Holland Escorts

Mark and Wes at Monsoon Masala in Pleasant Hill,CA.

In this show, they talk about Mr. Edison’s Kindle, 8-bit sound, iPad features, 8-track tapes, the Zilog Z80 processor, and a method to fake out DNA tests.

Be sure to visit http://www.slurpcast.com to check-out the current show notes!

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes at Chef Chao’s restaurant in Rheem, CA.

Sites of Interest:

• MadTV made this video about the iPad before it was announced.
• History of the Apple Newton.
• Apple hired back one of the developers of the Newton.
• Details of the new Apple iPad.
• Haiti Earthquake Survivor Calls iPhone a Life Saver.
• Haiti Earthquake Relief: How You Can Help.
• AT&T Seeks to Phase Out Landline service.
• Spike Jonze video about robots in love.
• Online fan club for the other Spike Jones.
• NEC’s “Battery-Less” Remote Control Could Be The Future Of Gadget Power.
• The famous Dan Brown novel that Mark couldn’t think of was The DaVinci Code.
• The Plastic Logic QUE ebook reader.
• YouTube Redesigned With Films, User Uploads in Mind.
• YouTube’s Next Venture: Movie Rentals.
• Home page for the legitimate uses of BitTorrent.
• The Texas Instruments watch we discussed in a previous show is being used to unlock doors.
• ATM Card Skimmers Are Getting Frighteningly Sophisticated.
• Speaker system for pregnant women.
• Watch Any Vimeo Video in Freaky ASCII-O-Vision.
• Interview with the father of videogames, Ralph Baer.
• You should buy an iPhone instead of any other platform so you can run essential applications like these: SafeCab, Voice Band (video of it), Anti-Aging, Boobs and Sneezes, and Werewolf Me.

Mark’s iPhone Application of the week:

• PetSnap — With 32 different sounds and useful features, PetSnap could easily attract your pet’s attention and assist you creating wonderful pets’ photos!

Mark and Wes at Bo’s BBQ in Lafayette,CA.

Sites of Interest:

• New Google "near me now" features for iPhone and Android.
• Google takes a new approach with China.
• China is now the largest importer of cars
• 2010 Will Be the Year of 3D TV
• How different types of 3D glasses work.
• 3D without glasses, works very much like the 3D postcards you see in souvenir shops.
• Nvidia 3D vision card and glasses for 3D on your home PC. Mark was wrong in being skeptical about this. He was assuming 3D would need polarization on the display screen and forgot the technology where the glasses have electronic filters that turn each eye’s lens transparent and opaque in sequence to match the left and right pictures blinking alternatively on the display.
• TV goggles exist, but never seem to be good enough.
• The director of Avatar and Titanic made a 3D IMAX documentary called Ghosts of the Abyss about finding the wreck of the Titanic and exploring it with mini submarines containing IMAX cameras.
• Interview with James Cameron about the technology used to film Avatar.
• Good video of the Sony Aibo robot dog in action, including interaction with a cat.
• Video of Bigdog, a Military robot that look like a double-sided dog.
• Video of the Manoi Go break-dancing robot.
• Digital Mobile TV meant for portable devices.
• Sugar-powered phone, pour coca cola into it.
• Free Photoshop Online.
• The Sony Dash can run Chumby applications as well as other multimedia functions.
• SBSettings for jailbroken iPhones Offers Faster Method to Manage iPhone Settings
• Article critical of the Sound Exchange website.
• Touch the Future with Light Blue Optics.
• New Sony eBook readers have touchscreens and free cellular network access for downloading books and periodicals.
• Philip K. Dick Estate Sends Google Cease And Desist Over Nexus One Name.
• Pacman re-written for the 1976 Fairchild VES/Channel F/System II
• "Demo apps" people used to write to show off their programming skill
• The jailbreak ProSwitcher does multitasking on the iPhone looking just like the Palm Pre.
• Please don’t make the mistake of buying an Androd phone, Blackberry, or Windows Mobile. Only the iPhone can run amazing and essential applications like these: Mr. Dumb - Toilet, Marco Popo, iThong, Pet Snap, Nude-it, and Drunk Dialer.

Wes’ iPhone Applications of the week:

• Labyrinth 2 –The creators of the original iPhone Labyrinth game bring you Labyrinth 2 - the groundbreaking game taken to the next level.
• GoodReader — Read huge PDF, or TXT files, flawless performance with files over 1 gig in size, and re-flows the text to fit the iPhone screen.

