A Consumption Report From Virgin Airworld

I'm in Los Angeles with the family this week, visiting the in-laws. I booked the flight kind of late and decided to try Virgin America, which had been getting a lot of hype for its geeky amenities and Jetblue-style business model. The only way I could get three seats together on Virgin was to pay extra for the roomier bulkhead seats, the so-called Main Cabin Select, which came with "unlimited" food and media, a sort of discount business class. The flight was pleasant and as enjoyable as JetBlue, but the geek reality has not yet caught up with the hype. For example, the much-discussed on-board Internet was not available on our flight. (I've yet to see Jetblue's version of these services, either). So while the airline's Red touch-screen media console showed options for e-mail and Web surfing, those features were disabled. It was possible to chat with other seats, but my traveling companions showed no interest and as far as I could tell nobody else was using the system. And while there was a cool remote with each seat, in the bulkhead you had to lean forward quite a bit to use the touchscreen, which was set in the wall.

The satellite TV channel selection was about the same as JetBlue's, with some premium choices (HBO's "Entourage," a Bill Maher comedy special, etc.) and films for adults (I watched "Hancock") and kids (my daughter watched "Wall-E" again). I did not bother figuring out the parental controls, preferring to issue commands in person.

I made a brief effort to play one of the video games with the seat-remote, but gave up after finding lame graphics and needless complexity. I'm sure a kid could have figured it out, but my kid stuck to the games on her Nano. (Update: She has informed me that she did in fact try one of the games. Her review: "You were supposed to get to the top of this tower, with this little green guy who could shoot fire, but it was really hard because there were little things flying at you. You couldn't really go anywhere, because you kept getting knocked over by this little thingie. You had to jump a giant gap. I tried it for 12 lives and I couldn't figure it out at all.")

The seats were big and comfortable, and nobody had a problem with my frequent standing, stretching and walking around (I have a genetic predisposition to blood clots, which can be brought on by air travel and prolonged sitting in cramped spaces). The aisle seemed narrower than on other planes, but perhaps that was my imagination. In any event, passersby kept bumping me, and I am sorry to report that I did the same to others.

Instead of offering the usual snacks or meal service, Virgin lets you order drinks, snacks and small meals using the Red touchscreen.

A few minutes later, a flight attendant shows up with the order (the selections were slightly better than the JetBlue snack packs).

Also unlike JetBlue, Virgin America has first-class seats [video]. Other than the bulkhead partition, there is no aisle curtain separating those passengers from the rabble, however. In the bulkhead, we had a good view of first class (see picture at right), which had its own bathroom, bigger seats, better food and Red screens that were adjustable in some way. I was amused by the similarity to "Wall-E" -- the robotic console-equipped floating easy chairs that kept the humans supplied with a steady diet of Big Gulp-type drinks and media. Virgin America first class did not look as comfortable as the Wall-E spaceship.

This train of thought made me focus on my own consumption, so I powered up Zenbe Lists, one of my favorite iPhone apps, and kept track of my intake for the flight:

