Tekzilla

Hosted by Patrick Norton, Robert Heron and Veronica Belmont. New episodes Tuesdays & Thursdays

Tekzilla feeds your tech hunger! Patrick Norton, Robert Heron and Veronica Belmont bring you hands on reviews of the latest gear, tips and tricks that improve the tech you already own and conversations with the most informative experts around. Read More

Stealth WiFi In The Office, Big Notebook Drives, iPod Accessories!

Thursday, September 10th, 2009 – running time 33:43

Wooden iPod Dock, Secure Your WiFi: WPA2 + Random 13 Character Keys, Blu-ray vs. 720p, Shure X2u: Best XLR Mic Adapter Yet? Parallel Port to USB, iFixIt, Folding@Home, Adding WiFi To The Corporate Network (will get you fired). IDF, Apple, Leica, Motorola: tons of announcements this week!

Welcome to Tekzilla... hands on reviews of the latest tech, and how to make the most out of the gear you already own! Veronica Belmont and Patrick Norton are your hosts.

IDF, Apple, Leica, Motorola... tons of announcements this week!

Unfortunately, they all took place after we taped. We'll be talking about the nifty new CPUs from Intel next week with Loyd Case!

00:38 | Play

DIY WiFi + The Corporate Network = Bad Idea

Jason's looking to drop a spare PCI WiFi card into his office PC... it'll work as a Wireless Access Point and extend the WiFI coverage in his office. You could use Internet Connection Sharing to do this, it's built into Windows... and you'll probably be setting yourself up to get fired. DIY WiFi on corporate networks is usually a big no no!

01:54 | Play

Better WiFi Security: WPA2 + Random 13 Character Keys!

If you are looking to keep your WiFi secure (and you should!) the security researchers at the Church of WiFi have compiled Lookup/Rainbow Tables for the top WPA passphrases and SSIDs to speed up brute force attacks... so try to use a random 13 character key along with WPA2 security!

03:04 | Play

Free Software: Folding@Home

This distributed computing project runs protein folding models across millions of Macs, PCs, 3D video cards from ATI and Nvidia and Sony's PS3s around the world in order to better understand mis-folded proteins and, hopefully, help find treatments for a number of life threatening illnesses including Alzheimer's, Mad Cow, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease and a range of cancers. If you're gonna leave your PC or PC's on all the time... make a contribution to medical science and run Folding@Home!

06:23 | Play

iPod and iPhone Accessories!

Love or hate 'em, the iPod and iPhone have a ton of accessories... here are some of the ones we've gotten hands on with lately: Woodtec iPod Dock, Speakal iPanda, Monster Mobile SoniTalk, iGo Everywhere Power Kit, Tiko Fold Travel Stand!

07:21 | Play

Website We Just Can't Get Enough of: iFixIt!

Broken gadget? iFixIt.com has it all when it comes to repairing, troubleshooting, and ripping apart your favorite gadgets... at least if they're iPods, iPhones or Apple notebooks! The step by step guides are awesome, and they regularly tear down all kinds of gadgets, so you can finally see what's inside!

17:35 | Play

XLR to USB: The Best Mic Adapter yet?

Field recording? Recording your guitar? Need some help getting better audio for your podcast? Veronica says with Shure's X2u, a decent mic and a laptop "you'll never need to lug around anything else!" Find out why on the show...

18:46 | Play

Blu-ray vs. a 720p HDTV

Blu-ray players are getting cheap and Joel's thinking of picking one up... but none of the reviews mention how 1080p Blu-ray disks look on 720p HDTVs. Not to worry, Joel, Patrick has spent a lot of time watching DVDs and Blu-rays on both 720p and 1080p monitors, in various sizes and from various distances and he's got the info for you on the show!

24:30 | Play

Parallel Port to USB?

There are lots of reasons why folks still want to run Parallel Port accessories on computers that only have USB ports... who wants to buy another OKI Impact Dot Matrix Printer if they don't have to? (OKI still sells 'em, btw, and they do come with USB now and they still sell serial and paralell port versions, too!) What Lyman needs to do is verify that he's got drivers that'll work with his current OS, then pick up a USB Parallel Port adapter from Newegg or TigerDirect

26:35 | Play

When Will Notebook Drives Get Bigger?

Jason's wondering if notebook hard drives are stuck at 500GB, when 1TB notebook drives will ship, and if SSD drives are where all the research is going! Unfortunately the new 750GB and 1TB 2.5 WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB and 1 TB drives are 12.5 mm. (Too high for most notebooks!) Don't worry, those 1 TB drives will be coming when areal density gets high enough to put 500GB on a single platter. And a few days after we taped the show, WD released a 640GB 9.5mm inch drive. (SSDs are still pretty pricey per GB, but we can't wait for 'em to go mainstream.)

28:07 | Play

Have you checked out Hak5 lately? They've been getting into wireless sniffing tools, Amazon Kindle hacks, multi OS-booting USB keys and building a corporate network from the ground up. If you're into hacking you can't miss Hak5 every Wednesday at Revision3.com/Hak5!

Connect with Tekzilla

  • about 19 hours ago

    RT @jackietalbott: watch me on @tekzilla today talkin about goog hangouts! how to find and make the best ones: http://t.co/a0CWUEwHNd (3rd …

  • 6 days ago

    .@donttrythis I think @patricknorton would agree that it was an honor having both of you on the show!

  • 6 days ago

    @JamieNoTweet Thanks for coming on! You and Adam are welcome back anytime.

  • 6 days ago

    Tekzilla Ep 436 is up! Special guests Adam and Jaime from #MythBusters, E3 Wrap-up, and a review of the Pebble Watch. http://t.co/yUYjfCO5kM

  • 8 days ago

    Tekzilla ep 435 is up! NSA's PRISM, E3 2013 Games for the Xbox One, Apple's new OS X, iOS 7, gaming Headset Round-up. http://t.co/gMTr6cFuHN

  • 15 days ago

    Tekzilla ep 433 is up! Intel's Haswell performance, Razer Edge Pro Review, GoPro for Pets, and the new Handbrake. http://t.co/8AboZGFt69

About the Show

Details
Show Title:
Tekzilla
Description:
Tekzilla feeds your tech hunger! Patrick Norton, Robert Heron and Veronica Belmont bring you hands on reviews of the latest gear, tips and tricks that improve the tech you already own and conversations with the most informative experts around.
Categories:
How-To & DIY, Technology & Gadgets
Launch Date:
Sep 1, 2007
Episodes:
Credits