Frankie's back from Russia

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Mark, Wes, and guest Frankie at the Swad restaurant in Lafayette, CA

Sites of Interest:

• The little-known Jewish holiday of Christmas Eve.
  
  
• Most Bay Area cellphone carriers now work in the BART Transbay tube. That article shows problems at first, but the service seems to be good now.
  
  
• Comparison of prepaid cell phone plans, including unlimited plans that compete with Metro PCS.
  
  
• If you aren't familiar with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's personality, please watch this video first so you will understand the context, then watch this Video of a guy who says Steve Ballmer personally fired him because he wasn't enthusiastic enough about the word "Bing!"
  
  
• Mark's puppy is a Bichon Frise.
  
  
• Nettop computers are miniature desktop machines that use basically notebook components so they are very small and use little electric power. Mark got an Acer Aspire Revo 1600 for $200 and is happy with it for the price.
  
  
• Taffic and runway lights with incandescent bulbs are being replaced with LED lights because they last far longer and use less electricity, however because they run so much cooler, they create a hazard in the winter.
  
  
• World Climate Report, a blog skeptical about global warming.
  
  
• If you are truly concerned about global warming, the best thing you can do personally to save the planet, is to eat your pets
  
  
• Here are the pictures Wes took of his trip to Thailand.
  
  
• San Francisco mayor backs mandatory cell phone radiation labels.
  
  
• Inform 7 is a design system for interactive fiction based on natural language.
  
  
• USB Hourglass random number generator and random number generators based on radiation.
  
  
• Twitter co-founder starts a new company, Square, that lets individuals and small businesses accept credit cards for payment using a tiny cube accessory that plugs into the audio jack of iPhones and other cell phones. See a video here.
  
  
• Mark sees a similarity between Square and the beginnings of PayPal, which started as a way to beam money from one Palm Pilot owner to another.
  
  
• Google goggles is an Android app that lets you take a photo of a product or building and lookup information about it by matching your photo to others of the same object that Google knows about. Google says Goggles will eventually be implemented on the iPhone.
  
  
• Wes saw the Rama IX Bridge in Bangkok, which was dedicated to King Bhumibol Adulyadej on his 60th birthday.
  
  
• The latest rumors about an Apple Tablet device.
  
  
• Reference manuals for the Apple Newton including a scripting language for end-users
  
  
• Be sure to buy an iPhone, not a Blackberry or Android device so you can run fine applications like these: iboobOrButt, Bing, Pull Santa's Finger, iLust, Stool Scanner (Fingerprint Test), ISOCK-the talking sock!, Assassin FPS, and Pie Fight.
  

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• RacerCoaster -- race a powerful racing buggy over roller-coaster-like race tracks?
  
  

Mark's iPhone Attacks

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Mark and Wes, at the California Pizza Kitchen on Van Ness in San Francisco.

Sites of Interest:

• Fertility treatment may produce fewer baby boys.
  


• Why we know from genetics that grandmothers play favorites.
  


• This is the blood thinning drug that Mark is taking that requires a lot of testing to get the right dosage
  


• Twitter to make money in 2010 with non-traditional advertising
  


• What is the President and his staff looking at?
  


• Wes mentioned this EZ430 sports watch and development platform. Mark ordered one from here for only $49 which includes the watch and all the tools. The ordering website didn't actually work to complete the order, so Mark ended up calling the phone number listed in the error message page and ordered it by phone.
  


• Buffalo USB 3.0 hard drive now on sale and also a USB 3.0 PCI adapter card.
  


• Mark bought Wes one of these for Bah Humbug day.
  


• Darpa’s Simulated Cat Brain Project a ‘Scam’?
  


• Tesla Motors IPO coming 'any day' now
  


• Changes to Sarbanes-Oxley to ease costs for small firms
  


• Mark explains why you should only buy an iPhone, not a Blackberry or Android phone or Windows Mobile, because seriously only iPhones can run these essential apps: Balloon Boys, Banjo Hoedown, CatPaint, and Sexy Fruit.
  


• Geohot's jailbreak for latest iPhones and ipod Touch's including ones with the latest firmware. But note that the very latest models currently being sold by Apple have a serious problem with this: you must connect the device to a computer and re-do part of the jailbreak every time you reboot the device. This is a serious issue for an iPhone because if you are out and away from your computer and something happens to force you to restart your phone, you will be without a phone until you can get to a computer to do the "tethered boot".
  

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• iTimeZone -- World time clock that lets you enter a past or future date and time as well as the current time and see the corresponding date/time in other cities.
  


• TripIt--That link will take you to search page which shows several apps that interface with the tripit.com website.

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Blower Real Air -- Simulates an air blower on the screen, including making a special sound that somehow causes a tiny stream of air to blow out of the speaker port!


• Crazy Text -- Lets you create messages in inverse and upside-down text.

Is it time for Droid?

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Mark and Wes at the Le Chaval restaurant in Walnut Creek CA

Sites of interest

• David Pogue on how the Motorola Droid is a "manly" phone
  
  
• Apple tablet rumors again
  
  
• How to build a Hackintosh
  
  
• Apple Mac OSx updates flipflop on support for Atom processor
  
  
• Recovery.gov and Layar app layer
  
  
• Acer Liquid handheld with Android OS 1.6
  
  
• Second Canadian cellphone carrier gets iPhone, but has to switch to GSM to do it.
  
  
• Microsoft will drop Spot watch technology in 2012
  
  
• inPulse SmartWatch for Blackberry
  
  
• This is probably the digital ink watch Wes was talking about
  
  
• US losing domain name registry and non English characters for domain names
  
  
• The Motoroa Droid in the U.S. doesn't do multi-touch
  
  
• Hybrid cars in 1901! by Ferdinand Porsch
  
  
• Good article for starting out with Google Wave, once you get your invitation code and a complete eBook reference guide.
  
