Year: 2012

DigitalOutbox Episode 128

DigitalOutbox Episode 128
DigitalOutbox Episode 128 – Mountain Lion, Quarterly Results and Nexus 7

Playback
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Shownotes
1:11 – Mountain Lion
– £13.99 upgrade
– iCloud, Notification Centre, Sharing, Twitter and Facebook, Airplay and Airplay Mirroring, Messages, Power Nap, Gatekeeper, Dictation, Safari (fast!), Reminders, Notes, Calendar, Game Center
– Consensus is that the OS feels a lot snappier than Snow Leopard and Lion
– Ian – I hope it’s more stable!
– Safari for Windows no longer available!
5:01 – Apple Results
– Apple disappointed analysts despite reporting profits up 21% year-on-year to $8.8bn (£5.6bn) and revenues up 23% to $35bn, after missing targets that Wall Street had forecast as consumers held off buying iPhones ahead of an expected new model later this year.
– The company also offered surprisingly low guidance of just $34bn in revenues for the coming quarter, suggesting it will not have another blockbuster product and may be expecting a slowdown in sales as people anticipate new products including new iPhones and possibly a smaller version of the iPad.
– That slowdown hit iPhone sales a year ago as anticipation grew ahead of the launch in October of the iPhone 4S.
– Chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer told analysts after the release that iPhone sales were being impacted by rumours of new products.
– Though sales of its iPad leapt by 84% year-on-year to 17m, iPhone sales rose just 28% to 26m, well below the figures some analysts had expected. The stock plunged almost 5% in after-hours trading after the company announced the results, which were below the Wall Street consensus expectations for the quarter of $37.22bn. The number of iPhones was below forecasts, while iPad sales were ahead.
– A key part of the miss appeared to be sales in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. In Europe, sequential sales dropped by 7%, but in Asia-Pacific they fell by nearly a 25% from the previous quarter.
– iPhone and Mac shipments were particularly soft, while iPad sales — 17 million — set an all-time high. Apple sold more “computers” last quarter — 21 million Macs and iPads — than any quarter ever before, including last Christmas.
– But the big-picture story is that this is a slower period ahead of the expected new iPhone and potential new iPad this fall (and maybe someday, a television). Apple’s 23% year-over-year revenue growth was its slowest since 12% growth in the June 2009 quarter, and was almost down at Google’s 21% level!
8:01 – Microsoft Results
– Microsoft just released its Q4 2012 earnings report, posting just $192M in operating income before taxes and its first ever loss ($492M) due to the writedown the company took because of its failed aQuantive acquisition. Revenue for this quarter was $18.06, up from $17.41 billion in the last quarter and $17.37 billion in Q4 2011. Loss per share – and this is the first time Microsoft reported a negative EPS in its history – was $0.06.
– Analysts previously expected Microsoft to post around $18.13 billion in revenue and earnings per share were expected to be around $0.62 on earnings of around $5.3 billion. These numbers don’t reflect the aQuantive writedown, however. In the year-ago quarter, Microsoft reported a profit of $5.9 billion and $4.5 billion in Q4 2010.
– Still have $50 billion in the bank
9:25 – Google Results
– It was a strong quarter for Google overall, posting 21% year-on-year revenue growth for Google’s own properties, but Motorola racked up a $233 million loss. Despite running at a loss, Motorola netted Google $1.25 billion in revenue.
– Google’s total quarterly revenue was $12.21 billion, up 35% from Q2 2011, including revenue from Google-owned sites and partner sites not part of the main Google portfolio. Revenues from outside the U.S. accounted for 54% of Google’s quarterly revenue, holding steady from a year ago.
– Adding Motorola to the family caused Google’s employee numbers to skyrocket. The company already had 34,000 workers, and Motorola adds another 20,000. The Motorola loss breaks down to $192 million for the mobile segment and $41 million for the home segment. The loss represents 19% of Motorola’s Q2 revenue of $1.25 billion, $843 million of which came from mobile and $407 million from the home segment.
13:20 – Google buys Sparrow
– Google buys Sparrow for $25 million
– Sparrow still available for Mac and iPhone but will receive no more updates
– Sparrow’s experience at building simple and powerful email clients will be helpful in bringing consistency to the Gmail ecosystem. Our sources also noted that Google isn’t ruling out native Gmail clients for platforms beyond iOS and Android, and emphasized that Google wants to bring polish, “beauty,” and ease of use to all of its Gmail experiences across platforms (a suggestion that a native client for Mac and PC might be in the offing).
– Shame. More and more great developers being bought up by the big firms and their products are then shuttered.
– Worst bit for me is that they put the app on half price sale around a week ago ‘for a few days’. Then at the end of that they have sold and for all those new customers there are no more updates. They still have a great app, but an app that is now frozen from a features perspective.
17:56 – Nexus 7
– Great success for the tablet
– Can’t buy 16gb edition
– Sources close to Google say the search giant seriously underestimated the demand for the 16GB version of its 7in Nexus 7 tablet, which has sold out from stockists and other sources while demand for the smaller 8GB version remains comparatively low.
– The company has now halted further orders of the 16GB version of the tablet, costing £199, on its Google Play store in the US and UK. Orders made in the period up to the end of last week are due to be fulfilled, but a shortage of stock now means a hiatus in sales.
– Couple of weeks wait for 8gb
– Some screen issues
– Not bonded properly
– Complaints are multiplying online about quality issues with the new Google Nexus 7 tablet, with a number of people complaining about “loose screens” which bleed light from the edges or move when touched. Some of those who have had problems say Google has been slow to respond to their concerns.
– Reports of “loose screens” have begun occurring almost since the devices first arrived. Some users have complained that the touchscreen glass is slightly lifted around the edge of the device. In some cases that means that light seems to “bleed” into the display of a page, while others have said it means the screen actually moves.
– In a post on the Android Central forums, a user called psycho9x reported that “Just got [my] N7 yesterday and I love it BUT I have noticed that the glass on the left side is separating from the case… When you look at it from the side you can see the glass sticking up a bit and when you push it back down you can hear the adhesive grab on then it lets go. I haven’t even had it for 12 hours yet.”
– Other reports show “phantom” typing because of uneven screen attachment.
– Other users have reported “stuck” pixels on the 1280×800 screen. Others have said that it is unresponsive to some touchscreen input.
– Ian played with one…..
23:59 – Ofcom reveals 4G auction plans
– Telecoms regulator Ofcom has unveiled plans for the auction of fourth generation (4G) bandwidth for mobile phone services.
– The sales process will start later this year but bidding will not begin until early 2013, which Ofcom said was in line with its previous timetable.
– The regulator says it expects consumers to start getting services in late 2013.
– It wants to see “at least four credible national wholesalers of 4G mobile services” to promote competition.
– The auction will sell chunks of radio spectrum to support future 4G mobile services, which will allow users to download data such as music and videos at much faster speeds.
25:45 – Three users double data usage
– Mobile customers now consume double the amount of data than they did last year, says Three.
– The operator’s contract customers now use an average of 1.1GB a month, compared to the 450MB they gobbled up this time last year. The culprits of high data use are unsurprisingly top-end smartphone users, who swallow roughly 1.5GB a month.
28:13 – Open Internet Code of Practice
– A number of UK internet service providers (ISPs) have signed up to a voluntary code of practice that generally requires them to ensure that they are offering “full and open internet access” to their customers.
– BT, BSkyB, O2 and TalkTalk are among 10 ISPs to commit to the Open Internet Code of Practice (9-page / 52KB PDF). However, Virgin Media, Vodafone and Everything Everywhere have so far elected not to sign up to the code, with Virgin citing concerns with its wording.
– Under the code, the signatory ISPs are allowed to offer “products” that may restrict “full internet access”, but they have committed not to use the term ‘internet access’ to “describe or mark such products and ensure that any restrictions are effectively communicated to consumers”.
– In addition, the code allows for the ISPs to restrict open use of the internet through “traffic management” of their services. This managing of congestion, together with blocking of services when ordered to do so by courts or law, as well as the blocking of sites and services that promote child pornography, count as legitimate restrictions to ISPs’ deliverance of a full internet service.
– Deploying age controls or complying with data caps or download limits as specified in consumer contracts are among the other permissible reasons ISPs can restrict their service.
– The code requires that ISPs do not use traffic management “in a manner that targets and degrades the content or application(s) of specific providers” and ensure that a ‘best efforts’ internet access is a “viable choice” to consumers even where other “managed services” are available.
– The ISPs signed up to the code have also agreed to operate “clear and transparent traffic management policies”.
– A new complaints system has also been established under the code to allow “providers of internet-based content, applications and services” to raise “evidenced concerns about possible instances of negative discrimination” with the individual ISPs. Should complaints be unresolved the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), which is an independent advisory body that helped facilitate the agreement of the new code, will report the incidents to the government and Ofcom, the telecoms regulator. Ofcom would then have to decide whether to investigate further.

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DigitalOutbox Episode 127

DigitalOutbox Episode 127
DigitalOutbox Episode 127 – Marissa Mayer, Office 13, Apple Woes and don’t criticise the Olympics

