The Global Geek Podcast #071 :: Horse Kennel
The show is a bit delayed this week as we were gearing up for a new co-host. Thanks for being patient.
In tech this week; Facebook have second thoughts about Beacon, YouTube doing a bit more convenient censorship, Second Life’s Growth spurt and finally we have found a use for your PS3.
Applications this week sees a defragging app with a unique feature, AutoPatcher is back (wow what a story) and one way to catch a thief.
The sites and services this week are excellent so stick around, we have a killer app for live blogging and a new site that does “best of the web” very well to name a few.
As well as the usual segments and no rant from Knightwise we have the Mac Lab Rat, Featured Firefox extensions and your feedback. Please enjoy this weeks GGP!
The Global Geek Podcast #71 (MP3 – 25.73MB – 1:14:54)
[audio:http://globalgeek.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/tpn_theglobalgeekpodcast_20071203_071.mp3]
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Welcome
TPN Annual Survey Thank you for your time 
Tech News
- Facebook Beacon (or is that bacon?)
- Dell Releases Linux PC Sales
- iPhone to go 3G
- YouTube Censors Activist’s Video, political or content?
- After Hours Bandwidth
- Google Launches “My Location”
- Second Life User Activity
- The PS3 Grid, do something with the doorstop
Promo Spot – The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show
Applications
- Defraggler beta: Maintain your whole drive or just single files
- DriverView: Display every driver installed in one easy list
- AutoPatcher Updater: Download the latest Windows updates in one hit, yey! (Windows XP, 2000 and 2003 ONLY)
- iHound: Track portable media and storage devices if they are lost or stolen
Firefox Extensions
- Picnik: Extens Firefox’s integration with this very cool web based image editing service
- EverNote: Enable clipping straight from Firefox to EverNote, note taking software
GGP Mac Lab Rat
Sites and Services
- GenFavicon: Generate a favicon quickly and easily
- Befuddle: Time waster and fun, get befuddled
- Visual Dictionary: Find the name of something using imagery
- CoverItLive: Live blogging tool for your blog to cover events and news, adds interaction with your readers in real time. Awesome
- Human Brain Cloud: Word association game, weird and make sure you check out the jelly thing
- Mixx: Targeted content tailored to your interests with some other great features
Feedback
Farewell
- Dave’s Blog (Second Life: Rooster Rubble)
- Cait’s Blog (Second Life: Knowledge Tomorrow)
- Keith’s Blog (Second Life: Maezik Darwin)
Cait’s Place with the Great Deck in Second Life
Featured Music
Desoto Jones
“Speed Bump” (mp3)
from “Aurora”
(Deep Elm)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at GroupieTunes
More On This Album
December 6th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Hey Guys,
Great show! I just thought I’d share my experience of shopping with Dell over here in the UK. Until a few years back I did the typical geek thing and always built my own PCs from scratch, but when I bought my girlfriend’s PC for her she insisted that I go through a ‘name’ retailer rather than the sweaty fat guy at the computer fair who I usually buy my components from.
After shopping around I noticed that Dell seems to always have some awesome offers on. They are always offering free RAM upgrades or bigger hard drives. Just click around the web to find the latest offers. Plus bizarely you can often get better deals by switching between the home and small business departments at the dell website. Often one department is running a better offer on the same spec PC than the other.
The other thing to think about is that like any mainstream retailer these guys make a lot of their money through extended warranties. Dell are a little sneaky because the price they quote on their website is with an over the top extended warranty (frankly who needs 5 years warranty on a PC you’ll probably have upgraded way before then?). So if you manually remove the extended warranty you’ll notice a drastic redution in price. You get your 1 year manufacturer warranty anyway… also strangely enough if you buy a system from from them without a warranty you’ll probably get a phone call after two weeks from a friendly chap offering to sell you 3 year on site warranty for a fraction of the price it would have cost you when you bought the system. Against my advice my girlfriend insisted we bought a three year warranty when they phoned up, but frankly I’m glad I did; in the last two years Dell have replaced the laptop with three keyboards, two screens, one case and a CD-ROM drive, all the day after I reported the damage and at no additional cost.