  
• Microsoft Comic Chat stilll lives and can still be installed
  
  
• Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will
  
  
• At prankdial, you can send prank phone calls to your friends for free! Just select the type of prank, enter the victims phone number, and send away
  
  
• It's very important that you get an iPhone because Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile can't run these apps: Metrognome, Monkey Sheep poop fight, Furious George, Swine Flute, Mega Fart, Bed bug identifier
  
  
• New Comcast bandwidth throttling scheme

We had to cut off the show early at this point because the recorder battery was going dead.

Shit Wes' Dad Says

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Mark, Wes, and Wes's dad at the Hotel Mac in Pt. Richmond, CA.

Sites of Interest:

• Bully Sticks are NOT tendons or processed meat strips, no!  Bully Sticks are 100% ____ _______.
  
  
• History of the PC bus standards: ISA, Micro Channel, PCI.
  
  
• New eBook reader from Barnes and Noble, the Nook.  Mark thought this was the vaporware Plastic Logic reader that we talked about on a previous show because the announcements for that one months ago said it would be for B&N. It turns out the Plastic Logic Que announcements were true, but their reader will be a competitor to the Nook that will also be displayed in B&N stores and also use their eBook library.
  
  
• Mark's speculations were wrong, Sir Alan Michael Sugar did not invent sugar or the Sugar OS on OLPC devices.  But he did have a part in computer history.
  
  
• Will Linux take over from Windows on the desktop?  Probably not, but it is used a lot on server machines, along with FreeBSD, another open-source OS based on UNIX.
  
  
• How Algol and PL/I relate to other computer languages.
  
  
• Mark's memory was totally wrong about the Apricot computer; it had nothing to do with the Apple II and was more of a PC clone, but not quite.
  
  
• Very funny: Conan O'Brien interviews the REAL Intel employee rock star who co-invented the USB bus, not the fake actor in the TV commercials.
  
  
• Google drops Tele Atlas as their provider of U.S. maps, now creating their own maps with the help of crowdsourcing.
  
  
• Google Maps asks the public to help design models of the buildings around them.
  
  
• Details of the Google Book Search Settlement.
  
  
• Wes' dad used to wear a Timex Datalink watch that loaded data from a PC by watching a sequence of rapidly flashing bars on a CRT monitor or a flashing LED.  He now wears the later USB version of such a watch.
  
  
• WikiReader, the complete Wikipedia in a handheld device.
  
  
• AT&T officer kind of admits US iPhone exclusivity may end.
  
  
• The ARCHOS 5 internet tablet is unusual because it's not a cellphone, yet uses the Android OS.  Here is a video demonstration of the device.
  
  
• Warning, you'd better buy an iPhone because BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android, and WebOS phones cannot run essential applications like these: Virtual Kelli, Cry Translator, Hoax Factory, Prankster Kit, Chicken Kazoo, Sexy GrandMa, and Sexy GrandPa.
  
  
• Mark thinks this would make a great iPhone app: http://hotchicksplungingtheirtoilets.com.
  
  
• Justin Halpern is 29, lives at home with his mom and awsome 73-year-old dad, writes down the shit his dad says, and tweets the best ones every day on twitter account @shitmydadsays.  (You don't need to be a twitter user; just click on that link to see his tweets.)  Here is an interview with Justin.

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• Net Scan - Scans the WiFi network your iPhone is connected to, discovers Mac and PC hosts along with any other (even hidden) network servers and devices, shows related network information and services they run.
  .
• Tweetie 2 - Wes' favorite iPhone app for reading and sending tweets.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• iNet - Same idea as Net Scan mentioned above.
  
  
• Best Camera - App for taking and editing photos.  The name comes from the author's book The Best Camera is the One With You; i.e. your cellphone.
  

Phill Schiller is not Vince Shlomi. Steve Balmer is really Peter Boyle.

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes at Korean BBQ Plus in Concord, CA.

Sites of Interest:

• Is it true that in Second Life you can walk uphill both ways to/from school (in the snow)?
  
  
• Read news fast with Google Fast Flip.
  
  
• Are there problems with iPhone 3.1?
  
  
• The Jailbreak is out for 3.1 for the older iPhones and iTouch's, but not for the 3G(S) or latest iTouch's.
  
  
• Saurik's article criticizing Apple's closed app store, and details about the eventual jailbreak for 3G(S) with 3.1 and what you should do to prepare for this.
  
  
• The History of Turntablism, and now DJ's have Pioneer's new CDJ-2000 DJ deck.
  
  
• History of mechanical music clocks.
  
  
• Kanye West crashes the Video Music Awards, then he crashes a presidential speech, President Obama calls him a jackass, and a website where he disses your website.
  
  
• Mark likes Baby Gramps because he plays the banjo at least sometimes.
  
  
• How large can memory cards get?  Toshiba announces a 64 GB SD card. The largest microSDHC we found for sale is 16 GB.
  
  
• The Broadcom chip in the new iPhone Touch is capable of 802.11n.
  
  
• The new iPod Touch models don't have a camera, but it looks like a prototype did.
  
  
• Does David Pogue have a conflict of interest?  And his new book The World According to Twitter.
  
  
• Twitter hash tags.
  
  
• Look at this guy's prediction about  the iPod nano camera.
  
  
• The next eco supercar: the Steenstra Styletto.
  
  
• Electric cars have been around since the 1800's.
  
  
• Information and news about the upcoming Windows 7.
  
  
• Carbonite.com offers unlimited offsite backup to their Internet servers for less than $5 per month, and you can save 20% if you buy via this special deal.
  
  
• Buddy Backup is an example of software that lets you backup to a friend's hard drive over the Internet for free.
  