Playback
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Shownotes
1:05 – O2 Compensation
– The firm says customers who pay monthly will get back 10% of their July subscription, the equivalent of three days’ charges, applied to their September bill.
– Pay-as-you-go customers will get back 10% on their first top-up in September.
– All customers, even those who were not affected, will also be given a £10 voucher to spend in one of its stores.
2:14 – UK Texts more than Talks
– Mobile voice calls in decline for the first time ever, as more switch to text and online communications
– Newer ways of communicating led by 16-24s, with texting and social networking more frequently used than either phone calls or face to face communications
– The average Briton now sends 50 texts per week
– Two fifths of UK adults now own a smartphone, with the same proportion saying their phone is the most important device for accessing the internet
– Tablet ownership has jumped from 2% to 11% in 12 months
5:29 – Marissa Mayer is Yahoos new CEO
– Marissa Mayer, one of the top executives at Google, will be the next chief of Yahoo, making her one of the most prominent women in Silicon Valley and corporate America.
– The appointment of Ms. Mayer is consider a coup for Yahoo, which has struggled in recent years to attract top talent in its battle with competitors. One of the few public faces of Google, Ms. Mayer, 37, has been responsible for the look and feel of some of the search company’s most popular products.
– The move to Yahoo is an opportunity for Ms. Mayer to step out on her own and claim a bigger stage. Ms. Mayer, an engineer by training whose first job at Google included computer programming, was behind the famously unadorned white search home page and the way users interacted with Gmail, Google News and Google Images. She also sat on Google’s operating committee, part of a small circle of senior executives who had the ear of Google’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
– Marissa Mayer, the Google (GOOG) executive who today was named Yahoo’s (YHOO) new chief executive, is pregnant.
– Mayer told Fortune exclusively that her first child is due October 7. It’s a boy!
“He’s super-active,” Mayer told me in a phone call tonight, three hours after Yahoo announced her appointment. “He moves around a lot. My doctor says that he takes after his parents.”
– Great move by Yahoo – bold and looks to have put someone in place that will actually do something with the assets they have.
9:29 – Office 2013
– a “modern” version of the software that is used on a billion PCs worldwide. Cloud-connected and designed to work well on Windows 8 tablets, Office 2013 signals a shift to document collaboration and anywhere any device access. Notably, Microsoft is introducing an on-demand subscription version of Office 2013 that can be streamed from any Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC, with the ability to sync settings and documents.
– Perhaps the biggest change to Office 2013 isn’t the way it looks or its features, but rather the way documents are delivered along with some important under-the-hood changes. Microsoft is really pushing the ability to create a Word document on a Windows PC and edit it on a Windows Phone, Windows 8 tablet, or any Windows 7- or Windows 8-based PC with an internet connection. Home users can store documents in Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage and businesses can use a range of the company’s SharePoint offerings. Office 2013’s big innovation is its ability to let users stream a full-featured version of Office to a PC with personal settings intact — an on-demand Office suite whenever you require it.
– Office on demand is a powerful aspect to Microsoft’s Office 2013 subscription offering, providing a way to access a full version of Office wherever you are. The service lets you stream a full-featured Office application to any internet-connected PC running Windows 7 and Windows 8, providing access to the settings and documents you use regularly. Simply put, you can sign in to a streaming version of Office at a friend’s PC and finish a document; the app will then be removed from the PC once it’s closed. This all requires an Office 365 Home Premium subscription, but its ease-of-use makes it a compelling prospect for users who are comfortable using Microsoft’s Office suite and require more document editing functionality than Google Docs or Microsoft’s own Office Web Apps provide. Despite this, you can still opt to simply buy a standalone version of the Office 2013 desktop software and utilize SkyDrive as an online storage hub for documents. You won’t get the streaming Office 2013 apps, but you’ll benefit from the cloud and avoid having to pay a subscription fee.
– Lots of different editions – Office 365, the company’s software plus services platform for Office, will power Office 2013 as a subscription service for those who want to avoid the up-front costs of a perpetual license and take advantage of some of the on-demand features. Available in Home Premium, Small Business Premium, Pro Plus, and Enterprise — Office 365 has a variety of offerings that are flexible based on needs, but like many of its other products there’s still no one size that fits all. The new Home Premium product allows a family to install Office 2013 on up to five PCs and get an additional 20GB of online SkyDrive storage to share documents online. Home Premium includes access to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Access, and Publisher through an Internet-connected Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC. Documents and settings, and even the actual apps will roam across whatever PC you choose to use Office 365 with. Other editions, like ProPlus and above, include additional user accounts and access to apps like InfoPath and Lync — designed for businesses. Office 365 will also include access to Office for Mac.
– Metro look and feel – A Touch Mode feature is present in each Office 2013 application, but it does very little. Although hit targets become larger, making it slightly easier to navigate with touch, and it’s easy to navigate or type data in documents, the feature feels a little gimmicky and is hidden away from immediate view.
– Word – open, edit and save pdf’s, embed web video, better layout options
– Outlook sees most improvements, but mostly back end
– OneNote look nice – could be great on a surface device
15:43 – Nokia Woes
– The woes at the Finnish mobile phone company Nokia continue to mount, with further losses in its main division in the second quarter of 2012, and a €220m (£170m) write-off on unsold stock of its smartphones.
– Nokia also admitted its high-profile attempt to break back into the US smartphone market with its new range of Lumia phones, running Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, had led to only about 600,000 sales in the US – down on the 1.5m sold in the same period a year ago when the company was only offering its outdated Symbian software.
– The mobile phone division recorded an operating loss of €474m, its second successive quarter of losses, on revenues down 26% year-on-year to €4.02bn. Overall, the company recorded a loss, including one-off restructuring costs, of €826m compared to a loss of €487m in the same period in 2011. Without the restructuring costs, losses would be €327m.
– Elop said Nokia had delivered 4m Lumia smartphones in the second quarter, and that he expected Microsoft’s launch of the new Windows Phone 8 software in the autumn would be “an important catalyst”.
– Existing Lumia phones won’t run the new Windows Phone 8 software…
18:15 – Man assaulted for wearing digital eye by McDonalds staff
– Steve Mann pioneered and wears a digital eye glass
– Think a more permanently attached Google Glass
– On the evening of 2012 July 1st, my wife and children and I went to McDonalds at 140, Avenue Champs Elysees, Paris, France, after a day of sightseeing (8 museums and other landmark sights, as part of a boat cruise package), and while we were standing in line at McDonalds, I was stopped by a person who subsequently stated that he was a McDonalds employee, and he asked about my eyeglass (digital computer vision system, i.e. EyeTap).
– Because we’d spent the day going to various museums and historical landmark sites guarded by military and police, I had brought with me the letter from my doctor regarding my computer vision eyeglass, along with documentation, etc., although I’d not needed to present any of this at any of the other places I visited (McDonald’s was the only establishement that seemed to have any problem with my eyeglass during our entire 2 week trip).
– Since I happened to have it with me, I showed this doctor’s letter and the documentation to the purported McDonalds employee who had stopped me in the McDonalds line.
– After reviewing the documentation, the purported McDonalds employee accepted me (and my family) as a customer, and left us to place our order. In what follows, I will refer to this person as “Possible Witness 1”.
– We ordered two Ranch Wraps, one burger, and one mango McFlurry, from a cashier who I will refer to as “Possible Witness 2”. My daughter handled the cash to pay Possible Witness 2, as my daughter wanted to practice her French. Possible Witness 2 complimented my daughter on her fluency in French.
Next my family and I seated ourselves in the restaurant right by the entrance, so we could watch people walking along Avenue Champs Elysees while we ate our meal.
– Subsequently another person within McDonalds physically assaulted me, while I was in McDonand’s, eating my McDonand’s Ranch Wrap that I had just purchased at this McDonald’s. He angrily grabbed my eyeglass, and tried to pull it off my head. The eyeglass is permanently attached and does not come off my skull without special tools.
– I tried to calm him down and I showed him the letter from my doctor and the documentation I had brought with me. He (who I will refer to as Perpetrator 1) then brought me to two other persons. He was standing in the middle, right in front of me, and there was another person to my left seated at a table (who I will refer to as Perpetrator 2), and a third person to my right. The third person (who I will refer to as Perpetrator 3) was holding a broom and dustpan, and wearing a shirt with a McDonald’s logo on it. The person in the center (Perpetrator 1) handed the materials I had given him to the person to my left (Perpetrator 2), while the three of them reviewed my doctor’s letter and the documentation.
– After all three of them reviewed this material, and deliberated on it for some time, Perpetrator 2 angrily crumpled and ripped up the letter from my doctor. My other documentation was also destroyed by Perpetrator 1.
– I noticed that Perpetrator 1 was wearing a name tag clipped to his belt. When I looked down at it, he quickly covered it up with his hand, and pulled it off and turned it around so that it was facing inwards, so that only the blank white backside of it was then facing outwards.
– Perpetrator 1 pushed me out the door, onto the street.
– The computerized eyeglass processes imagery using Augmediated Reality, in order to help the wearer see better, and when the computer is damaged, e.g. by falling and hitting the ground (or by a physical assault), buffered pictures for processing remain in its memory, and are not overwritten with new ones by the then non-functioning computer vision system.
– As a result of Perpetrator 1’s actions, therefore images that would not have otherwise been captured were captured. Therefore by damaging the Eye Glass, Perpetrator 1 photographed himself and others within McDonalds.
21:40 – Apple ordered to run Samsung didn’t copy ad’s
– A UK judge has ordered Apple to publish announcements that Samsung did not copy the design of its iPad, according to the Bloomberg news agency.
– It said the judge said one notice should remain on Apple’s website for at least six months, while other adverts should be placed in various newspapers and magazines.
– It follows the US company’s failed attempt to block sales of the South Korean firm’s Galaxy Tab tablets.
– Apple has not commented on the news.
– The order did not feature in Judge Colin Birss’s judgement published on 9 July, but Bloomberg said the matter was discussed in the court following the verdict.
– It said the notices must make reference to the court case and should be designed to “correct the damaging impression” that Samsung’s tablets had aped the look of Apple’s products.
23:08 – Apples in-app purchasing circumvented
– a Russian developer has published a method of obtaining in-app purchases from iOS apps for free. First noticed by Russian blog i-ekb.ru, the “in-app proxy” method does not require a jailbreak, can be completed by novices in three steps using just an iOS device, and allows users to install in-app content for free. The hack also works on all devices running iOS 3.0 to 6.0. We confirmed the method works (at least temporarily), and the published instructions are starting to get attention, so we decided to publish this story as a warning to the Apple developer community.
– The hack appears to come from Russian developer ZonD80 who posted the above video demonstration. ZonD80 also appears to run a website called In-AppStore.com, where donations are being accepted to support the development of the project and help keep servers up and running. The developer explained the three steps of the hack, which include the installation of CA certificate, the installation of in-appstore.com certificate, and the changing of DNS record in Wi-Fi settings. After the quick process, users are presented with the message pictured above when installing in-app purchases, opposed to Apple’s usual purchase confirmation dialog. The fact that this hack is being used to steal in-app purchase content is perhaps just as troubling as the developer’s terms of service. Below is a list of data processed through the devs servers as part of the process (but again, we are imploring readers not to try this):
-restriction level of app
-id of app
-id of version
-guid of your idevice
-quantity of in-app purchase
-offer name of in-app purchase
-language you are using
-identifier of application
-version of application
-your locale
– Developers concerned – in app purchasing is a major source of revenue
– Apple has responded to The Loop regarding the situation with the following statement:
“The security of the App Store is incredibly important to us and the developer community,” Apple representative Natalie Harrison, told The Loop. “We take reports of fraudulent activity very seriously and we are investigating.”
– One of the suggestions for a method by which Apple could improve the security of In App Purchasing was to include a unique identifier in validation receipts, and we’ve received word that developers are now seeing something along those lines coming from receipts issued by Apple since late yesterday. The receipts carry a new field called “unique_identifer” that appears to include the Unique Device Identifier (UDID) for the device making the In App Purchase – 5 days after the above report Apple has updated the purchase process
26:08 – Apple reverses course on EPEAT environmental standard
– Apple has posted a letter from retiring senior VP of hardware engineering Bob Mansfield to its website, walking back the company’s abandonment of the EPEAT certification for its eligible products. Per the letter:
– We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.
– There’s a corresponding statement from EPEAT president Robert Frisbee on the organization’s site. It was only last week that Apple’s 39 EPEAT-eligible products were pulled from the industry registry at the company’s request.
– As recently as this Tuesday, Apple’s PR team was pointing out that the company’s environmental efforts are continuing and include many areas of progress not covered by the outdated EPEAT standards. It’s likely that the “loyal Apple customers” who raised their concerns with Mansfield and Apple management included many large institutional and government accounts, which may have purchasing rules mandating EPEAT-eligible gear when possible.
– Both Mansfield and Frisbee emphasize that this experience has strengthened the collaborative efforts of Apple and EPEAT, and that Apple’s input will be crucial in evolving the standard to deal with more modern devices.
28:32 – Betaworks Acquires Digg
– Betaworks, the company behind bit.ly, news.me, Chartbeat and a number of other successful products, has acquired the social news site Digg.com for an undisclosed amount. Betaworks’ founder John Borthwick will become the new CEO of Digg. The site’s current CEO Matt Williams will join Andreessen Horowitz as Entrepreneur in Residence after the Betaworks transition is complete. Digg’s founder Kevin Rose joined Google a few months ago after the search engine acquired his latest startup Milk.
– Betaworks promises to turn Digg “back into a startup,” with low budgets, a small team and fast update cycles. None of the remaining Digg employees, it seems, are moving to Betaworks. Instead, the News.me team will take over the management of the site. Betaworks, says Digg, will soon unveil a new “cloud-based version of Digg” that will complement News.me’s iPhone and iPad apps.
– According to Digg’s outgoing CEO Matt Williams, his team “considered many options of where Digg could go, and frankly many of them could not live up to the reason Digg was invented in the first place — to discover the best stuff on the web. We wanted to find a way to take Digg back to its startup roots.” Betaworks says it’s planning to “build Digg for 2012.”
– Update: Rumor has it that the price was just $500k, but that number doesn’t really make a lot of sense, given that the site still gets enough traffic to make more than that in a year by just selling ads. Talking to AllThingsD, Digg CEO Matt Williams confirmed that “the overall consideration is significantly larger” and includes a combination of cash and equity. Another source close to the negotiations tells us that the price was indeed not $500k. We haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact price yet.
31:56 – Now TV Launched
– BSkyB is to launch its internet service Now TV on Tuesday, with the aim of taking on rivals such as Netflix and LoveFilm, offering movies for £15 a month or up to £3.49 per view.
– The service, which will launch this week on PC, Mac and some Android smartphones, will initially only offer Sky Movies content at launch with access to 600 films and 11 channels.
– However a typically aggressive rollout plan will see Sky Sports content including Premier League, cricket, rugby and golf before the end of the year, as well as channels including Sky1, Sky Arts and Sky Atlantic.
– Now TV will be priced at £15 a month for customers who want to access Sky Movies content, with a “pay and play” option of selecting individual films from 99p to £3.49.
– Sky is aiming to break beyond its pay-TV roots and target the 13m UK households who refuse to sign up for what can be costly subscription packages.
– BSkyB has more than 10m pay-TV customers, however the number of new sign ups has dwindled to as low as 15,000 per quarter.
– The launch of Now TV is seen as potentially as important as BSkyB’s move into the broadband market in 2006, a move to protect and grow its business model to tap into shifting consumer viewing habits such as watching TV on mobile and handheld devices.
– “We are targeting the 13m non-pay TV households out there with a no commitment, no contract way of delivering Sky content they want in a dip in and dip out way,” said BSkyB managing director of sales and marketing Stephen van Rooyen. “The whole idea is to have something ‘not Sky’, it is purposely designed to attract new customers.”
– BSkyB intends to roll out the availability of Now TV rapidly to other devices including iPhone, iPad, Microsoft Xbox and Roku, while the company is also in discussions to bring it to the PlayStation 3.
36:04 – You can’t link to Olympics website if you say something mean about them
– For years, we’ve highlighted the overaggressive nature of the Olympics in over-protecting their intellectual property — even to the level of getting host countries to pass special IP laws that only apply to the Olympics. But this sense of ultimate entitlement seems to pervade everything that the Olympics does. It was recently noted that the terms of use for the London 2012 website include a restriction on how you can link to the site:
Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format. You may not use any link to the Site as a method of creating an unauthorised association between an organisation, business, goods or services and London 2012, and agree that no such link shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services) in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner. The use of our logo or any other Olympic or London 2012 Mark(s) as a link to the Site is not permitted. View our guidelines on Use of the Games’ Marks.
– Either way, this claim that you can’t link to their site in a “derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner” has inspired the creativity of the internet, it appears. Specifically, lots of folks have taken to Twitter to share their own derogatory or otherwise objectionable statements along with links to the website.

