Crave

We spend most of today's show covering holiday gifts you won't want to stuff in the stocking of someone you care about... and a few that you might.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

ThinkGeek 8-bit tie

Necktie for music-loving commuters

Blacksocks — the Sockscription ™

The Cushy Tushy

Passive aggressive gifts for tardy geeks

The H1N1 Destroying UV Wand

My DNA Fragrance lets you smell like a celebrity

OH NO SHE DIDN'T

(Credit: Flickr/Foofy)

"Oh man, I was hanging out with this girl and we walk into her bedroom and she has this BEAT UP old Compaq computer connected to a freakin' CRT monitor there! So I just made up a lie about not feeling well and just left." That's a deal breaker, ladies!

On today's episode of The 404 Podcast, we talk about some of the tech-related dating faux pas that would be ultimate deal breakers in a potential relationship. Wilson, of course, would never date a girl that wasn't fully committed to Apple and all its family of products, Jeff could never hang out with a non-gamer, and I'm pretty much open to anything that comes my way. Just kidding, I could never be in a relationship with someone completely obsessed with social networking. Who's trying to go on a dinner date with someone that keeps taking TwitPics of their food?

All of this leads into a conversation about the most commonly used Hotmail password, which just happens to be "123456." I suppose it makes perfect sense that someone who's still riding the Hotmail train would use such an obvious password (why not make it "God," or "money," or "power?"), but that's exactly what 64 out of the 10,000 people surveyed actually use. What do you guys use to keep track of all your passwords? OpenID? Keychain? Moleskin? We want to hear about it!

Next, we get into a conversation about why the Japanese haven't embraced the iPhone as much as we have, and the answer is pretty clear: the iPhone simply can't keep up with modern technology in Japan, where they already have 4G phones that can stream live television, pick kids up from school, and dice potatoes into shoestring fries.

A big thank you goes out to our pal Zen in Flagstaff, Ariz., for sending us this poster in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It's based on the book, "The Men Who Stare at Goats"; Jeff and I have both read this hilarious novel, and we suggest you read it, too, before the movie comes out.

Enjoy the show and have a great Wednesday!

(Credit: Rx Bandits/Last.FM)

It's only been about a week since the release of Sony's PSP Go, but hackers are already ahead of the game, despite Sony getting rid of the removable battery in an attempt to stop the siege. We don't have a link to the actual game you have to use to release the exploit, but hackers are using it as a proof-of-concept for future homebrews and pirated gaming. As usual, these guys are ahead of the curve, as we've seen before in Sony's previous PSPs. Of course, you can always get free games if you can somehow get a job reviewing them for a big Web site...right, Jeff?

In other news, Facebook can now measure what they're calling the GHP, or the Gross National Happiness. The popular social-networking site is using text analysis software to index how its users are feeling based on positive or negative words in their status updates. You can see on this chart that there were major spikes last year around November 23rd for Thanksgiving, as well as in December for Christmas and New Years. Check out the podcast to hear Jeff's reason why Hanukkah is nowhere to be found.

The Rx Bandits' newest album, "Mandala"

It's also time again for the Beck's Beer semi-weekly Audio Draft! Jeff's pick for today is an oldie but a goodie, The Rx Bandits! Jeff and I are huge fans of the bands from when we were wee lads. They're rooted in Seal Beach in Southern California, and while their ska sound grew popular in the early '90s, they have successfully pulled out those roots and progressed into a super eclectic alt/prog/rock/reggae sound. They just released another full length entitled Mandala, which also includes one of today's featured tracks, "Bury it Down Low." Here's to many more years with the Rx Bandits!

Oh yeah, everyone's password got hacked.

We couldn't record today's Podcast without spending a little time on Gizmodo's big unveiling of Microsoft's secret tablet PC. The blog is reporting that even though our first inclination is to call it a tablet, it's really more of a booklet, with two 7-inch(ish) screens with multitouch, a 3MP camera on the back, and a fancy stylus for clicking, writing, dragging, and drawing. In typical 404 fashion, we have to poke fun at the fact that while a long plastic pen is very innovative, we wish it had fully functioning voice recognition, but as we've seen from the Google iPhone app, that technology will likely never be perfected. In the meantime, it looks like the Microsoft booklet will materialize before the fabled Apple tablet.

Speaking of Apple, Wilson and I are very psyched for Google to finally release push e-mail support on Google Sync for the iPhone. This means there will always be a connection to Google's servers to keep your mailbox up to date. There's no additional application necessary, just head to m.google.com/sync from your computer and follow these instructions.

If you're a long-time 404 listener, you'll remember a few months back when my iPhone camera stopped working and the Apple Genius at the store told me that my phone had somehow been submerged in water, judging by the indication on the external water sensor. Well as it turns out, that liquid sensor is a filthy liar. There are actually two liquid sensors on the phone, an internal and an external, which more often than not, tell contradicting stories. If a Genius sees the external one is triggered, the official Apple protocol tells them to report that the warranty is now void and Apple is no longer responsible for fixing the damaged phone. More importantly, the protocol says not to open iPhones and check the internal sensor. If you've had a similar experience, we want to hear about it, but you should also head back to the Apple store and ask them to open up the phone and double-check it. Who knows, you might leave with a brand-new iPhone.