  
• Bing Visual Search for popular iPhone apps.  Mark is confused on how to use it to find fart apps, since farts are invisible.
  
  
• Steve Ballmer gets mad at a Microsoft employee for using an iPhone, and gets physical with Guy Kawasaki's MacBook Air.
  
  
• The most amazing video of Ballmer's presentation style.
  
  
• Video about the Steve Jobs reality distortion field and details on how it works.
  
  
• Wes' stupid BlackBerry can't run these basic iPhone apps, and neither can Android phones: Waiter Rater, I Got a Man, Virtual High Five, DollEye, Virtual Sushi, Fat Mama's Pussycat Playland, and Blood.
  
  
• Krapps.com is a blog with more examples of the KRitical iPhone apps that aren't available for other platforms.
  
  
• OpenStreetMap creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them.
  

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• Driving Test - teaches the material and simulates the written driving test and at the end presents you a detailed score which you can e-mail yourself. Works for multiple states, but Mark is skeptical because driving laws can be different.
  
  
• iChess - Play against the iPhone computer or a second player.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Application of the week:

• Waze - free, 100% user-generated, social navigation app that allows drivers to build and use live maps & real-time traffic updates to improve their daily commute.
  .

Choose your own Android!

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes at Bo's Barbeque in Lafayette, CA until the wasps and loud band-with-no-banjo forced us out, and then we went to a Starbucks.

Sites of Interest:

• It's the 40th anniversary of Nerf.  Mark has one of these Nerf toys and this iPhone app to control it (although he hasn't gotten the app to work yet, possibly because his missile launcher looks identical, but has a different brand name on it).
  
  
• Wes complains about the Sima Hitch device we talked about last week.
  
  
• This is the type of wasp that attacks us in Lafayette (not our video).  Search this page for the word "wasps" to see how to trap them.
  
  
• Comparison of all Android phones so far, including the new Motorola CLIQ.
  
  
• Warning: Android and Blackberry phones can't run these important iPhone apps: Urinals: the Game, Pocket Bacon, Barf Puke-A-Thon, Puma Index, Sexy Flashlight Sexy, Hell Chicken, D-color_Picker, Blow and Touch, and Fart Tester (is that the picture of a nose? Do we have dirty minds?).
  
  
• Steve Jobs: video at the Apple Keynote event, and interview with David Pogue.
  
  
• The new iPod Touch models don't have a camera, but it looks like a prototype did.
  
  
• Mark wondered whether the new iTouch models have VoiceOver for blind users.  Yes.
  
  
• Demonstrations of the video on the new iPod nano models.
  
  
• Did Yoko Ono And Sky News Just Ruin Apple’s Beatles Surprise?
  
  
• Tenth anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast.
  
  
• SimplifyMedia lets you share streaming music and photos with other computers and iPhones.
  
  
• What's new in iTunes 9?
  
  
• Boxee plays personal and Internet media along with social networking features on a 10-foot user interface so it works well on a computer connected to a large TV monitor with a remote control.
  
  
• New features in iPhone 3.1.
  
  
• Apple explains iPhone OS 3.1 Exchange Server changes.
  
  
• Caching Apple's Signature Server.
  
  
• Oracle tries to stop Sun's bleeding: Is it too late?
  
  
• The IBM 5100 Portable Computer in 1975.
  
  
• Reminisces of the first computer virus.
  
  
• Facebook Lite is here, and some like it better.  As if that isn't sufficiently twitter-like, Facebook  also added tagging of friends using the "@".
  
  
• WordPress is the first blogging platform to implement RSS Cloud.
  

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• Flickr - shoot, upload and share photos & videos, geo-tag your photos or add them to a set. View your photos by set and tag.  (Marked mentioned Google's Picasa software and service.)
  
  
• craigsphone - Craigslist viewer for iPhone 3.0 and above only!  (Will crash on older OS.)
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• C64 - Commodore 64 emulator along with 5 games.  This is pulled from the app store at the moment, but hopefully will be back.
  
  
• I Am T-Pain - gives you Auto-Tune in the palm of your hand, using the same Antares audio technology T-Pain himself uses in the studio to record his music.

Cross-Platform Fart-App Compiler

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Mark and Wes at Pizza Antica in Lafayette, CA.

Sites of Interest:

• The movie "9" comes out on 9/9/09.  The 9 Experiment is here.
  
  
• Information about USB On-The-Go.
  
  
• The Apple Camera Connector let you copy photos from certain digital cameras to your iPod.
  
  
• Wes is buying the Sima Hitch USB Transfer Device.
  
  
• Review of the new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
  
  
• Snow Leopard adds an anti-malware scanner and here's an example of Mac malware in the wild.  Macs have security vulnerabilities, and malware could target Macs.  Everyone says not to worry because there is no incentive to write such a thing, but Mac owners do online banking, etc., just like PC owners do, and are far less likely to have their systems protected by anti-virus software.  So Mark wonders why malware authors wouldn't go after Mac user's passwords and other valuable info?  And how do we know this isn't happening, since Mac owners don't run software to look for them?
  
  
• Snow Leopard: the 64-bit reality.
  
  
• Inside the new Microsoft retail stores.  Everyone forgets that Microsoft had a retail store before.  Wes heard that the San Franciso Microsoft store will be in the old Virgin Megastore building a block from the Apple store, but we can't find any articles saying that.  Mark thinks it would be funny if Microsoft opens their store again at the Metreon, since that is also only a block away.
  
  
• Microsoft is trying to compete with iPod's with their new Zune HD.
  
  
• Wes said GoDaddy blocks China, but it seems like it's China doing the blocking from time to time and our impression is that China has nothing against GoDaddy itself, but sometimes finds objectionable material on a site hosted by GoDaddy and blocks a range of ip address that includes other GoDaddy-hosted sites.
  