Picks

DigitalOutbox Episode 126

DigitalOutbox Episode 126
DigitalOutbox Episode 126 – O2 Outage, Samsung, KickStarter and Yodel

Playback
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Shownotes
1:54 – O2 Outage
– Started on Wednesday 11th
– Affected up to ⅓ of customers – around 7 million in total (they have 23 million customers)
– O2 customers found they were unable to make calls or send and receive text messages from about mid-afternoon on Wednesday. The disruption continued throughout the night and into Thursday morning.
– Some O2 customers who were not affected yesterday also claimed to have been disrupted on Thursday, in a sign that the network outage spread further overnight.
– O2 is the UK’s second-biggest mobile network and provides services to customers of Tesco Mobile and giffgaff, who were also affected by the prolonged disruption.
– Lasted around 24 hours
– Switching off 3g this morning resolved the issue for many
– Fully restored late this afternoon
– The UK’s second largest mobile network is now facing an investigation by telecoms regulator Ofcom into what caused the downtime and is likely to have to pay compensation to customers affected by the blackout.
– Pity the social media team dealing with complaints on twitter
6:21 – Samsung wins latest patent dispute
– Samsung won a victory over Apple in the UK high court as part of its world-spanning battle over intellectual property and design after a judge ruled the design of its Galaxy Tab isn’t cool enough to be confused with an iPad.

– The ruling, by Judge Colin Birss, means that Apple cannot stop the import or sale of the Galaxy Tab 10 under claims it has made that the designs are too close to those of the iPad.
– Instead, Judge Birss ruled that Samsung’s designs did not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design: “They are not as cool.”
– He noted distinctions such as the thickness and details on the backs of the devices in his ruling. “The informed user’s overall impression of each of the Samsung Galaxy Tablets is the following,” he said in his ruling. “From the front they belong to the family which includes the Apple design; but the Samsung products are very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back. They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool. The overall impression produced is different.”
– Apple has been given 21 days to appeal against the decision.
– In a statement, Samsung said the judgement confirmed its assertion that it did not infringe Apple’s design rights.
– “Samsung welcomes today’s judgment, which affirms our position that our Galaxy Tab products do not infringe Apple’s registered design right,” it said. “As the ruling proves, the origins of Apple’s registered design features can be found in numerous examples of prior art.
– “Should Apple continue to make excessive legal claims in other countries based on such generic designs, innovation in the industry could be harmed and consumer choice unduly limited.”
9:08 – Windows 8 Launch Date
– RTM in August, general release in October
– Slate from Intel – Jan 2013
9:44 – Dropbox doubling pro accounts
– Good news for Dropbox Pro users: Starting today, you’ll have twice the amount of storage space, for the same cost. Instead of 50GB, you’ll have 100GB to play with; instead of 100GB, it’ll be 200GB of space. You also can send others a 100GB 3-month trial for the online sharing and syncing service.
– So 100GB for $100 a year, 200GB for $200
– A new 500GB plan will also be offered for those who really need a lot of online storage space.
12:02 – Kickstarter coming to the UK
– It is the US-based crowdfunding website behind dozens of eclectic projects, including a $1m-backed fantasy webcomic and an unlikely brand of “rugged yet refined” men’s underwear.
– Now the site, Kickstarter, is to open in the UK, allowing British startups to solicit donations from the potential buyers among the public that could help get their projects off the ground.
– Kickstarter has already proved a remarkable success in the US. Since 2009, its users have helped fund more than 60,000 projects with nearly $280m, ranging from digital innovations to campaigns involving movies and photography. The site makes its money by levying a 5% fee on any projects that reach or exceed their funding target.
– So far seven projects – such as a visual-music project and a collection of “e-paper” watches called Pebble – have managed to raise more than $1m.
– Kickstarter confirmed in a tweet on Tuesday that it will be open to UK-based projects this autumn. “People in the UK will be able to launch projects on Kickstarter starting this autumn! More info soon! <3 <3 <3," the site said. 15:39 – Ouya – the android gaming console
– OUYA is a new game console for the TV, powered by Android and costing $99.
– We’ve packed this little box full of power. Developers will have access to OUYA’s open design so they can produce their games for the living room, taking advantage of everything the TV has to offer.
– Best of all, OUYA’s world-class controller, console, and interface come in one beautiful, inexpensive package. All the games on it will be free, at least to try.
– Specifications:
Tegra3 quad-core processor
1GB RAM
8GB of internal flash storage
HDMI connection to the TV, with support for up to 1080p HD
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth LE 4.0
USB 2.0 (one)
Wireless controller with standard controls (two analog sticks, d-pad, eight action buttons, a system button), a touchpad
Android 4.0
– Another kickstarter hit – over $3 million with over 20 days to go
19:49 – Amazon launches GameCircle
– Amazon has just announced a bit of good news for avid Kindle Fire gamers and developers — the company has been working to revamp the gaming experience on their wallet-conscious tablet and have decided to share the fruits of their labor.
– Starting today, developers can use Amazon’s GameCircle APIs to implement a host of new features in their Kindle Fire games. Considering how many other console and mobile gaming platforms already support them, it should come as no surprise that support for achievements is on that list of features. Also on deck is leaderboard functionality, which allows users to see how they stack up to their rivals without having to pop out of the game in question.
– So far, it all sounds very Game Center-y (though Amazon could do worse than to take cues from Apple), but GameCircle has one last trick up its sleeve. Perhaps the most immediately impressive feature is GameCircle’s sync functionality, which automatically saves a player’s progress to the cloud. As such, players are able to pick up where they left off even if they’ve had to re-install the game in question or switch devices.
22:38 – Yodel threatened to sue Twitter
– Home delivery firm Yodel, which handles packages for Amazon, Currys, Boots and O2 among others, has asked Twitter to delete dozens of critical tweets and accounts that it claims are defamatory and “constitute a serious libel”.
– Yodel’s lawyers, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, wrote to Twitter on May 9 threatening legal action if the tweets were not removed. It claims the statements in the tweets are “entirely false” and it includes a list of tweets that it wants removed.
– Yodel, formerly known as the Home Delivery Network, has been repeatedly criticised by customers awaiting packages and its reputation has taken a battering online and on TV after it was the subject of a BBC Watchdog programme
– The list of tweets that Yodel provided to Twitter typically include those hitting out its failure to deliver on time, lost parcels and advice to others not to use the deliver service. Many are disparaging while others are humorous but don’t strike me as particular libellous.
– Yodel appears to be using heavy handed legal tactics in an attempt to silence dozens of online critics – hardly a step that is likely to endear it to customers or a step in the right direction when it comes to customers service.
– Some of the tweets Yodel wanted deleted simply call on Yodel to fix its customers service. Others tell of horror stories similar to the one suffered by Claire Jolly.
– Many of the tweets still seem to be online while others appear to have disappeared. Yodel in its letter also asked that a parody account, @NotYodel, and another Twitter account @HDNL (the name by which Yodel previously went by before rebranding) be removed. Both accounts are no longer active and appear to have been taken down by Twitter.
– Weil, Gotshal & Manges claimed that it has been proven that the existence of these Twitter accounts “”over a substantial period of time, that the existence of these pages serves as a platform for such defamatory statements to be made against our client”.
– In a statement Twitter says it doesn’t “comment on actions taken around specific accounts or Tweets” and offered no comment on the Yodel letter.

Picks
Ian
Google+ for the iPad
– Fantastic update to the app to support iPad
– photo’s and video’s look amazing

Tweetbot for Mac
– Alpha release
– Free but will be a paid app upon release to the App store
– Despite missing features it’s my default client on the Mac

DigitalOutbox Episode 125

DigitalOutbox Episode 125
DigitalOutbox Episode 125 – RIM, Twitter, Facebook and YouView

