It's been an extremely slow day for gadget news, so I decided to jailbreak my iPhone today (or, rather, Neal's iPhone). I decided to use iFuntastic, recommended by TUAW. If you have your iPhone plugged in before opening iFuntastic, it immediately recognizes it and all all you have to do is click on "Unshackle", then follow directions. I installed the BSD Subsystem since many third party apps require it, then I got to the fun part and installed Pool, and Twinkle. I kept getting an error with Labyrinth, but it eventually installed. If you do get an error, try "Clear Queue", then try again. Sometimes that helps. I'll be playing and testing with it, and will keep you updated! Remember, jailbreaking your iPhone or iPod Touch voids the warranty and the geniuses will not help you!

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Our lease ends in a week on May 21st. We haven't found the right Geek Brief Mobile yet, so we're going to have to find a temporary place to live while we continue to look. This Brief is an update on our goal to take the show on the road. Friends of GBTV keep pointing us toward the super cool CNN Election Express Bus. It's a mobile news bureau/studio and it's very cool. Right now, we're looking at three very different buses. One is a 1985 Eagle that is very inexpensive but would require quite a bit of work. One is a 1995 VanHool that is nicely converted, but has some red flags. One is a well-maintained 1998 Prevost with low mileage. We think of what we do as Open Source media. Taking the Brief mobile for a couple years is a big goal and viewers are rallying around the project. Companies are too. Like everything we do in comparison to big media, we think we can do something as cool as the CNN thing for a small fraction of the cost. This episode is sponsored by Beck's Beer. It doesn't have a pre-roll. At the end of the brief, I invite beer aficionados to visit becksbeer.com and talk about a really cool job opportunity. Beck's is looking for an official blogger. Info about that is available at becks.com.

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On Brief #361, I talk to My Home 2.0 Guru #2, Brian Albert. He's the craziest person I've ever put on The Brief. He showed me some of the projects he's built over the course of his life, and I try to convince him to call himself a geek.

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On Saturday, I hung out at the My Home 2.0 studio, a technology makeover show. I got to see some really cool D.I.Y. projects, but I'm not allowed to show you those just yet. On Brief #360, I talk to one of the three gurus, Alison Lewis about how her interest in integrating technology into fashion. She gets her fashion cred from Parsons, and her tech cred from creating and installing interactive exhibits in children's and science museums.

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I love you guys, but there was no way I was going to spend $500 on a Psystar to try it out, even though it's deductible. John Biggs from CrunchGear.com did it, and I called him up to talk to him about it.

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This Brief was meant to be up hours ago, but we had a computer crash just before a meeting. We had to re-edit after we got home tonight. Twitter friend, @Lindsay25 turned us on to The Great American Road Trip project. It's three guys driving through the lower 48 in 5 days. They charted a route that is only 7500 miles. Their journey started on Sunday and ends Friday, May 9th. Using mobile broadband, they've blogged about the trip all week. Tivoli Audio announced and Internet radio called NetWorks. It streams audio via Wi-Fi or Ethernet. PicLens is a free broser plug-in that turns browsing photos and video online into an immersive 3D experience. You can download the plug in from here, and you can learn how to make your Web site Piclens ready here. The Kuro Plasma Displays by Pioneer have black levels that are five times deeper than last year's models. Friday night (May 9th) at 9PM EDT, Neal and I will be on Ustream.tv/calilewis live from New Jersey talking about the status of the Big Trip. Come by and join the chat.

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I've been a little bus obsessed for the last couple of days. Our lease is up on May 21st. Our plan has been to downsize and move into a small apartment for the summer while we finish planning The Big Trip. Even though we won't be ready to hit the road, we're really anxious to get the bus and start geeking it out for the trip. Times is an RSS feed reader for Mac that is beautiful. It creates a Newspaper-like context for news delivered via RSS. It isn't a static experience though. Times takes advantage of Core Animation to make reading the news an enchanting experience. When you click on a headline, the page folds down to reveal the text of the story. A featured called Shelf lets you organized stories into stacks. You can download it from here and try it for 14 days. It's the one newsreader I've found that's worth paying for. The PC Decrapifier is a freeware application that removes all the trialware nonsense that comes pre-installed on a new PC. Evernote is an extension of your brain. Clips from Web pages or photographs you take with your phone camera can be sent to your Evernote database where the information is searchable. It's very cool. Lycos Cinema is a social video viewing experience. You pick the video, invite up to 10 friends and the video is synced to everyone watching at almost the exact same time. A chatroom gives viewers a way to talk about what they're watching. The big downside, though is the very limited supply of interesting content. The conversation about prerolls and Beck's Beer is on my blog, iCali.tv.

