Thursday, December 24, 2009

Frankie's back from Russia

Click here to listen to the official audio show

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

Sites of Interest:



Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:
  • RacerCoaster -- race a powerful racing buggy over roller-coaster-like race tracks?

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Mark's iPhone Attacks

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

Sites of Interest:


    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.

    Thursday, November 5, 2009

    Is it time for Droid?

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

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

    Sites of interest

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

    Thursday, October 22, 2009

    Shit Wes' Dad Says

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    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.

    Thursday, September 17, 2009

    Phill Schiller is not Vince Shlomi. Steve Balmer is really Peter Boyle.

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark and Wes at Korean BBQ Plus in Concord, CA.

    Sites of Interest:



    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.
      .

    Thursday, September 10, 2009

    Choose your own Android!

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    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:

    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.

    Thursday, September 3, 2009

    Cross-Platform Fart-App Compiler

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark and Wes at Pizza Antica in Lafayette, CA.

    Sites of Interest:

    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:

    Thursday, August 20, 2009

    Show me how to strengthen my fingers again?

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark and Wes at Pizza Antica in Lafayette, CA.

    Sites of Interest:

    Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:
    • iWine Simulator - Have you seen the iBeer app but want something more classy? iWine Simulator is the solution for you!

    • Geocaching - provides real-time, direct access to Geocaching.com's database of worldwide geocaches, with GPS assistance to find them.

    Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:
    • Singing Glass - amaze your friends by tapping a tune on the pre-filled crystal glasses, or rubbing the rims to produce haunting glassware shrills.

    • Quicken Online Mobile - sign up for FREE Quicken Online and add your accounts to start tracking your finances from your iPhone.

    • Notifier - On a jailbroken iPhone, install "Notifier" from Cydia and an icon called "Reminder" will show up (I don't know why the names are different, but that's how it works).  You can configure this to put icons at the top-right of the screen showing that things like a call, voicemail, email, SMS, etc. have been received, and the alert sound/vibrate for these events can be repeated.  The icon will disappear when you open the appropriate app to handle the event.

    Friday, August 7, 2009

    No sir, you can't train that Zombie

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark and Wes at the Peet's Coffee & Tea in Orinda, CA .

    Sites of Interest:

    Wes' iPhone Application of the week:

    • preFlight Airport Delay Status - easy to use display of real time airport delays, closures, and current weather conditions for all major U.S. airports.

    Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

    • Balloonimals -beautifully-rendered balloon animals spring to life when you blow into the microphone on your iPhone.

    • Signalscope - turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a powerful real-time spectrum analyzer and oscilloscope.

    Thursday, July 30, 2009

    Find Ghosts? There's an app for that!

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark and Wes at the LeCheval Vietnamese Restaurant in Walnut Creek, CA .

    Sites of Interest:

    Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

    • Lunar Module 3d - unique lunar-lander style game that mixes classic arcade action with realistic environments.

    • Currency Calculator - multifunctional calculator which allows you to work with multiple currencies. All currency ratios are provided by a professional currency exchange rate provider.

    • AP Mobile - Select news from local newspapers and broadcasters and combine it with the best of the AP's videos, photo galleries, and national and international coverage. Has rare push notifications for important stories.

    • Tweetie + Boxcar - Wes likes this combination so he can use his favorite Twitter app, yet still get push notifications.

    Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

    • Star Walk and Pocket Universe - On an iPhone 3GS, these use the GPS, compass, and accelerometers to let you aim your iPhone in any direction and height, and they will show you what is in the sky at that point plus a lot more info.

    • B&N eReader - eBook reader from Barnes and Noble. Buy digital books and download them to the reader.

    • TripIt - forward your travel confirmation emails and TripIt creates a master itinerary for your trip, with detailed information about flights, hotels, rental cars and much more.

    • Sudoku Grab - capture a Sudoku puzzle from a newspaper or book using the iPhone's camera. Solve it on the iPhone, or let the app solve it for you.

    Thursday, July 23, 2009

    Full Metal Chopsticks

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark and Wes at the Ohgane Korean BBQ in Oakland, CA .

