The Real Deal 196: Emergency preparedness tech (podcast)

What kinds of tech gadgets should you have in your emergency kits? We give you some ideas and take some from the audience.

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Episode 196

Power for gadgets

* UPS
* Batteries (code red) store around 60 degrees in a dry place. Best to store rechargables at half power.
* Crank chargers
* Solar chargers like Solio
* Don’t forget your car as a power source – got adapters?

Backup of data

* Cloud storage – Mozy, Carbonite, Sugarsync. Backupify, or shared – Crashplan
* USB – in Tupperware for waterproofing. In fireproof safe. (Fireproof hard drive — http://www.iosafe.com/; http://www.digitalhomethoughts.com/news/show/28375/backing-up-your-digital-photos-in-a-fireproof-safe-without-opening-it.html)
* Legacy Locker; InformationSafe

iPhone apps to save your…

* First Aid
* EMT ICE

Gadgets for disaster

* Scott E Vest!
* Radio
* Walkie-talkie
* Old GSM cell phone with charger. Grundig emergency crank radio with phone charger.
* Cellular diversity – have different people in the family on different networks. More expensive but more fault-tolerant
* Landline phone
* PLBs; the SPOT messenger (http://www.findmespot.com/en/)

Tech for Emergency kits

* Walkie talkies
* Fire makers
* Stove – jetboil
* Purifier (filter/tabs)
* Headlamps
* Find a good Twitter feed – LA fires.

Best advice

* Find a burner, emulate their kit

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Hey fellas,

Long time listener, first time emailer. After losing a lot of stuff
in Katrina, my wife and I learned the only thing worth saving was
photos. Keepsake souvenirs from trips can be replaced, or aren’t
really that important to begin with. The family china and silver can
be washed. Photographs, on the other hand, are irreplaceable, and if
they get wet are completely unrecoverable. While we were on
evacucation, we bought a scanner and scanned all the printed photos we
had brought with us or could save.

Now, whenever I download photos to my computer from my camera, I also
upload them via S3Fox to Amazon’s S3 remote storage service. It’s
about .15 per Gb/Month and well worth the piece of mind. A backup
drive is only good if it’s not been flooded, burned, crushed, lost, or
stolen. If Amazon’s storage server farm AND my backup drive are
toast, I’ve got bigger problems than missing photographs. In
Louisiana, we at least get a warning for our disasters. In earthquake
country, remote storage makes even more sense.

LTS,

Duff
Citizen of the Who Dat Nation

Good advice. Here’s more: scan your old prints and negs. See Scancafe, Digital Pickle, ScanMyPhotos

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First, may I say how much I appreciate all your knowledge. On a podcast, you recommended FoxIt for PDFs. If you install this, do you delete Adobe Reader? If you uninstall, do you mind telling me what I can safely delete? Again, love listening and watching you. Sarah

Answer: Don’t delete Adobe Reader, just uninstall it. You should see an uninstall option in for Adobe Reader specifically in your start menu. However, if you don’t, do this.

Control Panel>Add-Remove Programs>Adobe Reader

Don’t just delete files in Windows. It’s a bad idea.

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Hi Guys!

I know that I need to do a clean install of Windows 7 on my Dell XPS 600 that is currently running Windows XP 32bit . On the 10/15/2009 episode of “How To: Upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7″ Tom recommended using Windows Easy Transfer wizard to back up my files and settings.

My question is, I want to upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit so I can upgrade my RAM from the current 2G, but will the file that Windows Easy Transfer wizard creates from my XP 32 bit file be able to import to the Windows 7 64 bit?

Steve D

Answer: Good point! For an inexplicable reason, Microsoft’s Easy Transfer Wizard doesn’t support moving from 32-bit to 64-bit or 64-bit to 32-bit.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/32-bit-and-64-bit-Windows-frequently-asked-questions

I have READ that you can use the backup and restore function in Windows Vista, but that doesn’t help you anyway. In this case, I might try PC Mover from LapLink. http://www.laplink.com/pcmover/ Or just export the registry and move all your files manually.

********************

Hi Guys,
Love listening to the Real Deal!
Have enjoyed Buzz Out Load for years, but the Real Deal always leaves me with something to try out when I get to work.
I have written down a half dozen questions in the past – then they get answered on the show before I send!

I wanted to ask about what software you would recommend for video editing on PC?
I am fairly computer savvy and able to learn software operation.

Craig Parker,
Toronto, Canada

Answer: I asked around with the CNET TV editors, and we all pretty much agreed Adobe Premiere ($800) is the best for Windows still. You can save a load of bucks if you don’t need a lot of pro features and go with Adobe Premiere Elements ($80). http://download.cnet.com/Adobe-Premiere-Elements/3000-2193_4-10701416.html

Rafe: I used Windows Movie Maker, http://download.live.com/moviemaker. Very simple. And free!

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COMMENTS

Greetings Rafe and Tom,

On a recent episode, someone wanted to hookup their Sling Box wireless.
I had this problem with other devices that only support wired Ethernet.
The solution I used is a D-Link DWL-G820 Wireless Gaming Adapter.

Thank you for a very informative show,

Henry C
Livonia MI

*********************

To the engineer looking to do pen input on iPad; they make
capacitive pens, and actually they make an app that turns the new
giant MacBook touchpad into a “wacom” tablet. (I know that was a
horribly malformed sentence, sorry)

Also, what are your thoughts on multi-tasking on ipad or iPhone? I
personally think it’s worthless(other than running music apps). As
long as either device doesn’t have a windowing system, what’s the
point of multitasking? It’s not like you are going to start a final
cut render and switch to play some peggle to waste time while it
renders on your iPhone or ipad. As long as apps save the last used
state, it’s essentially the same as “multitasking.”

Just a thought

#end
dwight

For cutting and pasting between apps (browser/email/word processor for example), you don’t want to have to restart the app everytime you switch

Next time: All-questions

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