A Review of David Lawrence's Radio Show Online Today

On February 20, 2000 at 11:15 a.m. the radio show "Online Today" came on KFBK 1530AM, which was hosted by David Lawrence. It was very high in educational value. I wouldn't mind listening to it again, because it helped me find out about some rather intriguing things. The host was very knowledgeable and helpful to callers.
Well, the show started off talking about apple computers, the Macintosh, and their history. The first commercially successful microcomputer was Apple. The Apple 1 was cheap and less complicated than previously built microcomputers. People would then call in with questions and the host, David Lawrence, would try answering their questions and assisting them the best he could. It seemed as though each person might have taken about 5 minutes on average per call, but that's merely an estimate. I'd say he handled people's questions with the best of knowledge and he clearly answered them and they weren't left in awe.

A bill was passed so that spamers must use "adv:" in their emails. Spam is flooding people with emails. This "adv:" would clearly tell the receiver that it's spam. You can set filters at the server level to stop users from receiving spam. The host had briefly mentioned E-mail attachments and how to do them, and how to use them. An e-mail marketing scheme, "voxemail.com," can increase a company's sales. It provides a sound file attachment that livens up the e-mail. It's a recording of the company's advertisement. David had said it could increase a company's sales by as much as 4,000%! Another man called about spamming and had said that he was able to catch a few spamers selling his name. He knows how to track his name on the Internet and who's giving his name out.

A man called in about windows explorer and asked about changing the setup. Windows explorer is a program that lets you see the contents of your hard disk in a different way. It provides a hierarchical overlay of what's inside. Some users find windows explorer rather easy to use from just using the "my computer" and doing your work from there. The host wasn't too certain how to do that, so he couldn't exactly answer the caller's question, although he still tried.

Ray called about his monitor and he was having color problems. His red was jumbled. The host of the show believed that it was due to Ray's RAM usage. The host thought the caller was running too many applications. David had also suggested running Norton's Anti-virus, which is a program that searches the computer for viruses and eliminates them, in response to another of Ray's questions. A second guy called in about his monitor, and he too had problems with his color. It was diminishing in quality and he was considering purchasing a new one.

Georgia called in about free ISPs (Internet Service Providers). Free ISPs make more money out side of the United States than the ones in the States, because of the way it's setup, said the host of the radio show. She also asked about security risks and the host responded with saying it wasn't that big an issue. The issue is with putting up with the constant advertisements from free ISPs, which are extremely annoying. NetZero is an example of a free ISP, but it has a permanent banner that is excrutiatingly annoying. The banner is always active and you have to keep moving it out of the way to do things on your browser. If you close the banner it logs you off and if you try to block the banner it logs you off. NetZero doesn't provide users with much ease, you can connect easily, but constantly find yourself struggling to get things to run online (such as multi-player games), and so just stick with paid ISPs for now, which are much better overall.

The host gave out an address (a uniform resource locator) that you could go to on the Internet and sign up to receive pay for surfing the Internet. He said that basically you do nothing and get paid for it. He said you could get 50 cents an hour. David had said that 30% of the population uses computers, which I found interesting because I thought it would be higher than that.

The host doesn't know anything about Windows NT, a common LAN O/S, which a man was asking him about. A new O/S, "Windows ME (Millenium Edition)," was mentioned, which will be available to consumers in the near future. There was a modem question about a WinModem. The caller was trying to find out how to get the fastest connection possible with his modem. To get a fast connection you can either use a faster modem or connect at a different time when there's less traffic. The host said that he's only going to be able to connect at a maximum speed set by the modem anyway. The host had also mentioned computer telephony, which is using your computer as though it was a telephone, talking to people across the Internet in real time.

The host had briefly mentioned, "Sleep mode". Sleep mode is a mode, in which the virtual machine is not running, but connection time still accumulates and messages may be displayed at the terminal. The virtual machine is reactivated either at the end of a specified time interval or when the user signals attention to it.

Someone had called about Win98 and Tweak UI to shut off the windows networking password. Tweak UI is a software utility that lets Windows 95 and Windows 98 users modify the desktop user interface and other system characteristics. Using Tweak UI, you can change the menu speed, how windows are animated and many features about Microsoft Internet Explorer. Tweak UI allows the user to change settings that are not easy to locate, including some in the system Registry. For example, a user can speed up system startup by reducing the frequency with which the Scandisk utility is run. Microsoft includes Tweak UI as one of several "Power Toys" that were developed after the Windows 95 release. For Windows 98 users, it comes with the system but is not usually pre-installed. It is located on the Windows 98 CD-ROM. It is advised to always back-up Registry before doing anything that might modify it.

A lady wanted to copy from her floppy disk to her hard disk. The host gave her step-by-step instructions on how to go about doing it. He told her two different ways to do it. One way he said was to do it from the Windows explorer. He had also told her a second method, which was to just access her floppy drive and drag-and-drop the file to drive c:\.

The show ended roughly at 12:30pm, lasting over an hour. It was very useful to the callers getting assistance. The show was very entertaining, only because I'm interested in this subject, although I doubt others would find it entertaining. The show didn't seem to have many weaknesses to me; it was strong in presenting and explaining concepts. Although, it wasn't that "jazzy," I mean to me, it seemed dull and as if it wouldn't attract that many callers. I wasn't sure if the show usually lasts only around an hour like that, but I think it should be longer. I wouldn't mind hearing it for two hours or so. Even though I'm somewhat a computer junky, I know that I picked up a few new things.

Source: Online Today. KFBK 1530AM. Radio.