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About 35 people joined us at the Emergency BBQ Meetup at Bluegrass Restaurant in Highland Park, IL. Thanks to Jim Lederer and Dave Teichman for their hospitality. John Pozadzides was also in town for Hosting Con. John Stopped by and let us know Woopra 1.2 RC2 is now available for download. Here are the links:
Windows Version
Mac Version
Linux Version
Google has been the top search engine for years. Some new kids are challenging the search giant. We looked at Viewzi a while back and I still think it’s the most interesting search alternative. Cuil (unfortunately pronounced cool) launched Sunday night. They’re new, so I want to give them a shot, but so far some of the results are a little odd. Rafe Needleman wrote about the Cuil launch on Webware.
d-VISION is an internship program for product development and industrial designers. Flowlight is one of their current projects and it promises the ability to write on the air.
At the meetup, I unboxed, or really I re-unboxed, the Beats by Dr. Dre headphones. I’m impressed and encourage you to try out a pair after they go on display in Apple Stores. I’m impressed, but I’m no audiophile. Here is what 3 reviewers had to say about the Beats:
Charlie White, Dvice
John Biggs, CrunchGear
Josh Quittner, Time.com
Cali’s Shirt Courtesy of Brew City Online
Go there.
« GBTV #399 | GeekBrief.TV
GBTV #401 | Ones and 0s »
July 29th, 2008 at 12:36 am
Apple is certainly choice equipment for testing out the beats headphones. From my Bondi Blue to my Dual Core 2 the audio quality has always been a higher true. ^..^~
July 29th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Yeah, I tried Cuil today and was also less than wowed by the results. I, too, tried “Cali Lewis” and on my search GeekBrief.tv came up as the first return, so that was good, but all the rest were odd, peripheral references. I tried the name of my site, “GadgetyTech” and did not get my site, but again got odd, peripheral references to my site. I’ll try Cuil again after they’ve had a chance to pull themselves together, but I’m afraid my hopes are not high.
A nice #400, and good job to Max Murphy on the opening montage! Thanks to William, Emily, Jude, Nick, Rick, David, Chris and everyone else who has helped Cali and Neal put out my favorite podcast. The empty-glass drinks are on me!
July 29th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Could it be that there’s more than one Cali Lewis out there on the planet? tee hee ;)
On one hand the choice of the name Cuil is awful. But then again, the misspelling of the site has generated a bit of publicity.
My one word review of Cuil: meh
July 29th, 2008 at 4:58 am
First, congrats on #400.
Second, Cuil is such a bad name. That’s an initial turn off right there. I actually like how it lays out results, I think another engine did something familiar w/ actual site clips. However, at first it could not even find my car (Mazda 3). I searched Mazda and it gave a list of Mazda cars in the sidebar thing… but still no Mazda 3. It’s fixed now, but I’m still sticking w/ google this time.
Third, $350 for headphones.. ouch. Then again, mine were $125, w/ a MSRP of $200 I think. But still, I hope they get into the stores soon, I’d like to hear them myself, though, no audiophile myself.
July 29th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Cali,
Please don’t support Monster Cable in anyway. They make it common practice to bully small companies with “Monster” in their names, even if they are not related at all to home theater. Their products are tremendously overpriced, and they spend tat profit on lawyers, shutting down small, hardworking, business owners.
A quick search will reveal cases too numerous to list, but to get you started, here’s an excerpt from the shownotes of my podcast, The Real HT Info Podcast, episode 34
“Monster Cable, aka Goons and Bullies, beside making overpriced cables, can also lay down a heck of a frivolous lawsuit. Kurt from Blue Jean Cables spanked them hard (http://www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm), but their latest victims, Monster Mini Golf (http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/26/monster-cable-at-it-again-sues-mini-golf-company/), may not be so lucky. Boycott Monster, get more for your Home Theater $$, and don’t support starving out the little guy.”
P.S. Check out Sennheiser, Grado, Beyerdynamic, and Ultrasone, among others, for headphones that will sound as good as the Monsters, at less cost to both your wallet and other business owners.
July 29th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Damn you Cali! The Beats, the BEATS! Now I have more saving to do for new headphone! It’s all your fault!!! jk ^_^
But seriously, as a audiophile, I have been spending too much on home audio equipments… receivers, speakers, and cables (yes, they do add up). Shopping for headphone and earbuds are mostly the second frontier.
However, I always have bad luck with headphone. M first pair of cheap SONY just broke after 6 months of use. then I brought a decent pair of, also, SONY for replacement, too bad my friend’s cat ate it few summer back.
