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Buzz Out Loud 1270: MP3: the gateway drug (podcast)

On today's show, Buzz Out Loud gets you a tiny bit high ... using a sine wave. Could it be!? Also, we continue our long slog through the Story that Wouldn't End: the iPhone 4 antenna issue. Press conference tomorrow! Also, will the Droid X self-destruct if you try to mod it? Maybe, maybe not. But it seems like the phone world is all about picking your poison these days.

Molly Wood Former Executive Editor
Molly Wood was an executive editor at CNET, author of the Molly Rants blog, and host of the tech show, Always On. When she's not enraging fanboys of all stripes, she can be found offering tech opinions on CBS and elsewhere, and offering opinions on everything else to anyone who will listen.
Molly Wood
4 min read

On today's show, Buzz Out Loud gets you a tiny bit high ... using a sine wave. Could it be!? Also, we continue our long slog through the Story that Wouldn't End: the iPhone 4 antenna issue. Press conference tomorrow! Also, will the Droid X self-destruct if you try to mod it? Maybe, maybe not. But it seems like the phone world is all about picking your poison these days.

Watch this: Ep. 1270: MP3: the gateway drug

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EPISODE 1270

Apple to hold special iPhone 4 press conference on Friday
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20010617-260.html

Apple Engineer Told Jobs IPhone Antenna Might Cut Calls
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-15/apple-engineer-said-to-have-told-jobs-last-year-about-iphone-antenna-flaw.html

iPhone 4 Silent Recall: Some Readers Confirm [Updating Live]
http://gizmodo.com/5587029/iphone-4-silent-recall-some-readers-confirm

Breaking News: Analyst Claims Design Fix for iPhone 4 Signal Issue Being Deployed
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/07/15/analyst-claims-design-fix-for-iphone-4-signal-issue-being-deployed/

iOS 4.1 update released to developers
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20010608-260.html

Nope, iOS 4.1 doesn't fix the iPhone 4's death grip antenna issue.
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/07/14/nope-ios-4-1-doesnt-fix-the-death-grip-antenna-issue/

This Is How Much the New iPhone 4 Signal Bars Have Grown
http://gizmodo.com/5587535/

Droid X actually self-destructs if you try to mod it
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/07/14/droid-x-actually-self-destructs-if-you-try-to-mod-it/
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/15/reality-check-modding-the-droid-x-may-not-lead-to-a-bricked-phone/

It’s official: Software will be unpatentable in NZ
http://www.nzcs.org.nz/news/blog.php?/archives/97-Its-official-Software-will-be-unpatentable-in-NZ.html

Report: Teens Using Digital Drugs to Get High
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/digital-drugs/

Exclusive: HP's Android Tablet Tabled
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100715/exclusive-hps-android-tablet-tabled/

How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_old_spice_won_the_internet.php

Which came first..the chicken or the egg?
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/835020-the-chicken-came-first-not-the-egg-scientists-prove

Today's featured Buzz Out Loud remix(es) at the end of the show:
Thomas Canada (mariopaint!) https://podcast-files.cnet.com/podcast/BOLremix_ThomasCanada_mariopaint.mp3
Thomas Canada (pron clean) https://podcast-files.cnet.com/podcast/BOLremix_ThomasCanada_pron_clean.mp3

Email (buzz@cnet.com)
I read today in the Globe and Mail about poetry on e-readers (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/breaking-up-is-hard-lines-of-poetry-a-tough-fit-in-e-form/article1639820/). I don’t know if this has come up before on the show, but I thought that the problems associated with poetry in an electronic form which are discussed in the article were interesting, and it hadn’t really occurred to me how the flexibility of e-books, particularly with regard to font size, could change not only the visual aesthetic, but sometimes even the MEANING of poems when they are adjusted to fit the screen.

I particularly liked this small section of the article where the dilemma is explained by the article’s author, and then former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins explains the difficulty in a more poetic way (of course!):

“The critical difference between prose and poetry is that prose is kind of like water and will become the shape of any vessel you pour it into to. Poetry is like a piece of sculpture and can easily break,”"Collins says.

Nice!

Anyway, as a former English major and now a librarian I think that the growth of e-books has great potential for fostering literacy, and so I’m a fan (plus, I’m a tech geek of course… I am a BOL fan after all!) but I also thought that this was a great example of a resistance to technology that actually has a substantive basis (i.e. it’s not just poets being Luddites as one might expect!) and it’s also a great example of a problem that engineers are hopefully working to solve creatively!

Love the show!

Chad, the Librarian from Toronto

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Why all this talk about microcells? Why not use existing tech that everyone has like T-Mobile is doing. My old Blackberry could go through VoIP over WiFi. It is called UMA. Full bars all over my house, even in my basement. And when I visit my parents in Dubai, I turned off the GSM radio and I still got all my texts and could talk, using my minutes from my plan, but no roaming fees. London was the same way.
My hotel had open WiFi, and just about every pub had it too. Now that I am on Android, I am waiting for it to be able to do the same, and am keeping my Blackberry handy when I go to Europe next winter.

Caution, if you are on DSL and have the BitTorrent going full pace, you will get some choppiness, but it is easily fixed by turning it down. Since I moved to Cable, it has not been a problem.

James Allgood

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Hey buzz crew

In my time in NYC at Starbucks I saw a jut with a newly unbowed iMac. I think it was 27 inch but I can’t tell.the images are attached

Love the show
Nick

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What have you done to become “that guy” in the past? Send us a comment via Blackberry Messenger. Our PIN # is 24523C65.

Watch this: Ep. 1270: Web Exclusive