CNET Live: March 20, 2008

[ Music ] ^M00:00:09 [ Background Music ] >> Tom Merritt: Coming up on CNET Live. We'll show you how to giva with Kiva. There you go. Hey! Where's that. Plus we've got a little light bulb that could fry your eyeballs. That's fun. >> Brian Cooley: I didn't write it It was Bonnie. >> Tom Merrit: And an April Fool's friend that might be coming to USB port into you. All that and more coming up on CNET Live. ^M00:00:25 [ Music ] ^M00:00:31 [ Background Music ] >> Brian Cooley: Well, here we are folks! Back together again for the first time in the neon. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah again. >> Brian Cooley: The jolly Neopolitans. >> Tom Merritt: You were gone and I was gone. >> Brian Cooley: And then we were both gone I think at some point. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah well. >> Brian Cooley: Now we're all back together again. >> Tom Merritt: This is Molly Show. >> Brian Cooley: This is [chuckles]. >> Tom Merritt: This is clearly decorated. >> Brian Cooley: She barred the door. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: Well, we broke through. >> Tom Merritt: The Molly bug. >> Brian Cooley: Brian Cooley. >> Tom Merritt: And Tom Merritt. >> Brian Cooley: Here on CNET Live, taking your calls at 888-900 CNET to answer your questions. >> Tom Merritt: Give us a call and when you do, Sheryl. We'll get you all lined up. >> Brian Cooley: Where's Sheryl. >> Tom Merritt: There she is. >> Brian Cooley: There she is. >> Tom Merritt: Taking the calls, put them in line, so that we can pick them up in here in the studio and try to fake an answer before we throw you the reports[laughs]. >> Brian Cooley: That's right [laughs], but before we start faking those answers, let us show you a couple of things we crave. ^M00:01:09 [ Music ] ^M00:01:12 [ Background Music ] >>Tom Merritt: Here are some of our favorite things in the Crave. Blog a crave.cnet.com starting up with a little practical joke, April Fool's Day coming up, it may come in handy for that. >>Brian Cooley: Oh boy! >> Tom Merritt: This is probably Phantom Key Stroker. It's a little USB device that just plugs in to a USB slot on an unsuspecting desktop or laptop computer. >> Brian Cooley: That means mine. >> Tom Merrit: And then it runs up that little chip on the end and causes strange characters to be typed at random intervals. >> Brian Cooley: Oh, that's fun [chuckles]. >> Tom Merritt: You know windows to be closed. >> Brian Cooley: Oh, good. Hopefully, I'm something out on an online up for a refire or something when that's happening. >> Tom Merritt: Move the... >> Brian Cooley: [Chuckles ] Here's the party! >> Tom Merritt: Moves the cursor around, types in dummy text whatever it feels like. >> Brian Cooley: Types in some file of sanities make it send. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, you can't control what it does. >> Brian Cooley: Oh, that's encouraging! >> Tom Merritt: But you can control the timing. >> Brian Cooley: What? So, great! >> Tom Merritt: So, I'll give you, say it like, oh, it's gonna take me 5 minutes, you know. Plug that in. >> Brian Cooley: Okay, so now folks, now you know what he is gonna do to me on April 1st. >> Tom Merritt: I'm gonna buy one of these things go. >> Brian Cooley: It makes you go quicker 'coz it's only got a few days to go. >> Tom Merritt: All right. >> Brian Cooley: Before I get screwed. >> Tom Merritt: Once again mine is useless. Is yours better? >> Brian Cooley: Mine is very useful and no one knows which one is yours. So the idea of using your cellphone as a boarding pass, we got winded in Continental Airlines. They started to do this already. You check in and you get a boarding pass. Its kind like a glare for its 2-dimensional bar code as our piece is described it from Maggie Reardon [assumed spelling] that you show and I guess they scam it and use this as being done in Ball Park. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, there'd been some baseball teams and I think other sports have been experimenting with sending you your ticket as a text message, you know, and then they just scan your cellphone. >> Brian Cooley: That's wild! >> Tom Merritt: And that's it, 'coz they have those little handheld scanners now that they use to scan the tickets. >> Brian Cooley: Right. You know. >> Tom Merritt: So you show me your cellphone and boop, you're in. >> Brian Cooley: I think it's a bit surprising that they can scan an LCD screen of varying ratios and resolution and have it be read, but I guess they can scan any kind of printout you do, so it works as they are. >> Tom Merritt: What I don't understand this, okay. I just flew like 4 times in the last week and every time I had to hold up my boarding passes, I went through the security gate, the metal detector security gate. >> Brian Cooley: [ Laughs ] Might as well. >> Tom Merritt: How did they do that with my cellphone? >> Brian Cooley: That's why in the end you put your phone in the plastic band and now they wanna see your boarding pass. