Buzz Out Loud Podcast

We're very happy to welcome you to our 1,024th episode, which as we know means we will no longer to count the shows in binary on two hands. But that's OK. We will still be doing shows. Because we have more hands. And our 11 finger listeners can still count on two hands. We also have a date for Windows 7. He's nice. They'll like him.

EPISODE 1024

When will you get Windows 7 RTM?

Microsoft confirms Family Pack for Windows 7

iPhone, Mac sales continue to propel Apple forward

Apple can't seriously be "very happy" with ATandT relationship

ATandT to Power Upcoming PlasticLogic E-Reader

Google Wave public beta rolling out in September

"Vanish" makes sensitive data self-destruct

Artists find backers as labels wane

Disney to offer films on microSD cards, consumers to pass on by

Synaptics' ClearPad 3000 touch screen does 10-finger capacitive multitouch, other forms of dark magicks

Robo-Ethicists Want to Revamp Asimov's 3 Laws

Sam Raimi to direct Warcraft: The Movie

It's a racy Buzz Out Loud as Natali Del Conte and Molly Wood double-team Jason Howell. Yes, by the way, that was the most blatant click-bait I've ever written. We discuss who's the bigger liar: Google or the Wall Street Journal. Plus, mobile news galore, including FCC approval of the Garmin Nuviphone. And then it gets too hot to remain in the studio and we flee to cooler climates.

EPISODE 872

Does Google want Net priority?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122929270127905065.html
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/12/net-neutrality-and-benefits-of-caching.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081215-google-backing-off-net-neutrality-with-isp-deal-not-really.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10122935-38.html

Gmail views PDFs
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/fast-pdf-viewing-right-in-your-browser.html

Obama mobile application
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/obama_iphone_app_now_available.php

Microsoft releases its first-ever iPhone application
http://www.pcworld.com/article/155482/microsoft_releases_its_firstever_iphone_application.html

Nuvifone gets FCC approval
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/14/garmin-nuvifone-gets-fcc-approval/

Push to talk BlackBerry
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/15/sprint-launches-blackberry-curve-8350i-first-push-to-talk-black/

Estonia mobile voting
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081212/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_estonia_cellular_voting_1

Gym car looks ridiculous
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/12/get-pumped-up-o.html

A movie about Facebook?
http://gawker.com/5109810/facebook-movie-book-deals-confirmed-by-fabricating-boston-author

Internet or sex, which would you choose?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10123138-52.html

VOICEMAIL
Roger the therapist: Fast-talking WoW stuff

E-MAIL

Hi Buzz-town -

Although attributing the increased college drop out rate to World of Warcraft addiction being completely unsubstantiated, I too think she could absolutely be right (although it would be interesting to know if there has been an steep increase in WoW subscriptions). I graduated from a 5 year Engineering program in Canada in April, during my first year I had 5 friends who played Final Fantasy XI (although its not WoW, its similar) - 2 of them failed out in first year, and a third failed out 2 years later. During our last two years my remaining gaming friends quit playing FFXI and switched to WOW, although I wouldn’t describe most of their behavior as an addiction - it was a little excessive. My only friend who still plays the game after graduation from University, is very involved in game and is a the guild leader of a 100+ member guild - unfortunatly hes having trouble striking a balance between relationships online/ingame and those in the non-virtual world. We haven’t lost our friend yet, but I can see how easily it could happen.

oh and I love the show.

Jillian

***********

Hey buzz Crew:
Today, I finally gave up, and tried to download Google chrome to test if it's better than Opera (I think opera is so much better and cooler that Firefox), then what the .... ?
Google has blocked Iran's IP range or maybe as I have searched the whole middle east IP rang, and we can not download the browser, why Google why? Why? Why? Why Google why? We are blocked?
To make sure I connected a VPN with USA IP address that I use to watch Hulu.com and get past the stupid filtering, and then I was able to download it, so only USA? Or every where except Middle East and Iran?
Siavash
It’s true!
http://www.surfchrome.com/index.php/home/news-list-mode/89-google-chrome-blacklists-syria-iran-north-korea-and-more

***********

While it’s good to get it out of Beta, the real answer as to why - may be Android.

It is very likely Android will be moving to PC platforms in the next few years - maybe not in time for Windows7, but by 2010? Netbooks first, maybe low end desktops as well. The leap from smartphone to netbook cannot be that far away, with their closed and proprietary components(no dealing with every random driver out there, yet). Why not push hard to get it out before Windows7? Undercut them, remove a LOT of their thunder, and be a real competitor.

