Ep. 957: Tweetza Hut!!!!
Ep. 957: Tweetza Hut!!!!
42:08

Ep. 957: Tweetza Hut!!!!

Culture
[ Music ] ^M00:00:04 >> Today's Tuesday April 21st 2009. >> I'm Natali Del Conte. >> I'm Tom Merritt. >> I'm Rafe Needleman. >> And I'm Jason Howel. >> Welcome to Buzz Out Loud CNET's podcast of indeterminate length. This is episode 957 welcome back Tom Merritt. >> That's right. >> Hey, it's good to be back. >> Where were you? >> I was in Malta and in London. >> At the same time? >> No, different times. >> Okay. >> In Malta, I was there for speaking on a panel. And in London I was there meeting with Buzz Out Loud listeners which was awesome. >> Cool. >> 40 some people showed up at the Montague Pike in Charing Cross Road in London. >> Including, I hear the Tom Merritt [inaudible]. >> Tom Merritt from Oxford came, yeah. We shook hands and did not explode. >> Oh, really, two Tom Merritt's were in the same room and we didn't have an explosion or anything like that? The streams crossed. >> London is still standing. >> Pictures didn't happen, man. >> Hum? >> Pictures didn't happen. >> Nope. >> No pics? >> No, oh, oh pics I thought you said pickser didn't happen. I was just agreeing with you because I didn't know what you meant. >> Yes, there are pictures actually on my Flicker page of both of us and there's a video that I got a link from, from Tom Merritt's wife. >> Okay. >> And her name is different than my wife's name although her, his wife's name is the same as my sister in law. So, anyway we should probably start talking about Tech. >> No wouldn't nobody do have to ask us because you were in Malta a place where few people have, that I know of, ever been. And I can just imagine it is, like I said, they must make half of their income on selling little Maltese stuff to travelers. >> No, if you follow my Twitter feed they weren't no Maltese falcon paraphernalia at the airport, there were no in the shops near the hotel. It wasn't until I got to Medina, a 7,000-year-old village I don't know it's really old, and there was, in the middle of Medina one shop called the Maltese Falcon. And they didn't even, they didn't even have but one shelf of Maltese falcons inside that store, really. >> If you can't find a Maltese falcon at the shop called the Maltese Falcon then, something's wrong. >> But I did. And I brought it back and it's on the video version of Buzz Out Loud today, yeah, you're looking at me cross-eyed. >> Can't wait. >> There were. >> And it will protect us and it brings us good stuff. >> They're the stuff that dreams are made of. There was also a real falcon. They had a guy on top of a rooftop with a trained falcon. >> Really? >> Doing falcon tricks, yeah. >> How about a Millennium falcon? >> I believe that that falcon may have been born in the year 2000. >> There you go. >> Thus making it a Millennium falcon. Okay, good. Let's talk about Blu-ray in every home. Backers say they're going to aim for 99-buck Blu-ray players. Maybe not like a regular list price, but hopefully with specials by the holiday season. So, black Friday 99 dollar Blu-rays. You know what who cares? >> Blue Friday. >> Who, there you go. >> Yeah. >> Who cares? I mean first of all DVDs are pretty good. Secondly, the idea of distributing movies on physical media is just, this is, it's great technology but this is past, you know. >> Well I cared at CES when they started launching Blu-ray players that had Networks capabilities so that they could get on the internet and stream movies from Net Flicks. I don't care if it's a 99-dollar player that does nothing else. >> Right. So, give me a Blu-ray player, but you know, skip the Blu-ray part, and just give me the Network productivity and I'd be happy. >> That's called a Roku Network. >> Right. >> Exactly. >> I know that's called a Roku Box, you know that, right. >> You know that most of the people in the country don't want to get a Network streaming player because they don't even know what that means. >> Right but also. >> Then they go. >> They don't have, they don't want to hook something up to their television that they have to hook up to their internet because it sounds confusing. What they might do is upgrade their old DVD player that's five or ten years old now for 99 dollars if it can play all the movies they have now plus new high def movie titles from Blu-ray. >> I would go, I would see your point if they hadn't last year, when DVD players were 49 dollars, upgraded and gotten a bunch just for spares because they were practically free. So, I think people who were, had like a five, six, seven-year-old DVD player and they were, was running it broken or they needed a new one they probably just did the upgrade. And a year later, they're not going to want to do it again. >> Well, either, no matter what you think this will be the telling tale out of Blu-ray, right. >> Yeah. >> If they get 99-dollar players out there and they don't sell, well Blu-ray is definitely dead. >> And it still comes down to the price of the movies. Who wants to pay 30 dollars for a physical movie when you can get a high definition stream for half that? >> Or in the Net Flicks tax on Blu-ray disks. >> Well the high definition stream has got to get easier the massive market to implement. Right now, it's still in the beginning stage. I think you're right Natali though, over the long term, once it's coming in over the box you already have from your cable company or your satellite company, or they start to realize hey that 99 dollar Net Flicks player is great, I can, I can, you know, have my brother wire me up, then, then there really isn't any competition. I think Blu-ray's future is as a storage medium. I don't think it is as a, as a, as a movie format necessarily. >> Storage medium for who? >> Just, there won't be a need for optical disks for, for high storage until we come up with a new technology that can store more on optical disks, but. >> Ah, putting it all on the cloud. >> I don't think