• Watched entertaining cartoon safety video. Finally understood how to inflate the vest that is unlikely to save anyone in the unlikely event of a water landing.
• Chewed two pieces of gum for takeoff, so my ears would pop. 
• Drank cup of nondescript coffee, ordered directly from attendant. Saw first-class passenger select from a tremendous basket of muffins, more than enough to serve half the coach passengers. Plus a small bottle of water.
• Used Red toucshcreen to order Virgin's cheese and fruit plate (actually, a box), then ate it, plus some of the cheese from my daughter's box. Surprisingly good, especially the soft cheese and walnuts, although some of the crackers were stale and tasteless.
• Watched the end of "Witness" with Harrison Ford, on satellite TV, the scene where he kills a Philly gangster by dumping Amish grain on him.
• Watched a premium movie, "Hancock" with Will Smith. It was O.K., although I thought it was implausible that the villain was allowed into prison with a hook for a hand. Yes, more implausible than star-crossed immortals with superpowers. Oh, sorry, that was a double spoiler.
• Watched two "premium" short films, both available online, "Beard Science" and "Poke," both part of Campus Moviefest. The first, a sort of "Trading Places" with beards, was hard to follow. The second, about a slapstick-Rube Goldbergian effort to take back a Facebook poke, was funnier.
• Read through early-morning Twitter traffic on Twitterific for the iPhone. These Tweets had been downloaded to my phone before I put it in non-broadcasting airplane mode. Everyone was Twittering about being at the airport. This blog post represents what I might have been Twittering, if I had access.
• Played a futile game of Bejeweled on the iPhone.
• Read Friday's NYT Kindle edition on my Kindle, after solving last-minute battery problem.
• Drank contents of a can of seltzer. (By the way, whenever I order seltzer in L.A. restaurants, I get blank stares. Does this happen to anyone else? They show no recognition until my wife says "club soda." Virgin's Red calls it seltzer.)
• Ate a rather large can of Pringles chips,and refelcted on the burial choice of Fredric J. Bauer.
• Drank another small bottle of water ordered through Red, to stave off deyhydration, a contributor to blood clots.
• Had another cup of coffee. They serve real Half-and-Half, which is impressive, though I prefer plain milk or, better yet, soy milk.
• Shared a bag of chocolate chip cookies with my daughter. Her mother continued to doze between us, her preferred mode on planes.
• Listened to parts of "MacBreak Weekly" and "Uhh, Yeah Dude" podcasts for about an hour, for a future zeitgeist blog post.
• Walked around a lot to stretch legs, used bathroom.
• Read the dustcover and several pages of John Hodgman's "More Information Than You Require." I was stopped short by his prediction that one of the presidential candidates would reveal that he had a hook for a hand, which called to mind the villain in "Hancock." This kind of coincidence happens all the time. Good thing I'm not superstitious.
• Took comical photos of flight attendant using a tiny flashlight to search for a first-class passenger's lost eyeglasses. Too blurry to use.
• Listened to music on my iPhone, including Fleet Foxes, some Jonathan Coulton and Stephen Colbert's Christmas song. I briefly tried the Red music system, but I wasn't happy with the sound quality.
• Chewed two more pieces of gum for the landing.

I can only hope this was all helpful to the economy, if not the environment. I'm just doing my part. The flight was pleasant and relatively quiet, which made it bearable to endure the mysterious, hourlong wait at the Avis rental car center that followed at LAX, pictured at right.

Things I didn't do:

• Open my laptop. But I had to carry it on so it wouldn't get stolen by the Transportation Security Administration.
• Order a second cheese and fruit plate. No reason to be a pig.
• Attempt to read more of "Anathem," which I had hopefully lugged aboard, adding two pounds to my carry-on. But I will finish it on this vacation and blog about it, I swear.
• Stick gum under the leather seat. That would be wrong.

Podcast Zeitgeist, Dec. 26

The mix this week is more culture than tech. Most of the podcasts I sample were off for the holidays, or they had recorded episodes in advance, so I went a little farther afield. [See all lists.]

