Shit Wes' Dad Says

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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.
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• 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.
  

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:

• 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.
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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:

• 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 of 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.