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We had a hard time decided whether the big story for today was the launch of tomcruise.com or that Microsoft bailed on the Yahoo! takeover. I'm still not sure, but everyone should go to tomcruise.com and watch the 25 Years reel. If you don't find it funny...well...then...nevermind! Woopra, my favorite analytics tool, now works on a Mac thanks to a recent Java upgrade. My twitter friend, @jeffmccord explains how it works on his blog. Hitachi has a new set of 1080p displays that are only 1.5 inches thick. Some of their 01 series of displays have a power swivel feature that is remote controlled allowing viewers to turn the display 30 degrees in either direction. AT&T yanked the rug from underneath iPhone owners by providing free WiFi and then taking it away. Rubik's Cube got together with a Kompoloi and had a very cool love child called The NeoCube. It's a combination of 216 high-energy, rare-earth spherical magnets that connect together in unlimited configurations. They're good for creativity, focus or just as a cool thing to put on a desk.

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Yamaha Key Between People, Disklavier Mark 4, Movies available on iTunes immediately, Starbucks transitioning to AT&T

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ots of boxes have been built to get some of what's on your PC onto your HDTV. Most of them govern which content you're able to see. The ZeeVee ZvBox will let you see what ever is on your computer from any TV connected via a coaxial cable. You're essentially creating a personal HDTV channel that displays whatever is on your computer. You can access and control any application on your computer. You can even play DVDs from your computer's optical drive. Zv components are available for pre-order exclusively from Amazon. The only downside I could find is that the computer channel will be the same on all connected TVs. Two people in different rooms cannot watch different videos at the same time, unless I missed something. Sometime around CES, we covered the R2-D2 DVD Projector. We thought it was a cute novelty thing until @chaeseco pointed us toward the video via Twitter. Neal told him we already covered it, but after watching the video we wanted to show it to you guys. It's longer than most videos we put on Geek Brief (about 2 minutes), but it's just too cool to shorten. The Star Wars Shop sells the R2-D2 DVD Projector for nearly $3000 and they're sold out.

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Monday night, I thought gmail was down so I tweeted. I got plenty of responses from other gmail users that lead me to think I was the only single person on the interwebs having and issue. @quecojones shot me a link that I immediately bookmarked. The site, downforeveryoneorjustme.com, answers that very important question: Is [insert the name of a Web site here] having a major problem or am I delusional? Page2rss.com is another recently bookmarked Web site that turns a non-RSS enabled Web page in to RSS enabled content. I tried it with a T-Shirt company I like. If it works, I should see an update in my feed reader when they add new shirts. In prep for William the former Geek Brief Intern's 21st birthday, we were searching for Wii news and we came across MiiSculptures.com. You can upload a picture of your Mii and they'll turn it into a little sculpture for $75. Wireless HDMI technology will soon be available in the Sharp X-Series of HDTVs. Japan will get them first. The rest of the world will have to wait. Viewzi is a visual search engine that is really fun to use. The invitation code, "geekbrief" will get a couple hundred of us into the semi-public beta. I really like Viewzi, except for the Video x3 feature. I'd like to know what you think.

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Despite the fact that I introduced the show as Brief #352, it's actually #353. Microsoft's attempt to acquire Yahoo reminds me of something that would happen in sixth grade, except instead of passing notes, the two companies keep passing Press Releases. Yahoo didn't respond to Microsoft's deadline for an answer and Mark Andreessen >analyzed the situation Apple upgraded the specs on the iMac, but everyone is really just waiting for the announcement of a 3G iPhone. The expectations are reaching frenzy status. Geoff Smith launched a new Web service called RingtoneFeeder.com. It's a subscription service that automatically installs a new original ringtone on the iPhone via iTunes every week. Each ringtone is an original Geoff Smith production. Subscriptions are $1.98 a month or $19.98 a year. There is a free sample feed available at Ringtonefeeder.com for anyone who would like to see how it works. Festo created a giant indoor flying object that floats through the air like a jelly fish in water. I cant tell what AirJelly's ultimate purpose could be, but it's beautiful to watch. It uses a combination of helium and an electric motor powered by lithium-ion polymer batteries.

