You know that we spend a LOT of time producing our shows for you.

And as we aren’t making money out of advertising, we’d like to ask for your support to help us keep TPN running. We have real costs in IT support, hardware, bandwidth, etc., as well as our time and effort. For the last four years, we’ve covered these costs ourselves. Outside a small amount of advertising that we have run, the majority of TPN’s costs have been covered by our founder Cameron Reilly and the TPN hosts.

Now, we know that paying for online content is probably new to some of you. You are used to getting it for free.

However, we do ask you to think about the idea of the people funding their own media. We all know that if corporate advertising is the main source of funding for the media, it influences the kinds of media that is produced and the messages they carry. We don’t want that kind of media to be the only kind out there. We want an independent media, run by the people and for the people.

If you want to support our efforts to bring you intelligent and entertaining content, please consider one of our donation plans below:

We have five ways to support a TPN podcast:

A once-off donation

$2 per month subscription

$10 per month subscription

$20 per month subscription

$50 per month subscription

If you’re not familiar with Paypal, don’t worry - you can use any regular credit card.

What you’re signing up for is to automatically send us $2 every month. It will automatically come out of your Paypal account or credit card. That’s $24 a year which is a lot less than you pay for 60 minutes of music on a CD or a monthly Netflix subscription.

When you are entering your information, please enter the name of the podcast you are supporting and please feel free to support every TPN podcast you listen to on a regular basis by donating multiple times.

This subscription system is totally voluntary. If you don’t want to pay or cannot afford to pay, don’t worry - you will still get access to our podcasts for free for as long as we can keep affording to produce them for you.

A once-off donation to the value of your choice (please enter the name of the podcast you are supporting):

———————————

The TPN Podcast You Are Subscribing To

$2 per month subscription:

———————————

The TPN Podcast You Are Subscribing To

$10 per month subscription:

———————————

The TPN Podcast You Are Subscribing To

$20 per month subscription:

———————————

The TPN Podcast You Are Subscribing To

$50 per month subscription:

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Free software for sale
• Defective GPU’s
• Good-bye 3.11
• Last.fm Supports Artists and Gives then Cash
• 128 Solid State Drive
• Cait is Right about twitter
• Artificial DNA
• No Dog
• Exploding Fridge
• Huge GGP Breaking News

Promo Spot - The Extraordinary Everyday Lives Show

Applications

• Meebone (AIR): Take Meebo out of the browser
• FormatFactory: Convert multimedia into just about any format you care to name
• USB Image Tool: Image any USB device to a file, and handy restore function as well
• Windows Steady State: Preserve your computer’s sanity

Firefox Extension

• FireFTP: FTP Client right in the browser, fully featured and very functional

A Word from Knightwise

GGP Mac Lab Rat

• Tierprogramm
• Ant Commander

Sites and Services

• FavThumbs: del.icio.us links awesome interface that allows coverflow viewing
• Fichey: View del.icio.us popular links as they happen, have to see it
• Privnote: send a private note that only one person can read, think Inspector Gadget
• simplynoise: white and pink noise generator
• ThisIsSand: drop sand… very cool flash toy

Updates

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Blog
• Cait’s Blog
• Keith’s Blog

Featured Music

Matt Nathanson
“Gone” (mp3)
from “Some Mad Hope”
(Vanguard Records)

Buy at Matt Nathanson Store
More On This Album

See you on the flip side geeks

Please let us know what you thought of the casual, take it easy show this week as we enjoyed the show and would like to know what you guys thought

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

• Where’s Keith?
• Cait feel like crap
• Dave gears up for the new job

General

• Extension Update
• Car Rego, geek style
• New Toys
• Dell
• Vista
• IMAP (damnit)
• Gmail and IMAP: IMAP Behavior Chart

The Micro Blogging War

• identi.ca: Open Source twitter platform
• Dave’s FriendFeed
• Cait’s FriendFeed
• If Keith has one it should go here
• 62% of Dial up users like it slow and don’t know what they are missing
• Firefox Record
• California Mobile Fine