• The Dinner Party Download, Episode 12 "The show that helps you win your next dinner party." A breezy podcast from Brendan Newnam and Rico Gagliano of 89.33 KPC public radio in Los Angeles. It starts with an icebreaker joke: "A penguin walks into a bar..." On to small talk, based on news tips from American Public Media reporters: How big of a wallet would you need to carry all the cash from the Madoff scheme? This big. Then it's on to a history lesson and related cocktail. The lesson: Why General Grant was bad for the Jews. The drink: an ounce of bourbon, an ounce of apple brandy, sugar or honey topped with hot water, a mix of North and South. An interview with David Fincher, director of "Benjamin Button." A food segment about mozzarella, including mozzarella restaurants and bars like Obikà in New York. A 30-second music clip (Low's "Just Like Christmas,"). Time to party. Get the cheat sheet. Fun concept. Length: 13:51 minutes. Released: Dec. 19.
• "Books on the Nightstand #20: Sci-Fi for the Rest of Us" Do you read the book, or the e-book? Like the hosts, I do both. They're using Sony Readers, and I use a Kindle, but the advantage of e-books for travel is clear in either case. In fact, I plan to be reading my Kindle for a couple of hours today on a flight out west. (I don't care for extended reading on my iPhone, though there are several e-book apps.) I used to strain my back lugging books on trips so I wouldn't be caught without something. Another segment focused on science fiction picks for people who don't like SF, including "Stranger in a Strange Land," by Robert A. Heinlein. I grok the choice, though it's not for everyone and I don't think the pitch here -- "fish out of water story" -- does it justice. Other picks in the podcast included "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell, "Life Class" by Pat Barker, and "Firmin" by Sam Savage. As podcasts, and book discussions, go, this did not strike me as particularly deep or compelling, but I may give it another chance later. Length: 18:18. Released: Dec. 17.
• Coffeegeek Podcast 64: Carl Sara Rocks This podcast is infrequently updated but my quest for the perfect espresso shot seemed to require more research, so I grabbed the most recent episode, from August. Intro/outro is Sinatra singing the jaunty "Coffee Song." The host, Mark Prince, founder of the excellent Coffeegeek.com, started by apologizing for a two-month delay pledged to get on a weekly schedule. Didn't happen. Oh, well. (The other day, I sent an e-mail asking what was up, but did not get a reply yet.) This episode is notable for Prince's grievance, discussed at length, about a "backlash to the pursuit of culinary coffee" that he sees in the mainstream media. He blames the bad economy. He says the U.S. coffee market breaks down this way: 80 percent of the people are "the untouchables... They are satisfied with Folgers and the junk around the office." He wants to reach the other 20 percent, including 1 to 2 percent who are culinary coffee experts, 6 to 8 percent who understand and love it but "they're not quite convinced the effort is worth it"; and 10 percent who may have had a cup or two and are open to it but they think it means Starbucks. "They don't know what culinary coffee is yet. They know it exists." He goes on a digression about iced espresso (the gist: to avoid a sour taste, brew the espresso into a cold cup, not directly into the ice). Back to the backlash. He blames a Burger King mentality in the U.S. "In a lot of cases the customer is always right," he explains. "But when it comes to the delivery of a culinary product, and you have a reputation you want to protect as a business for delivering a culinary product, I'm sorry, there are certain lines that a customer can't cross, and they can't ask you to do things in a certain way if you believe it is detrimental to the quality of the beverage. And I do blame Burger King for that for their 'have it your way' campaign." Of course, he says, "commodity or utility coffee" at Starbucks or McDonald's is O.K. in a pinch, but don't drink the stuff in the hotel room. At 38:15 minutes, a list of "awesome" coffee beans, followed by a recorded interview with Carl Sara, a New Zealand coffee champion, which takes up the rest of the podcast. Then Sinatra takes us out. Length: 1 hour, 27 minutes. Released: Aug. 9, 2008.
• Stuff You Should Know This is a great find from the How Stuff Works folks, with a place on the iTunes "Best Podcasts of 2008" list. The hosts Josh and Chuck take apart a topic scientifically in about 17 minutes per show. On this one, we learn that flirting is a form of language important to our survival as a species, with a discussion of the ambiguous protean gestures preferred by women in flirting. I also listened to the previous two episodes about the safest parts of your body to take a bullet (answer: hands or feet), and eco-friendly ways to get rid of a body. All were entertaining and informative. Length: 17:29 minutes. Released: Dec. 23.
• New York Review of Books Podcast Compared to some of the stuff I have reviewed, this is laid-back, ruminative stuff from the bastion of New York liberal intellectualism. First I listened to this 17-minute interview with the veteran Washington correspondent Elizabeth Drew about the Obama transition, cabinet picks and other issues, based on her N.Y.R.B. article "The Truth About the Election." My takeaway is that she thinks Obama was different from other Democratic candidates in that he had been working on his message, plan and staffing long before the election itself, making his transition rather smooth. We'll see. The more recent 50-minute podcast is a recording of the 2008 Robert B. Silvers lecture by the novelist Zadie Smith, delivered at the New York Public Library on Dec. 5. Silvers is the editor of the review and delivers introductory remarks. It was framed as a lecture about lecturing. The description: "Drawing on literary and historical examples from Elizabeth I to Eliza Doolittle to Barack Obama, Zadie Smith explores race, writing, and what it means when we speak in different ways to different people." There's a lot more Obama than this description suggests, and a bit more about mixed race and the duality of language. She has a take on Obama -- "the man from Dream City" -- that is far more poetic than Drew's nuts-and-bolts assessment. In that respect, the two podcast episodes complement one another neatly. Length: 17:27 minutes and 59:05 minutes. Released: Dec. 15 and 19.
• The Futile Podcast: M.A.D. Men The action movie podcast. This episode was billed as a discussion of "preachy movies that are remakes of movies that were preachy about avoiding nuclear annihilation, or what was known ... as M.A.D., or mutually assured destruction." But it's mostly about the recent remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still," with Keanu Reeves and the guy from "Mad Men." Overall review: "This movie sucks, but it doesn't." Beware of spoilers, if that matters to you. In the case of htis movie, maybe not. A couple of days after I listened to this, another podcast dropped, about the original "Lethal Weapon," but I haven't listened to that yet. Length: 23:15 minutes. Released: Dec. 20.
• Uhh Yeah Dude, Episode 146 Great episode. Topics include 50 Cent's fight with Floyd Mayweather, cameras hidden in the baby Jesus, cellphones for the dead, the new Burger King fragrance, adult video awards, the Michael Phelps video game, and Z-mailing, similar to sleep-eating, in which people send inappropriate e-mail while asleep. Jonathan: "Can't we just get back to sleep-dreaming?" Seth: "I was listening to U.Y.D. and the two hosts of the show have trained themselves to sleep-dream, where they fall asleep, they create almost movies in their head, I guess is how they would describe it. Literally, they'll think about people in their lives, not in their lives, who have been in their lives, in situations where they'll be in a house, but it's not really their house, it's their childhood home. They call it sleep-dreaming." Hey, that's happened to me. I dreamed podcasters were watching me in my sleep. Length: 1 hour, 7 Minutes. Released: Dec. 22.
• This Week in Tech 174: 10-Ferret Night Leo Laporte dispenses with tech for another appearance (recorded earlier this month) by John Hodgman, who is still on his book tour. Leo interviewed Hodgman the week of Nov. 2. This time they are joined by his friend Jonathan Coulton, a Brooklyn singer-songwriter beloved by nerds and geeks. There's no point in summarizing the discussion, which is entertaining and well worth a listen if you are a fan of their work, as I am. A few topics: Hodgman's career as a literary agent, the throwing of shoes at the president, the availability of Crystal Head Vodka, quahogs, and two things Laporte learned from his father: "Rummies have no wind, so you can outrun them. And never catch the eye of a hobo." There's more, plus Coulton music. Length: 1 hour, 20 minutes. Released: Dec. 21.

