Buzz Out Loud Podcast

On today's Buzz Out Loud, Natali and Molly form a new Amazonian society in advance of the development of artificial sperm. But in much more important news, Google is finally building the thin-client, Netbook-friendly operating system that Molly predicted back in 2005. And poor Yahoo is stuck in 2005: it just announced Search Pad. Aw. Poor Yahoo.

EPISODE 1014

Introducing the Google Chrome OS
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10281744-2.html

Which Molly predicted in 2005!
http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-5759958-1.html

Yahoo Search Pad
http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=394383

Michael Jackson memorial pushes Internet traffic to its limits
http://gigaom.com/2009/07/07/michael-jacksons-memorial-online-traffic-pushes-internets-limits/
http://mashable.com/2009/07/07/cnn-live-stream-michael-jackson/
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-jackson-memorial-stats-roughly-6000-facebook-status-updates-per-minute-/

Federal sites hacked
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/07/AR2009070703250.html
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=5093

RIAA/music streaming sites agreement
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/technology/internet/08radio.html
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/07/08/1339224/Pandora-Stabilizes-No-Longer-Completely-Free

LG Chocolate Phone: what is this aspect ratio??
http://gizmodo.com/5309204/new-lg-chocolates-secret-feature-is-an-800x345-resolution-219-cinema-widescreen-display

West Virginia sues Comcast over cable box tying
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/reviews/2009/07/west-virginia-sues-comcast-over-cable-box-tying.ars

Gaze-tracking software protects computer privacy
http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/07/07/1946217/Gaze-Tracking-Software-Protects-Computer-Privacy

British scientists can make sperm
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2009/07/08/3007405-british-scientists-claim-to-create-human-sperm

VOICE MAIL
President of the Internet

Dwight on Gmail

E-MAIL
Team Buzz

During your discussion of Google Chrome OS today, I am curious as to what impact, if any, GCOS might also have on older PCs. Since GCOS is already targeted at low-powered Netbooks, it stands to reason GCOS might also breathe some extra life into that 5-year-old laptop you were thinking of ditching. By moving a lot of the processing power from your lap to the cloud, could an unintended consequence be a reprieve on hardware's life cycle? Certainly Google wouldn't complain.

Mike in Dayton

************

Hello Buzz crew!
We are one month away from the coolest day/time, according to my friend, Saud:

On August 7, 2009
At 12hr 34 minutes and 56 seconds on the 7th of August this year, the time and date will be
12:34:56 07/08/09

Khaled from Saudi Arabia.

************

iTunes 5-star club
The Geek Master
zippyg
3thom
Norman from Novato
BryanBR
delmauriow
Vance M
ihatebillg
iFOREIGNi
jbpounders
Tommollijas
yoyojam55
legend2k
niatish
pmm217
johnnyg123
yokonative
ct06
shetbomb78
Club Debit
Nostra Thomas
Tiki Guy
vaso247
Sunder_r
poly915
mdr33
tav72
tecknodragon
greghutch
techgolf
cubanmike82
natePickard
Gildorluthien
Dingo42
pmm217
Kenwait
Big JT
BraveJHawk
mike e_p
drsid
HonestReviewer9000
Real_MrHappy
Polarfreeze
colintethys
michelleh45
mhanley
satguy (a little weird with the wal-mart tale there)
currently downloading
merrittgene
sandbox32
ewavemedia
Mareshalu
Jasc79
Mike798001
Gale the Third
macSK
BobMac
Matt1212

CrAzY Tom M.
Jesse Vazquez
KeatonTech
Dfaoj
Dr. Sanseveria
zypher.the.one
MiliaryLovesBOL
Ikcor
watchmesoar
slamshrk31
Jonathan55
njk828
SmittyRedcard
yourmomisanillegalimmigrant

While we inadvertently promote a chain restaurant's free luncheon, we also talk a lot about space. Which annoys Brian Cooley to no end. We talk about Google Mars, and contacting the ISS and the NASA-sponsored Singularity university. But he gets his revenge when he announces the retirement of the inventor of the BMW-butt.

