Author: Ian

DigitalOutbox Episode 46

DigitalOutbox Episode 46
In this episode the team discuss Facebook privacy, Spotify, and Apple vs Adobe again!

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:41 – Facebook f8
– 400 million users
– We’re going to combine all the permissions dialogs that you use using Connect into a single Permissions dialog. Someone comes to a site. You show them a dialog that shows all the permissions you need. They click once.
– “Once upon a time, Facebook could be used simply to share your interests and information with a select small community of your own choosing. As Facebook’s privacy policy once promised, ‘No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.’
– How times have changed.
– Today, Facebook removed its users’ ability to control who can see their own interests and personal information. Certain parts of users’ profiles, ‘including your current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests’ will now be transformed into ‘connections,’ meaning that they will be shared publicly. If you don’t want these parts of your profile to be made public, your only option is to delete them.”
– Open Graph – new plugins to see what friends have liked and shared
– Like button everywhere – share without logging in
– Will be on all IMDB pages from today – hit button, added to your movies in Facebook
– 30 other partners
– Search. 400 million users sharing 25 billion things a month. Now devs will be able to search all public updates on Facebook.
– Finally, revamping the way authentication works. Together with industry leaders we’ll adopt oAuth 2.0. The first reason this is cool: it’s an industry standard. Code you write will work equally well expect standard to be widely adopted. It’s objectively more awesome. It’s just simple.
– One more cool thing (a glimpse of the future). When we wondered what would happen if we worked with a small group of trusted companies if users didn’t have to click Connect. What if they already knew public info of public users. Worked with Microsoft (Docs.com).
– Microsoft is announcing Docs.com. Online version of Office Suite. Makes it easy to share and collaborate with friends online. one of friends writes up a document. Share it, goes to Docs.com. Share it with you, you go to Docs.com without having to reauthenticate. Immediately can get started. All the power of Microsoft office suite online with simple FB integration. This is built with the ground up with assumption that every user has real idenitfy and friends. Will be avialable later today at Docs.com.
– Another example: Pandora. Now for the first time when you go to Pandora it will be able to start playing music from bands you’ve liked all across the web.
– Massive announcements really
– Facebook will be everywhere on the web
– Capture more of what we do, where we go online, information we consume and create
– Launched a commerce system on top of this – Facebook credits
– Facebook are betting on social connections – as big as the hyperlink
BUT
– Who controls Facebook – do we trust Facebook – Google has better image
– Is this a utility – utilities are usually governed
– What happens if facebook is used to authenticate everywhere and it goes down….web broken?
– How to alter your privacy settings in facebook – http://www.fastcompany.com/1624745/time-to-audit-your-facebook-privacy-settings
– What does Facebook share about you – http://zesty.ca/facebook/
– EFF has a timeline of FB privacy – http://w2.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline/
10:19 – Spotify Updates
– added a number of social features, centered on a fully editable Spotify music profile
– Connect to Facebook: you can connect to Facebook inside of Spotify, instantly adding all your Facebook friends who’ve selected the same feature. Your friends’ profiles will appear in a new ‘People’ sidebar at the right of the screen, with your personal profile at the top.
– Add usernames: you can also add people by typing their Spotify username, should you know it, into the Spotify search field. For example searching ‘spotify:user:username’ will bring up their profile (if their profile is published).
– Publish your Spotify profile to the web: easily publish the link to your Spotify profile on your blog, Facebook page, website or anywhere else on the web and allow others to follow your musical journey. For example here’s a link to the official Spotify profile.
– Inbox: a new ‘inbox’ folder on Spotify’s left sidebar lets you send tracks to friends directly within the platform, simply by dragging and dropping a track to their name in the People sidebar. Alternatively, just right click on the track and select the new ‘send to’ option.
– Facebook feed: music your friends have posted on Facebook will be visible on the Spotify ‘What’s new’ page and via a new ‘Feed’ tab.
– Popularity count for playlists: all playlists will show how many other Spotify users are currently subscribed to that playlist. By clicking on the number, you can even see the usernames of those who added the playlist.