Podcast Zeitgeist, Dec. 12

I'm mixing it up a little this week, adding some new podcasts from the iTunes Best of 2008 lists [iTunes Store Link], including a few with video under 10 minutes.

"Grammar Girl Video: Irony" Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips are usually audio, but this six minutes of video is worth watching for its excellent explanation of the frequently misused words "irony" and "ironic," using to good effect the infamous Sarah Palin turkey-pardon video. Here's the gist: Irony is all about incongruity and always in the eye of the beholder. Palin and her critics both might have thought the event was ironic, but for different and legitimate reasons. Writing that something is "ironic" says more about you, the observer, than the events themselves, and it is open to misinterpretation. Watch, understand, then use these words properly, or not at all, especially if you are a journalist trying to be fair. Length: 6:29 minutes. Released: Dec. 5.

"60-Second Earth: I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas (Tree)" From Scientific American, another short gem (though longer than 60 seconds). When it comes to Christmas trees, which is more green, wood or plastic? The answer is complicated, but seems to be a live tree in a pot. The strategy in our mixed unfaith household: Thirty years ago, my aunt made a porcelain Christmas tree that stands about a foot tall. We put it on an end table at a respectable distance from the menorah. This represents our own ambiguous connection to a holiday that my wife only observed as an outsider and a religion I no longer observe. The kid is probably confused. So be it. Length: 1 minute, 29 seconds. Released: Dec. 4, 2008.

"Keith and the Girl 860: Turn It Down" This podcast by a Queens couple is consistently rated among the top 10 comedy podcasts at Podcast Alley. Keith Malley was raised Catholic. The "girl" (Chemda Kallili) is Jewish. The schedule is erratic but frequent. This is one of the shorter episodes, and not as funny as the previous, "Get Over Yerself." They do nearly 10 minutes on religion, the holidays and their families. The new Guns N Roses record. The strange gay humor on "Three's Company." The end of Polaroid film. They dream of making millions and moving to Manhattan, which they call, quaintly, "The City." And more. Length: 59:23 minutes. Released: Dec. 8.

