Episode Twenty: The Orange Goo Doesn't Owe You Anything
January 17th, 2010
Welcome to Episode Twenty in which our heroes discuss Reverend Dave's Reverence, Jeff's new baby, Avatar (again!!), Laser Cats 5, Jimmy Fallon's cover of Pants On The Ground, analysis of romantic comedies, Best Buy's optimization scam, advertising spam in podcasts, Hulu as bullshit, Google's real-time search, Firefox versus Chrome, and BPotW: Baconnaise; with music by The Ting Tings, Jonathan Coulton and Jimmie's Chicken Shack.
100 Things I Learned About Avatar #7: When aliens shoot six foot long arrows at you, which travel at over 40 miles an hour, it's the neurotoxin that kills you, not the arrow.
#35: Blue chicks aren't just for Shatner anymore.
#50: The Na'vi are extremely hard to kill, until you try to kill thousands of them.
• The Ting Tings The name comes from the first name of a Chinese colleague of White at a shop who told her the name sounds like the pronunciation of "an old bandstand" in Mandarin.
The Romantic Comedy Formula Very simple. Boy meets girl, girl either outright hates or is indifferent to boy, girl and boy interact in some kind of contrived way, girl thinks she likes boy, girl and boy have a major fight and boy and girl make up in some wonderful cinematic location or in some climactic way. Now of course, you can interchange the sexes in this formula, much like John Hughes did in the wonderful movie SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL. The formula however remains quite constant and is the backbone of MOST romantic comedies.
Best Buy Optimization Is A Big Stupid Annoying Waste Of Money Over the past year, a number of you have been telling us that, due to "pre-optimization" of computers, it's difficult -- sometimes impossible -- to walk into a Best Buy and leave with the advertised deal (in effect, you would be paying a $39.99 surcharge over the computer's advertised price). We decided to look into your complaints. We sent the Consumer Reports secret shoppers to 18 different Best Buys in 11 states, and one of our shoppers was denied the price advertised for a specific model because only pre-optimized computers were available. When the Consumer Reports engineers compared three "optimized" computers to ones with default factory settings, there was no performance improvement. In one case, an optimized laptop actually performed 32% worse than the factory model.
YouTube Vs. Hulu YouTube, owned by Google, was a clear leader in online video, starting with user-submitted content and moving onto other content through various partnerships. Enter Hulu, founded by NBC Universal and News Corp, with its large catalog of the parent companies’ programming to spoil the game. Now YouTube is countering with full-length MGM films and TV shows. This topic will track the latest on the competition between these two online video giants.
Google Launches Real-Time Search We knew it was inevitable, and now it’s here: Google has just launched real-time search integrated into search results pages. Google real-time search updates as stuff is happening around the Web — for example, live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles and Web pages now stream in on the actual result pages for your query. It works on mobile too (at least iPhone and Android for now).
Firefox 3.7 dropped from Mozilla's development plan Mozilla has changed their entire strategy on how they will be developing their Firefox browser. There are plans to drop Firefox 3.7 from the schedule and the hope is to release "incremental updates throughout the year", the company says. This move marks a major change in the way that Mozilla operates.
Episode Nineteen: You Have The Right To Remain Cyber
January 7th, 2010
Welcome to Episode Nineteen in which our heroes discuss Avatar (again), It Might Get Loud, The Lion's Share, online avatar rights, Jeff Bezos on the extinction of books, Apple iGuide rumors, Luke Wilson as an AT&T shill, Top 10 Bacon Recipes of 2009, and BPotW: Bacon Cups; with music by Cornelius, The Previous and M.I.A..
The Lionshare The Lionshare is the debut feature from writer/director Josh Bernhard. It was made in the spirit of the independent, do-it-yourself cinema of the Internet age, shot with consumer video cameras at the cost of a few thousand dollars. The latest in a wave of films dubbed “The New Talkies,” its kinetic style and raw performances recall the work of John Cassavetes and the DOGME 95 movement. Relying on naturalistic dialog and a barebones aesthetic to match the bare honesty of its characters, The Lionshare is a personal look at life and love in an increasingly impersonal world.
The movie is a reflection of how we are living now, as we increasingly relate to each other through the music we listen to and the media we consume; where people communicate through internet memes and pop culture references. The Lionshare demonstrates how the medium has truly become the message.
Chase Budziak on Online Avatar Rights Chase Budziak is currently finishing his Masters of Arts at Northern Illinois University where he studies Communication. More specifically, he is interested in Rhetoric, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and Social Movement Theory. His master's thesis is a combination of all of the above, that is, he is trying to understand the evolving role of rhetoric by studying the convergence of real-world social movement theory with virtual-world social movements.
Bezos: I do. I don't know how long it will take. You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world. That's not going to go away; that's going to thrive. But the physical book really has had a 500-year run. It's probably the most successful technology ever. It's hard to come up with things that have had a longer run. If Gutenberg were alive today, he would recognize the physical book and know how to operate it immediately. Given how much change there has been everywhere else, what's remarkable is how stable the book has been for so long. But no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever.
