CNET Live: August 7, 2008 Video

CNET Live: August 7, 2008 Video Transcript

[ Music ] ^M00:00:08

>> Coming up on CNET Live, how a little download can help launch programs faster in Windows.

>> Plus, rock your desktop with a set of USB speakers.

>> And we'll talk to David Merkoski from Frog Design. He's in the studio talking touchscreen tech and that, and more coming up right here on CNET Live. ^M00:00:25 [ Music ] ^M00:00:30 Welcome to CNET Live. I'm Tom Merritt.

>> I'm Molly Wood, filling in for Brian Cooley, who is off doing the things that Brian Cooley does.

>> He's walking the earth like Cane from Kung Fu. Look for him on a street near you. He might be driving the Google video thing, or the Google Maps thing.

>> Really?

>> Yeah. Maybe. I don't know.

>> You think he just stole it?

>> He does moonlighting sometimes.

>> He does things.

>> Anyway, we're still here to take your calls, 888-900-2638. 888-900-CNET. If your trying to figure out what gadget to get for back to school, how to get something working again, just how to tweak away at your technology, that's what we're here for. Jamie is standing by. She'll take your call; get you all the information you need to know to get on the show.

>> That's right. But before we get to those calls, it's time for the Things We Crave. ^M00:01:08 [ Music ] ^M00:01:12

>> This is brought to you by our friends at the Crave Blog, at crave.cnet.com. And the thing I'm craving today is something that Molly tried to tell me about.

>> Hello.

>> You tried to tell me.

>> Just say it. Say the word that stats with "R."

>> Oh, what?

>> Right.

>> You're right. Oh, yeah, Zappos actually sells shoes.

>> Yes.

>> And that's why I didn't care at first.

>> I know. They do. They're awesome.

>> Until I bought some shoes, and I realized how great they are because they deliver them fast. Even if you don't pay for the extra-fast shipping...

>> Yeah.

>> ...they give you the shoes fast.

>> I know.

>> They have an excellent return policy...

>> Yep.

>> ...when you don't go wearing them out on concrete.

>> I know.

>> But now they're selling electronics.

>> I know. I know. It's very exciting.

>> You were right.

>> Although I'm a little worried about this because I'm hoping that it won't bring Zappos down. Like, it's easy to be fast and efficient when you only do one thing.

>> Right.

>> Once you start getting all crazy...

>> Yeah. Because they're doing not just electronics, they're doing clothes and stuff, too.

>> Yeah.

>> But if buying electronics from them is as pleasant as buying the shoes...

>> I know.

>> ...this will be amazing. And they use robots in their warehouse.

>> Oh, really?

>> Yeah.

>> Oh, I like that.

>> I think that's one of the things that make them more efficient.

>> Watch out, Amazon. That's all I have to say. I am craving Nikon's new enthusiasts' camera, the P600, which I believe comes out this fall. What is cool about it is that it's got built-in Ethernet. It's got wireless flash, this new Vista-compatible raw format, blah, blah, blah.

>> Oh, so you just plug it into your network to get the photos off?

>> Yes.

>> That's pretty sweet.

>> That is awesome.

>> And then in-camera GPS.

>> Ah, very nice.

>> Boom. Perfect.

>> Especially in a high-end camera like that.

>> I know. And it's gonna be about $500.00, which is not a terrible price. I love GPS in cameras because I can never remember where I was, and this thing will geotag.

>> But now everyone else will know where you were, so no more secret.

>> No more Flicker.

>> And so it will automatically geotag all your pictures. That's excellent.

>> It can, yeah. And it's -- apparently Lori Grunin says it's a nice interface for the in-camera GPS, which is also great.

>> Nikon P5100?

>> P6000.

>> P6000, wow.

>> Yeah. It replaces the 5100.

>> Replaces.

>> Looks like it will be out in about September, I think. Yeah, September, 499.

>> All right. Well, there's nothing more for it. Let's get to your calls at 888-900-2638. I think that Chris is probably been on the line longest.

>> All right.

>> Thanks for calling in early, Chris. Welcome to the show.

>> Thank you. I have an iPod Touch with 2.0 firmware, and it is just like a horrible mistake upgrading.

