A huge array of topics on today's show -- we hope you didn't miss any of them.

Dan's still searching for his perfect smartphone, and is leaning towards one of the Android-based phones. That means he's looking at either the Google Nexus One or the Droid. Lest you overlook the magnitude of this development, it means our in-house Mac fanatic is thinking of using something other than the iPhone.

I talked with a friend this week who made a mind-blowing point: Today's children might very well be learning to use computers before they learn to speak. Which makes English their second language, after "computer." And there's no doubt, "computer" is a language unto itself.

Bill Gates agrees with me: He's saying that if we really want to reduce pollution and change our addictive relationship with energy, we need to encourage innovation on a massive scale. This dovetails quite nicely with my argument that the government should offer massive inducement prizes instead of trying to tax us into a "low-carbon" future. You've been hearing about these prizes on the Wise Guys since at least July 2007. I think it's premature to call us Bill Gates's advisors, but he sure could hire us if he wants.

A listener texted us (at 515-989-1040) to ask whether we like AMD or Intel chips. Dan prefers Intel, arguing that they're more compatible with programs of all sorts than AMD chips. I argue that AMD chips have never posed a problem for me in the past (and I use a wide range of programs), and since they usually deliver more power for the same price you'd pay for an Intel chip, they represent a better value. So, really, the answer is: We're a show divided.

Dan complained about his progressive lenses and got a call from an optometrist who suggested he might have gotten his lenses shaped too small. That's why we like doing this show: Sometimes the listeners are teaching us, rather than the other way around.

Another listener texted to ask what to do about his computer that had failed catastrophically. (We're talking about one that won't even start in "safe mode".) Long story short, he needs to take it in for professional service and pay a hefty sum to get it working. That's why we will tell you over and over and over again to back up your data on a regular basis (shoot for once a week, but for goodness' sake, don't wait more than a month between backups).

And then we got into the matter of captioning at movie theaters. As more people find themselves with hearing loss (either due to age or to abuse of things like iPods), demand is going to increase for services to help the hearing-impaired. At the movies, it's difficult to offer captioning without irritating those prickly customers who don't want to see the captions. A solution: Rear-window captioning, which projects the captions on a screen behind the audience, making them visible only to people who use mirrors to view them. There's an active movement to make captions more widely available at movie theaters. We wonder how long it will be before radio captioning is adopted.

In the Help Desk this week, we answered questions about getting cell-phone service overseas and what to do about bogus antivirus programs.

Thanks for listening this week. Tune in next Saturday at noon!

- Brian Gongol

Twitter • newsletter • player • podcast • iTunes • Facebook • email
call: 515-284-1040 • text: 515-989-1040

We do our best to answer as many questions as we can, but the truth of the matter is that Dan and I could each work 40 hours a week answering your calls and still not have enough time to get to everything. But because I have a colossal guilt complex, I'm trying to answer more of your questions online. It's not perfect, but at least we're trying.

So, let's call this "Help Desk Wednesday." I've answered two listener questions that you can read at the following links:

1. How can I get cell phone service overseas?
2. How can I get rid of a virus that pretends to be an antivirus program?

As always, this advice comes with the standard "use at your own risk" disclaimer, but it should be pretty close to what you need. And set an alarm on your cell phone now to remind yourself to listen to the Wise Guys this Saturday at noon on Newsradio 1040 WHO!

- Brian Gongol

Twitter • newsletter • player • podcast • iTunes • Facebook • email
call: 515-284-1040 • text: 515-989-1040

Our thanks to Chris Jackson for filling in today for Dan Adams. Chris helpfully shared his experience with his new smartphone (an HTC Touch), which got us talking about the new service from Bing -- Twitter maps. As people spend more and more time with their smartphones, especially using tools like geotagging (which tells other people where you are in real time), it's inevitable that there will come a day when some people will start plugging directly into the Internet through things implanted in their bodies. We already have cochlear implants to restore hearing and bionic eyes to restore sight; it's not going to be long before people will choose to add enhancements for fun rather than just for medical need.

And when that happens, we'll have a whole new set of issues to deal with. When writer AJ Jacobs tells of getting into trouble with his wife for what "he" did in one of her dreams, he's only a step or two away from the serious question of what we will be responsible for having done while plugged into the internet while we're asleep.

I experimented with the Amazon Mechanical Turk this week. In an effort to respond to the requests of some of my ASL instructors for an explanation about what I talk about on the radio, I hired people to transcribe the text of some recent radio shows. The results were surprisingly quick -- and high-quality. It's called the "Mechanical Turk" as a play on a Revolutionary War-era chess-playing "robot" that wasn't really a robot. Amazon's Mechanical Turk service lets people hire others to do work online -- or make money by doing that work.

Speaking of hiring out -- it looks like NASA will have to outsource future efforts to go to the Moon. The President is cutting NASA's planned mission to the Moon from the 2011 budget, so it looks like the next American mission to the Moon will be conducted by a private group. And it could happen very soon if anyone is eager enough to win the Google Lunar X-Prize, which could be worth $20 million to a group that puts a rover on the moon, drives it about the length of two football fields, and sends video back to Earth -- all before New Year's Eve in 2012.

But even though the government could be getting out of the Moon mission business, it might be just about to bring us nuclear fusion, if early results from experiments at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory hold up. Very exciting! We could have early breakthroughs in nuclear fusion by the end of this year.

We keep falling behind in answering your tech questions -- two hours a week just isn't enough -- so we're going to try answering some of those questions online. I've answered a listener question about Microsoft Outlook this week. Your questions are always welcomed via e-mail (wiseguys@whoradio.com), text (515-989-1040), or Twitter (@briangongol).

Thanks for listening!

- Brian Gongol

Twitter • player • podcast • iTunes • Facebook • email

The volume of questions we receive both on the air and via our many online channels is simply more than we can handle in a two-hour show every weekend. So, with that in mind, I'm going to try to answer some of the questions we receive over on my website, where I have a little more flexibility to add pictures and move things around than I can do here. It might also help me lay out some of the better questions we receive during the week so we can talk about them on the air each weekend. If you'd like to check it out, the first question answered there is about how to get a free alternative to Microsoft Outlook.

In today's podcast, a clip from this past weekend in which I explain why I had to leave the show halfway through to attend my precinct caucuses -- even though it's not a Presidential election year.

As always, your questions are invited. Save our text line in your cell phone and send us a question whenever it strikes you: 515-989-1040.

- Brian Gongol

Twitter • player • podcast • iTunes • Facebook • email

Here's the Wise Guys logo I made for the show so that he could get it printed on schwag (you know, promotional stuff you get):



I had CafePress put the logo on some Wise Guys schwag, including a golf shirt I wore to the station today.

By the way, if you're a pro or semi-pro at designing logos, you can make some money online by competing in the Logo Tournament. If you're not so good at design, but still want to make some extra money, I have a long list of ways to make money online.

A caller wanted to know how to get free tools for things like antivirus and anti-spyware. We can help with my long list of free programs, including open-source programs like Firefox and free tools like AVG Anti-Virus and Spybot Search and Destroy.

The earthquake in Haiti is a reminder that everyone needs some kind of online footprint that they can use to tell their friends and family that they're OK in case of emergency. Whether you have a Facebook page or a Twitter account or something else, it's important to have some way to tell the world that you're OK.