Hasta La Gadget!

A 404 sticker at the Winter Games in Vancouver; thanks Drew!

(Credit:
Drew Meyer/The 404)

On today’s episode of CNET’s The 404 Podcast, the guys share the mics with longtime friend Clayton Morris of “Fox and Friends” and co-host of the Grizzly Bear Egg Cafe.

Anyone who listens to our show on a regular basis knows that very little preparation goes into each episode, but we always have a great time with Clayton, and today we spend the first half of the show talking about Jeff’s appearance on NPR’s All Things Considered, where he spent some time speaking with host Robert Siegel about his concerns over racism in multiplayer video games. After Wilson spends some time drooling over Siegel’s baritone radio voice, Clayton tell us about his humble beginnings in the broadcasting industry and even does a few spot-on impersonations of New York’s local television anchors.

After the break, Clayton tells us about his brief but educational sojourn into the armpit of the Internet that is Chat Roulette. Acting as the illegitimate child of Omegle and Skype, the site uses your Webcam to pair you up in a video chat room with a stranger on the Internet.

Clayton and the three of us attempt to describe the most common shared experience on CR: what might seem like a completely innocent Web site used to create new friendships across the world quickly falls flat on its face as you’re faced with the worst the Web has to offer. Racism, misogyny, nudity, and pornography are just a few of the scenes you’ll witness, so enter at your own peril, and don’t forget to breathe…it’s just a Web site.

EPISODE 524

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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast

Apple last week began banning iPhone apps containing “overtly sexual content.” But on Monday the company said it intends to leave apps from major publishers, such as Playboy and Sports Illustrated, untouched.

In an interview with The New York Times, Apple’s vice president of marketing Phil Schiller explained the company was responding to complaints from concerned parents and female customers.

“It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,” Schiller told NY Times’ Jenna Wortham.

Though the move is sure to mitigate complaints, and even please some developers turned off by raunchy content cluttering the App Store, it’s questionable why the Playboy and Sports Illustrated apps, which contain images of partially nude women, wouldn’t offend the same customers. Schiller explained that the Playboy and Sports Illustrated apps came from more reputable companies.

“The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” Schiller said.

The retroactive kind-of-sort-of ban of sex-tinged apps is certainly leaving some developers sore. Wortham interviewed Fred Clarke, co-president of a small software company called On the Go Girls, who lost 50 apps as a result of the ban. Clarke had been making thousands of dollars off the App Store, but no longer.

“It’s very hard to go from making a good living to zero,” he said. “This goes farther than sexy content. For developers, how do you know you aren’t going to invest thousands into a business only to find out one day you’ve been cut off?”

Apple from day one has said porn was not allowed in the App Store, so developers instead coded apps that contained only partial nudity. (Some were able to sneak full nudity into their apps, but not for long before Apple slammed the ban hammer.) Apple last year implemented a Parental Controls feature to prevent children from downloading content that Apple deemed “17+.” However, the feature still allows the App Store to display search results for 17+ content even if an iPhone has been configured to prohibit downloading such apps. Clearly, the Parental Controls tool has not been effective in addressing parents’ concerns.

See Also:

• Porn Comes to the iTunes App Store
• Apple: No Porn Allowed in iPhone’s App Store
• Apple Removes Porn Apps From App Store
• Porn Browser Sneaks Into iPhone’s App Store (Updated)
• Child Porn App Disappears from iTunes App Store

We’ve heard your pleas, citizens of Engadget, and we are pleased as punch to announce that The Engadget Show taping this Saturday, February 27th at 5pm will be streaming live, direct to you via the internet! We’ll be sitting down with Avner Ronen, creator and CEO of Boxee and taking a look at the forthcoming (and very anticipated) Boxee Box. Not only that, but we’ll have a Windows Phone 7 Series device on hand for a demo and discussion, you’ll be meeting our new investigative correspondent Rick Karr, and we’ll have more of the classic Engadget Show shenanigans you’ve come to know and love. You can also expect good, clean music from Nullsleep, and stunning visuals from Outpt and Paris. We’ll be doing giveaways at the live show only, so make the trek and join us at The Times Center in person! If for some reason you live in not-New York, you can catch the show streaming live, right here on Engadget — and you’ll be able to tweet comments directly to the show stream! Like Josh said, if you miss this one, you’ll basically have zero good stories to tell your grandchildren.

The Engadget Show is sponsored by Sprint, and will take place at the Times Center, part of The New York Times Building in the heart of New York City at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues (see map after the break). Tickets are — as always — free to anyone who would like to attend, but seating is limited, and tickets will be first come, first served… so get there early! Here’s all the info you need:

• There is no admission fee — tickets are completely free
• The event is all ages
• Ticketing will begin at the Times Center at 2:30PM on Saturday, doors will open for seating at 4:30PM, and the show begins at 5PM
• You cannot collect tickets for friends or family — anyone who would like to come must be present to get a ticket
• Seating capacity in the Times Center is about 340, and once we’re full, we’re full
• The venue is located at 41st St. between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York City (map after the break)
• The show length is around an hour

If you’re a member of the media who wishes to attend, please contact us at: engadgetshowmedia [at] engadget [dot] com, and we’ll try to accommodate you. All other non-media questions can be sent to: engadgetshow [at] engadget [dot] com.

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Continue reading The Engadget Show returns this Saturday, Feb. 27th… now with live streaming!

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The Engadget Show returns this Saturday, Feb. 27th… now with live streaming! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We all have something of a need, a need for speed, and while most won’t have an opportunity to go all Maverick on some MIG-28s somewhere over the Indian Ocean, we can do our best to get the quickest wireless on offer. Last summer, when we stacked the top four mobile broadband cards against each other, we found that AT&T came out on tops for peak performance, and now nearly a year on PCWorld has come to the same conclusion, finding that Ma Bell offers upload and download speeds that are twice some of the competition. The seven page test splits everything out by city and goes into more details than we’ll tire you with here, but do note that all this testing was done in urban areas, so don’t forget to double-check the coverage map before you sign the next 24 months of your life away.

[Thanks, A. Dewan]

PCWorld ranks AT&T tops in 3G performance test originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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