Mark’s iPhone Applications of the week:

• HuffingtonPost.com — Take the Huffington Post with you, and get the latest news and opinion –even when you are on the go.
• Dragon Dictation — Voice recognition application powered by Dragon NaturallySpeaking that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text.
• Mailme Voice — The quickest way to get all those things that you need to remember straight to your e-mail inbox.

Mark, Wes, and guest Frankie at the Swad restaurant in Lafayette, CA

Sites of Interest:

• The little-known Jewish holiday of Christmas Eve.
• Most Bay Area cellphone carriers now work in the BART Transbay tube. That article shows problems at first, but the service seems to be good now.
• Comparison of prepaid cell phone plans, including unlimited plans that compete with Metro PCS.
• If you aren’t familiar with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s personality, please watch this video first so you will understand the context, then watch this Video of a guy who says Steve Ballmer personally fired him because he wasn’t enthusiastic enough about the word "Bing!"
• Mark’s puppy is a Bichon Frise.
• Nettop computers are miniature desktop machines that use basically notebook components so they are very small and use little electric power. Mark got an Acer Aspire Revo 1600 for $200 and is happy with it for the price.
• Taffic and runway lights with incandescent bulbs are being replaced with LED lights because they last far longer and use less electricity, however because they run so much cooler, they create a hazard in the winter.
• World Climate Report, a blog skeptical about global warming.
• If you are truly concerned about global warming, the best thing you can do personally to save the planet, is to eat your pets
• Here are the pictures Wes took of his trip to Thailand.
• San Francisco mayor backs mandatory cell phone radiation labels.
• Inform 7 is a design system for interactive fiction based on natural language.
• USB Hourglass random number generator and random number generators based on radiation.
• Twitter co-founder starts a new company, Square, that lets individuals and small businesses accept credit cards for payment using a tiny cube accessory that plugs into the audio jack of iPhones and other cell phones. See a video here.
• Mark sees a similarity between Square and the beginnings of PayPal, which started as a way to beam money from one Palm Pilot owner to another.
• Google goggles is an Android app that lets you take a photo of a product or building and lookup information about it by matching your photo to others of the same object that Google knows about. Google says Goggles will eventually be implemented on the iPhone.
• Wes saw the Rama IX Bridge in Bangkok, which was dedicated to King Bhumibol Adulyadej on his 60th birthday.
• The latest rumors about an Apple Tablet device.
• Reference manuals for the Apple Newton including a scripting language for end-users
• Be sure to buy an iPhone, not a Blackberry or Android device so you can run fine applications like these: iboobOrButt, Bing, Pull Santa’s Finger, iLust, Stool Scanner (Fingerprint Test), ISOCK-the talking sock!, Assassin FPS, and Pie Fight.

Wes’ iPhone Applications of the week:

• RacerCoaster — race a powerful racing buggy over roller-coaster-like race tracks?

Mark and Wes, at the California Pizza Kitchen on Van Ness in San Francisco.

Sites of Interest:

• Fertility treatment may produce fewer baby boys.
• Why we know from genetics that grandmothers play favorites.
• This is the blood thinning drug that Mark is taking that requires a lot of testing to get the right dosage
• Twitter to make money in 2010 with non-traditional advertising
• What is the President and his staff looking at?
• Wes mentioned this EZ430 sports watch and development platform. Mark ordered one from here for only $49 which includes the watch and all the tools. The ordering website didn’t actually work to complete the order, so Mark ended up calling the phone number listed in the error message page and ordered it by phone.
• Buffalo USB 3.0 hard drive now on sale and also a USB 3.0 PCI adapter card.
• Mark bought Wes one of these for Bah Humbug day.
• Darpa’s Simulated Cat Brain Project a ‘Scam’?
• Tesla Motors IPO coming ‘any day’ now
• Changes to Sarbanes-Oxley to ease costs for small firms
• Mark explains why you should only buy an iPhone, not a Blackberry or Android phone or Windows Mobile, because seriously only iPhones can run these essential apps: Balloon Boys, Banjo Hoedown, CatPaint, and Sexy Fruit.
• Geohot’s jailbreak for latest iPhones and ipod Touch’s including ones with the latest firmware. But note that the very latest models currently being sold by Apple have a serious problem with this: you must connect the device to a computer and re-do part of the jailbreak every time you reboot the device. This is a serious issue for an iPhone because if you are out and away from your computer and something happensto force you to restart your phone, you will be without a phone until you can get to a computer to do the "tethered boot".