  
• AT&T will allow MMS for iPhone on September 25, 2009.
  
  
• Happy 40th birthday, Internet.  Watch the video!
  
  
• Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia, is a parody of Wikipedia.  This is the article that Mark couldn't remember: Free Kevin.
  
  
• Wikipedia will test a new policy for handling updates of articles about living persons.
  
  
• Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text.
  
  
• Wes' stupid Blackberry can't even run these common iPhone apps: Weekly World News, PocketMoney Launcher/Flashlight, Real Calculator, Mosquito vs Human, Full Metal Penguin, Blu Wave SAD Light Therapy Device, BustedHot (the redneck dating service), and Tickle the Beaver.
  
  
• If you're happy and you know it, syntax error.

Wes' iPhone Application of the week:

• Boxcar - We've talked about this before, but Wes is anticipating a new version which will work with Facebook and some email services.

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Expertise : Pure Silver Analyser - Uses the magnetometer on 3gs' to determine whether a piece of jewelry placed on the screen is pure silver, or is an alloy with ferrous metals.
  
  
• Tip Calculator Revolution - Does the same functions as any other modern tip calculator, but has a cool look and controls.
  
  
• Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite - Create, open & edit Microsoft Word & Excel files, and read PDF's.
  

Show me how to strengthen my fingers again?

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Mark and Wes at Pizza Antica in Lafayette, CA.

Sites of Interest:

• Wes' stupid Blackberry can't run these ordinary everyday highly-useful iPhone apps: Treadfinger, Static Chic, SEX-A-MA-PHONE, iDontFart, or the Amazing Radiation Detector.
  
  
• Computer History Museum in Mt. View, CA.
  
  
• Are developers for Windows Mobile worth more than 99 cents?
  
  
• Build an Apple-1 replica from a kit.
  
  
• Web-based Apple ][ and Apple IIgs emulators, including virtual disks for nearly every game ever made for these machines. Mark said The Prisoner is missing, but Prisoner and Prisoner II are there now in the Apple 2 Disks section.  The first one won't start, and Mark has no memory whatsoever of how to play II or why he used to like it.
  
  
• Run Windows applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X with Wine.  (This is an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator".)
  
  
• Judge ordered Microsoft to stop publishing Word and pay $hundreds of millions in fines.  Microsoft will appeal.
  
  
• Internet slowly wakes up to PayPal's quiet fee hike.
  
  
• DJ Mouse Lets You Sit and SPIN!
  
  
• Send a tube full of anything you want into space for only $8,000.  I wonder if a Woot Bag of Crap would fit?
  
  
• You can be a passenger on an orbital spaceflight for free.
  
  
• The game of Geocaching is placing and locating hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then sharing experiences about them online.
  
  
• Uncouth Facebook postings closing doors for job candidates.  Our friend @besz wrote an article about the ethics and legality of employers snooping at your online profiles.
  
  
• If you insist on snooping at people's online activities, Spokeo is an efficient way to go.
  
  
• Archos confirms Sept 15th Android event, readies AppsLib app store.
  
  
• The lolcat Bible Translation Project, translating the entire Bible into LOLspeak.
  
  
• Mini documentary about the Moscow Cat Theater.
  
  
• Enhanced, or Augmented, Reality apps coming to Android and iPhone.  But they might make you look like a dork.
  
  
• An iPhone app that emulated the Nintendo DS was pulled from the app store in several days.
  
  
• Mark and Wes compared the RSS reader apps Newsstand and Byline.  Both synchronize with Google Reader.
  
  
• The multi-platform VLC media player has gone beyond version 1.0.
  

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• iWine Simulator - Have you seen the iBeer app but want something more classy? iWine Simulator is the solution for you!
  
  
• Geocaching - provides real-time, direct access to Geocaching.com's database of worldwide geocaches, with GPS assistance to find them.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Singing Glass - amaze your friends by tapping a tune on the pre-filled crystal glasses, or rubbing the rims to produce haunting glassware shrills.
  
  
• Quicken Online Mobile - sign up for FREE Quicken Online and add your accounts to start tracking your finances from your iPhone.
  
  
• Notifier - On a jailbroken iPhone, install "Notifier" from Cydia and an icon called "Reminder" will show up (I don't know why the names are different, but that's how it works).  You can configure this to put icons at the top-right of the screen showing that things like a call, voicemail, email, SMS, etc. have been received, and the alert sound/vibrate for these events can be repeated.  The icon will disappear when you open the appropriate app to handle the event.
  

No sir, you can't train that Zombie

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes at the Peet's Coffee & Tea in Orinda, CA .

Sites of Interest:

• On Earth, most methane in the atmosphere is produced by the ongoing, unstoppable farting of living things.
  
  
• Wes' stupid Blackberry phone can't even run the basic iPhone apps such as ManWax, Raoul the Dancing Pancake, My Little Cockroach, Gobbler, and Zombie Weatherman.
  
  
• Mark is reading the book: Zombie Survival Guide, and loved the movie Fido.
  
  
• Original District 9 short film.
  
  
• Radio Shack asks for our help changing their signs to "The Shack".
  
  
• Twitter is not popular with kids.
  
  
• Blaise Pascal invented the Pascaline, among other achievements. Here is a Pascaline simulator that works for only a few seconds, and then you are supposed to buy it. Cheap plastic adding machines that looked and worked like the Pascaline were popular before electronic calculators became cheap. Slide adding machines were also cheap and popular and worked on a similar principle.
  
  
• Consumer 3D cameras are coming back in digital form. Fuji has a FinePix REAL 3D handheld model and Novo has the Minoru 3D webcam. The Stereo Realist camera was pretty popular in the film era.
  