Playback
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Shownotes
0:38 – RIM in trouble
– Blackberry 10 pushed back to 2013
– Loss of $518m in last three months compared to $695m profit for the same quarter last year
– Announce another 5000 job losses
– Wow – in freefall. Shares dropped 70% in last year, down 18% after this announcement
– Either bought or they will focus on their service rather than hardware
4:27 – Twitter restricting third party access
– Post on developer blog hints at future restrictions – The gist of the posts was that Twitter was cracking down on how third parties were using its APIs. LinkedIn’s display of the entire Twitter feed in its users profiles was the first casualty of this new stricter interpretation of the rules, but it won’t be the last.
– these two passages provide a very interesting juxtaposition:
– Back in March of 2011, my colleague Ryan Sarver said that developers should not “build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience.” That guidance continues to apply as much as ever today. Related to that, we’ve already begun to more thoroughly enforce our Developer Rules of the Road with partners, for example with branding, and in the coming weeks, we will be introducing stricter guidelines around how the Twitter API is used.
– And this one:
– We’re building tools for publishers and investing more and more in our own apps to ensure that you have a great experience everywhere you experience Twitter, no matter what device you’re using. You need to be able to see expanded Tweets and other features that make Twitter more engaging and easier to use. These are the features that bring people closer to the things they care about. These are the features that make Twitter Twitter.
– Third party clients really made twitter for me – would hate to see functionalit or app’s have their access removed
8:30 – Facebook blames e-mail problems on confused users
– Couple of weeks back facebook updated EVERY users profile to say their primary e-mail address was their Facebook address – yep – the one that no one uses
– Also, one that you can’t delete from your profile
– Several bloggers and users raised complaints late last week and over the weekend about missing messages. But a Facebook spokesperson said the missing messages may stem from confusion over how Facebook’s mail system categorizes messages, and that engineers were looking into complaints about a phone syncing issue that made it appear as if users were losing information about their contacts.
– “By default, messages from friends or friends of friends go into your Inbox. Everything else goes to your Other folder,” Facebook spokesperson Meredith Chin said in an email. “That is likely where the messages are being sent from other people’s emails. Even if that person is friends with them on Facebook, if the friend doesn’t have that email on their Facebook account, the message could end up in the Other folder.”
– Worse, many phones that sync Facebook with local contacts have overwirtten working e-mail addresses with these Facebook ones
– Android affected, so is iOS 6
– This morning my mother was complaining that many of the e-mail addresses in her Droid Razr contacts had been replaced with Facebook ones.
– It would seem the Facebook app had been populating her address book with e-mails and contact photos, and decided to migrate all her Facebook-using contacts over to this convenient new system.
– I sync my phone with Facebook for many of my contacts. Now I have an address book full of bogus e-mail addresses where they were correct before.
– What a mess
11:59 – British Airways flies into privacy storm over Google identity checks on passengers
– British Airways today faced a backlash from privacy campaigners after it revealed plans to use the internet to create “dossiers” on passengers.
– The airline said it wanted to be able to deliver a more personal touch by researching passengers. The “Know Me” programme will use Google images to find pictures of passengers so that staff can approach them as they arrive at the terminal or plane.
– BA staff will also search individual data held by the airline, including if a regular traveller has experienced problems on previous flights, such as delays, so that crew are primed to apologise.
– Jo Boswell, head of customer analysis at BA, said: “We’re essentially trying to recreate the feeling of recognition you get in a favourite restaurant when you’re welcomed there, but in our case it will be delivered by thousands of staff to millions of customers. This is just the start — the system has a myriad of possibilities for the future.”
– A BA spokesman added: “The most recent advancement of the system enables the British Airways team to search Google images for a photo of specific customers so they can recognise them and proactively approach them. The airline is aiming to send 4,500 personal recognition messages a day by the end of the year.”
– But Nick Pickles, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: “Since when has buying a flight ticket meant giving your airline permission to start hunting for information about you on the internet?
– “If British Airways want more information about us they can ask us for it, rather than ignoring people’s privacy and storing data without us having any idea what data they are storing.”
15:03 – Flash player for Android finally dead
– Flash on mobile – which at one point was held up as the key differentiator between Apple’s iOS platform and others including RIM’s PlayBook – is having the dates for its death laid out.
– Adobe has announced in a blog post that from 15 August 2012 it will stop any new installations of its Flash Player onto Android devices, and that only devices which already have a mobile version of its Flash player already installed will be updated.
– It’s a logical conclusion to the process that Adobe announced in November 2011, when it said that it would no longer be updating Flash Player for new devices, apart from bug fixes and security updates; effectively, Flash on mobile was a zombie from that point on.
– Given that smartphones and tablets now outsell PCs by a substantial margin, of about 50% – around 150m per quarter compared to 100m at most – the decision renews the question of how much longer Flash on the desktop will survive.
16:59 – Windows Pro 8 Upgrade for $39.99
– We’ve known for a while that Microsoft is offering some upgrade promotions for its new OS, but the company has now said that it will be selling Windows 8 Pro upgrades online for $39.99. In stores, the price will be quite a bit higher: $69.99. The offer is eligible to anyone currently running any version of Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7; it will last until January 31st, 2013. That’s the same time frame offered for the current $14.99 upgrade deal, but it applies to any current Windows users, not just those who purchase a new PC in the lead-up to Windows 8’s launch. Microsoft says the offer will be available in 131 markets, and that it will release more details as we get closer to launch.
– We’ve also got some more details on the upgrade process for older versions of Windows. An upgrade assistant will help users migrate files, settings, and apps from Windows 7, files and settings from Windows Vista, and files only from Windows XP. As before. After the upgrade, you can add Windows Media Center for free through the “add features” option. The online version obviously comes as a download, but it’s possible to buy a backup DVD for $15.
18:46 – YouView finally launched
– The YouView TV service – a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, BT, Channel 4, Channel 5, Arqiva and TalkTalk – will be set at £299 when the set-top boxes hit shelves just ahead of the launch of the London 2012 Olympics at the end of July.
– Sugar, who was parachuted in as the new chairman last March to put the problem-plagued service back on track, aims to create a subscription-free successor to Freeview that will take on pay-TV heavyweights such as BSkyB and Virgin Media.
– “This is a great moment in British television,” said Sugar, unveiling the product to assembled media at the London Film Museum. “I had something to do with the launch of Sky TV with Rupert Murdoch in the late 1980s, and then Sky+. It is a revolutionary product and I am proud to be associated with it.”
– Now the service is weeks from launch, BSkyB, which has vociferously criticised YouView and aggressively attempted to block its launch at every regulatory opportunity, has signed up as the first new content partner and will launch its new Now TV service on YouView.
– Now TV, the new internet TV service from BSkyB, will not appear as a main channel on the YouView electronic programming guide but will be available as a “portal” on the service.
– Sky is expected to offer live and on-demand programming including Sky Movies, Sky Sports and then entertainment channels such as Sky1 and Sky Living.
– Sugar said the steep price of the first set-top box from Humax, which will be stocked at six retail chains including John Lewis, Currys, Argos and Amazon, will drop as more hit the market.
– “When Sky+ launched, it was at that kind of level,” he said. “Will I be surprised if boxes in the retail channel in two years are £99? Not really. My audience … is the Freeview audience that don’t want to be tied to a subscription. They only need this box, my ambition is that this replaces the Freeview box.”
– No YouTube, no Lovefilm. Looks really limited compared to what is out there already
21:16 – Google Play movies, shows and mags not coming to the UK
– At this year’s Google I/O, the company announced updates to the Google Play store with movies, TV shows, and magazines, but because of differing copyright laws many of these new features will not be available in the UK with the launch of the Nexus 7. The Inquirer spoke to a Google representative who confirmed that the new Play store content is only currently available in the US. This means that Google’s new tablet, priced at just £159 in the UK, will have to do without a lot of the content advertised to US consumers. Google aimed to beat Amazon’s Kindle Fire with international distribution, and although the company never claimed that these features would be available outside the US, it’s still a disappointment for international consumers considering a Nexus 7.
23:43 – Google indoor maps comes to UK
– over 40 venues covered right now — a mix of museums, stations, malls and airports in the main — and most of them in London. With building owners being able to upload their own maps, however, this should / could expand quickly. Good news either way, though if you can get lost at London Bridge Station, then no amount of maps will likely help.
24:32 – Sony buys cloud gaming company Gaikai for $380m
– Sony confirmed today that it has bought the cloud gaming company Gaikai for $380m (£242m). A deal has been rumoured for several weeks and was expected to be announced at the major E3 video game conference in June.
– Formed in 2008 by industry veteran Dave Perry, Gaikai is a cloud-based game service which allows users to play high-end PC titles by streaming the content via a broadband connection.
– Consumers never need to download the games, and don’t need advanced PCs to play because the content is running across the web.
– Late last year, publishers EA and Ubisoft integrated the service into their websites to provide playable demos of new titles to gamers. In April, the service launched on Facebook. The deal will see Sony acquire Gaikai’s cloud-based infrastructure and survivor network.
– Commenting on the purchase, Sony Computer Entertainment president Andrew House said: “By combining Gaikai’s resources including its technological strength and engineering talent with SCE’s extensive game platform knowledge and experience, SCE will provide users with unparalleled cloud entertainment experiences.
– “SCE will deliver a world-class cloud-streaming service that allows users to instantly enjoy a broad array of content ranging from immersive core games with rich graphics to casual content anytime, anywhere on a variety of internet-connected devices.”
26:11 – needadebitcard
– @NeedADebitCard pillages the Twittersphere for unsuspecting users who posted completely legible photos of their credit and debit cards on the web. Its sole purpose: to shame those foolish enough to post Twitpics or Instagrams that contain their credit or debit card information.
– “Please quit posting pictures of your debit cards, people,” reads the account’s bio. It has posted 55 pictures and gained more than 2,000 followers since first tweeting on May 25.
– While some users are wise enough to blur or cover up some of their card’s data, others are exposing it all. One user even included the hashtag #smartidea at the end of her tweet, which showed off her totally transparent cell phone case-credit card holder hybrid.

Picks

DigitalOutbox Episode 124

DigitalOutbox Episode 124
DigitalOutbox Episode 124 – Google I/O

Playback
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Shownotes
2:00 – Google IO Day 1
– Android – 400m activations, 1m a day
– 4.1 – Jelly Bean
– Project Butter – Focus on performance – buttery smooth and predicts your movement – much better frame rate
– Auto arrange icons
– Improved keyboard with predictive text
– Offline voice typing
– Extra languages and improved accessability
– Android beam
– Improved notifications – actionable, looks great
– Search improved – better voice searching. Sounded natural, Siri competitor
– Google now – uses search history, calendar ad other signals
– Google now will learn schedules and patterns to prompt you with information. It will reroute your commute if there’s traffic automatically before you leave the house.
– “if you have an upcoming flight that you’ve searched for, it will keep you updated on the status of the flight.”
– Reminded me of passcode from Apple
– Available mid July
– For dev’s – app encryption, app updates only download changes and not the whole app, google cloud messaging free for all devs,
– Google play – adding tv, episodes, films and magazines
– Google Nexus 7 made by Asus
– Built for Google play – fire competitor?
– The display — 1280 x 800 HD display. Perfect for reading and videos. Performance, Tegra 3 with a quad-core CPU, 12 core GPU
– Front facing camera, all the connectivity you’d expect. Gyro and accelerometer. Up to 9 hours of video playback, and up to 300 hours of standby.
– 340 grams
– $199 ships July with Android 4.1
– £159 for 8gb, £199 for 16gb in the UK – pre-order now and ships 2-3 weeks – wow – who needs a kindle fire now? Makes ipod touch seem expensive. Initial reports say BOM cost is higher than $200. 8 GB version of the tablet will be sold exclusively through Google Play for £159 ($247). The 16 GB version will cost £199 ($309) and will be available at retail stores such as PC World, Comet, Tesco and eBuyer.
One of the first retailers to officially confirm the news is Carphone Warehouse, which says the device will be available either for £199.99 standalone or for free on a tethered contact.
– Ships with Chrome browser
– New Google maps – can save a city offline and great inside support
– Nexus Q
– Small android powered computer
– It’s designed to live in your home. It plugs into your TV and stereo, and it’s always connected to the cloud. You use your device to control it, but you’re not streaming from that device to the Q. You use your phone or device to control the cloud.
– Streaming media player
– $299 – no thanks. This looks rubbish.
– Google+ for tablets
– Like tumblr combined with google+
– Very visual
– For android tablets today, ipad soon
– Google+ events
– Nice way to save invites – integrates with calendar
– Party mode – photo’s at event are shared amongst everyone as they take them

