Computer America Show Line Up for the week of February 17, 2014

Monday
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Hour one: Urgent Call is an emergency service to assure your loved ones can find you when they have an emergency. You will never miss an important call from your selected contacts regardless of where you are, what your phone setting is and even with no service.  Joining us will be the CEO of Nassimi Consulting and Creator of UrgentCall, Shary Nassimi.

Visit the Urgent Call Website

Monday
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Hour two: Craig and Charles do Computer and Technology News, brought to you by Slimware Utilities, the Official Optimization Software of Computer America, and answer your computer questions.

Visit the Slimware Utilities Website

Tuesday
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Both hours: It's our all Linux Show with Computer America Correspondent Larry Bushey, the Host of the Going Linux Podcast!  Tonight's Topic: "Who are the people behind Linux?" Join us!

Visit The Going Linux Website

Wednesday
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Hour one: Intel now appears on every third Wednesday of the month in this special Intel Sponsor Hour!  Each month, we will have an Intel representative speaking on new Intel products, services and news stories!  Tonight's focus will be on "Smart Cities!" You don't want to miss this show!

Visit the Intel Website

Wednesday
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Hour two: Craig and Charles do Computer and Technology News, brought to you by Slimware Utilities, the Official Optimization Software of Computer America, and answer your computer questions.

Visit the Slimware Utilities Website

Thursday
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Both Hours: Charles Tendell.  Charles is a Certified Ethical Hacker and one of our Computer America Correspondents!  Now Charles invites one of his Hacker friends to join us on the show!

Visit Charles' Website

Friday
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Hour one: Audiobooks believes that reading great books (or any books, really) makes a person happier, helps them learn and makes them grow. A wise man, Stephen King, once said "books are a uniquely portable magic". We couldn't agree more. That's why they've created an audio book service that lets all of the audio book lovers out there, take their favorite books anywhere.  Audiobooks is all about combining our love of books with their passion for technology and innovation to create a service unlike any other, with features like cloudmark sync and intelligent restart. Joining us will be the General Manager of Audiobooks, Ian Small.

Visit The Audiobooks Website

Friday
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Hour two: Craig and Charles do Computer and Technology News, brought to you by Slimware Utilities, the Official Optimization Software of Computer America, and answer your computer questions.

Visit the Slimware Utilities Website

Some Interesting and (maybe) Useful Links -

Over the many years (some might argue too many) I've been online, I've collected a few interesting links.  One that I used at class on Monday was from CalTrans.
CalTrans has installed some webcams on the major roads through the state, from Stockton to San Diego.  They are free for the viewing.
CalTrans Web Cams:  http://video.dot.ca.gov/

California Highway Patrol posts incidents in their response areas everywhere in the state.  Just select the area you are interested in viewing and then click the Details links to get more information about the incident.
CHP Incidents:  http://cad.chp.ca.gov/

Ever hear sirens and wonder, "Where are they going?"  From here, you can check out incidents for SLO County Fire and CalFire.  The will tell you where, when and what the call was about, but will not show personal information or what happened after the call.
SLO County Fire Incidents:  http://incidents.slocountyfire.org/

Need the translate some text, Google has you covered:  http://translate.google.com/

Gresham College, established in 1597, puts every lecture they have access to online.  You can can download some in MP3 format for listening on your MP3 player, tablet, or burn the file to a CD for listening on your car stereo.  If you have an iOS or Android device, you can install their app from the appropriate store and watch video of the lectures.  Gresham College covers economics, religion, science and more.  And it's all free!
Free lectures:  http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events

Ever wonder what's going on outside of the Abbey Road studios?  Me too, all the time.  Well, they put up a webcam on the sidewalk that views the famous "zebra crossing" from the album cover.  Online 24 hours, the time difference is fun to see and you might catch a glimpse of some exotic car cruising by or tourists waving at the camera.
Abbey Road Studios webcam:  http://www.abbeyroad.com/crossing

