• PS3. A Prime numbered console that doesnt like leap year?

Some tech that wasn’t quite at its prime

• LHC at half capacity
• Palm not so hot
• TiVo not so hot
• Compact Flash is still in use?

A hot, hot car. It’s model is guess what, a prime number!

• Porsche- There is no substitute. Except maybe for this one…

A country with the most fiber in their diet. Technically speaking, that is.

• Lithuania is wired !

Nerd App of the Week/comic

• National Geographic

Birthdays/Anniversaries

• Prime stuff
• 1872 – Yellowstone National Park is established as the world’s first national park.
• 1893 – Nikola Tesla gives the first public demonstration of radio in St. Louis, Missouri.
• 1936 – The Hoover Dam is completed.
• 1966 – Venera 3 Soviet space probe crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet’s surface

This week’s stories:

• Lots of Game Console sales. 3.81 million Wii units (2.15M last year) and 1M PS3s (first time at that mark)
• Microsoft Warns of IE Zero-day Used in Google Attack. All IE versions are bad, but IE6 was targeted.
• AT&T drops price of iPhone data plans in response to a similar move from Verizon.
• Wii gets Netflix Streaming, but only SD. No HD for you!
• NASA prices shuttles to move! Get your very own space shuttle for only $29 meeleon dollars!

Nerd App of the Week

• Want your face in Lego? There’s an app for that.

Birthdays/Anniversaries

• Apple Lisa ships, $10,000 ! Jan 19, 1983 (a year later, a re-vamped Lisa2 is $6000.) First GUI EVER!. Also had awesome applications in it’s low, low price.

Happy New Year to All!

A couple of follow-up items from last week.

1. Listener voicemail.
2. Dictionary.com (building vocabulary).

Avatar Review ?

• Blue people. 3D. We’re not talking about Vegas here…

1080p HDTV/Projectors / BluRay ?

• What do you get when you combine a game console with a blu-ray player? A really sweet PS3 that spits out 1080p. Star Trek anyone?

Apple +Tablet = tApplet

• An Apple or an Applet? the Slate, the Slate, the Slate: when will it get here? when can I have one?

Nerd App/link

• The Dictionary.com app is a handy reference. (iTunes link)
• Project Blue Moon (the Alien/Tivo conspiracy)

Birthdays/Anniversaries

• 1972 – U.S. President Richard Nixon orders the development of a space shuttle program.

• Sprint offering a Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Netbook for $199. But there’s a catch.
• Apple announces a Reserve and Pick Up Program so you can shop on-line.
• Google Commerce Search launches for the Holidays
• African desert rift confirmed as new ocean in the making
• Space Hotel takes reservations for 2012 Opening

Microsoft and and Apple News

• HP Says Some Windows 7 Printer Drivers Are Coming. This sounds awfully familiar to Snow Leopard users.

QuickNews

• Best Buy movie downloads may be another sign of changing winds
• MSN home page getting a facelift from Microsoft
• 1.7 Million T-Mobile Users Hit by Service Disruption
• Space Elevator Games $900,000 top prize goes to Seattle Team

Nerd App of the Week

• NASA Launches iPhone App

Birthdays and Anniversaries

• Sesame Street Celebrates 40th Anniversary with Premiere on November 10th. See the Google tributes here.
• Firefox turns five
• UPS Marks 10th Birthday as a Public Company

]]> http://www.wordsfromnerds.com/2009/11/wfn-38-can-you-tell-me-how-to-get/feed/ 0 http://www.wordsfromnerds.com/2009/09/wfn-32-a-blockbuster-show/ http://www.wordsfromnerds.com/2009/09/wfn-32-a-blockbuster-show/#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:49:15 +0000 Mike http://www.wordsfromnerds.com/?p=315 Big changes at your favorite movie rental store, major renovations on their way to the Disney Parks and some news that is out of this world! Thanks for listening.

Blockbuster Shutting Down 960 Stores

• Even the big boys are feeling the effects of competition. Blockbuster has announced that it will close 960 stores by the end of 2010.

