"Murdered-Out." Engadget Podcast 131

Engadget podcast numero 131 was a pretty light-hearted affair.  paul miller was out sick; in his stead, chris ziegler provided some cell phone insight.  also in this episode, sweet sweet vindication for josh and nilay.

first of all, I'm going to get a whole bunch of blackberry stuff off my chest. I know that cell phone reviews are in no way created for me, so it doesn't really matter, but I still want to say that I have a hard time paying attention to bberry reviews. I had two of them, and no matter how easy they may have made it for me to get work done, I didn't develop loving relationships with either one. my hatred of their browsers made it nearly impossible for me to like either of them, and the fact that they failed so badly at browsing is what makes it so hard for me to take any review seriously. furthermore, a lot of what nilay and josh say about the similarity of specs between models and the mind-boggling proliferation of bberry form factors hit home with me.


josh loves this photo. normal day at chris ziegler's house (self-described cat-lady of cell phones).
courtesy of engadget.com


when I entered the ranks of management in my previous corpworld, I was given a bberry. as I anxiously awaited its arrival, I went online to see if I could figure out which one I would end up receiving. I wanted one with a camera and a decent browser. I thought that guessing which model I'd be assigned would be as simple as estimating how up-to-date my IT department might be, but that optimistic idea evaporated with my first search. I was shocked to see how many versions there were. there was no way for me to figure out which one I'd be getting, so I closed my desk-top browser and patiently waited for the box to come to my cube.  imagine my sadness at how crappy the curve's browser was (I had the one pictured right underneath the 8900 in the photo, above). at the time, my personal phone was a little nokia brick, and while I loved it, I sort of envied my husband his iphone. I figured that this work bberry would fulfill my smart phone lust. how wrong I was. I'm pretty sure that my curve's browser was just as bad as the one on my nokia. actually, I ended up loathing my bberry to such a degree that when I moved into my current role (different corpworld), I asked that I not be issued a bberry at all. my curve ended up representing the shackles of my job, and nothing more than that. I was resentful of it, even when it wasn't mysteriously crapping out on me (take the battery out and put it back in, power back on). the tactic of not carrying a bberry at my new job worked for a while, and then I was told I was receiving one. sigh. this time, I didn't even look around at coworkers to see which one I'd end up with. I just didn't care.


photo grabbed from tinh te review, posted to youtube.


I ended up with the bold on the left, in the photo, above. a friend received that one on the right from the same company on the same day. I don't know if her supervisor cheaped out on her, or if I just drew the newer straw, but despite having the latest bold, I still didn't care all that much. the first thing I did was to check the browser and it still sucked. what? why? how???? if I was in the stock market and had rim shares, I'd drop them as soon as I heard the CEO state that "buggy cell phone launches are the norm." how disgustingly apathetic. am I being too harsh?

but the pleather back? I liked it!  my curve had a plastic back, so the upgrade to pleather was great. denim? really? nilay, I am so right there with you when you asked, "denim? like stonewashed?" I shudder to think of all those who may have been walking around in denim shirts, denim jeans, and denim bberries. now I am being too harsh.

I know the iphone isn't perfect, but once my current company went the way of apple, and I was able to replace my bberry with the iphone 4, I cancelled my personal cell phone contract and stopped thinking about blackberries at all (that is, until I began this blog project). yes, at&t's network sucks and sometimes I wait in vain for my phone to sync or receive emails, but you know what? I can always get where I want to with my browser, and for me, that's what matters when it comes to my cell phone device of choice. yes, perhaps I am a sad, little, limited person, but there you have it. that's my bias. like paul, I prefer a digital keyboard, and no bumper. for the record, I've been keeping auto-correct on, just to try it out, since everyone besides me swears by it. I still find it frustrating, but now also I find it fascinatingly awesome by equal measures. and I keep thinking of things I wonder if suri could do for me, but I don't have ai technology...

first gen kindle, image via widipedia


I can't help but wonder if this is the kindle that josh is trying to buy as this pod is casting.  I was picturing the second gen version in my head, but that's because I had no idea that the first gen even existed. it's way cooler than the second release, and I can see why josh might become totally enamored after getting over his initial aversion. 

chinese crested (dog) via rate my k-9.com

a long time ago, I thought that I only liked big dogs. which is really kind of funny, since I never even had a dog in my home. like josh and the kindle, once I let go of my disgust, I found that I really wanted a little dog. various breeds come and go from my short list, but the chinese crested always rates in the top five wants. what I'm saying is that the first amazon kindle is ugly in the way that certain breeds of dog are ugly. they're so ugly that they're completely charismatic and ultimately, super cute. chris ziegler "flipped" two kindles on ebay, for which josh calls him a jerk. it's ok, josh apologizes for that.

in the beginning of the episode, nilay talks about why it's unlikely that apple will sue palm over the technology used for the pre's touch capabilities. josh just wants to be reassured that nothing will hold up the pre's release (nor the watchman's). nilay is happy that he has the opportunity to talk patents with his best friend and to set the record straight both on air, and in (digital) print. josh uses this passage to segue into the sectera edge / blackberry confusion issue. he crows over the fact that obama is shown with a blackberry in a photograph. not that he cares. no. but just in case I didn't make it clear in my last entry, the blackberry whatever and sectera edge are two, separate entities.

oh and last but not least, "murdered out." I don't know how to properly commiserate over how sad I feel about myself that I'm picking up "cool" slang terminology from a geek podcast that's over two years old. sigh. have I ever mentioned that I used to live in manhattan and hang with the cool kids (for example, I used to regularly see acts like borbetomagus and the boredoms at the cooler, & etc.)? now I'm in a suburb of a lesser city and so uncool that almost every day I don't care that I don't live in manhattan, or in one of its hip boroughs. anyway, "murdered out" is an awesome phrase and I am so happy that I learned it. thank you, engadget podcast (now vergecast).