Once you do that, you get a netbook loaded with Google Apps, Docs, Gears, Talk, Chrome. Everything most basic users need. Keep an eye as to when Docs goes live, and Android development.

Of course, theory only - but sure does sound interesting, right?

–dave

***********

It’s been almost two years since the CES where we reviewed Digeo’s Moxi, a CableCard DVR that could finally bring some competition to the market that TiVo’s been holding. Last week, with little fanfare, Digeo soft-launched the Moxi on Amazon, and a full launch is expected next month. It’s a far sleeker device than what we reviewed last year–perhaps the outcome of the company’s refocusing efforts at the start of this year. The bad news is that it’s $800 (TiVo Series 3’s initial price point), and it won’t order pizza from Domino’s. The good news is that there are no additional monthly subscription fees for TV listings and updates, and it includes 500GB of storage that you can extend using any eSATA drive. Add that all up, and it’s actually cheaper than TiVo’s new high-capacity unit with lifetime service.

Whatever the price, I’m happy to see a new consumer DVR option in the market. TiVo’s been alone on retail shelves for quite some time now, and it’s time they see some competition in this space. In the long run, I think it will be good for everyone.

Richard Gunther
Washington, D.C.

P.S. I had to have it, so I ordered one, and it’s tracking to arrive today. Besides, I don’t really like Domino’s anyway.

***********

Wow - I listened to Thursday’s podcast (episode 870) as I was walking Sander (my dog) and all I can say is wow. When I got home I checked the mirror for my scarlet A.

I don’t know how it went from a funny idea I had while out “in the wild” with my NetBook to me looking to steal husbands, but dang - not what was intended! In fact, I wasn’t even thinking of the idea for myself - just as a funny idea. Mostly b/c it allowed me to suggest an online dating site with Matchbook in the name!

Also, while I’m complaining - I’m bummed that Molly wasn’t there on Wednesday to appreciate the fact that my netbook fits in almost all my purses - that’s almost the best part!

Cheers,

Hester (AKA Heather in Boston)

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Hey JaMoTo??,

In the last few weeks many of the members of Buzz Town have been creating there own vertions of “In the wild BINGO.” There have been many places that the BINGO cards can be found so, i created a category on the buzz town wiki where anyone can index there BINGO cards in one place. The index can be found at http://buzzoutloud.wikia.com/wiki/Category:BOL_Bingo.

lightningboy7

***********

Hey Guys,

I was browsing the internet when I can across a mug that says on one side “In These Troubled Times” and the other side it says “DRINK!”. Just thought that I should run this by you guys. LINK: http://www.zazzle.com/in_these_troubled_times_mug-168795800428642129

Steve

Episode 871

Chrome breaks outta beta
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10120965-2.html

Nintendo Wii outsells Xbox 360 more than two-to-one
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/peripherals/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212500018&subSection=All+Stories

Sony’s PS3 A sinking ship: Sales plummet (SNE)
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/sonys-ps3-a-sinking-ship-sales-plummet-sne

Acer Aspire One goes official on AT&T’s 3G network
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/11/acer-aspire-one-goes-official-on-atandts-3g-network/
http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/12/acers-99-netboo.html

Android susceptible to apps that turn on roaming
http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08%2F12%2F12%2F149242
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/11/g1_roaming/

Cellphone jammer crammed into key fob, ends texting / talking while driving (thanks, Greg and Michael and Jordan et al)
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/12/cellphone-jammer-crammed-into-key-fob-ends-texting-talking-wh/

FCC Commissioner blames World of Warcraft addiction for huge college dropout rate
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/fcc-blames-college-dropout-rate-on-world-of-warcraft-addiction

Five PC power myths debunked
http://weblog.infoworld.com/sustainableit/archives/2008/12/pc_power_manage_1.html

NFL launches “Game Rewind”, every game on-demand in HD with no commercials
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2008/12/nfl-launches-game-rewind-every-game-ondemand-in-hd-with-no-commercials.html

Russian hopes to cash in on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7778767.stm

Puppy Cam: Viewed 15 million times, for 773 years
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/puppy-cam-viewed-15-million-times-for-773-years

E-mail
Hello Buzz crew,

Since you talk about it SO MUCH, yesterday I finally signed up for Twitter . And looking for CNET celebrities to follow, I went to see who does Rafe Needleman follow. Guess who. Yahoo’s top search term for 2008. That’s right, Rafe Needleman follows Britney Spears on Twitter. I just can’t imagine Rafe listening to "Baby One More Time," so, may I ask why?

