Best of the Buzz 2009

^M00:00:01 >> Now from the number one on air and on line information source for the digital age. ^M00:00:06 [ Music ] ^M00:00:10 >> Hi, I'm Molly Wood, and welcome to the Buzz Report, the show about the tech news that everyone has been talking about all year long. This week I am not here. Our gear is packed up for CES and we're preparing for a long holiday so we've put together our annual collection of the best moments of the past year of the Buzz Report, enjoy! It was announced this week that Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak will appear on Dancing with the Stars. ^M00:00:34 [ Music ] ^M00:00:45 Patent office...you are killing me, there is prior art on multi touch technology dating back to 1982. A paper published in 1991 discussed the use of multi finger and pinching motions on touch screens. This is on Wikipedia, you could look this up, I did, and the patent process is supposed to take into account whether an idea is non-obvious. Don't you think that Apple's 2008 patent filing on the idea of a finger pressing a touch screen surface seems a little bit obvious, why does Apple even get this patent. >> Palm strapped on a pair and launched its new smart phone the eve of the Apple event...but those cajones look pretty shrively when the name was announced, [noise] the Pixie. >> The phone sold out almost immediately because apparently Palm only released like 326 actual phones. You know Palm I can't help you if you don't help yourself. >> She just won't shut up, I mean I guess it's her house but still she can relax a little, push back from the white powder for a minute and stop being so damned excited about stuff like help and how to. >> Let's keep the oppressive regime train rolling, shall we. I think it's time for a little China up date. ^M00:01:59 [ Music ] ^M00:02:02 Despite increasing pressure from all sides, even from the United States government, China says it will not back down on its mandate that all PC's sold in that country come with filtering software pre-installed. You know, in case you were still harboring any illusions at all the china gives a damn what anybody thinks. So on the one hand scientists who invented the internet, on the other hand proponents of a fake grass roots disinformation campaign who routinely distort the impact of potential net neutrality rules and have a massive content delivery conflict of interest; I'm just saying who do you believe? ^M00:02:36 [ Pause ] ^M00:02:40 Oh, and Steve. ^M00:02:42 [ Music ] ^M00:02:55 >> Then we have the Cougar, this silver-haired piece of work has been a swinger since her divorce. She's trying to be interested in all this windows stuff, whatever that is, but she's really here because she heard you need a key to install windows, she's going to be real let down when she finds out this isn't a key party. >> Meanwhile, Josh Lowensohn at CNET's webware blog put together a list of all the ways that Google currently watches everything you do on line, like how it tracks your web history for its personalized search, it reads your e-mail to provide contextual g-mail ads, it keeps all your financial information in Google check out and it busts you for peeing on the sidewalk with Google street view. And then Josh wonders, you know, what kind of stuff might a Google operating system find out about you...ha, ha, ha, good question, wow, don't use that OS even if it ever actually comes into existence, just...no one should use that. The folks at Taser have released a new model that can shock three people in a row without a reload, yeah...basically a semiautomatic taser, tell me that is not totally bad ass and say it with me now...don't tase me bro, don't tase me bro, don't tase me bro. I know that's not funny...come on that's funny. Some combination of the Iphone radio and AT and T service is giving almost every customer everywhere fits of rage about this thing's flaky service, its almost total lack of 3G reception, its slow to respond radio and generally pathetic coverage range and don't get me started on how you'll pay almost $100 a month for a phone that doesn't work anywhere. [ Loud background conversation ] I don't care how many apps it has, people want to call me and text me and they can't, the Palm Pre could be about as good as X-Men's origins Wolverine and I am still paying my early termination fee to AT and T with a smile on my face. It's just easier to read all that bad news with unicorns and rainbows everywhere, sparkly. And that's the Buzz Report for this week everyone, I'm Molly Wood and thank you for watching. ^M00:05:00 [ Music ] ^M00:05:03