– Track playlist changes: see who and when a track was added to a playlist with the new ‘Added’ and ‘User’ columns in playlists.
– Spotify is evolving into a total music management platform. We’ve added a ‘Library’ folder in the left side bar, enabling you to combine your own music library with ours.
– Local files: missing any music in Spotify? Now you can import a link to all the music files stored on your computer with a simple click of a button.
– Gracenote: As with any good music media player, if you have missing or incorrect track information you need software to check those files and automatically correct them so that you can better organise and link them to our catalogue. Gracenote does just this.
– Local file linking: we will check your local files and see if we have that track/artist/album in Spotify. If we do, we’ll make the file linkable so you can easily go from that file into an artist or album page. This allows for better sharing of playlists that contain a mix of your own music and Spotify’s.
– Starred: every track and album on Spotify can now be ‘starred’ – allowing you to tag all your favourites into a special sub-folder.
– Wireless sync: you can copy your music files to your mobile without connecting a USB cable with our new wireless sync feature.
– Filter bar: the library has a permanent filter-bar at the top so you can easily type in what you’re searching for. In all other lists the filter bar is visible when pressing cmd-f (mac) or ctrl-f (windows).
15:00 – No Hulu for the UK
– Couldn’t agree terms with UK broadcasters
– Hulu wants to sell the adverts around the content – couldn’t agree with ITV, C4, Five
– A source close to Hulu said that the company had not totally ruled out a UK launch somewhere down the line: “It has definitely had to postpone its UK expansion plans, which the team are disappointed by. But without being able to secure any exclusive content – because Channel 4 and Five have already signed third party deals with YouTube and SeeSaw and ITV isn’t playing ball, it had to ensure it could sell the advertising inventory around the content it could secure. When those talks fell through – Hulu has been forced to walk away. But it remains hopeful that it can have a UK presence in the future – when the broadcasters realise they need to be more flexible with their business models.”
17:36 – Blippy Exposes Users Credit Card Numbers
– 4 users full names and numbers exposed by running google search – site:blippy.com +”from card”
– Scary – so much for protecting users – always was a dumb idea in my opinion
– Blippy blog – http://blippy.posterous.com/blippy-and-credit-card-numbers
– While it looks super-scary and certainly sucks for the 4 people who were affected (to whom we apologize and are contacting), and is embarrassing to us, it’s a lot less bad than it looks. Don’t worry – Google cache is great and we won’t get caught again.
– But…2 days later – http://www.businessinsider.com/warning-blippy-users-debit-card-numbers-still-appearing-in-google-2010-4
– “site:blippy.com +outstanding.” in Google turns up another card
– Site and service can’t be trusted – simple as that
20:11 – Google Maps navigation in the UK
– Runs on Android 1.6 and later
– Voice commands and voice search, street view, traffic warnings, POIs and step-by-step directions
– Free
– Also confirmed that service will come to iPhone…
– Or Not – Official Comment from Google – We did not say we would bring it to iPhone, we said to date we’ve had it on Android and that in the future it may come to other platforms but did not confirm this will be coming to iPhone at all.
24:07 – Bing losing money
– Just shows how seriously M$ is in taking on Google and just how much cash they have to throw around.
– Is it worth it?
25:56 – Scott Adams and the Stolen iPhone
– Police raid Jason Chens home – take his comps
– Was the raid legal?
– Are Apple after Gizmodo, the guy that took/sold the phone…..everyone?
– Do the police work for Apple?
– This is like a tech world soap opera
– Like Pete and Katie splitting…who?
30:22 – Apple vs Adobe
– Writing on his blog, Mike Chambers, project manager for Adobe Flash, revealed this week that his company is not planning additional investments in the software feature. Chambers noted that Adobe complied with Apple’s licensing terms during the development cycle of Flash CS5.
– “However, as developers for the iPhone have learned, if you want to develop for the iPhone you have to be prepared for Apple to reject or restrict your development at anytime, and for seemingly any reason,” he wrote.
– Chambers suggested that Apple’s changes to the developer agreement were meant to specifically target Adobe and developers who might port software from Flash to the iPhone.
– “It is our belief that Apple will enforce those terms as they apply to content created with Flash CS5,” he wrote. “Developers should be prepared for Apple to remove existing content and applications (100+ on the store today) created with Flash CS5 from the iTunes store.”
