The Alien Habbit

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes in Lafayette, CA at Pizza Antica.

Sites of Interest:

• Medieval Tech Support for this new-fangled thing called "books" on "paper".
  
  
• IBM's history and a history in ad pictures of IBM typewriters, including the Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter (MT/ST).
  
  
• The Friden Flexowriter used paper tape to do very early word processing.
  
  
• The new mp3HD format and information about the various MPEG standards.
  
  
• Fingerprinting blank paper using commodity scanners.
  
  
• Statistics on iPhones and iPhone apps as of March, 2009.
  
  
• It's hard to believe, but Wes' stupid $400 Blackberry can't run any of these essential applications: Buzzbuka, Bikini Fart, iGoniometer, Drop It, or Dangerous Finger.
  
  
• StumbleUpon is a social application for sharing great web sites.
  
  
• TJ-2 was a very early computerized word processor.
  
  
• php and Microsoft's ASP are extensions to HTML that coordinate with processes running on web servers.
  
  
• Web developers can get free, unlimited IP address geolocation with MySQL.
  
  
• Alexander Bain invented the fax machine earlier than you'd think.
  
  
• The concept of dithering is used in both audio and graphics processing. This technical article goes into great detail, including some history of the word.
  

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• Alpine Racer - like Nintendo 64's skiing game.
  
  
• PocketMoney - Lets you track your cash flow, understand your net worth, and improve the overall health of your finances.
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Emerald Chronometer - Models of high-end mechanical watches with many of the most complex "complications" found in real watches, plus refinements found nowhere else.
  
  
• Bell & Ross - Another beautiful simulation of a real mechanical watch.
  
  
• Mint - Sign up for an account on mint.com, add your online banking and credit card accounts, and access them anywhere.
  

Wiffy

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes in Orinda, CA at the Serika Japanese Restaurant.

Sites of Interest:

• Compact Disc turns 30.
  
  
• Remember the first CD Burners?
  
  
• The longevity of optical media.
  
  
• Audacity - an open source cross-platform audio editor.
  
  
• Wavosaur - a free audio editor for Windows that supports VST plugins.
  
  
• The Mentalists use iPhones as instruments; and another cellphone orchastra based at Stanford University.
  
  
• The latest iTouch models can now be jailbroken.
  
  
• History of WYSWYG.
  
  
• The LOGO programming Language.
  
  
• The Forth programming language.
  
  
• The Pentium Chronicles.
  
  
• We have mentioned the Will It Blend site before, but now there's Will it Fart?
  
  
• Pastor Gas.
  
  
• Kid uses a fart machine during a City Council meeting.
  
  
• Google will shortly have free phone services, so sign up for the waiting list. (If you have a Grand Central number, you can keep it and Google has probably already converted it to the new system.)
  
  
• Tellme has free voice phone services for the public.

Wes' iPhone Applications of the week:

• TextFree Unlimited - Buy this app and then send and receive unlimited free text messages from an iPod touch or iPhone to any US mobile phone. They have a free lite version of the app to check it out.
  
  
• Things - Todo manager that synchronizes with Things for Mac.
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Toodledo - Todo manager that synchronizes with the toodledo.com website, and via that, it can sync to Outlook.
  
  
• Farty Face - Select or take photos of your arch-nemesis (or best buddy) and blast away!
  
  

$1,300 Power Bars

Click here to listen to the official audio show

Mark and Wes in Concord, CA at the Fry's Electronics Store.

Sites of Interest:

• Legal stink over fart apps.
  
  
• Mark and Wes bought these Poqet PC devices back in the day, and still have them.
  
  
• Sony P Series tiny notebooks are still bigger than the Poqet.
  
  
• The technology behind the movie Coraline.
  
  
• Mark suspects the $1,000+ "power conditioners" at the Fry's store are just glorified $5 power strips and in the real world don't make any difference to audio and video quality.
  
  
• Mark guesses that this is the "store on Locust" with the $80,000 amplifier; but their website doesn't show anything like that.
  
  
• The Amazing Randi has a $1,000,000 challenge about audio cables, but Mark was wrong in the details.
  
  
• Startup.com, the movie.
  
  
• Big Blue's employees really, seriously, used to sing these IBM company songs.
  
  
• President Obama introduces RECOVERY.gov.
  
  
• If you have a U.S. GSM cell phone (AT&T or T-Mobile), the trapcall service will show you the caller-id of people who try to call you with their id blocked; plus other services. This really works and Mark uses it.
  
  
• Mozilla's Bespin framework aims to build an interactive Web-based code editor.
  
  
• The WebKit open source project let's you design your own custom web browser.
  
  
• Mark mentioned a street in London that protects pedestrians who walk while texting. This turned out to be a hoax.
  
  
• The old Commodore Amiga with Video Toaster, could do this, but it takes 21st century engineering to actually make toast from a video machine!
  
  
• How to build an aquarium from an old Mac.
  
  

Wes' iPhone Application of the week:

• He didn't have any this week. Mark was shocked.
  

Mark's iPhone Applications of the week:

• Tootin Pooch -- the world's first dog-fart app.
  

• Pukey Pete -- quite possibly the first puke app. Mark may branch out from fart apps and become an expert on puke apps as well.
  
  
• Ocarina -- turns the iPhone into a serious ancient flute-like music instrument.
  
  
• Fartarina --a mash up between Ocarina and a fart app.
  
  
• SignalScope -- turns your iPhone into a powerful real-time spectrum analyzer and oscilloscope.