Community Service Announcment

• Fake Identity Creator

GGP Mac Lab Rat

• iGTD: Get things done on your Mac
• Project Track: Project management tool for developers and others
• Menu-Eclipse: Hide your menu bar (click on Software then MenuEclipse)

Updates

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Tumblr Blog
• Rooster’s Rail
• Cait’s Blog
• Keith’s Blog

Featured Music

ABC
“The Very First Time” (mp3)
from “Traffic”
(Borough Music)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Napster
More On This Album

Great show this week and we had a ton of feedback. Special thanks this week to The Herne and Eric for their MyChingo messages, listen in for that and more on the GGP number 88. And yes Firefox is fuzzy - let us know what your experience of Firefox 3 is…

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Bye Bill
• ICANN Makes Some TLD Changes
• Firefox 3
• Mac and Malware
• Microsoft XP
• Justin.tv Nabs Thief
• AP Makes their Own Copyright Laws
• WTF?

Promo Spot - The Wii Show

Applications

• Portable Start Menu: A start menu for your portable apps USB Drive
• Types: Change file associations easily in XP and Vista
• Web Forum Reader: A central application for reading and posting to forums
• Firefox 3 Portable: Firefox on the Go
• Timekeeper: Customize the system clock

Firefox Extensions

• Hide Unvisited: Deletes visited sites from awesomebar indexing on deletion of your private data
• Weave *experiemental*: Synchronize all your Firefox data between computers and instances of Firefox

GGP Mac Lab Rat

• Tofu: Split text into columns for easy reading
• Disk Aid: Turn your iPod into a portable drive across platforms

Sites and Services

• When is Good: Set up a convienient meeting time - simplist solution yet
• Acronym Finder: Find out what that acronym stands for
• TinyPaste: Tiny URL’s for text
• Wirewize: Get that home media set up humming with the right cables in the right spots for the best results
• fasteagle: Quickly look up the best that web has to offer
• Wordle: Create some stunning tag clouds
• LaunchSplash: Custom splash screens for the up and coming launch of your site
• HelloQuizzy: Take tests - time waster, but cool

Feedback

• Link to Eric’s find of a Second Life client for mobiles

Farewell

• Dave’s Tumblr Blog
• Cait’s Blog
• Keith’s Blog

Featured Music

The Lodger
“The Good Old Days” (mp3)
from “Life Is Sweet”
(Slumberland)

Buy at Napster
More On This Album

One of the things they were shown was the vault full of every LEGO set from the 1950’s to now. Wow! Some of this stuff is amazing. The video is viewable on site and well worth a look.

See how many sets you recognize and remember. I saw a few that my brother had and I remember being launched across the bedroom But they are a real treasure and brought back lots of those memories.

The other thing is check out all the videos and stories from Gizmodo’s LEGO trip, very cool. Great write up as well.

Share your happy memories in the comments!

Hope you guys enjoy it. There may or may not be a show this coming week as I have had to make a rushed trip to Sydney. Just have to see how thins pan out.

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Yahoo! Runs to Google
• Australia Rules on eBay
• Official Release Date
• Firefox Mobile Concept Video
• SPORE - Site
• Logitech and Last.fm
• WWDC
• Dell’s Take on XP
• The truth Behind the g
• Porn Inspectors Complain

Promo Spot: The Extra Ordinary Everyday Lives Show

Applications

• Docstoc One Click: Email attachments without an attachment - uploads to docstoc
• Macrium Reflect Free: Disk imaging and backup
• Shrink-O-Matic (AIR): Quick and easy image resizing
• TumblWeed: Tumblr blogging client (Dave’s Pick)
• Wipe File: Simple, secure file deletion (Wipe Disk), by the same company)
• AceBackUp: Back-up utility, lots of features and options
• John’s Background Switcher: Change your wallpaper automagically (Cait’s Pick)

Firefox Extension

• Seo Quake: Get SEO data on the fly on web pages and search results
• Google Browser Sync Notice
• Cait’s Mission for PMOG Users
  
• PMOG: Passive multiplayer game for Firefox (very cool)

