We're having a Chicago meetup this weekend. Details are at www.Carnivore.tv. When: Sunday, July 27th Where: Bluegrass Restaurant: 1636 Old Deerfield Road, Highland Park, Illinois Phone: 847-831-0595 More Details: www.Carnivore.tv I'll be getting Beats Headphones in the mail soon to review. Early reviews look very good! Ion's USB VCR allows you to convert your old VHS and prepare the video for watching on portable devices. If you have a Blackberry and you have playlists in iTunes, you can use the Media Sync application to sync changes to your playlists. I can't wait to see Microsoft Research's Multi-touch Spherical Display. We're being teased with small tidbits of information, and hope to see more at the Research Summit next week. The Acrylic Cowboy PC Case lets you mount PC components so you can plug and unplug and test all the components you want.

I can't do shownotes because it would give away the joke, but this episode is Max at Mac News Weekly fault.

I'm continually impressed with research coming out of Georgia Tech. The latest accomplishment is a project by Dr. Maysam Ghovanloo and his students. It's called Tongue Drive System and it allows people who have been paralyzed to control their wheelchair or a computer by a magnet on their tongue. Google Maps released Walking Directions to get you from point A to point B on foot. Lifehacker pointed me to a great work around for using Google to search all cities in Craigslist. When you're looking for an item, sometimes it just doesn't matter where you find it. Take a bus, for example. Westfalia announced they'll be making a new VW bus-inspired camper called the Verdier Solar Power. WordPress for iPhone was released today. It allows you to create, edit and post to a Wordpress blog from an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Mike Arrington has an idea and I like it. He wants the tech community to build an Internet tablet that is inexpensive and that does one thing well...he wants it to browse the Internet. He's laying out the specs and for the most part, I like his specs. Mike wants an Internet tablet that isn't meant to do much beyond browsing the Web. Simplicity should lower the cost. He wants it to be Macbook Air-thin, with a touch screen that runs Firefox and Skype on top of a Linux kernel. He just wants a single button for power, a headphone jack, a built-in camera, low-end speakers, a mic, Wi-Fi, a USB port, a built-in battery, half a gig of ram, and a 4 GB solid state hard drive. I'm on board in support of the mission. This is actually my dream for Geek Brief ... the democratization of product development. I want the tech community to work together to create a piece of kit that we want to own. If you want to jump on board, Mike is arranging the details at, Mr. Cynical's post here. Samsung added something new to the digital camera mix. A couple of analog meters show photographers the status of their battery and their smart card and it looks better than anything I've ever seen before. The Periodic Table of Videos is right up my alley. I love when scientists figure out how to present science in a way that makes it fun. With the Periodic Table of Videos you get a standard Periodic Table of Elements where clicking on an element leads to a very fun video demonstrating what that element is all about. Also The Big Lebowski is 10 years old and available in a commemorative edition that collectors will want.

It's been a really, really long time since we released a bloopers special. Friends of the Brief (affectionately known as Fothbas or Briefers around our house) ask at meet-ups and in email for a new one. Neal was moving archives from 500 GB My Books to a Drobo this week and he found 5 unreleased blooper reels with about 20 minutes of non-stop giggles. These are the ones that made us laugh the most. Thursday was a big day for domain name purchases at GoDaddy.com because it was the first time the .me top-level extension was available. People were pinging me on Twitter and calling me on the phone asking which promo code would be best, but then it turned out promo codes weren't working on some .me purchases. If you're in the market for a .me or a .com or a dot something else, I apprecieate you trying my promo codes GB1, GB2 or GB3 at check out and I apologize if they aren't working to give you a discount. I've called Mevio to get it figured out. Bob Parsons, the CEO of GoDaddy is a great guy. I don't think this was intentional. It seems like their system was overwhelmed by all the orders because .me (nothing to do with MobileMe) is such a great extension.