National Weather Service Enhanced Radar Image for the continental US.  You can click on the areas below for a close up view, and then narrow down to where you live or a place that is of interest.
NOAA Radar:  http://radar.weather.gov/Conus/

Computer America is the longest running, nationally syndicated show on the air about computers and technology.  Craig Crossman has been on the air for 23 years now.  with his co-host Charles Tendell, they cover the World of Computers in plain English.  The show plays live 7PM PT every weeknight.
Computer America Radio Show:  http://www.computeramerica.com/

Patricia Rykiel runs a web site called LoveYourComputer and posts up a short audio clip once a week about technology, social networking, and more.  She also does the UK voice for the Avast anti-virus program.  The London Minute can be played directly from the age.
LoveYourComputer:  http://loveyourcomputer.co.uk/
The London Minute:  http://loveyourcomputer.co.uk/the-london-minute.html

Dave Graveline and company also does a very good radio show once a week for three hours.  Into Tomorrow covers everything from cell phones and tablets to cameras and computers.  They also stream their show on the web site, just click the play buttons.
Into Tomorrow:  http://www.graveline.com/

KVEC 920 AM streams live 24 hours a day from San Luis:  http://920kvec.com/

KSMX 1240 AM also streams live:  http://1240ksmx.com/

KKJL 1400 AM out of Morro Bay plays some good music too:  http://www.kkjl1400.com/

KINF 1440 AM from Santa Maria streams live:  http://www.am1440.com/home/

KFI 640 AM from Los Angeles:  http://www.kfiam640.com/main.html

KNX 1070 AM also from Los Angeles, also covers KCBS 2 and KCAL 9: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/

BBC Radio from the UK:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/ (Some shows may be blocked for listening outside the UK.  All video is blocked.)

The Shiba Inu puppy cam:  http://www.ustream.tv/sfshiba

Turtle Bay web cam, Oahu, Hawaii:  http://explore.org/#!/live-cams/player/hawaii-turtle-bay-east-cam

Computer America Show Line Up for the week of February 10, 2014

Monday
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Hour one: Sgrouples. In real life you don't have a thousand friends, and you don't talk in 140 characters. You don't interact with your family the same way you do with your friends, and you don't share the same things with your fraternity or sorority that you do with your co-workers. Sgrouples connects you to your relationships in the real world. You may have a thousand or more contacts. Control who sees what, and how you interact with those different people. At Sgrouples, invite your friends, family, and everyone in your life to become your contacts, then share what you want with exactly who you want, just like in real life. It's social networking for the real world. Joining us will be the CEO of Sgrouples, Mark Weinstein.

Visit the Sgrouples Website

Monday
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Hour two: Craig and Charles do Computer and Technology News, brought to you by Slimware Utilities, the Official Optimization Software of Computer America, and answer your computer questions.

Visit the Slimware Utilities Website

Tuesday
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Hour one and two: It's our Gamer Tuesday Show with Computer America Correspondent Grayson Hamilton!  Now that the amazing Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are here, we'll discuss even more options, new games and so much more!  Plus Nintendo is in the news!  Speculation about bombshell news coming from this venerable company is forthcoming!  Don't miss this show!

Visit Grayson's Website

Wednesday
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Both Hours: Sandy Berger.  Sandy is our Consumer Electronics Expert Correspondent on Computer America.  She talks about the latest technology gadgets and trends in the industry with us. Tonight's topics include the new Acer Chromebook and the new Asus Transformer Convertable! 

Visit the Sandy's Website

Thursday
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Hour one: Scheduled is Chris Cope is the CEO of SlimWare Utilities and he is here every month as our Chief Technology Correspondent!  Every month, Chris discusses the latest Computer Technology and new items that enhance your computing experience.  And remember that SlimWare Utilities maintains your PC, keeps it running smoothly and keeps it running as fast as it was when it was new!  You can update drivers, make Image backups while preserving your documents and so much more!  With SlimWare Utilities, you do it all and do it for FREE!!