"Mrs. Peacock with the Lead Pipe in the Ballroom" Engadget Podcast 130

so many things in this podcast. nilay spent his weekend evaluating set-top devices that stream netflix. I kept wondering what the big deal is with set top boxes, and why people can't just be satisfied hooking up their laptops to their tvs. can't that work for everyone? I stopped wondering this on thursday morning, when I worked from home and decided to watch the last half of the last season of weeds, as I did some editing.

andy botwin is awesome. just sayin'.

we have a projector rather than a tv, so maybe that complicates things? I'm not sure, but I had to call my husband to ask him to explain the set-up. In order to view the computer screen on my wall, I didn't just need to know which setting to use on the remote. I had to know where to position two separate switches (I didn't bother to ask what they were doing). due to my lemon of an hp, I also had to fiddle with the screen settings until the sound came through our speakers. yes, I wrote that correctly - screen settings to adjust speaker output - that sums up the character of my crappy hp pavilion. so I get it, viewing online content on one's television should be as simple as popping a dvd into the computer. we do have a blu ray that streams from netflix, hulu+, and a few other sites, but even now, in 2011, the interfaces are not great. hulu+ didn't even work, so we ended up canceling the subscription that we purchased just for the sake of our new set top box. in 2009, josh predicts that content will be the make or break aspect that determines netflix's success.  it's 2011...I'm pretty sure the streaming content is still fairly dismal when it comes to movies. best part of the netflix segment? nilay reveals the fact that he uses top gun and jurassic park as sound benchmarks for judging audio delivery. he catches some heat, but not nearly enough. even still, transformers?

this podcast is dubbed the "angry rant" edition. I like a good angry rant as much as the next guy (especially when it's not directed at me), but what I find interesting about this episode are the absences of certain rants. it's like interesting negative space. for example, listen to paul's rant over the frame channel concept. sorry to those readers who encountered a broken audio file. I've fixed it! click to hear about 30seconds of paul miller ranting.



it's a gentle rage. also absent is the rant that should accompany the recounting of the frame channel rep that used paul's personal account information to contact him to suggest a meeting in his home town. talk about disgusting. josh used the phrase, "creep salad." that was funny.  paul and josh are both angry about best buy's selling practices, but paul lets josh rant for him. I'm guessing because he knows that josh does a much better rant. needless to say, paul needs to work on his rant skills.

josh does a pretty good job getting lathered up over the issue of obama's blackberry, the sectera edge.

sectera edge security description. via pcworld.

just kidding! of course, a blackberry and a sectera edge are two, separate products. how many times can josh use the word, conflate, in one verbal paragraph? the best part was when he said that cspan or cnn or some journalistic entity "conflated the blackberry out of the picture." he corrected himself immediately, but really, it was a cute ranty sentence. very heat of the moment.

tim cook goes on about how apple will go after anyone who rips off their intellectual property. it's like a rant-threat.

"Steve Jobs...Is Dead." Engadget Podcast 129

oh, was that in poor taste? or did it just seem like the facts? back in 2009, it was an interruption comment made by paul miller that seemed to make nilay and josh pretty uncomfortable. paul blurted it out, deep voiced and dead pan. I imagined that after he said it, he was freaking out, making silent crazy faces, waving his hands around, being like, "what did I just say???" this is what I picture in my mind because the comment is so out of character (at least paul miller podcast character) that it reminds me of the time I dramatically mocked my third-grade teacher (who happened to be a nun) in front of her and everyone. I played her like she was a crazy, finger-shaking, bent-over old crone. for the first two and a half years of my attendance at that school, I didn't say very much, and then blam, I was lining up for a spanking (not really, but I did get sent to Sister Mary Margaret for some very stern words).

podcast 129 is nearly one-half steve jobs, and what his resignation might mean to apple and to the industry. the second half is about windows 7. there's a smidgen of CES 2009.

is this a man who has fanboys? I don't know, but he looks pretty cool to me. image via businessinsider.com

I like to read as much as the next guy, but biographies of the recently deceased don't usually make my list. I do, however, plan to read the jobs biography soon (why doesn't my public library own a digital copy of this book? seems like the ultimate oversight to me. I would like to meet the digital contents librarian to discuss improvements to the current purchasing scheme). I'm no apple fanboy, but the fact that one ceo/man can inspire so much hubbub/fanaticism/conspiracy theories/etc. is fascinating. that he reputedly generates a "reality distortion field" is also interesting. I can't believe I haven't seen pirates of silicon valley yet.

image via imdb.com

I just dug out my macbook pro purchase receipt to find its date of purchase. it turns out that I bought this laptop on November 10, 2010, which means that I must have purchased my dud of an hp pavilion sometime in the early part of 2009. after hearing this podcast, I am sad that I didn't know there was a beta version of windows 7 available. I never bonded with vista, I hated the pavilion, I was upset over the purchase decision I'd made, and I would have jumped on the chance to see if windows 7 could have improved my user experience. my hp isn't just slow, it's disobedient, and it suffers from short-term memory loss. every time the machine regains consciousness after being asleep or shut down, it "forgets" that we have a wireless signal and audio capabilities. therefore, every time we use it, we literally have to restart it once, if not twice. why? we haven't been able to figure that out. we thought that maybe it had something to do with the gazillion windows and hp updates the operating system was receiving, but after restoring to previous versions, barring automatic updates, and reading forums online, we still haven't been able to figure out what the problem is. it also has a really interesting, "I'm going to wake up with my fan on at 6am if I've been asleep, but still open" function. I'm willing to accept user error as the reason for my woes, but user error didn't cause the battery to die an early death. the computer only works if it's plugged in. am I ranting? YES I am! sorry. this is all to say that listening to the enthusiasm of the 129 podcast crowd makes me sort of nostalgic for the days when I was a pc. I use a pc for work, and I work a lot, but my work machine is still running xp (and a massive host of other outdated products - I can easily write another rant about this, but I'll refrain), so I don't get to play with any cool, new features.

