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Welcome to another week of The 404 Podcast! We’re running through several stories on today’s episode, including OnStar reading you Facebook updates in the car, Cablevision and Time Warner teaming up to offer “free” public Wi-fi in NYC parks, carrier pigeons beating the Internet, Americans increasingly distracted by the Internet, a useless product appropriately called the “Textee,” and a nerdy new Tumblr
that looks at how the Internet and hacking culture are portrayed in film!

Our first story in the rundown is a shameless plug for AccessMainComputerFile, a new blog that pokes fun at images of hacker culture and embellished UI in popular movies like Independence Day, Richie Rich, Terminator 2, and more. Submissions are also welcome, so send over your YouTube links!

Facebook is already a ubiquitous part of daily Interlife, but now OnStar is testing a service that connects your car to the social network as well. The system uses voice recognition and even interprets web-slang like LOL as “laughing out loud,” and drivers can also record audio as status updates without taking their hands off the wheel.

Additionally, if you have an Android-powered phone with Bluetooth, OnStar can even receive your text messages and translate them to audio and from there, you can use voice commands to send a reply (like “yes” or “can’t talk – driving”). OnStar hopes to have an similar app available for the iPhone soon, but in the meantime iPhone users can download OnStar’s MyLink App that shows you service information, tire pressure, and even the ability to lock your doors remotely from anywhere in the world.

New York’s two main cable providers are teaming up to offer free wireless Internet
in select New York public parks. Before you head out, though, we should mention that Time Warner and Cablevision only promise three free 10-minute sessions per month; after that, you’ll be charged $0.99 a day to get on the network. It sounds like a classic bait and switch scenario, and we can’t see users jumping to pay for public Internet when truly free wireless access is already available in thousands of hotspots around the city.

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Everyone complains about sluggish Internet, but on CTO of a UK ISP put his own pathetic broadband speeds to the test…against a carrier pigeon. The only thing more bizarre than the test set up is the result- the piegeons were able to deliver the 100MB of video by microSD Card faster than it took to upload the clip to youTube. The stunt is a half-joke, but it makes a good point about the necessity for net neutrality.

No voice-mails today, so it’s up to you to call us up at 1-866-404-CNET and help out the show! You can also hit us up on Twitter or just e-mail us at the404(at)cnet(dot)com!

Episode 669

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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast

ThermalTake is well known for its PC power and cooling products; devices like power supplies, case fans, and processor heat sinks. Recently, the company has formed a division called Tt eSports, an arm of the company specializing in PC gaming peripherals and products. Newest in their lineup is the new Shock Gaming Headset, a model that looks a lot like similar devices from Astro and Tritton and also aims to fill the space between superior audio headphones with lackluster microphones and excellent voice headsets with terrible audio quality.

The Shock Gaming Headset is a USB headset that features 5.1 stereo surround sound, a noise-cancelling microphone, and in-line audio controls that allow the user to mute the microphone and control the volume without using PC controls to do so. The headset fits on top of the ears and have a soft fabric cushion underneath leather covered ear-pads.  ThermalTake didn’t mention how much the Shock Gaming Headset would retail for when it’s launched, but they did say it would be available in October.

Your next iPhone’s interface could get more in your face with Apple’s acquisition of a face-recognition company, according to reports.

Apple has acquired Polar Rose, a Swedish augmented-reality firm, according to multiple independent news outlets. TechCrunch claims that Polar Rose sold for $22 million.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wired.com earlier reported on a conceptual smartphone app co-developed by Polar Rose called Recognizr, an augmented reality application designed to identify a person just by taking a photo of them.

Demonstrated in the video below, the conceptual app Recognizr uses recognition software to create a 3-D model of a person’s mug and transmits it to a server, which matches it with an image stored in a database. An online server performs facial recognition, shoots back a name of the subject and links to his or her social networking profiles.

The acquisition of Polar Rose comes in line with a recent patent application filed by Apple related to a security feature enabling the iPhone to listen to your heartbeat or scan your face to identify its rightful owner.

See Also:

• Apple's 'Find my iPhone' App Almost Impossible to Use
• Engineers Test Highly Accurate Face Recognition

Sounds like it’s not much of a delay — but be that as it may, if you were hoping to pick up your colorful N8 in the tail end of this month… well, we don’t quite know how to say this, but you’re going to want to make other plans. Backing up rumors that have been going around the past couple days, locales that had expected to get the N8 in September have now been pushed back to October while Nokia makes “some final amends.” On the upside, some rumors had the delay pegged for November, so this doesn’t seem to be as bad as it could’ve been. For what it’s worth, Nokia mentioned during Nokia World last week (and again today) that the N8 is seeing strong pre-order demand — the strongest ever for a Nokia device, allegedly — so this is likely to bum out a lot of folks, and for a few, it might even be just the impetus they needed to hold out for the upcoming E7. Here’s the full statement:

“The amount of preorders has exceeded our expectations and we are working hard to deliver the Nokia N8 to the market. In some markets, we had planned to start delivering the Nokia N8s to our pre-order customers by the end of September. To ensure a great user experience, we have decided to hold the shipments for a few weeks to do some final amends. We’re thrilled with the response that we’ve had to the Nokia N8 and assure everyone who’ve pre-ordered it already that it’ll be worth the wait! We expect consumers to get their Nokia N8s during October.”

Nokia N8 delayed ‘for a few weeks to do some final amends’ originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s pretty common for companies in the heat of product development to file for trademarks, domain names, and patents first and ask questions later, so we can understand (we guess) that RIM took the initiative to put the milquetoast “BlackPad” on lock earlier this year for the tablet it’s almost certainly working on — the logic, of course, is that if you fire enough shots in the dark, at least one of your filings isn’t going to suck. To that end, it looks like the boys and girls in Waterloo filed for “SurfBook” in early August, though it’s only showing up in Canada’s filing system at this point — there’s no matching documentation in the USPTO just yet. Obviously, applying the word “surf” to anything electronic at this point evokes the pleasingly vintage phrase “surfing through cyberspace,” which leads us to believe you’ll probably be able to use the SurfPad to browse the World Wide Web and swap warez on your favorite BBS. Keep trying, RIM. No, wait — definitely use SurfPad.

RIM files ‘SurfBook’ trademark in Canada, cyberspace awaits originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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