Folks, we’ve had a bit of a site hiccup this evening with the site. I’ve notified Pylorns about it and we’ll get it fixed. In the meantime, the podcast will be reposted once these issue are fixed.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but we’ll get this nailed down as soon as we can.

Out.

Okay, so recently in my travels to the wilds of Louisiana I had an opportunity to meet up with one of our writers, Stacked Heel (AKA Liz), in New Orleans. It was a cool night, and I got to meet some peeps I’d only heard about (or from) online.

At that little shindig, I met the operations folks behind NewOrleansTech.net. This outfit out of NOLA does some interesting work in bringing the tech news and events to New Orleans and the area, and they’re nice peeps to boot.

So, take a look at their site and see what they’re doing. You can hear Liz in their podcasts (and yes, I’m still working on some ideas for reviving our own podcasting venture), and you can learn some cool things.

Out.

From Gizmodo Best Buy’s computer optimization service is failing after being investigated by the consumerist.  We all know that business that sell “hardware” don’t make much money in the hardware now, they make money on the warranty and the services after the fact.  Finley is very much aware of their push to have them configure a newly purchased system.

That would be a slimy enough practice if the service was actually beneficial, but a new Consumerist investigation shows that the “service” is actually damaging, slowing down new computers by an average of 32%.

That doesn’t surprise me though.  My experiences with geek squad has been lack luster – in that they hire people for very little so you get what you pay for.

EDITOR’S NOTE FROM FINLEY: Pylorns doesn’t exaggerate when he speaks of my experience with this. I recently purchased a laptop from Best Buy for my parents, and the process was difficult in making sure that we received a non-optimized system. Additionally, I highly recommend reading Consumerist’s notes on how you can optimize your own system. Understand, I like Best Buy overall. I think it’s the best way to get some items. That being said, we here at Wetwired are vehemently opposed to anything that screws over the little guy like this, especially when all it takes is a small amount of time and the willingness not to be afraid of your own damn computer.

http://video.foxnews.com/12569117/medical-breakthrough

They’ve found a way now to make a hand that has fingers and a thumb that grasp.  We’re this much closer to Luke Skywalkers hand we saw in Star Wars.  You can tell that they still have some work to do but they are much closer now.

That’s right, they’ve made a fully functional Delorean in game.  Watch this all the way through as it keeps getting better.

If you want this actual mod check it out here.

This is a pretty amazing video using tilt-shift photography.

HP “Create Amazing” – Director’s Cut from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Update: The guy who created this – had to pull it until he got permission from HP.

In the meantime check out this video by the same guy:

Bathtub V from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

First they get rid of the ability to have dedicated servers.  Now they are limiting the number of people who can play to 18.  that’s right 9 vs. 9.  Compare that with any other major FPS game that hosts 32 and 64man servers – this is a crock of poo.

A max of 18 players has been the norm for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of previous entries Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: World At War, but it’s considerably less than previous iterations for the PC.

McCandlish explained that an 18-player cap was related to “the number of players we focused on when we were balancing map size, perks, classes, challenges, etc.”

Here Infinity Ward had a chance to fix the screwup of COD5 by releasing a graphically pleasing great followup to COD4 – which gamers prefer over COD5 STILL – and they manage to cock it up with screwy limits on the multiplayer experience.

Just FYI – FPS games suck on console controllers.  I’ll beat anyone on any FPS game if they have a console and I have a PC.

There are several petitions floating around, I urge PC gamers to go sign them.

Update: The plot thickens.

We thought the lack of dedicated servers was bad, but now we can add the lack of console commands, the inability to have a say in who hosts the game, a lengthy pause while the game migrates to a new host if the currently selected host quits, no leaning, no option to record matches, and no way to kick or block trouble players, hackers, or cheaters.

kaRMa: Please give me a direct answer. On the PC version. Are all games hosted by players, and is there a five-second delay when host migration is in effect?

Vince-IW: yes.Why is this a problem? Because Infinity Ward also revealed in the chat that the game will pick who hosts. You have no control over it. If the host leaves, there will be a five-second delay while the game picks the next best host. Players have no way of controlling who is hosting, and of course we know there will be no dedicated servers.

The host will of course have a ping advantage, which should be mitigated by the software “having a great tolerance for latency,” and a five-second pause if the host rage-quits before the game restarts will ruin any flow the game enjoyed until that point.

What’s more interesting is that they said ISPs will have to deal with you hosting games, even if there is language against running servers in their usage agreement. Infinity Ward’s response is that since this isn’t a “permanent” server, they have to deal with it. When someone else asked what would happen if their ISP throttled traffic that comes from running a server, they were told that “only players capable of hosting will host.”

They better hope that no ISPs get upset, because there is no way for any player to control who hosts. You can’t opt out of hosting. If the host quits, the game stops for five seconds while the next one is selected by the software. This is good for gamers… somehow.

Wow. Simply wow.

Update 11/9/09: Infinity Ward alludes to how they don’t give a crap about PC gamers.

