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Jason Howell, from Bore Out Loud, keeps us classy in this very special episode of The 404. We make our big videocasting announcement. That's right! The 404, podcast of the future, is going to become a video podcast, so you'll be able to watch as Wilson looks deeply/creeply into the camera every morning. Plus, we get into some studio shenanigans as we prepare to revamp this place. And CNET TV is nominated for a Webby!

(Credit: Wilson G. Tang/CNET)

On today's show, find out why you should never eat Domino's pizza, especially if you live in New York City. It's all about the Ray'z Pizza, man. Also, Amazon says it had a homophobic "glitch" that caused several LGBT books to be removed from its listings. We think Nazis did it.

On the second half of the show, it's Tuna Tuesday! (Please listen to the show to find out what that means.) Nintendo releases an add-on to the Wiimote that makes it even longer and more precise. TWSS. Also, a 79-year-old Japanese man has the greatest job in the world.

By the by, is Miramax sending the right message to a girl who couldn't find a copy of "Adventureland" on bittorrent by giving her free tickets to see the movie? Or is it all a ploy to get her arrested? Finally, be sure to check out your RSS and iTunes feeds for our little "404 presents."

Keep sending in your best survival stories and character voices to the show at 1-866-404-CNET (2638). Be sure to RSVP for The 404 and Buzz Out Loud Meetup here in New York City. Alison Rosen, Jason Howell, Natali Del Conte, Kenley Bradstreet, and so many more are going to be making their appearance. Maybe you can buy them a drink? (Be warned: Jason is ours though.)

Updated 5:25 a.m. PST Wednesday to note the official release of the Kindle application.

Amazon on Wednesday unveiled a free application that will allow the same electronic books available on the e-tailer's Kindle to be read on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch.

The program will be available for download for Apple's App Store and give users access to the more than 240,000 e-books that Kindle users can buy on Amazon. The program's Whisper Sync service promises to keep track of a reader's place in their chosen book, allowing users to pick up where they left off on either device the Kindle or iPhone if users own both.

While other e-book reader such as Stanza from Lexcycle and the eReader from Fictionwise are already popular on iPhones, it is the first time that Kindle content has been made available on a non-Kindle device. Amazon Vice President Ian Freed hinted at the move in an interview with CNET News last month, and expressed optimism that some of those who try Kindle on a cell phone will ultimately buy Amazon's device.

The app release is Amazon's latest salvo for a greater piece of the e-book market. The e-tailer unveiled the second generation of its Kindle e-book reader on February 9. Amazon touted the $359 Kindle 2 as thinner than its predecessor and offering longer battery life.

But the company quickly came under criticism from the Authors Guild, which claimed the device's new text-to-speech feature would hurt sales of audio books. The trade group representing 9,000 authors argued that Amazon wasn't compensating authors for the feature, and thus violating authors' copyrights. Amazon ultimately acquiesced, announcing late last month that it would modify systems to allow authors and publishers to decide whether to enable Kindle's text-to-speech function on a per-title basis.

In launching the new app, Amazon is taking on Google, which last month launched a mobile version of its Google Book Search, giving iPhone and Android users instant access to more than 1.5 million public domain books.

See also: First impressions of the Kindle iPhone app

(Credit: mobileread.com)

Update at 7:25 a.m. PST: Kindle 2 has been officially announced.

Amazon.com unveiled the second generation of its Kindle e-book reader during an event Monday morning at New York's Morgan Library and Museum.

The event started at 7 a.m. PST/10 a.m. EST, and we're updating it live below. Below the CoverItLive box, see photos of the new, $359 Kindle 2, which will start shipping February 24. (See also press release and Kindle 2 site.)

Amazon Kindle 2: Complete CNET coverage

Amazon Kindle 2 slideshow

Will Monday bring the long-awaited update to the Kindle?

(Credit: Amazon.com)

At a Monday morning press event at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, Amazon.com is expected to turn the page on its e-book reader business.

The company is widely expected to introduce its next-generation Kindle device (CNET News plans to live-blog from the event later Monday morning). Rumors of its imminent launch have circulated since last summer, and in the fall, a photo of what is purported to be the Kindle 2 leaked on the Boy Genius Report blog. On Friday, a fresh set of purported Kindle 2 pictures hit the Web.

What the final product will look like is unknown, but if a new Kindle is launched Monday it's easy to imagine it will be lighter, slimmer, and have an updated look. The original design was largely panned for being too bulky and having too many sharp edges, as well as an interface that wasn't as user-friendly as some had hoped.

Even beyond that, there are a whole host of tweaks to the device consumers want to see in the next Kindle: wider support of file formats like PDF; a color screen; touch-screen capabilities like swiping to turn a page (as with Sony's Reader); and, more particularly, redesign of the "next page" button, which is located near the spot where many hold the device while reading.

... Read more

Starting on Monday, One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop will be available through the Give One, Get One program again, this time facilitated by Amazon.com.

For $400, the nonprofit low-cost laptop program will send one XO to the purchaser and one to a school-age child in a developing country.

OLPC said in September that it wanted to revive last year's successful program, but didn't have the infrastructure to support the program alone.

Although Microsoft has started making Windows available for the OLPC, that extends only to those in developing markets like Colombia and Peru, not folks taking part in Give One, Get One.

For more about the upcoming Windows XP version of the XO, see the video below.

CNET News' Ina Fried contributed to this report.

