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Buzz Out Loud 852: Tempest in a Twitter teapot

Turns out a lot of people are all too happy to hand over their password to some unknown Web site just to find out if they're popular. Oh, people. When will you learn? Also, Microsoft Live gets a purpose, Valleywag loses its teeth, the BlackBerry Storm get

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
Turns out a lot of people are all too happy to hand over their password to some unknown Web site just to find out if they're popular. Oh, people. When will you learn? Also, Microsoft Live gets a purpose, Valleywag loses its teeth, the BlackBerry Storm gets a release date, and we're all going to become (a) elves in the Wrath of the Lich King or (b) total buffsters on the new EA Sports Active Wii game.
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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