“We have 14 million players on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare,” he said. “The hardcore gamers make up a smaller core of that, and PC gamers are the smallest group of that core”

Seriously, what is wrong with this company? Your rabid fan base comes from the “hard core gamers.”  What happened to creating loyal raving fans?

Related:

A few reasons NOT to buy Modern Warfare 2
More Modern Warfare 2 Hijinks
Modern Warfare 2 Shows how to Piss off Fans
Why I’m refusing to Purchase CODMW2
Modern Warefare 2 lacks manycommon PC FPS features
Could Modern Warfare 2 be any worse on PC?

Inspector Gadget Style

Today is the day that Windows 7 is released. Did you plan your windows 7 launch party today? (trust me don’t watch this whole thing…)

I know. Painful.  Now watch the video below – It is the parody of the above video.  Bleeping hilarious.

To celebrate Burger King and Japan are offering the Whopper with 7 patties.  So you can have your new OS, and have a heart attack when you get your first blue screen of death with the new OS.

And remember kids:

Steve is happy.

Preface: SNMP can be found here but a simple definition is its a protocol used to monitor network attached devices (routers, switches, etc.) So this is what you would call geeky.  Contributed by two of my co-workers.

10 – They both have good trapping capabilities

9 – Good with polling

8 – Even though they seem simple, in reality they are not

7 – Both require some sort of network

6 – There is a “certain” protocol to use when establishing communication

5 – needs a “community”

4 – Both Talk a lot

3 – Both are not supported by Dell

2 – Never have the information you really wanted anyways

1 – For both to really be happy, you have to provide money

(bonus # 1  When walking both you learn more useless shit and stats)

Easter Egg for the Palm Pre- and this is good. Remember the old Konami code? Type that into your Palm Pre and it unlocks the Developer Mode. Just type it all out on the keyboard, and it will bring up a new card and a switch to turn on the Dev mode. Reset your Pre and you’ve got the Mojo SDK.

Anything with the Konami code rocks. Dig it.

[via Engadget]

There’s no escaping the meteoric rise of Twitter in the past few months, with it getting mentions on morning tv shows, celebrity gossip shows, it’s been pushed to the forefront of everyone’s internet consciousness. There was also a much-publicized Twitter Race to a Million Followers between Ashton Kutcher and CNN.

Right after the Twitter War, ev, the CEO of Twitter posted this cryptic message: “Tomorrow just became a very big day” What would it be?

Turns out, the big news is that Oprah is now on Twitter, and it’s really her. Game On. Will her “Oprah Effect” be as influential in 140 characters as it is on her show? Well, by noon of her inaugural day she had almost 1000 followers, by 4pm (CST) she had almost 100,000 followers, and only 6 benign updates (someone please get her a Reuben). And this was just the soft opening. The hook was that she was going to make her Twitter Debut live on her show.

I am curious to see what she will do with Twitter. She’s already an adopter of new media and technology, often Skyping in people onto her show. I’ve been asked if her legions of apostles are even internet savvy. I’m postive many of them are, if it’s just to go internet shopping. If she tweets out her Favorite Things? Oh Hell. Bitches will be crashing some servers to get to them. Ever watch an Oprah’s Favorite Things show? The level of screaming and cheering women rival that of The Beatles or a Barack Obama appearance. You can’t get them to shut up. If she will tweet out discount codes or free shipping to get the stuff she recommends, I fear the internets will become one huge Fail Whale. It could take this country right out of the recession. Two things power the internet, and that’s porn and women who shop online. I’ve seen instances where a discount code and secret sale is leaked onto a women’s makeup and shopping message board and they have crashed Sephora and Nordstrom’s sites getting to it. Yes, Oprah could break the internets with the right free ship code.

She could use it for good as well, I suppose, her book club recommendations and her various causes. There’s lots of Twittering for charity lately. Many of the Twitterati has been behind a lot of charitable tweeting, and I think Ashton Kutcher’s hook to get him to 1M follwers included mosquito nets in third world countries. Does she still do her book club? Twitter would be another good way to get her book recs out to her apostles and keep em reading.

So, while there is a certain undercurrent rumblings of people displeased with such a high-profile person on Twitter, I have high hopes for Oprah’s use of it. Hopefully more than just an update to who’s going to be on her show. I think she can use it for good.

She might need an internet coach and Social Media Marketer on her team, my favorite celebrity twitter-er, THE_REAL_SHAQ pwns her after she makes her inaugural post:

twitter, oprah, ashton kutcher, cnn, larry king, aplusk, shaq

Basically because of the public outcry they’re “re-evaluating the testing” in favor of providing bandwidth tools so you too can measure the amount of bandwidth.  They are still “testing” just not charging anyone for it, they want you to know how much bandwidth you use so they can charge you for it and that way by the time we get to the point you’ll be used to seeing your bandwidth amount.  It’s not that they are going to stop the program, they still plan on capping bandwidth.  They just want to shift focus because of the bad PR.