I must sound like a freaking advert for Dell here, but the negative aspects of a Dell system is that firstly they ship them with insane amounts of useless Dell and Dell approved software on them that is a pain to remove, and secondly they lock out most functions in the bios so forget about trying to carry out any advanced bios tweaks.
Apart from that though I would personally recommend giving Dell a look if you are shopping for a new system. I’ve bought three systems through them now and would gladly go back again. Just treat them like a high street store though and search for the best bargains, and don’t get suckered in paying extra for warranties you don’t need.
Anyway… forgive me if you all know this information already, but I thought I would share my thoughts on the subject.
cheers,
Ian
December 6th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Hell of a post there Ian. I’m sure sharing your experience will come in handy for others looking to purchase through Dell.
If I’m not mistaken, I’m pretty sure Dell allows it’s customers to checkmark a box which tells them not to give you a PC preinstalled with a bunch of crapware.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:32 am
Like Ian i used to go for custom built over package systems all the time (still do at home). But for work PCs, you cant beat Dell.
Tick the boxes it turns up and works. I used to manage around 30 PCs and in say 4 years only had one mother board go and one HDD fail (someone at work once stole ram from some pcs but that doesn’t count).
But yes, they do what they are supposed to do which is pretty much all that counts. Plus the bios lockouts certainly ensure no unwanted tweaking.
I used to have a custom built premium DELL machine for computer modeling, which in its day was sweet and hellishly expensive, and it certainly worked well.
I do feel sorry for the sweaty fat guy at the computer fair though.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
First off, Welcome to the Geek Cait! You’re already showing that you’ve got some Geek Cred ((nice laptop!)) and I’m sure I can speak for most of the audience when I say we’re looking for great things from you in the future.
Secondly, great insights on your Dell experience, Ian. I’ve used Dell’s at work exclusively over the past 6 years and I have to say that for the most part they’ve performed well. And for me that’s saying something because I abuse the heck out of my computers.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Thanks Ian for the great Dell info. It has generated a loot more talk than I thought it would. Good to know though as I am myself tossing up between a Dell and getting something else for my wife. So thanks heaps guys
Thanks Keith for being so welcoming to Cait. She still has not got back to me about what she thought of the show and it is nearly time to start prepping the next one!
December 6th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Thanks Ian.
I did get an extended warranty with mine, because I’ll have it for a while and I want the coverage for replacement parts.
Thanks Keith – It’s not so hard to migrate off the Mac to a machine like this.
The finished show sounds great Dave and I’m already prepping.
December 6th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Oh crap, that was me, Cait.
December 6th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Hey guys (or guy and girl),
Nice show. Glad to see that someone’s on the job and prepping the show notes (Cait)! Heh. Nice to see a geeky chick as well…
Re Dell: I’ve never really been happy with Dell’s crapware, and I know that in the past that they would buy lot loads of parts from the lowest bidder and put these parts into their machines. When I was shopping for a new computer a few years ago, I couldn’t get Dell to tell me who made their parts, mostly because I don’t think they knew from one machine to the next who was making their parts. If I wanted an Asus motherboard, they wouldn’t make any promises. Maybe it’s changed now, I’m not sure. I’m still a little leery of their seemingly low prices. I prefer to know who makes the parts that go into my machine, so I often buy parts from an older asian fellow who runs a small shop down near the mall. It’s not a fancy shop, but I know what I’m getting and the owner is brutally honest about the quality of what he’s selling.
Currently I’m thinking about getting a new laptop, and while I was dead set on picking up a new MacBook Pro, I’m now leaning toward a PC-based dual core. I’m liking what I’ve been seeing from Acer lately, and these new Sony Vaios look interesting as well.
I’m kind’ve annoyed with the idea behind “extended warranties” though. Like when you buy a new Apple computer, they want you to doll out another $400 or so for the “Applecare”. Now, to me, this translates to: “We know our computer is going to fail at some point within the next three years, so we’re going to recoup our costs by charging the user another $400.” So what I want to know is, if the manufacturers KNOW their products are built to fail, then why don’t they just charge a bit more for a product that won’t fail? I don’t know how many times I’ve heard about the logic board dying in someone’s MacBook–I mean if they KNOW there’s a problem with the logic boards, why force the consumer to spend another $400 for Applecare? Just fix the problem and charge a bit more at the outset. Sheesh.
