Retro

Happy Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Day! Actually, that probably means none of you are listening to our show today. You're likely at your local Costco, Sam's Club, or other restaurant supply depot stocking up on Twizzlers and Four Loko for the next two weeks of gaming hibernation.

But if you're ready for a break, today we'll tell you how to case business interiors for your next B&E using Google+ and GMaps, access the hidden panorama mode in the iOS5 camera app, pay $19 for a truly unlimited everything cell phone plan, and why you probably shouldn't let a cowboy doctor in the UK shine a laser in your beautiful brown eyes.

Stream or download today's podcast after the break!… Read more

Break out the parachute pants and that red leather Michael Jackson zipper jacket you have stashed in the back of the closet. iHome's iP4 portable boom box for iPhone is going retro with a vengeance.

Just looking at the ghetto blaster design of the iP4 iPhone and iPod stereo dock makes me want to get a perm, rock some Cyndi Lauper, and see what Geraldo is up to these days.

The iP4 has more in common with a traditional boom box than just looks. It also runs on six D batteries so you can heft it up on your shoulder and strut down the street blasting the "Footloose" theme song. The original, not the remake.

Nostalgia doesn't always come cheap. The iP4 costs $199.99. At least the technology has come a long way. The 7.5-pound boom box features a five-band graphic equalizer with an LCD display, FM radio, and backlit buttons.

The speakers are composed of 4-inch carbon composite woofers and 1-inch ferrofluid-cooled tweeters.

Now all you need is one of those brick-size '80s cell phones to complete the tech look. Totally tubular!… Read more

Barnes & Noble just announced three new tablets that could extinguish the Amazon Kindle Fire--tune in to hear why you should care, and how to shop for the best device this holiday season. Also, happy birthday, Wilson!… Read more

Don't forget to update your Facebook status update for the last time before Anonymous nukes the whole site tomorrow. Remember, remember the fifth of November. Leaked from today's 404 Podcast episode: Siri goes down, Google does a barrel roll, Kevin Rose goes Oink, and who are the 35 million people still using AOL dial-up?… Read more

At first I thought the Tweephone might be a joke, but upon second look, I see that it's just a fun little hack. A twee one, even.

The "world's first analog Twitter client" lets you tweet with the turn of a rotary phone dial. An Arduino platform inside the retro-looking phone chassis interprets your dial turns as letters in much the same way you used to have to keep punching keys on an alphanumeric dialpad to get the right letters when texting. To get an "a," for example, you have to dial 2 once; to get an "f," you dial 3 three times. Yes, yes, that's a lot of labor for 140 characters, but has tweeting ever looked so charming? … Read more

Donald and Eric comment on RIM's dull vision of the future and are only slightly more enthusiastic about Microsoft's competing take on things. A Nokia researcher shows off a genuinely interesting vision of what flexible touch-screen devices might be able to accomplish. In Geek News, Eric confesses his love for Uncharted 3 and Harrison Ford's face.

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Today's show begins with a history lesson on the fate of the Microsoft Courier tablet and its possible reincarnation with a modified version of the Windows 8 operating system.… Read more

We can't remember the last time it snowed on Halloween weekend, but the cold weather kept all but one of us from dressing up today. Tune in to see who conjured up the spirits of Halloween!… Read more

Still don't have a Halloween costume? Check out Superpunch's list of downloadable masks--just print and cut them out, add a string or a Popsicle stick if you're extra lazy, and off you go. Happy Halloween!

Vampire power, also known as standby power, is a reference to some electronics sucking up juice even when they're turned off, but it also works for our ongoing Halloween show title theme! Check out this article on the Learning Thermostat to see what Nest Labs is doing to kill vampire power.

The iPhone Dev-Team is already close to finishing a preliminary jailbreak on the iPhone 4S that will eventually work with the iPad 2 as well, but what happened to good old analog piracy? As it happens, Activision Blizzard is knee-deep in pirates already circulating bootleg copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.… Read more