(New York, NY) — Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) today announced it would alter plans to test Consumption Based Billing, shelving the trials while the customer education process continues.

Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said, “It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met. While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.”

Time Warner Cable also announced that it is working to make measurement tools available as quickly as possible. These tools will help customers understand how much bandwidth they consume and aid in the dialog going forward.

Britt added, “We look forward to continuing to work with Senator Schumer, our customers and all of the other interested parties as the process moves forward, to ensure that informed decisions are made about the best way to continue to provide our customers with the level of service that they expect and deserve from Time Warner Cable.”

I have measurement tools already, its called a router with DD-WRT.

Whose bright idea was this?  Time Warner has spent years pushing their current speed packages – faster internet etc. explaining that faster internet meant we could stream better larger movies and other cool things that take up LOTS of bandwidth.   So someone there came up with the bright idea “You know how we’ve got them all hooked on the higher bandwidth, which we advertised about and told them it was unlimited, lets start charging when they go over 40GB of bandwidth.”

So about a year ago, I bought my Macbook.

It wasn’t my first notebook- I’d owned a Dell before then that was quite a nice machine. This one was bought for the purposes of doing podcasting (which, I admit, has been slow of late but we’re retooling the podcast so give it time) and other stuff, as well as the opportunity to learn more about a system and OS that I had little experience in.

So, I’ve had it for a year now. My thoughts?

Well, it’s not a bad little system. This thing runs certain games well (including 3D gaming, on an integrated chipset no less), and save for some frustration early on with the system’s touchpad (resolved by using a mouse instead) it’s done pretty well. I’ve upgraded the hard drive and the memory, and it runs like a champ.

I even installed VIsta on the machine through Boot Camp. Well… okay, first I installed XP, then wiped it, installed Vista, went back to XP and then back to Vista. Naturally, I rarely use the Windows OS on this thing now.

I have noticed some other things about the system. First, I can’t believe Apple hasn’t gone ahead and licensed out the magnetic power connection to other companies for some huge bank already. I mean, that’s saved my ass countless times now when I’ve moved the system and forgot to disconnect the power.

Second, iTunes runs just about perfectly on this system. On my older notebook and on my file server (the functional remains of what used to be a decent desktop), iTunes was always a bit buggy and slow. Not so on this bad boy. I never really have any problems using it and playing music on this system. Naturally, my iPod and iPhone also play much nicer with this system than the PCs.

Podcasting is simple as hell on this thing, too. Pylorns and I have both done some extensive work on the Wetwired Podcast using our notebooks, and it’s been a breeze. I’ve learned how to edit on the fly, and mixing is easy enough.

Now, much as I’d prefer for this to be a total lovefest, there are some drawbacks.

First off, let’s face it. Paying 1600 bucks for a system with the specs that this one had at the time of purchase was a bit tough to swallow. That, of course, didn’t include the $200 in upgrades and the 3 year warranty that came from Best Buy (which I ONLY bought because of the accidental damage protection that Best Buy offers and Apple doesn’t- another drawback.). When you include those, the system comes out around $2100.

There’s the fact that although the fan doesn’t often have to run on the system, when it does it sounds like a Harrier jet taking off.

Finally, there’s the fact that owning this thing makes me one step closer to being a total douchenozzle. I can temper that with the fact that I was THIS close to buying another Dell at the time, and the reason I bought this one was because there was a legitimate hardware upgrade on this one that the Dell didn’t have. (Stereo Mix recording capability on the sound card, in case you’re wondering.)

Overall, I’ve been quite pleased with the system despite some issues. It’s not a perfect system, and any Apple fanboy who tells you that it would be is drinking too much of the Kool-aid. It is, however, a pretty damn good system.

That being said, my next system is gonna totally be a kick-ass desktop PC. Gotta keep my geek cred, after all. Plus, I’m not quite ready to turn in the t-shirt for a turtleneck and a snooty countenance just yet.

Out.

So now that you know that apple has let skype develop an application for the iPhone that allows you to chat and receive calls. But..and there is a but here, you wouldn’t expect anything less would you? You can’t make phone calls over 3g.  If you have a wireless connection on your iPhone then you can make and receive skype calls without a hitch.   You think At&T would want you to not use your minutes and only use your data unlimited plan? Think again mon frere’.

From the Skype FAQ:

Can I use Skype over 3G?

Most 3G networks should support Skype presence and chat.  However, Skype calling is not possible via the iPhone. Please note that data usage costs apply for using Skype over 3G mobile networks, so we recommend an unlimited data plan.

That said, if you have wireless and want to call locally or internationally its not a bad deal because you won’t be using your minutes – its around $2/month for US nation wide.

Update: According to commenter (cleve) if you jailbreak and use the beta of  3.0 OS for iPhone you can use skype over 3g.  Check out the video here.  The question of course is will that actually last when they roll out with the non-beta version of customers.  I suspect not.