– Project Glass!!!!
– Best demo ever – live skydive onto moscone roof
– Skydivers wearing project glass, live video from plane, skydive and on hangout
– We wanted to position the display above your eye. It’s designed to be part of your vision, but not blocking it.
– Imagine this at demo’s, protests etc being broadcast live on hangouts…tis the future…somehow
– Why glass – We believe communication with images, and access to devices that empower people to communicate in news ways are very powerful ideas.
– So the second aspiration for Glass is to be able to access information quickly.
– Obviously, capturing video and images is only a part of what a wearable computer can do. But why are we showing you this utility?
– That’s why we want to involve all of you
– Today, I’d like to announce the Google Glass explorer edition.
– It’s only available for pre order here at IO. It’s only for US based, I apologize. We’ll try to broaden the base over time. It will be $1500. And we’re going to ship it to you early next year.
– Hope to launch to consumers in 2014
– Wrap-up – 2+ hours of keynote – We think it’s important for you to experiment early. So we’ve put together an Android developer pack. All 6000 of you will be walking away today with a new Galaxy Nexus phone, a Nexus 7 tablet and a Nexus Q.
26:28 – Google IO Day 2
– Chrome
– Lots of stats – worlds most popular browser
– Chrome tab syncing across platforms…
– Chrome for iPhone – launches today…and iPad too – Ian’s happy 🙂
– Google drive – iOS and Android support
– Editing Google docs and also offline editing – boom
– Chrome O/S and Google App Engine
– Google Compute Cloud
– “It gives you Linux virtual machines at Google scale.
– High performance networking between VMs, so you can form them into a cluster.
– Not much detail
– Cirque du Soleil in a browser demo – lots of 3d css
– “And we’re giving you all a brand new Samsung Chromebox,” says Sundar
35:45 – Google TV finally launches in the UK
– Google is making its long-expected assault on the UK television market with the launch in July of its first product – made by Sony – to let Britons surf the internet, play games and watch videos on TV.
– The move comes amid predictions that Apple too will move into the “smart TV” market, to compete not only with Google, but with Samsung, Sony and LG. All have been aiming to catch a nascent market that analysts say will become very important because it is one of the few bastions of entertainment not yet revolutionised by the internet.
– Google has a partnership with Sony to launch the internet TV set-top boxes, priced £200-£300, in UK stores from 16 July. The gadgets are based on Google’s Android software for smartphones and will let viewers switch between popular online applications such as Twitter and the BBC’s iPlayer while watching live TV.
– Google’s TV offering has struggled in the US, where it launched in October 2010. Logitech, a partner, lost millions after launching a Google TV set-top box in the US at Christmas 2010. During one quarter, more boxes were returned by customers than sold and the company later pulled out.
– Google has since spent heavily on the product, as the living room shapes up to be the latest battleground for internet companies. Nearly a million net-connected TVs were sold in the UK in 2010, the latest year for which figures are available, out of a total of 10m TV sales. But it is not clear how many were then actually connected to the net.
– Google-owned YouTube features heavily on the new service and, rather than the homemade clips of antics involving cats and dogs, boasts a library of films, premium music videos and live broadcasts of concerts from around the world.
– Unlike Apple’s current internet TV set-top box – which sells at £100, half the price of the Sony set-top boxes – Google TV brings the entire online world on to the big screen, including emails, news websites and Wikipedia.
– The Google TV products, including the £200 NSZ-GS7 internet player and the £300 NSZ-GP9 Blu-ray player (available from October), come with an internet-connected remote control which has a full Qwerty keypad on the reverse.
39:29 – Tech fault causes problems for Natwest and RBS
– RBS and Natwest have failed to register inbound payments for up to three days, customers have reported, leaving people unable to pay for bills, travel and even food. The banks – both owned by RBS Group – have confirmed that technical glitches have left bank accounts displaying the wrong balances and certain services unavailable. There is no fix date available.
The ongoing screw-up means that people waiting on pay checks, transfers or social welfare have been left out of pocket.
– RBS and Natwest spokespeople have assured customers that they are working on the problem but were unable to name a fix time. The crash also affects other RBS Group banks including UlsterBank in Northern Ireland.
– Amid rising anger, he had spent Saturdayat RBS’s City headquarters overseeing efforts to process the mountain of transactions delayed by the IT problem, which began on Thursday. In total, 7,000 staff were coming in on Sundayto handle customers’ queries and tackle the backlog.
– The bank has also been forced to promise redress to thousands of other people, many not NatWest customers, who have failed to receive their salaries because their employers use the bank.
– The RBS spokesman said the bank would refund overdraft charges or other costs incurred by customers who have slipped into the red or seen direct debits bounce as a result of the problems.
42:13 – Microsoft buy Yammer for $1.2 billion
– Microsoft just announced it has indeed acquired Yammer, the four-year-old social networking company for enterprises, for $1.2 billion in cash.
– The announcement confirms weeks of very credibly-sourced rumors that have been floating for weeks around the tech blogosphere (and San Francisco’s popular cafes, as first overheard by Business Insider’s Owen Thomas.) The actual price tag is exactly what had been reported by theWall Street Journal more than a week ago. According to Microsoft, the Yammer team will be folded into its Microsoft Office division while continuing to report to Yammer’s CEO and co-founder David Sacks.
– With the backing of Microsoft, our aim is to massively accelerate our vision to change the way work gets done with software that is built for the enterprise and loved by users.”
– The Yammer deal also puts Microsoft further into the game of developing social media services specifically for enterprises, an area where companies like Oracle, Salesforce and IBM have been actively playing, too. But it will be interesting to see how it turns this new focus on social media services into a solidly profitable part of its larger business. As it has had to do with Skype, Microsoft will now face the challenge of figuring out how to monetize Yammer.
44:34 – Jimmy Wales rallies Britain over TVShack extradition
– Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is spearheading a fresh attempt to block the extradition of a British student to the United States over copyright infringement charges.
Richard O’Dwyer was arrested and bailed in 2010 for being the owner and operator of TVShack, a “resource site” which allowed people to search for web pages hosting videos — many of them pirated. The domain had been seized by U.S. federal agentsseveral months earlier, but after British prosecutors declined to follow up the charges in May 2011, Department of Justice officials launched extradition proceedings.
– Now Wales has joined a cohort of campaigners who say that if O’Dwyer is to be taken to court for his activity, it should be in Britain and not in the United States — and that he should not be forced to leave the United Kingdom.
– The issue of Britain’s extradition agreement with the U.S. has come up several times before in technology circles, not least in the case of Gary McKinnon — the hacker who broke into American military computers in 2002 looking for evidence of UFOs and has spent the last decade fighting extradition.
But O’Dwyer’s case is more complicated and confusing — and controversial — than McKinnon’s.
– First there is the legality of the situation: O’Dwyer has argued that his site was merely a search engine — like Google — that complied with takedown requests when asked. The fact that he has not been pursued by the British authorities suggests that the evidence against him is not as strong as opponents might hope.
– Then there is the fact that none of the alleged crimes were committed on U.S. soil, or by an American. This makes many opponents concerned about the potential implications for cross-border prosecution in the future.
– Then there is the unignorable fact that the case involves copyright.
– 69,000 sign the petition
48:16 – Judgement reserved on airport tweet trial
– Judgement has been reserved in the appeal of a man who was found guilty of posting a comment on Twitter threatening to blow up an airport.
– Paul Chambers, 27, from Doncaster, who now lives in Northern Ireland, was convicted in May 2011 of sending a “menacing electronic communication”.
– He claimed it was a joke and wants his conviction and sentence quashed.
Comedian Stephen Fry, who was at the High Court hearing, said it was “very important” for freedom of speech.
– The judgement was reserved until a later date.
49:22 – Internet piracy appeal fee
– Suspected internet pirates will have 20 working days to appeal against allegations of copyright infringement and must pay £20 to do so, according to revised plans to enforce the UK’s Digital Economy Act.
– The details are contained in secondary legislation presented to Parliament and a draft code published by Ofcom.
– The telecoms regulator said it expected the scheme to begin in 2014.
Campaigners oppose the fee saying users should be innocent until proven guilty.
– Under the plans users suspected of accessing or uploading illegally copied files will be sent letters from their internet service provider (ISP), delivered at least one month apart, informing them they are suspected of copyright infringement.
– The messages will also contain information about where to find licensed material online. Copyright owners can request details about all the accusations made against any account-holder who receives three or more letters within a 12-month period, but the user’s name will not be revealed at this stage.
51:55 – Nintendo announce the 3DS XL
– Nintendo is launching a new version of its 3DS handheld console, complete with screens that are 90% larger than those on the original model. The Nintendo 3DS XL will launch across Europe on 28 July.
– The new version of the console will come in three new colour combinations – silver and black, red and black, and blue and black – and will be bundled with a 4GB SD card so buyers can immediately start downloading games from the Nintendo eShop.
– However, the device will not ship with an AC adaptor in Japan or Europe – in its press release, Nintendo states that as most buyers will already own the original 3DS, an adaptor is being left out to allow for a lower retail price. An AC adaptor will be supplied with the console in North America.
Picks

DigitalOutbox Episode 123

DigitalOutbox Episode 123
DigitalOutbox Episode 123 – Microsoft Surface, Windows Phone 8 and NeverSeconds

Playback
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Shownotes
0:47 – Microsoft Surface
– Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, unveiled two new tablet PCs at a closely guarded press event in Los Angeles.
– He said the new devices – called Surface – were part of a “whole new family of devices” the company is developing. The devices will run versions of Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8 operating system, a system the company hopes will allow it to make up ground in mobile computing lost to Apple and Google’s Android.
– “We want to give Windows 8 its own companion hardware innovations,” Ballmer said.
– The 9.3mm thick device has a magnesium case, features a 10.6-inch HD widescreen display, an integrated kickstand and weighs less than a kilo (1.5lbs). The device comes with a detachable keyboard and trackpad that attach magnetically to the tablet.
– At the presentation, Ballmer and Steven Sinofsky, the president of Microsoft’s Windows division, stressed Surface’s computing power.
– Sinofsky called the device a “tablet that’s a great PC – a PC that’s a great tablet”.
– Strange – called Surface a PC…but it’s clearly a tablet
– Count iPad as PC’s and Apple dominate 🙂
– Oop’s – crashes on demo
– No price, no release date, no battery life
– Business tablet? Certainly seems so. I’m quite taken with the design…but I was with the courier and it was vapour
– Confusing – arm and intel, Surface for Windows RT and Surface for Windows Pro
– Constantly talk about pc’s and tablets
– Enterprise empathised – TPM chip support. Does feel like a true pc in a tablet is the pitch
– If your a partner, how do you feel today? Microsoft believe only they can deliver a Windows device that truly matched their vision for Windows 8? Or that tablets up to know have been lacklustre? Partners seemingly didn’t really know about it.
– Is this a rush preview prior to Google I/O? Should Google have been doing it’s own hardware all along? Or is it Apple envy? Is it a fresh start – a new chapter as some has called it for Microsoft?
– Whole keynote was a bit odd – rushed, nervous presenters, hardware failing. But EVERYONE is talking about Microsoft
13:44 – Windows Phone 8
– NFC, dual- and quad-core support are all set, and Microsoft has shifted over to the NT kernel for Windows Phone 8 to make it even easier for developers to code for its mobile and desktop ecosystems. There’s a new Wallet hub, deeper integration of Skype, and an updated Start Screen interface with support for small tiles.
– Despite the improvements and hardware support, Microsoft will not release this particular update to existing devices. Instead, the company plans to rollout a Windows Phone 7.8 update separately that will bring some of Windows Phone 8’s user interface changes to existing devices, but many of the other improvements will require new hardware.
– Wow – so buy a Lumia right now and you won’t get Windows Phone 8. Rubbish.
– Launches this fall
– Shared core with Windows 8
– Manufacturers will be able to re-use the same hardware drivers they build for Windows 8 on Windows Phone 8.
– Multi core support, up to 720p screen size, micro SD support
– IE10
– Outperforming all other phones on SunSpider test
– NFC
– Mobile Wallet
– if the phone has NFC and a “secure SIM” from your carrier, you can make payments. Thats what carriers want, thats why they remove google wallet. allegedly
– Windows Phone 8 will include Nokia’s mapping technology – It will use NAVTEQ data, offline map support, map control for developers, and turn-by-turn directions.
– WP8 will support encryption (he mentions BitLocker), secure boot, LOB App deployment, Device Management, and Office.
– New start screen – Large “double-wide,” standard medium, and small. – a lot more content on the screen
– Lots of developer stuff – shared code etc.
– Deeply integrated VoIP.
– A Skype call feels just like a regular cell call — Skype can be fully integrated and feel like a phone call. The Caller ID even looks the same.
– Microsoft is hoping to do Siri one better by letting developers integrate speech response and recognition directly into apps for Windows Phone 8. APIs will be available for building in standard speech controls, which can then be run from the main search function. In a demo of Audible, which Microsoft partnered with for the voice features, the app was able to recognize a search for “Game of Thrones,” then pause it or skip to the next chapter based on voice prompts.
19:12 – Nokia to cut another 10000 jobs by end 2013
– Nokia will lay off 10,000 jobs globally and close plants by the end of 2013 in a further drive to cut costs, the company said on Thursday.
– The cuts mean that it will close some research and development projects, including in Ulm in Germany and Burnaby in Canada.
– The Finnish phone-maker said it would also close the manufacturing plant in Salo, but would keep its research and development operations there.
– Last year, Nokia announced more than 10,000 layoffs, aimed at cutting operating expenses by €1bn (£800m) by 2013.
20:06 – Amazon appstore launches in the UK
– the company has just announced that it is now taking submissions for apps to be distributed in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, with more countries to be added “in the near future.” Amazon already had a retail presence in all these countries, but this marks the first time an Appstore has opened outside the United States.
– The obvious question this raises is whether this is the first step to international distribution of the Kindle Fire, which relies heavily on Appstore content. For now, the Appstore provides an alternative to the Play Store for any Android users abroad. In time with the launch, Amazon is also tweaking its distribution agreement, giving developers 70 percent of list price rather than either 70 percent of the app’s sales price or 20 percent of list price.
21:48 – Online snooping scheme to costs £1.8 billion
– The government’s “online snooping” scheme to track email, Facebook, Twitter and other web use comes with an official pricetag of at least £1.8bn and an official warning that the figure may well prove to be an underestimate, the Home Office has revealed.
– Ministers have already agreed to pay all the costs of the scheme, which will require phone and internet companies to collect and store for 12 months the records of internet and mobile phone use in Britain for access by police and intelligence services.
– The Bill extends the range of data telecoms firms will have to store for up to 12 months
It will include for the first time details of messages sent on social media, webmail, voice calls over the internet and gaming in addition to emails and phone calls
The data includes the time, duration, originator and recipient of a communication and the location of the device from which it is made
It does not include the content of messages – what is being said. Officers will need a warrant to see that
But they will not need the permission of a judge to see details of the time and place of messages provided they are investigating a crime or protecting national security
Four bodies will have access to data: Police, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the intelligence agencies and HM Revenue and Customs
Local authorities will face restrictions on the kinds of data they will be able to access
– Rachel Robinson, policy officer for Liberty, said: “It’s good that local councils won’t be able to watch the entire population but even law enforcement should be targeting suspects – not all citizens.
26:02 – Neverseconds is banned…then reprieved
– Martha Payne started a blog – a photo of each days school dinners
– Got lots of traction quickly – many were shocked at the quality of the food
– Support from Jamie Oliver, Nick Nairn etc
– Visits from local councillors and food seemed to improve – also told they could have unlimited fruit and veg
– Photo’s from around the world of other school dinners – Martha would post her lunch, rate it for health and taste and also a hair count
– Wednesday – photo in the papers of her and Nick Nairn – Time to fire the dinner ladies – a joke title as there was a pic of martha, nicj nairn and flames as she was cooking
– Thursday – headmistress calls Martha and says she can no longer take pics of her lunches – sad post on blog from Martha and her father. She’d raised £2000 for Marys Kitchen with the aim to raise £7000 and had just over 2 million hits
– Friday – picked up by media outlets, twitter and Facebook – outrage at banning a 9 year old.
– Lunchtime Friday – council leader overturns decision – Martha can blog again
– By Sunday, 5.5 million hits and over £75,000 raised for Marys kitchen
– Great blog – well done Martha
31:34 – Louise Mensch launches rival to Twitter
– Tory MP Louise Mensch has made her debut as an internetentrepreneur, with the launch of a new social network hoping to win over Twitter addicts “who find Twitter frustrating”.
Mensch launched the US-only social network, the almost eponymousMenshn.com, on Tuesday as a topic-based site allowing people to debate by subject rather than monitor a stream of often divergent tweets.
Mensch told the Guardian that the site was not named after her. “It’s a play on the word mention,” she said. “We like it and think it will work fine on a chat site”.
– Mensch added: “This is an idea that I’ve had since Christmas. I’ve been a passionate user of social media since the days of AOL chatrooms, and that was the inspiration really.” The parliamentarian launched the site in collaboration with Luke Bozier, a former Labour political adviser.
– Bozier told the Guardian: “We were both frustrated at the way Twitter doesn’t focus on topics. We both love Twitter, but if you want to focus on the election there’s no obvious place to do that online. Twitter is just too random. We wanted to encourage people to have conversations rather than broadcast their thoughts.”
– However, British fans of the high-profile MP for Corby must wait until later this summer to defect to Menshn, which is presently focused only on this year’s US election.
Mensch and Bozier have incorporated a private company, MenschBozier Ltd, for the fledgling website in which they are the only shareholders and own an equal stake.
– The Tory MP told TechCrunch that the site has attracted early interest from venture capitalists, although Bozier told the Guardian there are no plans to introduce advertising to the site or for it to be party political.
– Initially, Menshn will only host three strands for discussion: the US election, the Barack Obama campaign, and the Mitt Romney campaign. Users of the forum can join chats and subscribe or block others on the site.
– Popular posts will be displayed prominently on the site and new users automatically follow 100 people who Menshn defines as highly-rated. Not limited to 140 characters but 180
– This seems a dud already – surely it’s just forums? And forums where the topics are locked and limited
33:19 – BBC lets you rewind and restart live tv
– The BBC has unveiled a new feature for its iPlayer video on demand service that ensures you’ll never miss the beginning of a show again. Called Live Restart, the feature does just what its name implies — it lets you restart and rewind live TV shows. You don’t need to have been previously watching or recording the show in order to use the feature, and it goes back as far as two hours. “So, if you’re stuck in a traffic jam, or delayed on the tube and miss the critical start of your favourite BBC programme when you get in, with one click you can skip back to the beginning of that live programme,” explains Henry Webster, the BBC’s executive product manager in media services. The new feature is launching today on the PC, while the BBC says that the mobile, tablet, and smart TV versions of iPlayer will receive the functionality later on this year.
36:04 – Facebook buys Face.com
– After about a month of speculation, Facebook has finallyannounced its acquisition of Israeli facial recognition technologyFace.com.
– We’ve heard from multiple sources that the acquisition price was around $100m, with others reporting that the price was between $80m-$100m. This is absolutely not an acqui-hire, as Facebook will be taking full advantage of the company’s technology and the advancements it’s made on mobile — perhaps to finally include mobile tagging options for photos.
– As Face.com’s speciality is mobile facial recogition, it could potentially allow you to upload a photo to Facebook while on the go, instantly receive suggestions of whom to tag, and confirm the tags with one click.
37:07 – Worlds first tax on IE7
– The Australian online retailer Kogan.com has introduced the world’s first “tax” on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) browser.
– Customers who use IE7 will have to pay an extra surcharge on online purchases made through the firm’s site.
– Chief executive Ruslan Kogan told the BBC he wanted to recoup the time and costs involved in “rendering the website into a antique browser”.
– The charge is set to 6.8% – 0.1% for every month since the IE7 launch.
– Mr Kogan said it was unlikely that anyone would actually pay the charges. His goal is to encourage users to download a more up-to-date version of Internet Explorer or a different browser.
– Mr Kogan told the BBC his customers were very happy and he had received a lot of praise for his efforts.