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: While it's in the in-thing, sir! >> Tom Merritt: It's there, the in-thing that you know! >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: A TSA sometimes little slow to pick up on these things. >> Brian Cooley: To say the least and... >> Tom Meritt: I can't imagine there have been some rough spots. Good thing it's plastic. >> Brian Cooley: No matter the dyes. >> Tom Merritt: Right. >> Brian Cooley: Your boarding pass has dyes. >> Tom Merritt: Yes, you have to recheck in at that point. >> Brian Cooley: Well, it's pretty cool. Anyway, that's to be the future of air travel if you're so inclined. Let's get to your phone call, shall we. Let's go to line 1 for call 1. >>Tom Merritt: Let us. >> Brian Cooley: Into Minnesota >> Tom Merritt: Entertain you. >> Brian Cooley: And let's see the problems with the monitor resolution. This is becoming more of an issue with different monitor sizes and ratios these days. Let's say hi to Lee in the Minnesota. Hi, Lee! Welcome to CNET Live. >> Lee: Hey, thanks for having me on the show guys! >> Brian Cooley: You bet! What's on your mind? >> Lee: My problem is, I just recently bought a 24-inch wide screen monitor to be used as a second monitor and I have problem with every time, like we say, I start my computer, it even put to sleep right free and back up my main set monitor, I usually have that my 24-inch using my laptop screen as a secondary, all of my task bar and all my icons switched over to my secondary monitor and then the resolution gets all throughout to whack. Is there any way to fix that regarding windows as well? >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, dude. What kind of graphics card? What kind of video card are you using? >> Lee: It's the Intel's Centrino card or the Intel's graphics card whatever they call it. >> Tom Merritt: Can I buy the graphics card? >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: Huh? >> Brian Cooley: I think you have somewhat limited abilities to go into what normally I think what Tom would be getting at here is using that control panels that come with a more advanced graphics card. >> Tom Merritt: Right, so I'm gonna bring up my control panel here. >> Brian Cooley: Let's see what you got. >> Tom Merrit: On the laptop and show you there's a Display Manager that I can go to. So this is actually how I output my display from the wide screen MacBook here unto the smaller screen that we have over there that outputs the signal into your live stream. So, I go through this display. I can run a multiple Display Wizard and it actually allows me to pick a resolution for each monitor. >> Brian Cooley: Right. >> Tom Merritt: And the cooler thing is I can set profiles. So if you look down here, I've got, let's see if I could pull this up. >> Brian Cooley: Over a thousand never working because we still have the show. >> Tom Merritt: I've got a profile for work and for CNET Live. >> Brian Cooley: With those profiles. >> Tom Merritt: And we're seeing it live. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, Aha! >> Tom Merritt: Now, the worked one works great. Every time I go from home and I plug into my 43 monitor. >> Brian Cooley: Yup. >> Tom Merritt: At my desk. >> Brian Cooley: 'Coz this is why. >> Tom Merritt: I set the work profile, works awesome. However, if I'm at the CNET Live for some reason never works. I always have to go back with the handy. >> Brian Cooley: So that beats our video system. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, there's something with it because we're doing a lot of funky stuff. >> Brian Cooley: And the bottom line is that I think our biggest concern is that you're using integrated graphics from an Intel chip 950 whatever they call those videos doing your graphics. I don't know that can support two separate outputs at different resolution and ratio. That's my gut, right? >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: Pretty unlikely for a basic integrated graphics? >> Tom Merritt: There is, yeah. There is a program called MultiMon which is multi-monitor support for windows. I'm trying to check to see if it works for Vista because that is also another way to go, although it says here you need a good multi-monitor video card like a Radeon and NVIDIA dual so. >> Brian Cooley: I've grappled with something likely, I wasn't mixing wide and same ratio monitor, but if mixing resolutions, but if it's really tough we're gonna get graphics. >> Tom Merritt: They suggest adding a second PCI card to control your second monitor and let the AGP card control your main monitor. So, you want to add a card? >> Lee: Right. >> Brian Cooley: Yes, just add a AGP card for that. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: And you know 39-dollar add-in PCI card was just you know, DGF. It doesn't mean your fancies or a high-resolution or a high-cycle performance. Try that. That's when you get around it. In that way yo have control over 2 discrete cards. You tell each one what the ratio and the monitor is going to. Try to split the brain of one relatively limited video output chip could be where your problem is. >> Lee: Okay. >> Brian Cooley: All right, so head to it. Bye, baby! >> Lee: Okay, thank you very much. >> Brian Cooley: Think that up. >> Tom Merritt: All right, wow! We spent a lot of time troubleshooting that so. >> Brian Cooley: Well, I think it's a good common. