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Items of Note: Welcome to all the new and old listeners who heard about The Geekcast from Twitter. We hope to hear from everyone via e-mail or voicemail.

This edition of The Geekcast is once again co-hosted with Gozer. Together we tackle the world of technology. Send your feedback, thoughts and suggestions on to us!

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Geek This Week:

Aaron: Aaron opens his b’day gift. Gozer briefly describes what it is.

Gozer: Gozer discusses new Grand Theft Auto 4 DLC expansion. “The Lost and Damned” $20 for roughly 1/3 of what the original game was.

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Tech news:

From News.com

Microsoft sues TomTom for patent infringement

Microsoft said on Wednesday that it is filing two separate patent infringement actions against the GPS navigation company. In complaints before the U.S. District Court in Washington and the International Trade Commission, Microsoft is alleging infringement of eight patents.

In an interview, Microsoft deputy general counsel Horacio Gutierrez said that the software giant has been trying to start licensing talks with TomTom for more than a year.

“They basically never were prepared to have a discussion with us with respect to licensing terms,” Gutierrez said.

A TomTom spokesman said, as a corporate policy, the company “does not comment on legal matters.”

Although Microsoft has been on the receiving end of many patent complaints, this is only the third patent case Microsoft has taken to court. Last year it sued Taiwanese mouse maker Primax, before subsequently settling. It also had a dispute with Belkin back in 2006, which was eventually settled as well.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10172068-56.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1

From Joystiq

Netflix planning on offering ’streaming only’ subscriptions in future

If you’ve found yourself fascinated by the Xbox 360’s recently acquired ability to stream movies and TV programs off Netflix, but found yourself hesitant to subscribe to its pesky DVD delivery service in order to access said function, we’ve got great news. Netflix has apparently recognized your reservations, and is planning on implementing a “streaming only” subscription in the “foreseeable future.”

The demand for such a subscription plan is clear. Netflix, which offers over 12,000 titles on its streaming service, saw a great deal of unexpected growth last quarter thanks to the popularity of streaming programming — we’d wager most of that came from the 360s Netflix app. No word on the release date or pricing of the stand-alone streaming subscription — without the hassle of postage fees, we’d wager it’ll see a nice discount from the standard $8.99 monthly plan.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/25/netflix-planning-on-offering-streaming-only-subscriptions-in-f/

From Ars Technica

New Google Toolbar beta invades desktops, brings suggestions

Google has released a beta of Google Toolbar 6 for Internet Explorer. The modest new version brings Google features both old and new to Internet Explorer, and also brings Google’s increasingly thorough search to Toolbar users’ desktops.

The most significant new feature of Toolbar 6 beta is the Quick Search Box (QSB), a search dialog that ironically has nothing to do with the toolbar itself. You may recognize QSB from Google Desktop for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, or even the scaled down, Mac-only product of the same name released in January.

Like a college-bound teenager, QSB lives separately from its IE toolbar brethren in the Windows taskbar. A mouse click or a control-space shortcut invokes its popup dialog for searching the web (with suggestions), local bookmarks, and even applications. As with its other implementations, QSB learns as you use it in an effort to (in theory) identify what you are searching for more quickly. In our brief experience, QSB is fairly smart, able to identify applications by abbreviations (WMP) and clearly present suggestions.

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/02/new-google-toolbar-beta-invades-desktops-brings-suggestions.ars

From OSNews:

Steve Ballmer: Linux Bigger Competitor than Apple

Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer had some interesting things to say yesterday about which companies Microsoft sees as its competitors in the client operating system space. You’d think Apple was their number one competitor – and you’d be wrong. Microsoft sees two other competitors as their primary adversaries.

During a speech for investors, Steve Ballmer showed a slide to his audience where Microsoft sees piracy as its biggest competitor. “Number two market share goes to Windows pirated, or unlicensed,” Balmer said, “That’s a competitor that’s tough to beat, they’ve got a good price and a heck of a product, but we’re working on it.” This isn’t exactly new information, but it’s interesting to see it spelled out so clearly.