EPISODE 903

Google Earth adds Mars roving
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10154741-52.html

Google privacy counsel facing criminal charges
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F02%2F02%2F2337207
https://www.privacyassociation.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1745&Itemid=228

VMWare virtual desktop on any device including mobile
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10155486-92.html

Amazon moves into casual gaming in a very big way
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/02/amazon-moves-into-casual-gaming-in-a-very-big-way.ars

NASA-sponsored Singularity University offers grad courses in accelerating technological change
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/03/nasasponsored-singul.html

Students call space station with home-built radio
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090202.wcollegeradio0202/BNStory/Technology/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20090202.wcollegeradio0202

New paper offers additional reasoning for Fermi’s Paradox
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F02%2F02%2F1719236

Retrevo sets up DTV coupon swap site — seems like the govt coulda’/shoulda’ thought of this.
http://retrevo.com/dtv

Chris Bangle, the guy who made BMWs ugly, quits the auto business
http://www.motorauthority.com/bmw-design-chief-chris-bangle-quits-auto-industry.html

GM working to make San Francisco, D.C. the showcase launch cities for the Chevy Volt.
http://www.streetinsider.com/Press+Releases/General+Motors+Outlines+Roadmap+for+Cities+to+Plug+Into+the+Chevrolet+Volt+Electric+Vehicle/4352330.html

Mobiles connect across the waves
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7867091.stm

Nearly half of consumers think an Internet tablet could replace their cell phone
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/abi-research-survey-nearly-half/story.aspx?guid=%7BD7D6EF92-92BE-4D7B-A3CA-5195FA49A31F%7D&dist=msr_2

Garbage-powered garbage truck now making its way across merry England
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/02/garbage-powered-garbage-truck-now-making-its-way-across-merry-en/

VOICEMAIL
Arsha from Illinois
Windows 7 UAC

Joe
Why I’m against delaying DTV transition

Jeremy Denver
What’s with the using the bandwidth limit faster?

E-MAIL
Hi Buzz Crew, this is Josh from American Fork, Utah.

I was pleased to hear that the developer of Podcaster, which failed Apple’s approval process, was able to get Rss Player into the App Store. But as he mentioned, the app dosen’t currently have a podcast directory. The only way to subscribe is to input the URL of the RSS feed, but since the iPhone dosen’t have copy/paste, this can get quite difficult, since most podcasts (including CNET’s) don’t have an easy to remember URL. I got an idea, however, from the app itself on how to simplify this process.

On Rss Player, there is a screen where you enter the address of the feed. Under the location box, the developer explains how to enter the URL of a feed. And just in case you don’t know where to start, the developer suggestts you try his favorite podcast by entering http://tinyurl.com/ourfav. This address redirects to the Buzz Out Loud .xml file, and is a lot simpler to type than the direct URL (which is http://feeds2.feedburner.com/cnet/buzzoutloud?format=xml)

So I took his idea, and simplified the URL’s of some other CNET podcasts using TinyURL.com. Here’s what I have:

http://tinyurl.com/cnetAppleByte
http://tinyurl.com/cnetBuzzReport
http://tinyurl.com/cnetCnetLive
http://tinyurl.com/cnetTop5
http://tinyurl.com/cnetInsiderSecrets
http://tinyurl.com/cnetMailbag
http://tinyurl.com/cnetQuicktips

Josh Davis

– Editors Note: All RSS feeds at podcast.cnet.com have friendly URLs. Check ‘em out! -Jason

**********

Not sure if have gotten to this or not.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/02/hd-nvd-is-chinas-home-grown-answer-to-blu-ray-but-does-it-have/

Not this is going to make a difference against the far too expensive blu-ray, but if the Chinese could get it together (not gonna happen though) and get some support for English language studios, this could actually be a threat to blu-ray, why? Price for the units and the disc’s.

Even if they could not get that, they ought to promote this format heavily to places like India, Middle East, Africa etc.

Jack

**********

Hi, Buzz Crew.

