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TECH RADIO FOR APRIL 22, 2006

We covered a lot of ground on this week’s Tech Radio show.  Matt Reinbold from mutednoise.com and bloomburst.com and a regular on Tech Radio flew solo this week and did a great job.  Rob Merrill with UtahTechJobs.com took the week off because of prior commitments.

Here’s a portion of the things we discussed during this week’s show:

HP:  Hewlett Packard has initiated a recall of some 15,700 battery packs installed in the company’s HP and Compaq notebook PC machines, warning that an internal failure can cause the batteries to overheat.  The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that HP has received 20 reports of batteries overheating and one minor burn injury.  To see if your notebook is part of the recalls, visit this web site or call (888) 202-4320. 

Apple:  Apple announced they were cutting the price of their iPods.  They also announced they were creating a version of Adobe Photoshop that will run on MAC computers based on the PowerPC and Intel chips.  It will be available in the first half of next year.  This is great news if you have an older MAC computer or a new Intel based machine.

Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD:  The companies backing competing formats for next-generation DVD technology will never again talk about forming a unified standard.  That’s according to Kazuhir Tsuga, an executive at Matsushita.  (Just in case you didn’t know, Matsushita is best know for the Panasonic brand.)  Panasonic is the leading supporter of Blu-Ray while Toshiba is supporting the other format called HD-DVD.  To bring you up to speed on this issue, at the core of the competing formats is a blue laser which have a shorter wavelength that red lasers used in current DVD equipment.  The blue laser enables discs to store data at higher densities.  The two sides held talks last year in the hopes of avoiding a prolonged format battle similar to the one between Betamax and VHS videotapes in the 1980′s.  May the company with the deepest pockets win.  Our advice, wait to see which which company out-muscles the competition before purchasing your next DVD player.

Alltel:  Alltel, the number five wireless carrier in the country, plans to shake up traditional cellphone billing by offering an alternative for customers who exceed their monthly allotment of minutes.  Subscribers who sign up for rate plans that cost $59.95 or more a month can make unlimited free calls to any ten phone numbers, wireless or land-line, anytime of the day and the calls won’t count against the subscriber’s monthly bucket of minutes.  Our opinion, A FANTASTIC IDEA.  Way to go Alltel.

• Some industry analysts are saying that cell phones will make significant inroads against PCs for surfing the Internet.
• One report suggests that cell phones will become "mobile wallets" instead of just a communications device.
• If you have Sprint cell service, this year’s NFL draft will be televised on your phone.  Reggie’s going #1.
• The number of people who filed their taxes electronically grew to an astonishing 54 people as of March 31.
• Phillips Electronics has invented a device that blocks DVRs from skipping ads (Our opinion:  This is a bad idea.)
• Google is testing a new look search results page.
• Google also announced that it could bid on U.S. licenses for wireless radio spectrum in order to offer Internet access services.
• Panasonic said it will sell a flat-panel TV with a 103-inch screen by the end of 2006.  The biggest screen on the market.
• Dutch researchers claim they can track the "mood" of Internet bloggers.

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