that's me, speaking out of my cube. technically, I'm still a pc at work, but that doesn't really count.

nilay found and purchased the #1 crap gadget of the 2009 CES show (found in the depths of the international gateway, which is also the first part of CES that sounded totally awesome to me. I would love to work for a gadget blog once a year, just to cover the international gateway) from a chinese lady who harassed him in her native tongue, then yelled, "one dollar" a few times.

it glows! for all you fantasy fanboys out there. image via endgadget.com

he almost didn't buy the dragon controller, but then regained sanity and forked over the bill. josh called him a cheap jerk (really) for not buying a controller for everyone. paul loved it so much that nilay gave it to him. paul renamed it awesome gadget, which is what you need to use as the search term, if you're going to look it up on the engadget site. josh waxed about his favorite crap gadget from 2008, the miniphone, "it's just like a regular phone, except that it's a little bit smaller."

josh's mini-phone photo. image via endgadget.com

it occurred to me, while nilay was talking about his experience of being yelled at in chinese by some lady, that she may not have been yelling at him at all. some chinese people seem to be all lathered up and potentially bomb-like as they spit tiny foam flecks at you and hold forth at an insane volume, when from their point of view, they're making normal everyday, lovely conversation. my parents had one male friend who would actually make me wince when he was just saying nice things to me. we also had to wipe down our telephone mouthpiece anytime we allowed him to use our telephone.

bsod = black screen of death, and I was very proud of myself for knowing that. paul was deemed unfit for gauging the performance of his vista machine, since he "doesn't push it very hard," (his words) and only "uses it for zune and rhapsody," (nilay's words). he has played counterstrike on it once, however, as well as civilization IV. why does every male I know seem to have been devoted to that game at some point in their lives?

josh almost talked about the palm pre, but then decided to save it for next week. he did, however, mention that it uses the same battery as the centro. very interesting, right?

"we are going to get so professional on you" Engadget Podcast 128

so, I was totally wrong. I had not seen the back of ces 2009. podcast 128 is another wrap-up episode, this time guest-starring thomas richer, an (ex) engadget senior editor, or lone wolf and self-acclaimed "old man," from the netherlands. he was apparently responsible for this bit of photoshopped handiwork:

image via switched.com

I agree, it's slightly disturbing to see mac guy's face on the little girl body, but the imagery is pretty far from reaching the "block it out" end of my horror-meter. I'm continually editing my impressions of each host persona, as I listen to the podcasts (my impressions of josh and nilay are still somewhat plastic), but I'm becoming fairly sure that my general idea of paul isn't going to change. the man is an innocent. he's sensitive. that isn't to say that he's fragile, or anything like that (I wouldn't know from the podcast, thank goodness), but he's definitely easily disconcerted. he's someone that I would probably have the urge to be extra profane around if I knew him personally. in a fun way, of course!

the very cute feature of this podcast is that everyone is super loving each other. it's like post-show haze love. and you know what? I was right about the snort-level giggling. there is slap-happy commenting going on in this podcast. first to come is thomas richer love: paul describes himself as glowing in the mornings after he gets up and reads thomas' posts. later on comes the group love: thomas richer initiates a conversation about how much everyone loves the opportunity ces gives the engadget staff to hang out with each other.


maybe when they hang out with each other at ces, the engadget staff are like tech-loving care bears.


before the conversation devolves into wackiness, there is some deadly serious discourse about the status of net books, consumer behavior (are there really people who don't know what to do once their desktops are full of icons?), the palm pre, and palm-the-company, and "the childlike joshua topolsky."

I like how the childlike version of josh topolsky is still ready to slam right into curmudgeon mode at the drop of a hat. for example, as everyone chides him, and he agrees that he's beaming (somewhat prematurely) over the promise that the pre holds, he says, "what, I don't deserve to be happy? is that what you're telling me?" or something like that. that quote was actually an approximation.

I was ready to write a whole thing about the [personalization of] and [identification with] one's computer and william gibson and jean baudrillard (I had a crush on some of his books when I was an undergrad), but I'm going to replace that sure-to-be-pedantic paragraph with this:  During a weekend visit, my mother-in-law asked my husband if he would help her with her computer. my jaw nearly hit the floor when she said that she wanted him to help her delete some files. uh, what does that even MEAN????? this is a smart and independent woman. she was a vp of hr when she retired, and she still practices hr on a volunteer basis for her church and the penn foundation. she uses her computer for various work-related tasks, and I assumed she was at least on intimate terms with basic comupter functions. as she was answering my husband's pointed questions (what kind of files do you need help deleting? has your computer's performance slowed recently? & etc.), all I could think was, "hey, if you have too many icons on your desktop, it might be time to get a new computer!" in the end, my husband told my mother-in-law that she needed to figure out how to delete items by herself and to let him know when she was having real issues with her laptop. harsh, right? will I completely forget how to interact with technology when I'm old? is that an automatic response to aging?

everyone tried, but no one succeeded in getting thomas to say the word, "kiosk."

