Author: Ian

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
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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
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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.

Competition Winner

A few weeks back we ran our first ever DigitalOutbox competition. As it was our first, we were a bit tardy with getting the prize shipped but after a couple of weeks we eventually employed good old Royal Mail who shipped the t-shirt to our winner.

Congratulations again to Brian (friend of the show but this wasn’t staged – honest!) who deserves a gold star for wearing the O2 t-shirt…while on site at O2. Hopefully we’ll run another competition soon when we, em, find a free prize.

DigitalOutbox Episode 120

DigitalOutbox Episode 120
DigitalOutbox Episode 120 – Cookies, Windows 8 and Chrome OS

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
2:35 – Cookies Law now active
– New EU regulations on the use by British websites of cookies have been watered down by the UK’s information commissioner just hours before they were due to come into force.
But they could mean that Britain is out of step with EU law in its implementation of the continent-wide directives, and lead to fights with European courts.
– In an updated version of its advice for websites on how to use cookies – small text files that are stored on the user’s computer and can identify them – the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has said that websites can assume that users have consented to their use of them.
The advice was only updated on Thursday, 48 hours before the deadline for implementing the new rules, and published the next day.
– “This is a striking shift,” said Stephen Groom, head of marketing and privacy law at the law firm Osborne Clarke. “Previously the ICO said that implied consent would be unlikely to work. Now it says that implied consent is a valid form of consent.”
– The use of “implied consent” shifts responsibility to the user rather than the website operator, and will come as a relief to thousands of website operators who have been struggling to comply with new EU directives which came into law a year ago.
4:40 – Twitter joke retrial
– The penitent hoaxer who tweeted a joke threat to “blow up” Robin Hood airport in south Yorkshire has lost his attempt to overturn the judgment – but a stalemate between two judges means that his appeal will now be heard again.
– Three high court judges will consider the case against Paul Chambers, 27, from Doncaster, who sent his message when the airport was closed by snow in January 2010.
– Unlike tweets, the essence of which is to be brief and to the point, the increasingly notorious legal action is now heading for its third unresolved year. No date has been set for the fresh hearing.
– Chambers lost his job as an accountant following an avalanche of publicity when he was convicted in May last year of sending “an electronic comunication of a menacing character”, contrary to provisions of the 2003 Communications Act. He was fined £385 and ordered to pay £600 costs after crown court judge Jacqueline Davies, sitting with two magistrates, called the tweet “clearly menacing”, with airport staff sufficiently concerned to report it to police.
7:18 – Windows 8 Release Candidate
– Now available
– Look and feel will change prior to expected release in October as Aero is being retired
– New
– Stripped down flash for IE10
– Some new metro apps
– New gestures
– Not much changed between this and consumer preview
– Fast and stable according to reviews online
12:16 – Google launches new Chromebook and a Chromebox
– Google and its partner, Samsung, are launching a new Chromebook and Chromebox today, targeting them at the educational and corporate customers.
The Chromebook from Samsung is like any other 12.1-inch budget laptop, while Chromebox is a tiny PC that you can connect to any keyboard, mouse and monitor similar to Apple’s Mac Mini. The Chromebook starts at $449 while the entry-level price of Chromebox is $329.
They both are powered by Intel Core processors and include 4GB RAM, Display Port, USB ports, gigabit ethernet, and dual band Wi-Fi. The Chromebox has Bluetooth and DVI output as well, while for $529 you can buy a Chromebook with an integrated 3G modem. And jokes aside, there is a lot to like about both of these new improved devices.
– Chrome OS has seen many updates
– Google says it has has released eight new upgrades to Chrome OS over past 12 months and as a result you are seeing 2.5x (and higher) improvement in speeds of the devices as well as speedier boot times, much faster browsing and responsiveness with hardware-accelerated graphics and a new trackpad stack. Here are some other new additions:
Multi-window support and the UI scales from seamlessly scales from 11” to 30” screens.
An app launcher and an option to pin favorite/most used apps to the launchbar.
Now you can customize backgrounds.
Built-in ability to view office files, online and offline, support for dozens of file formats
There is Google Drive support and in the next version of the Chrome OS release, there will be support for online and offline usage and will syncs with other devices that connect to Google Drive.
Google says Google Docs offline editing will be rolling out over the next several weeks to all Docs users. Google is currently testing it inside Google.
New media player & a built-in photo editor and uploader
– Universal praise really – now a viable platform and in some ways simpler than iOS said one review but is it overpriced for what you can do with it? Isn’t it still a browser?
17:26 – Google helping UK Education
– Google has announced a three-year partnership with UK organization Teach First, which aims to increase students’ exposure to science and technology by training teachers and providing equipment. Each year 34 teachers will go through a six-week training program, for a total of 102, with the first group due to start working in classrooms this September.
– Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt believes that the program could help more than 20,000 students from underprivileged backgrounds. The teachers will be provided funds to “purchase of innovative teaching aides to inspire their classes,” including theRaspberry Pi computer and Arduino microcontroller.
– “The success of the BBC Micro in the 1980s shows what’s possible,” said Schmidt. “There’s no reason why Raspberry Pi shouldn’t have the same impact, with the right support.
20:55 – YouView trial launched
– Being tested in 350 homes right now
– Sounds like an attempt to meet the goal of launching prior to the Olympics
– YouView is a joint TV venture between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel Five, BT, TalkTalk, and Arquiva
– Originally known as Project Canvas, the service was intended to launch in 2010, but has suffered delay after delay. YouView is a web-enabled version of Freeview, the UK’s free-to-air digital network, which adds widgets, apps, catch-up TV, and DVR services alongside traditional programming.
22:45 – ITV adds live streaming and airplay support
– The ITV Player iOS app has been updated to version 2.0 and now supports live streaming of ITV1 and ITV2 in the UK. The channels will stream over 3G or Wi-Fi, although on-demand content will still require Wi-Fi to play. In addition to ITV1 and ITV2 streams, the app will also offer access to live events broadcast on ITV3 and ITV4 through one-off streams. The app also now allows for AirPlay Mirroring of all content to other supported devices.
23:29 – Lovefilm brings 1080p to the UK
– Amazon’s Lovefilm is adding new high-definition options to its Instant streaming service. From today, Lovefilm will now stream 1080p movies to all customers that subscribe to an Instant package. In the UK, HD streaming will be available via Mac, PC, Xbox 360, and LG or Samsung Smart TVs.
– In order to stream HD content LoveFilm says you need a 4Mbps connection for 720p or 12Mbps for 1080p.
– LoveFilm will gradually upgrade its catalogue “over the coming weeks and months” to support the new resolutions.
– Brings parity with Netflix
24:17 – Virgin unclogs Spotify
– Many users complain of pausing and stuttering on Spotify using VirginMedia broadband
– Many blamed VM’s traffic management policy but
– Virgin needed more bandwidth to support Spotify
– Still growing then…
26:10 – Master Chief called in to resolve Syria
– The image, shown in the background of the clip above, even gets a special spotlight as the camera zooms in on the anchor as she discusses the very serious, very real issues plaguing Syria over the past year.
– The BBC has since acknowledged and apologized for airing the Halo logo, telling Eurogamer, “BBC News makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all images broadcast, however very occasionally mistakes do happen. Unfortunately an incorrect logo was used during a segment on last week’s News at One bulletin and we apologise to viewers for the mistake.
27:31 – Ghost Recon
– Slight disappointment
– Laggy night of gaming
– More Rainbow Six than Ghost Recon of old

Picks
Ian
CheetSheet
– Free
– For Mac OSX
– Just hold the ⌘-Key a bit longer to get a list of all active short cuts of the current application.
– It’s as simple as that.