– Apple responds publicly on Flash
– “Someone has it backwards — it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264 (all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard, while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary,” said spokeswoman Trudy Miller in a statement.
– Why is this a big deal?
– Apples quarterly results were massive
– Best quarter ever
– Apple’s iPhone business, which didn’t exist three years ago, now represents a whopping 40% of the company’s revenue, and has been the company’s biggest revenue generator for three quarters in a row.
– But wait…..it’s not all bad – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/23/apple_and_adobe_together_again/
– 10.6.3 includes a new Video Decode Acceleration Framework. This C programming interface provides low-level access to the H.264 decoding capabilities of certain GPUs
– http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2010/tn2267.html
– This is what has prevented hardware acceleration of Flash on the Mac
– Adobe are looking at it closely and hope to include it later this year
– Plex have done it already…
– http://elan.plexapp.com/2010/04/27/hardware-accelerated-h-264-decoding-on-plex/
– For the first time, your GPU is used to decode H.264 video. The results are incredibly impressive, with 720p and 1080p video decoding smoothly with much reduced CPU utilization
– Adobe company spokesman says that Mac hardware acceleration will arrive with an incarnation of the Flash Player due “shortly after” version 10.1, which is now on its second release candidate.
– http://blog.kaourantin.net/?p=89
– Version available now with Hardware decoding
– MacBooks shipped after January 21st, 2009, Mac Minis shipped after March 3rd, 2009, MacBook Pros shipped after October 14th, 2008, iMacs which shipped after the first quarter of 2009
– Doesn’t support al resolutions but a great step forward
– Blog post also acknowledges quicktimes better performance but that theres a good plan on how to proceed
– Thoughts on Flash by Steve Jobs
– http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
– Summary
– It’s proprietary.
– Most web video plays on the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad
– Who needs Flash games? We have apps for that.
– Flash has poor security.
– Flash doesn’t perform well on mobile devices.
– Flash negatively affects battery life.
– Flash was designed for PCs, not touchscreens.
– Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.
– Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.
– Third, there’s reliability, security and performance. Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash. Flash also doesn’t perform well on a mobile platform
– Battery life is an issue
– Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X
– Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
– And so it goes on.
– Dagger in the heart for Flash on mobiles?
53:12 – Apple buys Siri
– $200 million
– Siri was a great iPhone app – virtual personal assistant
– Great demo’s, not yet released in UK
– Bought to make iPhone exclusive?
– Bought for the underlying technology?
– Bought for mobile search? iAds?
55:43 – HP Buys Palm
– $1.2 billion
– HP back in smartphone market
– Saying no to Windows Phone 7?
– looking to make Web OS tablets to compete with iPad http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/28/hp_on_palm_buy/
58:54 – Dell Launching New Phones
– Lightning
– Windows 7 portrait slider
– 1GHz QSD8250 Snapdragon processor, WVGA 4.1-inch OLED display, AT&T and T-Mobile 3G,
– five megapixel autofocus camera, 1GB of flash with 512MB RAM plus 8GB of storage on a MicroSD card (non-user-replaceable, we’re assuming),
– GPS, accelerometer, compass, FM radio, and full Flash support including video playback
– Thunder
– Similar specs to Lightning but with Android 2.1
– Flash, Smoke
– Android as well, slightly less highly spec’d, oddish design
1:01:16 – Nexus One UK Launch
– Available on Vodafone from Friday 30th
– Free on 2 year contracts, but only with 1GB of mobile internet and mail, starting from £35
– Free on 18 month contract starting from £40
– For customers who only want to sign up for 18 months, the phone will cost £99 on a £30 a month contract, or £59 for £35 a month. It is free on an 18 month contract at £40 a month. On a two-year contract, the phone will cost £99 for £25 a month, or £59 for £30 a month.
– No yearly contract
1:05:00 – Sky Launches Unlimited Broadband
– Sky is set to become the first broadband provider to offer free internet access for all customers at speeds of up to 20Mb/s
– called Sky Everyday Lite, users have to be Sky TV subscribers and signed up to the firm’s Sky Talk phone service. And downloads are capped at 2GB a month. service is free and available from 1 June.
– On the same day, Sky also introduces Sky Unlimited, a £7.50-a-month package that is, it claims truly unlimited – there will be “no usage caps, fair use policies or traffic management”.