"MAIL MERGE!!!!!?????/? + CES" Engadget Podcasts 124-127

124 = macworld and ces day 1
125 = microsoft and day 2
126 = palm pre and day 3 (pre)
127 = last day wrap up, hungover

macworld must have been boring because I can't even muster the energy it would take to look up the correct spelling of phil shiller. honestly, the most interesting thing about apple is steve jobs. sure, there was an entire company behind the man, but so what? it's steve jobs who was credited with awesome comments such as,

"Bill Gates'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger." - The New York Times January1997

"We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it." -Fortune March 2008

AND he had something to do with the creation of Breakout, one of the best atari games ever. anyway, there is banter that makes the rehashing of macworld much more interesting than it would have otherwise been. can you imagine sitting through the boredom of listening to people retell tales of looking at 17" macbook pros? I don't care how unremovable a battery is. to me, that's just not news. josh had one great quote where he was talking about the lack of buttons on the macbook pro's trackpad, "I don't find the lack of buttons to be more useful. Do you know what I find to be a really useful tool for getting work done on a computer - and it has lot's of buttons? The keyboard, that's what."

I think that it was during 124 that nilay mentioned the gizmondo ceo who "chose" to crash his ferrari. I looked that up, and it was ugly. but the funny thing is that the car crash probably wasn't the worst disaster in this guy's life.

enzo into a tree? where's the tree?

the gizmondo itself is the punchline. it was apparently a bonafide clunker. here's an excerpt from the wikipedia article about the gadget:

"With fewer than 25,000 units sold, the Gizmondo was named by GamePro as the worst selling handheld console in history. By February 2006, the company discontinued the device and was forced into bankruptcy. In 2008, founder and CEO Carl Freer announced that he had reached an agreement with the liquidators, and planned to re-launch Gizmondo as Gizmondo 2." 

the gizmondo, via gizmodo

at the end of the podcast, josh gets all loopy and predicts that the microsoft ceo, steve ballmer, will execute a karate kick onstage, pump his fist in the air, and introduce a zune phone by having someone call him on it while he's on stage so that he can pull it out of his pocket while saying, "woa, I can't even answer the phone because I'm jamming to so much music."

oh one more thing - it was during this macworld that apple announced it would use a tiered pricing scheme for its itunes store. 69cents for "bargain basement" songs, 99cents for a "regular" song, and $1.29 for a "premium" song. I'm sorry, I know that I'm particularly scrimpy when it comes to media purchases (I've never paid for anything in itunes, nor have I ever purchased an application for my iphone), but I would NOT pay $1.29 for a song! I looked, though, and most of what I'd want from the itunes store is 99cents. I had to search around for $1.29 songs, and luckily, I'm not into the bieber. paul miller thinks that yacht rock is a prime example of bargain basement. maybe some of it, but I don't know, I'd say bargain basement is more like ratt or deo.

I think paul got one thing right though; he predicted that subscription services would become the big thing for music. spotify is seriously ruling my world (the free one, of course - thank you again, dj reef!). I mean, it has changed my life. I can't imagine buying another record or cd again. well, I take that back. of course I can, because a lot of what I'd like to listen to isn't on spotify (drag city), but then, so much is there that I really don't care about what I can't hear on it. right now I'm digging some john phillips.

125 is the microsoft day of ces. there is no zune phone. there is no fist pumping (in the air). there is no karate kick. but despite all those unrealized predictions, the retelling of the keynote is pretty hilarious. microsoft had some "ladies" demonstrate a few things, and one was named, janet galore. they also had a child demo a software called, kodu. josh and paul thought that maybe the kid's name was willow, "or one of those names." it was actually sparrow. microsoft billed sparrow as an "actual 12 year old girl."

sparrow demonstrated a really cool software called, kodu. kodu is a programming environment that allows a user to code by going through menus of icons, rather than typing in a language. paul said that had he known about this in his youth, he'd likely not be able to put a sentence together, but he would probably have made some pretty kickass games. for the record, paul accused willow/sparrow of doing some autistic-like mumbling chatter while flying through the kodu menus. someone said that steve ballmer made phil shiller (sp?) "look like a baby." most likely it was josh.

the guys make fun of thin tvs, which apparently, are all over the place. nilay sneaks around on the floor of the show, while paul and josh are on the press junket. there's a lot of security around an lg phone watch, which gets much airtime on the podcast due to the fact that they're making fun of it, except for paul, who thinks that it's pretty cool. when pressed for a reason by josh, he says, "because it's a phone that you wear on your wrist. that's cool."

feel like talking to your wrist? not quite spy-worthy. via cnet.com

episode 126? funny you should ask. it's about day three at ces. while they do mention the sony vaio p (nilay really really really wants one), they (ok, mostly josh, a little nilay) absolutely gush over the palm pre. I can feel josh smiling giddily through the speakers as he's talking to me from over two years ago. scroll forward, however, and what do we find? this is what we find, and it's sad. I wonder if josh ever got a turbografix 16 emulator for his pre.

it's interesting to find out that the pre is named for precognition. nilay mentions that the phone is said by palm to "know what the user wants before the user itself knows." josh responds, "like precognition," but no one is having it. nilay wants it to be like preview, and paul doesn't have an opinion. I'm surprised that there's no mention of phillip k. dick. in dick's books, precogs are humans that can tell the future.

if you haven't read this book, do so immediately. 

it's apparently during this ces that wireless charging (inductive?) is introduced as a truly viable alternative to plugging devices in to charge. nilay mentions that there is a wireless charging alliance. this is the second alliance I've learned of while listening to the podcast. the first was the open handset alliance. at work, we have signs up that discuss hand-washing. the signs have been designed by the soap and detergent association, which is a part of the clean hands coalition. I guess there's a group for everybody.

in 127, everyone sounds hungover. nilay sounds like he's been yelling and smoking all night long. ryan block is in on the action, and for some reason, I'm not remembering all that much about the podcast itself. I was wiped out after listening to so much CES talk. I can't even imagine what it's like to cover the event. I think that there was talk of Dell and its Adamo, but mainly what I remember from that was that they rented out a bunch of rooms for their announcement and that it sounded like a weird scene. oh wait, you know what? there was a bit of talk about some chips. maybe I can't remember the podcast that well because the pre talk blurs the episodes, and who cares about chips? I mean, sure we all do, but really, most of us don't.

aww, but he's so cute! 