GGP Mac Lab Rat

• Periscope
• Isolator
• SuperDocker

Sites and Services

• MoodStream: Describe your mood, watch listen and be inspired
• Plurk: micro blogging service
• syncplicity: web based back-up solution
• inSuggest: Using a del.icio.us ID makes suggestions for bookmarks
• SafeManuals: Lost a product manual? You might find it here
• vewzi: Visual search engine that changes the display of results based on your selections
• Bomomo: Unique mouse doodling for when your on hold

Updates

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Tumblr Blog
• Cait’s Blog
• Keith’s Blog

Featured Music

Blackstrap
“Repulsion” (mp3)
from “Steal My Horses And Run”
(Tee Pee Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store

Buy at Napster

More On This Album

The call went out to geeks across the globe, download Firefox 3 to help set a world record. Great job guys!

It’s not over yet and there’s over five and a half million downloads according to the Map stats. Before Firefox 3 was even available, Mozilla’s servers were feeling the burn. There’s a bit of time left, so it’s not too late to download, with Download Day 2008 starting at 10:00 a.m. 17 June 2008 (PDT or San Francisco time in the United States), and finishing at 11:16 a.m. 18 June, 2008 (PDT or San Francisco time in the United States). The current PDT time can be found here if you want to check it.

For those who have yet to see it, I’m a huge fan of the about:robots easter egg in Firefox 3 and the awesome robot art that goes with it. Lifehacker has also released the Power Users Guide to Firefox 3 already, with lots of great tweaks and tricks.

Laparoscopic surgery takes a lot of skill. Not having the sense of touch and working from what you see on a monitor is totally different from “open” surgery through an incision in the skin. In fact some surgeons don’t do any laparoscopic surgery at all because it involves a whole new skill set which they have not developed.

So I was impressed at this video as a demonstration of skill with the da Vinci robot in the making of an origami crane. It may not look impressive at first until you see the size of the result. But I would argue that it is probably easier with the robot than free hand without the robot. The robot means that every move is smooth and steady, by hand there is far less precision. But still this is awesome and I could really appreciate the difficulty and skill involved.

No doubt the conference will take twitter out of action. But it is OK apparently the folks at twitter have been gearing up for the rush. Another strategy that they are falling back on is the progressive “oh-shit” measures. That is as demand grows they start switching off features. This from the twitter blog:

We have isolated and created on/off switches for many Twitter features.

They are also claiming that they have made some server tweaks that should make things a little more robust. Sorry but I am not holding my breath. I am not going to even say what I think about the idea that you can support a service by killing off features.

That said one of the best summaries that I have seen of where to get your Apple fix can be found at Read Write Web. They did a good job of letting people know where to go. There are a range of goto places including FriendFeed rooms, twitter, blogs and sites. So you can pick and choose or really test twitter and have them all open plus use the ReloadEvery extension for Firefox. That extension will automatically refresh a page at an interval that you specify.

I was a bit disappointed not to see more utilization of live blogging services such as CoverItLive. There have been a bunch of these services released in the last few months, shame they are not being used more. Maybe they are, if you find one then throw it in the comments. I would guess that if you had a poke around you’ll be able to get something on services like uStream, Qik and seesmic.

Personally I am going to let the bloggers and commentators sort the wheat from the chaff and review the feeds tomorrow. My life is noisy enough already and this will also make the juicy bits float to the top. No doubt the Lab Rat will have something on it in the next show as well. But then if it is all hype and no content we will give it a miss entirely. Anyway as you guys know I am a feed junky anyway.

Have fun people and remember no eye gouging, name calling optional and feel free to pay out on Knightwise… he is Belgian after all and the fact that I ruffled his feathers on the last show.

Our feed is valid and working on all other services that we know of. The feed was working fine before the TPN servers started playing up. Enter non responsive servers last month. This coupled by the fact that the servers went down totally and NewsGator was getting no response from our servers.

Turns out that if a feed is not updated or has a fatal error and does not respond multiple times then NewsGator temporarily blacklists the server and or feed. I can understand that, it saves resources. But on the other hand it stays this way until a manual ping is done. Better would be that NewsGator set up some kind of scheduled periodical ping to see if the server is active again and if so reestablish regular indexing of the feed.