Tom — I’m ready to do my part to fund alternative energy. You
mentioned that a few distillers are going to start generating energy
from whisky by-products. Of those, only the Macallan made the cut
onto your list of “Tom-approved” whiskies. So now I’m curious: which
other distillers do you wish were moving to this green energy source?
Of course, this is simply a roundabout way of asking for a whisky
recommendation.

–Ian from Portland

On a very special Buzz Out Loud, we discover that we, much to our surprise and chagrin, are the cause for the ongoing economic crisis in this country. Who knew? Also, of course, we dissect at length the news that Apple is pulling out of future Macworld Expo conferences after this year, and the even bigger news that Steve Jobs won't be giving this last keynote. Heartbreak ensues.

EPISODE 874

Without Macworld, how will Apple create the buzz?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10124956-37.html
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/12/16macworld.html

What went wrong?
http://www.macworld.com/article/137596/2008/12/apple_kills_expo_reax.html

Microsoft plans quick fix for IE
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7787445.stm
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212500756&subSection=Vulnerabilities+and+threats

Suit: Microsoft knew Xbox could damage discs
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/156941.asp

Report: Palm to battle iPhone, BlackBerry with new OS at CES
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081215-report-palm-to-battle-iphone-blackberry-with-new-os-at-ces.html

Yahoo updates privacy controls on search, pageviews
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoo-updates-privacy-controls-on-search-pageviews/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10125132-83.html

Nvidia targets Netbooks, Intel with 9400M chip
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10125087-64.html

Clearwire’s $150 dual-mode WiMAX / Sprint CDMA modem launches Sunday
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/17/clearwires-150-dual-mode-wimax-sprint-cdma-modem-launches-su/
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/double-impact-s.html

MySpace quietly begins encouraging users to use their real names
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/myspace-quietly-begins-encouraging-users-to-use-their-real-names/

World’s first computer rebuilt, rebooted after 2,000 years
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/2000-year-old-a.html

VOICE MAIL
Hayden from BC: Steve is leaving!

E-MAIL

Hey guys,

I thought this article about the emotional reaction to the end of the Phoenix Mars Lander was rather interesting. This article talks about how Twitter was used to anthropomorphize the Phoenix Lander, and, thus, cause the mission to gain alot more interest.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1270/1

Perhaps this technique can be used to humanize other things, like Brian Cooley.

Chris the Commuter

It won’t be ready until at least 2012, but Los Alamos National Lab is demonstrating an MRI-based liquid identification machine for airport security. The press release is here
http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/15343

And a local news segment on the machine at the Albuquerque airport
http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/home.story/story_id/15343

2 interesting bits:
1) There’s a Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency now? And you thought DARPA was weird.
B) If you can quickly identify liquid chemistry in a shampoo bottle, what other things can you identify? Could be lots of medical or industrial uses beyond saving you $4 for a bottle of water at the airport.

Love the show,
-Mark the supercomputer repairman

Hello Buzz Crew!

I thought this would be a good time to drop you a mail, as it is clear to me that you do not realize your contribution to the economic crisis.

Every time you give credit to a stupid rumor about a nonexisting product (Apple tablet, some cool new iPhone killer smartphone) you are directly influencing the economic slowdown of your country. Consumers are already reluctant when it comes to buying useless/redundant gadgets, but when they hear that maybe, someday, somehow a better/cooler/sexier product will come out they will hold out and save their money for that nonexisting product, which may never even make it to the drawing board. You should urge buyers to just go out and buy the best of what is out there.

by the way, do you actually realize how stupid is to give credit and report unfunded rumors? A 12 year old “analyst” can come up with random ideas for products, put it on a blog and a large media outlet will bring it as “industry inside information”.

example:

HTC is going to launch a touch phone based on x86 microprocessor architecture that runs a componentized version of Windows XP with multi touch interface. It will come out in Q3/09.

Dell will sell a netbook based on the dual core Intel Atom processor starting february 2009.

Apple is going to make toasters and coffee makers with bluetooth connectivity. The devices will connect to the iPhone and make you breakfast in the morning.

Guess which one is fake?

PS: when you say the word ANALyst in the context of an unfunded/undocumented report, imagine the place the “information” was pulled out of. But of course you can always mask false reporting by making up reverse report, like “Intel decided to put on hold plans for launching 24 core desktop processors in 2009 as market research shows low demand for the segment”.