The Verge - The Movie Version

I was driving into work today, listening to the (old) Engadget podcast, as always, and it occurred to me that had I been a student at a liberal arts university, I might be tempted to spin this project into some kind of masters or dissertation research. I was sort of giggling to myself, thinking about how to describe its relevance to history, the social discourse, and all of its possible intersection points with the current-day technological/social milieu when it dawned on me that "there are the makings of a movie script here."

I see it as a Wes Anderson style buddy film with elements of John Hughes conflict/romance and Cannonball Run type madcap activity. The movie would begin in the future, at a time where The Verge has largely become irrelevant, and the trio of Paul, Josh, and Nilay have only very loose associations. I think the perfect time in the future would be just as Josh and Nilay are about to turn 40 (years old). the website (The Verge) itself is run and written entirely by other people, but the three have figurative places on the staff. once this context is established, an "old school" press event is announced and the receipt of the invitation inspires Paul to round up Josh and Nilay to propose that they regain their former journalistic status by covering the event like they used to, and by getting at least one GREAT scoop. the great scoop, of course, becomes the focal point of the action - bumbling and poignant with some really good madcap comedic moments. the romance will be between Paul (still single) and a technology ingenue that they meet in the shuffle of "grabbing the scoop." while the scoop is the pivot around which the movie will revolve, the film is really about the relationship between the buddies, and their reunion and rejuvenation. the ending will be happy.  

who wants to collaborate on the script with me? anyone? hello?  

"sounds Awesome" Engadget Podcast 123

123 is the last Endgadget podcast of 2008. everyone's excited about CES, macworld¹, clutch form-factors², x-mas, new year fantasies³, and the reader meet-up recap.

ok, listen up. enough technical banter already. I'm skipping straight to x-mas.

the GE OLED "holiday" tree mentioned in the podcast. this is the link to the original engadget post.

the discussion begins with the "holiday" tree versus "christmas" tree argument that took place in the comment section of the post that accompanies the above photograph. I read through some of those reader comments, and people really did "go nuts and lose their minds" over the title of that sculpture. the controversy may have blindsided the podcasters, but I wasn't surprised. if there's anything that people get silly over, it's dogma. while nilay was interested in assuring the readers/listeners that there is no engadget editorial rule on using christmas vs. holiday in their posts, josh made the following statement, "I would like to say that I have a personal policy of using x-mas⁴ as much as possible, but only because I'm a big futurama fan." that would be a great epigraph for a book chapter on the topic.

my favorite thing about this part of the podcast is learning about the editors' personal chirstmas/x-mas/christ-mas experiences. paul revealed that he hung about all vacation and watched netflix streaming through his x-box. I say, he was most likely in jammies, drinking hot chocolate, and watching john hughes movies. he didn't have a tree in his apartment, but his roommate did receive a "house⁵ from his gramma." nilay glommed on to his sister's tree, and got a zojirushi rice cooker. I'm no techy nerd, but oh boy, am I ever jealous about his rice cooker! I have an old tatung. it's pretty much one switch and a heating element. there are no computers in my rice cooker. it's so old that I can't find a photo of the model online (the one pictured below is similar, but more modern-looking than mine). I love it, but still, the allure of fuzzy logic cooking my soupy rice (congee) to perfection is so seductive.

rice cooker envy - how about an umami setting on your rice cooker? zojirushi has it.

josh did not exchange gifts with his wife for x-mas in 2008 (he "went crazy in 2007" at x-mastime), but he did have a nice tree, with no religious iconography. it was decorated only with star trek ornaments, plus one obama decoration. he mentioned that the tree was "really nice," and that he was "into it."

maybe he had a spock topper, since he didn't have an angel up there.

I knew that josh was nerdy, but having only star trek ornaments on the x-mas tree is other-level nerdiness. I'm not totally surprised, but I am mildly surprised.

everyone in the know knows that the best winter holiday to celebrate is circleness⁶!

as of this podcast, there were 12 days until the start of CES. after reading about the rivalry between tech blogs, I can't even imagine what CES is like for these guys. josh mentions being nervous, and it's obvious that everyone is keyed up about the event. these guys weren't trying to suppress the fact that they were salivating in anticipation of it. the slightly frenzied air of the talk makes me think that the event itself must be crazy for these journalists. I imagine geek machismo, one-up-manship style blogging, sleep deprived feats of nerd-pranking, and a lot of giddy, snorting laughter. I don't care how wrong this fantasy⁷ is, it's mine and I'm not changing it.

footnotes

1. so, no one is really excited about macworld. they're excited to talk about apple's cancellation of their appearance and the fact that steve jobs wasn't giving the keynote address. some guy named phil something or other was handed the keynote responsibility instead.

2. form-factor is hands-down the nerdiest piece of lingo I've acquired from this hobby.

3. paul wants the laptop of his dreams, which is basically an apple air that has adequate processing power and a replaceable battery. nilay wants streaming content to provide him with what he actually wants to watch in an HD format. I don't remember what josh wanted (his perfect smart phone).