I noticed I was bending to the will of some iPhone critics and restraining myself from talking much about iPhone 3G. Since GeekBrief.TV is primarily about what excites me in the world of technology, I realized why I was so willing to hold back on the show. I'm not exactly excited about the iPhone 3G. I like it. There isn't really anything I don't like about it other than it's tied to AT&T. The thing that excites me most about iPhone is the 2.0 software and the App Store. I've been doing mini reviews and tips on my blog at www.iCali.tv all week. I mentioned the Voodoo Envy a few shows back. LaptopMag.com showed off an awesome feature of the Envy. It's called IOS, or Instant On Operating System. It's powered by Splashtop and it gives users instant access to important applications while the full OS boots up in the background. Code Tech is a WYSIWYG editor browser-based code editor by Zachary Carter that comes in the form of a Firefox plug-in. I'll definitely be using it. A couple weeks ago my obsession was camera switching for live streaming video. Mike Versteeg is meeting that need with VidBlaster. Now my obsession is home automation and a number of GBTV viewers pointed me toward Savant Systems. It's unique in the world of Home automation because it's built largely on Mac hardware. I'm going to work on getting a Savant guy on Geek Brief Radio to talk about what they're doing. Alex Lindsay featured the system On MacBreak #158.

TuneUp is an app for Windows iTunes users to keep iTunes clean and organized. The Hacked OH! *#% Flash Drive make geek 2GB or your data safe in a completely unique way. The HomeSeer HomeTroller is an energy efficient home automation appliance that can controll your lights, appliance, climate, security, telephones, irrigation, window shades and home entertainment equipment. Thanks to AutomatedHome.co.uk for the heads up! N-Gage has a FIFA football game that's free through August, but only in certain European countries. PS3 pricing will drop to $400 for the 80GB version in September. Lyndsay Williams from Girton Labs is working a project called SenseSurface. It makes it possible to use physical knobs on a fluid display.

Nintendo announced the Wii MotionPlus. It's an ad-on to your existing remote that will make it more responsive and more accurate. xBox 360 will also have some changes to the dashboard. Microsoft announced a deal with Netflix that's pretty exciting! Tell me what you think about the changes in the comments below. Mosquito repellent sounds coming to Korean phones. There's a Battlestar Gallactica Toaster at the NBC Store. We talked about the NeoCube a while ago. We finally got it and haven't put it down since. I highly recommend it, but since there seems to be one guy selling them, delivery takes for .... ever!

Today was the launch of the iPhone 3G and the 2.0 software. Large groups of people lined outside the Apple Stores quickly before the 8:00 AM sale time. AT&T got involved in the activation process and decided they wanted all customers' purchases to be activated in-store. Instead, the servers weren't ready for the demand. Transactions couldn't be handled, and a 10-15 minute process turned out to be twenty minute to an hour per customer. I eventually got my iPhone untouched by the Apple employees, ready for me to take home and activate. This is the process...

I woke up this morning to a flurry of activity in the tech world. The iPhone 2.0 software had been unofficially released, and the App Store was in iTunes. I downloaded some apps quickly before heading to the airport to pick up Dave Peterson. Some of my favorites were PhoneSaber, AIM, Super Monkey Balls and HoldEm. Seagate released their first 1TB hard drive. Belkin's BreakFree incorporates a Magsafe adapter with 1/4 TRS cables, and the FlyWire streams HD video across the room to your flat screen across the room. My iPhone line plans are at www.icali.tv

On Brief #374, I put out a call to action for an affordable live switching application that would work with services like Ustream.tv and Stickam. After that, we began working with Mike Versteeg, the developer of Vidblaster. Vidblaster has actually been around for two years, but in the past couple weeks, Mike has been working hard (and amazingly fast!) at making it accomplish what we were looking for. There's a growing need in the market for this application, and Mike is now offering it at an affordable price so churches, community groups, schools, and individuals can have access to software that gives us all a live TV studio at our fingertips.

