Everyone with an email address gets spam, even John "I get no spam" Dvorak. We filter our email through Google's Gmail, which we recommend, as their spam filters catch ~99% of our spam with very few false positives. But as I've been cleaning out the spam folder, skimming for anything from a real human, I've noticed certain trends.  read more »

We've had a number of readers looking for Christmas gift ideas, and Tech Talk for Families makes a point of discussing which products would be good for which age groups. We deliberately haven't posted lists, especially ranked lists, for a couple reasons.
1. We haven't tested enough toys, games, and gadgets this year to definitively tell you what's best.
2. We don't want to recommend a product that we haven't specifically tested.  read more »

Hey, everyone, we'd like to let you in on a little secret: Amazon is offering free holiday music  read more »

This week, we've been hearing about all the houses in the wake of the wildfires outside of Los Angeles. It's received special attention due to the celebrity homes in the area, and since our family has never been the star-struck type, we were a bit annoyed that somehow celebrity homes are more important that regular people's homes.  read more »

A reader recently asked for our suggestion regarding portable video for the car. Are you going to be traveling in a car for the holidays? What's the best solution to keep your family sane and keep the number of times you hear, "Are we there yet?" to a minimum? Read on.  read more »

Harvard researchers have determined that earbuds like those included with iPods and most other MP3 players can be dangerous to pacemakers and defibrillators due to the magnets in them disrupting the pace, causing them to skip a beat or even shut down. The earbuds (not the cords) must come within 1.5" to have this effect, which seems pretty likely to happen at some point.  read more »

As Apple goes, so goes the industry. When Apple announced the iMac sans floppy drive, the PC industry proclaimed it a failure, because nobody would buy a computer without a floppy drive. Based on the unprecedented success of the iMac in its many fruity, flowery, and lamp-like incarnations, this prediction was clearly wrong, and the rest of the industry followed. Today, you'll have trouble finding a PC with an included floppy drive.  read more »

The Xbox 360, in case you haven't heard, is a Microsoft product, so many of its features are designed to work with Windows right out of the box, but if you're a Mac user, you don't need to be left out in the digital cold. The 360 is a great gaming platform and can offer lots of great content for your family. This tutorial will help Mac users get the most out of their 360's with some helpful tips and tricks, no coding necessary.  read more »

We haven't mentioned this on the podcast itself yet, but we're excited to announce that we are the winners of the Podcast Peer Award for Best Tech Podcast. Given the quantity and quality of tech podcasts out there, this is a real honor for us. Podcast Peer Awards are nominated and chosen by fellow podcasters, those who know the industry and what it takes to make a good podcast.  read more »

Both Coke and Pepsi are running specials right now (and have been for a while) that encourage you to collect points with which you can purchase, among other things, free mp3's. But if you, like me, enjoy both Diet Coke and Pepsi One, you may be wondering, "Which is the better deal?"  read more »