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I've been getting more and more requests for an updated behind-the-scenes look at our setup. We haven't changed equipment in over a year so I wasn't ready to do one. Well, to celebrate PodShow's name change to MEVIO, we changed our set. In this episode, I walk you through the new set, and explain the setup we use to produce GeekBrief.TV. It's in black and white because we're not quite finished and I thought it would be fun to do a kind of partial reveal. I forgot to mention the lapel microphone I use. It's listed below. This is our current equipment list: Video Production Setup Computer: Mac Pro & a MacBook Pro for video on-the-go. Camera: Canon XH-A1 Lights: (2) Kino Flo Diva Lite 400 & (2) Lightpanels Microphone: In Studio: Countryman Mic, On Location: ElectroVoice Mic with the Sennheiser EW100 G2 transmitter/receiver kit Teleprompter: ProPrompter Software: Final Cut Pro, Visual Hub, Lostify & dvcPrompt Audio Production Setup Microphones: (2) Electrovoice RE20 Mics and a Heil Classic Pro Mixer: Mackie Onyx 1220, with the Mackie Onyx Firewire Card Compressor/Limiter/Gate: dbx 1066 Solid State Recorder Marantz PMD570 Headphones: (2) AKG 240s

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This the second open source Geek Brief. Thanks to Chris Farley, Brian McNitt, David Sinclair, Dave Peterson, and Rick Yaeger for playing along at home. Story #1 provided by Chris was about Apple pushing Safari to iTunes users on Windows through software updates. Chris doesn't like the idea. I think Apple is just playing the game by Micrsoft's rules because Apple heard Windows machines are better for gaming. Brian McNitt pointed out how Macs do a pretty commendable job with it's built-in text-to-speech functionality. It can be enhanced with an application called iSpeak It from ZappTek that converts text to speech and sends it to iTunes. Cepstral sells voices you can add to your accessability mix. They have versions that are compatable with Macs and PCs. David Sinclair introduced to an application he developed that goes a step forward by adding multi-voice Narration. He also provided a discount code for a discount on Dejal Narrator. It's my name CALI. Dave Peterson gives us a look at the Wheel Surf available from Hammacher Schlemmer. It's a motorized monocycle that really has to be seen to be laughed at. Rick Yaeger dropped the news that the Flight of the Conchords soundtrack is finally available from iTunes. The Open Source logo we used is from griskeviciusjurgis.com.

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40 Seconds About a GeekBrief.TV Feed Issue

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The all-in-one desktop club has a new member. AkihabaraNews.com had pictures and specs for the Fujitsu FMV F-A50. It's specs line up pretty nicely with other all-in-ones and the front of the PC is as pretty as you'd want. The back, though...It looks like the back of a TV. You wouldn't want to show it off. OhGizmo.com has a story about an Exhaust Air Jack. It includes a hose that attaches to a tail pipe and an inflatable bag strong enough to lift one side of a car. I'm not sure how safe it would be, but it's a cool idea. A design firm called Clusta created a Web site for Publicis & Hal Riney that is entirely navigable using hand gestures read by a Web cam. It's in my top 10 list of cool things we've featured on GeekBrief.TV. Visit the Web site, if you'd like to play with the interface. The content isn't all that exciting, though. I hope we see more HID like this soon. Brief 350 closes with a video clip of a 3D hologram that is also controlled by hand gestures. The technology is called AirStrike and it was created by LM3LABS. Oh, and PodShow is now Mevio! Less about the Pod and more about the cast.

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Max Murphy is one of three teens in new media that we're really impressed with. Chris Farley and Daniel Brusilovsky are the other two. Most teens embrace social media, but the overwhelming majority prefer closed systems like Facebook and MySpace. We're impressed with Max, Chris and Daniel because they are working to master an open system where they own their own stuff. Max produces a weekly show called Mac News Weekly. He does pretty much everything himself, although his dad runs the camera. Who knows if Chris, Max and Daniel will continue what they've started as teens in exactly the same way. It really doesn't matter because they're learning to be their own media and to get their messages out to the world. That is cooler than a profile on Facebook could ever be.

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We frequently get asked for advice about podcasting. Our answer is pretty standard. We say do this, this, this and this. If the person asking is an adult, they'll usually come back and ask again. We ask if they did any of what we said. Usually, the answer is, "I should." If the person who asks is a teenager, they usually follow our advice to the letter, and for some reason, we find that endearing. Two teens that have asked for our advice are Max Murphy and Chris Farley. They took us to breakfast this morning and we went for a walk and talked about their shows. Brief 348 features Chris Farley. He's a blogger and audio podcaster, and he will work in the White House one day. He's smart and articulate, and even though his show and blog don't deal directly with tech, the opportunity to introducing him to a larger audience is a pleasure.

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This is our first trip to New York. I'm here to host an advertising awards ceremony. I always enjoy getting opportunities to do something I've never done before, so when they asked, I said, "Absolutely!"While we were here, I wanted to grab some time with Natali Del Conte to talk about her new gig as Senior Editor for CNET TV. We walked over to Central Park and chatted about her new show, Loaded, her transition from print journalism to video, and her famous flickr photos of food.The Cali's in New York Theme was written by Geoff Smith long ago for a trip that fell through. All-in-all there about been about six trips to New York that ended up not happening, for one reason or another.

