Episode 846

Missing 499
Curt Estridge, whose letter was referred to in Episode 841, listens to the Daily Giz Wiz at work with one earbud, leaving half an ear for his boss.  Curt does listen to a stereo podcast which it is OK to listen to with only one ear, and that's "Says You", also available on Audible.  Curt loves the Daily Giz Wiz, and all the MAD Magazines he's won from the WTHII game.  He hasn't missed a MAD issue, except Issue 499 which he couldn't find anywhere.  Dick invites Curt to send him an email to sort that out.

Leo doesn't beg
Leo is looking for cycling accessories to deck out his Terratrike, including the cyclocomputer-GPS Garmin Edge 705.  Leo will not beg for it from Garmin, but Dick might.  Dick's got Plantronics to send Leo a Voyager Pro (Episode 829) for him to review.  Dick and Leo are of course joshing about it, but little do they know that 2 weeks after recording the show in advance, this issue is going to come up in a very public way.

Pre-View Unit Controversy
Right now, it's not a good time to joke with Leo about review units, or talk to him about them, as yesterday, Leo, ever the nice guy, threw an uncharacteristic fit on TWiTLive during the Gillmor Gang show, over his being one of a select group of tech journalists who had been given a review unit of the Palm Pre.   Read a summary of it on John C Dvorak's blog, which also has a clip of the video that contains strong language from Leo in reaction to comments from Mike Arrington.

Anyone who has listened to Leo for any length of time knows how meticulous Leo tries to be in returning review units, and how many gadgets he's had to buy for himself, to avoid even the appearance of a possibility of conflict of interest, even though it is fairly common for journalists to keep some review units - in which case the reviewer needs to prove his credibility in the long term, and many journalists have succeeded in doing so.  But it is against this background that Leo's reaction and use of language must be understood.   It must have been extremely galling for Leo, who has spent so many years building up a reputation of integrity and a relationship of trust with his audience, to find himself at the wrong end of a suggestion of a possible lack of independence, by another tech journalist as experienced and knowledgeable as Arrington, just because Leo got a review unit.

Arrington has put his side of the story on TechCrunch.  In the midst of the explanations and justifications in that blog post, Arrington has made an apology.  Leo in response has also made an apology in the comments section.  Read it all for yourself.