Picks
Ian
iStat Menus
– Mac app that shows you lots of stats about your machine
– Temps, fan speeds, network speeds etc
– Looks great

Jamie Oliver for iphone
– Great recipe app
– Lots of video and audio content
– Recipes easy to follow and the ones I’ve tried are lovely

Transmit
– The best FTP app for Mac
– Robust and feature rich

Chris
Unhappy Hipsters
– alternative captions to photos from lifestyle magazines.

DigitalOutbox Episode 45

DigitalOutbox Episode 45
In this episode the team discuss Twitter Chirps, iPhone revealed and the Droid Incredible.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:25 – DEBill
– Libdems will call for repeal of digital economy bill
– Hoorah
3:31 – Twitter Chirps
– Launching Promoted tweets
– We are launching the first phase of our Promoted Tweets platform with a handful of innovative advertising partners that include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America—with more to come. Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users.
– You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you
– Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.
– Before we roll out more phases, we want to get a better understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets, user experience and advertiser value. Once this is done, we plan to allow Promoted Tweets to be shown by Twitter clients and other ecosystem partners and to expand beyond Twitter search, including displaying relevant Promoted Tweets in your timelines in a way that is useful to you.
– A Promoted Tweet isn’t guaranteed to stay afloat for a long time — if the tweet isn’t tracking well in terms of replies, clicks, and a number of other metrics Twitter is calling “resonance”, it will be pulled, and the advertiser won’t pay for it.
– Twitter Chirp
– Google Rolls Out Twitter Timelines
– http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/14/google-rolls-out-twitter-timelines-in-realtime-search/
– Google is going a different route by adding a timeline view of realtime updates.
– The feature is rolling out over the next few days, and includes more than just Twitter updates
– The timeline lets you go back in time to see what people were saying about any particular topic. It searches updates on Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, and MySpace.
– It is an attempt to recreate the conversation which occurred at a specific point in time about any topic.
– 3 Billion requests a day through API
– Growth – 1500% a year
– Twitter realise that twitter is too hard to use
– For devs, best twitter can do is grow userbase
– 55 million new tweets per day
– 600 million search queries
– Announcing today we’re launching Points of Interest. Actual places, not just lat/long. You’ll be able to click on Palace of Fine arts, see what everyone there is saying.
– User Stream API will give developers access to a feed of user actions on a more granular level than just tweets. The user stream includes mentions, friending and favoriting (the kind of stuff you’re used to seeing in Facebook’s news feed). The API will be available to developers to play with at Twitter’s Chirp Hack Day (which actually starts tonight).
– Annotations feature that will be launching “next quarter” that gives developers much more flexibility around the context of a tweet. The feature will allow developers to “add any arbitrary metadata to any tweet in the system.” So, just like a tweet can today be transmitted along with information about which other tweet it was in reply to, or what location it came from, or what application it was created on, now Twitter will allow developers to make up new stuff. Twitter is looking to see how developers use Annotations before it creates any sort of taxonomy for them, Sarver said.
– Twitter is launching a central developer resource site at dev.twitter.com later today. It includes such features as documentation that’s generated from code, rather than written by hand (this won applause from the Chirp audience), a way to securely build and reference API calls, an official WatchMouse monitor for the Twitter service and a way to search across all the repositories of Twitter developer information.
– Today the Library of Congress is announcing that it’s doing its part to digitally preserve each and every public tweet since the beginning of time … err Twitter. It fittingly broke the news on Twitter earlier today.
– after a six-month delay, “Tweets will be used for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation.”
– @anywhere also launched – http://dev.twitter.com/anywhere
– integrate twitter into your website with ease
