Peripherals

We reviewed the BlackArmor PS110 USB 3.0 external hard drive from Seagate and found that it is faster than any other USB external hard drive.

A More Perfect Union

(Credit: Schneids/The 404)

If you've ever petitioned Facebook to add a "Dislike" button to the site, you might get a kick out of a new antisocial networking site that lets your friends anonymously rag on you from the privacy of their homes. Failin.gs is currently in beta, but soon you'll be able to hit your friends up for anonymous comments about your mundane status updates. No, it doesn't integrate with Facebook itself (thankfully), but hopefully it'll force you to think twice about telling everyone what you had for dinner last night.

After 30 years of the same boring design, Heinz finally wised up and redesigned its ketchup packets. Fans of fast food will be treated to a new packet that opens up on BOTH ends: the top features the same tear-off perforation, but the new bottom opens to reveal a section for dunking your fries, which happens to be one of the most popular applications for the condiment! Check out this video on CBSNews.com for more details and look for the new packets coming to fast food joints near you!

Doppelganger week!

(Credit: The 404 )

Last week's viral "Post your doppelganger to Facebook" meme might violate Facebook's terms of service, but we're featuring our own celebrity photos on today's episode anyway...with a twist. Check out our cartoon doppelgangers above and let us know what you think: does Wilson really look like the Asian kid from "Up?" Does Jeff turn into a green-faced ogre at night? And should I seriously consider growing a goatee? Sound off by leaving us a voice mail at 1-866-404-CNET or send an e-mail to the404(at)cnet{dot}com.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

EPISODE 513 Listen now: Download today's podcast



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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast

(Credit: Maahstud/The404)

We kick off today's episode of CNET's The 404 Podcast with a fun story about the Nestle Crunch Hotline number. The company's latest viral campaign offers a series of hidden menus within the prerecorded call center that lets callers choose between English, Spanish, and Pig Latin language options. You can also choose to hear prerecorded knock-knock jokes, "funner game options," and the weirdest feature of all, which lets you listen to the sound of bubble wrap. We attempt to call the number during the show, but the line is so popular that we keep getting busy signals, so call 1-800-295-0051 if you have time to waste after listening to our show.

Jeff also brings us an amazing deal from Dell for the new Alienware M11x. It won our Best of CES 2010 award and, judging by its size, it's comparable to a gaming Netbook. You get an 11.6-inch display and a 1.3GHz Pentium SU4100 processor inside as well as a battery with 2 hours of gaming play and 6.5 hours of standby time. Best of all, the gaming rig comes in at a base price of $799. No, we're not working on the Alienware payroll, but with portable gaming systems dropping in price, the appeal of PC gaming is bigger than ever and we thought our listeners would appreciate this deal. Check it out!

Lots more stories in the rundown today, including a $7,000 talking sex robot, a T-shirt that all predators will enjoy, the new Sonic the Hedgehog 4 trailer, and more!

EPISODE 512 Listen now: Download today's podcast



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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast

The NEC AS171 has a traditional 4:3 aspect ratio.

King-size thanks to Props Guy Jim! (Click for larger image.)

(Credit: Jim Sleeth)

All the recent frenzy over the Apple iPad might be too much for the tech nerds of the world to handle. Tuesday, Josh Topolsky of Engadget reported on a disturbingly high volume of "ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening" comments on the Web site and took action by indefinitely closing all comments on the blog. We appreciate Josh's wake-up call, although vocalizing one's opinion through anonymous blog comments is just another extension of the Internet.

We definitely empathize with the site's moderators, however, who must be tearing their hair out trying to protect Engadget visitors from trolls, predators, idiots, and all the other lobos on the Web. Good luck with that, guys!

In other tech news, TechCrunch gives us a first look at Google's interpretation of a modern tablet device, as imagined by Glen Murphy, Google Chrome's designer. The video you see on the site is just a mock-up, however, so don't get your hopes up! At this point, we'll take just about any tablet that doesn't have an Apple on it.

We can't thank our buddy Props Guy Jim enough for making the awesome "The 404 Bunch" poster you see to the left. Jim is the same gentleman who came through with 3k temporary tattoos, so thanks again! Look for a full-size poster coming to a 404 studio near you.

EPISODE 511 Listen now: Download today's podcast



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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast

NEC's new professional monitor has plenty of exciting lookup tables!

Back in your hole, guy.

(Credit: Punxsutawney Groundhog Club)

2010 started off positively: an amazing CES visit, an uplifting State of the Union Address, and an entertaining Grammy Awards show. Yes, 'twas a great January...too bad that filthy, overgrown rat Punxsutawney Phil had to show up and ruin it with a dreary six more weeks of winter, which wouldn't be so bad except that Wilson won't have his iPad for another nine weeks.

Unfortunately, it turns out our furry little friend might be an amazing meteorologist, but his texting skills can use some work. It took Phil over two hours to send out his inaugural text message to awaiting subscribers. Phil took even longer to tweet out his prediction. Come on, Phil, are there no tween girls in Gobbler's Knob, Pa., that you can enlist to speed up your T9-ing? Maybe it's time for an upgrade.

The 404: Now broadcasting from your horse's assets

(Credit: CNET/The 404 )

Unfortunate news aside, we've also got plenty of exciting news to discuss, including this year's Oscar nominations! Of course, Avatar's nine nominations only make us that much more embarrassed about all of our trash-talking prior to watching the movie. But hey, we're big enough to admit our mistakes, however, infrequent.

And since that's more than I can say for some directors, we also have to take some time to run down this year's Razzie nominees. Will Transformers 2 take down G.I. Joe for worst movie of the year or Big Momma's House 2 circle back and reign supreme? Listen in to hear our predictions!