DigitalOutbox Episode 119

DigitalOutbox Episode 119
DigitalOutbox Episode 119 – Twitter privacy issues, Facebook IPO and the Google Knowledge Graph

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:08 – Twitter Updates
– Will support Do Not Track
– Twitter says it will honour requests from users who do not want their online behaviour tracked, the company said on Thursday, in contrast with web companies such Google and Facebook whose business models rely heavily on collecting user data.
– Twitter announced that it will officially support “Do Not Track,” a standardised privacy initiative that has been heavily promoted by the US Federal Trade Commission, online privacy advocates and Mozilla, the non-profit developer of the Firefox web browser.
– Thats GOOD however
– Micro-blogging site Twitter is to start recommending users for you to follow, based on your recent web browsing history. The site calls these ” tailored suggestions,” and it will track your footsteps across the web by using integrated Twitter buttons and widgets as surveillance outposts. So, every website with a “Tweet this” button will log your visit.
– Then, the social network can recognise which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular websites, and recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days. It’s specifically targeted at new Twitter hatchlings, as it hopes to provide them with a relevant list of accounts to follow as soon as they’ve made an account. Right now, Twitter has a default handful of popular users — including Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian — that it shows to all new sign-ups.
– There’s an obvious privacy worry, but Twitter’s Othman Laraki writes, “we are committed to providing you with simple and meaningful choices about the information we collect to improve your Twitter experience.”
– Thats NOT SO GOOD however
– Twitter now sends weekly e-mail digest
– Twitter just added a new feature that sends you a weekly email with the most popular tweets and links from people you follow.
– Sadly, Twitter signs you up without asking you, so you’ll have to take some action to get rid of them. You could wait until it comes and unsubscribe directly from the email, but if you want to stop them before they start, just head to Twitter’s Settings > Notifications > and uncheck the “Weekly digest of Stories & Tweets from my network” box at the bottom. Save your changes and you should never have to see one of those buggers make its way into your email.
– Thats POOR
5:12 – Facebook IPO
– Finally hits the stock market for $38
– Banks keep the price at just over $38 on day one but shares in Zynga drop 13% and they are suspended
– Monday sees Facebook drop
– It’ s a bubble!
– Facebook gets suited because some information only given to institutional investors…http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/23/us-facebook-lawsuit-idUSBRE84M0RK20120523
12:21 – Facebook Camera
– Facebook on Thursday announced a new application for the iPhone and iPod Touch called Facebook Camera, which is intended to make it easier to take pictures and share them on Facebook.
– Dirk Stoop, a Facebook product manager for photos, said that the application was much faster than the current Facebook app for Apple’s iOS, and that it puts photos at the center of the experience.
– “We can basically show you more photos on the app, so we can make a more immersive experience around your photos,” Mr. Stoop said. “On the side of publishing these photos, Facebook Camera lets you upload much higher resolution photos at up to 2,048 by 2,048 pixels wide.” The standard Facebook application uploads lower-resolution pictures.
The application will also finally bring photo filters to Facebook.
– Facebook Camera will offer 15 filters, and will also include tools for cropping and straightening photos, much like the photo editing tools within Apple’s photo app. The filters will include cool, light, bright, golden, cream and neon. “They are stylistic in nature, they are not just enhancements,” Mr. Stoop said.
– It might seem strange for Facebook to release a camera application with built-in filters just weeks after announcing plans to buy Instagram, the social photo app. But Facebook Camera is aimed at a different audience. Instagram has 40 million users, while Facebook has 900 million. This leaves a large swath of people who are not on Instagram but are actively taking photos and uploading them to Facebook. The filters in Facebook Camera were developed by Facebook and are not borrowed from Instagram.
14:20 – HP to lose 27000 employees