Lyons: Do you still read books on paper?
Bezos: Not if I can help it.
Apple To Sell LCD & OLED Versions of iSlate? We reported earlier on this rumor from an unknown product developer. This designer heard that Apple is buying up all of the 10" LCD and OLED screens they can nab. The designer's employer was looking for 10" screens for a project, but was told by Asian suppliers that Apple had pre-ordered all of them.
Apple Tablet Rumor Party: Fox News, Former Google China President, and the 'iGuide' No words can stress how much we're sick of Apple 'iSlate' rumors right now, but when someone with powerful links speaks up, we gotta take note. Kai-fu Lee -- former Google China president -- has joined the Apple rumor mill by leaking what he claims to be insider knowledge of the device. Now, we've heard a lot of this same noise before: sub-$1000 price, an iPhone-like appearance, 10.1-inch multitouch screen, video conferencing, cellular connectivity, 3D graphics and virtual keyboard. What really got our attention is Lee's link with Foxconn -- the Apple OEM is one of the main contributors to Lee's post-Google investment venture, Innovation Works, so there's a good chance that Lee's spoken to someone overlooking the manufacturing of a certain Apple device. Of course, we can't abide Lee's final proclamation that "Apple expects to produce near ten million units in the first year!" This is pretty bold considering Apple's only sold five million portable computers so far this year (and ten million was the number of iPods sold in Q3 2009 alone), but hey, who knows if Steve Jobs has already worked out a subsidizing plan with some carriers to lure us all?
A New Apple Tablet Computer Could Overwhelm Data Networks One thing we know: Apple's (AAPL) iPhone is so massively popular that the network it officially runs on (AT&T's) often has a hard time keeping up. Densely-populated areas have problems with dropped calls and unreliable data services since so many iPhone users are choking the network. It got so bad that AT&T stopped selling the iPhone from its website this past weekend, seemingly trying to slow sales down because its network couldn't handle it.
So what happens when Apple releases the next, best thing? The blogosphere and tech press are totally psyched over the pending release of an Apple tablet or pad computer -- one that will "change the world" no less. But nobody is asking the question of usage problems. If an Apple tablet is announced in January and released shortly thereafter, are the wireless networks the device will run on be overwhelmed?
Episode Eighteen: All Other Podcasts Taste Like Shit
December 30th, 2009
Welcome to Episode Eighteen in which our heroes discuss Avatar, the Phantom Menace YouTube review, Sherlock Holmes, Rage Against The Machine's number one Xmas spot, the Hokey Pokey's inventor's demise, Apple tablet rumors, the airborne incendiary attempt, HP's racism, Facebook's great betrayal, Verison's $350 termination fee, BPotW: Norton Saved My Bacon; with music by Jimmie's Chicken Shack, The Pigs and The Rugburns.
Rage Against the Machine beats X Factor's Joe to Christmas No 1 Killing In The Name, an expletive-heavy rock song first released in 1992 by the Californian rock band Rage Against the Machine, won the battle for Christmas top spot on the basis of downloads only. It sold about 500,000 copies last week, about 50,000 more than The Climb, McElderry's earnest ballad.
Hokey Pokey Inventor Dies What with all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the almost unnoticed death, recently, of a very important person. Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote the Hokey-Pokey died peacefully at home. He was 93.
The Exhaustive Guide to Apple Tablet Rumors The Apple tablet is almost here. We hear. Actually, we're hearing a whole lot lately. With this exhaustive guide to every tablet rumor, we've got the clearest picture of the Apple tablet yet.
Bomb Attempt on U.S.-Bound Flight A passenger on a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight tried Friday to detonate an explosive device strapped to his leg and later told investigators he had affiliations with al Qaeda and was trying to blow up the plane, according to a senior U.S. official.
Facebook's Great Betrayal Its new privacy policy have turned the social network inside out: millions of people have signed up because Facebook offers a sense of safety. For the last five years — as long as you're relatively careful about who you accept as your friends — what you do and say on Facebook for the most part stays on Facebook. Katie Couric's daughter first posted pictures of her famous mom dancing silly in 2006, but it took three years for them to leak to us. (Thank you tipsters!) But virtually overnight and without a clear warning, Facebook has completely reversed those user expectations. Their new privacy settings amount to making anything you post on Facebook to be public, unless you go to great lengths to keep your info private.
Verizon Wireless Defends Fee Verizon Wireless said a new $350 fee that it charges some subscribers to break cell-phone contracts is necessary to cover its higher costs and the "risks" of offering high-speed wireless Internet service. The wireless giant offered up a defense of its new fee—double the fee charged to other subscribers—in response to an inquiry by the Federal Communications Commission.
100 Things I Learned About Avatar
#7: When aliens shoot six foot long arrows at you, which travel at over 40 miles an hour, it's the neurotoxin that kills you, not the arrow.
