DigitalOutbox Episode 53
In this episode the team discuss the iPhone 4 – don’t hold it that way.
Playback
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Shownotes
0:53 – Google Investigated by UK Police
– UK’s Metropolitan Police is to investigate Google over its capture of data from unsecured wi-fi networks, following a complaint from human rights group Privacy International.
– The data, scooped up by Google’s Street View cars, may put the firm in breach of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).
– It is likely that the police will interview Google staff in the UK.
– Joins German, French and USA authorities in investigating breach
– Surely stuff and nonsense – won’t come to anything
3:03 – Police don’t need a law to stop a photographer
– Two police officers stopped a teenage photographer from taking pictures of an Armed Forces Day parade – and then claimed they did not need a law to detain him.
– photographing police cadets on Saturday when he was ordered to stop and give his personal details by an adult cadet officer who claimed he needed parental permission to capture images of the cadets.
– After arguing his rights in a series of protracted legal debates with officers, the sixth former says he was pushed down a set of stairs and detained for breaching the peace until the parade passed.
http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm
6:31 – Flickr Refresh
– Photo’s bigger, page cleaner and wider
– More info about photo – location, dates, camera
– Navigation controls better
– Actions menu – less distraction on the screen
– Lightbox – nice black background for viewing
– Favourites now integrated with comments
8:23 – British IP Streaming Record
– Breaking – BBC streams of England match peaked at 800,000 – breaks previous record of 350,000 set yesterday with budget,world cup, wimbledon
– 800,000 concurrent viewers is a pretty massive figure for online streaming.
– The difference between broadcast and IP is that if two people watch on their laptop in my home network, then that means my network has to cope with two sets of 896kbps streams. If four people watch, that’s four sets of 896kbps streams, or 3.5 meg. And if all 800,000 viewers were given the same bitrate, that meant a total of 716,800Mbps – or 716.8Gbps if you like it better that way.
15:06 – Virgin to launch 400Mbps
– Virgin already offer 50meg broadband and they will be upgrading this to 100meg broadband by the end of the year, speeds which already offer some of the fastest in the UK.
– Virgin aren’t standing still though, they are preparing their network to launch 400Mbps broadband with modems and routers which support this available at the end of the year, although no launch date for products of these speeds is in sight.
– Do gen public need that speed?
– Would increased upload speeds make a difference?
– What about focusing on latency, lag and reducing the throttling rather than casing speed headlines
18:28 – XXX Domain Name Approved
– The .xxx domain name has been approved
– Split opinions on whether this is a good thing or bad
– Easier to identify porn – filter it out etc
– But porn companies don’t want to use it for those reasons…
19:53 – Apple Storing and Sharing Location Info
– Apple’s new privacy policy contains a small new paragraph of big importance: it gives the company license to store “the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device” and share it with “partners and licensees.”
– there seems to be no effective method of opting out of the data storage and sharing, as you’ll need to agree to the new terms and conditions before downloading new apps or any media from the iTunes store.
– However you can opt out of iAd’s
– http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100621/apple-heres-how-to-opt-out-of-our-targeted-ads-but-not-our-location-tracking/
– Apple and its partners use cookies and other technologies in mobile advertising services to control the number of times you see a given ad, deliver ads that relate to your interests, and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. If you do not want to receive ads with this level of relevance on your mobile device, you can opt out by accessing the following link on your device: http://oo.apple.com. If you opt out, you will continue to receive the same number of mobile ads, but they may be less relevant because they will not be based on your interests. You may still see ads related to the content on a web page or in an application or based on other non-personal information. This opt-out applies only to Apple advertising services and does not affect interest-based advertising from other advertising networks.
– Google and Yahoo also allow you to opt out of ad’s. Facebook doesn’t.
24:22 – Bing for iPhone Updated
– Visual Scanning – like Google goggles
– lets you scan barcodes and cover art on the fly using your iPhone camera. Users can thus scan the barcode of any product or the cover art of books, CDs, DVDs, or video games, after which they will see descriptions and occasionally also reviews, prices and links to merchant websites.
– You can now connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts and see combined status updates from your friends from within the Bing app. For any type of search from the free Bing app for iPhone and iPod touch, you will also be able to see both Web results and relevant results from your contacts across social networks.
– Only available, for free, in US store
– Just like BBC app, paid for by UK licence fee payers, but only available in US store
28:07 – iPad Sales
– 1 million in 24
– 2 million in 60
– Now 3 million in 80
– 11,000 iPad app’s, over 225,000 apps in total
– Magical
34:16 – iPhone 4
– 1.7 million sold in three days
– http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/06/28iphone.html
– How many are still waiting, how many were turned away
– Queue
– Costs
– Death grip!
– http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphone-4-reception-issues-youre-holding-th/
– http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/25/hey-apple-youre-holding-it-wrong/
– http://mashable.com/2010/06/25/apple-iphone-4
– All phone’s have antenna at bottom – regulatory requirements
– http://twitpic.com/1zwoun – Nokia 6126 manual advises not to hold at bottom
– Tape fix – http://www.marco.org/733115343
– Connection and network better, quality better
– Screen – incredible
– Camera
– Performance – so fast
– Battery life
– Facetime
– Anything else? Grr…bumper
1:04:02 – Daily Mail Makes Stuff Up
– Quotes a fake twitter account @ceostevejobs
– Says Steve Jobs reveals that iPhone 4 may be recalled
– Lazy journalism but how many will know it’s wrong?
– Story now removed
Picks
Ian
Live Train Map for London Underground
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jun/22/underground-live-map-possibilities
– Built by Matthew Somerville of MySociety at Science Hack Day over the weekend
– uses the new Transport for London API
– Somerville has also built a similar live-updating map for network trains from all the major termini (it defaults to Birmingham New Street, but there’s a menu offering all the choices). Again, splendid stuff, using data pulled – scraped, actually – from the National Rail website. (National Rail doesn’t offer an API.)
– http://traintimes.org.uk/map/
also