As usual, we've also got a few sticker pictures, but it's not even close to the number we've sent out so far, so SEND US PICTURES if you got them in the mail! Send all your tattoo and sticker pictures to the404(at)cnet{dot}com- we want to see them all!

Finally, today marks the premiere of CNET TV's newest show, preGAME! Hosts Jeff Bakalar and Mark Licea bring you all the latest gaming news plus in-house demos of the hottest games a week before they're released. The show starts today and runs every Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET. Check out all the preGAME action on CNET TV!

EPISODE 510 Listen now: Download today's podcast



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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast

IPS and VA monitors. Who doesn't love these?

You guys filled up our voice mail box over the weekend with your thoughts on the new Apple iPad, but we have to spread the hate around with a quick chat about last night's Grammy Awards, PETA's robotic groundhogs, and high school reunions. We've also got plenty of your sticker pictures to show off, including one that might be NSFW....big surprise, 404!

Keep sending us your sticker pictures!

(Credit: Alan )

The Grammy Awards are becoming less and less significant to our personal music tastes, but something has to be said about a show that nominates NICKELBACK for Best Hard Rock Performance. To make matters worse, the show paired together some of the worst collaborations in the history of live performance.

To quickly recap the night, all you need to know is that Lady Gaga won two well-deserved awards and performed Speechless with Sir Elton John, Green Day took the award for Best Rock Album, poor Stevie Nicks looked pissed to be singing about locker room romance with 16-year-old darling Taylor Swift, and the live studio audience got treated to a 3D clip from Michael Jackson's "This Is It" while the rest of us settled for 2Ds and a subsequent headache.

Kirby <3 The 404!

(Credit: Lani Nguyen/The 404)

Speaking of bad news, we've got some bad news about the Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the new Broadway musical coming soon to New York. We just found out that the entire musical soundtrack is composed by U2's Bono and The Edge. Don't get us wrong, the three of us all have a special place in our hearts for U2, but their music just doesn't evoke images of a masked web-crawler slinging his way about town snapping photos of criminals and taking down a few in the process.

Finally, much thanks to everyone for sending in their sticker pictures! We've sent out hundreds of envelopes so far, so keep them coming; send a photo of where you put the stickers and tattoos to the404(at)cnet(dot)com!

EPISODE 509 Listen now: Download today's podcast



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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast

Wacom updates its excellent Intuos4 tablet to support Bluetooth.

The wearable mouse works on wireless, uses an optical laser, runs a week on a single charge, and is said to be pretty fast and accurate as it functions by aligning itself with the ligaments of your hand and wrist.

Samsung's new companion monitor, the LD220G.

Let's not get greedy; they can't ALL be good.

(Credit: Young Raging Bull)

This episode of The 404 Podcast is dedicated to all of our heartbroken comrades out there who were expecting an Apple tablet computer, but got an Apple e-reader instead. Join us as we recap what might be the most underwhelming Apple product announcement since Apple TV.

Full disclosure here: This entire 30-minute episode is dedicated to the Apple iPad. We know a lot of you must be exhausted with all the moaning and groaning so far, but we'll take any opportunity to make fun of Wilson. Bear with us as we try to get him to say one bad thing about the iPad.

In addition to a healthy dose of polite yelling, we also play a collection of voice mails that drive the stake in even further. We guarantee tomorrow's show to be (relatively) free of Apple talk, and we're also very excited to welcome Jerry Ma and Cliff Chiang of the Asian-American comic anthology "Secret Identities," who will join us in the studio tomorrow to talk about state of the industry, ethnic minorities in the comic genre, and...well let's face it, we want their artistic opinion of the iPad.

EPISODE 507 Listen now: Download today's podcast



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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast

Priced at $14.95 each, the Pogo Sketch and Pogo Stylus are also great for artists who prefer pen-based input over fingertips. The styli work with iPhones and iPods, too. pOriginally posted at a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10443415-233.html" class="origPostedBlog"iPhone Atlas/a/p

CNET's Donald Bell shows a hands-on video and photo gallery of Apple's unique keyboard dock for the iPad.

Apple's new iPad tablet is generating a fair amount of excitement, but it could have been so much more than a giant iPhone.

Together with the announcement of the iPad, Apple CEO Steve Jobs also unveiled three accessories for the new tablet--an iPad Dock, keyboard dock, and carrying case.

Does the 19-inch Dell IN1910n make too many concessions?

Stereophile magazine's John Atkinson loved the Asus Xonar Essence ST/STX sound cards. They are, by far, the least expensive way of turning a PC into a genuine high-resolution audio source. pOriginally posted at a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-10440755-47.html" class="origPostedBlog"The Audiophiliac/a/p

Straight from the CNET vineyards.

Wilson is supposedly out sick this morning and can't be on the show, but it's obvious to Jeff and me that he wanted a head start on Wednesday's Apple Event. Either way, we're happy to have CNET's Smartphone Senior Editor Bonnie Cha here to replace him. We casually discuss our weekends in the first half of the show, which include some serious headphone shopping and a viewing of the documentary "Anvil." Bonnie also tells us about her weekend run-in with the new cast members of MTV's Jersey Shore.

With the January 27 Apple Event just around the corner, speculation about the Apple tablet is reaching critical mass, but an interesting Call From the Public raises new questions about the possibility of an Apple gaming console.

Judging from the amount of gaming press in attendance, there's a solid chance that the hardware will be gaming-friendly, but the chance of Apple unveiling a gaming-only console is slim. If anything, we're predicting a strong push toward gaming development on the new platform.

Thanks to everyone who sent in photos of their strategically placed 404 stickers and tattoos! Keep them coming, or be sure to listen to the promo in the break for how you can get your own merch.

EPISODE 504 Listen now: Download today's podcast



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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast