Steve Jobs Delivers Baby in Taxi

It seems that the newest trick used by malware spammers is to create outlandish headlines trying to entice uses to open up the Emails and click on links. I’m still seeing Emails on how to enlarge my penis and buy a watch but the headlines seem to be a new trend.
Just today I received the following complete with misspellings…

• Afghan bombing kills President Bush


• Al Pacino investigated by police for mob funding


• Angelina Jolie dies in miscarriage


• Bill Gates and family held and robbed in family home


• Facebook hacked into, millions of accounts lost


• Freak accident causes Tom cruise to be paralysed


• Nicole Kidman loses baby in miscarriage


• Norton Firm admits to releasing viruses


• Obama caught with pants down


• Pope killed by assasin in Vatican City


• Stray javelin kills promising US sprinter


• YouTube shut down by lawsuit

Don’t be fooled! Most of these headlines are so crazy you don’t need to go to http://www.phoneymail.com/ to verify them. Some headlines may actually be true but unless you know the sender just hit the delete button.

Speaking of YouTube, I was thrilled this week to see that I can now watch YouTube videos, like my newest creation on my Series 3 TiVo.

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TiVo Beacon Error 1359 Caused by Xobni

There’s a new add-on for Microsoft Outlook which I was really starting to love. After the beta for Xobni was recommended on Twitter I thought I’d check it out and it soon became a very useful tool in managing the large volume of Email I receive.

Xobni has some great features like extracting phone numbers automatically from Emails. It gives you immediate access to previous Email conversations. It also connects people on the CC lists so it helps create a social friends network within Outlook. Since I personally handle all our support Email Xobni became an immediate time saver for me.

Here’s the Problem
Normally, I can view photos and listen to music located on my computer on my TV thanks to TiVo Desktop Software(formerly called TiVoToGo). Viewing photos is just one of the many cool features that integrate all my TV’s with my PC. Last week when I went to look at some Memorial Day Parade photos they weren’t there.

The Beacon service is required to access music and photos via TiVo

This occurred when trying to restart the TiVo Beacon Service

After spending hours trying to find out why my TiVo Service broke I finally narrowed it down to Xobni. It didn’t make any sense but according to my WinPatrol “First Detected” column, Xobni was the only new change to my system.

Sure enough, removing Xobni fixed the problem. If you don’t have TiVo I can still recommend Xobni even though I have no idea why it would affect my TiVo Server. In a home with five TiVo’s, the TiVo service takes priority but if Xobni ever finds the problem I’ll definitely reinstall their Outlook Plug-In.

Update: While I found messages in the Xobni forums dating back to Feb it appears my new best friend, Greg Duffy at Xobni has found the solution. Greg left a link in our comments but I wanted to make sure everyone saw it.
http://community.xobni.com/showthread.php?t=153

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"TiVo Like" Features on your PC

My name is Bill and I am a TiVoholic. I’m almost embarrassed to say we currently have six TiVo’s in our house and home office. It really annoys me when I hear someone say they have “TiVo like” features in their product. Google results in over 100,000 sites when searching on “TiVo-Like”.

There is WAY MORE to TiVo than its ability to pause or fast forward through commercials. Unless they own a TiVo most people won’t understand.

The most common offenders relate to the software that comes with TV video cards for PC’s. Even Microsoft strives to be TiVo-Like with its Windows XP Media Center Edition. While I’m impressed with the hardware that decodes TV signals for your PC, I have yet to find TV-PC software that isn’t crap.

Last year I tried out the ATI All-in-Wonder graphics board. The software that was included made my system so unstable I no choice but to remove it. Last week I needed to do some testing with Pinnacles Program Scheduler so I picked up a PCTV HD Stick on Amazon. When I could get it to work the HD analog signal that streamed on to my screen was crystal clear. I didn’t have the patience to do a full software evaluation so I’ll just summarize by saying, it sucks.

I have checked out others but none have the stability or power of TiVo. I do have a little bit of experience in this area. When I worked for Microsoft my job was to design an EPG(Electronic Program Guide) for something called the Information Highway PC. Some of my time was spent doing focus studies, observing people from behind a one-way mirror. It was a lot of fun but unfortunately I didn’t stay out west long enough to make a difference.

Now TiVo has announced a partnership with digital software company, Nero AG, best known for their CD/DVD burning suites. At last, a real TiVo interface on a PC. According to TiVo’s CEO Tom Rogers…

“This agreement provides TiVo with an opportunity to deliver its interface and differentiated feature set globally via the PC, enabling TiVo to use all avenues of mass distribution -- from consumer electronics, to cable and satellite boxes and soon, the PC”

This sounds promising but I’m still a little skeptical. The current TiVo software is Unix based and I’m not sure how successfully it can be ported to run under Windows. You’d think I’d be doing the dance of joy but I’ll stick with my current TiVo boxes for now.

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