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah it is. It is. It's something I brought into quite a bit with different laptops and different desktops too. Coming up, I'm gonna be talking to Fiona Ramsey of kiva.org. It's an organization that helps coordinate micro loans, small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries. That's coming up. >> Brian Cooley: Oh, I'm the first though SanDisk just released a new... How has that thing made up my next join, that's all. SanDisk has just released a new media player, an MP3 under Jasmine France. As I look at it, and she likes it a lot which isn't always the case so I suggest you check this out. ^M00:07:25 [ Music ] ^M00:07:29 [ Background Music ] >> Jasmine France: Hi, I'm Jasmine France, senior associate editor for CNET.com and I'm here today with the Sandisk Sansa Fuze and this is actually a very appropriately named MP3 player because it does look like a fusion of the Sansa View and Sansa Clip. It's kinda midway in between the two. It's similar to the View. It has this nice scroll wheel on the front. It also has the kind of shiny plastic phase and a smooth metallic backside. It actually also has a nice weighty feel to it. It feels like a high quality device. The similar thing to equip is the kind of the size. It's a little bit larger, but it's much thinner. It also comes in the same variety of colors. You can get black, blue, pink, red, or silver. It comes in a variety of opacities as well. There's 2DY, 4EY, and 8KY and it's really inexpensive. Those go for about 80, 100, 130 respectively. The one thing I don't like about it of course is that has a proprietary dock here in the bottom. I just always prefer many USB and I wish they would have cut back with this player but it's a minor grave. Over on the side here, you have the micro-SD card soft for adding more memory. It does accept high capacity, a micro-SD cards meaning you can get up to 12 gigabytes of additional memory in this thing. So that's a lot, that's like a 20-gigabyte player if you add it altogether. Over here in the other side view have the power and hold switch, the main menu and navigating is really simple, you just have the five-way scroll wheel here, a home button to go back. The interface here is a little bit boring and I think but it's pretty easy to navigate and you can change the wallpaper colors. One thing that I have noticed at this player is that the screen protection coding on the front kind of give us a dim effect overall that can cause some problems with viewing but it does help keep scratches off the screen which is a good thing. There are plenty of features on this player. It can play photos and videos although the 1.9-inch screen is ideal for watching videos so it's nice to have that feature. It also has an FM radio built-in as well as mic for voice recording and of course most important thing music. It supports MP3, WMA protected WMA wave and audible files and this includes support for subscription services. In fact it has integrated Rhapsody DNA platform meaning you can transfer things like Rhapsody channels on the device which are basically portable internet radio stations and you can save the songs as you're listening to them on the player. All in all, it's a great value. This player sounds pretty good. It offers a respectable battery life and it's just not by looking it either. I'm Jasmine France and this is the Sandisk Sansa Fuze. ^M00:09:39 [ Music ] ^M00:09:45 >>Tom Merritt: It's a pretty cool look of an MP3 player. Thanks, Jasmine. I appreciate that. Right now, I'm happy welcome to the show, Fiona Ramsey of kiva.org. Thanks for joining us today. >> Fiona Ramsey: Thanks for having me here. >> Tom Merritt: As I started wondering we tried to explain, Kiva is a way to help people out in developing countries. Tell us a little bit about what you do. >> Fiona Ramsey: Yes so, Kiva is a way that you could make a loan, a small one from $25 to an entrepreneur in the developing worlds. So you think about the people who actually have small businesses as in the developing worlds such as carpet weaver in Afghanistan or a goat herder in Uganda or people that raise chickens in Africa. You can actually make a loan to one of these entrepreneurs. They'll use it to start or expand their business and you actually get the money back. >> So when we're talking about micro-loans or micro-finance, this is the kind of thing you're talking about, making small amounts. >> Fiona Ramsey: Exactly. So the idea of microfinance is you know we've all heard that saying, "give a man of fish and feed him for a day, teach him how to fish feeding for a lifetime." >> Tom Merritt: Right. >> Fiona Ramsey: Well, the reality is that there are millions of people around the world that are actually know how to fish and they could fish a whole better than you or I but they just need that fishing net. So how do they get the money that they need to start that fishing business? So microfinance is the idea of providing financial services that are tailored to the needs of the poor and specifically with microcredit, you can give somebody a small loan that they can use to buy a fishing net and then sustain their family with a fishing business. >> So how does this work? I gave $50 to a pig farmer in Cambodia, Sorn. >> Fiona Ramsey: Sorn? >> Tom Merritt: But it was part of a larger effort that I think is a low total amount, a sort of a hundred dollars he wanted to get to buy a pig to raise and develop and sell, there it is right then. So tell about how this works. >> Fiona Ramsey: Yeah. >> I'm