A couple of weeks ago, I described how to sync contacts between Outlook, Gmail, and your iPhone. The program missing from this contacts mega-merge was Thunderbird (download for Windows | Mac), and for good reason. Mozilla's free e-mail program is not particularly contact-friendly.

The first time I attempted to use Mozilla Thunderbird's import function to bring my Gmail contacts into the client e-mail application, I was seriously disappointed with the results. Most of the contact information was squished into a single nondescript field for each record. The few fields that did make the conversion were incomplete. The entire process was pretty worthless, overall.

Then I found the free Zindus add-on for Thunderbird. The program brings a subset of contact fields from Google and Zimbra into Mozilla's free e-mail program. For Google, the fields imported include the contact's name, primary and secondary e-mail addresses, phone numbers, IM names, company, title, and notes. (I didn't test the program with Zimbra.)

After you download and install Zindus, a "Zindus" option is added to Thunderbird's Tools menu. Clicking it opens the Zindus Configuration Settings dialog box where you're presented with a handful of contact-sync options, including a Sync Now button.

The Zindus Configuration Settings dialog lets you reset your sync options.

(Credit: Zindus)

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Gmail's Google Maps link to CBSi's address on the iPhone via Smart Links's translation. Instead of the lengthy URL, you now have the actual address with the link embedded to it.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

Chances are that you have seen extremely long links when you receive an e-mail that contains a Google Maps address or driving instructions. This gets annoying, especially on mobile devices, because not only do the links take up a lot of space, but they also make it hard to find out the important information, such as the address, hidden within it.

Now that has just changed for Gmail users who use the iPhone or Android-powered devices to read their e-mail.

On Tuesday, GoogleMobile announced the Smart Links feature, a mechanism that automatically shortens a raw link and converts it into a meaningful phrase with the link embedded. Click on the phrase and the link will open just like with the original raw link.

For example, when you receive a Google Maps link of CBSi's address via Gmail using the iPhone's browser, instead of seeing a long string of characters, you will see the actual like this 235 2nd St, San Francisco, CA 94105. The address is hyper-linked and when clicked on will launch Google Maps showing the location of our HQ office.

Smart Links is part of GoogleMobile's Interative Webapp series that focus on developing and enhancing Gmail features specifically for the iPhone and Android-powered devices.

Currently, Smart Links supports four types of links: Google Maps address queries, Google Maps directional queries (with one destination), Google Sites Web pages, and links to YouTube videos. It's available only in English and, for now, only works with e-mails composed in plain text format.

In the future, Smart Links will also work with more link types, such as Google Docs, according to GoogleMobile.

There's nothing you have to do to use this feature other than checking your Gmail account via the Web browser on an iPhone/iPod Touch (running OS 2.2.1 or later) or an Android-powered device.

Note that you need to use the mobile browser to take advantage of this feature, other mail clients, such as the iPhones Mail app, don't support it.

I tried the new feature with on my iPhone 3GS and it worked very well. However, I wish it also supported e-mails formatted in rich text or HTML formats. That would make it more useful as most e-mails are sent using these formats.

Without Smart Link, this is how the original link looks.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

Jeff, Wilson, and Justin recover from their hangovers with ace reporter Caroline McCarthy. We chat about Wilson's drunken debauchery and Caroline's bacon tattoo.

(Credit: University of Wisconsin)

Some days on The 404, there isn't much news to report, so we do something we like to call "milking," and boy are we good at it! It's not for lacking of trying. We spend as much as 10 minutes every day looking for stuff on the Interwebs to riff on, and while we could talk about hackers taking apart Safari in seconds, it's really not that funny. And it's not 404-esque material. See how much text I've written, and really I haven't said anything!

In actual stories today, Caroline McCarthy tells us that there are bacon tattoos at SXSW. We think someone spammed our poll. President Obama makes a terrible, terrible 404-style joke about bowling and the Special Olympics. (We wish he would come on our show.) Google gives you an "Undo Send" feature in Gmail. We think it would be more effective if it had a five-hour, post-hangover undo-send feature. And we're really, really tired of Jason Seigel & Co. movies like "I Love You, Man." But it does bring up fond memories of Jennifer Love Hewitt in that teen classic "Can't Hardly Wait."

Showing that its Web application priorities extend to the mobile world, Google on Wednesday demonstrated a version of Gmail for the iPhone that could be used even when the phone had no network connection.

Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering, showed off at the 2009 GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona what he called a "technical concept" of Gmail even when the iPhone was offline. In January, Google released an offline version of Gmail for desktops and laptops, and like it, the mobile phone incarnation runs in a Web browser, not as a native application.

The software let Gundotra browse and read e-mail even after he switched the phone into airplane mode, which shuts off the wireless network. To watch a demonstration, check the demo video on iPhone Buzz.

Offline applications can't of course retrieve new data from the network, but they do synchronize when network access is restored. Meanwhile, e-mail is stored in a local database on the phone, even when online.

"You'll note that it's very, very fast because it's using that local database," Gundotra said. The application also showed a floating toolbar that was visible even as he scrolled through his in-box.

If you missed last week's news about Google's feature-honing update for its native BlackBerry app, here's your chance to see it in action.

As part of a few well-appointed changes, the new Google Mobile App for BlackBerry does away with its predecessor's penchant for hogging space on the home screen and has rearranged its resources to pack a greater wallop with search. Tune into the video to see what we mean.