The Microsoft and Yahoo! saga continues. Google is launching a new feature to allow you to close sessions left open on other computers so you can make sure no one has access to your account. Lots of people asked for it, and we finally got it. Drobo released v2 today and this version has two firewire ports. Pioneer has a prototype 400GB Blu-ray, read only, drive. Massive storage on an optical drive is on its way. XBMC is changing their name to Plex Squared to avoid assumptions that it's for the Xbox.

The release of the iPhone last year was one of the most fun days of my life. We waited in line for ten hours and bonded with the people waiting with us. We're not expecting the same magic this year, but we still want to make it an unforgettable day. Friday, July 11, 2008 People are flying and driving in to buy their phones with us at Northpark in Dallas, and then we'll all have lunch at Buca di Beppo (Park Lane). The music video is from the launch of the iPhone and the song is Hello, Hello by Geoff Smith. You can buy his latest album, Ones and 0's, at RingtoneFeeder.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at Twitter.com/GeoffSmith.

We're giving up DV tapes in our production flow with the Firestore FS5 release. Matt, or Multiple Account Twitter Tweeting, is the first service I think I might continue to use to post my tweets to multiple accounts. The only downside that I've found is that posting isn't immediate. AT&T is working to make purchasing the iPhone 3G seem as complicated and unpleasant as possible. My t-shirt was provided by Allmightys.com.

Drobo released an SDK today. Developers can build apps to make Drobo do more after joining the Drobo Developer Community. Fontstruct is a free, Web-based app for future typography rock stars. I want the creator of the next Helvetica to be a GeekBrief.TV viewer. GoLive2 is releasing a Wiimote inspired series of controllers for PC gaming and they're calling them Stix. Philippe Starck designed a small wind turbine that might generate 20% to 60% of the energy needed to power a home. I skeptical, but definitely interested. 149 Series Mitsubishi HDTVs will include 16-point speaker systems that simulate 5.1 surround sound.

After trying multiple iPhone cases, I finally found one that I'm happy with. It's called the Naked Case. The Dock Extender from SendStation is a universal dock extension kit that lets you plug your iPhone in a dock without removing the case. RuinediPhone.com has a petition to try and get Apple to intervene for Canadians and make Rogers offer a more acceptable rate plan. The PlantSense GardenGro offers a more high tech approach to growing plants. Neal is finally starting to use Firefox 3 as his main browser, thanks to extensions like Gspace. Gspace makes it easy to use Gmail for storage. You can download the extension here.

Bill Gates says goodbye. Rogers Wireless is still crap. Princeton is making textbooks available on Kindle. The Monsterpod, apparently, sticks anywhere. The Super Side Bar is a Liquor faucet. VidBlaster is working with Ustream. Test tomorrow at 4:00 PM Central time at www.CaliLIVE.tv.

We're on our way back home from the Bus inspection and this is one last show show in a hotel room. ICANN will begin allowing vanity domain name extensions next year for a hefty fee. NeoCubes are now shipping. Bluraymods.com announced the first region-free Blu-ray DVD player. HP Labs has a new idea in private Beta. MagCloud is a print-on-demand magazine service that makes it possible for anyone to become a magazine publisher. Yes! I've seen the Terra Wind Amphibious RV! :) Uncrate featured it today.

Today's Brief comes to you from a hotel room that looks like a grandma's house. Tnkgrl solved the problem of why MacBook Air super drives only work with MBAs and she explains how to get one working with any Mac or PC on her blog, tankgrl.wordpress.com. SmugMug has a new service for unlimited storage of any type of file. The service is called SmugVault and it's built on Amazon Web Services. Storage costs pennies per GB. D-Link dropped an update for their DNS-323 NAS. The update turns it into a PC-free BitTorrent machine. They also released a new router, the DIR-628, that is dual-band. The 2.4GHz channel is for regular network traffic and the 5.4GHz channel is for media distribution. The Boy Genius Report got a tip that the iPhone will go on sale at 8AM on July 11th. SlashGear says JVC will release the world's thinnest 1080p LCD HDTV in July. Tomorrow we're having a bus inspected. I'll be providing updates on Twitter and live video from Qik.

