Nerd News

• Desktop Netflix HD?
• Warners Bros program expands for DVD2Blu
• Some Wii games to get AMA Heart Seal
• Hotmail Connector for Outlook updated
• Be like Luke, get a green laser (pointer)
• LED bulbs, Sylvania, 60W, 12x a reg bulb
• PG&E admits to not-so-smart utility meters

Feature Story: Are you feeling productive?

• Productivity Updates from Google
• MSFT updates Office 2010
• Alternatives free or not
• on the mobile or iPad, away from a desk
• sharing docs across machines
• sharing with people
• sharing with work and home life
• DropBox

Nerd History:

• YouTube is 5 !
• LASER beams are 50 !
• Parking Meters are 75 !

Nerd News

• People who signed up for AT&T DSL service after March 31, 1994, may be eligible for a partial refund after the operator settled a class-action lawsuit charging it with delivering data rates slower than promised. AT&T doesn’t admit to any wrongdoing as part of the settlement of a case filed last year in the Court of Common Pleas in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.
• GoogleMail is becoming GMail in the UK, saving 60 million keystrokes per day.
• Apple sold 1M iPads by last Friday
• Google, Microsoft and Apple endorse HTML5 and H.264 for video (not Flash)
• HP buys Palm for $1.2B
• Check out the Stark Expo 2010 site for the new Iron Man 2 movie

Feature Story: Wired for Tech

• You have decided to undertake that big home remodel project. What considerations for tech should you consider?
• Wired vs Wireless. Is wireless good enough? for the TV? for Music? for Gaming?
• Lighting: LED, CF, control panels
• Speakers: wired v wireless, buying, monoprice, freestanding, in-wall (not by power)
• Hiding tech: wall, RF, cabinets and IR, closets (video cabling and conduits)

Nerd History

• May 6, 1937 – Hindenburg fire
• May 5, 1961 – Alan Shepard is first American in ‘outer space’
• May 3, 1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (which would later become known as “spam“) is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States
• May 6, 1994 – Channel Tunnel opens
• May 3, 2000 – The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.

Nerd News

• Facebook shuts down their Lite site
• Apple will replace faulty third-gen iPod shuffle headphones
• Prototype iPhone was left at bar by Apple software engineer
• Microsoft pitches cloud to help manage PCs
• Amazon Debunks Top 5 Myths of Cloud Computing

Feature Story

• Microsoft Cloud announcements this week
• Google: mail, reader, docs, calendars, contacts, pics
• Amazon Cloud storage, Carbonite, MSFT LiveShare(?)
• value (cost, D/R, sharing), risks (speed, captive)

Nerd History

• April 21, 1994 – The first discoveries of extrasolar planets are announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan.
• April 21, 1965 – The 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair opens for its second and final season
• April 21, 753 BC – Romulus and Remus founded Rome (traditional date).
• April 22, 2001 – Andrew born (WfN offspring)
• April 22, 1998 – Disney’s Animal Kingdom opens at Walt Disney World (zoo tech)
• April 22, 1970 – The first Earth Day is celebrated. (green tech)
• April 22, 1904 – Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist is born (atomic tech)
• April 22, 1950 – Peter Frampton, English musician (wa-wa tech)

Top Google Search Terms of 2009

• The annual zeitgeist report from the search giant. The King of Pop was at the top of the list.

Top Twitter Trends of 2009

• A list of what people tweeted about the most during the year.

Top YouTube Videos of 2009

• Here’s a list of what we watched on YouTube during the last year.

iTunes Best of 2009 Lists

• The #1 online retail store for music and mobile apps has published several lists for 2009. Included are categories for movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, audiobooks and, of course, iPhone apps.

• Practical alternatives to the expensive cables from the big box stores.

Google adds two new kinds of search

• Google search, now with social media integration!!!
• Scrolling, real-time results in your Google search results display real-time information
• Google Goggles lets you use a photo to search the net.

Facebook Users too free with their data?

• How careful are you when using FaceBook? Do you accept all of the invitations from friends? Do you know what you are agreeing to? You might be surprised.

Short News

• In the coming weeks, Google plans to send out 100,000 of these stickers, each with their own QR code, to a new demographic of businesses Google is calling “Favorite Places”. These favorites are based on search results from users interacting with local business listings on Google Maps.
• On Sunday, LHC engineers increased the energy of this “pilot beam”, reaching 1.18 trillion electron volts at 2344 GMT.
• The U.S. Air Force is looking to buy 2,200 Sony PlayStation 3 game consoles.

Nerd App of the Week

• The classic 1983 arcade game Dragon’s Lair (link to AppStore, $4.99 USD) comes to iPhone/iPod Touch. WooHoo! For some background, here is a little history of the classic LaserDisc game.

Wireless Mouse App for your Mac or PC

• Tom tells us about the Mobile Air Mouse, a very cool app that lets you wirelessly control your mouse for your PC or Mac with your iPhone/iPod Touch.

FaceBook 3.0 App in the Pipeline

• The new FaceBook iPhone app has finally been sent to the App Store for approval. Loaded with 15 new features that give you better control over your FaceBook experience, this update catches up to the overhaul that FB made to their website months earlier. We’re hoping this fixes some of the issues we’ve seen with entries that appear to be duplicated when viewing on the iPhone.

G1 Android Phone Problems Already?

