vi

The 404 414: Where we eat Snow Leopard for dinner

Wilson's back, but we figure everyone is tired of hearing about the Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard by now, so we shift gears and talk about Walmart shoppers instead. Behold: a new blog documenting the People of Walmart. While Wilson "Tennessee" Tang thinks this all looks pretty typical, Jeff and I are straight up spooked. It's humiliating enough to set foot in a Walmart, but what if I just need to pick up deodorant? Now I have to worry about being publicly humiliated on this blog too? And who brought that goat into the store?

After our rant is over, we move on to dissect a few upcoming movies like James Cameron's newest science fiction CGI powerhouse, "Avatar." The weird part is that James Cameron has been planning this movie for 10 years but hasn't been able to make it because the technology just wasn't there. Well, now it's here...and the movie looks like a cheesy cut scene from Halo. Next up on the butcher block is "Cirque de Freak: The Vampire's Assistant." Don't get me wrong, I love me some John C. Reilly, but a convincing vampire he is not. When was the last time you've seen a bloodsucker with curly hair?

The rest of the show devolves into the three hosts doing vampire impressions, which isn't incredibly hard to do, just follow these three steps:

Talk loudly and open-mouthed Raise the intonation of your voice at the end of every sentence Don't forget the "AH AH AHHH" at the end

If you're like Wilson and don't have anything to do over the weekend, why don't you give us a call at 1-866-404-CNET and tell us what's on your mind? We're also on Twitter, Facebook, and Meetup as well, so there's really no excuse for falling out of touch. Or, if you have a suggestion for our Weekend Throwback Episode, let me know in a comment below!

EPISODE 414 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

EchoStar SlingLoaded HD DVR 922 combines Slingbox and DVR into one super set-top box

We're huge fans of the Slingbox, which lets you access your home TV from any broadband-connected PC and many models of 3G smartphones. But the boxes have always had a fundamental problem of monopolizing the host video source (cable/satellite box or DVR); if you access your Slingbox remotely and somebody happens to be watching the home TV, both of you are forced to watch the same program.

That's just one problem that the new EchoStar SlingLoaded HD DVR 922 fixes. The "SlingLoaded" moniker basically means that it's got a Slingbox built-in. That, along with … Read more

VMWare VI4 renamed to vSphere

For those interested in where VMWare's Virtual Infrastructure is heading, there was interesting news out of a Minneapolis VMWare User Group (VMUG) meeting yesterday: apparently VMWare is making it official that VI4 is now vSphere.

From Jason Boche's blog:

Today at the Minneapolis VMware User Group (VMUG) meeting, VMware employees disclosed to a group of 150+ attendees the new name for the next generation of Virtual Infrastructure many have been referring to as VI4 or VI.next. The new name is VMware vSphere. I value and respect the various relationships I have with VMware and thus before posting … Read more

Produce and sell music with strangers online

Sharing your music, videos, and opinions with other people online is the drive of many Web companies, each striving to make experiences more interactive, and to bridge the gap between the anonymous Web and face-to-face reality. Three companies peddling their wares Thursday afternoon at Plug and Play's Fall 2008 Expo in Sunnyvale, Calif., are taking online music-making, video conferencing, and content-sharing a step further.

Bojam can be thought of as the Wikipedia of music-creation. Musicians from around the world can add and tweak compilations piecemeal for profit or for play. The online mixer lets musicians from anywhere lay down … Read more

TweakVI needs tweaks of its own

When a new program asks you if you'd like to create a system restore point before you finish installing it, there's only one reasonable conclusion: something bad could happen to the computer, the programmers know this, and so they're offering you a bit of Teflon for protection.

In TweakVI, the Windows Vista settings utility, it's a mighty fine idea to take the advice and create the restore point. It's not that the program hosed my computer when I installed it, but it's definitely a buggy program and the current version, at least, should be … Read more

Microscope fits in your pocket, just because

It used to be that powerful microscopes were reserved for laboratories, but magnification levels that were once possible only with professional equipment are increasingly available to the masses thanks to advances in digital technologies. Some gadgets are finding a natural home on the science toy market for kids, complete with night-vision features.

But the most certain way to tell if a product category has attrained common-denominator status is when it reaches the prolific mass manufacturers of Asia. To wit: Korean company 3R Systems has unveiled the "ViTiny," a pocket-sized digital microscope.

Measuring 4.7 by 2.2 inches … Read more

VMware tool tries new twist on power savings

VMware announced details of its forthcoming Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 on Monday, including an experimental feature to shut down servers if they're not necessary.

The feature, called Distributed Power Management, monitors how hard servers are working and moves virtual machines to new machines to let unneeded servers be shut down. When workload picks up again, the servers are powered up again, according to the publicly traded EMC subsidiary.

Virtual Infrastructure includes two main components. First is ESX Server, the underlying hypervisor that lets a single physical computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously in compartments called virtual machines. Second is … Read more

The Saga continues...Final Fantasy VI Advance

I've never been a fan of RPGs, and when it comes to handheld consoles, I prefer the PSP. However, this may change with the release of Square Enix's latest offering to the pantheon of Final Fantasy games. A few days ago, the company released Final Fantasy VI Advance for the Game Boy Advance. From what I hear, the game is more than a mere import from the console version, and priced at only $30, you'll get your money's worth. Also, with the GBA Handheld running at about $80 (much less than its sibling the Nintendo DS), … Read more