Hey, everyone, I�m Molly Wood, and welcome to the Buzz Report, the show about the
tech news that everyone is talking about.
This week, it�s Nokia�s hail Mary phone, Steve
Jobs�s secrets at last, and political suicide on YouTube.
But first, it�s the Gadget of the Week.
The Gadget of the Week is the Nest Learning Thermostat.
Yep.
Thermostat.
But they�re
calling it the �iPod of thermostats.� Partly because Nest Labs was founded by Tony
Fadell, who led the design team that designed the iPod.
Nerd cred.
Anyway, the
thermostat.
It�s programmable, obviously.
It�s also networkable over WiFi, and you can
control it remotely with a mobile app.
You can network several thermostats together and
control them all at once.
And it has a motion sensor built in so it can �see� when people
are in the room -- then, it supposedly learns your habits and can auto-adjust to suit your
heating and cooling needs.
Nest says the thermostat could knock 20 to 30 percent off
the average utility bill -- which is good, since it costs 250 bucks.
Best part of all!?
Look
how easy it is to install!?
That�s amazing, let�s watch that again, in slow-mo.
Uh huh.
Have your electrician on
speed dial.
OTHER than that, pretty � awesome, um, thermostat.
Now, the other big gadget news of the week is Nokia showing off its firstborn child with
Microsoft.
The Lumia 800 is Nokia�s bet-the-farm smartphone, Microsoft and Nokia are
calling it the first REAL Windows Phone.
It�s a tricked up N9 with gorgeous hardware,
although the specs are just ok -- single core processor and whatnot.
The camera will be
pretty amazing, 8 megapixels, with a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and on-phone editing
features, plus HD video capture.
And since Nokia never, ever learns, it will debut in
Europe for about 420 Euros, with no word whatsoever on a U.S. release.
And THAT, my
friends, is why the THERMOSTAT is the gadget of the week.
In other news this week, the official Steve Jobs biography came out Monday, and it was
full of fascinating stories -- not all of them flattering.
On the one hand, Walter Isaacson�s
biography portrays a cool, counter-culture genius who left an incredible string of
achievements and inventions behind him.
On the other hand, abusive manager, bad
temper, family issues, calculating and more than willing to screw his partners out of
money and stock, brittle personality.
Stuff like that.
But the WORST thing he did, by far, even worse than abandoning his daughter or worse
even than the Newton � was that he hurt the feelings of that cute, cute Jonathan Ives,
the vice president of design at Apple.
In the book, Ives says it really upset him that Steve Jobs would often take credit for his
fabulous designs, and GET all the credit for being the only innovator at Apple.
Oh
Jonny, don�t worry sweetie, we always knew you were the smart one, and WE here at
Buzz totally appreciate you.
Moving on, Netflix.
Sigh.
The company�s quarterly report said that after it hiked prices 60
percent, WAY more customers actually canceled their subscriptions than Netflix
expected.
Like 800,000 of them.
Netflix�s stock fell 37 percent on the news, and limped
along down there all week.
See.
And now.
I�m not in the stock advice business, and I�m not allowed to buy Netflix
stock.
But Netflix ALSO reported record revenues, they�re expanding into the UK, and
they�re not splitting up their business after all.
Calm DOWN, investors.
And as for the
rest of you?
Buy low.
Just sayin.
That streaming catalog still sucks, though.
SPEAKING of panicky investors, even Amazon was down this week after the company
reported a dip in profits because it spent a lot of money making Kindle Fires and the rest
of the new Kindle lineup.
But they ALSO said they�re rushing to produce way more
Kindle Fires than they expected, because everyone wants one.
And then when they
have them, Amazon may take a loss on the hardware, but they�ll sell bajillions of 15-
dollar eBooks and also movies and TV shows and magazines with their little one-click
genius, and they�ll be printing their own Kindle-branded dollars.
But what do I know.
Wall
Street has done a great job with America so far.
And now it�s time for what�s Clogging the Tubes, this week�s it�s the Herman Cain Crazy
Train.
The Internet went crazy for his most recent campaign video, which features his
campaign manager � aka the smoking man from X-Files.
So, that was baffling.
But
THEN, we all realized that he�s been doing this for MONTHS!
Go to his YouTube page!
Check out the Yellow Flowers video!
It�s like a 4-minute video with some guy claiming to
be a famous actor and talking about how Herman Cain is great.
Except the unknown
actor is a total a-hole who can�t drink a margarita without a straw and is rude to everyone
around him and isn�t good at his job.
At all.
so, like � what?
How is this HELPING
Herman Cain?
OHHHH, I get it.
He�s trolling America.
It�s VIRAL.
Smart.
Maybe.
And that�s the Buzz Report for this week, everyone.
I�m Molly Wood and thanks for
watching.
