Views from the Coop On-the-Air 4-7-07 Welcomes Ray “Cluck” Hicks!

April 7, 2007

Y’know, I was wondering what kind of nickname I was going to give Ray….and then he went and gave himself one!

Today was the first radio show at 8:30am on Saturday morning and the first thing I can say is that it went by awfully fast! I guess I’ve gotten accustomed to an hour-long format and had WAY too much cool stuff to share in half that amount of time, and I even cut back on the amount of paper I usually bring into the studio. “Cluck’s” a bit more talkative than the “Big Bird”, too (I just love nicknames, don’t you?). We did get a couple of callers (KJ and Robyn) who were surprised to hear me on Saturday morning. They asked some really good questions which I’ll answer for you later in the blog but I’d like to share the topics and my resources first.

Since Ray is a Linux man (that’s what his computer guru put on the PC he built for him), I decided to do a little research on that OS in honor of our first *REAL* show together. What I found out is that Linux has moved more into the mainstream since it’s inception in the 1990s. Initially used by mostly tekkie folks and as the OS for servers, Linux has spun off multiple distributions and has greatly improved the Graphical User Interface (GUI) so familiar to Window users. Hey, it’s a point and click world! If you’re interested in the history of Linux, there’s some great information on Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, Dell Computer has had so many requests from customers to include Linux as the OS on their PCs that they’re planning to start doing just that . According to Red Herring, Dell believes the Linux operating system has “come of age” and is ready for a successful wide distribution. Dell offered a desktop in 2001 preinstalled with Linux but it was short-lived. This time, however, they are predicting that won’t be the case. Who will be able to purchase a desktop or laptop with Linux? Well, that’s not something Dell is sharing right now. For more information about their plans (and what other big name PC manufacturers think about Linux), check out the Red Herring article, Linux PCs Come of Age?

For those of you who are still trying to decide what kind of Windows computer will fit your pocketbook and meet your needs, About.com has a great questionnaire that lets you plug in your user preferences and then gives you a list of PCs that fit the bill. This is especially great for non-tekkie folks (like Ray) who know what they want to do with a computer but are lost when it comes to technical specifications. The questionnaire divides its recommendations for the best computers that match your preferences and a set of recommended specifications in an easy to read table. The table breaks downs the specs by category and recommends items to look for. If you’re in the market for a new PC, check it out.

If you’ve ever listened to Views from the Coop before, you know it’s not just a computer show. I share information about other electronic devices, too. One of the most widely used eDevice is the cellphone. Now, I’m pretty cellphone challenged and use mine to send and receive calls (imagine that!) and I can even add/delete contacts to/from my phonebook. I know that there are folks out there who use their cellphones for all sorts of conveniences from taking pictures to playing games and watching videos to sending/receiving e-mail. What does the future hold? Well, for one thing, CitiBank is starting a mobile banking service that their customers can download and use on their cellphones to do their banking! It’s like online banking but without having to have a computer. They’re hoping to have the service available to customers across the United States by mid-2007. CitiBank isn’t the only financial institution to get into the mobile banking business. Wachovia, Regions, SunTrust and BankcorpSouth are partnering with Cingular Wireless to provide mobile banking capabilities. Wow! What WILL they think of next? Learn all about CitiBank’s plans for banking by cellphone in the online Business section of the New York Times.

I remember back in 2005 when Coral Gables, Florida introduced cellphone parking meter feeding. Others in the US, Canada and Europe have jumped on board to offer easy pay parking…no more having to run out in the middle of a meeting to feed the meter. Just make a quick call from your cellphone and extend your time! A company called Verrus has expanding parking payments by phone across the US. They aren’t the only company to offer pay by cellphone services either. In a related story, Chevy Chase Supermarket in the Washington DC announced plans in September of 2006 to let their customers wave their RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) equipped cellphones across a scanner to pay for their purchases. Ray thinks the whole RFID chip thing is an invasion of privacy and you won’t see him using a cellphone equipped with one. As a matter of fact, you won’t see Ray making a call from a cellphone…he doesn’t have one! It’s an interesting concept, though, and you can read more about the supermarket’s plans in the online Washington Post.

I couldn’t end the show without sharing a cool FREE tool and this week’s a good one. If you’re like most serial surfers, you have a list of Favorites or Bookmarks that takes up your whole screen. Geez, it’s so easy to just bookmark a site you use a lot or one that you THINK you’ll want to visit again. Unfortunately, some of those links get duplicated (Did I already bookmark this or not?), some change without your knowing it, some are even no longer available. Do you really have time to comb through that gigantic list of favorites and clean them up? I don’t. That’s where our cool tool this week can help. Recommended by Bill Detwiler of Tech Republic, AM-Deadlink by aignes.com detects those invalid and duplicated links and deletes them for you!

Well, that’s it for this week’s show. I did promise Robyn that I’d list some options for archiving her e-mail in Outlook Express. I suggested the export function and found out that saving e-mails in OE to a folder is as simple as dragging and dropping them into the folder where you want to store them, then dragging them back into an OE folder to restore them to your e-mail. That stores the files as .eml files (I was wrong that using export didn’t save your messages as e-mail files). I actually tried it in Windows Mail (the successor to OE in Vista) and it works! I created a folder on my desktop, then selected the Windows Welcome Message and dragged it to the new folder. It left the original in my default e-mail folder in Windows Mail so I had to delete it but I restored it by dragging it back. If you want to use the long way, Robyn, you can choose Export from the File Menu in OE and export them into a different folder that way. NOTE: This didn’t work for Thunderbird. I tried. Also, when I double-clicked to open the .eml file I’d moved to the new folder, it tried to open in Thunderbird since that’s my default e-mail client and wouldn’t open. When I did “Open With” and chose Windows Mail, it opened up just fine. Hope that answers your question, Robyn!

K.J., I hope you were successful in contacting the software manufacturer for the ringtone making program that wouldn’t install on you home PC after you’d installed it as a test on a different computer. I always recommend calling Customer Service. So far, I’ve been lucky and have gotten the help that I needed. I just had to get a new activation key from Adobe for my Adobe Audition after my laptop quit on me and I couldn’t activate the program on my new PC. I explained my situation and the customer service rep walked me through reactivating the software. Before you make that call, though, make sure you have your license key available so that you can confirm that you do have a licensed copy of the software. I also suggest that you record the name of the person you talk to and any of the numbers he or she gives you and store them someplace where you can retrieve them in case you need to make a follow-up call.

I’m editing the podcast and will have it posted shortly. If you’re a subscriber, you’ll be notified when it’s available. If you’re not, you can visit the subscription page to see if it’s there yet! Thanks for making my first weekend show a success. Cluck, you’d better be ready for a photo session next weekend so I can post a picture of us for our listeners!

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