everybody. >> Yes. >> You'd want to have, you want to have multiple backups. >> Physical media has its place too, yeah. >> Backups, you want to have physical backups and so, you know, trying to backup a hard drive to a DVD now is getting kind of cramped. >> That's true, that's true. That's all I'm saying. >> Alright. >> GOOGLE's rolling out a bunch of new search changes today. >> Yeah, there's some cool things here. These are laps, new experiments. They have image search now. If you find an image you like on GOOGLE, you can search for similar images. So, you find the Golden Gate Bridge or the Eiffel Tower it'll show you other images that are like it. Not necessarily identical to it but similar to it. Which means, by the way, that GOOGLE is this close to launching photo [inaudible]. That's my theory. >> That would be pretty sweet. >> Yes. >> That would be pretty awesome. >> Yeah. >> Well yeah, it means that in their [inaudible] they know the difference between the example they gave was a jaguar. Are you searching for a car or are searching for an animal? And if you search that term then you can narrow it down to things that look more like the car or the animal or something like that. So, that's cool. They've also narrowed down their news search results. So you can get a chronological timeline of news. They're calling it GOOGLE News Timeline. So, if you're searching for something like the Craig's List killer then you could see what came out when and how the story progressed which is very cool because sometimes you'll search for something and get the most popular news results but not necessarily the most timely. >> Yeah. >> I love this. >> Or vice versa. >> I'm looking at the story in the BBC and I love the caption on the screen shot of the Timeline feature. The Timeline archives date, data I think they mean, the Timeline archives data back to the 1400s, cool. >> I guess [inaudible] in the 1400s right. >> I was really. >> Yeah, they had GOOGLE News back then. >> I guess they're pulling in some of their archival books and. >> Yeah, that's right. >> Scrolls and stone tablets. There are a lot of. >> Actually. >> There are a lot of Monks really upset with GOOGLE indexing their illuminated manuscript back then. >> It was all SEO that's why they kept referencing each other. >> Totally. >> Yeah, I've always wanted the ability to easily kind of go back in time on some of these news stories. Like, put in Net Neutrality and do a search and enter into timeline mode. And you can actually see like back in like, you know, 2003. >> Yeah. >> There were, you know, it was coming up very little, you know, very little talk about that neutrality. But it was there. They were starting coin the phrase. It's kind of an interesting, you know bend into the history. >> And finally, a new version of GOOGLE Labs was unveiled where users can take a peek at what the engineers are working on at GOOGLE, sort of a way to get those GOOGLE labs projects into the hands of users for testing much faster than it used to. But you kind of have to dig in and try to find them. And they weren't always announced fast enough for people to find. So, this new version will get what they're experimenting with in your hands. If you're that kind of person that likes to beta test stuff this would be a dream. >> Right. >> It's basically a database of all the things that are in testing at beta labs. And you can also comment on them. You can rate the features out there so you can give something like G Mail Goggles four stars of you like it or two stars if you hate it. And you can just see also you can rank it by what's new and what's the most popular. >> Yeah a way to help them figure out if they should keep working on a product. >> Yep. >> Or not. >> Yeah, right. >> Or if they are going to keep working focus on certain things to help make it more popular for the users. >> Now, GOOGLE, so this is GOOGLE main labs. The GOOGLE labs G Mail also has its own labs, which, you have to enable them and then you can pull in the cool weird things like, like you said, like Goggles and auto replies and stuff like that that aren't by default part of the G Mail. So, if you really want to see what GOOGLE is up to GOOGLE Labs, which is googlelabs.com and also the labs feature in G Mail, which is a separate thing. >> It's a totally separate thing? I thought it was on the backend anyway the same, the same thing. >> I'm looking at, I'm looking at googlelabs.com right now and I don't. >> You don't see any of the G Mails? >> See any of the G Mail stuff in here. >> Good to know. >> Yeah. >> What is also good to know is that things that are supposed to be secret remain secret. And, unfortunately, that's not true in the computer world. Another one of these horrible stories, computer spies have apparently broken into the Pentagon's 300 Billion Joint Strike Fighter Project and made off with documents on several terabytes of data related to design and electronic systems. >> Now, just to be clear here Tom, this is a 300 billion dollar not million dollar. >> Did I say million? >> Yes, I know you meant it but just to be clear, billion. >> This is the most expensive military contract in the history of the world to create this super advanced fighter. And, you know, the story says the costliest weapons program ever. Every time I see that I read the coolest weapons program ever. It is this amazing, you know, joint military aircraft, probably the last great man fighter before we all go robotic. And apparently, it looks like somebody, most likely, the Chinese has hacked in and gotten all this data. Although there are the really super secret, stuff isn't connected to the internet and they didn't get that. >> Well, hopefully they're not connecting a lot of the super secret stuff to the internet because that's just a bad idea. >> Yeah. >> But, the, you know, the ability to encrypt this stuff, make it private, keep it private is, it's always been important. It's, it's, I don't