I'm surprised that paul didn't fantasize about qrio. 

4. pronounced ex-mas.

5. the house was gingerbread style in its construction, and it lit up, and played a song.

6. go check circleness out. you owe it to yourself. the tree-topper shown is the circleness symbol of an infinity sign inside a circle. also shown is a lego death star ornament.

7. I know that there is live-blogging at many tech sites during these spectaculars, but I've never been a reader of the blogs, so I don't quite know the reality of how continuous the posts are. I'm not ready to become a reader yet.

"I plot all of their deaths constantly" Engadget Podcast 122

podcast #122 is really the Q&A session of the 2008 NYC reader meet-up. it's short and sort of sweet. josh, nilay, and paul seem to be as articulate and sassy in person as in their podcasts. at first I thought that maybe paul was d-r-u-n-k, but then I noticed he sounded quite sober later on in the session. maybe he was able to rally? there were fewer questions than I'd anticipated, but I guess that's because everyone was eager for the raffle to occur. I wonder if I would have chimed in with a question, had I been there. sometimes I imagine having the opportunity to interview the trio and I mentally compile a list of questions.

Ryan Block (left, former engadget editor-in-chief) and Brian Lam (right, former gizmodo editor-in-chief)

the first question of the evening was, "how do you feel about the staff at gizmodo.com?" to which josh provides a very diplomatic answer that nilay chimes in on, "I plot all of their deaths constantly. Let's be honest." but then he maturely adds, "read both sites, but read ours more often." I didn't even consider a rivalry between blogs before the moment I heard that question. I suppose it's natural, especially given the fact that engadget was started by someone who left gizmodo, apparently to begin a war between tech blogs.

did Engadget kill the Palm Foleo? image from Wikipedia

the cutest question was either, "what's the gender ratio of Engadget readers?" made cuter by the fact that it was lisped by a man, or, "how do you feel about mentoring and giving out advice?"

want to write for a tech blog? answer a call for writers! that's how josh, paul, and nilay got their jobs.

during the q&a, nilay proved to me that he really does like to yell at people. he yelled at people for booing free stuff (turns out they were booing the bberry storm), and he yelled at a girl who was heckling some guy. he told her to stop being mean, and that she was already scaring [the men] around her just by being a girl. it was cute.

there was one q&a-er I found to be completely annoying, Dingo (commenter name). he got up and PROJECTED a mini speech into the mic. his demeanor made it clear that he was shamelessly begging for attention. finally, after all the other crap he let out of his mouth, he got to his question, "but really, the question that's on everyone's mind," I'm telling you, he was obnoxious, "or at least the one that's on my mind," I suppose he did reign himself in, "is, 'What Is the Meaning of Life?'" Josh didn't skip a beat. "The Meaning of Life? Oh, of course, it's 42. Everyone knows that." so true. I'm not even a nerd and I knew that (but I'm sure I wouldn't have busted it out in a nanosecond).

The Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. image from Wikipedia.

"gnu gnu-gness" Engadget Podcast 121

the crew manages to deliver me the goods again with Engadget Podcast #121.

as soon as Josh introduces the palm portion of the podcast and says, "new new-ness," I hear it as "gnu gnu-gness." I can't help myself. when I was a wee lass, I used to watch The New Zoo Revue, featuring Gary Gnu. sure, I was young, but even then, I would think (as I watched), "this show is insane, and not particularly entertaining on a level where I want to watch it, but it's so crazy that I can't stop looking at it." oh wait, no - was Gary Gnu part of the Great Space Coaster? both shows were nuts.

"Gno Gnus is Good Gnus on the Gary Gnu Show." Image via River Bottom Nightmare Blog.

so that you're encouraged to go do an image search for each show, I've placed a couple of visual teasers here. and even though having seen these shows as they aired makes me super old now (oh please, I didn't see the original ones, they were being re-broadcast for my early hours viewing pleasure), I'm still happy I got to see the insanity in real time, as part of my normal life. without having born witness to these things, set in a presumably "normal" context, during my formative years, I'm not sure I'd be the person I am today. 

The Great Space Coaster via Retro Junk

The New Zoo Revue via Retrospace

most weeks I listen to the current This Is My Next Podcast, as well as the Engadget Podcast that I'm commenting on. so I'm aware that there are instances where, on a topical basis, the past and the present intersect. not being a real historian and not knowing how I want to structure my narrative on a philosophical basis, I've been ignoring those occurrences.  I did want to get my non-decision on the record, however, because I think that I might need to force myself to figure this issue out at some point. on the one hand, there's a real opportunity for rich discussion if I allow my knowledge of the current state of technology to inform my commentary on past podcast points and points of view (the topic of Android, for example). on the other hand, I don't actually know all that much about technology, so anything I write about it will likely be obvious, tedious, wrong-headed, or just wrong.

speaking of GNUs: ladies and gentlemen, Richard Stallman (via Wikipedia)

and with that, I'm going to skip right to the reader meet-up.

if this blog had a readership of more than 1.5 individuals, I would ask them, "hey, did anyone happen to attend this event? what was it like? was it super fun? did you get lots of cool stuff?" and then I would say, "leave your remarks in the comment section of this post." but...I'm pretty cowardly, so I've told maybe 3 people about this blog. sometimes I think about notifying its subjects, but then I get too self-conscious to actually do so. anyways, if you happened to go to the 2008 Engadget reader meet-up/holiday event, did you see Nilay? did he look like this?

or maybe you saw the entire podcast crew, and they looked like this:

notable moments in the podcast include the passage where Josh promised to probe Paul's psyche after he made a statement about preferring to "drink the kool-aid," in order to have "a more enjoyable experience," and the part when the OHA (open handset alliance) discourse winds up at how Nilay manages his contacts. Josh gets so keyed up about the topic, I feel his pain over his iphone-gmail contacts sync incident all over again. oh, and Josh called nokia terrorists.

for the sake of completeness

I don't want you to think that I don't have any ideas about Josh and Nilay's upbringing, here they are:

I think of Nilay as being raised by intellectuals who didn't quite know what to do with the likes of him, so they mostly peered at him from their vantage point, regarding him as a curiosity - interceding when absolutely necessary, but letting his personality simply manifest without too much parental fiddling.

