Tech Talk on Future Radio 96.9FM

Free and Open Source Software

On the 1st October Dominik was talking to Tim and Ross about his trip to Barcelona where he was at a conference of the Open Source project Drupal. The talk was about:
Difference between freeware and Open Source software
What kinds of free software people use
Why is Open Source important for companies and governments
Why programmers want to create free software
Dominik recorded a few interviews with important Drupal developers (including project founder Dries Buytaert) and played four clips to illustrate. The full interviews will be posted here eventually.

Digital photography (and some news)

This week Tim, Ross and Dominik talked some more about Apple News. Dominik reminded everyone that iPod Touch can connect to WiFi and that sparked a quick discussion of the free municipal WiFi in Norwich - Tim was right about its reach. The upcoming Apple announcement that is all but certain to include the iPhone in the UK was also mentioned. And it turns out that Tim and Dominik prefer Facebook while Ross is a MySpace fan.We also talked a little about a great deal students can get on Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate at TheUltimateSteal.co.uk and the free alternative OpenOffice.org. Next week, Dominik will be reporting from an Open Source conference in Barcelona and talking about free and open source software. And now for this week's theme:
Digital photography:
Buying a digital camera
don't just focus on pixels any more for consumer cameras good glass lens is more important
don't look at digital zoom, only optical
low light performance may also be important
check out some review sites first: http://www.dpreview.com, http://www.digitalcamerasreview.info, http://www.steves-digicams.com
phone cameras are usually not very good quality (even with a high pixel count)
Using a digital camera
shutter lag makes taking digital pictures different
many people don't know you need to push the shutter button half-way in first, wait for the zoom to lock in and then press it the rest of the way
TIP: you can use zoom locking to take pictures even into the sun> 1. Aim the camera at an object in about the same distance, 2. push the shutter button half-way in, lock the zoom BUT don't push it all the way, 3. Aim the picture at the object in the sun and take the picture.
What to do with the photos
BACK UP! Buy a large external hard-drive (250GB for #50) and back up a copy of all your pictures; THEN buy another one for a second copy and store it in a safe place
Print a few of them: Jessops or supermarkets will print them out from a card or CD. Their quality is usually higher than home ink-jet printers (unless you have the right paper and the right printer) and the photos are cheaper.
Share them online! Flickr.com offers free storage and great tools for creating albums and sharing them with others. See Dominik's pictures on http://www.flickr.com/photos/dominiklukes. Create an account, join the Future Radio group on http://www.flickr.com/groups/futurenorwich and share your favorite pics with other listeners.
Some Flickr alternatives are PhotoBucket, SmugMug, TinyPic and many others.

New iPods and Podcasting

Tim and Dominik are joined by Ross Patzelt to talk about the latest iPod releases from Apple and to announce this podcast on air for the first time.
Apple announces new iPods: (see UK Apple Store for details)
Shuffle gets new colors - £49 (1 GB) (Alternative: Creative Stone)
Nano now plays video - £99 - £129 (4-8GB) (Alternatives: Sandisk Sansa, iRiver, Samsung) (see Engadget's review roundup)
Classic now up to 160Gb and no longer white - £199 - £269 (80-160GB) (Alternatives: Cowon iAudio, Creative Zen, Toshiba Gigabeat, and more) (See PC Advisor's first look and a website review.)
iPod Touch - new, just one button, touch navigation, and WiFi - available Sept 28; £199 - £269 (8-16GB) (Alternatives: Archos, HTC Touch, Nokia N800, etc.) (see PC Advisor's first look)
iPhone - didn't have time to talk about that, UK ship date unclear
Podcasting:
How podcasts work
post on web with an RSS feed
get a podcatcher - iTunes (most common but sometimes buggy on Windows), Juice, Doppler Radio, Winamp
find podcasts in podcast directories - thepodcastnetwork.com, podshow.com, podnova.com, podcastalley.com

play back on a computer or on an MP3 player (not just iPod)
Interesting podcasts
BBC - bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts
NPR - www.npr.org/podcasts (Wait, wait, don't tell me)
Technology - TechTalk, twit.tv, podcast.cnet.com, and more
Arts, Science, Education - Platform, Sciencefriday.com, onthemedia.org, Berkley lectures, etc.
Music - podshow.com
Audiobooks - podiobooks.com
Dominik's favorite podcasts: BBC: Start the Week, In Our Time, NPR: Science Friday, On The Media, Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, Tech: This Week in Tech, Buzz Out Loud, Gadgettes, MacBreak Weekly, Education: Berkley lectures, Byzantine empire history, Music: TPN Jazz, No Idle Frets (import all 37 subscriptions from this file)

Back to school and searching - 3 Sept 2007

Tim and Dominik discuss the back to school gadgets and how to use Google to search more effectively. Oh, and the Eat Me Crunchy Bowl.
Here are some of the key Google tips:
Set Preferences to expand result display to 50 or 100
put "quotes around" whole phrases
+ for stop words or - for words you don't want
~ for synonyms
uppercase OR for 'either or'
Calculator and measure conversions, Definitions

More on Advanced searching on Google.