not giving the full amount to him and he is not getting it directly from me. There's some intermediary as well. >> Fiona Ramsey: Yeah, well, Kiva is actually a platform where we can bring lenders from all around the world. We have lenders from 70 countries, connecting with microfinance institutions on the ground to facilitate these loans and there then connecting with entrepreneurs on the ground. So for a lender, if you go to the Kiva web site, kiva.org, you'll find a list of profiles of people that are in need of a loan right now. You know we have a picture of them and tell you what their business is for, what they're doing, how much they need, when are they expected to repay, when and how often I expect to make repayments and you can browse those profiles. Find somebody that you'd like to make a loan to for whatever reason may be there somebody that you know from a country you're really interested in and you know may be you're interested in pig farming? [Laughs]. >> Tom Merritt: Well, I know a lot of friends growing up for pig farmers, so I gotta have a soft spot for them. >> Fiona Ramsey: And there you go and find somebody that you'd like to make a loan, so you can actually contribute from 25 dollars. So that way, lots of people can come together contributing 25 dollars at a time, get together how much money this person needs and they can afford that on the organization on the ground who runs a microfinance operation and actually work with that entrepreneur to help them run that business. Make sure that they are geared for success, collecting repayments. >> Tom Merritt: What is the default rate on this? >> Fiona Rasmey: Default rate is really low, yeah. The default rate is less than 1%, so we have a 99%. >> Tom Merritt: So I'm gonna get my money back, right? >> Fiona Ramsey: It's most likely. You'll get your money back. >> Tom Merritt: Will I get with interest so? >> Fiona Ramsey: No, right now we're not offering interest, but we have to do that soon. >> Tom Merritt: Okay, and then once I get my money I can either pull it back out or I can reloan it. >> Fiona Ramsey: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: What are some examples of people who've made good use of this? >> Fiona Ramsey: Sure, one of my favorite stories actually is of a guy who is 30 years old. His name is Angelo and he's in Bulgaria. He works in a bicycle repair store for 15 years and always wanted to have his own store. Through an 800 dollar loan from Kiva lenders, he actually opened his own store. He fitted out and put all the tools that he needed and he's repaid he's loan already within a year and he's now actually unto the second loan to make a little spin-up business he can make extra profit from. So he's, from this, able to support his family, his mother and his younger brother who is now actually hired part-time to help him. >> Tom Merritt: So instead of just giving money for food or something would actually help somebody set up a self-sustaining business. In a place not, why couldn't you just go to a regular bank? Bulgaria seems like a pretty descent country, right? >> Fiona Ramsey: Well to think about Angelo's, he's actually a Roman minority who is commonly known as gypsy. So, he's really discriminated against the way that you know many poor people are for him. He actually went into the 6 banks in his town and was rejected from every single one. They just refused to give him a loan. Poor people often excluded from the financial sector because they might not have collateral to offer on the loan. They might be illiterate and you know not be able to fill out the form or might be some you know reason where they don't just feel comfortable walking into a bank. So, there are a lot of reasons, the poor unable to find access to financial services that you or I could. >> Tom Merritt: So this is a way for you to take a little bit of your money and actually not just give it away as you were to charity but help somebody get started and help them get the money that I wouldn't be able to get otherwise, right? >> Fiona Ramsey: Exactly, and the great thing about this is you're giving somebody the ability to help themselves in a way that really permits a lot of dignity and self-respect. >> Tom Merritt: Well I really love the idea. I hope it helps out Sorn and I hope a lot of other people will try this out and help some people. What's the web site again? >> Fiona Ramsey: It's www.kiva.org. >> Tom Merritt: Kiva, where's that name come from? >> Fiona Ramsey: Kiva is a Swahili word that means unity or agreement. >> Tom Merritt: All right, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on the show. That's kiva.org. When we come back, download of the week to help you transfer files easily to your web sites. Stay with us. ^M00:15:10 [ Music ] ^M00:15:15 [Background Music ] >> The evolution of my BlackBerry has really changed the way that I do business. I don't think I would have been able to accomplish the expansion of our company without the ability to communicate the way we do. ^M00:15:31 [ Music ] ^M00:15:49 >>Tom Merritt: Okay, phones are back open taking your donations. The Tom Institute, wrong [laughs]. >> Brian Cooley: Long shot. >> Tom Merritt: For your calls, 888-900CNET right here on CNET Live, but first, the download of the week is. [Background music] The download of the week is brought