seattle

It's true that New Yorkers groan the most about the summer heat, but nobody's complaining today because we have Libe Goad from AOL's GameDaily in the studio! She gives us her take on the boring PS3 Slim and even defends our right to be 35, fat, and bummed-out gamers!

Libe helps us kick off the show with a chat about the new PS3 Slim. After yesterday's unboxing, we've all determined that you'd have to be a fool to upgrade from the PS3 Fat (that can't be the official name), but there are a few games to look for on the console, like Wet, starring Eliza Dushku as Rubi Malone, a "lethal heroine who will take any job as she likes it and the price is right." Other games of interest include Wolfenstein and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

All this game talk leads us to a study that reveals the average gamer is 35, fat, and bummed. As a nongamer, I see absolutely nothing fallacious here, but Jeff and Libe have to disagree, and they make a good point. First, the CDC only surveyed 552 subjects in the Seattle-Tacoma area. 552 is a pretty small sample size to determine the "bummertude" of this group, and I'm sure it doesn't help that Seattle rains 226 days a year, these poor gamers are literally being forced to stay in their houses, can we blame them for actually being fat and bummed? We'll get to the bottom of this...

We also talk briefly about the 12 most annoying types of Facebookers, like the Let-Me-Tell-You-Every-Detail-Of-My-Day guy (aka Twitter feeders), or the Town Criers who feel the need to broadcast every headline they see on TMZ. Unfortunately, I think all of us are guilty of being The Self-Promoter, but who isn't? Everything you post on Facebook is a form of self-promotion, isn't that why people join social networks in the first place?

Per usual, we always need Calls From the Public, so if you have something to say feel free to give us a call at 1-866-404-CNET or shoot us a line at the404(at)CNET{dot}com!

Update at 3:30 p.m. PDT July 4: Power was restored to Fisher Plaza early Saturday morning with back-up generators, and many sites are back online, including Bing Travel, according to TechFlash.

Update at 4:51 p.m. PDT July 3 The fire's start time and a statement from Fisher Communications were added.

An electrical fire at downtown Seattle's Fisher Plaza has interrupted service at a long roster of Web sites, including Microsoft's Bing Travel and Authorize.net.

Fisher Communications said in statement Friday that the problems at the Fisher Plaza data center started in a … Read more

The City of Seattle has partnered with Nissan North America to promote the development of an electric vehicle charging network in anticipation of Nissan's release of its highway-legal EV, Renault-Nissan Alliance and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced Tuesday.

Nissan's commercially sold EV will have a different look than its EV-02 prototype, but the same functionality. The Nissan EV is expected to have a range of 100 miles on a single charge and be able to be charged within four to eight hours via a 220-volt outlet. The City of Seattle is planning to work with its local utility … Read more

The Lenovo Yoga isn't a Netbook; it's a ripoff of the HP Jornada. It also apparently fits in a pocket, but it's a little long for all our pockets, even Jason's. We also cover iPhone 3.0 rumors and the truth about battery life lies.

iPhone 3.0 to have copy and paste, Pre-like features — but no background apps http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/15/iphone-3-0-to-have-copy-and-paste-pre-like-features-but-no-b/

Lenovo Pocket Yoga http://i.gizmodo.com/5170542/shots-leak-of-lenovo-pocket-yoga-netbook-looks-like-it-actually-fits-in-a-pocket

AMD comes clean about battery stats http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/16/1447218 … Read more

On today's show, the world of anonymous chatting gets even more confusing, thanks to the increasing numbers of computers passing the Turing test. Is it a pervert? Is it a computer? Is it both? In other news, Chrome breaks Molly's heart, Sony breaks all the rules and keeps the PS3 prices high, and people keep preordering G1 Android phones. Who knew?

Test explores if robots can think http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/berkshire/7666246.stm http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/10/13/1450205.shtml

Sony … Read more

Longtime Seattle Post-Intelligencer Microsoft reporters Todd Bishop and John Cook have left the paper to launch a new technology news site focused on the Seattle area.

Bishop, who covered Microsoft, and Cook, who covered venture capital, will continue to blog about those areas and also help guide the site, which is backed by the Puget Sound Business Journal.

The site is expected to launch in the next few weeks, with name and URL still to be decided. The pair promises guest columnists and interactive features to help create a "gathering place" for those interested in Seattle-area tech goings-on. … Read more

Earlier this year, Radiohead singer Thom Yorke explained to the AP that the band was going to take concrete steps to minimize its contribution to global warming, including traveling by airplane only when necessary and using solar-powered generators. But the biggest contributor, by far, to the band's global carbon footprint are its fans, who drive by the millions to its shows every time Radiohead tours. Hence, Yorke said that the band would play only "in places that have municipal transport systems in place or that we can persuade promoters to put on transport."

Apparently this dictate doesn'… Read more

Most people compare Bill Gates' keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show and Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo address by analyzing the relative strength of the products announced.

That's all fine and dandy, but what about looking at the words themselves? That's exactly what the ever-resourceful Todd Bishop at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has done. In a blog posting Tuesday, Bishop includes a tag cloud showing the most frequently used words by each, as well as an analysis of the rate of big words used by each.

In terms of which words came up the most, a tag cloud shows words … Read more

MTV has a rundown of events showing that 2007 was the year the music industry broke. Not broke as in "broke big," like "The Year Punk Broke." Broke as in "became broken." (Which I suppose is followed by "went broke.")

And in Wired, David Byrne explains the modern landscape and what musicians can do about it. I'm a huge fan of his music, his writing, and his art, so far be it from me to add anything to what he said, but I'll point out my favorite part: he begins … Read more