Show me how to strengthen my fingers again?

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Mark and Wes at Pizza Antica in Lafayette, CA.

Sites of Interest:

• Wes' stupid Blackberry can't run these ordinary everyday highly-useful iPhone apps: Treadfinger, Static Chic, SEX-A-MA-PHONE, iDontFart, or the Amazing Radiation Detector.
  
  
• Computer History Museum in Mt. View, CA.
  
  
• Are developers for Windows Mobile worth more than 99 cents?
  
  
• Build an Apple-1 replica from a kit.
  
  
• Web-based Apple ][ and Apple IIgs emulators, including virtual disks for nearly every game ever made for these machines. Mark said The Prisoner is missing, but Prisoner and Prisoner II are there now in the Apple 2 Disks section.  The first one won't start, and Mark has no memory whatsoever of how to play II or why he used to like it.
  
  
• Run Windows applications on Linux, BSD, Solaris and Mac OS X with Wine.  (This is an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator".)
  
  
• Judge ordered Microsoft to stop publishing Word and pay $hundreds of millions in fines.  Microsoft will appeal.
  
  
• Internet slowly wakes up to PayPal's quiet fee hike.
  
  
• DJ Mouse Lets You Sit and SPIN!
  
  
• Send a tube full of anything you want into space for only $8,000.  I wonder if a Woot Bag of Crap would fit?
  
  
• You can be a passenger on an orbital spaceflight for free.
  
  
• The game of Geocaching is placing and locating hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then sharing experiences about them online.
  
  
• Uncouth Facebook postings closing doors for job candidates.  Our friend @besz wrote an article about the ethics and legality of employers snooping at your online profiles.
  
  
• If you insist on snooping at people's online activities, Spokeo is an efficient way to go.
  
  
• Archos confirms Sept 15th Android event, readies AppsLib app store.
  
  
• The lolcat Bible Translation Project, translating the entire Bible into LOLspeak.
  
  
• Mini documentary about the Moscow Cat Theater.
  
  
• Enhanced, or Augmented, Reality apps coming to Android and iPhone.  But they might make you look like a dork.
  
  
• An iPhone app that emulated the Nintendo DS was pulled from the app store in several days.
  
  
• Mark and Wes compared the RSS reader apps Newsstand and Byline.  Both synchronize with Google Reader.
  
  
• The multi-platform VLC media player has gone beyond version 1.0.
  

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.
  

No sir, you can't train that Zombie

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

Sites of Interest:

• On Earth, most methane in the atmosphere is produced by the ongoing, unstoppable farting of living things.
  
  
• Wes' stupid Blackberry phone can't even run the basic iPhone apps such as ManWax, Raoul the Dancing Pancake, My Little Cockroach, Gobbler, and Zombie Weatherman.
  
  
• Mark is reading the book: Zombie Survival Guide, and loved the movie Fido.
  
  
• Original District 9 short film.
  
  
• Radio Shack asks for our help changing their signs to "The Shack".
  
  
• Twitter is not popular with kids.
  
  
• Blaise Pascal invented the Pascaline, among other achievements. Here is a Pascaline simulator that works for only a few seconds, and then you are supposed to buy it. Cheap plastic adding machines that looked and worked like the Pascaline were popular before electronic calculators became cheap. Slide adding machines were also cheap and popular and worked on a similar principle.
  
  
• Consumer 3D cameras are coming back in digital form. Fuji has a FinePix REAL 3D handheld model and Novo has the Minoru 3D webcam. The Stereo Realist camera was pretty popular in the film era.
  
  
• YouTube is experimenting with letting people post 3D videos that can be viewed in various formats. Tutorial on how to prepare your 3D videos for uploading. Watch this sample 3D video and note the dropdown box under it called 3D View Style.
  
  
• The Khronos Group is working on a 3D standard for the web.
  
  
• How 3D postcards and posters work.
  
  
• iPhones and other U.S. GSM cellphones are open to an SMS hack.
  
  
• T-Mobile releases the myTouch, a thin Android phone with on-screen keypad. They got publicity for this with a parachute display over San Francisco.
  
  
• Lenovo will release an Android phone in China shortly.
  
  
• FAQ about USB 3.0.
  
  
• Mathematician Cracks Mystery Beatles Chord.
  
  
• Share, the IBM mainframe user group, turns 50.
  
  
• Philippe Kahn, the real founder of Borland, and the fake Frank Borland.
  
  
• A 16-year-old boy died in at a boot camp for Internet addicts after being beaten by supervisors.
  
  
• Feedrinse will take in any RSS feed, filter it to your specifications, and give you a new RSS feed consisting only of the filtered items.
  

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.
  
  

Find Ghosts? There's an app for that!

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

Sites of Interest:

• Mark used his iPhone to test the restaurant for ghosts using GhostRecorder.
  
  
• Creative Labs introduces Zii Plaszma, the StemCell Computing Platform.
  
  
• Early BART ticket counterfeiting. Cap'n Crunch caught doing this.
  
  
• Hackers counterfeiting San Francisco parking meter cards.
  
  
• O.R.B. Bluetooth Ear Ring: wear it as a ring on your finger, open it into a Bluetooth headset.
  
  
• How the old Napster worked. Shawn Fanning's latest venture.
  
  
• Steve Jobs spotted at the Apple campus and backstage at a Coldplay concert.
  
  
• Various rumors of new iPod Touch and Apple Tablet devices.
  
  
• Build an appliance or your own custom Linux distro with Suse Studio.
  
  
• Sprint buys Virgin Mobile.
  
  
• Microsoft, Yahoo! agree on Internet search partnership.
  
  
• Jerry Springer plays Billy Flynn in the musical "Chicago" in London and maybe Broadway.
  
  
• David Pogue's "Take Back the Beep" campaign, and his book "The World According to Twitter".
  
  
• Apple releases a software update for the iPhone SMS security problem.
  
  
• Skype As We Know It May Not Exist Much Longer, eBay Says. Mark always thought eBay purchasing Skype was a stupid idea and this story is only part of the problem. Meg Whitman was the CEO of eBay when they bought Skype, so Mark wonders whether she should be campaigning for California governor.
  
  
• Wes likes the IPEVO Wi-Fi phone for Skype.
  
  

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.