Much more interesting is Microsoft’s idea of Linux and Apple, According to Microsoft, Linux is a bigger threat to the company than Apple, placing Linux above Apple in the marketshare figure pie chart thing. He went on to explain how the company views Apple: “I think depending on how you look at it, Apple has probably increased its market share over the last year or so by a point or more. And a point of market share on a number that’s about 300 million is interesting. It’s an interesting amount of market share, while not necessarily being as dramatic as people would think, but we’re very focused in on both Apple as a competitor, and Linux as a competitor.”

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Test A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast

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How To: Watch Hulu Shows With Only One Commercial

If you refreshing a streaming Hulu video page, you are offered the choice of watching one two-minute video instead of regular commercial breaks. Handy for slower connections and sly office viewing.

You might not save that much on total commercial time, but rather than having to re-buffer each video section between commercials, Hulu’s offering lets you watch one two-minute clip, then stream a whole episode without having to stop again. It’ll be interesting to see if this opens up downloading hacks down the road, since it would seem the whole clip would be cached in your browser.

Some users might see the new commercial option right away, and it might take multiple refreshes for others to pull it up.

From Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/5158623/watch-hulu-shows-with-only-one-commercial

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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast

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Hack: Re-add Hulu to your Apple TV

Last week Hulu removed their content from TV.com and then the next day from Boxee, which streams content from many sources. Many people loaded Boxee onto their Apple TV units and Hulu was the missing piece to make the box the perfect online TV device. Now there is a hacker’s plug-in that can put streaming Hulu content back into your Boxee media center on Linux, Macs, or Apple TV.

Before embarking on the process, grab the Hulu plugin package from the forum links at the page at the end.

1. Launch Boxee and log in, then head to the left-hand panel and click down to “Settings.” Choose “Applications” from the upper right.

2. Choose “Update/Remove” from the top-hand bar, then scroll down to Hulu and click.
3. Head down to the bottom two options, choose “Remove” on the right, and confirm. Don’t worry, it’ll be right back!
4 Grab the Hulu plugin package from the link above this gallery, unzip it, and drop the folder into your plugins/video folder. Here’s the likely spots:
Apple TV: SFTP into your Apple TV’s root directory (described in our Apple TV/Boxee guide linked above), head to Applications/boxee.app/contents/resources/boxee/plugins/video, and drop in the Hulu folder you extracted. Make sure there isn’t an extra “Hulu” folder containing it, as noted above.
Linux: In your home folder—.boxee/plugins/video (note the period at the beginning)
Mac OS X: From the Boxee package—/Contents/Resources/Boxee/plugins
5 Head back to Boxee, browse to Settings/Applications, choose “Add New” from the top bar, then select the “new” Hulu.
6 The non-blocked Hulu comes uncapitalized, but you can rename it however you’d like. Make sure “Video” is checked among the “Source Type” options, then hit “Add.”
7 Boom! Hulu’s icon is right back where you left it, and you’re once again flush with streaming TV, movies, and other content.

Some people on Apple TVs, and other systems, are seeing a “Failed to retrieve data” message, and I was too, earlier. I fixed it by removing the extra-level “Hulu” folder and copying the folder inside it into the correct plugin folder (listed below for each system). In other words, make sure the folder you’re dropping into your plugin folder contains two folders, .svn and resources, and three files, not another “Hulu” folder.

From Lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/5157615/how-to-reinstall-a-working-hulu-in-boxee

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The Geek’s View: Blu-Ray review of Hulk vs.

Part 1 Hulk vs. Wolverine ( ultra violent awesomeness)

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Related Episodes:

1. The Geekcast #191 – IPTV
2. The Geekcast #167 – Boxee
3. The Geekcast #179 – A Chat with Phil Zaninni of Venti Pixel
4. The Geekcast #157 – Filezilla