"This Week in Tech: Zunegate"http://twit.tv/172 Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. This is the podcast that first got me thinking too much about Twitter this week. It is also the podcast that got me to join Twitter way back in April 2007, mostly as a lurker. Leo Laporte is joined by John C. Dvorak, Bwana McCall, and Julio Ojeda-Zapata, author of a book on using Twitter for business. Dvorak likes Twitter but says it has problems. His comments lead me to think these tech celebrities with thousands of followers have a different experience than people with mutual followers in the dozens or hundreds. They are more like performers or broadcasters than members of the community. They toss out a question and hundreds of fans answer. Sometimes, Dvorak says, they keep answering long after he wishes they would stop. Claims are made that Twitter skews to an older crowd, that it's lazy blogging, that younger people prefer Facebook and IM on Skype. The rest of the tech talk feels recycled: Mac viruses, Obama's Zune, Leo's story (told on last week's MacBreak Weekly) about getting irritated at a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Then they plug their stuff. Length: 1 hour, 33 minutes. Released: Dec. 7.

"Uhh Yeah Dude, Episode 144" Intro is Stereolab. Outro is Lorn. The episode gets off to a meandering start but picks up. The show's T-shirts are late. Libraries and video stores ripping off Netflix. More brocabulary. More obscure fast food. A riff on the 9-year-old pickup artist. "Comb your hair, and don't wear sweats... Just say hi." Top Yahoo search terms. When Seth met search term No. 1. Crazy science: A killer fungus reproduces sexually in your nose and the babies record podcasts. Riffing on the money-saving tips of Andy Rooney of "60 Minutes," who steals dinner rolls from restaurants, mixes gasoline of different octanes, complains about paying $1.50 for a cup of coffee etc. (Rooney has a podcast, too.) A Rastafarian, Bobby Brown, is suing Jiffy Lube for discrimination. Seth recounts how he nearly killed himself and Jonathan with a gas leak in his furnace. Seth claims to be dating the oldest person in the world, a woman they visited at the nursing home in an earlier episode. Removing bear gall bladders. Dreading the holidays. (Seth and Jonathan have done a new interview. ) Length: 1 hour, 3 minutes. Released: Dec. 8.

Attack of the Show's Daily Video Podcast: "The Wired Holiday Store" An iTunes 2008 pick. I actually watched a couple of episodes, which were short and well-produced, seemingly excerpts from the TV show on the obscure G4 cable network. The first one featured a tour of the temporary brick-and-mortar store version of the print magazine that ought to be just a Web site. Lots of gadgets flash by. The store's at 15 West 18th Street through Dec. 28. I'll have to check it out in person. The episode after this, "Batman's New Voice-Over Career," riffs on the terrible raspy Batman voice from the "Dark Knight" movie, which is, not coincidentally, out on DVD. Entertaining, but it has the main drawback of video: You can't enjoy it while walking to work, or you'll run into people. Length: 2:25 minutes to 3:26 minutes. Released: Dec. 10 and 11.

"Buzz Out Loud: Baba-Boo! Scareware!" C-Net's "podcast of indeterminate length." This show starts out with fast talking and sound effects by Molly Wood, Tom Merritt and Jason Howell. Some chatter about Playstation Home and Amazon's Unboxed service. Praise for TiVo, the service/hardware with a terrible business model that everyone loves. Merritt disagrees with Corey Doctorow's views on copyright right of first sale. "There's no such thing as 'used' in the digital world." Gratuitous reference to the Brooklyn musician Jonathan Coulton. Learned something: The term for the propensity of people to find faces in things like toast and the moon is paradolia. A couple of the hosts have apparently never heard of Tumblr (or was that a joke?). It is one of the few companies doing well in these troubled times. Howell does not understand the phrase, "throwing the baby out with the bathwater," pleads youth. A Web-based no-hack copy-and-paste method for the iPhone between Safari and Mail. A good idea that calls attention to a continuing, pathetic Apple lapse. Vast expansion of Google Street View. The blank areas seem to be mountains. Now go listen to "All My Internet Friends" by Amanda French, a musical tip that earns this podcast major points. Length: 37:38 minutes. Released: Dec. 11.

