Hi, I'm Molly Wood, and welcome to the Buzz Report, the show about the tech news
that everyone's talking about. This week, it's the sorest of sore losers, a biblical epic
about a CEO, and interspecies adorable-ness.
But first, it's the Gadget of the Week.
The Gadget of the Week is the Kyocera Echo. It aims to answer the question, how do I
choose between a touchscreen smart phone and a tablet? Oh, I know! Put two 3.5 inch
touch screens on a smart phone, let people attach them and put the phone in "tablet
mode," and voila. Problem solved. Kinda. Like many gimmicky gadgets, though, once
you get past the "tablet mode," there's not a ton of there there. It's running Android 2.2
with middling specs -- a 5 megapixel camera, a single-core 1GHz Snapdragon processor,
and, and this is the bad part, NO 4G, even though the big double screens pretty much
scream "streaming video." But hey, good little multitasker, right? Don't worry. It comes
with an extra battery.
And now for the news. The Winklevoss brothers, Tyler and Cameron, continued to lose to
Facebook this week. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Winklevii, or as I call them, the
Whinervoss twins, cannot overturn a settlement agreement they signed with Facebook that gives them 20
million dollars in cash and partial ownership of Facebook. The Whinervosses wanted out of the deal,
because they said they didn't understand what they were signing when they agreed to it, AS SOBER
ADULTS, and they didn't know Facebook was going to be worth as much as it is now.
In the ruling, even the judge said, look, guys. At some point? You gotta stop suing. The Whinervosses,
however, said they plan to appeal the appeal. Guys. Can I see you over here for a second?
Look. I understand. Believe me. It sucks to get dumped. And it sucks even more to watch the guy who
dumped you become like, prom king and win the football championship and be named Time's Man of the
Year. And meanwhile, you didn't even win the Olympics. Ouch. But seriously? You need to move on. All
this anger is just not good for you. And also? Your deal is worth a hundred million dollars, you spoiled,
whiny brats. Let's ALL move on.
In other news this week, at last! There's an authorized biography of Steve Jobs coming
out next year. Renowned journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson got unprecedented
access to Jobs, his family, and his co-workers for the upcoming book. Which will be
called ...iSteve: the Book of Jobs. This is not the part where I'm making a joke. That's the
real name of the book.
In other Apple news, there are rumors that the iPhone 5 might not launch until September or even early
2012, and there won't be an iPad 3 in 2011 at all. Dude, what are we gonna stand in line for?
Cheap gas? Oh yeah, gas is expensive.
Amazon this week announced a new, ad-supported Kindle! It's a whole 25 dollars
cheaper, and it'll include what Amazon refers to as "special offers." Uh huh. Like, "it was
the best of times, it was Coca-Cola time?" For a measly 25-dollar discount? You know
what I liked? I liked those rumors about a free Kindle for Amazon Prime subscribers. I'm
holding out for that.
Cisco killed off the Flip camera division this week, just two years after buying for almost
600 million dollars. The news caused millions of people around the U.S. to mutter
nostalgically, "aw, I have a Flip camera somewhere!"
And now let's see what's clogging the tubes this week. If you've had a sucky week, like
maybe you just lost ANOTHER lawsuit against Facebook, this video is JUST the thing
you need to cheer you up. Cat playing with dolphin. Yes, really.
See? Don't you just feel better about the world now?
And that's the Buzz Report for this week, everyone. I'm Molly Wood, and thank you for
watching.