Picks

DigitalOutbox Episode 122

DigitalOutbox Episode 122
DigitalOutbox Episode 122 – WWDC

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
0:32 – WWDC Retina Macbook Pro
400 million store accounts, 650,000 apps, 30billion downloads – lots of other ‘facts’
– Notebook changes
– Macbook Air – new cpus up to 2ghz dual core, up to 8GB of ram, 512 of flash, USB 3, 720p camera, 1366*768
– Macbook Pro’s – 13 – new cpu’s up to 2.7ghz, Nvidia GeForce GT 650m graphics, USB 3, 1280*800 – 15 – quad core – 1440*900 – both shipping today
– New model – Next Gen Macbook pro – 2880 x 1800 – retina – better than my 27” imac in a15 inch screen, 75% less glare!, as thin as a macbook air, updated version of Lion to support display – will it be less buggy? Apps updated too as well as professional apps, wow – Adobe Photoshop updated for new display, Diablo 3, quad i5 or i7, 8gb ram, 256gb of flash, $2199 – out today – truely a top spec laptop
9:32 – WWDC – Mountain Lion
– OS X
– Detail 8 new features
– iCloud
– With Mountain Lion we built support for iCloud right in. When you sign in with your account, we configure all of your apps and your content is up to date across devices.
– “And we introduce three new apps: messages, reminders, and notes
– “We’re also bringing integration with your documents, with a feature we’re calling Documents in the Cloud.”
– “When you launch Pages, it shows all the docs you have in the cloud. And it makes these available across all of your devices.”
–
– Notification Centre
– Messages
– Dictation
– Sharing
– New Safari – unified smart search just like Chrome – sue them google! iCloud tabs, tabview – if the speed is good I may be switching back to Safari
– Power Nap (Apple really do like cheesy names) – Wouldn’t it be great if our computers still worked for us when we weren’t working? Now it can.” – Keeps your Mac up to date while it sleeps. Oh thank heavens — will backup while sleeping. – Automatically refreshes data, silent, power efficient. Works with MacBook Airs and the new MBP. Thats impressive. So the new Macbooks work like iOS devices doing ‘stuff’ in the background!
– Airplay Mirroring
– Game Centre
– “We support turn based and head-to-head gaming, across platforms.” More new apps I guess – Words with Friends for the mac 🙂
– $19.99, ships July!
17:03 – WWDC – iOS6
– iOS
– 1 1/2 trillion push notifications, 7 billion a day, 1 billion messages a day
– iOS 6
– Siri – whole load of american sports questions, yelp, opentable, movies (rotten tomatoes) – all american – I fear that nothing will come to UK. Ask about actors, directors. Launch apps via Siri, tweet, english premier league mentioned. Eyes free – We’re working with car manufacturers to include a button that will bring up Siri — so you can keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. A number of manufacturers have committed to delivering this in the next 12 months. Mobile search – US only is now around the world. Looks like commitment is there. Bringing it to the new iPad
– Facebook – Integrated like Twitter with API support – “We’ve also integrated it with Siri. And we’ve taken this deep integration and made it a public API so it’s easy for apps in the app store to integrate with Facebook. We’ve also integrated it in the app store, so you can like apps and see what apps your friends like — same with music, TV shows, and movies.” Contact integration, calendar integration and on the Mac too.
– Phone (low hanging fruit?) – Reply instead of answering – “If you choose reply with message, you can choose any of these, or if you choose remind me later, you can be reminded in an hour… or remind me when I leave, which will set up a geofence and remind you when you leave the building.” Do Not Disturb – “I can see many of you are like me and you’ve been awakened in the middle of the night — this tells your phone not to bother you. The messages will still come to your phone, it just won’t light up the screen or make a sound.””You also get fine grain control over which phone calls you can receive.” This is nice — you can also do groups. “You can also set up repeated calls — if someone calls a second time in 3 mins, it will come through.”
– Facetime – over cellular (not 3g?) – Integrate mobile number and apple ID – “Also, we’re unifying your phone number and Apple ID. So if someone calls you on your phone number for Facetime, you can answer it on your iPad or Mac. And we’re doing the same thing with iMessage.”
– Safari – “We’re adding iCloud tabs, and offline reading list.” Smart App Banners – for publishers – instead of popup you can have users jump right into the app or to download the app. Sync between web activity and app activity.
– Shared Photo Streams – Photo Stream sharing with friends. Choose the photos, choose the friends — friends will get a notification. The photos will appear in an album… and friends can comment. Weird, this is like a Facebook feature. Almost like Apple’s own social network.
– Mail – mark friends as VIP’s, attachments
– Messages – pull to refresh
– Passbook – This is a place to collect boarding passes, store cards, and movie ticket apps. Like a wallet. Geolocate will pull up your card when you’re nearby a store. Like when you get to your local Starbucks.
– Guided Access – “We were surprised at how many kids with autism have been using the phones, but there are controls in apps that you don’t want them hitting.” You can now select parts of apps to disable.
– Maps – “In iOS 6 we’ve built an entirely new mapping solution from the ground up, and it is beautiful. We’re doing all the cartography ourselves… this is a worldwide effort, we’re covering the world.”
– Integrated apps to replicate transit services – so missing transit info that Google supplies
– Traffic service
– Anonymous realtime incident reports.
– Built in turn-by-turn navigation – partnership with tom tom
– Quick Route –
– Siri integration
– 3D maps — very much like Google’s 3D mode on Android.
– Flyover – Wow, Flyover is very visually impressive. Detailed 3D. Huge applause in the room right now. “This is being rendered in realtime.” The level of details is insane.
– No streetview. Quality of maps isn’t as good as Googles. This is a big miss. Question – will Google release a maps app, will Apple approve it?
– Redesigned Stores – interesting. Chomp? New iTunes later in year?
– Beta for iOS 6 – today
– Full wrap smart cover, updated airport express, updated Mac pro – processor bump!
– iPad 1 not supported by iOS 6, iPhone 4 will not support turn by turn and flyover
– A big FU to Google really. Facebook alongside Twitter, no Google+, no Google Maps
44:52 – So Tom Tom and other sat nav providers dead with iOS 6 imminent
– Smartphones have been slowly killing the satnav but they could now revive TomTom, Europe’s largest navigation device company.
– TomTom’s shares soared as high as 16.5% on the Amsterdam stock exchange on Tuesday, after the company said its technology was being used in Apple’s latest phone software.
– “TomTom has signed a global agreement with Apple for maps and related information,” the Dutch company said, while declining to give further information on its deal with the notoriously secretive Californian group.
– According to the following legal notice Waze is included as a source for iOS 6 Maps, in addition to Getchee, Localeze, Urban Mapping, DMTI, MapData Sciences and, of course, TomTom.
46:44 – Android hits 900,000 activations a day
– Andy Rubin, the founder of Android (the company) and head of Android (the mobile software division at Google) is not leaving Google.
– And, simultaneously but unrelated, Android device activations are now running at more than 900,000 per day, according to the latest tweet from Rubin. Based on previously given figures (850,000 activations per day, and 300m devices activated, from the Google Mobile blog in February) that suggests that there have been a total of 390m Android devices activated in total.
47:45 – Three launches unlimited roaming data in Europe for £5 per day
– UK mobile operator Three is launching its new Euro Internet Pass today, offering unlimited roaming data to its customers who travel throughout Europe. For £5 ($8) per day, Three customers can use as much data as they like in most European countries, with some exceptions including The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Norway.
– The day pass can be activated for £5 ($8) as soon as data roaming is enabled on a handset.
48:51 – Internet trolls targeted
– Major reforms of the libel laws will see a duty placed on internet service providers to try to identify internet trolls without victims needing to resort to costly legal action.
Websites will also be given greater protection from being sued if they help to identify those posting defamatory messages, under government plans.
– The defamation bill, which will be debated in the Commons on Tuesday, will also see would-be claimants having to show they have suffered serious harm to their reputations, or are likely to do so, before they can take a defamation case forward.
– “Our proposed approach will mean that website operators have a defence against libel as long as they comply with a procedure to help identify the authors of allegedly defamatory material.”
– He added: “The government wants a libel regime for the internet that makes it possible for people to protect their reputations effectively but also ensures that information online can’t be easily censored by casual threats of litigation against website operators.
– “It will be very important to ensure that these measures do not inadvertently expose genuine whistleblowers, and we are committed to getting the detail right to minimise this risk.”
51:47 – Icann reveals new internet top-level domain name claims
– The full list of submissions for new internet address endings has been published by the global organisation co-ordinating the expansion.
– Requests to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) include .porn, .ninja, and .ferrari.
– The BBC was among the applicants, applying for .bbc as an alternative to .co.uk and .com.
– Several top-level domains have been applied for by more than one party, including .sex, .home and .diy.
– Both the US drugmaker Merck & Co and its German rival Merck KGaA appear to have applied for the .merck ending, which may trigger an auction process.
– However the .uk manager, Nominet, looks likely to secure .wales and .cymru after no-one filed identical claims.
– Likewise the Dot Scot Registry was the only organisation to apply for .scot and the League of Arab States the only body to claim .arab.
– Coca-Cola and the cereal manufacturer Kellogg’s, which also signed a petition in protest, have abstained.
– By contrast Google has applied for dozens of the generic top-level domain (gTLD) name strings.
– Obvious choices included .google and .youtube, but there were also unexpected inclusions such as .and, .boo, .dad and .new.
– The search giant has also requested .music, which has been claimed by seven other organisations including the online retailer Amazon.
– Other gTLDs attracting multiple requests include .art, .book, .news, .play, .shop and .vip. The most contested name is .app which received 13 applications.
– In the case of the names that have multiple bids, ICANN will evaluate the applicants on technical merits and in some cases have an auction. The applications cost a non-refundable $185,000 each and successful bidders will be obliged to pay high ongoing annual fees to ICANN. Many of the new domain names are expected to go live next year.
– Icann and domain registrars are the only beneficieries here. This will confuse the consumer, and break many assumptions around domain names going forward. What a mess. Icann should have ownership of this stripped and passed to a non profit, multi national owned company.
55:00 – Twitter launches tailored trends
– In order to show emerging topics that matter more to you, today we’re improving our algorithms to tailor Trends based on your location and who you follow on Twitter.
– These Trends lists are tailored for you by default on twitter.com and mobile apps like Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android. If you don’t wish to see tailored Trends, but instead want to see a more general list of Trends, just change your location on twitter.com.
55:59 – 4Seven – the TV channel with programs chosen by Facebook
– Channel 4 will launch a new TV channel called 4Seven next month screening repeats of the programmes viewers and critics have most talked about from the previous seven days, prefaced by a snappy selection of their comments, good and bad.
– The channel, which takes its place alongside E4, More4 and Film4, will keep open the weekday 8pm and 10pm slots so that shows that create a critical buzz in newspapers, chatter on social media through Twitter and Facebook, and reaction on the overnight log of comments kept by the broadcaster can be repeated the next day.
– “We think it is the first time a channel has incorporated the views of viewers into what goes on air. We will run a montage of comments before the programme starts, the rough with the smooth, not just propaganda,” said Dan Brooke, Channel 4’s chief marketing and communications officer. The rest of the programmes on 4Seven will be reruns of the most popular ones of the week, with the 9pm slot reserved for the programme shown on Channel 4 at 9pm the previous day. Weekends will be devoted to multiple repeats of the best-rated programmes of the past seven days.
– It is also a recognition by the broadcaster, marking its 30th birthday in November, that although there has been massive growth in people using on-demand services, which accounts for 5% of viewing, and catching up on computers via the iPlayer or 4OD service – where use is up 15% on last year – many more viewers still prefer to watch channels scheduled for them.

