Rich's Random Podcast Generator

Jim and I discuss the soon-to-be-released Blackphone – product of a collaborative effort between Phil Zimmermann (PGP) and Geeksphone. This is their way of taking back privacy for consumers in wake of the NSA revelations. We also talk about Knox Security for the GS4, the SED technology found in Samsung’s 840 EVO 500GB SSD, hacked Internet-connected appliances, McAfee’s rebranding by Intel which is a good idea considering snafu’s McAfee has had in the past which includes a virus definition update that quarantined a critical Windows system file rendering the OS unbootable, and more. Listen Mobile: Intel ditches McAfee name for

  Black Friday, Cyber Monday, OCZ Bankruptcy, Buy The Right Tablet!, DNS Explained, nslookup, TestDisk, Thoughts on Google Glass & Privacy – RRPG025Kevin Schoonover(@schoondoggy1979) joins Jim (@jcollison) and Rich O’Neil (@dvn7) for RRPG #25. We’re all over the map on this one as you can tell by the title of the article. Kevin’s been coming up with a lot of great online deals and posting them in the Home Server Show forums. Listen Mobile: Kevin’s notes: Determine your needs before you buy anything – server, laptop, PC, tablet. Don’t assume anything, do your research! STec was acquired, OCZ files, who

Verizon Window Phones – Nokia Lumia 928 & 520 Kyle Wilcox and Eddie Ramirez join Jim Collison and me to talk about smartphones, specifically a couple of Windows phones from Verizon – the Nokia Lumia 928 and Nokia Lumia 520. We don’t go into all the features as much as hit upon some key points to compare and contrast with the Samsung Galaxy S4 which Jim and I are both using. Kyle, Best Buy Mobile guy, talks about customers and what they consider to be important to them. Everyone’s different, so it’s not a one size fits all solution as

  WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org Jim and I discuss WordPress, the free blogging software that makes it easy for anyone start their own web site with freely–available site templates and plugins. Jim is the experienced one having set up and run his WordPress–based web site theaverageguy.tv for the last few years now. I’m just a beginner who’s recently set up a blog so I can post some of my tech–related articles and stuff. At this point, I want to use my site as a sort of catch–all where I can post some work–related articles as well as personal tech notes and

The guys from Home Tech Podcast show #117 hang around post-show to help me, Rich O’Neil, figure out what to buy as a replacement for my 2 1/2-year old $199 Acer Aspire 5251-1317 laptop. The cheap little laptop has been holding its own, especially since I had I installed an SSD in it, but the screen is beginning to die and I don’t know if I’m going to replace it. Besides, it really doesn’t have enough power to run virtual machines well, something I occasionally require for testing and  schoolwork. Listen Mobile:   The guys and I talk about hardware

This week on Rich’s Random Podcast Generator, we’re joined by John Horton, a University of Southern Maine theatre major on the Gorham campus who’s involved in the technical aspects of theatre. John grew up in a hi-tech household. His dad was a MIT grad who worked as a design engineer for DEC, and later Intel. John was breadboarding basic circuits as a child – flip-flop, 555 timer IC, etc. – and picking up whatever else he could from Forrest M. Mims‘ instructional books originally sold by Radio Shack. Listen Mobile:   John talks about acquiring some old computers from dad’s

“The Last Password You’ll Have to Remember!” Amber Gott, Online Community Manager for LastPass.com joins Jim and Rich to talk about online password management and security. Online security has always been a hot topic, and it’s only going to be more so as time goes on. With that in mind, there’s never been a better time to look at how you’re handling your online presence, specifically the passwords you use for site logins, be it a gaming site or commerce such as Amazon.com. Listen Mobile: To start with, people are known for using the same password across multiple sites because

This week Jim and Rich go guestless and spend some time covering Acronis True Image Home 2012 Backup & Recovery Software.  After talking for a few minutes about working with our friends and neighbors on their PC problems, we take an in depth look at the Acronis UI and spend some time covering items that might be helpful for both beginner and expert.  As a bonus, we’ve included some screenshots for reference.  All images can be seen in full size just by clicking on the image. Listen Mobile: Getting Started Backup and Recovery Disk Backup Schedule your operation DBO –

Nathaniel Lindley joins Jim Collison and Rich O’Neil on RRPG #18 to talk about how he uses a Mac Mini, CrashPlan and Drobo together for his home and social back up strategy.  A former CrashPlan employee, Nathaniel has a lot of interesting things to say about this solid and flexible backup solution.   Listen Mobile: ”In early 2008, my friend and I were looking for a way to backup our children’s photos to each other’s house. We didn’t want to trade external drives; we didn’t want DVD copies. We wanted to use the Internet to transfer. Tried setting up FTP

Mike Howard, Eddie Ramirez, Tim Black, and Paul Braren join Jim Collison and Rich O’Neil for some talk about PC repair, Apple love/hate, white-knuckling over the coming of Windows Phone 8, Drobo’s next (fast) storage devices with mSATA SSD capability, Paul’s personal experience with Lenovo’s USB 3.0 Dock, and Eddie’s new computer repair bench which doubles as a dance floor.   Listen Mobile:   PC repair Isolate your bench computer from the rest of your LAN to avoid spreading any malware Utilities – MSE, Malwarebytes, Symantec Endpoint Protection, SUPERAntiSpyware Get the license keys with ProduKey – www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html and SIW –

