Check out Better EMF - shielded garments with metal in them - better than tinfoil!

I want the undies. :->

http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html

Sean and I had dins with Betsy Weber from TechSmith of Camtasia fame and an assembled crew that was attending Flash in the Can in Toronto.

More here

I was quoted in the New York Times today… a story on nicknames…
“Mi, a name I call myself”

A great take on the topic. Reporter Stephanie Rosenbloom (”Stephro”) did a nice job. ;->

Guess who is back at G4techtvCanada –

http://www.g4techtv.ca/webgems/
http://www.g4techtv.ca/supersoftware/

It’s true I’m hosting a new series of shows for Rogers that will beginning airing on G4techtvCanada this month. Tho I think the aim is to market them around the world and certainly back into the US.
You can think of these shows as the best of CFH. The producers have cleverly repackaged the best segments of the show and I’m shooting intros, extras and blurbs in between.

But its not just me. Some show’s are also hosted by the talented Marc Saltzman. Some by the hilarious Pay Chen.

And before people ask, no I have not been asked to return to CFH. I’m writing my second book Windows Vista Help Desk for Que Publishing due out in Jan 2007.

I continue to do radio in Toronto on The Stafford show most Monday nights http://mondays.cyberwalker.com
And the ever growing Cyberwalker team is working on a major relaunch of Cyberwalker.com. That will happen later this year.

LabRats.tv of course continues to do well with Sean Carruthers and I as co-hosts.

And there’s more fun stuff to come later this year - maybe and even another fun TV project. ;->
-Andy

Alan Ziman of Business in Vancouver magazine reviews my book in his weekly column with great kindness, accuracy and a frankness that I think is rare in tech journalism today.  Check it out.

Here’s another useful article that explains how Vista manages users vs administrators.

Windows Vista Beta 2 User Account Control Step by Step Guide

It aint thus far very pretty. But its early days yet.

I have been working on my new book - Windows Vista Help Desk - this week and came across this hardware requirement list. Thought you’d be interested:

[click here]

Sean and I check out new gadgets from Panasonic including a new exercise device that looks like a mechanical bull for the home. And yes, I ride it. Click here

Check it out - LabRats is now searchable at PodZinger.com It has a new video search feature where you can search word in the audio segments of video.

Lab Rats on PodZinger! here:

Click here

Been on a little tour of Vancouver to promote my book - the Vancouver Province newspaper did a little story with me -

http://tinyurl.com/mvd59

Off to LA today to see my brother, and for a quick rest before I start work on my new book on Windows Vista.

Looking for opinions on PC Bug Doctor.
Worthwhile? Like or dislike the free scan? Is it a product you’d buy? Or recommend to a friend or colleague? Better than Norton Utilities or registry scanners? Any an all opinions welcome.
Click here.

I have been giving a lot of interviews lately on how parents can protect their children from Internet predators. Seems to be a hot topic in the US at the moment. So here’s a little piece I wrote with tips that help you protect kids when they use the Net. Click here to read it

Might want to take a closer look at this product Registry First Aid from Rose City Software. It won a People’s Choice Award at a recent shareware conference.

I was impressed. I like how thorough it is. It also tries to correct registry entries if you move software from one drive to another. And best of all for the cautious types it has a great undo feature. Worth a look. Trialware is here.

Click for bigger image

If your a fan of Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta1 then you should take a look at Microsoft’s new antispyware release - Windows Defender Beta 2. It’s the new name for the free anti-spyware product released by Microsoft initially for XP and 2000.
The product was bought from Giant more than a year ago, though sadly Microsoft gimped it to not work on Windows 95, 98 or Me.

Defender will ship as part of Windows Vista, XP’s successor.

On first looks it’s less pretty, I have to say, but who cares. Does it work? Yeah. I remain a fan, but check it out for yourself and let me know what you think in the comments on this post. Windows Defender Beta2

With the release of epsiode 15 today (Monday Feb 20) @ 5pm EST, we will crack 2 million downloads of the show.
This is quite astounding as we announced 1M downloads only 2 weeks ago on Feb 5.

The popularity of the show has caught us by surprise and we have been struggling to keep the server primed with enough bandwidth to accommodate the huge demand.

Sean, Matt and I, as well as the LabRats team, are delighted and frightened at the same time. ;-> To accommodate tonight’s launch we will be adding a server feed at www.libsyn.com to accommodate the 320 MPEG4 iPod version of the file which has been three quarters of our traffic, however in recent days the WMV files have been doing very very well.

Ep15 is a food demo that uses marshmallows and a blowtorch to show how CDs and DVDs work. If that’s seems familiar it is. I did the demo on Call for Help, however ep15 takes that CFH demo and extends it to 15 minutes and covers CDs, DVDs, and Blue ray and HD DVD. we also added TicTacs to the demo to a fiery result.

We are actively looking for a sponsor and are talking to several companies about this so that we can continue to bring you millions more downloads in the the coming months. More new on that soon.

Catch me talking about HDTV and the future of TV technology on CBC Newsworld’s Business Report today (Monday, 20 Feb) at 6:30 PM EST 3:30 PM PST. [CBC Newsworld program guide]

For those that can tune in TVO (TV Ontario) check out Studio 2 tonight (Friday) at 8pm or 11pm.
I do a 10 minute interview about computer security and I plug my book of course and do a little food demo on how anti-virus tech works that results in me getting nailed in the chin with an apple. It’s quite funny.

(This is also posted at blog.labrats.tv as well, but the server is extremely busy - ep13 has done 181,000 downloads in 48 hrs and we’re at 1.5 million all time downloads)

Hi everyone:

We are developing a LabRats Premium offering that for a modest annual fee (to cover our massive bandwidth costs) will provide you with some fantastic premium benefits including:

* A premium members-only server for fast direct downloads
* All the shows in three resolutions and up to seven different formats.
* All shows playable on the page using Flash 8. (see a sample of ep9)
* Lots of extras including more outtakes, more promos by famous geek celebs and other unreleased content.

This service will be tested in the coming weeks and released as soon as possible. If you would like to be notified when the premium service is available then please send an email with the subject “LabRats Premium” to premium@labrats.tv.

The first 100 people to email us at that address will be eligible for the discounted rate of US$59. Thereafter the premium membership will be set at US$99/yr.

If you’ve already donated to LabRats, then you can pay US$59/yr less your donation and get the premium service at a further discount. If this is the case then please email us at premium@labrats.tv with your name and donation amount and donation email address and we’ll make the arrangements to upgrade you to premium after you have paid the difference.
I hope you’ll find this offering enjoyable and of interest.

Best,

Andy

We’ve cracked a million downloads at LabRats.tv. Quite amazing. More here.

For those that haven’t had a chance to pick up a copy of my book, or have been wondering if it’s for them….here’s a peek inside.
My publisher Que has provided a way to look into chapter 1, as well as other pieces of the book through Amazon.com.

To take a look, click here and then click on the cover to see inside. In the pop up window click “Excerpt” to read the first few pages of Chapter 1.