know how it works without words and how. [ Talking at once ] >> To happen. >> Yeah. >> There are thousands of contractors working on this project. >> Exactly, all the more reason that you need to lock down that data. >> But how can? >> Yeah. [ Talking at once ] >> Was this done through social engineering or was this done through, through some sort of Network crack? >> I bet it was a combination. >> It looks like it was a Network hack. But, they did say that, I'm sorry, I dropped out for a while so I didn't hear you guys talk about the first part, but what they did say was that the most super secrets were not actually hacked. They were on a computer that was not networked. So, the more secret the secrets are the less likely it is to be on a computer that's likely to be hacked. So, what was hacked was something that was hacked through a network not, what was the alternative that you just said, I'm sorry. >> Social engineering. >> Yeah in other words. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> Some contractor was there for the last time and. >> Hey Joe I love my password. >> Yeah right or somebody steals a laptop exactly. >> Yeah, no it wasn't, it wasn't like that. >> It says here the fighter itself relies on 7.5 million lines of computer code. And that's just, probably is the code that runs in the airplane itself. And that's not talking about the terabytes a day that's required to build the thing. This is, I mean the question is can you keep a network secure anymore? I mean I'm reading this book Daemon by Daniel Suarez. And in there a program is able to essentially live on its own by cracking into networks and owning corporations, not, sometimes by exploiting the vulnerabilities that haven't been patched but often by co-opting, disgruntle people that just give them the password. This could have been social engineering. It may not have been a network hack. It may have been like I found some person I can pay off to get me the Admin rights so I can break into the network. >> Do you know what makes me most uncomfortable about this whole thing? Let me read these three, three short paragraphs here. Formal US officials say the attacks appeared to have originated in China however, it can be extremely difficult to determine the true origin because it is easy to mask identities online. A Pentagon report issued last month said that the Chinese military has made steady progress in developing online-warfare techniques. China hopes its computer skills can help it compensate for an underdeveloped military. The Chinese Embassy said in a statement that China opposes and forbids all forms of cyber crimes. It called the Pentagon's report a product of the Cold War mentality and said the. This stuff makes me really anxious. >> Yeah but that's always what a. >> Well yeah, it should. That's an appropriate response. >> Like who, I mean like what are war, it sounds like some kind of cold war. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. It freaks me out man. Meanwhile we're, you know, we're doing this massive amount of trade back and forth. >> Let's, yeah, this is, this is, this is frightening. >> Next week on politics on tech. >> We should talk about it. but, we, I did see through Gizmodo that ZDnet reporting on some interesting developments regarding Windows 8 that was not a malapropism I meant Windows 8. They're starting to hire developers for it. >> That's right. So, it looks like we could be seeing a new operating system even though we're expecting Windows 7 hopefully by the end of this year early next year. We could see an entirely new revision of Windows in 2011. >> They're hiring for the people to help with the next generation of the distributed file system replication storage type. >> You know what's going to happen now because this is the feature that we wanted to see at the beginning of Windows Vista, the new file system. Here's what's going to happen. Windows 8 is going to come out and it's going to have a new UI and a bunch of new features. And then they're going to announce that they're hiring people to do Windows 9 to develop the distributed file system that they had to take out of Windows 8 because they couldn't get their act together this time. >> You're thinking that it's never going to come and this means nothing. >> I've been waiting for a real files system in Windows forever. >> Yeah, well and then there's, you know, there's this argument that FAT32 is sort of still being used as the cross platform file system. But, it can't handle anything over what four gigs. >> Four gigs, yeah. >> So we are, we are fast running out of that. We need a new file system that can be used across different platforms. But, that's not what Microsoft's going to give us. Is it? >> No. Who knows? >> I mean NTFS can, is, you know. >> A modern file system but it's not across platform. >> Yeah exactly. >> And then there's the XT1 and then all these other file systems out there. We may be moving into a world where we no longer can have a drive that you can swap between Lynx OS X and Windows. >> And Microsoft to the rescue. I don't know. >> I mean you can hack things. You can, you can make OS X read NTFS there's always going to be ways to do that. But that's like a step backward for us. >> Well. >> Well, monster.com has apparently had an effect on Amazon as they have launched a lawsuit for trademark infringement against a site in Europe called Amazee. >> Yes, Amazon, I'm sorry yes, because we often call it Amazon. I can see where there might be confusion between a site called Amazee and Amazon. >> No this, this is not really. >> Well maybe you, if you speak with a French accent it may sound. >> Amazon. >> Where there is Zurich, so some sort of Zurich accent. >> No, I'm thinking French accent is the only thing that may. >> Oh, you're saying like you'd have to be in France. >> I know the story. >> Yeah. >> I'm making a joke, bad joke. >> So what is? >> I wanted to hear your French accent. Go