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I start Brief 346 with a public apology for the most embarrassing thing I've ever done in my life. Then we introduced the alpha phase of an idea to bring an open source element to Geek Brief. It looks like there could be a problem with Psystar, the company that says it's selling Mac clones. Gizmodo is on it and they're doing a great job. They have their readers on the ground tracking down whether or not Psystar is the real deal or not. Joe Finnigan brought us our first open source story about a Web application called iubo. It's a U.K. startup that enables users to organize personal and public information in a single place that you can search. It's like a private search engine you can use to search the details from your life. 's Baggers is a restaurant that was opened last year in German. It doesn't have waiters. Food is delivered to diners via roller-coaster like tracks. Footage is from the BBC, and I heard about the restaurant listening to The World on NPR. Lindsay Plumley, a huge Friend of the Brief, submitted a story about the gigantic 1080p displays that will hang above the field in the new Dallas Cowboy stadium. Lindsay's blog is borrowedlinks.blogspot.com. We end the episode with the craziest robot footage I've ever seen. The song is Drive Away by Matthew Ebel.

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I keep getting questions from people asking about the show notes and where they can be found on the Web site. These are the show notes for Brief 345. There are two big stories today, at least in my world. The first is the news out of NAB from Red. They announced two new cameras and an optical drive. The Red Epic is a whopping 5K camera. I have a snazzy demo on the show about that. The Scarlet is one I might actually own one day. It's 3K and might make sense for those of us who aren't making movies. The Red Ray is an optical drive that blows the Blu-ray out of the water. Psytar is a company willing to fight Apple over the right to build a machine that runs OSX. When we started this story, they were calling it the Open Mac. Now they are calling it the Open Computer. We'll have to see if they can stand up to Apple legal.

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iZED is the first 3D monitor designed for gaming. I give the details on the show, but the deal is here. It's available for $600 until April 17th from Newegg.com. You'll need promocode EMCAEBBBB. This isn't a sponsorship. We just think it's cool. HP is introducing the 2133 Mini-Note to compete with the Asus Eee. Brando has something practical for a change. Popgadget has recommendations for Firefox plugins to make Gmail pretty. And then, there is Sweater Friends. Who can't LOVE Sweater Friends?

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Yahoo! is trying their best to avoid a Microsoft takeover. They're working on a deal to join with AOL and trying out an advertising partnership with Google. Microsoft doesn't like the possibility of any kind of Yahoogle happening, but the test is limited to a two week trial. Yesterday was a BIG day for watch phones. The coolest one is the MW2 from VanDerled. The other one was oversized and odd-looking with no details about availability or price. The Red Ferret Journal introduced us to a Web 2.0 copy editing service called Gramlee. You submit your written work to them, pay the a very nominal fee and a human editor cleans it up for you. As far as I recall, we didn't bring up Zune Guy when he got his Zune logo tattoo, or when he announced he was changing his name to Microsoft Zune. We waited until now. He put the name-change plans on hold because someone told him it would cost $500. Now it turns out, it's only going to cost $150. He put a survey up asking people to vote on name alternatives. I want him to go with Mike Zune. Microsoft is notable in so many ways, but the name means tiny and soft. What guy wants to be identified THAT way? My crisis of idealism blog post is at iCali.tv. Thanks for taking the time to read it and adding your feedback.

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So, this one's different. Today, we continually encountered slightly silly, but entirely lovable attempts at video today. That became the theme of Brief 342. It started with a project from Microsoft Research called MySong. The team had fun with their video showing how the technology works. It's a parody of bad commercials. The application though looks like it's going to be so much fun for kids when it's released. It creates an backing track to go along with what you sing into a mic. We had some fun with them having some fun. Then today Flickr launched support for video and they used sock puppets to demonstrate what it's like. Then John Biggs from CrunchGear.com was at some kind of event when he was attacked by a Lego Mindstorm robot. Drew Domkus appears courtesy of Dawn and Drew TV. You can get a Nokia N810 for 15% off at podshowoffers.com (more details here). Use Promo Code "geekbrieftv".