Based on what I've seen so far, Spy Pens haven't surpassed novelty quality. OhGizmo.com pointed us toward a new one called the DVR Pen Recorder that stores up 30 hours of audio and video, but only at a resolution of 352x288. Sony's HDR-CX12 Memory Stick Handycam camcorder uses smile shutter technology to automatically take photos of people when they smile. SpotCrime recently got TechCrunched. It's a google map mashup that gives you a graphical representation of crime activity in a particular area on the map. Psystar is tempting fate again by selling an OSX rack server. iRetroPhone is a rotary dial for iPhone. PortableApps.com is a source for downloading small applications that run from a flash drive, including Firefox 3.

Kaleidescape released two new movie players. The 1080p upscales stand definition DVDs to deliver a viewing experience that rivals Blu-ray. Information about the Kaleidescape court case is here and a review of the player is here. The Aztech WL850MS HD Media Streamer uses wireless N to stream 1080p video wirelessly over your home network. The Cuisipro Ice Cream Scoop & Stack produces 3.75 oz., perfectly cylindrical scoops. Rogers Wireless may match AT&T pricing for the iPhone, including the data plan. Popgadget has a tip for skipping voice mail greatings when you call mobile phones. XBMC is a cross-platform media center application that works on OSX, Windows, Linux and Xbox. It's my favorite application for the Mac that I've come across this year. Thanks to everyone who recommended it.

Mozilla surpassed the goal. They got more than 8 Million downloads of Firefox 3. 15% of visitors to GeekBrief.TV have upgraded. 30% are still using Firefox 2. 22% are using Safari and 20% are using IE. The rest are using much, much older browsers. Optoma is the first company to release a projector based on the Texas Instruments DLP Pico chipset. Their project is smaller than the average smartphone, but it won't be available in the U.S. until next year. Texas Intruments is also working on an lamp-free projector. It combines a PhlatLight LED with a BrilliantColor chipset that will use 30 percent less power and deliever a much better picture. The Panasonic HDC-HS100 is an HD consumer camera with 3 CMOS sensors the yeld unprecedented low-light performance. Rick MacMerc alerted us to an amazing array of Bacon goods from Archie McPhee. Apple is opening the first Australian Apple store Thursday. It's at 367 George Street, one block North of the Queen Victoria Building, if you're looking for directions. Thanks to Beck's for taking a chance on a little show called GeekBrief.TV. On the rare occasions I have a beer, it will be a Beck's.

Today was Download Day and at the time I'm posting this episode, Firefox 3 has been downloaded 2,205,910 times. It was also the release date of the Spore Creature Creator, the heavily anticipated precursor to Spore the game. Sony Ericsson's C905 is mostly a 8.1 Megapixel Cybershot camera and a little bit a phone. It's beautifully designed and is probably following the best anti-iPhone stratagey a phone maker could. If the camera is the most important part of the phone to you, the C905 is probably a great choice. Dexrex is an online backup system for your IM sessions. It works with most major IM services to create a searchable archive of all your chat sessions. LS9, Inc. is a Silicon Valley company that just may have solved the crude oil problem. They've genetically modified bacteria to feed on woodchips or wheat straw and excrete crude oil. The process is similar to Ethenol production, but it isn't energy intensive. They expect to fuel the first car with gas produced from the bio-petrolium within a month.

I put up a survey earlier this week asking GeekBrief.TV viewers to help me narrow down the best gadgets stores to a top 10. Just before we shot the show, I tweeted asking if anyone else wanted to chime in. By the time we finished shooting, the results had changed somewhat. On the show the list is as follows: #10: A tie between ShopFosters.com and Tigerdirect.com #09: A tie between Newegg.com and Perpetualkid.com #08: SharperImage.com #07: Brookstone.com #06: Hammacher.com #05: Firebox.com #04: iwantoneofthose.com #03: ACgears.com #02: Red5.co.uk #01: ThinkGeek.com

People have been asking for it, and now it's inevitable. Qik will be available for the iPhone. HP released v2 of their TouchSmart all-in-one computer. Through their Voodoo line, they also announced the Envy, a MacBook Air competitor, and the ever-so-expensive and sexy Omen Gaming PC. The Microsoft Surface has been installed at the iBar at the Rio in Vegas. I don't think I'm cool enough to really understand if this is going to work out for the club crowd, but I am interested in watching drunk people use it. It's very important for you to watch the HD version of the show if you want to read the closed captioning during the Surface video.