Oops… I got a bit carried away on that rant. I blame it on reading Cam’s Twitter feed this morning. Anyway… Good show! Now I want to hear more about Second Life.
December 7th, 2007 at 5:57 am
Great show, I was pleased to hear about sites that are a fun place to waste time at. I loved the comment about it being a good site to visit while on-hold.
On the topic rasied about swearing, I too will miss tim’s swearing. Frankly, at times, these hi-tech gadgets can bring out the worst language in all of us. Swearing is much better then bringing out the hammer and giving our cpu a good smack.
December 7th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Firstly, great show guys (including Keith).
Secondly, Cait thanks for taking the time to be a host. I realise how much time goes into the show and therefore it is important to recognise both your and Dave’s efforts. And lets not forget Keith.
I finally listened this morning.
With regards to the dictionary you guys talked about, and the conversion software talked about by Keith, both sound good. I have used some free software called wordweb as a dictionary for years and some other software called covert by Joshua Madison, again free software. Both can be handy.
I must admit i laughed at the agistment debate. My horse collection has now grown to five, all bar one living at my parents farm. If only I wasn’t the only person in my family that rides horses and people would stop giving them to me!
Sorry back on topic, Cait, my thoughts for agistment have always been around putting horses into paddocks where they live essentially outdoors. You pay for this of course! Stabling, is more along the lines of holding them in small pens and keeping them indoors. You pay more for this!
I had a look at the brain cloud and of course have wasted too much time there already. Further, I have downloaded the auto patcher software, thanks for the tip!
Cheers
December 7th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Thanks for the ScriptSaver plug, folks!
December 7th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Can you can prank call Tim Timmy when you know he’ll be drunk and record his swearing then drop it into the show randomly as a sound effect? Sorta like dvorak’s sounds on TWiT. I like the rubber ducky. Please do more drunk shows. Was Cait already a podcaster? Is Second Life the new irc then? Someone mentioned links to places within the world. Does that mean the URL in the show notes would drop a user into a specific location? Would you record a show with KW, Tim Timmy, Keith, Cait and both Daves in SL? I bought iShowU which is more stable than any of the 4 or 5 screen recording apps I’ve tested on Windows including camtasia which wont even record system audio on the two systems I tested. Thank god my work is mostly Unix.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Hi Eric
I wasn’t a podcaster before this show, it’s my first one.
The SL hyperlinks to look for are slurl.com (Second Life URL)
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Yeongheungdo/49/87/64
Yeongheungdo is the region.
49, 87, 64 are the X Y Z coordinates in that region.
These links will teleport you directly to the location in Second Life, but they do require the SL client.
Cait
December 8th, 2007 at 7:40 am
Cats like :
- eating mice
- shitting inside the house
- licking their own genitals
- sniffing the genitals of other cats
- barfing up hairballs
- Windows Vista Arrow-glass interface
I rest my case
Welcome to the show cait !
I’ll try to be nice to your Vista computer … but i will probably fail at that 
Ps : I was out for the week : New host on the GGP that likes second life AND runs vista = Flame opportunity overload !!!!!!! It knocked my fuses out
December 8th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Cats like :
- eating mice
If you have mice in your house, you have a problem.
- shitting inside the house
So do you. Are you jealous because you don’t have a minion to clean yours up?
- licking their own genitals
Some of us wish we could.
- sniffing the genitals of other cats
Cats sniff other cat’s faces, or occasionally another cat’s butt.
- barfing up hairballs
This is just their way of letting us know who is in charge.
- Windows Vista Arrow-glass interface
Vista is just wrong.
I think Knightwise is just jealous because Cait’s female and knows about tech… but maybe that’s just me.
December 8th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Knightwise – Some cats are well trained, some aren’t.
This house currently has XP Home, Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger), Mac OS 9, Mac OS 8.5, Windows Server 2008 (RC1), Windows Server 2003, Vista Enterprise, Vista Ultimate, Suse Linux 6, Suse Linux 6.2 and Suse Linux 8.
And two cats who love Vista and don’t care at all for Linux or Mac, unless they’re running videos of zebras.
It’s Aero, not Arrow.
Cait
December 8th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
@Cait: What? No AmigaDOS?