"You Look Nice Today: Nickelpuss It's back to the original three hosts. Secular bands. Nerd jokes about Unix command lines. Merlin Mann's childhood room. A lengthy discussion of automobile horns. Youthful ninja fascinations and experiences by Adam Lisagor. How has this movie not been made? Good question. Discussing his teenage musical career in a church band and his secular band, Scott Simpson reveals he grew up near York, Pa., where I worked for eight years, and mentions the nearly forgotten York band Live. Still popular in Europe and parts of New Zealand! True story of the early Web of the mid-90s: I once hand-coded a Live fan page for the local newspaper's pioneering Web site. Ooh, frames -- lovely. It got dozens of hits, which we deemed a success. The site itself was born in a 1996 blizzard that stopped the newspaper delivery trucks. It's hard to remember how primitive the Web was just 12 years ago. This was in a time when people predicted that average readers would never have computers at home and certainly not read news on them at home. Which is kind of true: Now they mostly click around the Web at the office when they should be working. Podcasts were barely imagined. Video was unthinkable on dialup. Twitter? Forget about it. Email was hard enough. Anyway, it's great to see these fellows back on track with their jazzy, meandering nostalgic conversations, much of it about that weird, lost dawn-of-the-Web past. I'll leave it there. Length: 38:48 minutes. Released: Dec. 10.

"Macbreak Weekly 118: Macs in the Mist" Leo Laporte with his regulars, Alex Lindsay, Scott Bourne, Andy Ihnatko. Perhaps Leo watched Grammar Girl's podcast this week (see above) because he asked Bourne if it was ironic that he ate a freshly slain turkey at a Thanksgiving dinner with his fellow bird-watching photographers at a bird refuge. "You don't see any irony in that.. " Bourne: "I do not." Later, Leo: "It's ironic that all four of us are camera bugs..." Ok, maybe he didn't watch Grammar Girl. After about 10 minutes, down to business. Any truth to the rumor that Apple will remove DRM from iTunes for the holidays with unlimited downloads in Europe? Consensus is no. What about $99 iPhones at Wal-Mart? Consensus is no. Discussion of DRM: Only hurts honest people, doesn't deter thieves. True. A five-minute ad for Drobo, ends at 24:20. Big vendors dropping out of MacWorld Expo. Are convention expenses worth it, especially in a layoff environment? More discussion of pulled Apple advisory on antivirus software. Do Mac users need the software? Consensus is no. Santa Claus iPhone app gets run over by a reindeer. Brief discussion of Information Week's Top 10 Apple Stories of 2008. Consensus: Bad list. "We lost interest at the same time the author lost interest." Around item 3 or 4. Ouch. Six-minute conversation/ad about Audible.com ends at 1:01 mark. Then it's time for the picks. Length: 1 hour, 27:56 minutes. Released: Dec. 9. Update added 12/13.

It was a busy week, so I missed a few favorites (in the case of This Week in Media, the Skype interference was so bad in some cases, I couldn't stand to listen. Reportedly, the problem has been fixed and the episode was reposted). [See earlier roundups.]

Podcast Zeitgesit, Nov. 13

What I got out of this week's podcasts for nerds and geeks:

"TWIT 168: Dirty Pedro" This week's episode proved useful for getting to sleep on Tuesday evening. Otherwise, I might be asking, how do I get this 1:34 hours of my life back? The signal to noise ratio is quite low, despite heroic efforts by John C. Dvorak to keep the discussion focused on technology. The Audible.com ad was mercifully short. Topics: Google/Yahoo, Obama's technology and FCC policy, cameras, keyboards, an argument for aggressive comment moderation on blogs. Released: Nov. 9. Length: 1 hour, 34 minutes

"Uhh, Yeah Dude, Episode 140." For some reason, podcast ads are often like those old timey 1950s TV ads in which the host held up the box of soap flakes and vouched for the product. This week Seth and Jonathan spend the first few minutes talking about how much they like the Australian comedy "Summer Heights High" on HBO. They segue into the usual oddball topics. Old P.S.A.'s against crack. Murder-free months. An epidemic of falling elderly people. PETA's animatronic elephant. "The Perfect Game," a screenplay based on the true story of a man who dropped dead after bowling a perfect game. Extreme tween makeovers. Root beer float in a can = bad. $400 "Sopranos" box set = too much. Gordon Gekko sues "World of Warcraft." "Uhh Yeah Dude" T-shirts on the way. Supplemental podcast is more about "Summer Heights High." Released: Nov. 8. Length: 1 hour, 2 minutes, with 10-minute supplement..