ahead. We're waiting. Give it a shot. >> No. >> No, come on. >> So what is a, what is, what is Amazee? >> Amazee. >> I think it's pronounced. >> Right. >> Amazee, what does Amazee do that Amazon doesn't? >> Everything. >> Okay. >> Amazee is a is a social network. Amazon is a, is a retailer. >> Obviously, they're confused. >> Yes. >> With each other easily all the time because I often go to a social network when I want to buy books and computers. >> Gregory Gearhart and Donia [assumed spelling] Gearhart founded Zurich as a way to help people collaborate on projects in an open fashion. So it's not, and when I say social network that's even demeaning what it does. >> I mean it's not even really part of the root word of Amazon. And Amazon is not a verb or any kind of action word. You don't, you don't Amazon something in the same way that you GOOGLE it. So, it's, it's such a sill waste of energy. >> Why on earth? This makes no sense unless we're missing something here. >> Unless, unless he, like this guy Gearhart through a drink in Bezel's face in some conference or something. >> Or, or there is, there is some lurking Amazon collaboration software project. >> Amazonousity between the, sorry. >> Amazonousity? >> Didn't work, never mind. >> Now, see, Natali's joke was funny. >> Oh, stop it okay sorry. I'll just shut up for ht rest of the show then. Be that way. >> BT would like to shut you up if you're the Pirate Bay or any sort of adult website. They have a filter in place on British Telecom, Mobile Broadband. And the Pirate Bay is now prevented from being surfed to is blocked access. >> It's called, because it's called an adult site. Correct? >> Well any. >> It's called CYA. >> Yeah. >> Cover your, no. >> Your adult side. >> Cover your adult side. >> Serious there. >> Anything, anything that is sexual explicit content, criminal skills or hacking. >> Ah there you go. >> Now, I hate that when they throw this hacking thing at us. It's like, oh, so I can't go and find out how to put in some code on OS X to read MTFS natively because that's hacking. >> Yeah. >> Somebody who made that was hacking. >> It is. >> That is hacking. Hacking isn't always illegal. Okay, so I just have to throw that out. I mean if that's going to be an official policy, you need to define your terms. >> Or they could just call it criminal hacking. >> Criminal hacking. >> Right. >> That would be fine. >> Yes, that would be acceptable. >> Get your lingo right or Tom will be mad. >> Well, a lot of people will be mad. I'm the least of them that'll be mad. I mean this annoys legitimate hackers all the time. >> So, if you call up BT and say I want all the porn sites will you also then get Pirate Bay? >> Yeah, yeah, you have to. >> Okay. >> You can call and say hey, take me off the block list. >> Yeah. >> I would assume that you'll get Pirate Bay. >> And then they'll put you down in a little book. >> Yeah, right exactly. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Well, obviously this is an attempt to disassociate themselves with the Pirate Bay because the founders of the Pirate Bay went to jail last week. >> Well, they didn't go to jail yet. >> Actually, they're in an appeal. >> Yeah. >> But they were sentenced to a year of jail. And they don't want to be associated with that. But, Sir Paul McCartney has rang in about that, the Beatles founder, I guess. >> Original Beatle. >> The singer, musician has rang in and said hey this is what they get this is a fair trial. I think he is just, he thinks that he's speaking up on behalf of all musicians and saying this is what's right because if you're a young band you're a one hit wonder you need that one hit to feed your family the rest of the year. >> Actually Paul. >> Or the rest of your life rather. >> It doesn't work that way anymore. >> No, no. >> It works the opposite way. If you're the unknown band. >> The Pirate Bay is representing that. >> If you're the unknown band, you give away your music for free and build up an audience. And then you get a record deal. >> Yeah, that's the old way, the old way. >> Paul. >> Just be an artist with longevity. >> Or, be Jonathan Colton and don't sign with a label at all and give your music away and sell it and make a business model and be able to quit your day job. >> Yeah, and then do a deal with the guys who did Portal. >> You know. >> Everybody should do a deal with the guys that did portal. >> Absolutely. >> Right. >> We're going to bring up the book Daemon again because I'm reading it right now and it's a certain lazar book. But. >> It's totally in your head. >> There was a, there was a passage in there where they reference, and I know it's a work of fiction, but it's it references a lot of real things. And one of the things that it referenced was anytime you've got something that is easy to copy you can't build a business on it. I can't remember, I'm not quoting it exactly. But that was sort of the substance of the comment that you have to have, you know, uniqueness to things to be able to build a business. And what's happened with music is you used to have uniqueness, you know, I mean it was. >> It used to be hard to copy. >> It wasn't easy to copy. >> Now, in the internet everything is infinitely copyable. So what they, what the music industry should do is adapt to that and put out lots of different versions of things, lots of different ways of consuming them instead of everything on MP3. Just give the MP3s away. That's publicity. That's marketing. Now, come up with different ways of getting videos or Lossless Compression is a pretty, you know, it's a pretty new way. Come up with lots of different ways for people to access and enjoy your material and charge for those. >> Well, plus there's additional material, live events, features, etcetera. >> Copied music is not necessarily new. The music industry was making a profit in the 80s when we could just record off of the radio and just push record on the tape player and