Loaded: Power from the people

^B00:00:00 [ Sound effect ] >> Microsoft extends Windows 7 Beta. President Obama launches another website, and Wikipedia wants to take the power from the people. It's Monday, January 26th. I'm Natali Del Conte, and it's time to get Loaded. ^M00:00:12 [ Music ] ^M00:00:17 If you've been wanting to download the Window 7 Beta, you have a little more time. Microsoft has extended the deadline to download to February 10th. Originally the Beta was set to close this week. There are a couple of exceptions. First, if you start your download before February 10th, you have until February 12th to finish it. I guess that's for the dial-up users. Also, the company will still continue to provide product keys for the operating system. Microsoft hopes that it will have enough Beta testers to put the operating system through its paces. We hope so, too. We are anticipating the official release late this year or early 2010. [ Sound effect ] I think President Obama may be addicted to buying URLs. The Obama administration launched Recovery.gov over the weekend. The purpose of this site is to track how and where we spend our taxpayer dollars. If you visit the site now, it says to check back after the Recovery and Reinvestment Act is passed. I appreciate the online transparency, but do we really need all of these separate sites? Couldn't we just accomplish all of this on one page, like Change.gov or Whitehouse.gov, or my Barack Obama, or any of the other dozens of sites that Obama has? Just wondering. [ Sound effect ] At Apple's earnings call last week, the acting CEO, Tim Cooke, let loose a little veiled threat on the upcoming Palm Pre. It looked like Apple was not thrilled about the fact that the Pre will have multi-touch. And Cook said that they would not tolerate patent infringement. The Silicon Valley started chanting, "fight" on the blogosphere. Palm responded over the weekend with a statement to all things digital. A spokesperson said, quote, "Palm has a long history of innovation that is reflected in our products and robust patent portfolio. And we have long been recognized for our fundamental patents in the mobile space. If faced with legal action, we are confident that we have the tools necessary to defend ourselves." I don't really think we'll see long-term battle over this one, but if we do, both sides are ready. [ Sound effect ] Nokia is discontinuing production on the N810 Tablet. This is the second-generation tablet computer that replaced N800 in 2007. It doesn't look like there's gonna be a replacement for either of them, though. A Nokia spokesperson confirmed that the Tablet was pulled last week, but we must have missed this simple fact due to Inauguration. This was their big WiMAX product, though, so we had this great tablet they could use a WiMAX network, but no WiMAX network. Now that we have two WiMAX networks, Nokia's pulling the device. The company did say that they were interested in WiMAX still. I used to use a Nokia Tablet, but I just couldn't really find many uses for it because it was so dependent on Wi-Fi. It was a good idea, though, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they'll come out with next. [ Sound effect ] If you don't live in an area that has 3G for T-Mobile, you still can buy the G1. Previously, the phone was only sold in markets that offer 3G service, but that changed over the weekend. The phone is now available at all T-Mobile retail spots and retail partner stores. Of course, you could have just ordered it online before, even if you didn't live in a 3G area. [ Sound effect ] If you want to vandalize my Wikipedia page, you should probably do it soon because in a few months Wikipedia may not let you. The company is considering some new rules that would require all updates be approved by a reliable user. The protocol would be called "flagged revisions," and it would allow registered trusted editors to publish changes to the site after some research and editing. Some edits could sit a queue for a while. And this will not be a popular move. Some people sit on Wikipedia all day, every day, and they will not like to give up this control. I'll bet this is a result of last week's 30 Rock Episode. >> Wikipedia. I'm gonna check that out. [ Sound effect ] Verizon launched an Internet phone this weekend. It's very futuristic looking. The Verizon Hub uses your home broadband to make calls over the Internet, but the service is linked to your mobile plan. You can send and receive texts and use location-based services from your mobile number, even when you're at home. It also integrates with Microsoft Outlook for calendar and contact support. The Hub goes on sale on February 1st and costs $199.00 after a $50.00 rebate. You have to be a Verizon customer and agree to a two-year contract with a monthly charge of $35.00. That's a lot of money just to be able to use your cell phone at home. [ Sound effect ] YouTube now has high quality videos available to you without any hacking required like it was before. The new embedded player has an HQ button in the expandable menu, which will give you much prettier videos than ever before. [ Sound effect ] A new study shows that people who play video games just might be antisocial. Shocker, I know. According to research out of Brigham Young University, young adults who play video games are prone to poor relationships with friends and family. Eight hundred and thirteen college students were studied, and the results showed not only anti-social tendencies in gamers, but also higher incidents of risky behaviors such as pot smoking. Young women who played a lot of games also had a higher reporting of low self-confidence. Of course, you can't really make any concrete claims out of such a small study, but is this at all surprising. I mean really? I think I'll ask our video game expert, Jeff Bakalar, to ring in on this one. He's not antisocial, after all. [ Sound effect ] Those are all your headlines for today, but I will see you tomorrow. Thank you for watching. I'm Natali Del Conte with CNET TV, and you've just been Loaded. ^M00:05:23 [ Music ]