  
• YouTube is experimenting with letting people post 3D videos that can be viewed in various formats. Tutorial on how to prepare your 3D videos for uploading. Watch this sample 3D video and note the dropdown box under it called 3D View Style.
  
  
• The Khronos Group is working on a 3D standard for the web.
  
  
• How 3D postcards and posters work.
  
  
• iPhones and other U.S. GSM cellphones are open to an SMS hack.
  
  
• T-Mobile releases the myTouch, a thin Android phone with on-screen keypad. They got publicity for this with a parachute display over San Francisco.
  
  
• Lenovo will release an Android phone in China shortly.
  
  
• FAQ about USB 3.0.
  
  
• Mathematician Cracks Mystery Beatles Chord.
  
  
• Share, the IBM mainframe user group, turns 50.
  
  
• Philippe Kahn, the real founder of Borland, and the fake Frank Borland.
  
  
• A 16-year-old boy died in at a boot camp for Internet addicts after being beaten by supervisors.
  
  
• Feedrinse will take in any RSS feed, filter it to your specifications, and give you a new RSS feed consisting only of the filtered items.
  

Wes' iPhone Application of the week:

• preFlight Airport Delay Status - easy to use display of real time airport delays, closures, and current weather conditions for all major U.S. airports.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Balloonimals -beautifully-rendered balloon animals spring to life when you blow into the microphone on your iPhone.
  
  
• Signalscope - turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a powerful real-time spectrum analyzer and oscilloscope.
  
  

Find Ghosts? There's an app for that!

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes at the LeCheval Vietnamese Restaurant in Walnut Creek, CA .

Sites of Interest:

• Mark used his iPhone to test the restaurant for ghosts using GhostRecorder.
  
  
• Creative Labs introduces Zii Plaszma, the StemCell Computing Platform.
  
  
• Early BART ticket counterfeiting. Cap'n Crunch caught doing this.
  
  
• Hackers counterfeiting San Francisco parking meter cards.
  
  
• O.R.B. Bluetooth Ear Ring: wear it as a ring on your finger, open it into a Bluetooth headset.
  
  
• How the old Napster worked. Shawn Fanning's latest venture.
  
  
• Steve Jobs spotted at the Apple campus and backstage at a Coldplay concert.
  
  
• Various rumors of new iPod Touch and Apple Tablet devices.
  
  
• Build an appliance or your own custom Linux distro with Suse Studio.
  
  
• Sprint buys Virgin Mobile.
  
  
• Microsoft, Yahoo! agree on Internet search partnership.
  
  
• Jerry Springer plays Billy Flynn in the musical "Chicago" in London and maybe Broadway.
  
  
• David Pogue's "Take Back the Beep" campaign, and his book "The World According to Twitter".
  
  
• Apple releases a software update for the iPhone SMS security problem.
  
  
• Skype As We Know It May Not Exist Much Longer, eBay Says. Mark always thought eBay purchasing Skype was a stupid idea and this story is only part of the problem. Meg Whitman was the CEO of eBay when they bought Skype, so Mark wonders whether she should be campaigning for California governor.
  
  
• Wes likes the IPEVO Wi-Fi phone for Skype.
  
  

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• Lunar Module 3d - unique lunar-lander style game that mixes classic arcade action with realistic environments.
  
  
• Currency Calculator - multifunctional calculator which allows you to work with multiple currencies. All currency ratios are provided by a professional currency exchange rate provider.
  
  
• AP Mobile - Select news from local newspapers and broadcasters and combine it with the best of the AP's videos, photo galleries, and national and international coverage. Has rare push notifications for important stories.
  
  
• Tweetie + Boxcar - Wes likes this combination so he can use his favorite Twitter app, yet still get push notifications.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Star Walk and Pocket Universe - On an iPhone 3GS, these use the GPS, compass, and accelerometers to let you aim your iPhone in any direction and height, and they will show you what is in the sky at that point plus a lot more info.
  
  
• B&N eReader - eBook reader from Barnes and Noble. Buy digital books and download them to the reader.
  
  
• TripIt - forward your travel confirmation emails and TripIt creates a master itinerary for your trip, with detailed information about flights, hotels, rental cars and much more.
  
  
• Sudoku Grab - capture a Sudoku puzzle from a newspaper or book using the iPhone's camera. Solve it on the iPhone, or let the app solve it for you.
  
  

Full Metal Chopsticks

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes at the Ohgane Korean BBQ in Oakland, CA .

Sites of Interest:

• Amazon CEO apologizes for removing George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm digital books from Kindle machines that had already purchased them.
  
  
• History of Amazon Acquisitions and Investments, including Zappos.com for $920 million.
  
  
• An old article about the history of Novell Netware, showing its importance at the time.
  
  
• iPhone factory worker committed suicide (or was pushed?) after being interrogated (tortured?) about a missing prototype.
  
  
• Plastic Logic will ship an ebook reader using AT&T cellular data service.
  
  
• New version of Palm Pre webOS lets it sync with iTunes again, and the legal fight begins.
  
  
• A Blackberry firmware update offered by UAE mobile carrier Etisalat was designed to spy on users.
  
  
• Mark thinks this and this are a lot worse than a country spying on Blackberries.
  
  
• CEO of AT&T said iPhone will not always be exclusive with them.
  
  
• Google maps had the moon for some time, and now the Google Earth program can be used to view the moon.
  
  
• Top 20 signs you are a twitter addict.
  
  
• Disney Japan will offer micro-SD versions of movies along with the DVDs.
  
  
• Best T-Shirt of the month: Amish Gone Wild.
  
  
• Microsoft announces Windows 7 RTM gold master disc.
  
  
• A history and evaluation of IBM's System R and SQL
  
  
• Wes likes the O'Reilly "Head First"series of technical books.
  
  
• Wes' stupid Blackberry can't even run the FartBot iPhone app.
  