we shared it that way and we'd make tapes for each other. They were still making a prophet back then. But you're right, the extra digital, you know, all the lyrics and the videos and all that stuff is what music fans really want, the upgrade to the sound file and all of that. >> Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, with cassettes and everything the copying wasn't as true, it wasn't as easy. >> And, let's not forget that the music industry did not let go willingly and say yeah sure whatever. >> Oh yeah they fought it like tooth and nail. >> Right. >> Yeah, so and that's one of the reasons we have the current copyright laws at DRM and the DMCA that we have today is an offshoot of in analogy copying restrictions. Meanwhile, MySpace and Fox News are actually paying attention to the fact that it's good to use the internet and they're joining up with the, or not joining up with but they're joining in what CNN has done in starting a citizen journalism platform. This one will be called You Report. >> That's right. You can now go to myspace.com/youreport not to be confused with CNN's I Report, and you can see what other people are uploading, if they're in and around somewhere where breaking news happens. And you can also upload yourself. So, it's a nice integration. CNN was sort of the pioneer of this citizen journalism platform with their I Report. And they use SpaceBook for this very same purpose. >> This is really cool. What this is doing, because every news outlet will do this at some point, is it's creating your point about adding value to free content, this is creating community around content. So, whether it's CNN or FOX or whatever it is, if I watch this particular, if I get my news from a particular source, now I join that community and I become more invested in it. This is really good. >> Right. I'm a little confused. I thought that they would use their FOX Nation, the news site that FOX News launched that integrates FOX News and FOX business. It's not really very social. That launched in March. And I thought that that would have a big social component. I thought that that would have the user-generated component. But it really doesn't. I'm not sure what they're doing with that. But, at least it's good to see synergy between MySpace and FOX News in this way. >> That's the whole, that's the whole thing in bringing it all in under the one business model there. You know who the real, honestly, the real pioneer in this area, in a way was YouTube because that's where people first started uploading their own reports so to speak. And that's what gave the news organizations to create this. >> And the ability to reply back. >> Yeah. >> And there are whole businesses that are built up around this but they're much smaller like Current TV, for example is all about, you know, we'll put an assignment out there and then our community will contribute to it. The problem with YouTube is they're not making any money. And in some cases, they're just leaving money on the table. >> Such as? >> Such as Susan Boyle, I don't know if you've heard about Susan Boyle. She was on a show called Britain's Got Talent. It's a tearjerker sort of exert from the show. >> Yeah, we've talked about her on the show for the last couple of weeks. I know you've been out of the country. But she's been on every network all over. >> Okay, I'm just making sure everyone else. >> She is, she is the next Britney Spears. >> I just watched it last night to be honest with you. >> You just watched it last night for the first time? >> I had no idea what anybody was talking about. Like Susan who? And I finally looked it up on YouTube and was like holy crap. It was amazing because there was this, everybody knows the story, right. This frumpy woman from I don't know where, and she gets up and she has a voice of the gods. I mean it's an incredible voice. And so, apparently it shown 100 million times on YouTube. >> They talked about it on the show. >> And everybody was saying. >> Yeah okay never mind sorry getting off on the thing here. I'm just going to shut up. >> I felt. >> I was just told to stop talking about that. >> The point is someone got upset because they were saying hey she'll never see any money about this, you know, SONY owns the rights to it. And then SONY come out and said guess what we are not actually making money off of it either. I don't know why they are not. >> Even they, even they. >> Partner on this or even, you know, it comes from the Britain's but. >> Ah, oh, I didn't do that. It wasn't me. >> I know I think the cord just fizzled out. >> Yeah, there's a short in your cord Natali so we can't hear you all the sudden again. But, she got the point of the story across there, which was that they've streamed this thing what how many millions of times. >> A hundred million times. >> A hundred million times. >> But even so, they didn't have enough competence. >> They wouldn't have made 500,000 dollars on it but they haven't set up revenue sharing on it because these stupid companies, I'm sorry, just hold back well I don't know if I want to actually take a chance on this stuff. And every once in a while it's going to come back and it's going to burn you big. And it did this time. >> Totally. >> Though Susan Boyle [inaudible]. >> Can you guys hear me now? >> Yeah, you're back. >> Okay. So, I did an interview with the dad from David After the Dentist, and he had uploaded this video of his son. Have you guys seen that one where the little boy is drugged? >> Right. >> From his dental surgery. Do you know what I'm talking about? >> Yes, he's been weekly-administered pharmaceuticals as part of his legal dental surgery. We don't want to make it sound like his dad drugged him and put him on YouTube. >> No, the dad didn't obviously drug him. The guys, the kid is coming out of pretty intensive dental surgery. And so, he's really high on Novocain. And he says all these really profound questions that everyone