Wes’ iPhone Applications of the week:

• iTimeZone — World time clock that lets you enter a past or future date and time as well as the current time and see the corresponding date/time in other cities.
• TripIt–That link will take you to search page which shows several apps that interface with the tripit.com website.

Mark’s iPhone Applications of the week:

• Blower Real Air — Simulates an air blower on the screen, including making a special sound that somehow causes a tiny stream of air to blow out of the speaker port!
• Crazy Text — Lets you create messages in inverse and upside-down text.

Mark and  Wes at the Le Chaval restaurant in Walnut Creek CA

Sites of interest:

• David Pogue on how the Motorola Droid is a "manly" phone
• Apple tablet rumors again
• How to build a Hackintosh
• Apple Mac OSx updates flipflop on support for Atom processor 
• Recovery.gov and Layar app layer
• Acer Liquid handheld with Android OS 1.6
• Second Canadian cellphone carrier gets iPhone, but has to switch to GSM to do it.
• Microsoft will drop Spot watch technology in 2012
• inPulse SmartWatch for Blackberry
• This is probably the digital ink watch Wes was talking about
• US losing domain name registry and non English characters for domain names
• The Motoroa Droid in the U.S. doesn’t do multi-touch
• Hybrid cars in 1901! by Ferdinand Porsch
• Good article for starting out with Google Wave, once you get your invitation code and a complete eBook reference guide.
• Microsoft Comic Chat stilll lives and can still be installed
• Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will 
• At prankdial, you can send prank phone calls to your friends for free! Just select the type of prank, enter the victims phone number, and send away.
• It’s very important that you get an iPhone because Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile can’t run these apps: Metrognome, Monkey Sheep poop fight, Furious George,  Swine Flute, Mega Fart, Bed bug identifier
• New Comcast bandwidth throttling scheme 

We had to cut off the show early at this point because the recorder battery was going dead.

Mark, Wes, and Wes’s dad at the Hotel Mac in Pt. Richmond, CA.

Sites of Interest:

• Bully Sticks are NOT tendons or processed meat strips, no!  Bully Sticks are 100% ____ _______.
• History of the PC bus standards: ISA, Micro Channel, PCI.
• New eBook reader from Barnes and Noble, the Nook.  Mark thought this was the vaporware Plastic Logic reader that we talked about on a previous show because the announcements for that one months ago said it would be for B&N. It turns out the Plastic Logic Que announcements were true, but their reader will be a competitor to the Nook that will also be displayed in B&N stores and also use their eBook library.
• Mark’s speculations were wrong, Sir Alan Michael Sugar did not invent sugar or the Sugar OS on OLPC devices.  But he did have a part in computer history.
• Will Linux take over from Windows on the desktop?  Probably not, but it is used a lot on server machines, along with FreeBSD, another open-source OS based on UNIX.
• How Algol and PL/I relate to other computer languages.
• Mark’s memory was totally wrong about the Apricot computer; it had nothing to do with the Apple II and was more of a PC clone, but not quite.
• Very funny: Conan O’Brien interviews the REAL Intel employee rock star who co-invented the USB bus, not the fake actor in the TV commercials.
• Google drops Tele Atlas as their provider of U.S. maps, now creating their own maps with the help of crowdsourcing.
• Google Maps asks the public to help design models of the buildings around them.
• Details of the Google Book Search Settlement.
• Wes’ dad used to wear a Timex Datalink watch that loaded data from a PC by watching a sequence of rapidly flashing bars on a CRT monitor or a flashing LED.  He now wears the later USB version of such a watch.
• WikiReader, the complete Wikipedia in a handheld device.
• AT&T officer kind of admits US iPhone exclusivity may end.
• The ARCHOS 5 internet tablet is unusual because it’s not a cellphone, yet uses the Android OS.  Here is a video demonstration of the device.
• Warning, you’d better buy an iPhone because BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android, and WebOS phones cannot run essential applications like these: Virtual Kelli, Cry Translator, Hoax Factory, Prankster Kit, Chicken Kazoo, Sexy GrandMa, and Sexy GrandPa.
• Mark thinks this would make a great iPhone app: http://hotchicksplungingtheirtoilets.com.
• Justin Halpern is 29, lives at home with his mom and awsome 73-year-old dad, writes down the shit his dad says, and tweets the best ones every day on twitter account @shitmydadsays.  (You don’t need to be a twitter user; just click on that link to see his tweets.)  Here is an interview with Justin.