to you by our good friends and I do mean a good friend of CNET. >> Brian Cooley: Oh! Good friend. >> Tom Merritt: To download, CNET.com. I like those guys, Jessica... >> Brian Cooley: And really good friends we have left. >> Tom Merritt: And those good folks over there. Anyway, today we will look at a free FTP program called FileZilla. >> Brian Cooley: I love FileZilla. >> Tom Merritt: Hey why, is it? >> Brian Cooley: That's you, I just knew on your news here. >> Tom Merritt: No, I'm not. I'm showing FileZilla and it's not shown up over there. >> Brian Cooley: Oops, let's try this. Nope, that's mine, here. >> Tom Merritt: Anyway, FileZilla is an FTP program that would like to show a... >> Brian Cooley: We have to call our show a good help on this. >> Tom Merritt: Here it is, all right. >> Brian Cooley: [Laughs] There we go. >> Tom Merritt: If only there were a help show, we can call to fix this. >> Brian Cooley: Who might help us on that? >> Tom Merritt: Let me show your FileZilla. Now that we actually can, this is it right here it's saying an FTP program that allows you to take your files as you can see my files over here that are off the hard drive. I got some of my web site stuff over there and then over here is my web site. So I just select some over here and just drag it over there. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. Just drag. You know what I like with FileZilla, its open source really very much like Cued FTP which is of course is a paid product and which I've been a lot of headaches with getting it to keep running our new version. >> Tom Merritt: Actually you use Wiz FTP the old because the '98. >> Brian Cooley: Oh, the old WS_FTP. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, I can do it in a USB drive and carry it around. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: But it's a limited functionality, 'coz they've upgraded it since to make you pay for it. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: So if I then need to do something a little more fancy, this is what I use. >> Brian Cooley: This is a great FTP. I'm kinda delighted that you brought up just for using it a few months ago and it's like. >> Tom Merritt: Excellent. >> Brian Cooley: A1. >> Tom Merritt: FileZilla available of course from the Mozilla Foundation, but also at CNET download.com >> Brian Cooley: That's right. Okay, back to your call. Let's go to Kevin in Michigan. He's gotta an easy one to be quite on us, but he doesn't this answer. I bet a lot of you don't either, so let's do it. Kevin, welcome to CNET Live. >> Kevin: Hey guys, thanks I love the show. I'm trying to get my Google calendars to sink with my outlook calendar. I'm not just importing it but constantly sinking back and forth so I can add one to one, showing it up vice versa. >> Brian Cooley: All right, well, lucky for you we're good, you're good friends of Googles. >> Kevin: [Laughs] And we mean good friends. >> Brian Cooley: And we mean good friends. I'm thinking about you all the time. Let's see. I've got the screen here of the Google calendars sink tool from Google. We're gonna love that and I'll get everything Google does except for search, it's a beta, but they just like the word beta I think. So, this is. >> Kevin: That is not set yet. >> Brian Cooley: This is the utility that you can use to sink outlook. You can go two-ways, you can just barely see there if you look into the menus there. One way, Google to outlook or the other way outlook to Google. See, you got some nice flexibility there and then one of the fields down there I think you can just see it is a sink every x-number of minutes. So you can set the frequency of the persistence on the sink there. You know, great little tool that is made by the folks into your Google calendars. So that's your first place to start. Try that out. >> Kevin: Does that work out exactly? >> Brian Cooley: You can get that over it. If you go over the Google and hit there Applications menu. That's what they'll have all their things like Google calendar and docs and all link is called applications, but we've got a trick for you right now, just wanna leave you hanging hold on 1 second. Let's see, go to Google and get up under more and drop down to, let's see even more and we're looking for, yeah, here it is. It's in this array of tools under more and then even more. So, that's an easy crumb trail to follow and then you go find your sink tool in there. Hey, thanks for calling. >> Tom Merritt: You call it search for the Google too. >> Brian Cooley: You always do that, but you know, I don't know, it does not always work. >> Tom Merritt: All right, let's go to line 4 in LA, Joseph. Welcome to CNET Live. >> Joseph: Hi! >> Tom Merrit: You weren't expecting us, were you? >> Joseph: No [laughs]. >> Tom Merritt: I don't like a Spanish inquisition. We apologize [laughs]. By the way, what's you question? >> Brian Cooley: Just like it with less blood. >> Joseph: Well, the Freeware stand alone alternatives for Power Point. >> Tom Merritt: For a Power Point, well, stand alone meaning you don't want to open office 'coz they have a Power Point clone in the Open Office Suite. >> Joseph: Yeah, I don't want anything in the Suite. >> Tom Merritt: Okay, you just want the individual. I know there's ThinkFree Show from the ThinkFree Office Suite. Let me pull that. I