December 8th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Nope, but I have been the Melbourne Amiga User Group (MAUG).
December 8th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Herne gets the come-back award for this week. Classic.
I was going to say that cats sound a lot like KW, without Vista… But I loved Herne’s reply.
Thanks Cait for keeping up with things here, I was working last night.
KW using SL… fat chance so I guess that is a no to the combined show… but you never know what Christmas might bring.
Video’s of Zebras wtf?
December 8th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Dave – My cats also love videos of zebras.
Cait
December 8th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
@George: Thanks for the positive comments!!
@Eric: I think it’ll be a cold day in hell before we see KW doing a group podcast from Second Life… But maybe he’d record us another six-minute-over-caffeinated rant to plug into such a show.
@Cait: Holy crap. You win. I’ve only got a few OS’s installed compared to that list (XP Home, XP Pro, Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), Windows Server 2003, Ubuntu 7.10)
Only if I count my VM’s and Dual-boots do I get anywhere close to that total! (Vista Ultimate, Windows 2000 Server, MS-DOS 6.22 (I’m a sucker for a classic…) and Fedora Core 5).
December 8th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
@ herne : Yes I did wish I was female from time to time. As for licking your own genitals ? Buy a yoga book and take the night off to practice ;p ( next time you have bad breath i’m running away screaming)
@ Dave : Send me the ghosts of Second life past present and future and i’ll take a look at jumping into SL. Bah Humbug
@ cait : “Nope, but I have been the Melbourne Amiga User Group (MAUG).” .. Damn ! I’ve been out-geeked !
@ my cat : Stop Staring at the stupid Zebra’s !
December 8th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
@KW: I had no idea Neelix liked Zebras… He must have a thing for convicted felons… (stripy suits??)
December 8th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Keith – That’s over the household, three people and quite a few machines of varying ages. That’s including VM and dual-boots. I’m thinking of adding GOS though, and what old machine I might be able to put that on. It would look great on my eMac, but no good for what I want it for.
Knightwise – If you come down under for a visit, I’ll take you to the Melbourne Amiga User Group. These guys are old school. I was never an Amiga user, but was invited along by a friend from work.
Cats – there is unlimited footage of zebras on YouTube, but don’t use up all your owner’s bandwidth.
December 8th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Would be nice to have a “globalgeek Dave” and “Globalgeek CAIT” account. Then we would know who was posting a reply.
@ Maclabrat : It is obvious you do not know your cats from your dogs ..
December 8th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
@KW I agree and no I can’t do it. We (read “I”) will try to remember to put my name at the end of a comment…
Dave
I thought cats and dogs were the same thing…
December 8th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Shit we have cats making comments… and I thought we were going to the dogs…
Dave
December 9th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Sorry Knightwise, I’m used to being logged into everything as myself.
Cait
December 9th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
My first computer was a Commodore PET.
My second computer was a Commodore 64.
My third computer was a Commodore Amiga 2000.
The C64 had an unfortunate incident with an axe… The Amiga2000 still worked last time I checked it, and was being used to hold up my TV set until recently. I used to have a C64 with 8 megs of floppy storage hooked up to it…I was a gawd! And my Amiga has 2 megs of RAM–amazing!
December 11th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Can’t see why you can’t do it Dave. I can .. look !
Must be something wrong with you today..
Cait.
December 11th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Nobody likes a smart arse…
December 11th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
My punctuation is better.
The real Cait
December 12th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
* Snicker ** =-)
December 12th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Ha thought it was you… the type of behavior I would expect from a… a… guttersnipe
Dave
December 13th, 2007 at 1:25 am
* Guttersnipe¨* ? ? I’m shocked ! I was going for lowlife, douchebagg, Evil henchman, Goon, Evil Sidekick … Vile Overlord, Darth vader.. but guttersnipe ? Jeez Dave
December 24th, 2007 at 4:01 am
Just wanted to say that I finally listened to the program and I think Cait is exactly what the doctor prescribed. I think she did a wonderful job ( even better in the next episode) and I commend her for doing the co-hosting position. Thank god for a PC convert.
May 3rd, 2008 at 9:48 pm
[...] Check out the latest GGP where we get to introduce a new host and talk about weird horse kennel thingies… [...]