>> Uh huh. You paid for the firmware, too, huh?

>> Sorry, yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Oh. Bummer.

>> And I just want to downgrade back to 1.1.4.

>> Okay. You are in luck. There are some hackers out there who want to help you out. Apple does not make it easy to downgrade on the iPod touch, but there's a little program out there called that you'll want to download. You'll also want to find the firmware, the one one four firmware, and then you can use AutoDown and the one one four firmware to downgrade your iPod touch to 1.1.4. Now, look around on your desktop -- or not on your desktop. Look around on your computer to see if you can find the firmware. It should still be there somewhere. That way you don't have to go out and find it, although there are places where you can download the firmware direct from Apple again. And I'll put all the steps on how to do this in our show notes at blog.cnettv.com.

>> Bad news. Of course, you're probably out your 10 bucks.

>> Isn't it 20?

>> I thought they managed to get the price down to 10 dollars.

>> Oh. How much did you end up paying? Chris?

>> Hmm?

>> How much did you end up paying for the firmware?

>> It was $10.00 for firmware, and then $20.00 in apps.

>> Oh, okay.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> So you're just gonna boot the apps?

>> Yeah, I mean I guess if it's worth it to lose the 30 bucks, that's the only way to go about it because Apple's definitely not gonna probably enable that for you. Sorry.

>> All right, let's move on to Eric. Are you in Ontario, Canada or Ontario, California?

>> Canada.

>> Ah. Very -- welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

>> I'm looking for -- I'm buying a laptop for back-to-school, preferably on the Mac platform because I haven't much luck in the past with Windows' based laptops. I 'm looking at the MacBook, just the standard MacBook because of its still -- big on popularity. But I know it's been a while since they updated the MacBook Line, and wondering if -- should I buy it or wait.

>> Oh, definitely wait.

>> Yeah

>> Definitely wait.

>> Yeah, definitely. All signs point to new MacBooks or MacBook Pros in September, in and around September, so it's gonna be little late for actually being back in school.

>> Right.

>> But I think if you can hold out, I would definitely do so because -- unless you buy it, you know, within fourteen days of the announcement. But I think there's a very good chance that this is gonna be refreshed, at the very least.

>> Right.

>> Yeah. Hope that helps.

>> Okay. Yeah it does, definitely.

>> Otherwise it is our top-rated laptop at backtoschool.cnet.com, where you can find all kinds of other recommendations for back to school here.

>> I was trying to find the link to, I think it's Mac Rumors, that does the listing of like whether it's red or green on buying the different Apple stuff.

>> Right.

>> I'll find that, and I'll throw it in the show notes at blog.cnettv.com. But the new Delicious is just impossible to use right now, so I can't the bookmark.

>> So he can't find that, but there was -- there are reports today that now analysts are starting to say there's actually going to be an event in September, with new iPods, also one to wait on.

>> Oh, that's the rumor, huh?

>> And new MacBooks, yeah.

>> All right. Let's move on to Una [assumed spelling] who's in Chicago. Hey, Una, hear you got a problem with your DVD player.

>> Hi. Yeah, my DVD player in my laptop, that's it.

>> Okay, what can we do to help you fix it?

>> Sure. About six months ago, it started getting kind of fritzy. It would stutter; my DVDs would stutter when I was playing them. And eventually, they just totally stopped playing. Like, right now, I can't play DVDs in it at all.

>> So when you put the DVD in, does it give you an error message, or it just -- nothing happens?

>> Like, different things would happen. Sometimes I'll go into my computer and it won't even register that there's a disc in there at all. Other times it'll start playing in my WinDVD, and it will just like stop, and it will give me an error message, I think. I can't really remember.

>> Like, unreadable disc, that kind of error?

>> Yeah, something like that.

>> Uh huh. Now, just to cover the bases, have you upgraded the firmware on that DVD player?

>> I tried looking at HP because that's the laptop I have, and there didn't seem to be any available.

>> Okay, so they said there wasn't any new firmware?

>> No.

>> Or no new drivers.

>> No new drivers for that. Okay.

>> Right. I was looking for that.