    Sites of Interest:

    Wes' iPhone/Blackberry Applications of the week:

    • Later Dude Pro - Blackberry app to create call back reminders.

    • Cube - single player and multiplayer first person shooter that provides satisfying and fast oldskool gameplay; kind of like Quake.

    Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

    • SimplyTweet - Mark's favorite Twitter app this week (he always changes his mind). Includes push notification for your Reply and Direct tweets.

    • BoxCar - Provides push notifications for Reply and Direct tweets, but that's all it does. Useful if your favorite twitter app doesn't already have this function.
    • iGPUtrace - For iPhone 3GS only because it uses the new GPU and the compass. Just a demo of what the GPU can do, but fun to play with because it demos a virtual reality by moving the iPhone around in front of you.

    • RedLaser - realtime barcode scanner, supports all standard UPC and EAN barcodes and looks up the products in a database. (Mark said it was a jailbreak app and it is, but he found out that it has also been in the App Store for a while so anyone can buy it.)

    Thursday, July 9, 2009

    Is your iPhone 3GS Broken?

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark and Wes at the Korean Bulgogi House in Concord, CA .

    Sites of Interest:

    Wes' iPhone Application of the week:

    • ModBox Module Player - universal Tracker Format Player that plays Amiga and PC module computer music, e.g. Protracker, Fasttracker, Screamtracker.

    • The Sexy Ladies of SHOW -brings you the incredibly beautiful women from the pages of SHOW magazine.

    • Babe on a Beam - balance the little cutey on the beam and unlock new powers. But go easy with those controls... it's a long way down!

    • Linux Cheat Sheet - a quick reference guide for all the Linux command lines necessarily to manage a Linux server.

    Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

    • iTwitter - Full-featured Twitter app including filtered groups; can do everything in landscape.

    • TweetDeck - Also full-featured Twitter app with filtering; won't do landscape; synchronizes filters with TweetDeck for desktop machines.

    • Epocrates - Information on 3,300+ drugs, including dosing, adverse reactions, pricing and pictures, interactions, pill identification.

    • Run Pee Mobile - tells you which points in a movie you can safely "run" and "pee" without missing a hugely important plot point.

    Wednesday, June 10, 2009

    "Bing" goes the sound of Microsoft

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark and Wes at the Back Forty Texas BBQ in Pleasant Hill, CA .

    Sites of Interest:

    • When we recorded this show, the Palm Pre had not yet been released and we were going by rumors and pre-release reviews. The Pre is now out and available in Sprint stores. Mark played with one and liked it a lot more than he thought he would.

    • Same story with the new iPhone: our show was going on rumors, but the iPhone 3G S has now been announced and should be available for purchase on June 19.

    • If Mark decides to get the new iPhone 3G S, his old 3G should get better than normal value on eBay because he has been careful to maintain compatibility with Yellowsn0w so his phone can be unlocked to work with foreign SIM cards.

    • iPhone OS 3.0 is supposed to have Parental Controls to restrict which tier of apps can run, and therefore Apple may relax their restrictions on types of apps in the App Store.

    • History of the Xerox Corporation and how xerography works.

    • Ditto machines were a very cheap way to make multiple copies of a master. You can still buy one!

    • Muscular Men Have More Sex Partners, but Poorer Health.

    • Gummi bear surgery. WARNING: This Instructable contains graphic images of Gummi Bears being cut open.

    • Wes likes squarespace for setting up blogs and other websites.

    • Actor David Carridine was found dead in Bangkok, Thailand under strange circumstances.

    • Literal Video Versions of music videos. Watch that one, and there are plenty more from that producer and the Related Videos.

    • Windows 7 is expected to be shipped on 10/22/09.

    • The first phone-company operated mobile phone call was made in June, 1946.

    • Ham radio operators can make phone calls via an autopatch device installed in a repeater.

    • The CarterFone device (click that link, then scroll down to that section) let businesses build their own radio phones.

    • Adobe Design Catalyst is a new interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding.

    • San Francisco is the first city to take city services requests via twitter.

    • Gary McKinnon, aka SOLO, is a Scottish hacker facing extradition to the United States to face charges of perpetrating what has been described by one prosecutor as the "biggest military computer hack of all time."
    • Microsoft introduced a new search engine to compete with google: Bing. To further compete with google, the Bing 411 service is like GOOG-411, and seems to be the Tellme service that Microsoft bought.