seems to relate to and finds it so funny. And the dad said, you know, I just put this on YouTube on a Friday. And then I went away to the Super Bowl to Miami to watch with some friends. I came back and there was ten million views in the first, or however many, 10,000 views in just one or two days. And then it just kept growing and growing and getting more viral. So YouTube contacted him and said hey, this video is huge. You should become a YouTube partner. It's just going to grow. And he's like I don't understand what that means I'll deal with it later. He set the video aside and email aside. And then a week later looked at it and said oh I can share ad revenue with YouTube yes I'll do that. From the time he was offered the YouTube partnership it had three million views. And the time he signed up it had eight million views. So, that was five million views that he never monetized. >> What's on the table? >> First of all, people don't understand how they can monetize their own videos. It takes them a long time to figure it out and then there's all this lost opportunity. So this happens a lot not just with poor Susan Boyle. >> Do you think that's what happened with SONY? >> Yeah. >> The YouTube called the mom sent them an email. >> Yeah. >> Said hey, we'd like you to make some money off this video and they set it aside and oh, we'll get to that. >> Yeah, I can understand an individual uploading video to YouTube and not understanding that they're, you know, leaving money on the table. But, SONY, and BMG if they're putting any of this type of content on there they should definitely be thinking about it. Why wouldn't they? >> Whose job is it to do this? Who's like put it aside and said. >> Well whatever, 100 million views, big deal. >> I don't know the internet we only lose money on the internet. I don't believe you. >> A couple of funny stories to finish this up. Nabaztag, the makers of the happy little Wi-Fi bunny, you know that can read RSS feeds and stuff is making something called the Violet RFID Mirror according to according to Engadget. It'll run about 60 bucks, has a myriad of uses because it can read RFID chips. But, it will let you tag things so they can figure various applications. For instance, if you tag your keys and you drop your car keys on the plate it'll launch Traffic Report. >> Where? On what? >> It's like a USB device you plug it into your computer. >> Oh, okay, yeah. >> You put your wallet on there. >> But it's a short-range wireless technology so it could read various devices. It's a lot like the Microsoft Surface. >> Yeah. >> The Microsoft Surface has some kind of small reader that locks underneath it. So, if you put say a bottle of wine down and the bottle of wine has a chip on it, it will read the information off that chip and display. >> Right. >> What's inside it. >> Here's the big difference. It's 60 dollars. >> It's 60, well yeah, it isn't a big table with a display it's just a reading. >> And the Surface is 10,000. >> Yeah exactly. >> It's just the part that reads stuff. But yeah, you could conceivably hack your own Microsoft Surface together using this now that I'm thinking about it. >> So, I saw, I saw the Nabaztag little robot at a demo conference. And I think it was the same conference that I saw the Pleo, the little robot Pleo which is extinct, going extinct. This is very sad. This little robot which sold for, what, 400 bucks or something like that, it was a little toy robot. >> Yeah. >> They, believe it or not, couldn't find a market for a robot pet or anything that they do. Actually, the whole company is filing for chapter seven bankruptcy. What's the difference between chapter seven and chapter 11. >> I don't think you. >> I don't know. >> Is seven the deadly one? >> Yeah, the we're done one. >> So, Pleo is no more, very sad. Now, the guy who created Pleo was, what was his name again. >> I got his name it's here in the story. >> Anyway, he was the guy who built the Furby. And what the Furby did that was brilliant was, engineering wise was. >> Caleb Chung. >> Thank you. It was one motor and some clever electronics that was really inexpensive to produce. And it was kind of fun. The Furby was like everything he knew crammed into one little device for 349 dollars and it was incredibly cool. But, it's 349 dollars for a little thing that walks around and makes a few noises. >> Yeah. >> Yeah it didn't work. >> A lot of people felt that way about the iPhone. >> Yeah, that was a big problem with, yeah and around Christmas time, I saw it on every single news network on TV. I saw it on FOX, seen it on CBS, I saw it on the Today Show. I mean it was a popular little guy because it was so cute. But you just, who wants to pay 300 dollars for a dinosaur that really does nothing except respond to your touch? >> And it didn't move fast enough for a good robot huffy. So, it just shows to go that, you know, what makes a great story, especially a video story doesn't necessarily make a great product as far as longevity, very sad. >> Depends what kids want these days. >> The kids do, just ask them and then they'll all be high on Novocain. >> Daddy I want a robot. Is this real life is this a real robot. >> Let's move on to the voice mails. Our first one comes from Jason in Marietta Georgia. He spotted something on a commercial he found fairly interesting. >> Hey Buzz crew, it's Jason [inaudible] in Marietta Georgia. I was watching 24 last night and there was a Sprint commercial for the new Sprint Nation with the, they're talking about, you know, they're 3G and now they're the only ones with a 4G. Well, in the commercial, at the end, they use a Palm Pre. I don't know what that means but it looked pretty sweet by the way. So anyway, hey, love the show rock on Buzz on a long time. >> I really like that commercial. Also, have you noticed that Sprint is a big sponsor of 24? They use those phones all over that show. But that current show I find really interesting because