  
• iPhone Fart App Legal War on the Daily Show.
  
  
• Accidents related to factory robots.
  
  
• Robot Cannon Goes Berserk, Kills 9.
  
  
• IBM PS/2 personal computers with MicroChannel Architecture.
  
  
• Rumors that the next iPod Touch will be just like the iPhone, but without the phone.
  
  

Wes' iPhone/Blackberry Applications of the week:

• Later Dude Pro - Blackberry app to create call back reminders.
  
  
• Cube - single player and multiplayer first person shooter that provides satisfying and fast oldskool gameplay; kind of like Quake.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• SimplyTweet - Mark's favorite Twitter app this week (he always changes his mind). Includes push notification for your Reply and Direct tweets.
  
  
• BoxCar - Provides push notifications for Reply and Direct tweets, but that's all it does. Useful if your favorite twitter app doesn't already have this function.
  

• iGPUtrace - For iPhone 3GS only because it uses the new GPU and the compass. Just a demo of what the GPU can do, but fun to play with because it demos a virtual reality by moving the iPhone around in front of you.
  
  
• RedLaser - realtime barcode scanner, supports all standard UPC and EAN barcodes and looks up the products in a database. (Mark said it was a jailbreak app and it is, but he found out that it has also been in the App Store for a while so anyone can buy it.)
  
  

Is your iPhone 3GS Broken?

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes at the Korean Bulgogi House in Concord, CA .

Sites of Interest:

• Mark mentioned hostgator.com for hosting WordPress blogs and many other types of web pages and services.
  
  
• Wes' stupid Blackberry can't even run basic iPhone apps like these: Fartoscopes, Big Mouth, and TubaFollow.
  
  
• Zoho has free and low-cost productivity, collaboration, and business apps. They just added a way to export your Access databases to the web.
  
  
• Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in Mathematics and is also credited with having written the first high-level language compiler, and for leading the effort to develop the COBOL programming language.
  
  
• History of Borland International, and Will The Real Frank Borland Please Stand Up?
  
  
• Fancy fast food: yeah, it's still bad for you, but look see how good it can look!
  
  
• Universal/TuneCore deal opens major doors for indie artists.
  
  
• Peter Pancreas Pimple still uses WebTV.
  
  
• VLC media player 1.0 officially released after more than 10 years of work.
  
  
• The Story of the Fail Whale, and the Fail Whale in Pop Culture.
  
  
• Why are SMS messages limited to 160 characters?
  
  
• History and myths about why railroad tracks are the gauge they are.
  
  
• Cheap Trick brings back the 8-track.
  
  
• Radio Station Broadcast Cartridges are similar to 8-track tapes.
  
  
• YouTube videos of the Star Spangled banner played on a Louisville Slugger baseball bat and on a ukulele. Explanation of the electronic bat.
  
  
• Pandora lives! SoundExchange cuts deal on webcasting rates.
  
  
• Google Chrome OS vs. Android on notebooks.
  
  

Wes' iPhone Application of the week:

• ModBox Module Player - universal Tracker Format Player that plays Amiga and PC module computer music, e.g. Protracker, Fasttracker, Screamtracker.
  
  
• The Sexy Ladies of SHOW -brings you the incredibly beautiful women from the pages of SHOW magazine.
  
  
• Babe on a Beam - balance the little cutey on the beam and unlock new powers. But go easy with those controls... it's a long way down!
  
  
• Linux Cheat Sheet - a quick reference guide for all the Linux command lines necessarily to manage a Linux server.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• iTwitter - Full-featured Twitter app including filtered groups; can do everything in landscape.
  
  
• TweetDeck - Also full-featured Twitter app with filtering; won't do landscape; synchronizes filters with TweetDeck for desktop machines.
  
  
• Epocrates - Information on 3,300+ drugs, including dosing, adverse reactions, pricing and pictures, interactions, pill identification.
  
  
• Run Pee Mobile - tells you which points in a movie you can safely "run" and "pee" without missing a hugely important plot point.
  
  

"Bing" goes the sound of Microsoft

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes at the Back Forty Texas BBQ in Pleasant Hill, CA .

Sites of Interest:

• When we recorded this show, the Palm Pre had not yet been released and we were going by rumors and pre-release reviews. The Pre is now out and available in Sprint stores. Mark played with one and liked it a lot more than he thought he would.
  
  
• Same story with the new iPhone: our show was going on rumors, but the iPhone 3G S has now been announced and should be available for purchase on June 19.
  
  
• If Mark decides to get the new iPhone 3G S, his old 3G should get better than normal value on eBay because he has been careful to maintain compatibility with Yellowsn0w so his phone can be unlocked to work with foreign SIM cards.
  
  
• iPhone OS 3.0 is supposed to have Parental Controls to restrict which tier of apps can run, and therefore Apple may relax their restrictions on types of apps in the App Store.
  
  
• History of the Xerox Corporation and how xerography works.
  
  
• Ditto machines were a very cheap way to make multiple copies of a master. You can still buy one!
  
  
• Muscular Men Have More Sex Partners, but Poorer Health.
  
  
• Gummi bear surgery. WARNING: This Instructable contains graphic images of Gummi Bears being cut open.
  
  
• Wes likes squarespace for setting up blogs and other websites.
  
  
• Actor David Carridine was found dead in Bangkok, Thailand under strange circumstances.
  
  
• Literal Video Versions of music videos. Watch that one, and there are plenty more from that producer and the Related Videos.
  
  
• Windows 7 is expected to be shipped on 10/22/09.
  
  
• The first phone-company operated mobile phone call was made in June, 1946.
  
  
• Ham radio operators can make phone calls via an autopatch device installed in a repeater.
  
  
• The CarterFone device (click that link, then scroll down to that section) let businesses build their own radio phones.
  
