Uncompressed.org - A weekly podcast dedicated to geek life!

Merry Christmas to all those celebrating the holiday!

Due to the timing of the holiday with relation to our recording schedule, Episode 43 has been delayed. We will have it out to you as soon as we are all recovered from over-eating, and have time to hook up all of our loot.

Please take this opportunity to review the contests we have going for the month of December. We would love it if all our regular listeners participated, but if you dont have the time be sure to at least enter part 4, as all you need to do is send us an email.

Happy holidays to all, than you for supporting Uncompressed!

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the “Uncompress Yourself Holiday Contest”. Originally the plan was to release 1 contest per week totaling up to 4 contests for the month of December. Due to the Christmas holiday falling over our normal recording period, I am releasing the last two parts of the contest at the same time so that everyone has enough time to participate.

Part 3

Part three of the contest is designed for our regular listeners. I want you, in a few sentences (a paragraph or less) to describe your favorite moment from the past 40-something episodes of Uncompressed. It might be Sean’s DDR diet, possibly last year’s gift guide episode, our Harry Potter episode, or Grue making the statement that he had been on 20% of our shows — only to never be heard from again. Whatever it is, we want you to share with us what you think makes U* great! All submissions should be 1 paragraph or less and sent to uncompressedshow@gmail.com. If you want to use one of the examples I just gave that’s fine, but make sure to include WHY you thought that part of the show was so good. As we constantly strive to improve Uncompressed, we can’t wait to hear what you like about the show!

Part 4

Part four of the contest is a free-for-all for all of our listeners. Simply send an email with the subject line “Uncompressed Contest Part 4″ as the the subject line and you are entered — its that easy (if you’re lazy click this link). At the end of the month there will be a random drawing based upon all entries into part 4 of the contest, and the winner walks away with the $25 gift card. As with all parts of our December promotion, make sure you use a real email address. We arent going to spam you, but we need a real way to contact you and get additional information (like where to send the gift card) if you win.

Thanks to everyone that participated in the contests this month. Hopefully we will have more of these in the future, but that means you need to help get the word out to keep Uncompressed going strong! Happy holidays to all of you from the entire U* staff — Uncompressed is just over a year old, but thanks to all of our loyal listeners the time has seemed to fly by.

Contest note: You MUST read our disclaimer before entering, and the assumption will be made that all submitters have done so.

Thanks for listening!

The Final Fantasy series is one of the most storied in the history of video games; even casual gamers, and those who dislike the RPG genre, can’t help but be familiar with the series as a whole – especially flagship titles like Final Fantasy VII. It comes as no surprise, then, when Square/Enix (Squenix to which it is often lovingly referred) announced that an installment was coming to the extremely popular Nintendo DS. The catch was that this was not to be a new title, but rather a complete remake of the classic Final Fantasy 3 – which in original release never made it to US shores.

Of course the prospect of having a game of such stature available to the American audience for the first time, outside of directly importing the game, was enough to throw fans of the series into a frenzy. Helping to fuel this was the announcement that the game would be a 3D rendition, harnessing the often underestimated power of the Nintendo DS. But does the game live up to all the hype?

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Things are a little crazy this week in Uncompressed land — longtime fans will recognize the off-the-cuff format.

Planned discussions about Vista Authentication being cracked, HD-DVD pulling ahead in the HiDef race, and Christmas lights degrading WiFi signals, spiral out of control into conversations about car navigation systems and hot chicks playing with the Nintendo Wii. (for those listening that want to play along click here!)

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 Uncompressed Episode 41 [65:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Its week 2 of our special holiday contest!

There will be one contest starting each week for the month of December — the prize for each contest will be a $25 Best Buy gift card. Even though each contest will start 1 week staggered, all contests will end at the same time during our last show of the month.

The second contest is a Photoshop contest. Here at U* we talk a lot about video games; well, we want you to take the pictures contained in this post and put the Uncompressed staff into the game(s) that you think we belong in. I am including several pictures of myself, and I am hoping the other staff members will chip in a few as well. For this contest we will accept multiple entries from the same person — so if you have more than one idea dont hesitate to submit them all! For more information listen to episode 41 of Uncompressed.

Send all submissions to uncompressedshow@gmail.com. You MUST read our disclaimer before entering, and the assumption will be made that all submitters have done so.

Thanks for listening to Uncompressed!

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As we move into the holiday season lots or people are trying their hardest to get their hands on a Wii or PS3. This week (as we often do) we further explore these systems focusing on some very scary news reports circling around the PS3. Tony finally managed to find a Wii and talks all about that; other topics include AMD’s new 4×4 platform, the long awaited Optimus keyboard, and a missing member of the tech community. Also featured in this episode is the kickoff of our 2006 Uncompress Yourself Holiday Contest. So please, check that out and make sure to enter!

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 Uncompressed Episode 40 [68:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As you will hear in the upcoming Episode 40, we are running a holiday contest.

There will be one contest starting each week for the month of December — the prize for each contest will be a $25 Best Buy gift card. Even though each contest will start 1 week staggered, all contests will end at the same time during our last show of the month.

The first contest is a story contest. We want to hear about your holiday mishaps. Think National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. The stories must be true, and your own (plagiarism will not be eligible for winning) — but beyond that we want your creative story-telling style to come through. Stories are confined to the winter holiday season (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, all other ethnic/religious holidays occurring in the same time frame). Some of the finalists may be read on an upcoming episode of Uncompressed and the winning story will be picked at the end of the month.

Please keep all entries to 1 page or less, and send all submissions to uncompressedshow@gmail.com. You MUST read our disclaimer before entering, and the assumption will be made that all submitters have done so.

Thanks for listening to Uncompressed — now start writing!

Short show this week as I was the only one in the studio. Despite a lack of hosts, we have a very full news report this week by Lynn Richter, which lends itself to some thoughts on the upcoming Apple “iPhone”, the new DS MP3 player, broken Wii straps, and the new Tenacious D movie.

Hopefully we can get everyone rounded up for a big push into the holiday season. I take some of the blame for this one as I had to take my brother back up to Minneapolis this weekend — so the recording date got pushed back.

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 Uncompressed Episode 39 [37:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The gaming world is worked up into a frenzy over the launch of both the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3. Since we are a geek life podcast, we explore the launch day drama — focusing mostly on the Wii as it was the more availible of the two machines. Not only do we cover the launch details, but our good friend Tyler McCall stops by the studio to give us a full report on what playing the new console is actually like.

We didnt discuss it on this podcast, but we have a December promotion coming up in which you could take home some goodies for the holiday season; watch this space for further details!

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 Uncompressed Episode 38 [77:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download