it's about the network and how many people are sending them email right now. How many people are getting spam about a banana diet? How many people are twittering? How many people don't know what that means? And he's right there is a Palm Pre at the end which is very enticing. >> They're probably just future proofing themselves so that when the Palm Pre finally does come out they can still run that commercial. >> Yeah. I saw on some Gadget blog yesterday that Angelina Jolie had a pre release of the Palm Pre. I did not like that. >> She had a free one. >> I wasn't happy about it at all. >> A pre Pre. >> A pre Pre that's not fair I don't care who she is. >> A preemie pre. >> Our other voice mail came from Matt in New Hampshire. He has got some fears about Oracle buying Sun. >> Hey folks, well there's not really anything funny about this message. I'm more scared than anything, yeah okay, happy for Sun that Oracle's taking over. But what about the tens of thousands of installations of my SQL that are probably going to lose their support? Oracles going to shut my SQL down, just there's no doubt about it. It's free. We run on it and it scares us. It scares me. Anyway, this is Matt from New Hampshire. Take care. Love the show, bye. >> Matt this is Rafe. Send me your email. I want to know what you're running on this. I don't think, we don't think here at CNET that Oracle's going to shut down My Sequel. We don't think they can. There are too many Web 2.0 services built on top of this like, you know, Twitter. It doesn't fit with Oracle's business to have a free fantastic open source database platform. But, Oracle cannot shut this down without destroying the internet, so. >> Well and then they'll destroy their own business. In a way, it is good for their business to leave it up because they would destroy relationships with everyone. >> Yeah. >> If they shut this down, [inaudible]. >> The question is it doesn't, the issue is it does not fit with their database paid business so we don't know what. >> It's a previous business. >> We don't, yes exactly. We don't know if Oracle can change, how they're going to change. We do not think they're going to eviscerate Web 2.0 sites by making My Sequel. >> It'd be idiotic to do that. >> Or, [inaudible]. >> Yeah, yeah it would be bad for business in the end for them to do that. And they've, they've got to pursue a new way of doing business. >> I bet the spin it out. That's my thought but. >> Or they could radically change their business. >> Yeah or they could just keep it as a parallel line, you know, that's possible too. There are worthwhile ways they could go. >> The worst thing that, what they also could do is they could slowly strangle it by keeping it there, you know, just slowing down the development of it. >> Right. >> I would hate to see that happen. I really don't think that will happen. I think this is, it's too important of an infrastructure product for the web for that to happen. >> Travis wrote into Buzz at CNET.com said he saw MED V download at VM World last year. We talked about MED V last week. It's a way that apparently Windows can emulate any machine so if you have an old program that only runs say on Windows 98, it'll create a Windows 98 machine for it to run in, in Windows 7 or in Windows Server. He said he would've been impressed, but the problem is that MED V relies on entire virtualized Windows OS. So it adds overhead to the system and it adds complexity. A piece of software that did impress him was from VM Ware. They had purchased a company that made a software called Thinstall. They've renamed it Thin Ap. Thinstall allows you the encapsulate an entire software package into a single .exe file that can be run from any computer without an installation. It also encapsulates all the Windows components that are needed. This means you can run Windows 95 software on XP, Vista, or any other Windows operating system. The application becomes portable and flexible and it's licensed towards corporations. The bad thing is it's not cheap. Hopefully one day there'll be an Open Source project for the same thing. When this tech becomes widespread, it could really change everything. >> That is really interesting. >> Yeah, I had to send that along Travis. >> I missed the part where VM purchased that because I'm a big fan of fusion on those virtualization aps. This is cool. I'm curious to know how well it works with other aps running on a device that is also running this one so if they cut and paste and share resources and stuff. But, this could be cool for just like picking up your computer on a little USB stick, plugging it in and running it anywhere [inaudible]. >> Alright, we got an email from Dan the computer science student. He says hey BOLers apparently, it's considered suspicious behavior to use a command prompt or multiple OS's. And he cites this EOS story about a Boston College computer science student. They were looking into an investigation of who sent an email identifying some student as gay. That in itself was not criminal but they're singling out this one particular computer science major because he was using multiple devices which were hosted by were running multiple operating systems. And because of the fact that he was using multiple devices and multiple operating systems, they marked him as suspicious. They called him an expert or someone who knows a lot about computers. So, he's suspicious because he is sending emails from various platforms. So be careful. >> Yeah, the story's. >> You must only use Windows at all times. >> Yeah. >> In order to be non-suspicious. >> Prairie's been around for a little while but there are a bunch of updates on there you might want to check it out. It's been around for a few days. But, it's just the idea that a command line system would be, you know, suspicious. Or the way they refer to it as the Boston College operating system, which I think is just Windows, probably, anyway. >> Yeah, unless