Wes’ iPhone Applications of the week:

• Net Scan - Scans the WiFi network your iPhone is connected to, discovers Mac and PC hosts along with any other (even hidden) network servers and devices, shows related network information and services they run. .
• Tweetie 2 - Wes’ favorite iPhone app for reading and sending tweets.

Mark’s iPhone Applications of the week:

• iNet - Same idea as Net Scan mentioned above.
• Best Camera - App for taking and editing photos.  The name comes from the author’s book The Best Camera is the One With You; i.e. your cellphone.

Mark and Wes at Korean BBQ Plus in Concord, CA. Sites of Interest:

• Is it true that in Second Life you can walk uphill both ways to/from school (in the snow)?
• Read news fast with Google Fast Flip.
• Are there problems with iPhone 3.1?
• The Jailbreak is out for 3.1 for the older iPhones and iTouch’s, but not for the 3G(S) or latest iTouch’s.
• Saurik’s article criticizing Apple’s closed app store, and details about the eventual jailbreak for 3G(S) with 3.1 and what you should do to prepare for this.
• The History of Turntablism, and now DJ’s have Pioneer’s new CDJ-2000 DJ deck.
• History of mechanical music clocks.
• Kanye West crashes the Video Music Awards, then he crashes a presidential speech, President Obama calls him a jackass, and a website where he disses your website.
• Mark likes Baby Gramps because he plays the banjo at least sometimes.
• How large can memory cards get?  Toshiba announces a 64 GB SD card. The largest microSDHC we found for sale is 16 GB.
• The Broadcom chip in the new iPhone Touch is capable of 802.11n.
• The new iPod Touch models don’t have a camera, but it looks like a prototype did.
• Does David Pogue have a conflict of interest?  And his new book The World According to Twitter.
• Twitter hash tags.
• Look at this guy’s prediction about  the iPod nano camera.
• The next eco supercar: the Steenstra Styletto.
• Electric cars have been around since the 1800’s.
• Information and news about the upcoming Windows 7.
• Carbonite.com offers unlimited offsite backup to their Internet servers for less than $5 per month, and you can save 20% if you buy via this special deal.
• Buddy Backup is an example of software that lets you backup to a friend’s hard drive over the Internet for free.
• Bing Visual Search for popular iPhone apps.  Mark is confused on how to use it to find fart apps, since farts are invisible.
• Steve Ballmer gets mad at a Microsoft employee for using an iPhone, and gets physical with Guy Kawasaki’s MacBook Air.
• The most amazing video of Ballmer’s presentation style.
• Video about the Steve Jobs reality distortion field and details on how it works.
• Wes’ stupid BlackBerry can’t run these basic iPhone apps, and neither can Android phones: Waiter Rater, I Got a Man, Virtual High Five, DollEye, Virtual Sushi, Fat Mama’s Pussycat Playland, and Blood.
• Krapps.com is a blog with more examples of the KRitical iPhone apps that aren’t available for other platforms.
• OpenStreetMap creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them.

Wes’ iPhone Applications of the week:

• Driving Test - teaches the material and simulates the written driving test and at the end presents you a detailed score which you can e-mail yourself. Works for multiple states, but Mark is skeptical because driving laws can be different.
• iChess - Play against the iPhone computer or a second player.

Mark’s iPhone Application of the week:

• Waze - free, 100% user-generated, social navigation app that allows drivers to build and use live maps & real-time traffic updates to improve their daily commute. .

Mark and Wes at Bo’s Barbeque in Lafayette, CA until the wasps and loud band-with-no-banjo forced us out, and then we went to a Starbucks. Sites of Interest:

