TWIT Staff's blog

Is this a common practice/scam....?

Yay!! Tomorrow we have a doctor appointment to have an ultrasound, and find out the sex of our baby. So I go to check the video camera, since I'd like to get video of it.... Grrr the camera is fragged, I forgot about it... I knew it was broken too. Doh...
OK so I need to buy another small, inexpensive mini-DV cam, today. I'm going to want it around a lot when baby is born anyway, right... So I found a model that fit my budget ($700) and size needs. I wanted something almost palm sized but fairly high quality. I decided to try the Panasonic PV-GS150, from my research it seemed like a good thing to satisfy my needs.

TWiT Strikes Again

We are now #1 on Podnova!

Systm Release Party!

Hey fellow TWiTs! Itâ??s official - My new downloadable Tech show 'Systm' will be released on Monday May 23rd at 8:00PM PST! To kick off this new series we are throwing a house party. While we donâ??t have enough room for everyone in the house, weâ??d love to have you take part! Starting at 6:00PM weâ??ll fire up our live webcam of the festivities, along with an IRC chat room. Chat with Kevin, Dan, Keith and Ron (systm crew) along with other TechTV staffers (Leo, Pat, Yoshi, Robert, Alex, and others have all been invited).

Canâ??t wait to download Systm?

Revenge of the Sith (in 1080p+)

I recently posted an article on ExtremeTech discussing the technology of modern digital cinema. My opinion of Episode III aside, the latest iteration of Texas Instruments' DLP technology is delivering the best image quality you can see on the silver screen.

TI's "2K" DMD (digital micromirror device) used in the latest cinema-class DLP projectors sports a native resolution of 2048x1080 (one pixel per micromirror.) That equates to over 1.2 million more pixels than their previous 720p cinema technology.

About Your Donation

A number of people have been asking me about our choice to ask for donations instead of taking advertising or requiring a subscription. Let me explain our thinking.

First, there are a number of good reasons not to take ads. One, I hate ads and I know you do, too. Two, we really wanted to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. We are all fiercely independent and bloody minded, and love the idea of doing a show that's ours alone. The only people we want to be beholden to is you, the listener.

Nor do we want to require a subscription. TWiT is free and always will be. No one HAS to subscribe or donate. But there are expenses associated with doing the show, and if there's some capital we can invest in making the show better.

My favorite Firefox plugin - Adblock

We got to talking about browser security on today's Podcast, and I wanted to mention some tools I never surf without (using Firefox, of course!)

Adblock loaded with Filterset.G

Filterset.G is described in the readme as:

The guiding principle behind this filterset is efficiency. Conservative domain blocking, careful use of Regular Expressions, and a strict stance against false positives help to avoid the problems faced by other filtersets, from overspecificity to overgeneralization.

Digg Itt

Sorry about the problems earlier. Not sure what was happening but I repaired the MySQL database and all seems to be well again.

UPDATE: I thought it was a DOS attack but no.... it was Digg. Getting Dug is far worse than getting Slashdotted - it slammed the servers all evening. Vizaweb couldn't figue out what was happening and disabled the Gallery. (That's what was linked to in Digg.) Well now we know. Nice job, Kevin, yah brought the site down!

UPDATE 2: OK maybe it's not all Digg's fault. I was using a beta version of Menalto's Gallery for the logo gallery and it seems to have some problems. I've removed it and disabled the logo gallery for now. I'll get it back up using some other program. I like the rotating logos on the front page anyway - might be a permanent feature. There are so many good ones!

We're number one on Podcast Alley?!?

Don't let Leo kid you... he's horrendously competitive and has been known to scream, gnash his teeth and pitch furniture (and smaller coworkers) around the room when â??the numbersâ?? arenâ??t to his satisfaction.

Thank you to everybody who voted for us into the number one spot on Podcast Alley. Especially the ones who voted twice. And to that kind, gentle hacker in Sidney with the bot... you rule.

Cause if we weren't number one with a bullet Leo would have fired up â??The Publicity Stuntâ?? machine.

And we would have had to do the podcast naked.

BTWâ?¦ all this is a thin tissue of lies and shameless pandering for laughter (and making Leoâ??s eyes bug out), except for the part about thanking everybody who votedâ?¦

Help Us Choose Our Logo

I've created a gallery of submitted logos. Please visit it and comment (vote too if I can figure out how to turn that on). If you created one of the logos, please add your name in the comments. There are so many I'm having a hard time of keeping track of which logos belong to whom.

We're Number 2!

I'm very pleased to see that this WEEK in TECH is currently #2 on Podcast Alley. In the past I've ignored this kind of beauty contest, but it does help get the word out, and I have to admit to a little thrill seeing TWiT up there.

Anyone can vote once a month. Click the Podcast Alley image and vote now. Let's show them what TWiT Power is all about!