So with that in mind, we decided to look at what you can get your dear old Dad next weekend for Fathers Day. Whether you want to spend a very little or a lot, we’re looking at a variety of things.

We’re also checking out Microsoft who had us up the coast this past week to show us all their new ideas. Yes, one of the chefs at The Gadget Grill was allowed in to see new tech and toys, so we’re looking at Windows Phone 7, Kinect, and a bunch of other things.

Plus there’s news, bad jokes, a competition that you probably missed, music dedicated to the great city of New Orleans, and more.

Because we love that city so much, we decided to make all of our music New Orleanian for this show.

Here’s what we played, as well as links to places (some not on iTunes) where you can find the tracks if you’d like to buy them…

Cyril Neville – Foxy Lady
from “The Essential Cyril Neville”

Galactic – Never Called You Crazy
from “Ruckus”
Buy from Galactic’s store…

Henry Butler – Old Man River
from “PiaNOLA Live”

Dumpstaphunk – Turn This Thing Around
from “Listen Here”

Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue – Joey’s Wet Dream
from “Live  at New Orleans Jazz Fest 2008″
Buy from Munck Music…

Although my attendance was as a member and guest of Microsoft’s Open Source Convergence group, this conference offers attendees a wonderful opportunity to achieve many goals. For instance, upcoming technologies, such as Windows Phone 7 and X-Box were on display and able to be seen by many. Those wishing to pursue formal professional certifications through the MSCE processes were encouraged to complete courses and examinations and thus improve their personal professional standings.

All were encouraged to attend as many of the 150 or so sessions being held at the Gold Coast Convention Centre during the conference, so as to increase and improve their knowledge of the technologies that are currently in common use throughout the general business world.

But as I mentioned earlier, I was there as a member of the Open Source/Convergence stream; given that we are talking about Microsoft, how does Open Source come into the picture?

What many are unaware of is the amount of effort that Microsoft is now putting into the development and integration within their core product lines of many of the traditional Open Source technologies.

PHP, perl, MySql, and Ruby on Rails, for instance, are all popular Open Source technologies, and as such, are technologies that we tend to think of in terms of Linux. While the very term “LAMP stack” refers specifically to MySql and PHP. for instance, Microsoft have been looking at these technologies, and writing and contributing back to the Open Source communities thousands of lines of source code, so that these technologies may be run, side by side, with Microsoft products, in a Windows environment, as native binaries.

Yes, that’s right: perl and PHP, directly accessing MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQL Server, from within your Windows 7 desktop environment!

And as a part of tech Ed 2010, Microsoft was able to bring together a number of Australia’s leading Open Source developers, and had them meet with some of their own Open Source technologists.

Presentations were made that demonstrated and explained the efforts that Microsoft were making in this realm, and presentations from the community were made to demonstrate and explain to Microsoft some of the efforts and directions that the community were taking.

Microsoft brought to the table a number of their internal staff, including Tom Hanrahan and Eric Golpe, who are both senior technical staff within Microsoft. These guys very quickly demonstrated that they had a “hands-on” approach, with a very open attitude. They were clearly on hand to listen and become engaged with those at the coalface within the community, and their positive attitude and willingness to actively listen, discuss, offer suggestions and communicate with those present illustrates, to me, a level of engagement, professionalism and dedication that one rarely sees from an organisation of this type.

Microsoft are an organisation that we all love to criticise, and it’s important that, when kudos are due, we recognise and applaud the efforts being made. The consensus that I took away at the end of the week was that the locals involved in these efforts – and that extends to those in Singapore as well – are to be applauded and encouraged for their efforts and attitude, and that there needs to be even greater inclusion of Open Source technologies within future Tech Ed and similar events.

And that is why we are pleased to tell you that Google have just added a movies section to their YouTube site.

This section contains over 400 movies, including some very obscure stuff, but also including a very comprehensive catalogue of stuff like old Three Stooges comedies.

Slowly I turned, step by step.

Well no, not quite.

But scientists have recently rediscovered that water droplets, surrounded by modified silica, can be used to create a form of powdered water.

It is believed that powdered water can help to counteract global warming by soaking up carbon dioxide.

Although Reverb Communications have been ordered to pull down the reviews, they have stated that don’t feel that this was a major problem.

Some people simply don’t get it.

Au Yeung Ping Chi, owner of Hong Kong’s Bo Wah Effigies Shop, has created a new niche market making paper effigies of popular electronic gadgets. These effigies are then set alight and burned in the honor of the recently deceased person.

Devices created include video game consoles, mobile phones, digital cameras and even designer handbags.

I’ll be quit interested to see how this one is resolved. We should remember that it’s only been a few weeks since the US courts ruled that jail breaking of the iPhone was legal, and was more of a very minor copyright issue rather than a hardware one.

D-Jays in-ear earphones

Tune in and win. (NSW listeners only, please)

Philadelphia Grand Jury – When Your Boyfriend Comes To Town
from “Hope Is For Hopers”

Cady Groves – I’m Still Here
from “The Life Of A Pirate”

Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl
from “The Essential Van Morrison”

Dave Matthews Band – Crash Into Me
from “Crash”

Bucky Pizzarelli – I’ll See You In My Dreams
from “Bucky Pizzarelli’s Pizza Party”

And have you ever made pasta? You might want to when we get through with you because we’re finally bringing a food gadget into the grill!