Picks

Mac Bundles

We highlighted a couple of Mac Bundles on the podcast this week and as they are available for a limited time only I thought it best to get a quick post on what I think are the stand out items from each.

First up is the MacUpdate June bundle which features 11 apps for $49.99. Standout applications in this bundle are Parallels Desktop 7, ScreenFlow 3, BusyCal and Civilization V. The links above are affiliate links so buying via that link will give DigitalOutbox a small kickback as well which helps cover the cost of running the podcast and website. Overall you save $400 when comparing the bundle and individual application price so it’s a great offer but it only has another 12 days to run so get moving.

If you want to run a virtual machine on your Mac, Parallels Desktop 7 is one of the premier titles that will allow you to run Windows and Mac titles side by side without restarting your operating system. ScreenFlow is a great screen video capture tool and in my opinion the best available on the Mac. You can easily capture your screen content as well as that from the camera, mic and any other sound input. It’s easy to create a full screencast and then output the video to a variety of formats. If you are in the market for either Parallels or ScreenFlow it’s better to buy them via the bundle deal as it will save you money on just the single title.

Civilization V needs little introduction. It’s the latest version of the famous Sid Meier game and has garnered great reviews over the last year. The final title I’d highlight is BusyCal, a great calendar replacement that means you no longer need to look at the faux leather and paper tear off look that Apple introduced with Lion but also benefits from a number of advanced features not seen in the default Calendar app on OSX. BusyCal is only available to the first 15,000 bundle purchases and with 12,000 already sold there’s not much time left to purchase.

The second bundle worth highlighting is from ProductiveMacs. Similar to the MacUpdate bundle, this time it’s $39.999 for eight applications. The highlights in this bundle are RapidWeaver, DEVONthink, Printopia and Mailtags. Again the link above is an affiliate link so if you are interested in buying, please use the link above. Also a big thanks to Tam for pointing out this bundle. This bundle has slightly less time to run with only 10 days remaining.

RapidWeaver is an easy to use tool for creating and publishing websites. It follows web standards, has good plugin and theme support and makes building a website as easy as creating a document. DEVONthink Personal is a digital filing cabinet. Store anything in DEVONthink from a variety of different sources with good search and export options. If you were considering either of these applications, buying via he bundle will save you some cash while delivering another 7 titles.

Printopia makes it easy to rint from your iOS device to any printer. It also allows you to print to a PDF or Evernote via your iOS device. Finally MailTags is great for those that get lots of e-mail. It allows you to tag your mail via a variety of extra metadata to help you sort, retrieve and stay on top of mail. Very handy.

Hopefully you’ll find something to like in one of these bundles while saving a bit of cash and introducing some extra tools.

DigitalOutbox Episode 121

DigitalOutbox Episode 121
DigitalOutbox Episode 121 – LinkedIn stumble, Google Maps the future and E3

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:37 – Do Not Track – IE’s default already dead
– The latest proposed draft of the Do Not Trackspecification published Wednesday requires that users must choose to turn on the anti-behavioral tracking feature in their browsers and software.
– That means that Microsoft IE 10, which the company announced last week will have Do Not Track turned on by default, won’t be compliant with the official spec. Which means that tech and ad companies who say they comply with Do Not Track could simply ignore the flag set by IE 10 and track those who use that browser. Which means Microsoft has no choice but to change the setting.
2:48 – LinkedIn leaks your meeting notes
– LinkedIn mobile app subscribers may be surprised to learn that the calendar entries on their iPhones or iPads— which may include details about meeting locations, participants, dial-in information, passwords and sensitive meeting notes — are transmitted back to LinkedIn’s servers without their knowledge.
– LinkedIn’s mobile app for iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system, included an opt-in feature that allows users to view their iOS calendar entries within the app. Once users opt in to that feature, however, LinkedIn automatically transmits their calendar entries to its servers. LinkedIn grabs details for every calendar on the iOS device, which may include both personal and corporate calendar entries.
– LinkedIn quickly respond – http://blog.linkedin.com/2012/06/06/mobile-calendar-feature/
– We Do:
We ask your permission before accessing your calendar, this will continue to be an opt-in feature
We provide you with a way to turn off the calendar feature at any time in the settings
We send calendar data to our server only when the LinkedIn app is launched to be matched with relevant LinkedIn profiles of meeting attendees
We send your calendar data to our servers over a secure SSL connection
We Don’t:
We do not store any calendar information on our servers
We do not share or use your calendar data for purposes other than matching it with relevant LinkedIn profiles
We do not under any circumstances access your calendar data unless you have explicitly opted in to sync your calendar
We Will Improve:
We will no longer send data from the meeting notes section of your calendar event
There will be a new “learn more” link to provide more information about how your calendar data is being used
These improvements are live on Android now and have been submitted to the Apple store and will be available shortly.
5:45 – 6.5 million passwords leaked from LinkedIn
– According to a new report from Dagens IT, nearly 6.5 million encrypted LinkedIn passwords were recently dumped onto a Russian hacker forum.
– Of the millions of passwords dumped, Dagen IT claims that nearly 300,000 of them have been decrypted so far and that number seems sure to grow as users spread that hefty file around.
– The passwords are stored as unsalted SHA-1 hashes, and multiple reports on Twitter indicate that users have found their own hashes buried in the massive text dump. While unsalted hashes are much less secure than their salted brethren, it still takes a non-trivial amount of time to decrypt unless a user opted to use a common dictionary word as their password. It’s currently unknown whether or not the email addresses that correspond to those passwords have also been dumped, though if they are in someone’s possession, they apparently don’t feel like sharing.
– Considering that LinkedIn reported back in February that 150 million people use the professional networking service (a number that has certainly grown since then), the breach represents a relatively small number of users. Though chances are slim that you yourself are personally affected — 6.5 million people makes up less than 5% of LinkedIn’s userbase — those odds seem unlikely to assuage the concerns of people who are.
– Linked in confirm it…kind off
– We want to provide you with an update on this morning’s reports of stolen passwords. We can confirm that some of the passwords that were compromised correspond to LinkedIn accounts. We are continuing to investigate this situation and here is what we are pursuing as far as next steps for the compromised accounts:
Members that have accounts associated with the compromised passwords will notice that their LinkedIn account password is no longer valid.
These members will also receive an email from LinkedIn with instructions on how to reset their passwords. There will not be any links in these emails. For security reasons, you should never change your password on any website by following a link in an email.
These affected members will receive a second email from our Customer Support team providing a bit more context on this situation and why they are being asked to change their passwords.
– Check if your password was leaked – http://leakedin.org/
– Horrible – wait until there’s a leak of Facebook passwords. Meltdown.
– Eharmony and Last.fm also have password breaches
– http://www.last.fm/passwordsecurity
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/us-news-blog/2012/jun/07/blogpost-eharmony-linkedin-hacked-leaked
– Eharmony lose 1.5m passwords – same hackers that affected LinkedIn
– As a precaution, eHarmony has reset the affected passwords, but did not say how many of its 20 million registered users might have been compromised.
– Security experts believe more than the 1.5 million listed have been stolen
– Lastfm – only breaking news tonight but asking all users to change their passwords
– This weekend will see me go long and random on all passwords, ditch accounts I don’t use and be totally reliant on 1password. A pain but like 2 step authentication on Google, a necessary evil.
9:58 – Twitter tops 400m tweets a day
– The stratospheric figure was revealed by the social networks CEO, Dick Costolo, who noted that spam (not really) and both mobile usage and revenue are outpacing desktops.
11:05 – Vodafone and O2 speed up 4G rollout through use of shared network
– Vodafone and O2 are clubbing together to speed up the roll-out of superfast 4G mobile broadband to virtually everyone.
– The nation’s second- and third-biggest mobile operators say they will pool their network of radio masts and antennas to enable them to cover 98% of the population by 2015.
– Combined, the companies will share a network of 18,500 masts which, they promise, will extend current 2G and 3G coverage to all but the most remote villages. They will also kit out the masts with 4G technology so they can offer mobile internet speeds fast enough to download and stream TV and music as soon as the government approves the sales of 4G licences.
– The deal follows the merger of Orange and T-Mobile UK to create the nation’s biggest network, run by a new joint venture company calledEverything Everywhere. Vodafone and O2’s deal is not a full-blown merger and the companies will continue to operate different airwaves. Three, the nation’s smallest operator, piggybacks on Everything Everywhere’s network.
– Saves money but does consumer really benefit? Looks like there is 2 mobile networks now in the UK.

We asked Brian Lancaster, mobile industry expert and friend of the show
Is the O2/Vod deal purely to save money?
1. Yes, it’s all about money. Mobile operators want to move as far away from site ownership and engineering as possible and focus on being content and bandwidth suppliers. British mobile operators used to have sizeable engineering teams which have reduced to single figures of permanent employees – most are now contract staff or whole areas of network management/maintenance/engineering is contracted to the likes of Ericsson.

Will it limit customer choice?
2. No. Punters will still have deals from both networks to choose from – the spectrum cannot be blobbed into one single operator lump as this would breach OFCOM and the monopolies commission rules (only O2 and VF have 900MHz spectrum – T-Mobile/Orange/EE have 1800MHz only).