I think of Josh as being raised by people who are exactly like him.  though he's from Pittsburgh, so I don't think of his parents as vegan.

"written with a quill" Engadget Podcast 120

Finnish Army Visits Engadget Editor-in-chief Somewhere in New York and Removes Dog, at Behest of Nokia - details here

episode 120 of the Engadget podcast is thick with the good stuff.  the guys come back after a Thanksgiving break to discuss Nokia, widgets, the Peek, and streaming content.

when the discussion turns to widgets, I'm pulled in several different directions.  I too, have often been befuddled by the lack of active widgets on the iphone home screen.  just like Josh, the one I've been known to pick on is the weather icon.  it would be so cool if it could reflect the actual weather, rather than remain static (although it probably does a good job with the weather in parts of California).  I understand when everyone talks about how great it would be to have more "data" on the home screen, and when Josh mentions the fact that icons could take up the space of more than just one square on the grid.  I really do get it, but when I compare the look of the Android home screen to the iphone's (and I knowingly write this with the luxury of hindsight; the same comparison couldn't have been made at the time of the podcast), I see why the iphone icons are the way they are. it is an aesthetic thing. it is form beats out function. there's a clean simplicity to the iphone that Android phones somehow cannot achieve. and you know, I don't really need to have a widget provide me with up to the second weather reports, because I'm usually not about to emerge from an underground cave.  most of the time, when I wake my phone up, I do need to know what time it is, and sadly, what the date is. my informational requirements are dread low, so I'm sure I speak only for myself, but I say, if providing me with an active weather icon and more information on my iphone home screen cannot be done without preserving its spartan stylings, then I can do without.

every time data was mentioned, I kept thinking about Swingers, and how it brought the adjective, money, into the popular vernacular.  I'd like to introduce the word, data, to be used as an adjective meaning: knowledgable, in the know, hip to the scene, impressive in terms of intelligence, and generally great. there would be a little bit of an overlap in meaning between "data" and "money," but mostly because the meaning of such adjectives should be plastic, affording users the opportunity to provide meaning with context (personalization is an important property for such things).  take this scenario:  you and a teammate are embroiled in a head to head Trivial Pursuit match. the stakes are high. you and the other team are neck in neck. you land on the final hub. if you don't answer the question correctly, you will likely lose the game. the question is read to you and you have no idea what the answer is, but your teammate busts it out practically instantaneously.  you are so happy, you shout, "dude, you are so DATA!"  I might begin throwing the term around. be on the lookout.

I find the Peek section of the podcast to be pure hilarity. Josh kills me with his nerd monologue.  "what is that? what does it do? never mind, I don't care, I want it." but the really funny part is when they get to Paul's mom.  yup, Paul's mom.  the Peek is a device that handles email and sms. it was marketed to "moms on the go."  Josh gave a demo unit to his mom, and she loved it. Paul tried to sell the idea to his mother, and she wasn't having it. As Paul began explaining why his mother didn't want a Peek, saying something to the effect that she's old fashioned about writing emails, Josh piped in saying, "she writes them with a quill." he had me laughing there, but once Paul was finished with his explanation, Josh said, "So what you're telling me is that you're mom doesn't understand what email is."  Paul, of course, leapt to defend his mother, prompting Josh to say that he wasn't trying to insult Paul's mother, and then some banter ensues.  I don't know exactly why I was laughing so hard, but I was.  it's funny.  you should listen to it.

Peek, nerd lust-worthy? image from itechnews.com

I can't even begin to wrap my head around a device that only handled email, and was meant for on the go people. text functionality was added, but still.  was 2008 that long ago? I suppose it really was.

Nilay watched Singles over Netflix streaming. I tried to watch it last night, but it's no longer available as an instant watch (and now I'm paying for the stand-alone service). both Josh and Nilay agree that the selection is fairly dismal. Paul disagrees with them in a way that makes me realize that maybe Paul is one of those backwards thinkers that are so rare and lovely.  Paul likes the fact that Netflix has so many obscure titles because he would never have found them, had Netflix not presented them to him, and because it means that the makers of such obscure titles have not labored in vain, since they now have an audience. as most other users think, "yeah, the streaming better be free because I would never pay for this stuff and can barely find anything I want to stream from it as it is," Paul is thinking, "this is so cool, I'd pay for the streaming as a separate service - right now, with this selection!" he said so out loud during this podcast and there you have it - that is why Netflix now charges for its streaming service.  thank you, Paul Miller, you and your sweet sensibilities.

Josh identified a few missing Miami Vice episodes on the Netflix streaming service...

little by little, I'm beginning to think of Paul as being raised by the type of kind, gentle people characterized best by aging grandparents who knit doilies and bake casseroles (women) and mow lawns and build model trains (men).  I just can't help it.  that image is there.

summer vacation

previous pod is taking a two week summer break.  in the meantime, however, I wanted to report that I had the opportunity to play with a bberry storm.  my cousin has had it since it was released in 2008.  I have NO idea how he's managed to deal with it for so long, the typing action gave me the willies.  I would have cut and run a long time ago, even if it was just over to the bold.  my cousin asked to see my iphone 4, and his eldest son snapped a photo of him doing it, declaring, "caption: Dad uses technology for the first time!"