Jim Collison is off today, visiting family in Kentucky. Mike Howard of jpeg2RAW joins Rich O’Neil as co-host for the show, and joining those two are John Stutsman, Paul Braren, and John ‘Diehard’ Zajdler. Discussions center on Windows 8 – Start screen and features such as Restore + Reset and File History, plus the Splashtop app for iPad and Android, and more. There’s been some push back on the new W8 user interface – the Start screen in particular. The community is not exactly feeling all cuddly about it, yet I think it has possibilities; folks just have to get

This week’s episode is all about hacking the HP Proliant MicroServer N40L. John Stutsman, John Zajdler, Jim Collison, and Jay Moore each own one. Check out this post over at the Home Server Show forums to see what John S. has done with his MicroServer. It’s a great post with benchmarks and photos. While you’, you might want to check out the other posts in the HP MicroServer section of the HSS forums. The guys owe a debt of gratitude to BIOS-Mods.com for hacking the BIOS to get at some additional hidden features of the little server’s motherboard. You can

This week the guys help Jim buy his first SSD. They talk in depth about the characteristics and inner workings of SSDs while trying to help Jim get the best bang for the buck. Though it’s an excellent choice, you might be surprised to see what Jim finally settles on. The guys also discuss media streaming devices in the sub-$100 range. Over the last month, Rich had been testing the Roku 2 XS, WD TV Live Plus, WD TV Live Streaming Media Player, and Apple TV 2. The following is by no means an in depth review, but rather an

Today I’m joined by John Zajdler MS WHS MVP and Mike Faucher of BYOB. Jim Collison is off today. So…John’s HP MediaSmart Server EX 490 has died (motherboard) so he’s modding it with plans to turn it into a port multiplier drive bay. Mike had an issue caused by a miniport adapter in bridge mode that was absolutely killing his wired network speed. The miniport adapter was likely installed when he put VirtualBox on his PC. He disabled it in Device Manager and the issue went away. I had the same issue on my laptop where it would occasionally fail

Michael Martis of BYOB joins us for the first time along with regulars John Stutsman and Mike Howard of jpeg2RAW. Michael M. works with servers, RAID and virtualization so we hit him up with a bunch of questions. The guys analyze some RAID 5 benchmarks and talk about RAID setups. Most any drives will work in a RAID, but some have better firmware, a better controller so they have better performance. Do you rely on Windows Update to keep your hardware drivers up to date? Rich recently ran into a network problem which could only be solved by grabbing the

Mike Howard of jpeg2RAW once again joins us in the Google+ Hangout. This week’s topic include multi-monitor setups, Belarc Advisor, home-user RAID problems, Google+ pluses and minuses, and an extended discussion on podcasting and what it takes to get things rolling. Belarc – “System Management for the Internet Age” – is a software suite which provides an in-depth assay of IT assets. Sorry, but this is not your typical home-user software. Belarc’s customers include NASA, US Marine Corps, US Army, US Air Force, US Navy, among others. As you may surmise, besides being cost-prohibitive for a home-user, Belarc also provide

Jim and Rich are joined by John Zajdler, Mike Howard, Tim Black, Jay Moore, and newcomer Paul Braren. Paul’s a long-time IT guy who launched his own tech site – Tinkertry – last July. He’s been a busy guy ever since, posting some fairly technical articles ranging from SSD caching to virtualization with special emphasis on VMWare products, something he’s familiar with as he’s traveled all over the country as a VCP certified technical consultant. Listen Mobile: Topics include: iOS 5 update – features and functionality, Google+ Hangout Extras, Logmein Hamachi, Belarc, DriveImage XML, fixing those old XP machines, Secunia

Jay Moore, John Stutsman, and Mike Howard of jpeg2RAW fame join the show this week. Topics include uses for VM servers in the home, pop screens and swivel mounts for microphones, Apple v. MS, and the good ol’ Ford Pinto. A majority of people own computers that run on the Intel platform. Mike’s entire household runs on AMD because he like’s the bang for the buck. Plus he likes to root for the underdog which is why he sides with Microsoft. Wait…what?? Listen Mobile: Have you seen those recent Windows commercials on television? One or two might be passable, might

John Zajdler, Microsoft MVP – Windows Home Server and co-host of The Home Server Show podcast, and Mike Howard, creator of the jpeg2RAW podcast join the show this week. Topics include in-home streaming devices, a Netflix apology email, Mouse without Borders, Windows 8 and the Metro UI, and what will now be known forever more as The Full Fo-Shay. Listen Mobile: Windows 8 is the new Microsoft OS equally at home on desktop and tablet. That’s due to the addition of a new UI library called WinRT, a set of API’s which among other things supports the Metro style. Windows

John Stutsman, Jay Moore, and Mike Howard join this week’s show. John is an Electrical Engineer with some power industry experience, Jay is a systems admin for TriWest Healthcare Alliance, and Mike is a fellow podcaster and creator of jpeg2RAW over at novstudios.com. Topics include post-9/11 technology, the electric power grid, virtualization, and discussions around PC builds and repairs. Memorials marked the 10th anniversary of 9/11 recently all over the USA. The guys talk about people they know who were either in Trade Center building or the immediate area on the morn ing of the attack. Listen Mobile: Mike talks