesley Stahl (yep, that CBS synergy paying off again), along with some other pretty big names--the regular contributors and founders are, in addition to Lesley, Peggy Noonan, Liz Smith, Joni Evans, Mary Wells, Sheila Nevins, Joan Juliet Buck, Whoopi Goldberg, Julia Reed, Joan Ganz Cooney, Judith Martin, Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, and Marlo Thomas.
I will be, not surprisingly, bringing the tech to the party. I'll have a weekly post tied to or based on the Gadget of the Week segment in that week's Buzz Report episode. The Wowowow audience is definitely less tech-savvy than the CNET audience, so look for these to be more informational or explanatory posts about the trends behind the Gadget of the Week, some buying advice about the category, or just an explanation of what in the heck a "Netbook" is, as in the first post, which went up today!
Check it out; I'm pretty excited. I'll post a link to each week's column as it goes up!
We had problems. You kinda just need to watch. But we answered a lot of questions!
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Things We Crave
BlackBerry Storm gets official pricing and release date
Best of the Web
Your calls
Here's how to use GParted to resize your Windows Vista partition. Here's one of the reasons why resizing Vista partitions is an issue. And if the Vista repair above doesn't work, here's an Ubuntu forum thread on a workaround using a Windows XP disk.
Having problems with the T-Mobile G1's data access? It could be a coverage issue. Here's their coverage map.
Our take on the best MP3 players with Bluetooth.
Need to buy a digital TV converter box? Here's which ones to buy.
Need a bigger TiVo hard drive? Here's how to do it yourself or pay someone else to do it.
E-mail us!
Whether it's a regular text note, or a recorded video question, you can send it to cnetlive@cnet.com. Keep your videos to 15 seconds or less, post them to a Web site like Youtube, and then e-mail us the link.
A nice mix of questions today, including SATA drives that can't be formatted properly, how to run DVD backups on Apple TV, and more.
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First Look
Best of the Web
Insider Secrets
Create a multiroom iTunes music system
Discussion
Is Theora the video codec that will save us from the tyranny of video incompatibility? Your video calls
Rob's question: You can watch converted DVDs on Apple TV in several ways. Brian explained a way to use iTunes. You could also put them on an external drive, AppleTVHacks.net has a solution for that. Boxee is another solution, if you can get into the private beta.
Your calls
Looking for a good MP3 player for Linux? I like the Archos 605 WiFi, though it is a little bulky and pricier than the iPod Touch. You can use the iPod Touch with Linux, but it takes a little work. Here's a HowTo on syncing the iPod Touch with Linux.
Michael was having problems getting Windows to recognize all the bytes on his hard drive. Others who've faced this issue have had to tweak a registry setting to enable 48-bit LBA support. Here's a thread on Annoyances.org and another on Tech Support Guy that deal with this issue.
E-mail us!
Whether it's a regular text note, or a
We share some of our scariest tech stories involving the FBI, Rock Band, debit cards, and Windows 98.
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First Look
Download of the week
News
Take a ride in a modern Zeppelin
Your video calls
Franklin's questions: Tethering a Treo to a Mac?
Watch our video by Rich DeMuro and read this detailed step-by-step from PeachPit press.
Tim's questions: If I delete junk mail will the spam filter still work?
Yes. Here's the wikipedia article on how Bayesian filters combat spam.
Your calls
If you're having trouble uninstalling SmartDefrag, read this forum thread from IOBit's message boards. Then you may want to try Revo Uninstaller or CCleaner.
Want to start your own hot spot? You can buy a plan from a vendor like this one. Or you can try rolling your own with some free and open source software.
Brian C. pointed a caller with about 3,000 photos to high-speed scanners. He also pointed out ScanCafe as an example of a service that will do the scanning for you..
Should you get the Sony AW laptop or the HP HDX18? The HP's safer but if you can hold on, wait until we can get a full evaluation of the Sony, because even though the AW is more expensive, it's got killer specs.
To downgrade from
... Read moreChris DiBona, Open source manager at Google talks about Android, open source, and more.
Watch the show on CNET TV.
Things we Crave
First Look
Moxia Energy USBCell AA NiMH batteries
Download of the week
Quick Tip
Customise your Windows Vista log-in
Your video calls
Jacob's questions: Should you upgrade a two-year-old Gateway computer to Windows Vista?
You can use Microsoft's Windows Vista upgrade adviser to get its advice. I'd probably hold off still. An older computer is more likely to have issues with Vista than a brand-new or recently purchased computer. See the video for Brian Cooley's tips on Zune-management issues if you do upgrade.
Your calls
In response to an e-mail, Brian Cooley recommended a couple of outdoor display companies. One is Sunlight LCD and the other is SunBrite TV
Want the most accessible music player between Zune and iPod? The iPod Nano has talking menus, but if that's not enough storage space, Brian Tong noted that the Zune has larger text.
Brian C. pointed a caller with about 3,000 photos to high-speed scanners. He also pointed out ScanCafe as an example of a service that will do the scanning for you..
Will pre-N or Draft-N wireless routers be firmware upgradable to 802.11N once the standard is completed? The short answer is probably not.
... Read moreAnd the winner is...
Although there were worthy competitors in the afternoon, the winner of the CEA i-stage event here in Las Vegas was Boxee, the "open, connected, social media center." (Though I did talk to a venture capital guy who said he was following my pick, Occipital.) I suspect that Boxee won through sheer slickness of interface, defined value proposition, and possibly presentation value. It's a good product, there's no doubt. Boxee walks away with the $50,000 and the coveted CES booth space, and we'll probably try to keep tabs on it on its road to CES. Keep an eye out for that!
I-stage also featured an official fan favorite vote, and said fan favorite will get a "pod" in the CEA TechZone at CES, so they don't make out too badly, either. In this case, the fan fave winner was the Minoru 3D Webcam. The Webcam itself is adorable, it takes images exclusively in 3D, and, best of all, the presentation required the audience in front of me to don 3D glasses en masse! It was like being in front of a 1960s movie audience! But judging from their responses, the experience was worth it. Judge Jeff Pulver noted that he was looking for a "wow" experience out of the last two presenters of the day (Minoru was second-to-last), and the audience was definitely murmuring "wow" as they watched a cute little girl blow bubbles ... Read more
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