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Twitter is increasingly becoming a richer and richer part of users lives. Even with all the twitter evangelism, though, there are still plenty of hold-outs who think it's silly or might not be useful. It's becoming a network that activates the 6 Degrees of Separation principal in powerful ways. This past weekend, Mike Arrington's Internet access went down. Comcast customer service failed for him, and after spending some time with a chicken, he vented on Twitter. Shortly after the tweet, Mike got a call from a Comcast executive and his problem was quickly repaired. Even though I can't expect every Geek Brief viewer to join twitter, I believe in its benefits enough to try. If you're not following me, I'm at twitter.com/calilewis. The Samsung Instinct is intended to be an iPhone killer. It has a few advantages including 3G and real GPS, but it doesn't have a browser as great as Safari on the iPhone. eBay has decided to do the Naked Conversations thing and launch a corporate blog. The editor-in-chief is my friend, Richard Brewer-Hay. The blog launched last week and ebay users with pent up frustrations started commenting like crazy. It's really kind of fun to read, but my heart goes out to Richard as he interfaces with the world on ebay's behalf. iCoral was the craziest gadget I saw today. It's a $2000 iPod dock made of artificial coral. Hava is a place-shifting device that does some things Slingbox doesn't. They have a player for Nokia Internet Tablets. The guys at TabletBlog.com got their hands on a pre-release copy and showed of the results. You can get a Nokia N810 for 15% off at podshowoffers.com (more details here). Use Promo Code "geekbrieftv". The Wacom Cintiq 12WX is the most awesome tablet interface device we've seen. It came out last November, but we missed it. It serves as a second monitor, and I think it's the same tablet Maribeth Gandy used for her Second Life application demo.

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Apple announced they've surpassed Wal-Mart to become the number-one music retailer in the U.S. They've sold over four-billion songs to over 50-million customers. Sony took the title for the worlds smallest full HD camcorder with the HDR-TG1 Handycam. The Plantronics Discovery 925 Bluetooth Earpiece looks like jewelry and they MEANT for that to be the case. Blue Lounge has done it again. First, we saw the SpaceStation and now they've introduced The Sanctuary. It's a gadget valet that charges over 1500 different types of electronic devices with 12 built-in connectors and a USB port. A few weeks ago, we talked about the Sofa-side computer called MEdiaCOre from Pearing Systems. Alexander Grundner brought it to our attention and the attention of enough interested buyers to bring the idea back to life. It's creator had kind of lost interest after launching the site and apparently not getting much of a response. Andrew's story, and perhaps ours too, led Adrian to finally bring it to market. Here's the recorded phone call between Andrew and Adrian. Very cool story. Geoff Smith has done it again. He created a pro version of our Drobo song that you won't be about to extract from your brain. So Geoff, thanks a LOT for that! :) Use promo code "CALI" to save $50 off a Drobo at DroboStore.com. More details are here.

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Brief 339 is all about research, baby! I LOVE shiny, happy tech coming to market today, but much more that that, I love getting a look at the raw science and engineering that will make it's way into ordinary products of tomorrow. That's been our goal since the beginning and those few episodes where we've been able to bring future tech to the Brief have been my favorite. In Las Vegas, I met Thad Starner. He's doing stuff as amazing as Dean Kamen, but he's not quite as well known...YET. He was walking around all day looking kind of like Mad-Eye Moody with his futuristic wearable display. It's an expensive prototype that includes an oQo computer running Ubuntu, a battery pack, a wearable VGA display that clips to his glasses and a one-handed input device called a Twiddler. A Twiddler is a combination keyboard and mouse that weighs 4 ounces and fits in the palm of one hand. They've been on the market for 14 years, so I hope Twiddler enthusiasts will leave comments to share their experiences. I also talked to Maribeth Gandy about her Augmented Reality research using Second Life. In just the last three months, she and her team have built an application that overlays second life on top of reality. I explain it here, but both she and Thad explain their research better on the videos I shot live on Qik. Click over if you want to learn more. Thanks to everyone supporting the Big Trip by buying pixels at PaidByPixels.com and thanks to everyone who supports the Brief by buying Nokia N810s using promo code "geekbrieftv". Nokia Internet Tablets will be major players in the world of augmented reality, so it's a good idea to get your hands on one now.

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Neal and I spoke at WordCamp Dallas on Saturday. Matt Mullenweg, the very young founder of WordPress was there so we chatted a bit about the origin of WordPress and features on the new 2.5 release. WordPress.com is a free, hosted blog network. WordPress.org is where you can download the open source application to install on your own Web server. Matt's personal blog is http://ma.tt.