NetFlix Contests

• NetFlix, on the other hand, has some money to spend. It just awarded a $1 million prize to a group that figured out a better rating system than the one NetFlix currently uses. It liked this idea so much, it started another contest. How good are your programming and analytical skills?

Disney Expansion

• At their D23 Expo, Disney unveiled plans to completely revamp FantasyLand and the Star Tours ride. There are some cool videos that show an imagineering look at what is in store.

Cobol Anniversary

• If you are under the age of 40, the chances are that you may not have even heard of COBOL. But the Common Business-Oriented Language has just celebrated its golden anniversary.

Hubble

• Hard to believe that the Hubble space telescope has been up there for almost twenty years now, isn’t it? Though it got off to a rocky start, it sure does send us back some nice pictures now.

MIT Students Space Camera on a ShoeString Budget

• If you can’t afford to build your own Hubble Telescope, but still want your very own pictures from Space, you can always try what these MIT Students did… on a $150 budget!

Nerd of the Week

• H.G. Wells, famed science fiction writer and author of The War of the Worlds, was born this week in 1866.

The Passing of 3 Hollywood Legends

• Google thought they were under a DDoS attack. It turned out to be an outpouring of searches for the late Michael Jackson.

NetFlix CEO on Blu-Ray

• Netflix CEO predicts significant declines in packaged media rentals by 2018

Blu-ray Adoption Soft

• A Harris Interactive study shows that more people own the defunct HD-DVD player than the current Blu-ray standard.

DVRs in the Cloud?

• The Supreme Court declines to hear appeal to block remote storage DVRs.

Lunar Recon Orbiter

• Lunar Orbiter mapping the surface of the Moon.

New Telescope to Be Launched into Space

• NASA readies the next generation deep space telescope.

Windows 7 Pre-Orders dominate Amazon sales

• People are taking advantage of temporary discounted pricing from Microsoft and are snapping up advance copies of Windows 7.

Microsoft Extends XP availability

• The Windows OS manufacturer will sell XP on PCs through 2011.

Report: Sony considers adding phone to PSP

• Sony giving thought to combining their PSP gaming device with the Ericsson phones to have an all-in-one device.

Toshiba 1GHz smartphone launched, runs Windows

• 1GHz processor power in smartphones? Really? Toshiba is working on it. Wow!

Windows Mobile Marketplace

• Microsoft to Launch Windows Mobile Marketplace with 600 Applications

Google Voice

• A really cool new offering from Google. Or is it? What’s your privacy worth to you?

HD-capable video camera included in the new iPhone

• Apple’s iPhone 3GS can record HD images at 720p. But it doesn’t today. Why? Battery life might be the holdup.

Apple, other phone makers agree on standard charger for Europe

• John called this one in an earlier podcast. Looks like they took the hint.

Pepcom Show Touts 720p Zune, New NVIDIA Toys, And Phones Galore

• NVIDIA shows off the chip that will be inside the new Zune HD players.

35 years later, bar codes, and scanning, are everywhere

• Has it been 35 years already? A milestone anniversary for the invention of the bar code scanner.

Say Goodbye to Kodachrome. No, not the song.

• Kodak Kills Kodachrome.

HP reincarnates calculators on iPhone, Windows

• Remember these? Perhaps you still use one. If not, maybe you still want one. Well, now you can run them on Windows or iPhones.

Control your Apple TV from your iPhone/iPod Touch

• They may call this a ‘hobby’. But Apple’s engineers continue to deliver cool functionality to the Apple TV.

Nerd Site of the Week

• RPN – Reverse Polish Notation

Movie Quote

• (El Guapo) – “Would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?
• (Jefe) – “A what?
• (El Guapo) – “A *plethora*.”
• (Jefe) – “Oh yes, you have a plethora.”
• (El Guapo) – “Jefe, what is a plethora?”
• (Jefe) – “Why, El Guapo?”
• (El Guapo) – “Well, you told me I have a plethora. And I just would like to know if you know what a plethora is. I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has *no idea* what it means to have a plethora.”
• – from Three Amigos, 1986

Other Links:

• RedLaser iPhone app – $1.99 at the iPhone App Store. Lets you scan barcodes.

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