who

Wilco beats leaks by streaming its own album

Wilco on Wednesday began streaming its new album, "Wilco (The Album)," in its entirety from its Web site. The band began circulating the record about a month ago, and anticipated that the album would be leaked on file-sharing networks. As soon as it appeared via P2P, the band offered it up as a free stream, reasoning that hardcore fans would pre-order the new album regardless, and showing confidence that fence-sitters would find it engaging enough to buy it as well, or at least be aware that the band will probably be bringing its (amazing) live show to town … Read more

Is that your final answer?

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Lite is a free, six-question preview of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, a game based on the current U.S. version of the world-famous TV game show. The game faithfully recreates the look and feel of the show, from the live video clip of Meredith Viera kicking off each game ("Let's play Millionaire!") to the music, sound effects, graphics, and question format and categories. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire even gives you the game's signature "lifelines": Ask the Audience, Double Dip, Phone a Friend (with canned … Read more

The 404 298: Where Erica Boeke teaches us how to watch sports like a girl

Erica Boeke is on the show today to talk about her new book "GameFace: The Kick-Ass Guide for Women Who Seriously Love Pro Sports." On the show, we talk about women and their fascination with watching hockey players kick each others' ass. And Justin reveals that he has never played baseball, basketball, football, or hell, even played catch in his life.

We don't talk too much technology today, but we promise: we have a good time with sports and our general ability to turn any seemingly benign topic into a sexual innuendo. After Justin talks about men playing hockey, you'll never think about it in an unerotic way again.

Briefly on the show, we mention the war going on between Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," and Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money." Jon Stewart pretty much destroys Jim Cramer and the entire financial news media. We've never almost seen a grown man crying on cable television.

As usual, keep the voice mails coming: 1-866-404-CNET (2638). We still haven't found the right motto yet, but boy do we have a good time sorting through them. Or if you just want to leave a message about how Erica Boeke looks like Helen Hunt, that's fine too. Everyone have a great weekend, and you'll hear us next week when Jeff asks the Sleep Doctor Michael Breus how to stop farting in his sleep.

Episode 298 Download today's podcast… Read more

Fully Equipped: Stupid human tricks--no HD on an HDTV

The Leichtman Research Group recently conducted a phone survey that showed 18 percent of HDTV owners think they're watching high-definition shows, when, in fact, they're viewing standard-definition programming.

I'm not sure exactly what questions LRG asked and how it arrived at that 18 percent figure, but I can tell you that I spent part of my New Year's Eve this year confronting and rectifying a non-HD situation just in time to see the ball drop in Times Square in HD.

This is not the first HDTV I've rescued from the standard-def dungeon. It's happened … Read more

Stupid human tricks: No HD on an HDTV

The Leichtman Research Group (LRG) recently conducted a phone survey that showed 18 percent of HDTV owners think they're watching high-definition shows, when in fact they're viewing standard-definition programming. I'm not sure exactly what questions LRG asked and how it arrived at that 18 percent figure, but I can tell you that I spent part of my New Year's Eve this year confronting and rectifying a non-HD situation just in time to see the ball drop in Times Square in HD.

This is not the first HDTV I've rescued from the standard-def dungeon. It's … Read more

Dalek sneakers: Exterminate with your feet

Black sneakers are pretty stylish all on their own. It's hard to improve upon basic black.

But if you could, this would be one way to do it: trick them out with hand-painted Daleks from Doctor Who!

Inventive crafty type kelly_bear whipped up these kickin' kicks, complete with the Daleks' signature phrase, "Exterminate!" on the backs.

And while they can't actually exterminate people as far as I know (my brother's shoes can, Daleks or not), they do have one advantage over their inspiration: they can go up stairs.

(Via Technabob)

Hearwho crunches text into MP3s for your amusement

Listening to MP3s of robotic voices reading stories from the Web is a good way to prepare for the eventual downfall of mankind at the hands of our robotic overlords. If you're into that kind of thing, Hearwho will do all the heavy lifting for you by converting any text you feed it into a downloadable MP3 file.

If you've spent hours amusing yourself playing with AT&T's text-to-speech demo, you'll be glad to know that Hearwho does away with the somewhat annoying 300-character limit. I dumped an entire 800-word story into the text box … Read more

SezWho acquires Tejit to expand commenter reputations

Distributed commenter reputation service SezWho is growing a little bigger Wednesday morning with the acquisition of Tejit, an engine that tracks content around the Web to see how it links up with people, events, places, and more. The tool began as a pet project for creator Indus Khaitan, who wanted to sort through blog content to find who had the most gravitas on any topic or in a certain field.

What does this mean for SezWho? SezWho's founder, Jitendra Gupta, tells me that in the next two to three months users of the add-on reputation system for comments, forums, … Read more

Where Jeff has the clap

EPISODE 56

Randall and Wilson talk today about crazy Apple lawsuits handwritten on notepads, 90210 could be returning from the grave, plus dolla-dolla-bill-y'all, the purple $5 bill hits the streets, and Mark the Intern kicks some ass. All that, plus Jeff is on the phone and 404 best buddy Demetrius Wren joins us in studio. Listen, or else you'll get the clap, too.

Listen now: Download today's podcast