>> Okay so we've got that covered. Where do we go from there?

>> Yeah, one thing I would suggest is to get a -- it seems like sometimes this can be solved with a CD or DVD cleaning disc that you pop that in and it basically cleans the lens inside because one of the problems might be that it's -- that your DVD drive is just literally not seeing the disc because it's all gunked up. Because you said earlier that the laptop's a couple years old, right?

>> Yeah.

>> So that may be one possibility. I would give that a try. And then the other thing you could do is to try upgrading the software itself. Maybe you have an outdated version of the software.

>> Okay, I can try that.

>> The playback software.

>> I actually do have a DVD cleaner already. I used it on my PlayStation before, so that'd be easy for me to use.

>> Oh, yeah. There you go.

>> Yeah, give it a shot.

>> Yeah, you don't even have to spend any money. Try that, for sure.

>> Yeah, okay.

>> Because it definitely sounds like it's trying to read the disc and it can't, to me.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> It doesn't sound like it's necessarily a software problem.

>> And a three-year-old laptop, stuff gets in there.

>> Yeah.

>> Cat hair.

>> For sure, yeah.

>> Schmootz [phonetic]. Deschmootz [phonetic] that thing.

>> Okay.

>> That's my technical advice for the day.

>> Awesome.

>> All right, coming up, David Merkoski from Frog Designs will be joining us here in the studio. But first, if you listen to music on your computer, the tiny speakers that came packed in with it could probably stand an upgrade. Here's Donald Bell with a look at the Ion Desk Rocker USB speakers. ^M00:08:29 [ Music ] ^M00:08:32

>> Hey, I'm Donald Bell, senior editor for digital, audio, and MP3, and today we're taking a First Look at the Ion Desk Rocker USB speaker system. The desk rocker's around $99.00. They're a power speaker system that attaches directly to your computer over USB, and can also be used as a stand-alone system for playing music from an MP3 player or a CD player. The USB port is there to allow the Desk Rockers to send and receive audio back and forth from your computer without a lot of extra cables, or an expensive audio card. Each speaker is powered by 10 watts, run through a one-inch tweeter and a three-inch woofer. Underneath the woofer, you'll found a volume knob and a headphone jack that mutes the speakers when it's used. The back of the desk rockers include RCA and 3.5 millimeter stereo auxiliary inputs, a bass boost switch, and power and USB plugs. Once cool feature of the Desk Rocker system is that when the speakers are connected to your computer over USB, any audio source that's connected to the aux inputs can be recorded directly to your computer at CD-quality 16 bit, 44 kilohertz sound quality. Ion even bundles a few Mac and PC programs to help you capture and edit recordings. At $99.00, you get what you pay for when it comes to sound quality. The Desk Rockers can get plenty loud, but the quality of their sound is a little muffled with a lot of emphasis on base. We also weren't thrilled with the Desk Rockers design, which is a little bulky and a little boxy, especially if you're gonna have to look at this thing every day. I'm Donald Bell, and that was a First Look at the Ion Desk Rocker USB speaker system. ^M00:10:00 [ Music ] ^M00:10:06

>> From laptops to luggage products to packaging, Frog design is a company known for their creativity. Joining me today is David Merkoski. He's the creative director at Frog Design. Welcome, David.

>> Thanks so much for having me.

>> Thanks for joining us. So tell me real quickly, a little bit about what you do at Frog.

>> Sure, so I'm the creative director here in San Francisco, the headquarters of Frog. I manage day-to-day operations for the creatives. So that's a bunch of engineers and software designers, interaction designers, visual designers, and what we call design analysts, people who kind of think about the overall complexity of the problem, and bring that together to solve problems for our clients.

>> Now, one of the recent problems you've been dealing with is a touchscreen. The HP TouchSmart is one of the products that is billing itself as being able to be used as a touchscreen right off the monitor. How do you go about, with a touch screen, making that work for the user?

>> Yeah, it's an entirely different problem from the traditional PCs that we have with keyboards, right, and mouse interaction. It's very much around direct manipulation, right, recognizing the finger as the interface. And in many ways, it's the oldest interface there's ever been.

>> Right because we're so used to typewriters.