Kaadi (Romania)

Hey Molly Tom and Jason and Cooley or whatever other people join in,

I saw this story on Massively and found it interesting, apparently employers are saying thanks but no thanks to anyone they find that plays World of Warcraft, The story mentions a recruiter was told by companies to out right avoid anyone that is found to be a player of WoW. I guess this is because most anyone who plays WoW gets no sleep, gets angry easily when someone messes up something important (raids), and is likely to shout the name of Leeroy Jenkins before single handedly screwing up whatever project is underway.

http://www.massively.com/2008/12/16/employers-screening-wow-players-during-recruitment/

For the record I play Lineage 2 and many other games, and steer clear of WoW because I can’t stand Blizzard’s art style and the endless quests and raids which I so often hear about from friends who play it for months only to finally quit saying it was a mistake and cursing it endlessly.

Love the show Oh and a suggestion for the live stream, maybe Jason could find an image relating to each story, and put it in the empty corner where the BOL logo usually is, and change it as you go along. Not sure what use that would have but I like images, not that Molly isn’t pretty enough

Byebye!

-Kassandra

In today's show, Rafe joins us for a discussion of useless video blobs, the implications of, uh, Internet "shopping," the NPD numbers that read Tom's mind, and the U.S. Senate's "enormous gift" to Big Content (per Ars Technica). Also, we rouse the Buzz Militia from their stupor to launch an attack on Apple's arbitrary and annoying App Store approval process. Save Podcaster!

Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 808

Committee amends, approves 'enormous gift' to Big Content
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080911-committee-amends-approves-enormous-gift-to-big-content.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10039745-38.html

Apple rolls back problem driver in new iTunes 8 update
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=543
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10040273-37.html

MySpace Music adds user playlists, Amazon links
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/myspace-music-a.html

NPD numbers for game consoles
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080912-madden-09-owns-360-moves-back-in-front-of-ps3-in-sales.html

Video game industry shows signs of slowing
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10040111-52.html

Et Tu, Mozilla? Firefox 3 to get privacy mode
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/12/065230

iPhone Takes screenshots of everything you do
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/09/hacker-says-sec.html

100Mbps. 2010. Over the air. Don't be surprised.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=10010

Japan tops world broadband study
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7610534.stm

Seinfeld and Gates hit the road for Vista
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10039646-56.html

VOICE MAIL

Gabriel
My guess on iTunes.

Bill Portland
A couple of iTunes announcements we missed.

Rob from Philly
I had to install Real Player.

E-MAIL

On yesterday’s show (807), you mentioned that TiVo should buy Sling. However, Sling is owned by Echostar (Dish Network), who has a dispute with TiVo over their DVR technology. A great idea would be for Dish to license TiVo’s DVR technology and TiVo to license Dish’s Sling technology.

Bennie Jr.

Hey Buzz people,

That’s right, Apple has rejected my application because it duplicates the functionality of the desktop iTunes application. What!

Here is the e-mail they sent

“Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.”

That just sucks. It really sucks. Maybe they should reject all calculator applications because they already have a calculator.

Anyway, just thought you would want to know as this is juicy news.

Keep up the good work.

Alex S.
from New Jersey

Hey there all powerful buzz crew.
Just wanted to let ya’ll know that the analog signal is being used to display a message with the hot line.
I know this because I took a day trip to the beach and in the morning my portable TV worked but after lunch every station had that notice.
By the way I thought it was cool that the FCC paid fire departments $15 per converter they helped install, I think I read it in the WSJ, but do a live.com search to be certain .
Love the show.
Stephen
Charlotte, N.C.

typing from my phone so forgive the lack of proper CAPS. Episode 807 10 mins 16 seconds in, Tracfone will not deduct credits for text messages received if they are not opened. However, you can look in the in-box and read the first 50 characters as they scroll by in the preview. Love the show.

