Hi, I'm Molly Wood, and welcome to the Buzz Report � the show about the tech news
that everybody�s talking about. This week, it�s Skype �Buy it Now�, Apple Rock �n Roll,
and horrific highway slaughter for education. But first, it's the Gadget of the Week.
The Gadget of the Week is the Sandisk Sansa Clip+. Yes, it has a plus sign in the name.
BUT, it's an absolutely great little player that, for 2 gigs, costs 40 dollars. It's 70 bucks for
the 8-gig version, it's got a great interface, it's super portable, it comes in cute little
colors, it integrates with the Rhapsody DNA subscription service, it has an FM tuner, it
can play back OGG files -- what, like, three people care -- and did I mention that the
nearest competition costs 79 dollars and doesn't even have a SCREEN? That's how you
get to be an Editors' Choice. Sansa Clip+. Buy it, and get your butt to the gym.
And now for the news. In the big buzz of the week, eBay has sold Skype. A group of
investors bought a 65 percent share in the voice-over-IP provider, and the deal valued
Skype at 2.75 billion dollars ... but not in like, real money. It's finance stuff. Anyway, it's
kind of like, remember when eBay bought Skype and we were all like, �what the heck is
eBay going to do with Skype?� Well. We should have known. Auction it off! That's what
they do!
In other news, Apple finally confirmed that there WILL be an Apple Event on September 9th, the theme is
"It's only rock and roll, but we like it," and there you go. iPods. And NOW, analysts are starting to
speculate that Steve Jobs himself will host the event. You know, since he's back at work. And like 90
percent of his job description is "keynotes." Yeah. Way to go out on a limb, there, analysts. If he doesn't
host the event, expect Apple's stock to hit 9 cents.
Terrifying developments from Google this week, Gmail went down for 100 minutes. The
darkest 100 minutes humanity has known in centuries. In a nutshell, Google took some
servers offline for maintenance and made some router changes to try to improve
reliability ... but it turned out that WAY more people use Gmail than they expected. So
with some servers offline, the other ones got overloaded in like, nanoseconds, and
boom. Outage. Now, the GOOD news about this is that I would have thought Google
knew exactly how many people use Gmail and where they live. See!? Not that scary. The
bad news is that Google makes human errors just like the rest of us. Who can we trust!?
And speaking of trust, a new study confirms that the Xbox 360 is the least reliable game console in the
world. The SquareTrade study found that the failure rate for the console COULD be as high as 35 percent.
Yeah. Not that anyone is surprised. I think if your console is as well known for the Red Rings of Death as it
is for like, Gears of War, then ... I guess that just makes it a Microsoft product. Rimshot!
And now, let's have a look at what's Clogging the Tubes. This week, it's the texting-
while-driving PSA coming from the UK. Now, this has been kicking around the Internet
for a few weeks now, but it just, as NPR likes to say, "went viral" this week. It's got a
million and a half views and them some on YouTube, and it HORRIFICALLY depicts a
HORRIFIC multicar accident that occurs while some girls are murderously texting while
driving. I cannot watch another second of it ever again, but I'll avert my eyes while you
watch a little bit.
I MEAN. MY GOD. Experts are wondering whether the video will actually deter kids from texting because,
after all, it's apparently crazy popular. Yeah. No. Listen. They don't like it for the message. They like it for
the same reason that Final Destination is the number one movie in America and the UK right now.
Because it�s basically that movie, in PSA form. It�s not helping anyone, people. But good special effects!
And that�s the Buzz Report for this week, everyone. I�m Molly Wood! Thanks for
watching.