I had been shopping for headphone at the beginning of this summer, and seeing all the wonderful reviews on newegg and circuit city website, I decided to go to the circuit city store to test and buy a pair of Pioneer. Sadly, these headphones actually does NOT exist in store. I needed a pair for the evening, so I decided to go for a walk at Target and pick up a pair of retro Panasonic RP-HTX7. It isn’t satisfying, but for now, it will do until I have my next headphone budget around.
I always had been interested on the Grado RS-1, but well… it is a pretty damn expensive pair. More important, no one carry it in store (at least for where I live) to have it test out. But now, with the Beats, it is half the price of a Grado RS-1 and yes there is a local apple store. I just can’t wait they put it on the shelf, physically, not digitally.
Maybe you can give a brief review on your show about the Beats to relief my headphone shopping experience.
Congrats on show 400 btw!
July 29th, 2008 at 8:50 am
I understand what critics of Monster Cable are saying. Some of the points are valid. I agree that Monster goes too far in their efforts to protect their trademark, but I think they have a right to go too far. Absolutely Monster sells their cables for far more than it costs Monster to make them, but they have a right to do that as well. If people don’t want to pay the price of a Monster Cable, they don’t have to pay the price of a Monster Cable. Lots of people are willing to pay, though, and that’s what a free market is all about.
A bigger issue is when retailers do not stock reasonably priced alternatives. That’s what we should get upset about. When the lowest priced option in a store on any cable is $30, that’s a problem. It shouldn’t be a problem, though that a company wants to sell a cable for what ever price someone is willing to pay. That’s freedom.
I buy cables from Monster and I buy cables from Monoprice. I’ve had both good results and bad results from cables bought from both places. I have a Component Cable from Monster that drives me crazy because the plastic around the RCA plugs is too fat and the RCA plugs are much, much tighter than they need to be. I have an ethernet cable from Monoprice that is next to impossible to unplug without adding a screwdriver to the mix.
Monster Cables are well made and beautiful to look at. Lower priced cables may be well made too, but there certainly isn’t the same attention to detail. There are some Monster Cables that are almost works of art. Does that justify the price? Only if people are willing to pay it.
My friends in the music world absolutely love Monster Cable. My friends in the digital world almost universally hate Monster. If you don’t want a Monster Cable product, you don’t have to buy one, but I would hope we all stand for a free market where companies always have the right to manufacture high-end products.
The Beats by Dr. Dre are headphones designed to reproduce the same quality sound produced when music is played in a professional recording studio environment and they’re on the market at a price point that competes with Bose. I don’t think they can be compared to $100 HDMI cable because they are competitively priced for the target market and, to me, they sound better than our Bose Quiet Comforts and our AKG studio headphones.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Of course I cannot let #400 go by without saying CONGRATULATIONS and THANK YOU!!!
July 29th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
After trying viewzi today I felt that it has a great interface, but the results were confusing, I don’t understand the flow. I think if google had a jazzy interface like viewzi I would dig it. But of course the payoff would be speed. And who doesn’t love the speed of google.
Cuil on the other hand was a bit faster than viewzi, but the results were not very good. I tried searching my name and weird results came up including some adult graphic stuff. Google seems to actually understand what i’m searching for… the others don’t.
All in all I like the interfaces, but hate the actual usability of them. Google rocks, no matter how boring it looks.
July 29th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Congrats guys!!!
July 29th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
“I agree that Monster goes too far in their efforts to protect their trademark, but I think they have a right to go too far.”
Cal, not sure how you arrived at ‘they have a right to go too far’ :) I can’t see how this form of bullying is in anyway justifiable. It doesn’t do anything for business as a whole other than demonstrate that money = legal decisions in your favour.
Anyway, onto Cuil. Discussion on the crap results that they provide has quickly faded in favour of an argument on their name here in the Irish part of the Twitterverse. Not many agree with their decision on the meaning of the word and dictionaries are being waved around :)
July 29th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Congratulations guys! I know that 400 is only a round number, but is an amazing achievement nonetheless.
Can’t wait to see what the next 400 episodes bring!
-Max
July 29th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Congratulations on #400!
As for cuil, the name is after the Irish hero Finn McCuil, not that that makes it any better, but the spelling is actually correct.
My results from the few tests I’ve done on cuil are mixed. I’ve had some good and some completely off however the good ones are different enough from Google that there might be a reason to use it as well. I’m not going to be too quick to pass final judgment though.
Monster… I think they’re a bunch of crooks out to fool innocent people into paying to much money for a piece of wire. However, you’re absolutely right in that as along as people support them they have every right to be in business (as long as it’s legal…).