– Restructuring
– 27,000 employees to go worldwide
– The company said the cuts – about 8% of its workforce – will reduce costs by up to $3.5bn (£2.2bn) a year.
– HP employs about 350,000 people worldwide and about 20,000 in the UK.
18:22 – Yahoo Axis
– Yahoo introduced its new Axis browser tonight, with versions for the Apple iPad and iPhone, as well as plugins for the top desktop browsers.
– The company briefed a media army on the product and the consensus is that it’s very good. My favorite headline from Gizmodo: “Yahoo Came Out With Its Own Web Browser and It Actually Doesn’t Suck.”
– It’s a slick offering, which essentially eliminates the texty link-filled search page for one of pretty visual tiles and pull-downs and more. Think Pinterest of search and you have the general idea.
– iPad app is nice but US only for the moment – won’t replace my browser but something different. It’s more than handsome enough, it runs very smoothly (thanks mostly to its WebKit underpinnings), and your bookmarks sync between devices quickly once you make sure you’re logged in.
– Not sure if it’s a browser as such
21:43 – Google finally gets Motorola
– Google has today announced that it has closed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, buying the Illinois-based device maker for $40 per share in cash for a total of $12.5 billion.
– As widely expected, Sanjay Jha is stepping down as CEO and Dennis Woodside, Google’s former Americas head, will take the helm at Motorola Mobility, which will be operated as a standalone company. The company says the acquisition will help Google “supercharge” the Android ecosystem: while Motorola will be making devices using the platform, it will also remain open.
– “It’s a great time to be in the mobile business…I’m confident Dennis [Woodhouse] and the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come,” Page writes.
26:06 – Google launches the Knowledge Graph
– The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query. This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do.
– Google’s Knowledge Graph isn’t just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. It’s also augmented at a much larger scale—because we’re focused on comprehensive breadth and depth. It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects. And it’s tuned based on what people search for, and what we find out on the web.
– Helps you get a good summary of the search topic and go deeper if you wish to
28:26 – Waterstones teams up with…Amazon
– Waterstones will sell Kindles in their own stores and also the best Kindle experience
– The thinking seems to be that since we all like browsing in bookshops, and we all like reading on digital devices, combining the “singular pleasures of browsing a curated bookshop” with the “best digital readers” will make for the best of both worlds. But that seems to fundamentally misunderstand the appeal of the digital reading experience. Full disclosure: I don’t use a Kindle, but price aside, the attraction of the Kindle experience seems to be that you can have lots of books, straight away – neither of which is usually much of a problem when you’re standing in a bookshop. And the risk that Waterstones runs is that by welcoming its greatest rival onto the high street it puts Amazon’s device into the hands of its most committed customers.
– The terms of the deal won’t be announced until the autumn, but the success or failure of this deal will be determined by what people think digital reading is
– Basically says Kindle is the device/platform for reading books. Amazon wins.
30:36 – O2 rolling out 42Mbps 3G to major UK cities
– UK mobile network operator O2 has confirmed it is currently rolling out a variant of DC-HSPA which will support connections of up to 42Mbps. Although the dual-cell HSPA technology can support impressive speeds, the technology will still operate as 3G ahead of the 4G spectrum that is being planned for the UK. British owners of the latest iPad or Nokia Lumia 900 (devices that support DC-HSPA) will be able to take advantage of the speeds providing their local mast has been upgraded. O2 says it’s rolling out to “major UK cities,” but there’s no word on exact locations.
– Three is also planning to rollout a 42Mbps version of DC-HSPA over the summer and T-Mobile / Orange are planning to support the technology later this year. Vodafone, the fourth major UK network operator, started to rollout a variant of DC-HSPA last year, but with support for up to 28.8Mbps — the company says it has no plans to support the 42Mbps variant.