So the process for “forcing” NewsGator to recheck a previously “blacklisted” feed. Especially useful if you have feeds that don’t appear to be updating as they should (Matt):

1. Log into NewsGator Online you have an account automatically if you use FeedDemon
2. Go to settings on the top right
3. Select the “My Feeds” tab
4. Find the feed that is the problem
5. Manually ping the feed to force NewsGator servers to check the feed

The ping button is a little obscure in that it looks like a “refresh” symbol, it is on the far right. But it is the manual ping button. Hit that and if the feed is valid and updating it should fix the problem. It only took about 30 minutes and I was receiving the latest posts from the GGP blog, including the latest podcast.

Just note though that this only works with feeds that are valid and working. There is no point pinging a server for a feed that is borked. I think that is obvious but worth mentioning.

I am very pleased that our recommended feedreader is now updating our own site. Please let me know if you are using FeedDemon and it is working again for you as well.

Recommended reading is an article about what NewsGator does by the CTO of NewsGator Greg Reinacker. The article is well worth the read. For publishers check out NewsGators ping endpoint details.

Many thanks to Nick Bradbury for his assistance in sorting this problem and letting us know about the new ping functionality. Nice work on FeedDemon Nick, it is still our recommended feedreader and one tool I could not live without. Thanks.

Oh, and we are short one Lab Rat this week… if you know where he is let us know or post him back He did FTP his segment in though.

Thanks for your patience this week, been a rough one.

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Adsense and RSS
• Twitter Disclosure
• Revision3 gets Revised
• Mozilla Records
• Amazon and Movies
• The Belgian’s are at it Again with Google
• Bacteria that Love Plastic
• Martians
• The ISS Call the Plumber

Promo Spot: Box Office Weekly

Applications

• Desktop Media: Shortcuts to your hardware devices only while they are plugged in
• CloseWin: Instantly close all open windows or create profiles of windows to close
• Feedalizr (AIR): FriendFeed client
• Start Killer: Get rid of the “START” button and reclaim some taskbar real estate
• Zindus: Sync your Gmail contacts with Thunderbird

Firefox Extensions

• No-NSFW: Warns when a link might not be safe for work
• Tab Counter: Lets you know how many tabs you have open
• Peers: Displays real time search results as you type in the search bar

Mac Lab Update

• NameChanger: powerful file renaming tool
• jfSnip: text/code snippet manager
• Weather Satellite Widget: satellite weather without the evening news
• KidiFree: OS X freeware resource

Sites and Services

• TweetSmart: Aims to group links from twitter with categories
• tinySONG: Quickly share music with your friends here is the one I said I would share: http://tinysong.com/5z4
• SensibleUnits: Convert regular units into something you can relate to
• MyTimeZoneIs: Update your timezone through twitter and have a widget that updates with it
• SuperLame: Super fun with images and cartoon speech bubbles
• Tag Galaxy: Search flickr tags in supreme style OUR PICK OF THE WEEK
• When twitter is Down: Humor for when twitter is on the blink

Updates

Geek Project

• Desktop Fan

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Blog (Second Life: Rooster Rubble)
• Cait’s Blog (Second Life: Knowledge Tomorrow)
• Keith’s Blog (Second Life: Maezik Darwin)

Featured Music

Lennon
“Where Do I Fit In” (mp3)
from “Damaged Goods”
(John Galt Entertainment)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Napster
Buy at Amazon
More On This Album

• Sunday: recorded the show and finished about 1am
• Monday: Worked the late shift; 1430hrs till 2300hrs, in the morning I finished a job application and helped the wife clean the house.
• Home Monday night and did an hour of editing, but had to sleep as I was a 0730 in the morning.
• Tuesday; Late shift again; 1230hrs until 2100hrs. Edited in the morning for about 1/2 hour but had to go an d fix the driveway on our property as it is gravel and we had over 100mm of rain over night and some of the driveway was on the road.
• Got home Tuesday night and had dinner. Had some domestic paperwork to do for the extension. Edited the show for an hour after that but fell asleep at the keyboard… Thought I needed to go to bed.
• Wednesday (today) , 10 hour shift - 0700hrs till 1800hrs. I actually worked until 2100hrs due to an emergency at work.
• Got home, had dinner and then I had to return a phone call.
• Tomorrow I have another 10 hour shift…

I had every intention of getting the show out tonight. But as you guys know I work in the medical profession and sometimes you just can not walk out of the place.