got an upright here. Its part of the ThinkFree Office Suite but you can download ThinkFree Show individually. They have it as a purchase, but I'm pretty sure you can get it for free unless they just changed. So that's one option. You got others there? >> Brian Cooley: Well, I'm just thinking you know, I'm thinking I'm gonna through WebWare here and look for anything that is analogous to Power Point something. >> Tom Merritt: Where there's a...Goggle came out. >> Brian Cooley: Something new came out. >> Tom Merritt: That's the Google presentation. >> Brian Cooley: It's the Google presentation which was just recently got some nice new add-ons. They just added gadgets to the Google Docs Suite if you're okay with the web service as opposed to a download. I mean you care if it's web service or an install? >> Joseph: Preferably install. >> Brian Cooley: Preferably install okay, the Google Docs is not gonna be the thing for you. >> Tom Merritt: So far, I think we show is the best bet for that, but I don't know. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: I'm still looking around and see if I can dig up something else 'coz there used to be several of these but they kind of pop up and go away from time to time, so that's my.. >> Brian Cooley: These 2 places to start to. >> Tom Merritt: That's my best bet for right now. >> Brian Cooley: Yup, good start. So take that for a run. Okay, let's see. We're gonna go next year. How about, got a camera question here. Quick one for Jim who is in Indiana. I just love camera questions 'coz I'm a camera buff. Hey, Jim! Welcome to CNET Live. What's your question? >> Jim: Hey, what I was wanting to know is, what you folks recommend to stream video over the internet? Which one would be the best camera? It doesn't have to record video, but I'd like to stream video over the internet. >> Brian Cooley: Ah, so a web cam. What are you guys using right now for Buzz Out Loud. >> Tom Merritt: We are using the Logitech. It's our editor's choice for web cam. Yeah, Logitech. >> Brian Cooley: To pick that all. >> Tom Merritt: Remember the model number at the top of my head. >> Brian Cooley: We're gonna find it here for you. Yeah, the Buzz Out Loud crews doing live video while they're recording the show each week and... >> Jim: What BOL got cam? >> Tom Merritt: QuickCam Pro 9000. A Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 is the one we're using. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah. >> Tom Merritt: And it's like the editor's choice. >> Brian Cooley: What's the price? >> Tom Merritt: It is sold for about 80 bucks right now, but it's given as cheap as 57. >> Brian Cooley: That's right for a good web cam and yeah, that has really good image model and I was very impressed by the way it looks. >> Tom Merritt: Again, you could buy a video camera or use a digital camera and hook it up and get a better quality. >> Brian Cooley: Yes, you've got a. >> Tom Merritt: You've gotta get a web cam. >> Brian Cooley: But if you have an old camcorder floating around even if the tape transport doesn't work, I mean it's good to tape it there and put them on the record mode. That's a great way to use an old camcorder. If that's broken, otherwise, that's an outstanding web cam. I was very impressed by that one. I saw them using it over the studio everyday. So good, try that one out. Okay, so in our news.com, Mike Kanellos was here last week and if you recall that he told us about 4 amazing technologies he saw on a trip to Ireland of all places. He's always finding cool stuff. He does it again this week. Check it out. A light bulb he's found, the size of a tic-tac that gives off the full light of a street lamp. Check it out. ^M00:22:49 [ Music ] ^M00:22:52 >> I got it in the middle of this is an Oregon cam. >> It might look like a refugee from a string of Christmas lights, but this tiny bulb from Luxim can put out as much as light as a street light. Check it out. >> You got 400 light bulbs in this unit in our system where there is about 250 lux. >> Here how it works. Electrical energy is delivered to a component called the puck. >> The puck, acts like an electrical lens. >> The gases heat up turn into a plasma and give off light. A substantial portion of the energy gets turned into light rather than heat. >> How many of these will I need and bring you answer only one light. You gotta cling it. >> Yeah one for 3 lights. >> Luxim gets about 140 lumens per watt. High in the LEDs, get around 70 lumens per watt and an ordinary light bulb gives about 15. >> The key advantage is that the energy is present into the bulb without any electrodes. So, you don't use any electrical connections to get the energy of the bulb. At the middle of the chamber, the plasma will be 6000 Kelvin in temperature, so it can be the same temperature as the surface of the sun which is why the spectrum, that's very similar to the spectrum of the sun arriving on earth. >> Lighting is hot these days mostly because engineers and companies have ignored energy efficiency 'til recently. A lot of LED companies have received funds. Luxim for instance has received around 40 million in BC Funds. We don't know who will win, but it seems clear that bulb in streetlight you grew up are going to change soon. [Music] >> Brian Cooley: Okay, I've got some tic-tac. >> Tom Merritt: So, this is all I need. >> Brian Cooley: That's it. So, this would be like a whole boulevard with the street lamps. If there is, we're all bulbs. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: Six thousand degrees Kelvin? >> Tom Merritt: And tasty too. >> Brian Cooley: Six thousand Kelvin is 10,400 Fahrenheit. >> Tom Merritt: That's a lot more calories that is gained in actual tic-tac. >> Brian Cooley: [Laughs] All right, it looks like. >> Tom Merritt: And this is a product placement. >> Brian Cooley: No, what is like tic-tac and... >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: Charlie had to have the pack of this on the set, right now. >> Tom Merritt: Okay, let take them some call, shall we. >> Brian Cooley: Shall we. >> Tom Merritt: Line 1 in. The show must take doing. >> Brian Cooley: Hi, how are u doin'? >> Tom Merritt: Where you come from in Missouri? >> Around Kasey. >> Tom Merritt: Ah, okay. Excellent. >> Okay, my question. What in your opinion is the best reasonably priced monitor that would be good for like gaming? >> Tom Merritt: It would be for game, all right. >> Brian Cooley: You're talking of a computer monitor not a television monitor, right? >> A computer monitor. >> Tom Cooley: Do you care how big it is? >> Not particularly. >>Tom Merritt: Okay so you don't need some 30-inch monitor or anything like that. >> Yeah. >>Tom Merritt: I think 'coz you could also go projector. >> Brian Cooley: I like that 'coz that's immersion. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, 'coz that you can make as big as you want. You can take around with, so that's something to consider. Look at projector monitors, but that's at the higher end. Our top LCD monitor is the ViewSonic VX 2025 WN. >> Brian Cooley: I'll cover for you. [Cough]. Yeah, you have the ViewSonic 20... >> Tom Merrit: Thanks for coughing with me by the way. >> Brian Cooley: We're both dying. Hey, what is this? Yeah, ViewSonic 2025, what we got for a price on that guy? It looks like, you know this monitor is an 8.0, is a CNET editor's rating of 8.0, so that's editor's choice if anything less than absolutely third world internet connection this week. I have a price for all, oh not in stock in our merchants. That's an odd mix of high rated and not available. >> Tom Merritt: The VX 2255 WMB is between 295 and 385 bucks so it's not very reasonably priced. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, it's not cheap, but I like it some $200 monitor myself but how about, you know, we got a couple of Dell's monitor here. You don't more think of Dell for peripherals, right? You think for entire machines. Here's a Dell Ultra Sharp 2407. Again, this gets an A, that's an excellent and of course that's not in stock in our merchants as well. How can that be? Well, because we're the embarrassed by our database right now. Well, Dell ViewSonic. Here, this is it you can look for. You can shop this yourself. For gaming, you wanna look for hopefully a 2-millisecond refresh rate. So, I think that they'll gonna call it. That's a KeySpec for gaming as you don't get smear. This computer monitors are all dedicated for supporting progressive scan as when that on issue on computer. This is more of a TV thing. When you get a wave from interlace so progressive's gonna be no problem and then for contrast ratio, you know the hot monitors these days are I wanna say you're looking at 5000-6000 to 1 is considered a pretty impressive contrast ratio. A bigger one were seeing 10,000 to 1 kinda bit very high end but I think if you're on 5000 or 6000 to 1 contrast, 2-millisecond refresh or response time. They have a different way of describing it but it's the same thing and again remember all computer monitors are high depth. They are all able to do that, so you're not worried about really the resolution as much as you want. What size do you want and you want wider 403. I think you can do okay for under $200 if you shop aggressively and if you're looking at the 20 or 22-inch that should be the ballpark you're looking at but Dell and View Sonic rate very highly with us. >> Tom Merritt: We have the Dell UltraSharp 2007 WFP actually on the forums isn't called out several times. >> Brian Cooley: How was it? >> Tom Merritt: As a good gaming monitor. >> Brian Cooley: 7.8, that's the good high rating and that one price is at 400 to 477, that's expensive, but it's got a very nice articulated base as well I see it. It could be part of the cause. The cheaper monitor has got a simple little foot and you just sit there and you've got a little comp with your own if you want such a thing. So, there's some advice. There's some assistance for you on that one. >> Tom Merritt: All right, let's see what we can do for Nick. Real quickly, I don't know if we'd be able to you help or not, but we'll give you the shot. You got a virtual PC question, eh? >> Nick: Yeah. Hey Brian and Tom. >> Tom Merritt: Hey Nick. >> Nick: Okay I downloaded a virtual PC and I wanted to install Linux. I've burn too on it and I try to give them the ISO image to both active as my disc on the virtual PC. It loads up but it stops in the middle. I tried making a disc for it, but the disc does not boot up with the virtual PC. Do you know how to fix or I could use to make it work? >> Tom Merritt: You know what you might try 'coz there are probably a bunch for it so you