Posts tagged tablet
Ep. 290 – From Saganaki to Shatner, everything’s coming up cheese!
Nov 29th
TOPIC: Who’s that on the phone? Holy Cannoli it’s prodigal host Dave “Sparky” Saganaki! That’s right, Dave jumps in remote style and helps us share the news about rogue murdering anti-virus millionaires, why or why not you might want to give up that clunky iPad and look for the slightly smaller (and cheaper) iPad Mini, and more! Dave’s audio quality may be a bit choppy, but the show quality is raised immeasurably!
Jay Garmon helps bump that level even higher by giving us a tremendous amount of Thanksgiving geek to digest – plus we get this tech aperitif:
What percentage of employers have fired people for shopping at work on Cyber Monday?
We had WAY too much fun with Dave and Jay to get around to coolsites of the week this week, but there is a special TechTalk challenge: Can you make it through all 5’40″ of “Bohemian Rhapsody” as sung by …. William Shatner?! (my personal best is 3’07″)
Ep. 268 – iPad, uPad, we all Pad!
May 10th
TOPIC: Except Dave, that is … that’s right Dave has declared a moratorium on tablet discussion! Unfortunately, he chose the week that Mike got an iPad from work, so good luck with that
Other than waaaay too much talk about tablets for Dave’s liking, we have a lot of fun discussion Amazon book price fixing, the Beastie Boys loss of Adam Yauch (MCA) and then Jay Garmon comes in to talk Avengers, JJ Abrams and this awesome question:
What is the legal definition (from 1893) of whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable, and why?
Coolsites of the week are actually Mike and Dave’s first Coo Apps of the week, with some of the best apps we’ve found so far!
- Vevo (iOS) – MTV (or VH1 for you oldsters out there) comes into the 21st century on your iPad! Watch music videos all day, every day with this sweet (and free) app.
- Flipboard (iOS) – Just about the best and prettiest news app you’re likely to find, it also integrates your twitter and facebook feeds into the stream!
- AppyGeek (Android) – Get geek news in a nicely formatted interface!
- KhanAcademy (iOS) – As cool as the online version, a great way to get access to educational materials and videos, for free!
- PBS (iOS) – PBS has a ton of great apps, but NOVA Elements is my favorite!
- FedePlayer (Android) – Downloads pictures and album covers of the music you are listening to.
Send us your favorite apps too, both Dave and I would love to hear them (and will share on-air next week!).
The podcast only song of the week is “Pass the Mic” by The Beastie Boys.
Ep. 263 – The War on Porn!
Mar 13th
TOPIC: Between your favorite porn site storing all passwords and credit card numbers in clear text and PayPal trying to take a bite out of e-book porn, it’s been a rough week for those in the rough trade … not only that but our favorite nemesis Anonymous becomes not quite so anonymous anymore (and with a Chicago connection to boot!).
Jay Garmon attempts to pull us out of the sludge with a great conversation on the relative merits of tablets, and gives us this fantastic trivia question:
Who got lucky (and wealthy) because the US Air Force recovered a hydrogen bomb on St. Patrick’s day – March 17 – 1966?
Dave kicks off our coolsites of the week this week with a great one, and Mike adds a few of his own:
- Unblock-US – Pass your IP through to pretend you’re linking in from another country (great for our repressed friends from those nasty countries with restrictive firewalls!) … note that this may have a fee associated depending on the usage.
- Universal Scale – Lets you dive down from Planck length all the way up to universe sized glimpses, in a beautifully put together and interactive flash app!
- Jelli Radio – A great alternative to the other major streaming radio stations, plus a direct hit into all the best SXSW performers! Both the web and the mobile versions give you social control of the music too … very cool stuff!
The podcast only song of the week is “Always Something” by Cage the Elephant.
Ep. 262 – Windows 8 Unseen!
Mar 5th
TOPIC: Flying solo again this week, Mike takes down the consumer release of Windows 8 and tells you what to look for (and look out for)! Is it just a tablet OS?
Jay Garmon joins us (or should we say saves us?) with some fabulous discussion on tablets and reading, writing and the difficulty thereof. Are tablets just for media consumption, not creation? We also get very excited about virtual reality glasses and how they will be the way of the future … and then after a deep discussion on the conjoining of ebook technology and AR glasses, Jay jumps in with another fabulous trivia question of the week:
What glaring mathematical error in the Pioneer plaque defeats it’s purpose?
Some wonderful coolsites of the week finish us off:
- ByLiner – Follow your favorite authors and writers, and make sure not to miss any of their online content!
- SourceFabric - Download the free and opensource BookType to format your books into an eBook of any type!
- PaperWall – Awesome wallpaper site, with a huge collection of beautiful photography for your desktop! (Note: Some images may be NSFW)
The podcast only song of the week is “Only an Expert” by Laurie Anderson.
Ep. 254 – The year in review (and other random stuff)
Jan 4th
TOPIC: Happy new years, listeners! Can you believe we’ve finished another trip around the sun so quickly? And that so much happened this last 12-months? We have a great and quite random discussion about this, talking about top stories of 2012 and spending altogether too much time discussing the loss of Steve Jobs.
Jay EncycloGarmonica does us the service of answering the previous question and provides a new and quite current “ripped from the headlines” trivia question for you:
Why is the US Government looking to rule whether the X-Men should be considered human beings or not?
No coolsites this week – but check our Facebook page http://facebook.com/techtalkwrlr for some “Best Of”‘s for 2011!
Podcast only song, after the break, is “Help, I’m Alive!” by Metric.
Ep. 241 – Let the tablet wars begin!
Sep 6th
TOPIC: Both Dave and Mike get to opine about their individual idea of where the tablet wars will go, and have fun discussing the differences between geeks, nerds, and ne’er-do-wells! Plus Dave shares his ongoing love (and deep fear) of the hacking group Anonymous!
Jay Garmon leaves us for Dragoncon, though we’re sure we’ll talk to him again soon. That still leaves us time for a couple of cool cool sites this week:
- Plan B – Lost your phone? Forgot to install tracking stuff on it? No worries, go for plan B!
- Runkeeper Importer – Bring that Nike+ data straight into Runkeeper if you’re ready to make the switch like I was!
The podcast only song of the week is “One way ticket to the moon” by Dave Stewart!
Ep. 239 – Fake Review Ferrets!
Aug 22nd
TOPIC: Dave is in the house again! Tired, wet, but here, and he helps Mike figure out the ferreting of fake online reviews! Not only that, but the first reports of the HP WebOS tablets comes through, and they’re going like hotcakes!
Jay Garmon joins us with some fantastic geek trivia as usual:
What is the synonym for the word “medieval” that exists only because of a malfunctioning profanity filter?
And a handful of coolsites of the week to close it out:
- Kibin – Community editing of your documents; perfect for the start of school, and you can choose to be edited or be an editor!
- Meraki Stumblr – A website that provides detailed information about all the wifi signals in your immediate area, no download required!
- Mermailer – Control the flood of email that comes into your inbox by scheduling digests. Free and useful!
The podcast only song of the week is “It’s Too Late” by Dirty South (vs. Evermore)!





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