What started as a grab bag of factoids and bon mots degenerated into repeated threats upon the Third Guy’s person as we came to grips the full force of our jealousy at his new home of London, England. Along the way we discussed much news, reviewed the newest Sarah Jane Adventure, and tried to figure out if the rumours of Peter Davison donning his old costume and joining with David Tennant for the upcoming Children in Need special were in fact true, only to have the BBC confirm it mere moments after our podcast. Still, jaunty banter and death threats for all. (feed, web, direct download)
A peculiar breed of conspiracy theorist, the 9/11 Truther, loves to claim that 9/11 was an inside job. You can go on the internet and see the fruits of their madness anywhere, but for true entertainment watch this clip where some the so-called Truthers start yelling in the audience of Bill Maher’s talk show and he unleashes a verbal torrent upon them.http://view.break.com/385638 – Watch more free videos
Vice magazine’s online video channel, VBS.TV, is a combination of the hipster nonsense you’d expect and some really decent documentaries. Personally I can take or leave Vice magazine, which comes off too often as smug and over the top just for the sake of shock, but the videos are quite slickly done. Wired breaks down the VBS plan for world domination.
So it looks like Apple is finally going to bend to the whims of nerds everywhere and start allowing third party apps on the iPhone and iPod Touch, beginning with the release of a Software Development Kit release in February.
This is one checkmark off of my iPhone wishlist. Now all that needs to happen is for the iPhone to get to Canada, and Rogers to wise up and reduce their frankly atrocious data plans to something reasonable. Not much to ask for, really.
New York magazine has a piece that’s half whine, half interesting examination of the rise of Gawker, New York’s snarky media blog. Gawker’s advertising success in the face of declining profits at the newspapers and magazines it lampoons is interesting, as is the snapshot of NY as a town for the rich by the rich, with snotty kids in Brooklyn commenting on the sidelines. But really, young kids in the city with their first jobs have ALWAYS been underpaid and bitchy. This lot just happen to have a sounding board
9rules features a great retrospective on Apple’s comeback from the brink of defeat to their current place on top of the digital media and music downloading heap. The highlight of the piece is a video from 1997′s Macworld where Jobs breaks down just was wrong with Apple at the time (in a nutshell, a ridiculously large product line and plummeting sales) and how it was going to get fixed. And, amazingly enough, he actually did it.
Our last commentary episode also marks a first, in that the Third Guy called in from London with tales of errant police boxes, playbills aplenty and dodgy internet connectivity. Oh yeah, and we commented on Last of the Time Lords, and were none too kind to it, sending it to bed without diner and making it think long and hard about what it had done. (feed, web, direct download)
While Bin Laden occasionally creates videos aimed at a Western audience, his parables of naughty she-goats unearthing knifes don’t have a hell of a lot of cachet in media-soaked North America. But a growing group of jihadi bloggers and other activists already based in the West are spreading Al Queda’s message,and according to the New York Times, are doing so with some measure of success.
The New York Times Magazine lays down a definite maybe. With the rise of global capitalism and the shift to electronic trading that doesn’t even occur in a physical space, Wall St. may be losing its edge.
With Blackwater already in trouble for shooting Iraqi civilians, more stories are coming to light of arrogance and recklessness regarding the private security firm. The latest involves Blackwater operatives getting into a car crash with U.S. soldiers, then forcing the soldiers to lie down at gunpoint until help arrived. Not that there’s any real legitimate power structure in Iraq, but you’d think U.S. soldiers would be the last word in authority in a war zone, just by dint of hardware and history.