  
• Adobe Design Catalyst is a new interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding.
  
  
• San Francisco is the first city to take city services requests via twitter.
  
  
• Gary McKinnon, aka SOLO, is a Scottish hacker facing extradition to the United States to face charges of perpetrating what has been described by one prosecutor as the "biggest military computer hack of all time."
  

• Microsoft introduced a new search engine to compete with google: Bing. To further compete with google, the Bing 411 service is like GOOG-411, and seems to be the Tellme service that Microsoft bought.
  
  
• Bill Gates owns the image management company Corbis.
  
  
• Samba and WebDAV are alternative methods of accessing files on remote machines.
  
  

Wes' iPhone Application of the week:

• Flight Control game- Air traffic control is the world's most stressful job, but not for you. You don't need heading angles, flight rules or meteorological reports, you're a natural! A prodigy! A born controller! Just touch and drag the planes to their runway.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Alien Composite Sketch - Have you had a close encounter with Aliens. Perhaps you’ve been abducted and no one believes you? Well now you can give the authorities an accurate description of their identities.
  
  
• Meat Clock -Now iPhone and iPod touch owners can proudly display the current time in meat! Includes animated seconds t-bone.
  
  
• The Moron Test - Are you a complete idiot? What about your friends, coworkers, and family? Buy The Moron Test and find out!
  
  
• Arcade Bowling - In the tradition of Skeeball, everyone’s favorite Boardwalk bowling game, use your fingers and steady aim to flick “laser” balls down the alley and up the ramp into the scoring holes.
  
  
• QuickOffice Mobile Office Suite - Enterprise-grade Microsoft Word and Excel Office functionality with leading-edge innovation and unparalleled ease-of-use.
  
  

The Mail Order Tapeworm

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark, Wes, and guest @besz at Bo's BBQ in Lafayette, CA .

Sites of Interest:

• We make jokes about being sick because this recording was made when the Swine Flu scare was going on.
  
  
• Apple removed the Baby Shaker iPhone app from the app store.
  
  
• History of the word "computer". Comptometer operators should have had that title.
  
  
• Were the people who wired plug boards the first programmers?
  
  
• Purse that is a cross between a Nintendo and a Commodore 64.
  
  
• History of Commodore Computers and pictures of the Pet.
  
  
• The Remington Rand Univac was the first use of a high-speed printer.
  
  
• Early-day line printers used chains and other mechanical technologies to print one entire line at a time.
  
  
• Computer music using an IBM 1403 chain printer.
  
  
• Modern video of making music with vintage personal computer equipment.
  
  
• Will people pay for custom Facebook URL's?
  
  
• Mark thinks this is all bullshit bullshit bullshit: the Tapeworm Diet.
  
  
• Wes mentioned worms that eat infected flesh, but he probably meant medical leeches.
  
  
• Get your free "chimp id". Mark has one.
  
  
• The .tel domain suffix is kind of like a chimp id, but more organized for business use and it's not free. The price for a .tel domain name varies with the registrar; the cheapest Mark found for .tel is mydomain. @justinhayward does support for the .tel concept on Twitter. Mark has one, but he doesn't do much with it.
  
  
• In October, 2005, Steve Jobs was still saying there would be no video iPod.
  
  
• How to make a hole in one, right there in your office.
  
  
• Bes' HTC TouchPro phone and Wes' Blackberry can't even do these simple things that every iPhone can do: Pimple Popper, Dart Anyone, Table, Monkey-Fart, Parent Remote, Mr. Elephant Fart.
  
  
• The Time Magazine poll for the World's Most Influential Person was rigged.
  
  
• The 2 Girls 1 Cup video.
  
  
• Mark thinks this is a stupid name for a website about things you like (as opposed to things you lick): likaholix.com
  
  

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• Wolfenstein 3D Classic - You are OSA super agent B.J. Blazkowicz and you must escape from Castle Wolfenstein and defeat the twisted Nazi regime!
  
  
• Vir2L® Base Jumper - Base Jumper does more to capture the spirit of the old beloved games than anything Nintendo has released in 13 years.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• 10 Balls 7 Cups - simulation of the Skeeball game, including winning prize tickets.
  
  
• My.tel - The official free app from Telnic to manage your .tel domain.
  
  
• Party Whistle - Just blow into your microphone and enjoy the realistic sounds and animations of a party whistle.
  
  
• KFC Grillz - Hold the iPhone in front of your mouth and talk as you impress your friends with your new grill. The grilled out mouth speaks in time with your voice!
  
  
• TweetStack - Group your Twitter friends, search terms, and TwitPics into fully customizable "stacks", all of which reside on the tab bar and show you the number of unread messages.
  
  

New Ways to be Gross with Twitter

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes in Pleasant Hill, CA at the Monsoon Masala restaurant.

Sites of Interest:

• Office chair that measures farts and sends twitters.
  
  
• Brain-Twitter interface. There have been similar machines that read brainwaves as an input device to a video game.
  
  
• There are websites where you type commands and a virtual actor obeys them. E.g. Virtual Girlfriend.
  
  
• Long before twitter you could leave community messages on cards.
  
  
• The Community Memory system of public terminals.
  
  
• Optical signaling is an ancient method of long-distance communication.
  
  
• History of the Vocoder instrument, first demonstrated by AT&T at the 1939 World's Fair.
  
  
• The Legend Group turned into Lenovo and acquired IBM's Personal Computer Division.
  
  
• Version 9.04 of Ubuntu Linux was released.
  
  
• Nintendo Gameboy turns 20. You can play the old games on emulators.
  
  
• For several days, the Apple.com home page was taken over by a counter supposedely showing the number of app downloads as this approached one billion.
  
  
• Apple iTouch 3.0 firmware will unlock the Bluetooth capability that was already in the hardware.
  