My kids have not seen me for 4 days. I am absolutely buggered beyond reason. But I am going to work on the show tonight. I need to get the show out and I am trying.

But thought to share that with your guys so that you knew what the go was and that I am doing my best.

Stay tuned it is coming!

But I will say that we had a great time recording the show this week and there was as usual some very funny moments. In addition I am very pleased with the edit and mix, creatively I am pretty happy with it. I hope that it is all that you want it to be.

See Herne begging will get you everywhere

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Tech News

• Reselling Software
• ASUS to Release Desktop EeePC
• A Little Bit of History
• MS Office to Support Open Document Format
• Google Domain Blunder
• D&D Goes Digital
• Napster Reinvents Itself, Again…
• Save XP Petition Update
• Good Gaming Badges
• Apple Store for Vancouver

Promo Spot - The Comic Review Weekly

Applications

• Dup Detector: Locate duplicate images
• Snackr: RSS ticker on the AIR platform
• Folder View: Add recent and favorite folders to Windows Explorer
• Fractal Explorer: Fractal Generator and manipulator for Windows

Firefox Extension

• PMOG: Gaming while you surf the net (I am sure Keith was playing it for 1/2 the show)

GGP Mac Lab Rat (Dave’s Wee Stop)

• Fluid
• cfxr
• iTubeX
• iBench and System Info Report

(Links Finally Added — The Lab Rat was being what Dave would call a Slack Bastard)

Sites and Services

• Eureka Science News: Algorithmic based science news aggrigator
• Remime: Reminder service for all those important dates
• Penzu: Simple note taking/ Journal service that your Mum could use
• YouTomb: Find out why that video was taken down from YouTube
• TweetBeep: Google Alert type service but just for twitter

Updates

FeedBack

Farewell

• Dave’s Blog (Second Life: Rooster Rubble)

• Cait’s Blog (Second Life: Knowledge Tomorrow)
• Keith’s Blog (Second Life: Maezik Darwin)

Lennon
“Infinitebeat2 Mix” (mp3)

from “Where Do I Fit In : REMIXES”
(John Galt Entertainment)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at Napster
Buy at Amazon
More On This Album

i can haz sleep now?

Image courtesy helmer.sfe.se

It’s an amazing piece of engineering, yet so simple in concept.  Janne has provided a bunch of other pictures on his website.  They’re worth a look.  A perfect example of function over form, and simply doing what’s necessary to “make it work”.

While the video focuses on startup marketing and getting noticed, I think that there are some really good ideas and information for everyone. There is also talk about users, community and social networks. There is also a 10 minute question time at the end. One of the questions is “How do you recover from bad press?”. Quite funny, but some really great strategies for doing so none the less. Also including some details and interesting insights from Arrington about what social media to use in order to market yourself. This stuff applies to the aspiring blogger not just the multi-million dollar start-up and A-list blogger.

One thing that really struck home for me is the value that media producers and bloggers need to have in their community. That is your audience and for us that means you guys. I can honestly say that one thing I value more than anything here in our community is the Eric’s, Herne’s, Knightwise’s, Ape’s, George’s, Doug’s, Brie’s, BlogSlut’s and all the rest that I have failed to mention. Thank you for all your support and being active contributors - without you the comments would be boring and we would feel like we were talking to ourselves.

OK now you can have your opinion’s back and love him or hate him.

via: Orli Yakuel

Me I want to know how he toasted 1,500 hard drives just modding XBoxes!!

Chunk B features the GGP Mac Lab Rat, Sites and services, the updates and all the feedback we could muster.