>> That's right.

>> This is essentially what we're living off, which is what, a late 19th century invention?

>> Yeah, it's a very old technology.

>> We've been using our fingers forever.

>> We have been using our fingers forever. And it's a shift in the industry away from audio-visual as the only means of input and output, right? And so a lot of companies are grappling with what it means to redesign their products from a touch consumer experience.

>> The other things about touch screens that I've heard people criticize is, especially in an upright situation, like, that's not good for me. I'm gonna have to -- you know, my hands will get tired.

>> Yeah. That's right.

>> It's better to rest them down. How does that work into interface design?

>> Yeah, there's a kind of a phrase for that, gorilla arm.

>> Uh huh, yeah.

>> Which is the arm is always kind of up there, and you kind of get -- big muscles kind of form after a while.

>> Right. Well, maybe that would be good.

>> Maybe it would be good, but only on one arm.

>> Yeah, you're gonna have to balance.

>> The difference with the TouchSmart is that it's actually intended not as your general purpose PC for doing all your kind of word processing and emailing and things like that. It's really designed around a family environment. So you kind of go up to it, get a piece of information, like a note about where one of your children has gone for the day, or listen to a song, and walk away from it. So because it has a different intended use, the idea of having an upright touchscreen is actually more appropriate. In addition to that, some of the design that we've put into this TouchSmart is appropriate for how your hand moves across space. So you'll see here, for instance, there's sort of a fan of album art in your music browsing. And so it's a very natural, fluid movement for your hand to go in a curve...

>> Instead of just a line straight across.

>> ...as opposed to straight line, exactly.

>> Okay, I get you.

>> So a lot of design details in the product's experience were put in to make sure that standing in front of, right, or even sitting, but still having your arm upright as opposed to down like traditional is appropriate.

>> This brings up a good point. Our computers are still on a desktop model, which goes back into their used in the '50s.

>> That's right.

>> And since then, we have folders. We have files. We have pages. Is this an indication that we might be busting out of that metaphor finally?

>> Absolutely. That's a great question. There's a traditional software design thing called WIMP, a Windows Icon Menu Pointer. And all the software that we use is fundamentally oriented around that. But what we're doing is we're moving it into a much more resolution intense, visual experience that doesn't borrow on those traditional metaphors. And we can actually be direct about the things we're showing. So literally showing the music collection itself, the albums in this case, rather than files and folders and icons that represents those. And because of that, touch makes even more sense because it's like the real world. When we natively manipulate the world around us, we can apply that to the computer space because they look just as good as the things in the real world.

>> Now, there are other products doing this, this sort of interface type thing. Xbox comes to mind.

>> Hmm.

>> With it's blades, rather than file and system. What are some other good examples of us busting out of that metaphor?

>> You know, it's funny, there actually aren't too many good metaphors out there, right? I think the industry is struggling to move away from the dominant PC paradigm, this WIMP model, just because so many people have been trained on it. And in fact, if you look at what Microsoft announced -- the E3, I believe -- they've actually moved away from the blade model, and moved into a whole 'nother system, right?

>> Mm-hmm.

>> Because some companies can take on that innovation and that risk, right? They have a core market, like gamers, who can move with them as the interface changes. But a lot of people are very uncomfortable, once they've spent the learning curve to figure out how a PC works, to actually try something new in a very radical way in terms of the interface itself. And a large part of our job at Frog is to do that, is to slowly move people across the lifecycle from their traditional understanding of PCs to something more complex and innovative, like a design that you see here.

>> It's really hard to get people out of old habits. [Inaudible]

>> Yeah, that's exactly right.

>> One last question before we have to go. This is a touchscreen.

>> That's right.

>> And obviously people are getting more familiar with that. We have the multi-touch on the iPhone.

>> Uh huh.

>> We have that Microsoft table that's being used in casinos, I guess. It's just sort of its main use, where you can move pictures around and manipulate it. Where does this fall in thought spectrum? How does this differ?

>> It's interesting. There are -- traditionally, there are two types of touchscreens, resistive and capacitive. The iPod is a capacitive touch screen. It's literally a layer of chemicals that sense conductivity and energy. And when you, as an energy source, touch it, it completes the connection. This is actually...