can troubleshoot the actual virtual or some people may suggest going to VMware or trying something else, but one thing I know worked for me is go to pendrivelinux.com and you can make USB bootable who boots you out of thumb drive. I just tried a video earlier this week and would, maybe, play that video on another CNET Live down the road, but if you go to pendrivelinux.com then you can emulate who boots you from the USB drive within windows and that will get you there. >> Nick: Okay. Oh great, thank you! >> Tom Merritt: So yeah, keep an eye out for that video on that site next week. Okay, good stuff and good timing as well. Okay thanks for the call everybody, good stuff. Now, it's time for our Best of the Web. ^M00:29:35 [ Music ] ^M00:29:37 [ Background Music ] >> Brian Cooley: And of course Best of the Web is brought to us every week by the experts on this sort of thing, that would be the editors at cnetswebware.com. We look to them for the really cool stuff in web services and web utilities and this one is great. It's called SugarSync. Let me give you a look here at the main screen. It gives you an idea of what it does. >> Tom Merritt: And there's really self-syncing problems? >> Brian Cooley: In a really cool way. >> Tom Merritt: Okay. >> Brian Cooley: Because if you're syncing it tells that your services both machines typically have to be on to talk to each other over the network. >> Tom Merritt: Yup. >> Brian Cooley: This one uses the cloud as the intermediary so whenever even one machine is on, come back, come back. >> Tom Merritt: Oh. >> Brian Cooley: Come back, there it is. It sends up what is new on it and pulls down what is new from the other machines. So, only one machine has. >> Tom Merritt: So smart. >> Brian Cooley: It makes total sense. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah. >> Brian Cooley: What they do here is merge up that functionality of sync also mobile access. You see the phone there? >> Tom Merritt: That's a killer, right? >> Brian Cooley: That's cool. Remote access via the web of course that's fairly common and online backup. It's all done here. >> Tom Merritt: How much? >> Brian Cooley: In one place. Well, that's we get a little IC 100 gig, for 1 year it's a 150 dollars, 30 gig for a year I think is 50 or 60 dollars. >> Tom Merrit: Okay. >> Brian Cooley: So, we're looking at a service that is you know it's got money around it. >> Tom Merritt: Choose your data wisely. >> Brian Cooley: Right, choose your data wisely. You can get by with one of their least expensive accounts, so to make sure what the pricing looks like here. Let's see. We get a free 10 gig for 45 days to try it out. The 30 gig is 50 bucks a year and 100 is 150 a year. >> Tom Merritt: Oh, they got, like some kind of deal, huh? >> Brian Cooley: It's a business plan, 250 gig for 258, you're again the more you buy the better the prices per gig, but this is an interesting mix of both online backup, sync that works no matter which machine is on, mobile access, web access, and I think is probably a file sharing component. You can invite people to come and get the files. >> Tom Merritt: These are limited to the amount of the devices do you know? >> Brian Cooley: I don't know that. That's an interesting question. >> Tom Merritt: It probably would be. >> Brian Cooley: Yeah, you think because they... >> Tom Merritt: Because, I don't know people have a lot of devices these days. >> Brian Cooley: I like that mobile access part. >> Tom Merritt: That's really cool. >> Brian Cooley: And avail some of the lap that you can put on your phone so that we can take the picture to automatically put that on SugarSync. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah, when I do that on my iPhone, really. >> Brian Cooley: Well, it does as well with the MAC as a computer thing. I didn't see if anything about iPhone. >> Tom Merritt: I think about iPhone so. >> Brian Cooley: That's right. Well, this doesn't be by definition. You're always turning to trick me. I'm taking your tic-tacs. >> Tom Merritt: No, don't take my tic-tacs. >> Brian Cooley: Okay folks, so any of you have gotten. Get and listen to me I want the third grade. Ever received an invitation from someone saying, "Hi, I'm Joe Smith and I want connected you on link, dude!" and you have no idea who he is. >> Tom Merritt: Yeah most of the time I do know who they are 'coz so many people are getting to be LinkedIn. >> Brian Cooley: Got a lot, but sometimes you know. >> Tom Merritt: My news director WPGU in Champaign, Kurt Vanderough [assumed spelling] just sent me. >> Brian Cooley: Oh, Kurt V. >> Tom Merritt: You know. >> Brian Cooley: He's a good man. >> Tom Merritt: But then everyone still ought to get Joe Smith, and right. >> Brian Cooley: So when I'm gonna talk to the phone LinkedIn next week, we're gonna have Reed Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn here, to give us the ins and outs of what of becoming a very hot networking service. >> Tom Merritt: 4:00 p.m. Eastern, 1:00 Pacific Daylight Time, and 11:00 a.m. Hawaii. >> Brian Cooley: See like how we do today. ^M00:32:21 [ Music ] ^M00:32:31 >> My BlackBerry is my lifeline, the communication in my children's school now occurs via e-mail. Mom's at baseball practice. People I work with in the publishing industry, it's a wide range of folks that you used of.