• Google usually gets credit for delivering lean, efficient applications that run quickly (their web search engine, just to name one very good example).  It seems that they are running into some problems with their Android phone, though. A Google developer working on the Android team reports that it may be difficult to deliver future updates to the phone Operating System because the chip’s flash memory is nearly full. Oh, dear. That can’t be good.

2009 Buick Excelle: Made in China?

• Chinese influence shaping the development of American cars? That’s exactly what’s happening at Buick.

Gmail Overtakes AOL Mail

• A new report lists the top web services for email. Chances are you are using at least one of these. We’re not surprised by who is at the top of the list. But the size of their lead is quite a shock.

MLB Comes to the Roku

• Owners of the Roku streaming device may have noticed the addition of some new subscription content of late. Major League Baseball has delivered a beta of their game videos. With a premium subscription, you can watch out of market games on your device. None of us pay for that content, but Mike has used the MLB At Bat iPhone app where one game each day is offered for free.

TomTom GPS App Comes to the iPhone

• If you are still having a hard time swallowing the $9.99 price for some iPhone apps, then just wait until you check out the new release of a turn-by-turn navigation app from TomTom that has just hit the App Store. Weighing in at $99, this one may make you think before you hit that Buy button. When is Apple going to provide a way to test drive applications without having to shell out money for them? Okay, this conflicts with their statement that ‘all free apps will remain free’. But there has to be a better way. Otherwise the App Store will continue to be filled with junky apps and the user reviews will continue to carry little weight.

App of the Week

• For all you fantasy football geeks out there, check out the new ESPN Mock Draft Kit App for iPhone. Note: this link will take you to the iTunes app store.

Movie Quote of the Week

• Jimmy Dugan: “Are you crying? Are you crying? ARE YOU CRYING? There’s no crying! THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL!” - A League of Their Own (1992)

Traveling OverSeas with iPhone

• Tom’s back from a trip to Germany. He had some challenges getting the iPhone to work seamlessly while there. He’ll fill us in on what some of those hiccups were.

Present, but Absent

• A good article from USA Today talks about how obsessed we’ve become with our smart phones and social networking tools. Truth be told, I can’t remember the last time I was ‘unplugged’ for a long time.

Sweet Plane Tech

• On the way home, Tom gets a nice upgrade to first class from United. Wow, there was some cool tech there that we’ll never see in Coach.

Transparent Aluminum discovery. Beam me up, Scotty!

• The timeline from Star Trek IV must have happened. Because it seems that transparent aluminum has, in fact, been invented by scientists at Oxford. Woo hoo! No truth to the rumor that the scientist that discovered it had the same name as the scientist in the ST film.

Tron: Legacy

• Disney is making a sequel to the 1982 groundbreaking effects movie. You’ll have to wait until 2010 to see it. But the first trailer is now online. You can see that here.

Alie ?

• Speaking of movies, another Aliens movie is coming out in 2011. Ridley Scott comes back to direct but this time, it’s a prequel. So if the first movie was called Alien, and the sequel was called Aliens then does that mean the prequel will be called Alie ? Inquiring minds want to know!

I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost

• The hit movie from 1984 is now a wildly successful video game. They got all of the original actors back to voice the game. It must be time to watch that movie again. Don’t cross the streams.

Important computer patches

• Microsoft released a patch for Windows (Internet Explorer) and Apple pushes out a fix for an iPhone/iPod Touch SMS problem. Go get these updates for your devices. It’s always a good idea to stay current on patches.

Gmail Labs

• Google has added all kinds of add-ins for Gmail. One of them (Mail Goggles) makes you solve some math problems before it lets you send out late night emails. Just in case you wrote something after a few too many drinks that you might regret in the morning. Wow, a breathalyzer equivalent for email. Don’t drink and email!
• You can access this feature and many others by clicking Settings, Labs from within your Gmail account.

Chris Shuler is our guest this week. He enlightens us on some killer performance of his Kindle DX and very handy cellular access.

MacBook Air USB – choose wisely

• Due to limitations in Tom’s hotel room, he joined us via telephone. That MacBook Air needs more USB ports!

Google Wants to see Chrome on your desktop

• The search giant has announced that it’s getting into the desktop operating system market. They are working with netbook manufacturers to bring this to you as early as Fall 2010. They got their feet wet with the Chrome browser and developing for the Android phone.

Microsoft Fights Back with a free version of Office

• Not to be outdone, Microsoft seems to be going after Google Docs and other free Office alternatives with their announcement of a free web-based version of Office coming in the next version of the popular suite.

Kindle DX 1st Hand Experience

• Killer battery life, surprisingly handy cellular coverage (without a data plan), crisp display of text. Hear a first hand account of the new Amazon device for reading books from our special guest.

iTunes 8.2.1 Patch

• Apple released an update to iTunes today. It suggests that a fix for the AirTunes speaker problem may be included. But we know that Apple is notorious for simping on details of software updates.
• UPDATE: since recording the show, we’ve had more time to test this out. It looks like the problem still exists unfortunately. So you’re still stuck with having to restart iTunes to get your remote speakers back.

Charge your iPhone while it’s in your belt clip case

• Tom talks about the Fuel case for iPhone. He finds it very handy for recharging his iPhone without connecting it to a wall outlet or USB port.

Nerd of the Week

• Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla!
• Born on July 10th, 1856
• The inventor of radio (though wrongly credited to Marconi at the time) would be 153 years old now.

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