Will it deliver 4G more quickly to UK?
3. No as the existing Cornerstone agreement allowed both operators to share the same sites (towers, rooftops or large indoor sites such as the Wembley, Hampden, Millenium or St James Park. O2 and VF will still have separate LTE/4G spectrum (bid for and awarded to them separately) and there will still be some duplication of network hardware.

surely it’s the government auction that will dictate the pace of 4G?
4. The current limitations/critical paths are:

i) LTE spectrum award/auction – it is not clear whether 700MHz or 2600MHz will be used.
ii) Agreement on technology standards.
iii) Greater range of consumer devices (can only come from i) and ii) ).
iv) Improved backhaul network to carry the additional data loads.
15:48 – Digital music sales outstrip physical sales for the first time in the UK
– The British Phonographic Industry has released a report showing that physical music sales have been eclipsed by digital sales in the UK this year — a landmark achievement that the US experienced in 2011. The report indicates that 55.5 percent of the UK’s music revenues came from digital sales, resulting in part in a 2.7 percent increase in overall revenue over Q1 of last year, totaling £155.8 million. In contrast, physical media sales fell by 15.1 percent to £69.3 million, though BPI’s chief executive, Geoff Taylor, says that CD sales remain a strong source of revenue.
– One of the BPI’s most interesting numbers relates to à la carte and subscription based revenue, which increased 23.6 percent in Q1 to the tune of £86.5 million, or around $133 million. Considering the difference in population, this jump in digital sales revenue is rather impressive when compared to the $241 million the US generated last year.
18:30 – Instapaper hits Android
– Like Flipboard and Instagram, Instapaper was a much vaunted iOS exclusive…until now
– The Instapaper for Android app looks and operates much like its iOS cousin, and brings all of the mobile features you would want to Android devices, including your saved articles, the ability to share articles right from your device, and all of the reading and customization options you could possibly need.
– Despite Instapaper creator Marco Arment’s long-stated claim that an Android app wasn’t on his radar, he let the folks who developed the Tumblr app for Android build this gem for him.
20:18 – Major Google Maps update
– At a press event in San Francisco this morning, Google announced that it will soon feature far better 3D maps in Google Earth. The company also announced that Google Maps for mobile will soon feature offline caching. This feature will come to Google Maps to Android soon. Google says it wants to bring this feature to all platforms in the long run.
– The company also announced that its Street View cars have now driven 5 million miles and collected 20 petabytes worth of imagery data. Google also announced that it is bringing Map Maker to South Africa and Egypt today. Google’s engineering director for Street View, Luc Vincent also announced that the company has now managed to put the hardware that Google uses to capture its Street View data into a backpack called the Street View Trekker.
– To model the world in 3D, the company will now use the 45-degree aerial images it already gathers from planes. Thanks to new imagery rendering techniques and advances in computer vision, Google can now retire its old 3D view in Google Earth and replace it with these new images. The result, which Google demoed today, is nothing short of spectacular. These new features will come to Android and iOS devices. Google expects this new technology will cover “communities of over 300 million people” by the end of the year.
24:53 – Google buys Meebo
– Meebo, the seven year-old chat service that morphed into a website toolbar and ad platform, is indeed selling to Google. The companyconfirmed the news a few minutes ago, and we’ve since dug up some more details.
– First, the amount. After raising some $70 million in four venture rounds, Meebo’s acquisition was in fact for around the rumored$100 million, we’ve heard from a source close to the matter.
– Second, we’ve learned that the product team will be using its expertise to help build out publisher tools for Google+. We don’t know if this means there’ll be some sort of new Google+ toolbar coming. But, presumably the existing Meebo properties will be morphed into G+ or otherwise closed.
– Finally, following the original tip we got today, we’ve confirmed that there are layoffs happening within the sales and marketing arms of the company.
25:40 – Google buys QuickOffice
– it has acquiredQuickoffice, a company best known for its mobile productivity suite for Android and iOS. Google plans to bring Quickoffice’s “powerful technology” to its own Apps product suite. Quickoffice allows its users to create and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on their mobile devices. The company says its software is currently installed on over 300 million devices in more than 180 countries.
– The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed by either Google or Quickoffice.
– Quickoffice CEO and co-founder Alan Masareknotes that he hopes that “by combining the magic of Google’s intuitive solutions with Quickoffice’s powerful products, our shared vision for anytime, anywhere productivity can only grow.”
– Given Quickoffice’s focus on building native apps for mobile devices, chances are that Google will use this acquisition to launch more of its own native mobile productivity apps as well.
26:59 – Airtime finally launched
– Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning — who are debuting their much-anticipated (and more family-friendly!) version of ChatRoulette today.
More than 15 years ago, Fanning and Parker were just teenagers trolling chat rooms. “We were both hackers,” Parker said in New York today. “We were interested in computer security. The goal was some sort of miscreant behavior…. We were basically cyber criminals.”
Today, their lives are a world apart. Parker is a multi-billionaire, even factoring in Facebook’s recent declines. Their launch in a Chelsea warehouse right now has Martha Stewart in the front row and Jimmy Fallon as the MC.
– Basically a family friendly chatroulette
– Got $35 million in seed funding
– Parker’s first call on Airtime during the demo was to television host and model Olivia Munn. The second was Snoop Dogg.
But the celebs didn’t save Airtime from an embarrassing five-minute stretch where the product didn’t work in demo mode (the real product hadn’t gone live yet). A call to Snoop Dogg took a few tries. When Joel McHale, a TV host came on, the product failed to work for several minutes. “Whose ass are you going to fire?” he asked Parker on-stage.
– Login via Facebook
– You could call it a more fun version of Skype, a one-on-one Google+ Hangouts with your Facebook graph, or the evolution of Chat Roulette. But what you’re going to call it is fun. Pull in a favorite YouTube video or select one you’ve already shared to Facebook and instantly you’re watching together. It feels simple, intimate, and casual — like you’re actually interacting in person.
– However your paired with strangers based on your social graph
30:34 – Microsoft at E3
– Halo 4 – new enemy (forerunner) and weapons, step change for multiplayer
– Splintercell
– Fifa and Madden with Kinect – swear and the ref could punish you
– Fable
– Gears of War – 2013
– Forza Horizon – End October
– New Kinect voice commands
– New sport TV options this year
– Xbox Music – Xbox, Windows 8, Windows Phone – doesn’t discuss features, 30 million tracks, analyst says coming to iOS and Android
– Nike Kinect training
– Xbox SmartGlass – http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3064855/microsoft-xbox-smartglass-preview
– Works with Windows, iOS and Android phones and tablets. Makes TV more engaging and games more thrilling.
– Can resume video playback on different devices
– The SmartGlass app provides other, less obvious details. For instance, as Game of Thrones airs on the TV, the tablet shows a map of Westeros, showing where in the world a particular scene is taking place. Neat!
– SmartGlass will also extend to games. Developers can also harness it to create companion utilities for Windows 8 tablets and Windows Phone smartphones.
– A Madden title is compatible with SmartGlass. Choose your plays, draw hot routes and control the players using a tablet.
– “And you can do that with any device.”
– Internet Explorer is coming to Xbox this year.
– “Xbox Web Hub” opens up the browser. Anything is a voice command or simple swipe away. Menu navigation is done with swiping and voice on the Kinect, but it looks like typing and other navigation features can be done on SmartGlass.
– Tomb Raider
– Ascend:New Gods – God of War for Xbox – tick
– South Park – game looked shit but loved the South Park creators taking the mick out of Smartglass
– Dance Central 3
– Call of Duty:Black Ops 2
– Emphasising the ecosystem which is getting pretty strong. No new console…all next year?
40:28 – Nintendo at E3
– Pre-E3 demo showed many new things
– Wii-U gamepad
– http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/03/wii-u-gamepad/
– Nintendo has made some notable tweaks and revisions to the prototype version detailed last year at E3, adding a new NFC reader and writer, motion and gyroscope sensors, and fully-independent infrared TV remote functionality. The thumbsliders have been replaced by analog thumbsticks, which now support L3 and R3 inward depressions. Nintendo has also made adjustments to the controller’s ergonomics and dimensions, adding new handgrips on the bottom, making the Gamepad wider, and adjusting the button layout.
– Headphone jack and stylus
–
– Calling it the WiiPad? Wii U Gamepad?
– Wii U Pro controller
– http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/03/wii-u-pro-controller-unveiled-looks-awfully-familiar/
– Nintendo launch an Xbox Controller for the Wii U
– Miiverse for Wii U
– http://www.joystiq.com/2012/06/03/miiverse-announced-for-wii-u/
– Miiverse is an online system planned for the company’s upcoming system that displays a Mii plaza on the Wii U GamePad – it’s looking like a much expanded version of the Wii’s Mii Plaza feature.
– The plaza will show Mii characters gathering around game icons and feature a messaging system for players to connect with players they both do and do not know, as well as a variety of other asynchronous functionality. The messaging system includes a “spoiler” checkbox to prevent players from wrecking a friend’s game experience (should they choose to use it), as well as the ability to send images and drawings to one another. Miiverse will also feature a social networking-style “wall” of sorts, where players can post screenshots from games.
– Miiverse will also inhabit the 3DS and mobile devices (Android, iOS) in the future, though it will not be available immediately at launch.
– Pikman 3
– Super Mario Bros U – classic 2D Mario game – friend can use gamepad to place blocks
– Batman: Arkham City – use touchscreen to control unique aspects in game
– Scribblenauts
– Darksiders II
– Mass Effect 3
– Tank, Tank, Tank
– Tekken Tag Tournament
– Trine 2
– Ninja Gaide 3
– Wii Fit U
– Sing – new music performance game – gamepad displays lyrics – gamers…sing
– Lego City Undercover – open world lego game, use gamepad to find…criminals?
– 3 games from Ubisoft – zombi u, rayman legends, something else, just dance 4
– Nintendoland – Wii U’s version of Wii Sports – 12 attractions
– No pricing or release date for Wii U
– 3DS
– Super Mario Bros 2
– Paper Mario:Sticker Star
– Luigis Mansion Dark Moon
42:20 – Sony at E3
– Beyond: Two Souls – live the life of a video game character – from creators of heavy rain – looking great and ‘stars’ ellen page
– Playstation All Stars Battle Royal – fighting using PS characters on Vita and PS3
– Playstation Plus – more free games coming to subscribers – this month Infamous 2 and Saints Row 2 – also free for a year to all those in the E3 audience
– Littlebigplanet 2 DLC – turn Vita into a controller
– Far Cry 3 – 4 player coop & free DLC on PS3
– Assassins Creed 3 – free DLC on PS3
– Vita – Call of Duty and Assassins Creed 3 this October, PSOne classics also coming
– Wonderbook – make books come to life with Eye and Move. Working with JK Rowling.
– HTC will be first Playstation Suite non Sony partner – now renamed Playstation Mobile – kick in the pants for Android gaming?
– God of War ascension – looks as good as ever but still with the QTE – March 2013
– The Last of Us – new from Naughty Dog (uncharted) – survival horror in post pandemic world – again looked very good
– Move – not much mention (unlike Kinect) although there is a racing wheel that yo plug the move controller into coming this year
– Also outed the gold controller – sums up everything wrong at E3
44:52 – Ubisoft at E3
– Just Dance 4
– Far Cry 3
– Wii U is coming out…so theres a Rayman game
– ZombiU – zombies…on the Wii U
– Assassins Creed 3 – looked very good
– Watch_Dogs – 2013 – GTA/Bladerunner/24/Rubicon – looked pretty amazing – http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-05-ubisofts-watch-dogs-unveiled-platforms-not-yet-disclosed
47:54 – EA at E3
– Dead Space 3 – Feb 2013
– Madden – control team from other devices
– Simcity – looked very impressive
– Battlefield – 5 expansion packs – new vehicle and maps – lots of new content
– Medal of Honour Warfighter – out October, uses Frostbite engine – environments are getting destroyed
– Fifa 13 – FIFA club getting a lot of attention, FIFA 13 on ipad, android connected to console game, new iPhone app connected to the social club – gameplay – updated impact engine, more dribbling
– Need for Speed Most Wanted – Open world driving game, where players race, chase and explore competing to become Most Wanted among their friends. That … sounds like Burnout Paradise – October 30th – video looks great 🙂
– Crysis 3 – 2013
48:42 – Missing at E3
– 3D
– streaming games (Onlives iOS client still in review…after 6 months)
– new consoles

Picks
Chris
Input Output
– A new chrome experiment for Google IO 🙂

Tam
Productive Macs Bundle
– 8 great Mac app’s for $39.99 – closes in 10 days
– RapidWeaver, DEVONthink, Printopia and MailTags are really good app’s

Ian
MacUpdate Bundle
– 11 great Mac app’s for $49.99
– Parallels Desktop 7, Screenflow, Civ V and Busycal are excellent
– If you wanted just Parallels or ScreenFlow this bundle would save you money and get you some extra free app’s

Habit List

We all have bad habits and need help with breaking them…and starting out new healthy habit’s in their place. One app that I’ve found to be quite useful is Habit List for iOS. The app allows you to add a habit that you want to track and has some great options around scheduling. You have full control over when the habit appears on your daily list – weekdays, everyday or only certain days.

My Habits

To cross off that you’ve achieved one of your habits you just swipe across it in the app – very satisfying. You can also just tap them for speed but I really do like to swipe. You can also set reminders within Habit List and one of the slightly strange recommendations (but it works) is to set a habit of reviewing your habit list and set it to remind you at the end of the day. Really helps keep focus on your progress. I also ping one in for the start of the day so I can set in my head the habit’s I want to promote which are always harder to do.

Habit List tracks your progress

Habit List does two things to try and keep you motivated. Against each habit you will see your streak – how many times in a row have you kept to your goal. It’s a great incentive to keep the streak going but there will be days where you just can’t find the time or you’ve fell into your bad habit. The second way that Habit List helps is by tracking your history. The app will show you a calendar view of which days you’ve maintained the habit. Is it always the same day that you break the habit?

The app is well designed, iOs only and at only £1.49 it’s found a place on my home screen.