>> Does that need to have heat?

>> Actually no, it's just the energy field literally just -- the amount of electrochemical energy that you're sending out from your body.

>> Gotcha.

>> Your aura, really, right?

>> Okay. Yeah, I didn't it was aura driven.

>> iPod couldn't mind that.

>> Yeah.

>> The product here, though, is actually a third, new type of touchscreen called optical. And literally in the top two corners are cameras that beam down and hit the edges of the other side of the screen. And when your finger interrupts that camera, it literally creates a shadow, and interference. And so it's light, not electricity, which is determining where your touch signal is.

>> Similar to automatic doors, but a lot more complex.

>> A lot more complex.

>> Yeah.

>> Exactly. More resolution. As a result, and this is the big change, you can put that technology -- because it costs less than that chemical surface -- on bigger screens. And that's why we're seeing, for the first time, touchscreen laptops, tablets, PCs, and desktop level like this -- because it doesn't require a film and it doesn't degrade the quality of the visual experience that that film often does, 30 percent reduction in the kind of clarity.

>> Fascinating stuff. I could talk all day to you, David. Thanks so much for coming.

>> Thank you.

>> We appreciate it.

>> David Merkoski, creative director at Frog Design. And next up, the download of the week, we'll show you how to launch apps faster in Windows. Stick with us. ^M00:16:04 [ Music ] ^M00:16:10

>> When Jack left for college, he said he'd major in communication. But they worried. Fortunately, he had a good advisor. Best Buy. You. Happier.

>> Brian Tong says he knows product.

>> Boom.

>> But when he should be sitting at lab bench, what is he really doing? Dancing. Laughing. And sometimes you'll even find him in bed. Get the message Brian Tong? Product evaluation is not supposed to be a good time. Paid for by analysts who are not allowed to leave the lab. ^M00:16:45 [ Music ] ^M00:17:04

>> Welcome back to CNET Live. Keep those calls coming. The phones are open at 888-900-CNET.

>> But...

>> We're ready to answer.

>> Who's the girl from Big Brother?

>> Julie Chen would say, "But first, it's time for the download of the week." ^M00:17:16 [ Music ] ^M00:17:20 Download of the Week is brought to you by our good friends at CNET's Download.com, purveyors of spyware, free free downloads. You can look for the little certification that says it's spyware free when you download it there. Pulling up something from the Download blog, Seth Rosenblatt again, guy knows his stuff, pointing out a Mac app. Now, I'm not actually able to make my Mac work with this display. It's a long story, so I'm not gonna be able to show you it in action, but it's really actually very simple to explain. App Cleaner goes on OSX and allows you to easily uninstall applications. As you know, it's really easy to install applications in OSX.

>> Too easy, in fact.

>> You just drag them right into the applications folder. Maybe you have to run a script. But when you pull it out of the applications folder into the trash, it's gonna leave a lot of detritus around your computer.

>> Yeah.

>> So what App Cleaner does is very simply allows you to uninstall and application and take out all those little bits it left in other folders.

>> That's genius.

>> Yeah.

>> You know who should have built that.

>> I don't know maybe...

>> Apple.

>> Apple.

>> Apple.

>> Nah, see, but then they become a monopoly.

>> That's so true.

>> They don't want to package in too much.

>> They're leaving things open for other people.

>> All right, it's time to get to your calls on 888-900-CNET. We've got people waiting, galore.

>> Let's -- I believe the longest wait has been Steve, up in Edmonton.

>> I think so.

>> Hey, Steve, are you on the line?

>> Yes.

>> Thanks for calling in. What can we help you with today?

>> I have a USB key with a bunch of common things that I use all the time, like Pigeon, and portable Firefox. But I wanted to know how to keep it encrypted to use on computers that don't give you admin access.

>> Okay. So have you tried TrueCrypt yet?

>> TrueCrypt works awesome, and it's super fast, but you need admin access on the computer your using it on.

>> Have you -- if you installed TrueCrypt -- have you tried installing TrueCrypt on the USB drive itself?

>> As a portable app itself? Would that work?

