Brian Gongol
The WHO Radio Wise Guys airs on WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa on 1040 AM or streaming online at WHORadio.com. The show airs from 1 to 2 pm Central Time on Saturday afternoons. A podcast of show highlights is also available. Leave comments and questions on the Wise Guys Facebook page or e-mail them to wiseguys@whoradio.com.
Authorities in China are looking for a radioactive lead ball that went missing when a factory was torn down. It might've been melted down with other scrap metal, which certainly ought to give us cause for suspicion about any metals coming from China.
A wind-powered car has set a land speed record of more than 125 miles an hour. If you're wondering how a car can run on wind, it's mainly a matter of putting a sailboat on wheels.
Dan is trying to use Twitter again. Brian's been staying active on Twitter for some time.
Internet Explorer 8 claims to be standards-compliant, or at least close to being so. That would be great news if it were fully true. For years, people have been designing their websites to be "optimized" for one browser or another. But that's just plain lazy -- it would be like building a television to receive only CBS and NBC, but not ABC or Fox. The best way to ensure your site works on every browser is to use the W3 Consortium website validator. It's quick and easy, and pushes Internet designers to do a better job of reaching everyone who uses the Internet. On a related note, Firefox 3.0.8 has just been released. It doesn't do much cosmetically -- but since it's a security update, you'd probably better use it.
Did you know that Bill Gates has his own investment company? He actually has more than half of his wealth invested outside Microsoft. Cascade Investments, LLC is pretty secretive, but some people have tried to piece together where those investments lie using Wikipedia.
Some British authorities are using thermal imaging to find houses that appear to be wasting energy. Now, there's nothing wrong with voluntary weatherization programs...but if the government starts sending out "energy cops" to police your energy use, then we could be headed down a scary path.
The news may be full of talk about the economy, but that doesn't mean that other big problems haven't gone away. For instance, we could still be hit by an asteroid. A big enough asteroid hit would make our economic troubles look like a cakewalk.
The iPod Touch can be turned into a phone if you know the right tricks.
A mobile-phone company wants to deliver universal broadband access by mobile phone to people living in the UK. We ought to keep our eyes on this kind of proposal, because the UK is far more densely populated than Iowa, but they've had similar problems with getting universal broadband access to the public. If they can universal wireless broadband access to work in a country that has 61 million people living in a land area roughly the size of Oregon, then that might tell us something positive about the outlook for getting it to work here.
Keywords in this show:
asteroids •
Britain •
Cascade Investments, LLC •
China •
economics •
energy •
energy police •
environment •
existential threats •
Firefox •
Gates, Bill •
Internet Explorer 8 •
iPod •
Microsoft •
mobile phones •
privacy •
radioactivity •
scrap metal •
security •
standards •
thermal imaging •
Twitter •
universal broadband Internet •
Web standards •
wind •
wind-powered cars •
wireless Internet access •
W3 Consortium