The Widget: Games, Tech, Whatever

Tim's losing his touch. The guy that used to be on top of every single thing in the world of games, tech, and whatever has turned into, gasp, an adult who doesn't have the time to obsessively absorb every piece of news. No greater example of this exists than his recent purchase of a PSP. However, you'll have to listen to find out why. Other tidbits include: new MacBook Pro models, the 3DS is out in Japan (and hacked), Sony is a bunch of bastards (not news), Paul wants to have a key party with his Wii, and we all hate the gaming media (buncha young whippersnappers).

First off: the audio quality on this episode is below our usual high-standards. A mid-recording glitch in the process rendered Tim's audio channel nearly inaudible for the duration of the episode. However, through some digital black magic, it was able to be resurrected, but at the expense of some audio quality. Just so everyone knows, we're blaming Dave. That being said, here's what you'll find in this episode: Intel recalls Sandy Bridge chipsets due to a manufacturing flaw, Dave Bunchanumbers nearly destroys his new PC by installing his heatsink backwards, Nokia ditches Symbian and MeeGo and embraces the loving electronic arms of Windows Phone 7, Sony is cracking down on the people who broke open the PS3, a pre-release build of Crysis 2 was leaked, and much more (lots of viewer mail to sift through as well). Hugs.

As threatened promised, this weeks show is entirely brought to you by Dave. Topics (most of them), hosting duties, and Dave's patent-pending levels of excitement. It's a good thing too, as Tim and Paul are still seriously hungover from the night before. Duke Nukem Forever, Verizon iPhone (of course), XBMC being ported to iOS devices (Paul brought that one), custom PS3 firmware, and why our show isn't like the 6 million other gaming/tech podcasts that have come after it (seriously, we checked). Record levels of viewer mail in this show as well. Thanks! ZZzzzzzzzz

Happy New Year! With the 2010 Steam Holiday Sale behind us, we spend some time going over some of the great deals that were had by all (Tim has a spreadsheet to prove it). We also get to hear the first-hand account of the newly-minted Game Dev Story addict, Tim. Learn how to turn your new Radeon 6950 into a 6970 with nothing more than a BIOS flash. Thanks, AMD! One lonely piece of viewer mail, and a raving lunatic reviews Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Feed her.

The Boxee Box is out, looking pretty sweet, and Tim (and Dave?!?) may be getting one soon. If you pirate Michael Jackson games, Ubisoft is going to vuvuzela your ass, new Sony Bravia television features a built-in Playstation 2, the Playstation phone may be getting more real. Plus: the video card war is getting almost stupid at this point and starting to annoy Paul, Gran Turismo 5 looks like a hunk of shit, and we find out just how cheap Tim is. Viewer mail, comments, lots of swearing, and blue waffles (yum!). Happy holidays, everyone! We'll talk to you next year.

If you enjoyed our extended discussion about The Human Centipede (now on Netflix Instant), then you're going to simply adore our talk about Funky Forest - After School Club. In more technology related news: Kinect is dumb, but hacking it is super-cool, the new Asus Sabertooth P67 is awesome looking, AMD gets caught cheating with their drivers, dead-drop file sharing is a great way to share CP, and tons of Viewer Mail. 2+ hours for this one.

Dave's excited because of the new MacBook Air and the Mac OS 10.7 Lion Preview. Paul and Tim are excited because of the renewed GPU competition that the release of AMD's Radeon 6800 series has created. None of that lasts very long though, because for some reason, we start talking about 'The Human Centipede'. Paul has seen it, Tim refuses, and Dave is oblivious. Tweets, emails, and more on this 100% medically accurate Widget.

Hey ho, Widget buccaneers! After a goddamn lengthy hiatus, we decided to come back and do a show. Lots of stuff happened during the break. No, I'm not going to list it here. Also, I'm not going to post show notes, or what this episode is even about. The way I look at it, if you're reading this, you likely already have an undying love for all thing The Widget, so you're going to listen anyway. Oh, and ignore what I said about this being out on Monday. ♥

Paul is getting old. Or at least he has convinced himself he has. Though if Paul is an old man, then Dave must resemble Donovan from the end of Last Crusade. So what we've got going on this episode is the PS3 USB *ahem* jailbreak, XBox Live banning (stop pirating your games already!), the impressive Apple graphics driver update (running Portal like it's 2006! Awww yeaaah...), drooling over the Nvidia GTX 460 (go buy one NOW!), and lots of viewer mail. It's going to be a few weeks before our schedules line up again to record a show, so savor this one!

It's late, and I've been drinking. How's this: Paul is bored of games and Tim doesn't remember a time when he's played more of them. Dave's there too. Throw in a metric ass-ton of email and you get episode 78. What do you want? We're 78 episodes in now, you know the drill. It's all homoerotic jokes and tech talk. Bleh.

Like you needed another reason to wank while holding your iPhone. Coming up: Jailbreaking is legal, not that we cared anyway... y'know, while I've got you here; aren't you sick of the term "Jailbreak"? I mean, it was an iPhone thing at first, but now the fucking tards of the world use it to describe everything. Phrases like "Oh man, did you see my new Nokia? I Jailbroke it so I could make it suck less." and "I think I'm going to Jailbreak my Tivo this weekend."... ENOUGH with this shit! I liked it better when consumers were blissfully ignorant. You know: back when knowing where the command line in Windows 95 was enough for them to view you as a god. Now everyone seems to know just enough buzzwords to try and act smart, while those of us in the know shake our heads in disgust... anyway, there's a bunch of other news, and emails and stuff too. Have fun.

It's been a crazy couple of weeks of phone news mania! We BRIEFLY (so you wankers don't accuse of being fanboys) talk about "Antennagate", we also touch on the eFuse and the Droid X controversy, and we pour out a little for our Tim's beloved Nexus One, as Google has announced that it is over. Up front, you're going to get some movie reviews (no spoilers, don't worry), and on the back, you get some emails. Now go strap on a gun and mow down a jungle.

Greetings and salutations, faithful listeners. Couple of things this episode: Dave got an iPhone 4, and we talk about the connectivity problems it has been having (Dave has successfully replicated the lost signal issue). Plus, E3 happened since our last show, and none of us really give a damn (although the 3DS looks kind of neat). Tim bought a Nexus One, and Dave got his hands on a big, shiny, black... Wii. Talk to you soon!

Just as we promised, we're back, and we've brought our personal old computer stories with us. Marvel at our total nerdiness as we reminisce about Voodoo Graphics, 486 DX2s, and why DOS was the choice OS for gaming. We touch briefly on the iPhone 4 (Paul actually is the one to bring it up), DD-WRT is now on our top pick Netgear WNDR3700, and we get our 3D News of the Week in the form of 3D on the iPad.

Well, we asked for your stories and memories about old computers, and you didn't let us down. This episode, we spend a bit of time talking about why companies don't use bits as a form of measurement on new consoles, the ever rising costs of games and DRM, the news out of the Google IO conference, and a little bit more. The big focus this week is the giant pile of emails we got from folks who took the time to write us with their computer stories of old. Thanks to everyone for writing in! Now we know: you want an episode dedicated to our computing memories, and next episode, you will have it. Talk to you again in 3 weeks!