Picks
Henry
Swordigo
– £1.49
– Nice platform/adventure.
– Quite easy but nicely done.

Ian
Habit List
– £1.49
– Helps create good habits and break bad ones
– Add a habit, pick frequency, track how often you keep or break habits
– Looks great – finding it very handy

DigitalOutbox Episode 118

DigitalOutbox Episode 118
DigitalOutbox Episode 118 – Yahoo, Internet Porn and the Samsung Galaxy SIII

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:05 – Yahoo CEO Steps Down
– Scott Thompson hired from PayPal to reinvigorate the business, has been forced out over an error in his CV – which wrongly claimed he has a computer science degree.
– Lied about computing degree on his CV
– Apologised to staff, not for lying, but that this was a distraction
– He has seemingly been diagnosed with thyroid cancer which contributed to his decision to step down
– Thompson, who started in January, was initially praised by Wall Street for his first round of cuts – removing 2,000 jobs (from a headcount of around 14,000) in order to save $375m per year, saying that it was “an important next step toward a bold, new Yahoo – smaller, nimbler, more profitable and better equipped to innovate.”
– He will be succeeded — at least for now — by Ross B. Levinsohn, the company’s head of global media.
– Mr. Levinsohn, who is most likely auditioning to keep the role on a permanent basis, has been with Yahoo since late 2010, when the chief executive at that time, Carol Bartz, brought him in to lead its Americas operations. He is now the company’s global head of media, overseeing Yahoo’s core multibillion dollar advertising business.
– I don’t really know what Yahoo is or does anymore!
6:36 – Internet Porn – Government to consult on tough new measures
– The government is to consult on tough measures to protect children from internet pornography. Under plans being draw up by Downing Street, it would be up to customers to “opt in” to receive adult content online when they take out a broadband contract.
– Campaigners have argued it is too easy for children to access explicit adult content on their phones and computers. Parents who want to ensure their children currently do not have access to internet pornography must opt out of services.
– But under the proposals, internet service providers (ISPs) will be forced to ask customers if they wish to access sites when they sign up for broadband. David Cameron is due to meet large ISPs to discuss the measures but he is understood to be against tougher controls on internet porn.
– Tory backbencher Claire Perry has accused internet companies of being “complicit” in exposing children to pornography. She said ISPs had been “dragging their feet” on reforming the way explicit material is accessed online.
– A report by MPs found 77% of women would sign up to having a default filter barring pornographic content.
– Nick Pickles, director of the privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, welcomed the consultation as a “positive step”, but said ministers needed to focus on giving parents the ability to restrict their children’s access rather than trying to censor the internet.
– is it not better to educate children and parents
10:46 – Apple rejecting apps that use Dropbox SDK
– Last year Apple caused a bit of a stir by forcing developers to remove links in iOS apps that allowed for external subscriptions or purchases to be made — unless the same transaction was also available as one of Apple’s in-app purchases. A new wrinkle in the policy has developed, with Dropbox confirming that third-party developers incorporating its service are now being rejected under the same rule “because we allow users to create accounts.” PandoDaily first reported on a support thread in Dropbox’s user support forums, with developers complaining that their apps are being kicked back by the App Store review team. The issue is the way Dropbox’s new SDK handles the authorization of third-party apps: it sends users to a page in Safari where they can grant access. However, that same page also allows new users to create accounts, after which they could drill down through Dropbox’s site and upgrade to a paid account.
– Dropbox initially tried removing a link to the desktop version of the site as a possible workaround, but the review team continued to reject apps. Earlier this evening, the company posted a version of its SDK that removed the ability to create a new account altogether. While Dropbox believes this should resolve the issue, it’s hardly a convenient solution for iOS users looking to add functionality, and should only further stoke the flames of controversy over some of Apple’s review guidelines.
– Protecting iCloud, punishing DropBox or staying true to it’s word that you can’t offer paid options from links in the app without offering in app purchase as well?
– Dropbox have now worked around problem – still pretty stinky
13:18 – Apple barred from using 4G when advertising iPad in the UK
– Apple has been selling the device billed “4G”, even though the 4G chip inside will work only on 700MHz and 2100MHz spectra in the U.S. and Canada.
– In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which regulates advertising, will on Wednesday publish an informal adjudication after receiving complaints from disgruntled customers, who said Apple’s claims wrongly suggested lightning-speed browsing.
– But the authority could open a new investigation in to whether Apple is mis-leading customers.
– Apple no longer using 4G in the UK store
14:29 – Facebook launches App Centre
– Instead of selling apps that integrate with Facebook, the new App Center will refer users to other app stores where they can buy them.
– What Facebook has announced is more of an app showcase. In addition to apps built on Facebook, it includes apps that use Facebook Login, regardless of whether they’re iOS, Android or web apps.
– Though you will find iOS and Android apps in the App Center, you will be directed to Apple’s App Store orGoogle Play to actually download the apps. Facebook announced on Wednesday that it will allow developers to charge for “apps built on Facebook” for the first time, but is not clear whether users will purchase apps directly from the App Center.
– Facebook’s App Center will launch on the web as well as within the iOS and Android Facebook apps.
16:58 – Facebook testing pay to promote
– Facebook is testing a new feature called Highlight that allows users to pay a nominal fee to promote their posts, making them more prominent in others’ news feeds. Last year Facebook raked in $1.14 billion in revenue, about 85 percent of which is from ads, but this would be the first time the site attempts to monetize ordinary posts.
– In a converation with Stuff, Facebook spokeswoman Mia Garlick confirmed the tests: “We’re constantly testing new features across the site. This particular test is simply to gauge people’s interest in this method of sharing with their friends.” She also added that the company is testing the service at a number of price points, including free. The feature is similar to a new addition from Tumblr that lets users pay to promote their blog posts.
20:16 – Rdio launches in UK
– Similar to Spotify, listen to music on the web or devices
– No fanfare, just available with 7 day free trial
– Looks ot be more US centric with some new additions for UK market
22:14 – Samsung Galaxy SIII
– Major specs include a 4.8-inch PenTile Super AMOLED display at 720p resolution, 8-megapixel primary and 1.9-megapixel front-facing cameras with 990ms start-up time, 3.3fps burst mode, and best-shot selection (similar to the HTC One series), 16 or 32GB of storage (a 64GB version is coming later) with microSD expansion, Bluetooth 4.0 support, GPS with GLONASS reception, high-throughput 40MHz 802.11n Wi-Fi, NFC, and a relatively large 2,100mAh battery.
– The global version of the device will be using the recently-announced Exynos 4 Quad quad-core system-on-chip — regional variants could be using alternatives, just as the Galaxy S II did. The phone measures 8.6mm thick (136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm, to be exact) which is actually a bit thicker than the S II’s 8.5mm. The global version will support 21Mbps HSPA+, though Samsung is quick to point out that certain local models will have 4G.
– Flipboard is exclusive to Samsung SIII owners on Android for a limted time
– 50GB of Dropbox space – double HTC
– Samsung says that Europeans can look for the Galaxy S III to launch on May 29th with the 32GB model as a Vodafone exclusive for the first month
28:13 – Games Update
– Diablo III launches at midnight tonight
– Max Payne 3 – some great early reviews, out friday
– Ghost Recon Future Soldier next week
– Trials Evolution and Fez – great arcade games, not forgetting Minecraft too