>> Yeah, I looked into the documentation from their website, and they said yeah, when you use it on the computer you do need admin access.

>> I was able to make it work without true admin access. So you might give it shot. I don't know if there was some weird level of access I had on the computer I tried it on, but I had my actual computer here at work, and then I had a Vista laptop that I don't have admin access to, and I was able to get the password to come up. The only encryption that I know on a USB drive is really more of a password protection than a true encryption. So I'm not gonna be able to help you out anymore than that. That would be your first step, is just give it a shot, see if it works. And then I'll keep looking around and maybe anybody else out there who knows an encryption program that doesn't require admin access, send us a line cnetlive@cnet.com.

>> Yeah, also...

>> Okay, thanks.

>> I'm not gonna lie, that's kind of annoying that it requires admin access. Like, come on.

>> All right, let's go to our next call, Aaron in the UK, all the way from across the pond. Hello, Aaron.

>> Hey, how you doing folks?

>> We're doing well. Thanks for calling.

>> Good. Well, it's a pleasure. Right. I've got a question now. I'm hoping either one of you can probably help us out on this. I've actually lost Microsoft Works completely, unfortunately. And I want to open a dot WDB file and a dot WPS file. And I also need to edit it as well. Ideally, really, the main concern here is the dot WDB file. Is there any program out there that you guys are aware of, Molly or Tom?

>> Have you tried Open Office for this?

>> Yeah, Open Office...

>> And it won't open the WDB?

>> It doesn't really want to play very well, if I'm being honest.

>> Yeah, it looks like...

>> It's a nightmare.

>> Oh, wow. So you don't -- because there is a viewer for word that will open it, but I don't know if it will edit it.

>> No, it won't edit it. That's the thing.

>> Right. Open and edit. Let's see.

>> And you don't have Microsoft Word. That was your issue, right?

>> No, Microsoft Word I've got, but -- I can do the WPS one. I can open it, but I can't edit it. But I need to get the database files off the work situation.

>> Right. It's a word perfect WDB?

>> So, it looks like...

>> So yeah, WDB I can't open or edit. I can open it, sorry, in office -- no -- yeah -- no, in Open Office, sorry. But I can't edit it, period.

>> Right. So according to -- so I found this howtodothings.com site -- which, genius who registered that domain, love it -- that says that you can save a WPD file as a Word file.

>> Right. [ Inaudible ].

>> So it says that -- so word will convert the document and open it in word, and then you can save it in word document format, just by using the save as dialog.

>> And that's -- is that a WPS, or is that a WDB?

>> That was WDB.

>> All right. Okay. I guess that would help.

>> So a Word Perfect file? Oh, no. Wait.

>> But it's gonna lose it's format as a database, then. Yeah?

>> Possibly. That does seem to be the -- although Microsoft Word is fairly good at preserving formatting. So you know what? It might be one of those things where you could make a copy of the file, and then try the conversion. And then if you lose all the formatting, you know, obviously we'll know it's not the right thing, but...

>> Right. Right.

>> I'm still working on finding a converter. There's a bunch of them listed, but they keep disappearing, and you know why?

>> Why?

>> Because World of Warcraft uses this and they don't want people converting the file.

>> Oh. Right. So we'll have to keep...

>> I found one, though, at WDB to CSV converter. July 19, 2008. Does not seem to have been pulled down. It's at wow.curse.com. And I'll throw the link in the show notes at blog.cnettv.com.

>> Yep, I see it.

>> Awesome. Cheers, folks.

>> All right.

>> Talk about good luck.

>> Good luck with that.

>> [Inaudible].

>> I think we may have rumbled him about why he wanted to convert that file. I don't know, from that giggle.

>> I think so. Busted.