Classic brown cardboard will replace elaborate plastic packaging for some Amazon.com items.

(Credit: Amazon.com)

Sometimes the greenest technology improvement is going back to the old low-tech option.

Amazon.com announced Monday it's working with retailers to cut back on the packaging you'll need to open to get to your goods.

The Seattle-based company plans to start shipping items in plain brown cardboard boxes, instead of putting a pre-boxed or plastically sealed item inside another Amazon box. The cardboard box will have Amazon, and in some cases the retailer's name, on the front.

Memory cards, for example, are often sold in disproportionately large clear plastic packaging to prevent shoplifting at physical stores. Transcend's memory cards when bought via Amazon will be shipped in a recycled cardboard envelope. Children's toys, such as a Fisher-Price pirate ship set, will be shipped in a plain brown box with cardboard padding and a plastic bag holding the toy people and whatnot.

So, in addition to being less annoying to open, the new packaging will also be more environmentally friendly, according to Amazon.

As I made the usual morning slog through my in-box Monday, I was about to skip past a news release touting a back-to-school promotion for Live Search Cashback, when I noticed one of the featured deals was on a ThinkPad tablet PC from electronic shoe retailer Zappos.com.

(Credit: Converse)

Thinking for sure it was a typo, I went to harass the person who sent me the release. The funny thing is, it really is Zappos selling that tablet computer. I missed it when Zappos expanded from high heels to high tech.

While the departure sounds strange, Zappos certainly wouldn't be the first online retailer to go well beyond its initial category. As we all know, Amazon was the world's largest bookstore before it moved into groceries, sporting goods, and basically anything they can put in a box (and even a few things that don't need a box).

The key was Amazon had a logistics system that worked better than anyone else's. I have no idea how efficient Zappos system is, since I still buy my shoes the old-fashioned way. However, my co-workers tell me they are amazingly fast at getting your order to you and, well, they do have cool robots.

As for that Live Search Cashback promotion, some of the participants, like Zappos, are offering double their usual cash-back percentage during August to those who place their order after going through Microsoft's site.

The Filter is an entertainment recommendation service that asks questions about your taste, then tries to refer you to CDs and DVDs you might be interested in buying. (The site will eventually add other forms of entertainment, such as TV shows.) It's been in a closed beta since earlier this year, and has gotten some press thanks to the involvement of art-rocker Peter Gabriel. On Tuesday, it opened to the masses.

The Filter recommended these records for me.

(Credit: Screenshot)

The idea's not new--Amazon.com has had a recommendation engine for years, and many online music services like Pandora, iLike, and Jango employ variations on that theme.

I filled out the survey asking what genres of music I like, and was somewhat surprised that it only offered about a dozen genres. After noting that I liked jazz, "rock/pop" (a genre so huge as to be basically useless), and electronic, it kept recommending mainstream modern hip-hop, like 50 Cent and Ludacris. Not my bag, although I do own music by Outkast, plus more obscure artists like Mos Def and DJ Spooky. (How can an algorithm ever reconcile those types of contradictions? I have no idea.)

I cleared that up by going back and giving hip-hop my lowest rating. Then the engine kept throwing up pop-rock acts that I'm already familiar with and know I don't like, such as Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy. After a few more low ratings, it seems to have realized that I'm in my late 30s, and on the front page it recommended three CDs that I heard about a million times back in the early 90s--Pearl Jam's Ten, the Counting Crows' first record, and "Mother's Milk" by the Chili Peppers. All OK records for their time, but not exactly new discoveries. It also recommended a Bruce Springsteen collection--not his last album, Magic, which is actually his best in years and which I might theoretically not have heard since it got very little radio play.

The recommendations interface could also use some improvement: when I click "Improve My Recommendations" it takes me back to the genres page, which I've already filled out once. It doesn't offer me any artists to rate (like iLike does). There's a slider that lets you tell the engine to make recommendations "more surprising" or "more expected" but it's only available when you click through to an album page, and it didn't seem to make much difference when I moved it all the way to the "surprising" side. (Question: if you want recommendations that are "more expected," why would you need a recommendation engine at all?)

Maybe the interface and recommendation engine will improve over time. But based on my early testing, I'm guessing The Filter's meant for busy Internet users who view "entertainment" as an occasional product to be consumed, but don't know where to start. It doesn't seem to be for music (or movie) geeks or collectors. Fair enough. Just not for me.

This story was updated at 9:30 a.m. PDT Wednesday to correct the estimated number of Kindles to be sold by 2010.

Q: Is $360 versus $400 that big of a deal?

A: On a slow news day, apparently, yes.

(Credit: Amazon.com)

We're not talking an iPhone-level price cut here. Still, blogs here, here, here, here, and here are really excited about the 10 percent discount Amazon.com is offering on the Kindle.

It's not at all clear that a $40 discount is the shove fence-sitters considering buying a $400 device for reading electronic books are going to need. This is more of a light tap on the shoulder; depending on how far you're leaning toward purchase, combined with gravity (or free shipping), it could have the effect Amazon is hoping for.

In any case, the price cut may have come a bit earlier than analysts anticipated. Last week, CitiGroup's Mark Mahaney opined that the online retailer will have sold 2.2 million Kindles, or $750 million worth, by 2010, and that the price will have dropped to $300 by then, in increments of 15 percent cuts per year. It's not even close to holiday shopping season, and just a 5 percent cut between now and the end of the year doesn't seem logical.