14:46 – New Macbook Pros
– i5 and i7 dual cores – not quad core
– Emphasis on battery life rather than all out performance – 13 inch 10 hours, 15, 17 – 8-9 hours
– Screens – glossy 1440×900 screen, or a denser 1680×1050 panel with either glossy or matte coatings
– No need to reboot to swap between integrated and high end video
– 13 inch from £999, 15 from £1499, 17 from £1899
– From El Jobs…We chose killer graphics plus 10 hour battery life over a very small CPU speed increase. Users will see far more performance boost from the speedy graphics.
18:21 – iPad Dealyed in UK
– Now end of May due to greater than anticipated success in US – yeah right!
– Details and pre-orders announced on May 10th
– Makes this close to an iPhone launch
– O2 will also be announcing iPad deals in the coming weeks, also Vodafone and Orange
– really BBC, was it third biggest news in the UK?
21:18 – Opera Mini Approved
– Served through proxy with the sites compressed
– I thought experience was quite poor
– Safari as fast if not faster, GUI very poor too
– Zooming in was hit and miss, many times zooming in far too much
– Does sync bookmarks back to desktop
– So much for the regime
23:14 – iPhone 4G Leaked Lost or Stolen
– What’s new
• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×460 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic
What’s changed
• The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
• An aluminum border going completely around the outside
• Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
• Everything is more squared off
• 3 grams heavier
• 16% Larger battery
• Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery
– Biggest gadget story of the year…maybe ever?
– Gruber – Apple consider the phone….stolen
– Gizmodo confirm they paid for the phone
– Gizmodo tell the world the name of the engineer that lost the phone…what about the guy that stole/found the phone and sold it for premium? Was that really needed? From now on he’s the guy that lost the iphone. Then they do another post asking Apple not to sack him. Classy.
– Is Gizmodo handling stolen goods?
– Apple wants it back – http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/357361/apple-asks-for-its-iphone-4-back
32:19 – Microsoft Kin
– Today, Microsoft is launching its own Microsoft-branded phones targeted at younger users, “Kin,” also known as Project Pink. 2 phones, Kin 1, Kin 2
– Microsoft has dubbed a group of younger users “sociologists.” They like to share pictures on Facebook, check on their friends via mobile, talk tech and blog. They’re talking about Generation Y. It’s a teenie phone
– The first phone (pictures coming) is almost completely square. Microsoft is demoing the device on stage now, showing off its social features. Your contacts are almost entirely photo-based — it looks like a collage when you look at your favorites or friends.
– The interface is touchscreen: You can do drag-and-drop of links and swipe to open windows such as search. It does have a physical keyboard
– Use Zune video and music service
– 5- and 8-megapixel cameras on the two models, and it shoots video in 720p
– Kin Studio – web component of phone to access all content via slick front end
– Sharp built hardware
– Out in US on Verizon in May
– Autumn in UK on Vodafone
36:24 – Droid Incredible
– Camera at 8MP looks to be very impressive
– Best touch interface found on an android phone
– Sound playback and earpiece excellent
– 8GB internal storage + micro SD slot, therefore 40GB available – many apps don’t see internal storage though, and the phone doesn’t come with a card
– Software – Android 2.1 + Sense interface – well integrated
– In fact reviews say this is best interface found on an Android device
– Browser comes with Flash Lite – lots of problem, If someone was hoping to convince us that Flash could work on a device like this, consider the job unfinished.
– Battery – good but not outstanding for a device like this – get through a day just
– Best Android phone today
– What about tomorrow?

Picks
Ian
Lonely Planet iPhone guides Free
– Free until Thursday 22nd from App Store
– 13 cities – great offer

YoruFukurou (NightOwl)
– Native twitter Client for Mac
– Free, fast, feature rich

Shakeel
Marvel Comics for iPhone
– Good app for downloading and reading comics
– Pretty readable given small screen size

Henry
Free App Calendar
– Get a free app every day
– Nice way to get new content…for FREE

Chris
Geocaching
– but shhh, don’t tell the muggles.
– Not so much an app as a way of life.
– Free “taster” app.
– £5.99 for full app.
– Available across major platforms.
– Essentially a global treasure hunt.