Producing a technically good streaming show isn't something we need to do for any reason beyond the difficulty of making it work without spending thousands of dollars on equipment. The challenge has driven us to distraction. We've spent days researching options and talking to developers. We've spent nights dreaming about possible solutions. Streaming doesn't scale like podcasting, but it's a lot of fun to go live whether it's on QIK or On Location or in the studio. Leo Laporte is doing the best job of anyone. He's got the talent to keep viewers interested for a long period of time and/or keep checking in throughout the day. He also has the foresight to invest in equipment to make his stream look better than any other live show I've seen. That's why he is and pretty much always has been a role model. TWiT is a leader because of talent plus Leo's commitment to making it sound great. TWiT Live will be a leader in streaming for the same reasons. Leo is using a $10,000 TriCaster for switching and lower thirds. We considered investing in one, but we aren't going to be live every day. We've researched alternatives and there aren't that many. Sony has it's AnyCast, but it's about $20,000. The Datavideo SE-800 sells for about $5000, but it doesn't really fit the mission. We started looking into software solutions too. Mike Versteeg's VidBlaster is awesome. He's now working to make it work with streaming services like Ustream.TV, but it's going to take some time. Wirecast would be a great solution too, if it worked with the streaming services. Ustream tells me it will by August. Tonight we're testing CamTwist Studio on CaliLive.TV at 8PM CDT. It's almost like this quest has become a massive mountain we have to conquer before we can move on and get back to normal. We want to get to the point where we can produce a live streaming show that looks as good as TV. This Brief is about our streaming quest, but I hope it can result in motivating some hardware developers to consider the emerging demand for an even less expensive solution than Tricaster. Tricaster is awesome and the price is low for what it accomplishes, but churches, community groups and people like me are looking for something that isn't being sold yet. Hopefully someone who watches Geek Brief will take on the challenge and meet the need. I opened up a topic on GBTVTalk.com to discuss the need

This is our recap of WWDC08. What can I say? Monkey Balls, but that could be perceived as inappropriate. I could say Cromag Rally, but then people may think I'm pro-caveman. I'm ambivalent about cavemen, so ladies and gentleman, Steve Jobs and the 3G iPhone.

QIK.com, the camera streaming service announce support for two Windows Mobile phones. Sanyo upgraded the Xacti to include a 300fps Slow-motion feature. The HDD Stage Rack now supports two SATA drives and connects via eSATA or USB 2.0. LocatePC phones home when a PC is stolen. Superlame is a free Web app that lets you add cartoon balloons to your photos. I'll be live with Woopra President, John P. Saturday, June 7th at 12 PM Pacific time on CaliLIVE.tv.

It's not usually my nature to be snarky about a person, but on Brief 372, I make an exception. Yesterday, Peter Ha from CruchGear posted a video from TheStreet.com, and I had to bring it to your attention. In the video, Gary Krakow, apparently an old-school tech journalist, is asked what Steve Jobs needs to do to get the iPhone competitive in a corporate environment. His answer is crazier than anything my favorite Mr. Cranky Pants, John C. Dvorak has ever said about Apple.

Pandora has an AIR app that give you the option to see what's playing, pause and radio station buttons. Finally, Starbucks is offering free WiFi for two hours. I think it's about time. A new study tells us the PS3 and Plasma TVs use more power than a refrigerator over the course of a year. Canned Bacon. Uh...okay. Small Worlds is a new site in beta. What do you think? I'm on the skeptical side of the Remote Control Finder. Big Trip T-Shirts