Michael

On 806 you were talking text msg fees and on 807, no calls or e-mails about US Cellular having free incoming text messages and calls. They did follow the crowd up to the $0.20 for outgoing messages, so they are not all goody goody. I didn’t e-mail or call because you I was sure someone would. Oh, and I love my BlackBerry and haven’t thought once about switching to that other phone, what was it called…
http://www.uscc.com/uscellular/SilverStream/Pages/x_page.html?p=f_calltextpix

Thanks,

John, the bad speller (wish I was something cooler)
Peoria, Ill.

On today's show, we discover that it's hard to stand out in an orgy, only about a quarter of things Molly says are words, and EA poops all over you. That's just the kind of show we have when Rafe Needleman fills in for Tom.

EPISODE 777/b>

Happy birthday, NASA!
http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/07/29/2120225.shtml

EA: Hack took Facebook Scrabble down
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10002363-36.html

Garmin delays Nuvifone
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121742654018296961.html

Dell tests player to renew iPod battle
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121738346889295815.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10002382-1.html

DNS hacker victim of his own creation
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/30/1242229
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/073008-dns-attack-writer-a-victim.html

‘Pentagon hacker’ loses extradition appeal
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/07/30/uk.hacker.ap/index.html
http://www.crn.com/security/209900321

IOC admits Internet censorship deal with China
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/07/30/1551211.shtml
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10002097-93.html

Apple says MobileMe is fixed! Seriously! Go try it!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2326792,00.asp

Amazon unveils online payment service
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10002259-93.html

Face swapper software protects privacy
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/29/face-swapper-softwar.html

VOICE MAIL:
Anon:
Cops on cell phones!

E-MAIL:

Dear Buzzcrew,

Don’t you hate it when people make inaccurate statements like Sen.Stevens calling the Internet a series of tubes or like when you demonstrate you entire lack of political knowledge when you say he is the head of the Commerce Committee which he in point of fact hasn’t been since January 2007.

But then why let the truth stand in the way of a good story,

Thomas

Dear Buzz Crew

You mentioned on episode 776 the “Mojave experiment”, where Windows Vista was disguised as “Mojave” to make people see past the prejudice that vista faces, and how that doing this led to hugely increased customer satisfaction and popularity. This begs the question, why bother with the “Hey Look, Vista’s all right when it’s not called Vista” marketing campaign, and just not call it Vista. Just make up a cause for a new OS, and then release “Mojave”. Problem solved, and Mojave starts working for Microsoft and Vista is relegated to the nether land of Microsoft Bob and the infuriating paper clip.

Just a thought, keep up the great show

Techpriest

Hey guys,

I can’t believe you didn’t think of this but:

Search engines “help” you find something--a synonym for help is “aid”

Cuil-Aid!!!!

You’ll tell your friends to get some Cuil-Aid, and then have to explain that you don’t want them to grab a sugary drink, but that you want them to look something up.

Keep up the most excellent work!

Respectfully,

Chad

Dear Tom, Molly and Jason,

In your discussion of the new Cuil search engine there was one point you missed, namely its privacy policy. To quote from the site: “…our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period.”

As privacy is an increasingly important issue to web users, I’d suggest that this will be highly attractive to many people, especially given the concerns in this area that surround the current search imperator Google. Could Cuil’s privacy pledge be the wedge that prises apart Google’s search monopoly and frees us from the Black Iron Prison of cybersurveillance?

Your show is the tops for tech, and always entertaining. Keep up the consistently engaging (OK, I’ll say it, GOOD) work.

Best regards,

Andrew

Hello buzz crew,

I think the Olympics won’t be a problem for the IT department, because all the competitions will be at night in the U.S. So pretty much nobody will be working by that hour. If everyone gets to see the Olympics it would still be a problem, but for the HR department. People are supposed to sleep at night!

Here in Brazil, back in 2006 during the world cup, what i thought would be a joke worked pretty well: our major TV broadcaster streamed live all the world cup games in the Internet, and pretty much every place where I know there were computers, there were people watching that. There were no network problems because it was so popular, that usually people left one computer per room dedicated for streaming that video in full screen, which looked like as there was an actual television there. It was a total success in every office.

And guys, who are you fooling? People watch YouTube the whole day, and there has never been a problem before

Alexandre