Visit the SlimWare Utilities Website

Thursday
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Hour two: Craig and Charles do Computer and Technology News, brought to you by Slimware Utilities, the Official Optimization Software of Computer America, and answer your computer questions.

Visit the Slimware Utilities Website

Friday
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Both hours: It's time for Bond...  Ralph Bond joins Craig and Charles with computer news and special topics.  For many years, Ralph was Intel's Consumer Education Director and he continues to be the voice of Intel for Computer America's Intel Digital Minute.  Ralph is now with Autodesk and he is an official Computer America correspondent. Topics tonight include iBeacon Technology coming to stores near you, Blackphone security for your smart phone, 4K PC Monitors, HP's new Chromebox, Bose launches SoundLink III and so much more!  Join us!

Visit Ralph's Website

EXERCISE FOR PEOPLE OVER 50

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side.

With a 5-lb potato bag in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, and then relax.

Each day you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer. After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb potato bags.

Then try 50-lb potato bags and then eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb potato bag in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute. (I'm at this level.)

After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each bag.

TechTeach: Computer Maintenance

Like checking the oil in the engine, the air in the tires, and gas in the tank of your car, your computer needs some checking up on once in a while.

Clearing out the temp files and cookies you can do from your browsers by launching the program (be it Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Seamonkey) and then pressing the Control-Shift-Delete keys to bring up the Delete Browsing History dialog in IE or the Clear All History dialog in Firefox.  From there, you can select the items you want to delete.  You can delete Temporary Internet Files (all the little files your computer collects while downloading a web page), Cookies (those little text files that keep track of sites and settings), History (every site your computer has visited since it was last deleted) and more.  Those are the big three to clean up after.

Once or twice a year, a defragmenting of the hard drive is in order, though Windows 7 does this on a schedule.  Windows 98 and XP had great little animations showing what was going on and a (rather inaccurate) guess at how long the defrag process would take.  On an older, slow computer with a somewhat large hard drive, a defrag could take hours.  Not something you want to do in a hurry.  You can find the defragment feature by going to Computer, right click on the drive you want to defrag, click on the Tools tab and then the Defragment Now button. Vista doesn't tell you what it is doing, while Windows 7 puts more options in the control of the user.

While in that tab, you'll notice the section above called "Error checking."  This scans the hard drive for errors and, if it can, corrects them.  All hard drive have some errors right from the factor.  But there's enough overhead added that any errors are usual very small and don't impact the capacity of the drive.  Even in a modest 500GB (That's 500 billion bytes of storage, or five bytes for every star in the Milky Way galaxy!), there's a few hundred or thousand sectors (what the hard drive is divided up into to organize the data) that was are marked as bad.  If too many sectors are bad, or there are bad sectors that store critical data, like how to start Windows, you'll see problems.  This can be the infamous Blue Screen of Death to programs that don't run correctly, or cryptic error messages at boot like "No OS Found."

One button I don't use is the Backup button.  It's easier to buy a good sized external hard drive, 500 to 1000GB (1TB), and just copy and paste your data from the My Documents folder to the external drive.  A variety of options for backing up data are available, from a USB flash drive to plug in and forget external hard drives.  I like the ClickFree C2 and C6.  They differ in that the C2 only collects data while the C6 does a full hard drive image.

This is also a good time to remind people if they haven't to create their Windows Recovery disks.  This process requires roughly 4 to 6 DVD-R or DVD+R disks and can take a couple of hours to complete.  It can't be stopped once started and can be only be done once.  That is to prevent piracy.

Right on the General tab of the hard drive is the Disk Cleanup button.  This will offer to search the hard drive and look for files that aren't needed.  This can include Downloaded Program Files, Temporary Internet Files, the Recycle Bin, log files (these keep track of events, such as installing or removing programs), and Thumbnails (the little pictures displayed for picture files).

