Podcast: Play in new window | Embed
Tech News & Commentary
Don in Kingsville, Ontario, Canada listening on AM 800 CKLW – The Information Station asked: “I have been using a service called Unblock Us. It’s a DNS service that allows you to watch American Netflix in Canada. My friend is also interested in this service, but doesn’t want to pay the $5 a month. Are there any other good DNS servers for free out there? I’ve been looking and I can’t seem to find one that’s good, fast and free.”
There are many free reliable DNS servers out there, but all a DNS server does is translate a web address to an IP address, what you’re looking for is a proxy server. You will have a hard time finding a free proxy server that is good, fast, reliable, that hides your IP from Netflix without it being known to Netflix as a commonly used proxy (which would get it’s IP address blacklisted).
A lot of proxies are either public systems that have low speeds and are intended for lower bandwidth usage, computers that someone set up for that purpose, or computer that happen to be doing that without their owner’s knowledge and were discovered by someone else.
The problem is that providing a proxy server leaves you open to legal problems is someone uses your IP for something illegal, so most people and companies do not make their server available to everyone out there. With free ones, you’re typically at the mercy of whoever is providing the service, they may turn their computer off one day and the server is gone, they may be downloading a huge file, or choose to limit the speed of the server and you won’t be able to stream anything.
If your friend really wants to find a way around Netflix’s regional barriers, his best option is probably to pay like you do. If you want a longer term solution, you might want to consider writing to whoever regulates content licensing in Canada, or even to your MP in Parliament, and see if you can add your voice to the people demanding access to better legal content online, without licensing restriction US and Canadian Netflix would probably be about the same.
Unblock Us is a VPN, or Virtual Private Network, not a DNS (Domain Name Server) service. A DNS is akin to a telephone book. You come to it with an address and it gives you the number, in this case the IP address, for a particular website. A VPN is like a tunnel in cyberspace, burrowing under the US-Canada border, and connecting with services without revealing its actual location.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
“This Week in Tech History” Weekly Feature with Chris Graveline
Steve in State College, Pennsylvania listening on Newsradio 103 WRSC and asked: “What’s the best laptop to get? I’m new. I’m a baby boomer. I’d just like to find out some information.”
It all depends, there are baby boomer gamers and baby boomer email checkers. You say you’re new, if that means your use will be very light, you can probably focus on cheaper laptops. They won’t have the power of a gaming system, but you probably don’t need it, you’ll save some money and be able to do the basic things most people do, email, web browsing … that kind of thing.
A Samsung Series 3 laptop, for example, will cost you $450, it has a 15.6” screen, a Core i3 processor, a reasonably large 320GB hard drive, and at that price it’s basically competing with Chromebooks that will let you use only cloud services.
On the complete other end of the spectrum, you can look at a $2000 MSI laptop with a 17.3” screen, 16GB of RAM, a 64GB SSD for very fast performance and a 750GB HDD for plenty of storage room, but the thing is… if you’re new, you probably don’t need any of that and are better off sticking to something cheaper that will fit your needs just fine.
An Ultrabook may be a good option for you, they’re super light, super thin, with good battery lives and their price is between the first two computer we mentioned. For example, you can buy a Toshiba U845 Ultrabook with slightly better specs than the first laptop we mentioned, but with a smaller 14” screen for $700. It would likely be a nicer computer to use, so if you don’t think they price is too high, Ultrabooks are a good category to explore.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
Gloria in Brentwood, Tennessee listening on WTN 99.7 asked: “I did the update on iPhone 4 and have no issue. I have Straight Talk. But I am unable to send group messages or send pictures to iPhone 3. Any suggestion on how to fix this?”
As far as we can tell one of two things could be causing the problem, either it was an issue with the network at the time you tried, which we are mentioning because it happened to Straight Talk recently, or your phone’s settings may not be correct.
On the phone side, the first thing you should check is whether or not picture and group messages are enabled. They can be disabled from the settings. So open your Settings, and check under Messages that both MMS Messaging and Group Messaging are on.
If they are, then the problem may be with your data connection. Your data configuration has two separate sections, one for mobile internet and another one for data messaging. The easiest way to change your data settings is to go to http://www.unlockit.co.nz from your iPhone and select “US – Straight Talk”, the website will make the change for you.
Just make sure that it’s still not working first and that it wasn’t a temporary network issue.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
Jack in Los Alamos, New Mexico listening on KTRC 1260 – Santa Fe’s News Talk Leader asked: “I was wondering if there was any service available that when I get one of these phishing e-mails that I’m afraid someone on my family downloaded, that I could send it to them and find out if there is anything like a keylogger or whatever on it.”
There are sites that let you submit addresses that you suspect are phishing related. The most popular one is PhishTank.com, where you can submit links and either get a result, if it’s already known, or have the community vote on it, if it’s a new link.
The process is not really automated though, you have to copy the link from the email yourself, paste it on the site and either get a response or wait for one and remember to go check.
For most stuff, this is overkill. If you’re concerned that the email you got may be a phishing email, just don’t click on anything. Open a browser, go to the website that the email claims to be coming from and log-in as you would if you hadn’t received an email at all.
As for keyloggers, you will most likely either receive an email with malware attached, or a phishing attempt, but not both at the same time. A phishing email will just look like an official email from a reputable company to try to trick you into going to a site that looks official as well in an attempt to steal your login information and gain access to something valuable, typically your bank account. Bad guys don’t need to install anything on your computer to do that, they just need you to go to a website and use your credentials to sign in.
