vulture bytes

Vulture Bytes: Online Consumption (Plus SpongeBob)

Vulture Bytes went easy on the gadgets this week. Unless you count a SpongeBob watch, there’s only one true awe-inspiring gizmo in the lot. (It’s a handset that your cell phone plugs into.) The rest are free sites to make your pop-cultural consumption — of sports, movies, and music — all the easier.

As always, e-mail us anything you find throughout the week. VultureBytes@gmail.com.

Are ya ready kids? (Aye-aye Vulture Bytes!) I can’t hear you! (AYE-AYE VULTURE BYTES!) Ohhh … who lives on a watch that can’t go under the sea? (SpongeBob SquarePants!) Designer and yellow and plasticky is he! (SpongeBob SquarePants!) If chronological nonsense be something you wish, (SpongeBob SquarePants!) Then drop a few bills and slap it on your wrist! (SpongeBob SquarePants!) Ready? SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob … SquarePants! PRICE: $150. Theme song alarm tone not included. (Or available at all.) Patrick the Starfish design also in stock.
In a sci-fi future that we’re already living, our cell phones are the focal point of every room in our lives. We no longer need stereos, just speaker docks to plug our phones into. Our computers are essentially becoming keyboard accessories for our phones. And now, with the Moshi Moshi 03i, our landlines can just be handsets that ground our mobile phones. The Moshi Moshi is a sleek dock and headset combo that grabs your iPhone’s signal and turns it into what at least looks like a landline. Comes in white or black, and generally makes you look like you’re far more important than you actually are. PRICE: $1,300 — Hong Kong dollars, that is. Comes out to about $167 U.S.
Yes yes, we know that The Dark Knighta movie that just a couple weeks ago we told you had become an appis now streaming on Facebook. But we were too busy with Netflix, a site that sees Facebook as a pixilated blip on its radar, to notice. We’ve been streaming more Netflix than ever because we recently discovered instantwatcher.com. It’s an encyclopedia of ways to kill a Friday night. It lists all the new, most popular, and recently queued releases, pulling its data from sources that we’d rather not know about. New this week, for example: Fargo’s chill, Monsters’ suspense, and Black Snake Moan’s radiator. Oh, and there’s an app if you like to manage your queue on the road. PRICE: Site is free. But the app is $2.
Streaming movies is simple compared to LinkMooch’s feat: a website full of live TV streaming as it’s happening. It’s almost all sport broadcasts, so don’t think this means you can stop scrambling for a place to watch Mad Men every summer Sunday. (A demographic we are very much a part of.) But the bevy of games on offer is impressive, with even some European soccer matches slipping in every now and then. And occasionally a stream of something other than sports sneaks through, as was the case with the Oscars a few weeks ago. (If it were truly committed to broadcasting nights where the whole country is watching the same thing, it’d have American Idol and Dancing With the Stars live feeds.) The legality of all this, meanwhile, is questionable, so don’t all rush there at once — we want to make this last as long as possible. PRICE: So free it might be illegal.
Ever since Apple bought and unceremoniously shuttered Lala.com, we’ve been looking for a new music site to occupy us when the ads on Pandora start to sear our eardrums. Epitonic is a different kind of site than Lala — no full album listens, a focus on indie music, and none of that confusing credit system — but it’s promising nonetheless. The site is a rebirth of one that went under when the first dot-com bubble burst. It features indie music you’ve definitely heard of (Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, Spoon) and plenty of stuff that you vaguely remember your friend who takes music way too seriously telling you about that one time (Deerhunter, Antony and the Johnsons, the Wrens, etc.). The best feature is the ability to download to the site’s playlists so you can listen whenever and wherever you want. Definitely worth a look. PRICE: Free.
Vulture Bytes: Online Consumption (Plus SpongeBob)