    • Bill Gates owns the image management company Corbis.

    • Samba and WebDAV are alternative methods of accessing files on remote machines.

    Wes' iPhone Application of the week:

    • Flight Control game- Air traffic control is the world's most stressful job, but not for you. You don't need heading angles, flight rules or meteorological reports, you're a natural! A prodigy! A born controller! Just touch and drag the planes to their runway.

    Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

    • Alien Composite Sketch - Have you had a close encounter with Aliens. Perhaps you’ve been abducted and no one believes you? Well now you can give the authorities an accurate description of their identities.

    • Meat Clock -Now iPhone and iPod touch owners can proudly display the current time in meat! Includes animated seconds t-bone.

    • The Moron Test - Are you a complete idiot? What about your friends, coworkers, and family? Buy The Moron Test and find out!

    • Arcade Bowling - In the tradition of Skeeball, everyone’s favorite Boardwalk bowling game, use your fingers and steady aim to flick “laser” balls down the alley and up the ramp into the scoring holes.

    • QuickOffice Mobile Office Suite - Enterprise-grade Microsoft Word and Excel Office functionality with leading-edge innovation and unparalleled ease-of-use.

    Thursday, April 30, 2009

    The Mail Order Tapeworm

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark, Wes, and guest @besz at Bo's BBQ in Lafayette, CA .

    Sites of Interest:

    Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

    • Wolfenstein 3D Classic - You are OSA super agent B.J. Blazkowicz and you must escape from Castle Wolfenstein and defeat the twisted Nazi regime!

    • Vir2L® Base Jumper - Base Jumper does more to capture the spirit of the old beloved games than anything Nintendo has released in 13 years.

    Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

    • 10 Balls 7 Cups - simulation of the Skeeball game, including winning prize tickets.

    • My.tel - The official free app from Telnic to manage your .tel domain.

    • Party Whistle - Just blow into your microphone and enjoy the realistic sounds and animations of a party whistle.

    • KFC Grillz - Hold the iPhone in front of your mouth and talk as you impress your friends with your new grill. The grilled out mouth speaks in time with your voice!

    • TweetStack - Group your Twitter friends, search terms, and TwitPics into fully customizable "stacks", all of which reside on the tab bar and show you the number of unread messages.

    Tuesday, April 21, 2009

    New Ways to be Gross with Twitter

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

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

    Sites of Interest:

    Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

    • Yowza! - Launch it and it finds deals in your geographic area. Show the cashier the deal on your iPhone screen, they scan the barcode, and you save money.

    • CraigsMobileList - Wes' favorite app for accessing the craigslist website.

    Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

    • PocketMeter - It emits sound and measures the time it takes for the echo to return. Point it towards a wall or floor, touch the screen, and it will show you the distance.

    • 3 Numbers - Currency & units converter, tip calculator, and calculator all in one. But the special thing about this app is the steampunk look. To understand the true meaning of "steampunk", visit the Kew Bridge Steam Museum in London.

    Thursday, April 9, 2009

    BlackBerry and iPhone Battle at Strada

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark and Wes in Berkeley, CA at the Caffe Strada.

    Sites of Interest:

    Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

    Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

    • Skype -Phone calls and chats through the Skype system.

    • SullysFlight - Mark has this, but it no longer seems to be available. It was a subset of X-Plane, which is still an active app.

    Thursday, April 2, 2009

    Model Airplanes

    Click here to listen to the official audio show

    Mark and Wes in Moraga, CA at the Ranch House Cafe.

    Sites of Interest:

    Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

    • Bump -Somehow it knows when you bump two iPhones together, and will transfer contact information.

    • TapTapCards -Turns pictures on your iPhone into real picture postcards that are snail-mailed to your friends.

    • Color Splash - give photos a dramatic look by converting them to black and white, while keeping your chosen details in color.

    • iControl Cat - remote control for your cat, just like TV remotes. Mark particularly liked this because, believe it or not, he bought one of these and it didn't work either.

    • Farthoven -this sort of fart app has been done before, but Mark liked the name.