DigitalOutbox Episode 44

DigitalOutbox Episode 44
In this episode the team discuss Politics and the Regime.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:43 – Bye Bye Broadband tax
– a 50p-a-month broadband tax, which would have been applied to all households with a landline telephone, has been shelved.
– The Conservatives said they also forced the government to backtrack on the plans to levy a charge on landline phone bills – due to come into force in October – to pay for the universal roll-out of broadband.
– They declared the reversal of the two tax rises – as well as another on the taxation of holiday rental homes – as a “major victory for businesses and consumers across Britain”.
– Labour has said all the tax measures will be re-introduced should Labour be re-elected.
3:07 – Digital Bill passed in Wash Up Session
– The government forced through the controversial digital economy bill with the aid of the Conservative party last night, attaining a crucial third reading – which means it will get royal assent and become law – after just two hours of debate in the Commons.
– Clause 43 dropped a proposal on orphan works which had been opposed by photographers.
– Clause 43 was to allow orphan works
– Clause 43 says that if someone finds your photograph, wants to use it and decides that they can’t trace you, they can do whatever they like with it after paying an arbitrary fee to a UK Government-appointed “licensing body”. You’ll never know unless you happen to find it being used in this way, in which case you should be able to claim some money.
– lause 43 also introduces “Extended Collective Licensing”. This means that if someone finds your photograph and can trace you, they still don’t have to contact you for permission to use it. They can go to a UK Government-appointed “collecting society” and ask them instead. They’ll pay an arbitrary fee and be able to do whatever they like with the photograph. Your photograph. Again, without asking you first or paying what you would have charged.
– Full list of all measures – http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-digital-economy-bill-quick-guide-to-all-45-measures/
– Tom Watson, the former Cabinet Office minister who resigned in mid-2009, voted against the government for the first time in the final vote to take the bill to a third reading. However the vote was overwhelmingly in the government’s favour, which it won by 189 votes to 47. 20 MP’s debated the bill.
– Earlier the government removed its proposed clause 18, which could have given it sweeping powers to block sites, but replaced it with an amendment to clause 8 of the bill. The new clause allows the secretary of state for business to order the blocking of “a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright”.
– Example was given that Wikileaks could be blocked as it hosts copyrighted material
– Dropbox, Windows Live, Xmarks, Google, MobileMe – all could be construed as being used to infringe copyright. Youtube, Vimeo, Flickr – where could this stop? Or start.
– The third reading on Wednesday followed the second reading on Tuesday – around 40 MP’s debated it
– 1 Bill, 20,000 letters, 40 MP’s turn up to debate – http://debillitated.heroku.com/
– The Digital Economy Bill passed: The internet watched live as a handful of MPs ignored democracy in their attempts to control that they don’t understand. – http://www.skeptobot.com/2010/04/digital-economy-bill-passed-internet.html
– The third reading has been just as bad. Almost Empty. 2 hours given to debate amendments to 50 clauses. The first clause took 1hr. The last 49 were glossed over in the last hour. Ten minutes before the vote labour MPs put down their drinks, pulled themselves out of the bar and stumbled in to vote for the Bill. Having listened to nothing. Disgusting.
– 6-9 months scrutiny first, then potentially first letters could go out
– However the law that has been passed requires a years gap between letter and disconnection – so end of 2011 before we see any impact on home users – much sooner for websites to be disconnected though
– internet service providers will be obliged to send letters to any of their subscribers linked to alleged infringements.
– Copyright holders will be able to apply for a court order to gain access to the names and addresses of serious infringers and take action against them while ISPs would be able to suspend accounts of offenders.
– Can’t believe how quickly such important laws got voted through – one last trip to the lords and then it’s in place
– Letters to the house, websites taken down. Can’t believe this is the UK and it was brought in by a Labour government
– Stephen Timms who led the digital economy bill thought that IP address meant Intellectual property
– http://i.imgur.com/1pXlO.jpg
– Copyright is hard – http://ceedee.co.uk/copyright-is-hard
– Big business owns the government – this proves it
– Talk Talk not happy – http://www.talktalkblog.co.uk/2010/04/08/digital-economy-bill-its-a-wash-up/