Yes it’s a pasta maker. Find out more by listening below!

All that and multiple mentions of the word hung, some news, music, and random segues.

Pitched at photojournalists, this camera platform lets you get an aerial view of your subject, while sending you a video feed from the camera. It has a GPS built in and is radio controlled, and with the GPS it has the ability to keep itself in a location set by the user.

A secondary remote control allows you to move the camera around on its three axis gimbal, thus allowing you to get the correct composition and focus etc for your image.

Flash Cookies, as LSOs are more commonly known, have the ability to store user information over long periods of time. Disturbingly, they can do with without notifying the computer user, and without leaving any traces of their presence.

It seems that these LSOs have been used by websites to track visitors’ behaviour in breach of those websites’ privacy policies. A suit has been filed in the US District Court in Los Angeles against Walt Disney Internet Group, Clearspring Technologies, Warner Bros. Records, and a number of other entities. All of these companies are alleged to have shared these cookies.

The methods by which a user can remove LSOs is neither easy nor evident, and removing ordinary cookies can be overridden through the use of LSOs, which can reinstate previously deleted cookies.

Until September 15, affected Germans in up to 20 cities can ask to have their homes erased, and Google will then blur the image of the home within Street View.

And with good reason too.

We are hearing reports that the crash of SpanAir flight 5022, about two years ago, may have been caused by some malware that infected one of SpanAir’s computer systems.

The Spanish newspaper, El Pais has reported that in an internal airline report, the airline states that the infected computer failed to detect three technical problems with the aircraft. If those problems had been detected, the computer system may have prevented the plane from taking off, thus perhaps saving 154 lives.

Instead, a number of on-board systems failed and no warnings were given to the flight crew.

Their plans include the development of a thicker film solution that can be used to coat exterior walls, or that could be used as solar roof tiles that could clip together. It is envisaged that this could eventually replace the need for the big solar panels that we currently see on rooftops.

On this show, we’ll be taking a look at exactly what viral video is and even play a song from one viral video.

All of that plus news about Facebook privacy concerns, new phones from HTC poised to take on the iPhone, where bicycles meet technology in New York City, and a whole bunch of new and surprising music to get you in the whole gadgety spirit. Ok, we’re kidding about that. Music doesn’t do that. Gadgets do.

We also gave away another pair of headphones this week, so if you missed out, make sure to tune in next Sunday at 9pm to go in the running for another prize!

Rock, pop, jazz, and viral music: check.

What’s the viral music? You’ll just have to scroll down because on this Gadget Grill show we looked at viral videos… one of which has a song to go with it.

Cold War Kids – Hospital Beds
from “Hospital Beds”

Marina & The Diamonds – Mowgli’s Road
from “The Family Jewels”

Antoine Dodson & The Gregory Brothers – Bed Intruder Song
from “Bed Intruder Song”

also available on YouTube

Pierre-Yves Plat – Fantaisie / impromptu en ut dièse mineur
from “Récréations”

Donald Harrison & Christian Scott – Oriental Folk Song
from “Two Of A Kind”

But we often find that we’re just too busy to give it the regular exercise that a good Slinky needs, and that’s where the Slink-O-Matic comes into play.

This nifty device can sit in the corner somewhere, and will take care of that arduous task of slinking your Slinky for you. You no longer need steps, or tables or chairs …. Just use this to slink your Slinky from one side to the other, and back again.

Comprised of cardboard wheels and a handle, you attach the various pieces of this trolley to the box of great stuff you’ve just bought at Ikea, and you can now just wheel your booty back to your car, or maybe all the way home.

It seems that if you try to log in, but maybe don’t use the correct password, then it displays a failure screen, but shows your picture and email address.

At which point you can then harvest that email address, move along to attempt to log in to another user’s account, fail, harvest their details, and so one.

Well done, FaceBook.

A new version of iOS 4 has been released which patches a hole in the operating system and also, as a result, neuters this jailbreak site.

Under normal circumstances, we would probably expect to see the next iPhone in about June of 2011, but with the antennagate issues, coupled with the early leak of the iPhone 4’s details deters due to the phone being lost in bar earlier this year, there are stories circulating that suggest that the next iPhone might be seen as early as this coming January, some six months “early”.

Some of these stories also suggest CDMA technology, and there are constant rumors that, in the USA, AT&T may lose its monopoly as the exclusive carrier for the iPhone.

Watch this space.

In New York, they’re about to start testing a new network of social bikes, called SoBi, which you can just pick up from a nearby bike rack and leave at another.

To control the system there’s a SoBi unit which is clamped onto the bike. This contains a GPS unit, a cellular device and lock. You register with the SoBi system, and you can then use your mobile phone to locate a bike.

Having found a bike, you use your mobile phone to unlock the bike, and away you go. If the mobile network is up, of course.

Clue: you can stick it in your ear!