Love the show.

Regards,
Bernardo

**********

Have you all been following the USPS outages? I am 2 episodes behind (been to cold and rainy to walk my dog), so apologize if you've mentioned.

http://www.usps.com/homearea/onlinesysteminterruptions.htm

Seems it is affecting small business, too:

http://cbs3.com/local/Loca.l.Business.2.884808.html

LTS,

/John in Fairfax

AAAAAND its fixed.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10121982-38.html

**********

Hey JaMoTo / buzz crew +1,

I think the whole ‘In The Wild’ bingo game is great, and I’m just
waiting for someone to run up and snap a picture of me, being that I
bring my Kindle everywhere and I am a ‘Kindle in the wild’.

Anyhow, after yesterday’s show where Molly mentioned a Retro Edition
of BOL Bingo would be fun, I decided she shouldn’t be denied and I
made one up and attached it below. I’ve also uploaded it to my Flickr
account so it can be shared with the citizens of Buzz Town. It can be
found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/98865482@N00/3102895508/
I hope you enjoy it. Love the show!

-Aaron the Delorean driver (and Kindle in the wild)
New York

**********

Hi guys!

In the last show, Molly made a comment about how the ustream
video-page “isn’t an RSS-feed”. Well, now it is! I used Yahoo! Pipes
to create an RSS-feed of your live video shows. I wrote it up in the
forums, at:

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10152_102-0.html?forumID=97&threadID=320004&messageID=2926270&tag=forums06;forum-threads

Hope you like it!

–Oskar

**********

Ahoy Buzz Brigade,
Regarding episode 870 on LTE, y’all made a few missteps about the facts.

First off, the commonly held misconception is that LTE has anything to do with GSM. This is similar to the misconception that WCDMA, more commonly known as the tech behind UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA and HSPA+, has anything to do with GSM. While the tech that preceded GSM for AT&T, TDMA, was the technical precursor to the speaker-buzzing wonder iPhone fans know and love, HSPA (the 3G in the iPhone 3G, etc.) is only GSM’s successor because that was the preferred upgrade path of most GSM carriers. LTE is OFDM-based (as is 802.11g WiFi and…gasp…WiMAX in higher-speed modulations), and is thus another completely different underlying technology with no built-in backward compatibility to either GSM or HSPA. However, the majority of GSM carriers across the world, plus many CDMA carriers (Verizon being one of them) have chosen LTE as their upgrade path. It’s like saying that Mac OS X is a technical upgrade to OS 9…while the same company is going with the precedent as the successor, OS X is based on BSD/Unix while OS 9 is based on some witch’s brew Apple cooked up eons ago.

To be clear, I’m not bashing LTE, though WiMAX is out in the field now whereas LTE has so far not ventured out of lab doors. But to say either technology is the technical successor to either GSM/HSPA or CDMA (which has a direct 3G upgrade, EvDO) would be flawed. Though the same standards board responsible for GSM and WCDMA also dreamed up LTE (3GPP)…

Second and finally, though tests confirm that LTE, at similar range to WiMAX it seems, can provide link speeds comparable to WiFi, you won’t see speeds like those in the wild for quite awhile. The reason is mostly that of backhaul. To provide 100 Mbps to a subscriber, LTE not only needs a liberal swatch of spectrum (something only ClearWire, the WiMax guys, has), but it needs a tower connected to some serious backhaul. To give you an idea of how serious this backhaul would need to be, think about your local cable company’s node, that serves a few hundred people. If your cable operator is Comcast and you just got a speed upgrade, they can offer a total of 114 Mbps over an entire node on the downstream, and 30 Mbps on the upstream. This would be enough for a single LTE customer to get full-speed access. Then again, AT&T U-Verse and Verizon FiOS have the infrastructure for LTE at the node level, but you’re still looking at more bandwidth than anybody is pushing over copper or cable right now. Of course, if Verizon rolls it out in FiOS areas (WiFiOS anyone?) it’ll work on the backhaul side, but…

…you have the problem of femtocells. Anyone using a femtocell for LTE has their internet connection as the bottleneck for service. You can’t get 100 Mbps over a 6 Mbit cable connection. Of course, if Verizon allowed femtocells to hook directly into customers’ FiOS installs, independent of the 10-50 mbps download and 2-20 mbps upload limits on users’ accounts, that’d work. But that’s about the only solution if they want to actually get the speeds they’re boasting about.