Another topic I wanted to cover was how to add contacts to GMail.  You can do this by clicking on the little red arrow to the right of where it says "GMail" above the button and clicking on Contacts.  Not exactly intuitive.  From there, you'll see a button with what looks like a person and a plus sign in it.  If you click that, you can type a name in the field and click Add.  this will put the person's name in the Contacts list.  Click on the person's name and you'll get a screen where you can edit the information to add their email, home address, phone numbers and notes.



Contacts also has the GMail and Tasks, clicking the red arrow brings the drop down menu to access those.
The middle button with the icon of a person and the + is where to click to add a new contact.

And one more reminder:  Update and run Quick scans of your anti-virus and anti-malware programs.

Computer America Show Line Up for the week of February 3, 2014

Monday
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Hour one: netTALK is back and discusses VoIP and their DUO WiFI model that lets you place your telephone anywhere in your home or office!  No longer do you need be near the computer or router to make FREE long distance phone calls!  Get RID of your expensive phone company and make FREE long distance calls using your Internet connection!

Visit the netTALK Website

Monday
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Hour two: Craig and Charles do Computer and Technology News, brought to you by Slimware Utilities, the Official Optimization Software of Computer America, and answer your computer questions.

Visit the Slimware Utilities Website

Tuesday
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Hour one: Emory Simmons.  In April of 2014, Microsoft will discontinue support on its most utilized operating system-Windows XP. With no more support available for XP - no security fixes, vulnerability patches, or software updates - any PC running the operating system after April 2014 will be subject to cyberattacks, data and identity theft, hacking, and network intrusion, both via individual machines and across internal networks.  Emory Simmons, the president of CMIT Solutions will provide a few tips that can help you, as well as small to mid-sized businesses in the community prepare for the death of Windows XP.

Visit the CMIT Solutions Website

Tuesday
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Hour two: Craig and Charles do Computer and Technology News, brought to you by Slimware Utilities, the Official Optimization Software of Computer America, and answer your computer questions

Visit the Slimware Utilities Website

Wednesday
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Hour one: Mike Cermak the Owner/Operator of Techguy.org joins us in in helping you answer your computer questions and solving technical problems!  It's Wednesday Madness and we answer ANY questions you may have about Computers and Technology!

Visit the Techguy.org Website

Wednesday
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Hour two: Craig and Charles do Computer and Technology News, brought to you by Slimware Utilities, the Official Optimization Software of Computer America, and answer your computer questions

Visit the Slimware Utilities Website

Thursday
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Both Hours: Steve Stockman, Author of "How To Shoot Video that Doesn't Suck," Producer of two popular TV Shows - "Devil's Ride" and "Brew Dogs" and a Computer America Correspondent discusses his latest book just released by Audible,"How To Shoot The Perfect Holiday Video." Since the next holiday upon us is Valentine's Day, we'll discuss how to shoot the ideal Valentine's Day video!

Visit Steve Stockman's Website

Friday
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Hour one: iSIGN Media.  Their Smart Antenna utilizes Bluetooth technology just as Apple's iBeacon does - although its mobile reach is farther and actually provides an incentive to drive traffic from the outside into stores. During the online age, getting bodies inside stores continues to prove challenging for brick and mortar businesses. The Smart Antenna uses the most secure Bluetooth network and communicates with all mobile devices. Relaying advertisements and discounts in a rather non-intrusive manner, this technology learns shopper preference and allows retailers to mine phone data on the backend. The anonymous data can be applied to boost sales and follow shopper trends. Minority Report has arrived! Joining us will be the CEO & President of iSIGN Media Corp.

Visit the iSIGN Website

Friday
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Hour two: Craig and Charles do Computer and Technology News, brought to you by Slimware Utilities, the Official Optimization Software of Computer America, and answer your computer questions

Visit the Slimware Utilities Website