As usual the second half of the show is a lot of fun. We lost Cait for a while but managed to find her, Keith got a bit tongue tied and Dave stepped out.

Thanks for the feedback so far on Chunk A, let us know what you think about Chunk B.

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

GGP Mack Lab Rat

• 4 Free Automator Applications to Increase Productivity

Sites and Services

• CUBESCAPE: Drop cubes and create diagrams of your garden, pictures, 3D models and more
• SomethingStore: Spend $2 and get a cool mystery gift
• twitbuzz: Techmeme for twitter, also check out twitturly
• DailyLit: Have books and Wikipedia tours delivered in chunks, just like the GGP
• TwitterSnooze: Quiet that drunken twitt your following, for a time
• Manbabies: WTF Mate?

Updates

Cait’s Instructable: Robot Invasion

Feedback

Farewell

• Dave’s Blog (Second Life: Rooster Rubble)
• Cait’s Blog (Second Life: Knowledge Tomorrow)
• Keith’s Blog (Second Life: Maezik Darwin)

Featured Music

Bill
“Good as Gold” (mp3)
from “End of the Hits”
(Contessa Records)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
More On This Album

This is chunk one of a two chunk show. In this chunk you’ll get the Tech News and the Applications segment. So please enjoy and be prepared for the next chunk in the next few days. Enjoy. Man it is nice to be back!

Be sure to send us feedback, you can do that via email or leave us a voicemail. But if all that is too hard then a comment is tops!

Show Notes

Welcome

Technology News

• The anniversary of the Laser
• Zoho Opens it’s Doors even to Strangers
• HBO and Apple Make Friends
• NIN Internets Legends
• Firefox 3 RC 1
• Mozilla’s New Stealth Data Project
• twitter Does Earthquakes
• Microsoft Rethink Active X
• Swiss Birdman. You Have to See the Video! His Website is equally very cool
• The Finns Become Victims of their Own Laws

Promo Spot: The Extra Ordinary Everyday Lives Show

Applications

• ReadAIR: Google Reader comes to the AIR platform
• WildRename: Powerful File Renaming Utility
• WP Post Columns: Give posts columns, just like the newspaper
• MSConfig Cleanup: Permanently delete rather than disable start-up applications
• Purrint: Give that Print Screen Key some functionality
• PalmOS Games Going for Free

Firefox Extension

• DashBlog: Quickly collect videos, images, text/quotes, songs and screen-captures from any web page and publish them to your blog (word press, blogger/blogspot, tumblr) and/or twitter.

The Thought Criminals
“I Want To Be a Celebrity” (mp3)
from “Smash Hits”
(Ninthwave Media)

Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at eMusic
Buy at Napster
Buy at Amazon
Buy at GroupieTunes
Buy at mTraks Download
More On This Album

End of Chunk One

Case 1: The up and coming new Indiana Jones Movie “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull“. The movie is due for release here in Australia on the 22nd of May (IMDB). But just how he snagged Harrison Ford to interview for seesmic I don’t know! There is nothing on seesmic accept the videos, nothing on Loic’s Blog so I guees we will find out in due course.

So Harrison Ford has his own username on seesmic and there are a couple of videos up there of an interview with him. Looks like the interview has been broken up into questions with each one making a new video post. Harrison seems relaxed and quite candid, which you might expect - he is a bit of a veteran at this stuff.

So far there is one video on his Fave Indiana Movie:

Plus one on the stunts, which I think is a great response:

I am guessing that these are going to be filtered out over the next week in the lead up to release. What a fantastic idea. I love the fact that Harrison has appeared for seesmic and it “feels” a lot more personal and laid back. As opposed to some stuffy mainstream media interview. Bloody fantastic, I think Loic really does understand this space and the users that are a part of it.

But as jjprojects states; to really pull this one off it would br great if we could ask the questions! So how about it Loic? Seesmic is about the conversation right? So how about letting the users in on that conversation. How cool would it be to have Harrison Ford responding to users of seesmic? Damn, now that would be cool.

Who would you like to ask questions of on seesmic?