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At WordCamp Dallas today, I was introduced to a live analytics tool called Woopra. It didn't make me cry, but it did awaken my inner Scoble. We whipped out the camera and went to work. Unlike the stat service you might be using to analyze your Web site traffic data, Woopra provides exciting, LIVE data about your visitors as they explore your site. Web site stats might be interesting to those of us who have Web sites, but Woopra makes stats addictive and quite frankly, entertaining. It's sticky, and if you own a Web site, you're going to want to have it running on a screen, the same way a day trader keeps a stock ticker and CNBC running non-stop. The rich, client side Java application installs on a Mac, PC or Linux machine supporting the latest version of Java. And data streams to the interface in the form of lush looking maps, charts, graphics and text. Woopra logs details what pages your visitors look at, where they came from and what keywords they searched for to lead them to your site. Reading back the description I just wrote, it doesn't seem like anything new. The excitement comes from the visual nature of the application. I guess, then, it's a good thing we do video. Have a look... We used Vimeo's flash player so the shots of the screen would be crisp. Feel free to embed. :)

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Mix tapes are something we HAVE to make from time to time. Muxtape.com is a new way to do it. You upload up to 12 songs by different artists from different albums and then the mix is available at the click of a link. Pixeloo is a blog created by an anonymous artist. It seems pretty new, but he's using photoshop magic to create human versions of some of the best geek characters like Homer Simpson and Mario. MyFotoWall.com turns your photo in to wallpaper. Not wallpaper for your desktop...wallpaper for your wall! It's really pretty jaw dropping. Dawn and Drew invited us to a 4th of July camp out. It turns out that it's really primitive, so we need a tent. The Treepee is an idea I can sleep in. It is a pyramid shaped tent that hangs from a tree limb. On the episode, Shannon gets an answer to is question to Rachel. Wonder what she said? Use promo code "CALI" to save $50 off a Drobo at DroboStore.com. More details are here.

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Neal clicked on a Gizmodo link to look at some headphones on the Urban Outfitters Web site, but before looking at the headphones, he clicked another link that said Swim 2008. He called me over to show me what I think is the best use of the Web to display apparel for sale on the Web I've ever seen. Each swimsuit is displayed as a short movie clip and it kind of reminds me of the artwork at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies. It's worth a look and so are the headphones. The headphones in question are called Grandes and they're designed by Boosted Mobile. The look like DJ headphones, but they're made for use with portable media players and MP3 playing cell phones. They also have a push to talk button for answering calls and they remind me of Punky Brewster. I spent most of Brief 335 highlighting an open source project proposed by Chris Pirillo. I'm in. I want to do whatever I can to help make his vision happen. It's a great, and much needed idea.

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It was kind of a slow news day today, so I talk about some favorite apps I discovered thanks to some of my favorite blogs. I start with an application called Network Magic that I found via The Red Ferret Journal. Network Magic simplifies management of your home or small business network. It includes tools for troubleshooting, testing your Internet connection speed, adding devices to your network, sharing folders, sharing printers, modifying wireless security settings and fixing problems. From eHomeUpgrade, I found out about a video management application for Macs. The latest version of yFlicks organizes your video files, converts video files for different players and manages downloads. A piece on Lifehacker spells out exactly how Windows users can backup, organize and play DVDs using several downloadable apps. I discovered an idea in it's early stages called Journey2Work after they supported our Big Trip by buying an ad on PaidByPixels.com. The idea is to have people post photos and a narrative on their journey from home to work. Only three people have posted their journeys so far. I'm going to post mine (all the way from upstairs to downstairs) and I hope you guys post yours. I love stuff like this. Use promo code "CALI" to save $50 off a Drobo at DroboStore.com. More details are here.

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The D.O.J. today gave the O.K. to a merger between XM Satellite Radio and Sirius. South Park Studios is making every episode of South Park available for streaming on their Web site. Quanta Computer and OoVoo are joining together to bring HD video chat to HDTV and they promise a product this year. The Tape Project is a company that makes reel-to-reel tapes available to audiophiles for a lot of money. Here's the Tape Project catalog. Of all my t-shirts, none are currently knife-proof. My Oyster Shucking video suggests that it could be a potential problem. Nihon Uni T-Shirts ARE knife proof to an extent, but they cost $500 each and do not protect against stabs.

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In "Blossom" parlance, this is a "very special" Geek Brief. You'll have to watch to see why. I'm not giving it away in the show notes, but it IS a first. Jeff Bezos wrote an open letter to Amazon.com customers to announce that Kindles will soon be readily available. They'll ship the same day you order. Ze Frank is working to divide Twitter users into teams. I'm not having it. We made a rainbow graphic to add to your Twitter avatar, if you oppose Color War 2008. Miro just dropped an update. Miro is an open source app., the best one I think, for receiving and viewing Web video. It's also a 501.c.3 non-profit...kinda cool! Dean Kamen was on The Colbert Report last night with his newest miracle invention that makes pure water out of urine, poison or ocean water. It's mind blowing. Oh, and there's that very special thing...