"listen to me very closely" Engadget Podcast 119

this is a solid episode - well worth listening to.  there are a couple of meaty topics (josh tests and discusses the bberry storm; nilay speaks copyright law), and a nice demonstration of yet another reason I like this podcast: there's a lot of transparency in the thinking. that is, not every idea is fully baked and polished before being presented. for me, that's a big deal. it's nice to witness other people actually putting ideas together. discussions are more lively that way, I learn a lot more that way, and there's more comedy that way. I find many things I can comment on this week (e.g. unexpected cat meow at 44:01 that nearly gave me a heart attack on my way to work), but all are overshadowed by one thing:

REALLY paul? taylor swift? sigh. I suppose it's just something I have to accept. I don't understand it, but I'll try not to judge. I appreciate the fact that you have an inner teenage girl (everyone should), but I can't get behind what she's into.

paul, I saw this last night and thought of you

"reboot at reboot dot com" Engadget Podcast 118

driving to the tune of a "blackberry, or iphone?" discussion, I suddenly thought, "where am I?" I wasn't lost in a literal sense, but just suddenly very conscious of being deep into a strange past time.  for goodness sake, it isn't normal to be preoccupied with old podcasts about technology. it's not as if I were combing through the archives of This American Life, or Fresh Air.

but what is life for, if not to delve into things? at least that's how I rationalize this activity.  and anyway, I'm enjoying this foray into the land of "nerd[ing] out." I have a tendency to be obsessive (I have a ph.d. in entomology), and the tendency to embrace strangeness (I also have a bfa).  every once in a while, whilst listening to these three voices go on about phones, I re-experience a sensation I had once, at a party, recklessly drunk on bourbon, encouraging two strangers I'd just met (Walther and Cougar) to get as southern as they possibly could. I was gently pried away from them before things got out of control.

Deliverance still from The Compass Rose

podcast 118 is nearly all cell phones.  the blackberry storm, bold, and iphone are heavily featured, but there is also rumination on windows mobile, sony ericsson, htc, and others.

it kills me when paul, josh, and nilay all gush over how amazing it is to be alive in this time of intense cell phone diversity and evolution.  it reminds me of an ichthyology teacher I had who named his son, Devon, after the Devonian age - the period of greatest fish diversity.  it cracks me up in the same way to hear paul breathlessly state that they are all looking for that next, life-changing phone.

geological time spiral from wikipedia

I'm so right there with josh when he's talking about how the iphone somehow brainwashes its users into becoming complacent with less-than-adequate navigation functionality.  the day my husband stood in line to purchase the first iphone, I scoffed at how many touches it took him to dial my phone number. now, I'm so deep into that world that I don't ever think about it. I bought an f-ing macbook pro for f's sake! I hated my bberries because of their terrible browsers. the iphone did it so much better, that for me, there was no contest. it's the same with my laptops, alas, yes, "it just works."

oh but, really?  does everyone use auto-correct?  I am not a power user, but the first thing I do with my text software is turn off nearly all auto-correct and auto-format functions.  I cannot stand auto-correct. "NO - that's NOT the word I mean!" is what my brain is constantly shouting at the iphone's clumsy suggestions. when I need to send a text out on my husband's phone, I'm disgusted by the words it's suggesting I communicate. sure, maybe I can teach it to get better at anticipating what I'm about to say, but is it really worth it? I'd rather just hit the back button a few times. it could be that I lead a dull, plodding life, but I haven't yet been in a situation where I had to send out an emergency text at a breakneck speed. I have time to see the words and correct them myself. is that just lame? "it's all book."

"fully transparent, life is a BOS" Engadget Podcast 117

as I was listening to the podcast, it suddenly occurred to me that josh, nilay, and paul totally remind me of another important geek trio in my media-consumed life.  the geeks from Freaks and Geeks, duh - how did it take me so long to see this?

nilay is neal. intellectual, man-boy of action, and totally sure that he's not uncool.

um, of course paul is sam. sweet, conscientious, and guilelessly sincere.

who else would josh be but bill haverchuck? all-in, geek with pride, humor, and abandonment.

photo from betabeat.com

in podcast 117, the crew does a great job covering the election, the economy, apple, and stealing from big box stores.  they dismount with an unboxing and giveaway of a gears of war edition zune. 

another thing that struck me during this week is that one of the reasons why this podcast is so fun to listen to is that the laughter is infectious.  nilay's laughter is especially great, so it's nice that there's so much of it.  we learn to deal with our fears as we get older, and we also learn to love those things about ourselves that made us feel so self-conscious in our youth.  that's why it actually feels good to be teased by our friends once we get to a certain age. as adults, we're lucky to have friends that know how to make us laugh at ourselves.  there is a lot of charm in the way that josh, paul, and nilay poke fun at each other.

there are some passages here that definitely deserve a listen, if you have the time and inclination:

paul tells a story about how he went out to purchase rock band.
nilay observes that it's easy to walk out of best buy, even if the security system beeps at you.
josh describes a gears of war zune.
how do you say OS, how does paul say OS?
paul buys a set of headphones, entombed in a blister pack, after clearing security in an airport.
nazi germany.

my husband wants me to comment on current This Is My Next Podcasts. he thinks that I may be able to recruit readers, if I were to do that. his point is that people might actually be interested in what I post here if I was writing about current technology. to him I say, "but I'm not even talking about the technology." yes, I will forever be close to three years behind, but I don't think it matters all that much. you two readers have an opinion? let me know.