Picks
Ian
Bartender
– Free while in beta,
– Tidies menu bar icons
– Hide icons in bartenders own bar
– Can display an app if it updates for 5 seconds
– Really cleans up my messy menu bar

SCOtutor for Mac

SCOtutor for Mac is a great training video from Don McAllister, the man behind ScreenCasts Online. It’s a tutorial specifically written for users who are new to the Mac. With so many people picking up iPad’s there is a growing number of users who are also moving to Macs that have spent years using pc’s with Windows installed. This app is great for those users as it takes you through many basics and will get them up to speed in no time.

SCOtutor for Mac

There are over 150 minutes in the tutorial covering the following main topics:

• Introduction to the Mac
• Exploring the OS X Desktop
• Applications and your Mac
• Introduction to the Finder
• Auto Save & Versions
• Introduction to Apple Mail
• Managing Application Windows
• Printing and Scanning
• Sharing with the Mac
• Using the Safari Web Browser
• Users, Accounts & Parental Controls
• Time Machine

The application itself is easy to use and the video playback deserves a mention as you can easily jump between chapters, playback at different speeds and subtitle support in a number of languages. The app will also resume from where you left off previously so there is no need to worry about pausing mid tutorial.

The best bit isn’t the app though. Don really knows how to pass on information in a clear and concise manner without confusing the listener. I also think his voice is easy to listen too and takes away the pain of learning – it’s also great to hear a British voice in a sea of American tutorials. As an experiment Don has made this app free for a limited time as well as the SCOtutor for Mac iOS application which is actually a better option in my opinion as you can run the tutorials on the iPad allowing you to follow along on the Mac. However once the free offer is finished I’d still have no hesitation in recommending SCOtutor for Mac as it is a great application for newcomers to the Mac.