Buzz Out Loud 903: Moons over my HAM radio

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.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

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