Maccast 2008.11.09 "Hey Mac Geeks it's time for your Maccast, the show for Mac Geeks and by Mac Geeks..." Despite an annoying habit of often putting the best possible pro-Mac spin on any news, Adam Christianson's weekly podcast from San Diego is a good overview of the latest on Apple products. He spends a lot of time scouring blogs and news sites and invites a lot of tips from listeners. His show notes display on the iPod/iPhone screen as the podcast plays, a great feature that other podcasts should emulate. If you don't have time to read the 10 jillion Applie blogs out there, Adam will usually find the stuff you really want to know about glitches, new releases, new software etc. This week: No new iMacs, Mac browser usage falls, iPhone production down, Macbook trackpad problems, Steve Jobs' email address, Macbook Pro hinge problems, color syncing issues, Mobileme problems, the lack of good iPhone document apps and much more. Chock full of info. Released: Nov. 10. Length: 1 hour, 6 minutes.

"The Totally Rad Show, Episode 86, Bobble Bibble" A bit of a disappointment, since Alex Albrecht had tweeted about seeing the Bond flick "Quantum of Solace." Perhaps that's next week. In any event, this episode is taken up by a discussion of trailers and Pixar movies and the latest World of Warcraft expansion. And they answer questions from readers. As much as I enjoy their take on geek entertainment products, this all felt mailed-in, self-involved and easily skipped. Wish I had, given that video requires me to stare at a computer screen, instead of listening to audio and multitasking on other things. Plus, they haven't updated their site very well, or their blog, in forever. Perhaps this sloppiness is a sign of the troubles at Revision 3. Or an Autumn malaise. Released: Nov. 11. Duration: 58:12 minutes.

Five Tacos and a Taco, Episode 35 "We Built This City on Tac and O" I have tried a few times to listen to these guys. They make an effort to be funny, but the show is a weak imitation of "Uhh Yeah, Dude." It's the morning drive-time zoo without the bad music. The jokes are not delivered with anything resembling wit or skill. One bit that seems like it could have worked: Having listeners call in to decide the next move in one of those create-your-own adventure books for kids. But it was just dull and another excuse for gay jokes. In the end, I unsubscribed and dumped their podcasts in the trash. More hours of my life saved. Released: Nov. 7. Length: 1 hour, 3 minutes.

"MacBreak Weekly 114: Sexy Pancakes" With Leo Laporte, Andy Ihnatko, Jon Gruber, and Jon Rettinger. A lengthy discussion of Veterans Day. Then Leo says news is sparse: "There's really not much to say." Uh-oh. Yet there are nearly two hours to go. Discussion of Blackberry Storm, Macbook trackpads. Delays for Macbook Air. Rumors about a mini upgrade and a TV with Apple TV built in. Yawn. Fast-forward to 25:08 when Gruber joins and discussion turns to insider gossip, the replacement of the podfather Tony Fadell with Mark Papermaster at Apple. Coming soon: iPhone firmware 2.2, with wireless podcast downloads. An extensive discussion of iPhone apps and features. An 8-minute Audible ad, with a Stud Terkel anecdote; the Mac picks start at 1:10:58. Battery packs for iPhones (I use the APC power pack and second Ihnatko's recommendation). Griffin Clarify close-up macro lens for iPhone camera, for shooting product codes and the like. Boxee for Apple TV. Released: Nov. 11. Length: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

"The Sound of Young America: Found Magazine" Jesse Thorn, "America's radio sweetheart," interviews Peter Rothbart, the editor of the excellent Found Magazine, which features notes and tapes and other pieces of found art. This podcast is pretty much what you might have heard on American Public Radio, with an additional, funny song by Mr. Rothbart that was deemed too racy for public radio. (The previous episode is also better than the public radio version: the unedited/uncensored version of Thorn's interview with Dan Savage, the sex advice columnist and podcaster.) Released: Nov. 12. Length: 29:13 minutes.

"You Look Nice Today: Selfish Express" For the first time, the show has guests: the John Hodgman infestation of all media continues (with a bonus appearance by the Brooklyn singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton). Bicycle messenger culture. Bikies. Rolled-up pants leg guy. Join a group to get a slogan. Prius bumper stickers. "The other silent killer." Green offsets for poetry. Reading aloud a poem by Jewel. Hatred of short stories and short films and other short things that annoy audiences and will never make you any money. Working our way out of the recession by writing literary short stories set in the Midwest about failed marriages. Money-making idea: Celebrity mystery train tour. And finally... a business probletunity at the state fair. Released: Nov 13. Length: An ironically nearly twice-as-long-as-usual 52:17 minutes, worth every other second.

Find previous podcast reviews here.