>> Joe writes into CNET Live at cnet.com to ask, "I just switched from Mac to PC and I used to love how I could do Apple, spacebar to get a spotlight search. Is there any way to do a similar thing to launch programs in Windows?" Yes. It's called Launchy. It'll do exactly what you just asked, and a little bit more. I'll show you the little bit more in today's Quick Tip. ^M00:23:10 [ Music ] ^M00:23:11 Hey, I'm Tom Merritt, from CNET.com with a quick tip for faster access of your websites using Launchy. Now, if you don't know Launchy, it's a free keystroke launcher. Once you install it, you press alt, spacebar, and then type in any program you're looking for. It comes up. And you're on your way. But you can also launch websites from Launchy. Many websites, like YouTube, are already indexed, so you just start typing the name. If a site isn't indexed, type the whole URL, and then you can launch it. To make it more useful, you can also launch a search. Let's use YouTube as an example. Type YouTube. Once you select it, press the tab button. Now, put in a search term. Launchy launches the search page at YouTube for that term. That's pretty cool. You can also create your own launch commands. Let's make one for Gmail. Click the gear icon. Select the plugins tab. Make sure you're in the webbie plugin. Press the plus button. Type Gmail as the name. It will immediately alphabetize when you click the next box for URL. Chase it. Now type the URL. Press okay. Now, when you type Gmail, it takes you right to the Gmail log in screen. Pretty cool. That's it for this quick tip. I'm Tom Merritt for CNET.com. ^M00:24:29 [ Music ] ^M00:24:31 You love the Launchy, don't you?

>> I love the Launchy.

>> It's a cool little app.

>> It's like the Vista start menu, but better.

>> Ah, yeah. Yeah.

>> Mm-hmm because that can't do that.

>> Yeah. In XP you got nothing that can do that. So it like revolutionizes.

>> I know.

>> And this thing, you can kind of do it in the search, you're right. But it's not as fun.

>> Yeah.

>> All right, I've got one more call. Let's take it on line four. Steve, what can we help you today with, Steve?

>> Hey, I was wondering if I could use a BlackBerry as a Wi-Fi only device, without the cellular. Just for email...

>> So you got no sim card in it, is that what you're saying?

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> Or no service, essentially.

>> Oh. Yeah, there is actually -- I did just find -- because I've been having a problem with my Curve where it can't switch between the cell service and the Wi-Fi without crashing, which I love. But I discovered that under "options" there is a way. I think it's -- I wish I had it in front of me. It's like, options, connections. But there is a way to specifically turn off each individual connection. So you can turn on the Wi-Fi, and you can turn off the GSM. And there is that option contained on the device itself. And then I think you should just -- your basically just forcing to use Wi-Fi.

>> Okay. Can you...

>> It's called -- a ha, it's called "Manage Connections" my magic ear told me.

>> Our BlackBerry wielding producer.

>> Yeah. So you go to your little -- the wrench. You know, the little wrench picture, and then Manage Connections, and then you can actually turn off the cellular connection.

>> All right. Thanks, Steve. Hope that helps you out. Good luck with that.

>> Yeah. Check it out. All right. Now, quickly, it is time for the Best of the Web. ^M00:25:52 [ Music ] ^M00:25:57 Best of the Web brought to us by our good friends at Webware.com. I am kind of interested in this, but a little bit skeptical. Mozilla is apparently experimenting with a universal content reader that they're calling Snowl.

>> Snowl.

>> I might be less skeptical if it weren't for that name, but the idea is...

>> That's snow owl.

>> Snow owl. Great.

>> Except it's squished.

>> The idea is that it's an aggregator, like an RSS reader for news and blog stories. So it delivers them via RSS in the browser, not in the, like, email client or separate client. But it also does these microblog services, like Twitter. It can do Facebook status updates. So the idea is it's kind of just an aggregator for everything that you read all the time. Maybe. Maybe.

>> All right. So check it out, Snowl or Snule [phonetic], or something like that.

>> Read all about it Webware.

>> Next week, I will not be here. I'll be off at the podcast expo, but Brian Cooley will be back, and you'll be back. No?

>> Maybe.

>> I don't know. Jaime Lizendeck [assumed spelling] will be here there. He's the deejay, weejay. Join us then. 4 PM Eastern, 1 PM Pacific.

>> 10 AM Hawaiian.

>> 10 Am Hawaiian. ^M00:26:56 [ Music ] ^M00:27:07

>> When Jack left for college, he said he'd major in communication. But they worried. Fortunately, he had a good advisor. Best Buy. You. Happier. ^E00:27:24