i-Robot, Rainmeter, Youtu.be, MentionMap, Angry Birds Browser Edition, and Skype is now a Microsoft Company – HT025

Jim, Andrew and Christian are joined by Bill Paulmenn for this weeks installment of the Home Tech Podcast.

For anyone who has been off the grid for the past week, the guys start off discussing what is possibly the most interesting acquisition of the year, being the recent Microsoft purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion US, and what this could mean for the future of Skype as we currently know it, use it, and most days, love it!

Join us for the show live each Thursday at 8pmC/9E at http://theAverageGuy.tv/live.

The guys talk about the way they currently use Skype, their opinions on the future of Skype, given the range of products that Microsoft could integrate Skype with or replace with Skype, and the possible future names following the merger into the Microsoft stable.

Christian talks about the new YouTube shortening URLs YouTu.be, and what may be driving the use of this and other URL shortening services.  We talk about the release of Adobe Flash Player 10.3 for the Android platform, and how the other platforms are starting to fall behind the game in software development cycles.  Visit the Android Market to download your update now.

The Deal-of-the-Week is the Turtle Beach Ear Force PX5 Programmable Wireless Headset from NewEgg.com for $212.99.

Christian’s Windows 7 Customization Tip is RainMeter, a desktop customization engine, which lets you create amazing looking Windows desktops.

Christian’s Tech Tip of the week, is Tortoise SVN, which is source control software for the Microsoft Windows Operating System, interfacing Sub Version Control through a Windows interface.  The guys talk about revision history platforms used in the enterprise world such as Microsoft SharePoint, as well as Google Docs, which we use for the show notes each week.

Bill brings us the ultimate geek-wife gift, the iRobot Roomba, a Vacuum Cleaning Robot, which “combines the latest robotic and cleaning technologies to autonomously vacuum your home at the touch of a button”.

Andrew’s Site of the Week is MentionMap from Asterisq, which allows you to visually map your Twitter network.  It helps you to discover people who have relevant interests, and is a great way to find new people to follow.

The guys briefly talk about the Windows Home Server 2011 Online Evaluation, which is a free virtual environment that provides you a Windows 2011 Home Server, and a Windows 7 workstation to be able to evaluate Windows Home Server 2011 for free.

To wrap it up for the week, the guys talk about the latest release of Angry Birds, which lets you play Angry Birds from within the web browser.  You can get your fix online at http://chrome.angrybirds.com

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