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Windows Vista Service Pack One dropped. We installed it but we don't use Windows enough to notice a difference. The Airport Extreme now gives Time Machine access to an attached drive. eHomeUpgrade is one of my favorite blogs because Andrew finds things no one else does, like the BoxOne Multimedia Center PC from High-Def Technology. Rogers Wireless in Canada will be the first provider in the world to offer a Merlin X950-D ExpressCard modem from Novatel. It supports 2.1Mbps HSUPA and an unprecedented 7.2Mbps HSDPA. We did a story on an at home O2 bar kit just so I could say the phrase, "nose hoses." Nokia Research developed a way to deliver HD video from the N810 to an external LCD display. You can get a Nokia N810 for 15% off at podshowoffers.com (more details here). Use Promo Code "geekbrieftv".

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That iPhone holder I had stuck to my head on Brief 329 is a Naja King. It's a flexible holder that will wrap around anything including your neck for hands-free viewing on a plane. It also holds on to the iPhone really tight, but that doesn't mean you should twirl it like I did. It isn't meant to do that. This fetch robot started showing up on blogs Monday. It senses when a ball is placed in the launcher and automatically sends it in the fetch direction. In the video, Jerry the dog replaces the ball. We know the dogs name, but we haven't been able to find who makes the device. Kyocera makes our favorite mobile broadband router and they've just updated it. The K2 does wireless N and accepts a number of sources including Express cards, PC cards, USB modems and some phones. Checkser.com is a checklist Wiki. It's an interesting idea, but it needs additional features to make it truly practical. For example, I would want the ability to break a list out of the wiki and save it as my own because inevitably, things on my list will diverge from a general community list. Pidgin is the most popular app for the Nokia N810 right now. You can download it here. You can get a Nokia N810 for 15% off at podshowoffers.com (more details here). Use Promo Code "geekbrieftv".

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Apple AirPort Express was updated to 802.11n so it's faster and has a longer range. Boston Dynamics has a video of the BigDog robot and it's the most lifelike robot movement we've seen. The full video is here. Shuttle is famous for making small form factor barebones PCs. They have a new one, the KPC with Linux and components already installed. The Swiftpoint Slider is a mouse in a new form factor. It's tiny and controlled by a thumb. Bluelock is a Windows app that locks your PC when you walk away with a paired Bluetooth device in your pocket. Desktopple Pro from FoggyNoggin.com is a desktop hiding app. Duke Beattie won the Big Trip logo contest. The story of why we picked his design is at BigTrip.TV.

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Brief 328 isn't really brief at all. I got email from someone who has been resisting this whole Internet thing. I admire her restraint, but I'm glad she's giving it a go. She asked me to explain the Web and RSS and Digg and Widgets. I decided to devote an episode to explaining it all, the way I understand it. Hopefully, the explanation is something you guys would like to pass on to your less connected friends and family. I'd also like you to add anything you think I missed in the comments. I start by explaining the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web. I talk about packet data and the Web before the bubble burst. To me, that's important to know before you can begin to understand Web 2.0. I talk about RSS and give an example of RSS in action, and I close by explaining Digg and Widgets. For more detailed explanations, visit CommonCraft.com.

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Qik.com sent a couple IOGear GearJuice mobile Pocket Power chargers so I can always "go live" when I'm out on The Big Trip. Each one will charge a mobile phone up to 3 times before it needs to be charged. The MiniStation Turbo USB from Buffalo Technology is the smallest 500GB, 5400 RPM USB hard drive I've ever seen. Revolabs has a wireless USB mic designed for VoIP and Podcasting. The charging base stays plugged into your PC or Mac and the mic clips to your shirt so you can walk around the room. Crgslst is a service that allows location-free search from Craigslist, and Acer announced their new Gem Stone Blue line of notebooks. Jason Calacanis is really excited about almost having 10,000 Twitter followers and I'm a little jealous, so I'm trying to catch up. Help me by following me on Twitter! :) Thanks to Geoff Smith for all his help with the "New and Improved" Geek Brief Radio. We're covering the same stories on GBR, but now Neal joins me to talk about the stories. Give it a listen and let us know what you think. If you like it, you can subscribe in iTunes or download it here or get it from PodShow.

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I almost cancelled going down to SXSW all together because I wanted to be with Sydney (our Chihuahua). We decided to drive down and back Saturday, and the footage we captured is a series of happy accidents. It started with me running into podcasting pioneer (and Big Trip supporter) C.C. Chapman. He is one of my mentors and has given me some great advice over the last couple of years. Then I ran into Ron Bloom, CEO of PodShow, and his lovely wife, Marta. I asked him if there is anything new coming up with PodShow, and I think I ended up with a bit of a scoop. I also talked briefly to Marta about her new celebrity gossip blog, The Diva Report. After chatting with Ron and Marta, we met someone new. Kelly Sutton is a college student, blogger and podcaster. His Web site, hackcollege.com is a life hacking site for college students. It's all about doing more with less. Finally, and by that I mean FINALLY, I got Justine Ezarik on camera. We see each other at different events about once a month, but usually, I'm going up one side of an escalater while she's going down the other, so we end up just waving at each other. She was there doing some work with the Viddler guys who created a site for SXSW videos called SXSWvideos.com.

