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The 404 Podcast 524: Where you should avoid racist polar bears

On today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast, the guys share the mics with longtime friend Clayton Morris of "Fox and Friends" and co-host of the Grizzly Bear Egg Cafe.

Anyone who listens to our show on a regular basis knows that very little preparation goes into each episode, but we always have a great time with Clayton, and today we spend the first half of the show talking about Jeff's appearance on NPR's All Things Considered, where he spent some time speaking with host Robert Siegel about his concerns over racism in multiplayer video games. After Wilson spends some time drooling over Siegel's baritone radio voice, Clayton tell us about his humble beginnings in the broadcasting industry and even does a few spot-on impersonations of New York's local television anchors.

After the break, Clayton tells us about his brief but educational sojourn into the armpit of the Internet that is Chat Roulette. Acting as the illegitimate child of Omegle and Skype, the site uses your Webcam to pair you up in a video chat room with a stranger on the Internet.

Clayton and the three of us attempt to describe the most common shared experience on CR: what might seem like a completely innocent Web site used to create new friendships across the world quickly falls flat on its face as you're faced with the worst the Web has to offer. Racism, misogyny, nudity, and pornography are just a few of the scenes you'll witness, so enter at your own peril, and don't forget to breathe...it's just a Web site.

EPISODE 524 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Report: Deutsche Telekom considers IPO for T-Mobile USA

Deutsche Telekom is looking into an initial public offering that could lead to spinning off T-Mobile USA, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal Thursday afternoon.

The newspaper reported that the German phone company has held talks with banks about underwriting the IPO. Unnamed sources in the story said the proceeds from the offer could be used to spin off the wireless carrier or fund its expansion in the U.S. market. The company is expected to decide over the next couple of months if it will have an IPO and how it would spend the cash.

Deutsche … Read more

iPhone app streams 'This American Life' on demand

I'm a giant fan of public radio show "This American Life," and I'm not alone: it's long held the No. 1 spot on the iTunes podcast charts.

That being the case, you might wonder why there's now an app for that. Simple: This American Life, the app, lets you stream or download any episode of the show, not just the current week's as with the podcast.

Suppose, for example, you want to hear the much-ballyhooed episode about the subprime mortgage meltdown, or the classic about the "squirrel cops." The "TAL&… Read more

MobileMe: Public folder password not working?

When users set up their public folders on MobileMe, they have the option to password-protect it. Occasionally they find that the password they have set up is not working properly. The solution to this may be easier than you think, though it is not necessarily made obvious in Apple's support documentation.… Read more

Note to Silicon Valley: How not to manage privacy

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Larry Downes' bio below.

It's been a bad week for those, like me, who feel the debate over data privacy too often casts information businesses as evil Halloween monsters, determined to terrorize and humiliate their customers just for the fun of it.

On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission held the first of three conferences on privacy and technology, at which a parade of consumer advocates and legal scholars warned of an imminent data apocalypse.

Recent events seemed, alas, to support that view. Sprint, for example, reported that over the last 13 … Read more

Pub fined $13k for Wi-Fi copyright infringement

A pub owner in the U.K. has been fined £8,000 (about $13,183) because someone unlawfully downloaded copyrighted material over its open Wi-Fi hotspot, according to the managing director of hotspot provider The Cloud.

Graham Cove told CNET sister site ZDNet UK on Friday he believes the case to be the first of its kind in the U.K. However, he would not identify the pub concerned, because its owner--a pub that is a client of The Cloud's--had not yet given their permission for the case to be publicized.

Cove would say only that the fine … Read more

Podcast: One-stop online shopping for public assistance

In this tough economic period, more people are relying on some type of public assistance. However, getting information about what programs are available can be daunting. And even if you can access the information online, it typically requires going to numerous sites and filling out multiple applications.

The Oakland, Calif.-based Center to Promote HealthCare Access is trying to make the process easier with its new OneEApp service. OneEApp, which stands for One Electronic Application, is designed to provide a one-stop service to help people discover and apply for multiple benefit programs.

The service, according to director Claudia Page, is … Read more

Crowdsourced cartography in PublicEarth, OpenStreetMap

Wikipedia killed the encyclopedia business, in print and online, as it's hard to make a revenue model work that involves paying people to create content when there are hordes of enthusiastic experts around the world willing to do the job for free. The business of mapping may be similarly doomed, as indicated by PublicEarth, a new wiki-style database of places launching Monday, and by the continued improvement in authoring tools at the crowdsourced mapping service OpenStreetMap.

PublicEarth

PublicEarth is an open database of places. Michael Rubin, who was an architect of Netflix, wanted to bring the same "element … Read more

Google adds World Bank data to search results

The next time you search Google for life expectancies or number of Internet users in the U.S., you'll find the specific figures plus an interactive chart letting you compare the U.S. with other countries.

Since Wednesday, Google has been tapping into data from the World Bank to provide key details and interactive charts on specific topics along with its own search results. The goal is to better help you search for and compare certain types of public data.

The World Bank is providing Google with facts and figures on 17 key indicators, including population growth, fertility rate, gross national product, and energy use.

Enter one of the 17 indicators into a Google search. You can phrase it as the specific indicator, for example, "population world," or type it as a natural question: "What is the population of the world?"

At the top of the search results, you'll find a thumbnail chart along with the latest statistics. (According to the World Bank, 72.4 percent of the U.S. population is on the Internet as of 2008.) Click on the chart or accompanying link, and up pops a larger interactive graph where you can visually compare the U.S. with other countries by clicking on their check boxes.

You can embed the chart's HTML in your own blog or Web page and opt for the data to be updated automatically anytime the World Bank's information changes. Finally, a link for more info brings you directly to the World Bank's Web site where you can dig further into the results of your search.

This latest partnership with World Bank is part of Google's effort to offer data beyond that which it can grab from your average Web page. Back in April, the search giant started integrating stats and charts from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the World Bank is the first source to provide global data for Google. The World Bank's figures come from its World Development Indicators (WDI), a collection of data derived from its own research and that of 30 other sources. The global data includes statistics on social, financial, and environmental areas encompassing more than 100 different countries.… Read more