Boston College has their own hot new operating system. >> I just hate it when. >> Maybe. >> It's a misunderstanding [inaudible]. >> We have this and this is why I was going off on using the word hack earlier, is I hate it when we have this dis, we discourage people from actually being smart, from doing cool things, from trying out things from being intelligent. We discourage that. We mock it and in some cases make it illegal. >> And Grep is outlawed, only outlaws will have Grep. >> Well said. Dr. K writes about this New York Times story on the Pizza Hut intern, Twitter intern or Twintern. I mean I'm sure ghost Twitters are essentially equivalent but this is a job where you literally tweet about Pizza Hut and they pay you. What I don't get is the salary, competitive to other tweeters so you mean you work for free. But, this is one of those things you can't make viral happen it just does, my Zen statement for the day. so yeah, Pizza Hut is putting an add out, which I'm sure they're getting more play out of the add than the actual twitter account they will where they're hiring an intern to basically be their frontline on Twitter and run the Pizza Hut Twitter account. And there's nothing wrong with this. I mean Comcast does this. They monitor Twitter. They have Zappos has a corporate Twitter account which is huge. This is the way things is going. Everybody needs to have some Twitter frontline defense and Pizza Hut is doing it. >> Yeah. >> The problem is they're not paying beans for anybody. >> It's different than astroturfing where they pay a blogger to talk about their product. >> Yeah. >> And pretend that it's an independent blog. >> Yeah, this is not that. >> This is not that. And not to say that that won't happen or isn't happening where they're paying people to Twitter about products. I'm sure if it isn't already, it'll come along. But hiring an intern to just handle your Twitter feed that's, that's not going to happen. >> You what, this may be the new entry level into journalism. I mean use to be you had to be like a copy boy run copy around or cover do obits. >> Yeah, right. >> Obits or. >> Well, it's like a kind of relations intern. >> Yeah. >> That's essentially, what you're doing. >> Yeah. >> Although, I mean it's a pretty, it's a pretty visible job for just an intern because they'll be [inaudible] news to however many people who like Pizza Hut. >> Although you can't really screw it up that bad if, it's only 140 characters, right. >> Pizza Hut Sucks. >> You can do a lot with 140 characters. >> Actually, cheese is made out of goats. >> Cardboard, not goat cheese it's made out of. >> Yeah, they should put cheese in quotation marks every time the Twitter I would follow that. >> So, yes believe me a lot could damage if you have that space. >> Oh yeah. >> But a lot of good as well. >> That's right. >> A different Dr. K, this one being Dr. Karl, it's very possible the last one was Dr. Karl and we just didn't have the time to type out the rest of his name. anyways, he emailed in and said, basically pointed to a link to a story, study finds pirates bye ten times more music online than non-pirates it gives motto story. There was a study, I guess, in Norway with 1,900 different participants that found that those who downloaded free music were, yeah, ten times more likely to buy paid music online. In other words, music pirates are the music industry's online consumers. >> In other words, Paul McCartney had it totally backwards. >> Yeah, right. >> As much as I love Paul McCartney. >> Or maybe he doesn't like to make money off his music. >> Yeah, we already got that. >> I think he already did. >> Yeah. >> Well, he's dead. >> What? >> Remember there's all of the clues all over his albums. >> Yeah. >> He died in a car wreck in the 60s and then they replaced him with a fake Paul McCartney. >> [Inaudible] >> That's not true he's going to be in E3 announcing the new Beatle's rock band. >> You mean the copy of Paul McCartney will be at E3. Paul McCartney the fake Paul McCartney. >> Yep. >> If you look, he's barefoot on Abby Road. If you play Revolution Nine backwards it says Paul is dead now miss him, miss him. Actually, that might be a different track of the white album but the evidence is right there for you to see. >> Yeah, clear as day. >> I'm glad we finally uncovered this after all these years. >> let me get this straight. Paul McCartney's dead but Elvis is alive. >> Possibly yes. Paul McCartney is fake. >> Well, have you ever seen them in the same room at the same time? >> Who Elvis and Paul McCartney. >> Yeah, I'm just saying. >> Paul McCartney and his fake replacement. >> That could never happen. I mean you could never see a Tom Merritt and a Tom Merritt [inaudible] in the same room at the same time right. Check out flicer.com. >> This is going nowhere. Alright, yeah, anyways, yeah, so even if you don't like us going nowhere you probably should love CNET TV. And you can vote for them at the Webby Awards and the people's voice awards yeah people's voice. >> Don't say them, us. You're part of CNET TV. >> Well, yeah. I, I say that because I started that way and I wanted to add the sentence to match. But, yeah it's us. >> Yeah. >> CNET TV and also lots of CBS interactive properties are up for voice. >> Yeah. >> Voice votes as well like CHOW and a bunch of other stuff. >> Game Spot. >> If you like us, please vote for us, yes. >> You can do that at pv.webbyawards.com. And yeah, that's about that. >> bol.cnet.com of course is our blog if you want to interact with us, comment on the show, send us emails, whatever you like. >> And you can also vote for your favorite web 2.0 applications and webware 100 for another ten days, www.webware.com/100. >> And, if you like, no. Alright, see you all later, bye. >> Bye. >> Bye. [ Music ] >> Tom is now a Falcon. Tom is the falconer. >> It sounds great but. >> Well, you guys, I'm going to go.

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