• It’s the 40th anniversary of Nerf.  Mark has one of these Nerf toys and this iPhone app to control it (although he hasn’t gotten the app to work yet, possibly because his missile launcher looks identical, but has a different brand name on it).
• Wes complains about the Sima Hitch device we talked about last week.
• This is the type of wasp that attacks us in Lafayette (not our video).  Search this page for the word "wasps" to see how to trap them.
• Comparison of all Android phones so far, including the new Motorola CLIQ.
• Warning: Android and Blackberry phones can’t run these important iPhone apps: Urinals: the Game, Pocket Bacon, Barf Puke-A-Thon, Puma Index, Sexy Flashlight Sexy, Hell Chicken, D-color_Picker, Blow and Touch, and Fart Tester (is that the picture a nose? Do we have dirty minds?).
• Steve Jobs: video at the Apple Keynote event, and interview with David Pogue.
• The new iPod Touch models don’t have a camera, but it looks like a prototype did.
• Mark wondered whether the new iTouch models have VoiceOver for blind users.  Yes.
• Demonstrations of the video on the new iPod nano models.
• Did Yoko Ono And Sky News Just Ruin Apple’s Beatles Surprise?
• Tenth anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast.
• SimplifyMedia lets you share streaming music and photos with other computers and iPhones.
• What’s new in iTunes 9?
• Boxee plays personal and Internet media along with social networking features on a 10-foot user interface so it works well on a computer connected to a large TV monitor with a remote control.
• New features in iPhone 3.1.
• Apple explains iPhone OS 3.1 Exchange Server changes.
• Caching Apple’s Signature Server.
• Oracle tries to stop Sun’s bleeding: Is it too late?
• The IBM 5100 Portable Computer in 1975.
• Reminisces of the first computer virus.
• Facebook Lite is here, and some like it better.  As if that isn’t sufficiently twitter-like, Facebook  also added tagging of friends using the "@".
• WordPress is the first blogging platform to implement RSS Cloud.

Wes’ iPhone Applications of the week:

• Flickr - shoot, upload and share photos & videos, geo-tag your photos or add them to a set. View your photos by set and tag.  (Marked mentioned Google’s Picasa software and service.)
• craigsphone - Craigslist viewer for iPhone 3.0 and above only!  (Will crash on older OS.)

Mark’s iPhone Applications of the week:

• C64 - Commodore 64 emulator along with 5 games.  This is pulled from the app store at the moment, but hopefully will be back.
• I Am T-Pain - gives you Auto-Tune in the palm of your hand, using the same Antares audio technology T-Pain himself uses in the studio to record his music.

Mark and Wes at Pizza Antica in Lafayette, CA. Sites of Interest:

• The movie "9" comes out on 9/9/09.  The 9 Experiment is here.
• Information about USB On-The-Go.
• The Apple Camera Connector let you copy photos from certain digital cameras to your iPod.
• Wes is buying the Sima Hitch USB Transfer Device.
• Review of the new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.
• Snow Leopard adds an anti-malware scanner and here’s an example of Mac malware in the wild.  Macs have security vulnerabilities, and malware could target Macs.  Everyone says not to worry because there is no incentive to write such a thing, but Mac owners do online banking, etc., just like PC owners do, and are far less likely to have their systems protected by anti-virus software.  So Mark wonders why malware authors wouldn’t go after Mac user’s passwords and other valuable info?  And how do we know this isn’t happening, since Mac owners don’t run software to look for them?
• Snow Leopard: the 64-bit reality.
• Inside the new Microsoft retail stores.  Everyone forgets that Microsoft had a retail store before.  Wes heard that the San Franciso Microsoft store will be in the old Virgin Megastore building a block from the Apple store, but we can’t find any articles saying that.  Mark thinks it would be funny if Microsoft opens their store again at the Metreon, since that is also only a block away.
• Microsoft is trying to compete with iPod’s with their new Zune HD.
• Wes said GoDaddy blocks China, but it seems like it’s China doing the blocking from time to time and our impression is that China has nothing against GoDaddy itself, but sometimes finds objectionable material on a site hosted by GoDaddy and blocks a range of ip address that includes other GoDaddy-hosted sites.
• AT&T will allow MMS for iPhone on September 25, 2009.
• Happy 40th birthday, Internet.  Watch the video!
• Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia, is a parody of Wikipedia.  This is the article that Mark couldn’t remember: Free Kevin.
• Wikipedia will test a new policy for handling updates of articles about living persons.
• Wikipedia to Color Code Untrustworthy Text.
• Wes’ stupid Blackberry can’t even run these common iPhone apps: Weekly World News, PocketMoney Launcher/Flashlight, Real Calculator, Mosquito vs Human, Full Metal Penguin, Blu Wave SAD Light Therapy Device, BustedHot (the redneck dating service), and Tickle the Beaver.
• If you’re happy and you know it, syntax error.

Wes’ iPhone Application of the week:

• Boxcar - We’ve talked about this before, but Wes is anticipating a new version which will work with Facebook and some email services.

Mark’s iPhone Applications of the week:

• Expertise : Pure Silver Analyser - Uses the magnetometer on 3gs’ to determine whether a piece of jewelry placed on the screen is pure silver, or is an alloy with ferrous metals.
• Tip Calculator Revolution - Does the same functions as any other modern tip calculator, but has a cool look and controls.
• Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite - Create, open & edit Microsoft Word & Excel files, and read PDF’s.