Sometimes your best practice is just hovering your mouse over the links in an email and looking down to the status bar where it should show you what web address that link is going to send you to. This may not work in all email clients, but if you’re using a web based email system like Gmail or Hotmail, it will. If anything looks suspicious at all, never click the link! You’re far better off entering the address manually or select it from your own bookmarks, to avoid being hijacked.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
Guests in this hour:
Kevan O’Brien, Senior Product Marketing Manager – Boris FX
Want to spruce up your video projects with the same effects the pros use? Find out how Boris FX can help you.
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT with Rob: Adobe Creative Suite 6 Master Collection
One of the things we like about Adobe is that they bundle software created specifically for different design fields and needs. They also offer the Master Collection, the heftiest option, if you want to use almost their entire app collection.
For almost $2600, it includes: Photoshop Extended, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash Professional, Flash Builder 4.6 Premium Edition, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Acrobat X Pro for Creative Suite, Bridge, Adobe Audition, SpeedGrade, Prelude, Encore, and Media Encoder.
With Creative Suite 6, Adobe offers a new way to use their tools … in the cloud! Adobe calls it “Creative Cloud” and has been available since earlier this year.
Adobe offers three different plans for a monthly subscription fee. For example, for $20 a month, you get access to a single app and 10 GB of cloud storage. If you want to try the entire collection, you can sign up for 1-year of service and 20GB of cloud storage for $50 a month. Or, if you don’t want to commit to a year, you can pay $75 a month for the same plan. And there’s a free trial offer you can take advantage of, as well.
We’ve been playing with the new tools in Creative Suite 6 on Mac and PC and have enjoyed the new tweaks Adobe has included in their latest collection. Here are some highlights:
Photoshop
The Extended edition now includes 3D editing. And, it got a speed boost. I’m running CS6 on a MacBook Pro with a Core i5 processor. With the previous version, I would have to close other programs so my computer wouldn’t lag so much. With the new version, I didn’t have to do that.
The user interface in PhotoShop got a small makeover. It uses a darker gray background vs. the lighter option in CS5.
And there’s a new cropping tool. Cropping a picture is now faster with the “accelerated Crop tool”. It has multiple overlays to guide your cropping, which helps keep all the pixels of the original photo even after you apply the crop.
PremierePro
We use Premiere Pro as our video editing software of choice. Our weekly ITTV Updates are edited with this program. Premiere also got some new, useful tweaks, including a new interface. We like the fact that the media browser thumbnails can now be individually skimmed-through by moving the mouse over them. And when you click on one, you get a scrubber bar and can mark in and out points right there, before you even insert the clip into your project. Also, you can now drag files from your computer’s file system into the project.
Some people say Premiere doesn’t offer everything a professional video editor needs, but we disagree, as our “Into Tomorrow” video editors have been quite happy with it.
The only complaint we have is that the export process still takes a long time with HD video content and it occasionally made our PC crash. We’re still not certain if it was the software or the PC. To be fair, we may or may not have the optimum PC hardware configuration.
Dreamweaver
With the new tweaks, it’s good for anyone who wants to build web pages or apps that automatically adapt when viewed in a smartphone or tablet browser, or on a laptop or desktop. Dreamweaver CS6 is the first Web editor built for the multi-platform era, with support for HTML5 and CSS3.
Creative Suite 6 is a really sweet upgrade. Not sure you’ll notice a very big difference if you’re upgrading from CS5, but you certainly would if you’re currently on CS3 or CS4. We like the fact that it got a speed boost across their library of apps. Graphic designers will appreciate that with Illustrator and InDesign, for instance.
There is a learning curve to taking advantage of all the new features CS6 offers. We recommend buying a “how-to” book or look for tutorials online like Lynda.com to help you. Lynda is the official trainer for Adobe videos and her team does a great job!
Keep in mind that these professional programs require a lot from your computer system. Make sure you have plenty of storage space and RAM. Check the computer requirements on Adobe’s website.
Carol in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania listening on News Talk Radio WDEL 1150 asked: “What is the best Bluetooth player for an older car? I have a regular cassette player and of course a cigarette lighter. I have a 96 Jeep. I wanted to play from my Android phone, my MP3 music or use TuneIn.”
There are sites that let you submit addresses that you suspect are phishing related. The most popular one is PhishTank.com, where you can submit links and either get a result, if it’s already known, or have the community vote on it, if it’s a new link.
Your best bet, and maybe the only inexpensive option, will probably be to buy a Bluetooth cassette adapter. They’re fairly rare, but if you can find them, you can get one for about $25.
You can also look at replacing your radio. You can find some Bluetooth enabled radios for $60 or so, but they’re usually more expensive and will look nothing like your Jeep’s original radio.
The plus side of a new radio is that you will usually get the Bluetooth connection that you want as well and wired inputs, or the ability to play MP3 from flash drives, so you’re not just limited to your phone.
A new radio will also leave the 12V lighter jack unused and available for charging your phone, as Bluetooth use and Internet streaming over long drives will drain your phone if it’s not plugged in.
For more information tune in to Hour 2 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Corrosion Technologies: Several bottles of CorrosionX — A few squirts of CorrosionX clean contacts & connections & keep them protected for months (in salt spray environments) to years.
Dane-Elec: Several 8GB USB Flash Drives from Marvel’s The Avengers Collection
Ergotron: A Universal Tablet Cradle — This accessory converts a monitor mount to hold a tablet or eReader. Works with most popular tablets and eReaders, including Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook and Amazon Kindle.
iolo Technologies: Copies of System Mechanic 11 – PC Tune-up Software
SMS Audio: “Street By 50” Wired headphones in black or white. We brought ’em back from 50 Cent and our interview in Berlin.