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The 404 189: Where Dee is not Eric Franklin

Our No. 404 fanboy Dee Wren takes time out of his busy filming schedule to bring some positivity to our Monday morning. After revealing some news about the upcoming Google Android release tomorrow, we talk about the weekend box office, touch on Facebook porn, and make an overall attempt to shade ourselves from Jeff's rays of hate (unsuccessfully). Happy Monday!

To make up for all the lives we've ruined with The 404, we invite our buddy Dee Wren into the studio to pimp his philanthropic project, From Us With Love. It's a nonprofit organization that supplies aid to children in South Africa and Dee is helping to shoot a documentary on their efforts to send a group of them to Australia for the Homeless World Cup. We'd love for you to contribute as much time, money, and resources as you can to their foundation. The best part of this endeavor is that For Us With Love is already corporate-sponsored, so the full 100 percent of your contribution will go directly into the project, no filters. It's a very noble cause, please check out the Web site and do what you can to help!

Episode 189 Download today's podcast … Read more

The 404 183: Where it smells funky in here

It smells funky in the studio today, and it isn't just Wilson eating ravioli for breakfast. John Funk of Winnipeg, Canada, one of our favorite 404 listeners, joins the show to talk about Frank's Red Hot, the Buzz Out Loud hijack and hockey. The eh's and aboots abound!

Dan the Mantern here. On today's show we discuss celebrity sex tapes. From Paris Hilton to Austin Powers star Verne Troyer, it seems like everyone who's anyone has made a naughty film. Apparently, a spyware program has been circulating a phony link to an NSFW video of Barack Obama. No offense, but does anyone really think that Obama would have a sex tape? I really pity the fool who clicks the link only to find their hard drive infected by a virus. Even if the video was real, do you really need to see that? We wonder if the world would be as keen to see a Sarah Palin video or, dare I say it, a John McCain sex tape. If there is a recording of McCain taking care of his "executive privileges," I'm sure it's on 8 millimeter and you'd need your own hand-cranked projector to view it.

EPISODE 183 Download today's podcast … Read more

How to burn an ISO image

A lot of our tips here at CNET require you to burn an ISO image to CD. Many of you have written in asking how the heck to do that. Here's the video on how. Watch that then come back for the steps.

An ISO file is a single file, usually with the extension .ISO. Sometimes, on Macs, they may be called .CDR. It's essentially all the data that goes on a CD, also called a disk image. When you burn the ISO to CD, you're essentially creating an exact copy of the CD the ISO was … Read more

Featured Freeware: CDBurnerXP

Though this multifaceted burning tool won't win any beauty awards, it has almost everything Windows users need to create CDs and DVDs. One of the most glaring holes in Windows XP is a good DVD burner program, and CDBurnerXP Pro fits the bill well. Despite a slightly confusing interface, this freeware tool should not disappoint users who take the time to familiarize themselves with its functionality.

The core of the program's feature set consists of three main tasks, which are prompted via a wizard upon start-up: writing data CDs and DVDs, creating CDs for audio playback, and ripping … Read more

You are not prepared for the 'Warcraft: Wrath' intro

Blizzard Entertainment on Thursday released the CG intro for its next game, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. This is the second expansion for WoW. The first, The Burning Crusade was released in January 2007 and sold 2.4 million copies in 24 hours to become the fastest-selling PC game in history.

The CG intro for The Burning Crusade appeared about a month before the game's release. Blizzard has commented already that it expects Wrath to be released sometime in the fourth quarter. The fact that it's debuted the intro for the game is evidence that … Read more

'Wrath of the Lich King' looking good, 'WoW' fans say

Since its launch in the fall of 2004, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft has shattered expectations at every turn.

Prior to its release, no American massively multiplayer online game (MMO) had ever reached what was then seen as the magical million subscribers level--even major hits like EverQuest and Ultima Online. Yet almost before anyone could blink, WoW, as it's known, had surpassed 4 million paying users and now has more than 10 million worldwide, and at $15 a month for most users, it may well be bringing in more than $1 billion a year.

Then, prior to the January 2007 release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, no one had ever heard of the kind of nationwide midnight madness lines associated with iPhone and Xbox launches for a game expansion. Sure enough, however, people lined up at game stores everywhere for hours for the right to be among the very first to buy Burning Crusade, and the update went on to sell millions of copies.

And now, with the second major WoW expansion, The Wrath of the Lich King, in beta testing, Blizzard is getting ready to prove yet again that when it comes to American MMOs, it is the undisputed gold standard.

"It's just beautiful," said longtime WoW player and Lich King beta player Katrina Glerum. "The game really feels epic in a way that The Burning Crusade didn't....Burning Crusade felt like an extension of the (original) game. This really feels epic, and that you're part of something grand." … Read more

Rip and burn Blu-ray and DVD discs with free StarBurn software, today only

If you're looking for a Nero-like utility that can rip, burn, and author just about any kind of optical media, look no further: StarBurn v.10 supports everything from CD-R to DVD+RW to Blu-ray, and it's free--today only--from Giveaway of the Day.

Interestingly, there's a freeware version of StarBurn that's available every day, but the Giveaway-of-the-Day version includes features found only in the $495 Network Edition--namely, DVD and Blu-ray decrypters and network burning capabilities. While StarBurn doesn't actually copy protected BDs and DVDs, it can create image files (ISOs) from them, which you can … Read more

Featured Freeware: FreeRip

Like a finely tuned laser, FreeRip 3 does one task: extracts songs from your CDs. You remember CDs, right? (Heck, I barely do.) Fortunately, FreeRip accomplishes its goal accurately--with little flair or window-dressing--and makes for an easy-to-use audio-track ripper.

The latest version of the program features some long overdue enhancements. Chief among them is the inclusion of the WMA format, and it's hard to believe it wasn't included before. FreeRip also supports WAV, MP3, Vorbis, and FLAC. Other features include multitrack ripping and an option to use the program as an audio-file converter. The options menu is extensive … Read more

One-third of us copy DVDs

Yeah, I know, it hit me as a surprise too. However, that's one of the findings found in a recent Consumer Home Piracy market research study carried out by Futuresource Consulting and sponsored by Macrovision.

The study was done in May 2008 in the U.S. and the U.K. with the sample size of more than 5,000 people. As it turns out, one-third of all the respondents in both countries admit to having made copies of prerecorded DVDs, on average about 13 titles each, in the last six months, up from just over a quarter of respondents … Read more