Looking forward to #401.
July 29th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Congrats on #400!!
July 29th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
> … they sound better than our Bose Quiet Comforts and our AKG studio headphones.
@ Cali, my audiophile pals say that Bose products tend to be over-rated though I’m in no position to know as I’ve used Sennheisers for oh, I don’t know how long and currently wearing Philips models, the latter of which have pleasantly surprised me with remarkable audio quality for the relatively low prices of their products.
F.Y.I., I finally remembered that type of studio microphone the vocalists’ in my parents’ families were so terrified of: the Telefunken U-47.
I hope your Macbook Pro arrives soon, safe and sound. ^..^~
July 30th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Congrats and thanks to you, Neal and everyone supporting you for #400!
I tried cuil early on and it was a total miss. Now, after a few days or whatever I went back, but it really is not good at finding stuff, regardless of any supposed features.
My interest in four wd boondocking campers caused me to search “Syncro Westfalia”. Google gets right to the meat of the topic with forums, road tests, tech support and background sites. Cuil only came up with some for sale at RV sites, nothing as rich as google. Also, cuil had none of its “features” for that topic.
Second I tried another interest “Maryland Archaeology”. Google leads with good background, organizations and state government info. Cuil’s first page did not even find the “Archeology Society of Maryland” (note the different spelling, both are correct) but the catagories “feature” was ridiculous: one they offered up was “National Parks of Israel”. Huh?
I really would like to see some viable competition, but right now cuil is very disappointing.
Congrats again on #400!
July 30th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Thanks for the tip on Woopra. Looks like the are streamlining things a bit, since it took them less than 24 hours to accept my sites into their beta! :-)
July 31st, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Congrats on #400. Sigh. It seems only yesterday you were creeping up on #100.
The choice of “Cuil” is most unfortunate. I suppose you could say that “Google” is spelled wrong, too (Googol, or 10 to the power of 100, is how mathematicians would have spelled it before Google came around), but that’s a small percentage of the audience, and “Google” at least looks right to the rest of the unwashed masses. “Cuil,” doesn’t look like it’s pronounced “cool,” any way you slice it.
I wonder what they bid for “Cool.com.”
August 1st, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Love your show and appreciate all your hard work. Sorry to say though that I went ahead and bought the Beats by Dr. Dre headphones by Monster Cable from the Canadian online Apple store, without auditioning them in person first. I know that is always a bad idea, but the online reviews were positively glowing and (totally without any blame being intended here) your own statement that you would actually pay the $350 price to keep your set actually kind of put me over the fence. Sadly, I was not at all satisfied with their performance.
I suppose that I could be called an “audiophile”. I am a discriminating listener and I go to some effort to protect my hearing and I’ve spent multi-thousands of dollars for a very good home theatre system. I was hoping to recreate, to some degree, the quality I hear from my speakers while on the go with my iPod/iPhone and to also be able to use the headphones at home during those times when playing the full speaker system would be undesirable (late at night, for example).
Unfortunately, the Beats headphones have a “noise floor”. This is the low level hiss produced by the built-in amplifier. Many people may not notice this slight hiss. Certainly, if you are outside, with a lot of noise around you, it may go totally unnoticed. And if you are playing loud music that has no silent passages, then it would likely drown out the hiss. But in audio terms, often the most difficult thing to reproduce is silence! Much like how the best TV images come from a display that can produce deep, pure black, the best audio comes from speakers or headphones driven by amplification that can produce dead silence.
The Beats headphones are marketed as being “studio quality” and the quote from Dr. Dre is that the Beats reproduce music “the way [he] hears it”. In my opinion, if that is actually true, then Dr. Dre must either have some hearing loss or else he is stretching the truth in order to sell this new product. Simply put, there is no chance – zero – that a professional recording artist would accept an audible noise floor in his/her production equipment. Recording artists pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid any unwanted distortion.
The sound of the headphones reproducing music may indeed have more bass and perhaps even better high frequency extension than many competing headphones. But with the built-in amplifier creating audible hiss at all times in the background, these Beats headphones are most certainly not “high resolution” as they claim to be. I’m not saying they can’t be enjoyable. But to me, “high resolution” and “studio quality” absolutely demand a lack of distortion and freedom from an audible noise floor. Therefore, these Beats do not live up to their claims, their marketing or their (rather high) asking price. Simply put, I think you would be doing a disservice to yourself and others if you were to endorse or recommend these headphones.
Thanks very much for your time and please keep up the great work!
February 19th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Your blog is very interesting, i have bookmarked your site for future referrence :)