Brian Gongol
Once again, we're keeping up our Twitter channel during the show today. It's just a little way of keeping you up on what we're talking about during the program.
Dan, our resident Apple enthusiast, says Macworld 2008 was a little underwhelming this year. He's not overly enthused about the new MacBook Air, announced at this year's convention. It's just over a quarter-inch thick.
Do you love us? Can you share that love by voting for us in the Cityview Best of Des Moines 2008 survey? You can vote for media personalities on the last page.
We've talked many times before about security on MySpace, and once again we've heard about a security hole that allows crooks to view photos that have been marked as "private." It's just one more reminder that anything that shows up online -- even if you think it's hidden -- is at risk of being made very, very public faster than you can react.
Dan has been following the Barrett-Jackson auto auctions this week. That got us onto the subject of the $5.5 million Shelby Cobra sold last year.
Given the brutally cold temperatures outside, Dan was thinking about the Boy Scouts out on their Klondike Derby this weekend. It's an annual cold-weather camping event, made much easier to endure now that we have sleeping bags that are supposed to be rated for sub-zero temperatures.
Related to last week's talk about the Tata Motors $3000 car, we also wanted to let you know about the air-powered car that they're planning to build by August of this year. The principle is that by using compressed air to move the drivetrain, motorists could get 125 miles to the fillup.
The GAO is out with a report saying that the money we're spending to keep former Soviet nuclear scientists from going to work for terrorists isn't being used very well. That's a bit unnerving, isn't it?
A caller asked about how to set up video security systems at remote office locations. It's actually relatively easy, if you have a couple of computers, a couple of webcams, and an Internet connection. On a related note, it's pretty amazing how many people are putting up time-lapse videos of their pregnancies on YouTube. There's a whole generation of children being born now who have been on the Internet since before they were born. Amazing.
Another caller asked about the Slingbox, which is a system that allows the user to view TV from remote locations. Though none of us have used Slingbox and thus can't give a personal assessment, Slingbox has gotten good reviews from CNet, PC Magazine, and among lots of users on Amazon.com.
Central Iowa featured prominently in a news story this past week about biotech companies like Pioneer and Monsanto that are working as fast as they can to develop crops that grow well in dry conditions. Drought in Australia has put the crunch on their wheat crop, and there are larger concerns that world food supplies could be threatened over the long term if we don't find ways to grow crops without water -- especially if global warming results in deeper and broader droughts than we're used to. Australia's recent drought has been called a one-in-1,000-year event, and close to home, we're having serious drought problems in the Missouri River basin.
Keywords in this show:
agriculture •
air-powered cars •
Apple •
Australia •
automobiles •
bioengineering •
biotechnology •
Boy Scouts •
camping •
corn •
drought •
genetic engineering •
global warming •
laptops •
MacBook Air •
Macworld Expo •
Missouri River •
MySpace •
nuclear weapons •
online identities •
privacy •
security •
sleeping bags •
Slingbox •
surveillance •
Tata Motors •
time-lapse videos •
Twitter •
webcams •
wheat •
YouTube