Episode 855

Spy Cams
P3 International's Desk Clock Video Camera was first shown to Leo when he visited Dick's Gadget Warehouse in Episode 246.  Back then P3 was having a clearance sale and the gadget was still on its website.  It is no more.  These days you can get spy cams and nanny cams hidden behind fruit baskets, door bells, smoke alarms, alarm clocks and so on, with much better low-light performance, and in colour too.  Check out e.g., Brickhouse Security and Surveillance Spy Cameras.

Alfred E Neuman Mouse Pad
Dick has rented the current space for his warehouse from Sofia Bros for 21 years, at $350 a month.  That's about $85,000 - plus 5 years in another room before that.  You can support Dick by buying some of his MAD stuff and GizWizBiz gadgets.  Available now are some vintage Alfred E Neuman MAD Mouse Pads made 13 years ago, at Dick's Mad-Stuff.

Wall-E and the Beam Scope
Several listeners, including Daniel Holth from Gainsville, Florida, have written in, about Wall-E and his giant Fresnel lens which he used to watch his iPod in the film, which is out on DVD and Blu-ray.  The film has quite a few geeky references, one of which being Wall-E's personal Beam Scope (Episode 735).  Below is a comparison of the details in the DVD and Blu-ray versions, on hifi-writer.com., where Wall-E watching his iPod video through the magnifying lens.

From hifi-writer.com

Episode 854

A GizWizBiz MP3 Player ?
The Samsung U5 is available in black, white, red, pink and blue.  The white model lends itself particularly well to adaptation as a GizWizBiz MP3 Player, with a Square-Spaced Giz Wiz, I mean square-faced.  Perhaps with built-in support for automatic downloads of the Daily Giz Wiz?


Diaper Stuffing
Suzanne Lander writes in defence of the Sham Wow. Dick, Leo and her husband may laugh at her, but she thinks the Sham Wow is great as diaper stuffing, in place of microfibre towels and hemp inserts which she used to use.  It saves her from using disposables. Dick thinks it sounds like Gracie Allen.  By the way, the Sham Wow will be featured in MAD Issue 501, and you can win it in due course by playing the What The Heck Is It game.

Ideas for the TWiT Donation Button
During the intermission after this episode, Leo discusses with Dick and Studio Guest Jeri Ellsworth ideas for the TWiT Donation Button, and what should happen to Leo when TWiT gets a donation.

Episode 853

Snapper Boat Latch
Watch the demo of today's gadget.



The GizWiz Gets Slammed
Dick has had the same telephone number with Verizon since he moved to Manhattan, but recently he got "slammed".  Without his authorisation, his number got sold to XO Communications, which doesn't do residential telephone service anyway, and has apparently sold the number on to Vonage.  Dick has had to make numerous telephone calls to totally inaccessible hotlines on which you need to wait forever.  It's against FCC rules to slam a customer.  Finally after 8 days of telephone hell, Dick's Verizon service returned.

Forbidden Gardens
Leo is looking forward to seeing the Terracotta Warriors in Xian on his China Tour.  Jenny Vincin tells Dick that he need not feel left out.  He can head off to Katy, Texas, to visit the Forbidden Gardens which has 6,000 one-third size replicas of the terracotta soldiers.

Episode 852

BlueAnt Q1
For a direct comparison of new bluetooth headsets including the Q1 and Plantronics Voyager Pro, see a review by Phil Baker (whose book was referred to in Episode 795), and his follow-up review of the new Jawbone Prime.

BlueAnt Q1

Ask And Ye Shall Receive
On the last TTTT (Episode 847), which was the first show recorded on the same session, Leo was stumped as to why the Daily Giz Wiz podcasts have made their way into a listener's Music Folder on iTunes and got played in Shuffle mode along with the rest of his music.  Matt Pokky (for his previous letter to Leo, see Episode 652) happened to be listening to the live stream and managed to send in an answer before the end of the recording session, and Leo was astute enough to have taken notice of it.  Matt had the same thing happened to him about 18 months ago, when Apple decided (in iTunes 6 or 7) to include podcasts into Music, which maxed out his iPod's capacity.  Matt's workaround was to make a smart playlist called iPod Music, with the parameters "Genre is not podcast" and "Podcast is false".

Episode 851

Previous Clickfrees
For previous products of Clickfree which Dick talked about, see Clickfree Backup Drive (Episode 629), Clickfree DVD Backup (Episode 639), and Clickfree Transformer (Episode 753).  And here's a demo of the DVD Transformer.

Backup, Backup
Leo has 14 hard drives installed in various computers in the studio, over 30 just scattered around, and even more in the rest of the TWiT Cottage.  After he lost the video recording of Episode 600, he now makes sure that everything is recorded and backed up.

Game Show Memories
Since Dick was involved in game shows other than Match Game, listeners have requested Dick to do another show in the style of his earlier Match Game Memories.  He might just do that.  A small number of Match Game Questions are still left for sale.

A Petaluma Nobody
Jim Driscoll from Atlanta, who was looking forward to Episode 7795 in his last letter (Episode 534), met recently in the San Francisco Bay area a colleague who lives in a little town called Petaluma.  Jim asked her if she knew Leo.  "Leo who?"  Jim went on to astonish her with his intimate knowledge of the Butter and Eggs Parade.