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There are two types of people in the world, people who use Twitter and people who don't get why anyone would ever want to use Twitter. It's hard for Twitter devotees to convince the non-techie types in our lives how wonderful Twitter can be. Lee and Sachi LeFever specialize in solving explanation problems with delightful animated movies. On today's Brief we have permission to show you their video, Twitter in Plain English, and then I talk a bit with Lee about what they do at Common Craft. Also fellow dog lover, Jason Calacanis is having fun with the number of Twitter followers he has. I have a lot of catching up to do, so follow me, please!

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My dog has just had knee surgery and needs a lot of attention, so we're releasing the last bit of footage we have from Macworld. I talk to ExtremeMac about the Luna 2 and H2O Audio about their underwater iPod cases and headphones. Who can count how many times the word "underwater" is used??? You can get a Nokia N810 for 15% off at podshowoffers.com (more details here. Use Promo Code "geekbrieftv".

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Pearing Systems might be building a computer into a side table. It's a neat idea and they way they're dealing with access to components is ingenious. It pops right out of the box. The USB Typing Speedometer reminds me of my mom. It measures typing speeds up to 260 WPM. Penguin Books will soon be releasing DRM free Audiobooks. Penguin CEO, Marjorie Scardino seems to get what those of us in the tech world have been saying about DRM. The Rest Easy lounge by Winnebago converts a sofa into a large, soft bed at the touch of a button.

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Note: We tried a more conversational Geek Brief Radio this time, rather than just pulling the audio from the video. Let us know what you think! TomTom Go has a new technology called IQ Routes. It creates the fastest route to a destination based on average driving speeds rather than posted speed limits. Intel's smallest, lowest power processor is called Atom and it's designed for mobile Internet devices. The RoadRunner neckset is the strangest looking gadget of the day. Vara Software's ScreenFlow is the best screen capture application we've ever used. And it's snowing in Dallas!!! Here's the link to the not overly compressed Screenflow screen capture. It really is worth a click. You can get a Nokia N810 for 15% off at podshowoffers.com. Use Promo Code "geekbrieftv". For those of you asking for updates on our dog Sydney...her knee cap is out of her socket and won't stay put. She's scheduled for surgery on Wednesday the 5th. Dave Peterson from GadgetyTech.com is the Geek Brief Angel I spoke of previously, who has paid for the surgery, so that Big Trip plans aren't derailed. We're very grateful! Here's a picture of Sydney from yesterday.

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I switched to Mac with the advent of the Mac Mini. We've followed the same pattern from the beginning. We buy a desktop and then the notebook most similar in specs and performance to the desktop. After the Mac Mini, we added an iBook (currently on Ebay). Before we started GeekBrief.TV, we got an iMac G5. The notebook we paired with the iMac was a MacBook. When we went pro with the podcast, we went pro with the Mac Pro. We added to that a MacBook Pro and then another. The MacBook Air was the first Mac that's come out that dosn't fit our growth pattern. It's the first Mac since we switched that I can easily live without, so I didn't plan to do a review. My friend, Mark Taylor (taylormark.com) bought one and dedicated it to our Big Trip fundraising effort, so I've played with it for three days, reviewed it and put it on Ebay. Most people I'm around are always looking for more power in a computer. We want fast hard drives, fast processors and fast RAM. We'll sacrifice our desire to have a notebook that runs cool, and I'll live with the machine being heavy. Not everyone shares the mission of a power user, and it is those people that will get the most out of a MacBook Air. It's the ultimate writer's computer. It's size doesn't compromise it's quality. It's solid and well balanced. It doesn't want to fall or lean in any direction. It is perfect for online activity and really any job where the primary requirement is the production or consumption of text and pictures. It isn't good for video and I really don't believe Apple meant it to be. I could watch video in iTunes, some HD videos I tried downloading to watch in Quicktime just gave me a spinning beach ball. I also wasn't able to watch a remote DVD in another machine with out getting a beach ball. The MacBook Air is like a conceptual design brought to market. Apple made something that most companies would only design to suggest what a machine might be like sometime in the future. That's one of the reasons I'm such an Apple fan. The MacBook Air isn't for me or anyone who aims to produce video, but for anyone else looking for portability, it's definitely worth a look. OH!!! And we know we got the show number wrong! List of current items on eBay

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