fox

Having spent Tuesday evening in New Jersey attending a big Acer/Gateway press event at the Liberty Science Center, I arrived home to find the first back-from-hiatus episode of Fox's sci-fi (or is that "syfy"?) show, Fringe, waiting on my Time Warner Cable DVR (hey, that's far from the nerdiest thing that goes on in the CNET halls).

Unfortunately, the preceding program, a purportedly popular show called American Idol, ran long (once a relative rarity on network TV outside of sports broadcasts, but becoming more common with live episodes of reality shows), meaning the DVR recording … Read more

Yeah, we're not sure what the title of our show means today, but it's what happens when you let the chat room run the show. We think they want us to take off our clothes. Anyway, we're back to our old antics today: Bittr, Wii, Wolverine, iPhone, and pedometers.

As you can see, Slate.com already stole our idea for a skit mocking Twitter. We were going to shoot a video about a one-character status update. Some times, "F" is the only character that describes exactly how we're feeling at the moment.

On today's show, we talk a bit about how Nintendo is almost literally printing money with its Wii console. Apparently, it costs Nintendo 45 percent less to make a Wii than when it first came out. Nintendo is also trying to make more bank by releasing a pedometer, a device that measures foot steps--not an alarm for child predators. Also, we've got some info on a new iPhone app called Bad Decision Blocker that blocks your ability to make drunk phone calls. Seriously, though, if you need an iPhone app to stop you from making drunk calls, you need to 1) stop drinking 2) leave your phone at home, and 3) go see a therapist about your lingering girlfriend issues.

Finally, we get to our favorite "It came from Fox News!" segment. This time around, a Fox News commentator was fired for reviewing a pirated copy of the new "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" movie. Yeah, smart one. Fortunately, Jeff stopped selling DVDs of "Two and a Half Men" a few months ago. And a reminder, please call in with your most death-defying story to win your copy of "To the End of the Death: Our Epic Journey to the North Pole and the Legend of Peary and Henson" by our guest, Tom Avery. Yeah, long, long title.

Rafe and Molly take over the show today (because of travels by Tom and Natali) and, not surprisingly, geek out and argue a lot about things like FM radio transmitters. In the actual news, it's cell phone Monday with lots of talk about the spread of Android, the future of smartphone Internet apps, and the stupidity of illegally pirating a movie and reviewing it on Fox News. Oops.

MLB’s Web video puts everyone else to shame http://www.businessinsider.com/baseball-crushing-everyone-at-web-video-2009-4

T-Mobile to use Google software in devices for home … Read more

In case some of you missed this Thursday, Ritz Camera--and by association Wolf and Kits Camera among others--is shutting down more than 300 stores around the U.S. as part of a court-supervised bankruptcy reorganization. This of course means stock liquidation sales, which will begin Saturday, April 4.

As with the Circuit City liquidation, I wouldn't expect huge discounts despite a senior VP at one of the four LLCs handling the sale saying we'll find "quality, brand-name merchandise at greatly reduced prices." (I'm willing to bet his idea of "greatly reduced" and … Read more

The Walt Disney Company is discussing a deal to take an equity stake in Hulu in exchange for providing the video portal with ABC programming, according to a published report.

Citing unnamed sources, news blog PaidContent says that it's not clear how much of ABC's content would be involved, but a final deal could include ESPN, the sports cable behemoth that has been a goldmine for Disney.

Representatives from Disney and Hulu were not immediately available.

The talks between the two companies reportedly are "serious," but a final deal has not been reached, according to two … Read more

We get tricked into supporting Robot teams we don't know anything about, plus we talk about Pluto's pimps, also known as the Illinois Assembly. And speaking of pimps, Cook County Sheriff's are trying to get Craigslist to stop helping prostitutes. Thank goodness Veronica was here to set them straight.

Sheriff files lawsuit over Craigslist’s red-light district (Updated) http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/03/sheriff-sues-craigslist-over-mass-levels-of-prostitution.ars

Seattle paper may shift to online-only: reports http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2009/03/reuters_us_hearst_pi

Palm investor: Pre will trump … Read more

A few days ago, we pointed out that more people seem to be renting DVDs rather than buying, which means the studios are making less money on their former cash cow. According to a recent report by Video Business, Fox is trying a new strategy to encourage DVD purchases, by releasing two different versions of the DVD: the standard retail version with deleted scenes and commentary tracks, and a stripped-down rental version including just the movie. Movies such as "Slumdog Millionaire," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and "The Wrestler" are set to get … Read more

Our time with this free torrent downloader was brief because a glitch prevented it from working properly. FoxTorrent is a Firefox add-on that appears in your Tools menu.

According to the four-step guide that details how the program works, you're supposed to be able to click on a torrent, and the program automatically starts the download process. But in our tests, we continually received an error message stating that the Red Swoosh service was missing. No details were given about what that service was, but we were given the option to reinstall it. Even after this "fix," … Read more

From Fox and Friends, Clayton Morris joins us again today to talk about how to survive a shark attack by punching the killer fish, while Wilson tells you not to go in the water when you're on your monthly cycle. (Hint: piranhas are vampire lesbians.) Anyway, Wilson G. Tang here--your other favorite Asian podcaster--taking over for a Mr. Justin Yu for all your regularly scheduled blog posts. I can only hope to be half as funny as J. Yu, but I will certainly try.

In the meantime, we wax poetic about Facebook's changes in its terms of service. … Read more