text

The 404 317: Where someone poisoned the watering hole

Wilson's still at the car show, so Jeff and I play twosies under the table. We start off with a very important announcement that involves us literally showing up at your door with mace and a large, blunt object. We also reveal more details about our Meetup, apologize for yesterday's spoiler, and discuss some seriously screwed up stories!

Okay, so let's get a few business items out of the way while I have you here. FYI, we do have a ringtone in the works thanks to our buddy Jamie Lewis, check back here tomorrow for a download link. Also, be sure to keep sending in your adventure/prison/survival stories to win a copy of Tom Avery's book, "To the End of the Earth." Leave us an e-mail (the404 [at] cnet [dot] com) or call in at 866-404-CNET to submit an entry!

Finally, bust out your digital/analog calendar and mark this down: 404 MEETUP on April 16th (next Thursday) @ The Delancey. We plan on getting there around 7:30 and staying until whenever our legs give out. So here's what you have to do:

Go here. Sign up for a Meetup account and join "The 404 Podcast Meetup Group" RSVP for the Meetup on April 16th

Make sure you join our group even if you live somewhere else and can't make it to this one, it will still serve as a good barometer for future travels and meetups--we'll use this group to organize and plan all future events, so don't sleep on signing up and we'll see you next Thursday!

Now back to today's episode: who knew that you could get Viagra, the popular ED drug, in an aerosol can? In Europe, scientists are playing around with a spray-on version. We personally DO NOT have any experience in this field, nor do we suffer from any of those kinds of ailments, but Jeff just happens to have a "friend" that's used it for recreation and speaks good things. By the time this comes to the United States, it'll probably just be a laser point that you just aim at the little tadpole to awaken the bullfrog.

Next, we get a little tangential discussing a new service called TinyChat that allows users to create online chat rooms on the fly, which of course opens up a whole discussion about the old days of chatting, with IRC and AOL chats. Jeff takes advantage of the intimate studio environment and reveals a little something about his college years, but so what? Institutes of higher learning are practicallybuilt to encourage experiemtation. We'll get behind you and your freak flag any day, Bakula! Well...maybe next to you.

EPISODE 317 Download today's podcast |  Subscribe in iTunes |  Subscribe in RSS… Read more

Webware Radar: Play games, win cash (or maybe lose it)

WorldGaming, a site that allows console video game players to challenge each other to earn cash, announced Wednesday that it has officially launched to the public. Along with that announcement, the site has launched a 30-day online "launch party" that will give users the opportunity to join daily tournaments, earn cash, and receive sign-up bonuses.

WorldGaming allows users to challenge each other on genres like first-person shooters and sports games. The players add funds to their personal accounts and mutually decide how much cash to play for. After the game is over, WorldGaming verifies who won and awards … Read more

The Kindle 2 has enough features, for some

With the launch of the Amazon Kindle 2 and its text-to-speech feature, a broader range of reading materials would now be available to the 15 million Americans represented by The Reading Rights Coalition, a group which defends the rights of those who cannot read printed words because of blindness, dyslexia, spinal cord injury, or other disabilities. However, The Authors Guild is looking add a hoop or two for people with print disabilities to jump through .

As previously written by my colleague Greg Sandoval, "the retailer, which makes the popular Kindle electronic-book reader, announced late Friday that the company is modifying systems to allow authors and publishers to decide whether to enable Kindle's text-to-speech function on a per-title basis."

According to The Reading Rights Coalition: "The Guild has told them that in order to read their books with text-to-speech they must either submit to a burdensome special registration system and prove their disabilities--or pay extra. The Guild's position is contrary to the principle of equal opportunity for all and discriminates against millions of people with print disabilities. The Guild's position is outrageous and discriminates against the millions of people with print disabilities who are eager to be their readers and customers."… Read more

Senators introduce bill to curb mobile spam

Two Senators are attempting to curb unsolicited text messages with a bill to strengthen government oversight of commercial texts.

Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) on Thursday introduced the m-SPAM Act, which would strictly prohibit commercial text messages to wireless numbers listed on the Do Not Call registry. The bill would also give the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission more authority to regulate unwanted text messages.

"Mobile spam invades both a consumer's cell phone and monthly bill," Snowe said in a statement. "There is also increasing concern that mobile spam will become … Read more

TomTom debuts XL 340 and One 140 series GPS devices

TomTom announced Wednesday that it's rolling out a few new models: the TomTomXL 340 and 340S and the TomTom One 140 and 140S. The new units now include maps of Mexico, in addition to maps of the United States and Canada. Furthermore, TomTom's Advanced Lane Guidance feature trickles farther down the product lineup, as these new models gain the highly useful ability to display detailed information about major highway lanes and where they go.

The TomTom XL 340 and 340S are 4.3-inch wide-screen models that both feature TomTom Map Share, which allows users to upload corrections to … Read more

To get drunk fan kicked out, text 513-381-JERK

Please make contact with that deep and joyous part of you that is passive-aggressive.

Yes, the part of you that wants to remove the man sitting and spitting in the seat in front of you at an NFL game, or the lady who is flipping everyone off at a baseball game (probably a Yankees fan). Yes, the part of you that doesn't want to get involved in finger gestures, f-words, or fisticuffs.

Rejoice, because the wonders of texting can now be brought to bear down on the miscreants of the sports arena. All you have to do is know … Read more

Convert from PDF to Word for free

Free PDF to Word Converter shares many things in common with its competitors besides a similar name. There are some useful features here that try to address the various needs and permutations of PDFs, but it struggles to get a final output that looks perfect.

There's no drag-and-drop support, but the program can batch-convert PDFs without being restricted to specific folders. You can also customize your output folder, and choose a destination format in RTF or DOC. There's support for high levels of security, with space to provide passwords from the PDF owner and the PDF user. You … Read more

Great DOC output, but a bumpy road to get there

Converting PDFs to Word-compatible formats while not paying for the privilege nor getting scammed can feel a bit like herding cats. Free PDF to Word Doc Converter gets a few things wrong, but eventually will land you the DOC output you want.

Impressively, it offers one of the cleanest and most accurate free PDF-to-DOC conversions around. Users can change the output path and name, convert an entire document or just specific pages, and ditch images in the source PDF if need be. From there, it goes a bit downhill. The option to open the output DOC in WordPad didn't … Read more

More options than Notepad

Discover an alternative to Microsoft's Notepad: BDV Notepad. This Text file composition app offers users improved options on the traditionally simple program, but sacrifices some of the original's sleekness.

BDV Notepad provides many improvements upon normal word processors that save as txt. files. In an attempt to combine some of Microsoft Word's options with Notepad, users can click a button to undo previous work. In addition, users can send documents directly to a recipient in an e-mail, choose background and font colors, and even create URLs automatically as they are typed. This unlimited trial also offers an … Read more