  
• Broadcom is first with a Bluetooth 3.0 chipset.
  
  
• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi share the 2.4 GHz radio band.
  
  
• How Bluetooth got its name.
  
  
• Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming".
  
  
• Acer confirms it will make an Android phone, but this guy is skeptical whether Android will become popular.
  
  
• Mark thinks this is a very weird name for a website about things you like: www.likaholix.com.
  
  
• Oracle is buying Sun for a mere $7.4 billion.
  
  
• Wes is trying to sneak Blackberry applications into Slurpcast.
  
  

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• Yowza! - Launch it and it finds deals in your geographic area. Show the cashier the deal on your iPhone screen, they scan the barcode, and you save money.
  
  
• CraigsMobileList - Wes' favorite app for accessing the craigslist website.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• PocketMeter - It emits sound and measures the time it takes for the echo to return. Point it towards a wall or floor, touch the screen, and it will show you the distance.
  
  
• 3 Numbers - Currency & units converter, tip calculator, and calculator all in one. But the special thing about this app is the steampunk look. To understand the true meaning of "steampunk", visit the Kew Bridge Steam Museum in London.
  

BlackBerry and iPhone Battle at Strada

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes in Berkeley, CA at the Caffe Strada.

Sites of Interest:

• Where are they now? 25 computer products that refuse to die.
  
  
• Wes mentioned the vaporware Peapod electric car, and Mark pointed out that the Electric Time mini cars are available today.
  
  
• The Nopopo Batteries from Japan will recharge with urine, blood, and even apple juice! But remember, liquids only, no po po!
  
  
• RIM removed an application from the Blackberry app store, Wattpad eReader.
  
  
• History of the Hewlett-Packard company, starting with the sale of oscillators to Disney.
  
  
• 40th Anniversary of the Request For Comment method of developing Internet standards.
  
  
• Bill Gates and Paul Allen started their computer carreer with Traf-O-Data while they were in high school.
  
  
• Bill Gates rocks! (Starting at 4:23 into this video)
  
  
• The real portable Commodore 64, and Ben Heck's vision of what a Commodore 64 laptop would have looked like.
  
  
• How to turn the lit-up Apple logo on a MacBook into a second LCD monitor.
  
  
• Frequent IMs with your boss make you more productive.
  
  
• BumpTop reminded Mark of the old Microsoft Bob add-on for Windows. But now that he watched that video to remind himself what Bob was really like, maybe they're not similar at all.
  
  
• Wes' stupid $400 BlackBerry can't even run the most essential iPhone apps like iPimpler, i-Chirp, iTrigger Fart Version, I Crush Your Head, or Burpy.
  
  
• Wes' BlackBerry is so useless that he might as well get this or this instead of the real phone.
  
  

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• i-c-LiveCams -Live streaming video from cameras around the world
  
  
• Howcast - View videos from howcast.com wherever you are.
  
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Skype -Phone calls and chats through the Skype system.
  
  
• SullysFlight - Mark has this, but it no longer seems to be available. It was a subset of X-Plane, which is still an active app.
  
  

Model Airplanes

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes in Moraga, CA at the Ranch House Cafe.

Sites of Interest:

• Steve Jobs maintains grip on Apple.
  
  
• Some Safeway stores now have free Wi-Fi as part of a rebranding marketing effort.
  
  
• Remember ICQ?
  
  
• Tesla is working on an electric sedan.
  
  
  
  
• Mark sounds skeptical that Tesla will ever ship anything, but they claim they have already delivered 250 of their Roadster model. Video of a real owner showing off his Roadster.
  
  
• The idea of battery-powered cars is older than you think.
  
  
• Solar-powered birdhouse with perch that lights up at night to attract bugs for the birds to eat.
  
  
• Submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions.
  
  
• iPhone firmware 3.0 has been jailbroken, but you probably shouldn't try it yet.
  
  
• There are lots of rumors that new iPhone models will be out this summer.
  
  
• Is this article accurate about Obama's gift of an iPod to the Queen of England? No? How about this one?
  
  
• President Obama gave Gordon Brown a box set of DVD's.
  
  
• One of Google's April Fools jokes was that Google Apps can now be written in Fortran 77.
  
  
• Information and video tours of a typical Google data center.
  
  
• Flywheels are now used for Uninterruptible Power Supplies in competition to batteries. (Mark called these "gyroscopes" because he was thinking of something that spins.)
  
  
• The Apple 1 and a history of the Apple Computer Corporation.
  
  
• Nomee, TweetDeck, and PeopleBrowsr are software/websites that help you organize your feeds from various social networks.
  
  
• Wes likes the hi5 social networking system which claims to be the third largest in the world, but Mark never even heard of it. They are having a funding crisis.
  
  
• Mark couldn't remember the free dating service with the fishy name. It's PlentyOfFish.
  
  
• Write applications for .NET using the MONO IDE on Mac, PC or Linux.
  
  
• Mark likes the free SyncToy program from Microsoft, and mentioned it because it uses .net.
  
  
• Is voicemail obsolete?
  
  
• Mark's favorite voicemail transcription service is VoiceCloud.
  
  
• Western Digital goes solid state, acquires Silicon Systems.
  
  
• iFart was the #1 seller in the iPhone app store.
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Bump -Somehow it knows when you bump two iPhones together, and will transfer contact information.
  
  
• TapTapCards -Turns pictures on your iPhone into real picture postcards that are snail-mailed to your friends.
  
  
• Color Splash - give photos a dramatic look by converting them to black and white, while keeping your chosen details in color.
  
  
• iControl Cat - remote control for your cat, just like TV remotes. Mark particularly liked this because, believe it or not, he bought one of these and it didn't work either.
  
  
• Farthoven -this sort of fart app has been done before, but Mark liked the name.