Hope this clears things up and love the show!

Ian (the Colorado college student, iansltx on Twitter)

Episode 852

BlackBerry Storm gets release date
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/11/13/verizon-announces-blackberry-storm-release-date-november-21st-199/

Microsoft Live becomes social network
http://home.live.com/
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-and-now-windows-live-is-a-social-network/

The flap over Twitterrank and the social echo chamber
http://blogs.zdnet.com/collaboration/?p=164
http://blogs.zdnet.com/collaboration/?p=163

End of a snarky era: Gawker shuts down Valleywag
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10095984-36.html
http://valleywag.com/5085562/valleywag-clusterfuck-faq

Spam sees big nosedive as rogue ISP McColo knocked offline
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081112-spam-sees-big-nosedive-as-rogue-isp-mccolo-knocked-offline.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10095730-83.html

EU court rejects Lego trade-mark
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7726700.stm

Worldwide Wrath of the Lich King launch nerfs credit card systems
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/207893/worldwide-wrath-of-the-lich-king-launch-nerfs-credit-card-systems/

Move over Wii Fit, EA announces EA Sports Active
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/11/13/move-over-wii-fit-ea-announces-ea-sports-active

Korean geniuses invent lithium batteries with eight times the juice
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/13/korean-geniuses-invent-lithium-batteries-with-eight-times-the-ju/

Boot Windows Vista In Four Seconds
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/12/2249253

Voice Mail
“Anonymous”: Google terrifies me!

Rafa: On the flu

Dan: Hobobook

E-mail
Hey buzzards!
First off love the show!
This email is in response to the voice mail about online video. I wanted to point out that you shouldn’t be mad at cbs as all the shows they produce are online. If you will notice all the shows that warner brothers produces, ie “the mentalist” “cold case” and “without a trace” are not online anywhere. Same goes for the shows produced by abc studios for cbs- “criminal minds” and “ghost whisperer”. Instead of cbs you should be mad at the company that produces the show .
Just my two cents.
Stephen
Charlotte, nc

**********

Maybe this explains why Apple’s Cinema Displays are so expensive:

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/11/13.4.shtml

Steve Jobs was just waiting for the verdict to come in before he
released new models at a lower price.

-Andres (Austin, TX)

**********

Hey JaMoTo

This was regarding what Ken said in 851 I live downtown Chicago and I see net books every day around the Merchandise Mart and I actually saw one when I was Noodle Company this past weekend. So they’re out there I actually don’t have one but my laptop is close VGNS-360 Sony Vaio running Ubuntu 8.10

Thanks I love the show!

Zach in Chicago

**********

Lee from Boston writes:

Regarding Episode 851 and the discussion of the many press releases,
pitches and the like that use the phrase “in these troubled times”.

I’ve decided to put together a new economic metric, the Buzz Phrase
Index (BPI) — I’ll be tracking the number of hits that a Google
search for the phrase “in these troubled times” yields. We’ll see how
this curve compares to the national and international economic
situation over the next year or so.

Details will be on my blog at http://www.tlex.com/wordpress

A search on November 13, 2008 yielded 334,000 hits.

**********

I’ve come across a few Netbooks (Asus EeePC’s) out here in the wilds of
Dublin…

The GameSoc lads here in DIT have all got laptops, at the moment four of
them are equipped with XP-running EeePC’s. But that is tech-savvy crowd.
However my uncle who is not at all tech-savvy bought an EeePC for my
cousins. They’re running the EeePC linux operating system and really
loving it.
So there you have it, wild.

-ANkh, the Computer Engineering Student, Dublin, Ireland.

**********

Hurricane Electric:
Hey! People have heard of us! You have execs from the company in the
buzz army! Since I am a director for the company, I feel obligated to
point out we are the 8th largest ISP in the world for IPv4 and the
largest ISP for IPv6 in the world. Anyhow, just thought I would touch
base again as an offer of assistance if you need anyone from the IP
backbone industry…
–Reid
Director, East Coast Operations
he.net