– O2 – don’t know what they are – http://blog.o2.co.uk/home/2010/04/o2-comments-on-the-digital-economy-act.html
– Annoyed – visit Open Rights Group – http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ although I’m not overly convinced by this group
– Annoyed – what did your MP vote – http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmtoday/cmdebate/32.htm#hddr_2
– Annoyed – vote for someone that will at least respond to your letters
34:48 – Apple vs Adobe
– Dev changes – cross compilers no longer allowed i.e. Flash-to-iPhone compiler from Adobe due next week
– Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)
– Could affect Wired apps? Built using Adobe Air.
– Be in no doubt – numerous times during this keynote, Steve Jobs showed Adobe the middle finger.
– http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/09/adobe-says-iphone-ipad-adoption-and-alternative-technologies/
– If you were in any doubt, Adobes filings to Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday:
– it flatly says that “to the extent new releases of operating systems or other third-party products, platforms or devices, such as the Apple iPhone or iPad, make it more difficult for our products to perform, and our customers are persuaded to use alternative technologies, our business could be harmed
– Friday nights – Flash Blog – Platform Evangelist speaks
– http://theflashblog.com/?p=1888
– I am positive that there are a large number of Apple employees that strongly disagree with this latest move. Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this. The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging, posting to social networks, or other things that we at companies with an open culture take for granted.
– Many of Adobe’s supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation. Again, this is something that Adobe would never consider in a million years. We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company. What is clear is that Apple most definitely would do that sort of thing as is evidenced by their recent behavior.
– Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple. Comments disabled as I’m not interested in hearing from the Cupertino Comment SPAM bots.
– Adobe CTO speaks – http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/04/cs5_countdown_is_on.html
– CS5 is bigger than this one block from Apple
– There’s plenty of healthy competition that we can work with
– Developer talks to Steve – http://mashable.com/2010/04/10/steve-jobs-adobe
– We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.
– Calm, reasoned response – http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/04/11/gruber-a-voice-of-calm-in-a-mobile-world-gone-out-of-control/
– Good article summing up points form either side
– Did Adobe screw themselves – http://innerdaemon.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/sorry-adobe-you-screwed-yourself/
– 10 years ago dropped Apple and didn’t develop for OS X despite Apple reaching out several times to Adobe for support
– Payback?
– REGIME!!!!
46:12 – CS5 Launched
– Flash
– Player 10.1
– Mmm, nothing
– Our ActionScript toting contact says player 10.1 offers some snazzy features – including peer-2-peer functionality that’s quite exciting.
– Unprecedented access to 98% of desktop computers an lots of other connected devices
– Photoshop CS5
– 64 bit on Mac and PC
– HDR Pro
– Saving presents for single and multiple exposures
– Noise tools looking strong – reduction in demo looked really good
– Automatic Lens correction – looked very nice
– Online location for sharing lens profiles
– Content aware fill!
– Brushes
– Puppet Warp – drop points on body and make changes
– CS5 – empowers the digital artist
– Pricing – http://www.macworld.co.uk/procreative/news/index.cfm?newsid=3219980&pagtype=allchandate
– http://thomashawk.com/2010/04/adobe-photoshop-cs5-boldly-empowers-the-digital-artist.html
– The new version has lots of cool new toys and tools for photographers, which I’ll get into, but for me by far the most significant achievement in this new version is that it has for the first time made painting available to the photographer.

-All very good and I’m sure impressive (voodoo even with the content aware fill) but they GONE AND DONE IT AGAIN – f*****s
– Ignoring VAT: US FULL = £1235 – UK £1509
US UPGRADE (CS3 Design Prem) – £519.52 – UK £714
1:02:11 – Twitter buys Tweetie
– Twitter buys Tweetie
– Renamed Twitter for iPhone and made free (instead of £1.59)
– Loren Brichter will become a key member of Twitters mobile team that is already having huge impact with device makers and service providers around the world.
– Loren’s work won the 2009 Apple Design Award and we will eventually launch Twitter for iPad with his help.
– No word on the Mac version of Tweetie
– One week before Chirp – is this Twitter wanting to take better control of user experience?
– I’d be concerned if I had a paid for Twitter app right now as part of my core business – http://www.loiclemeur.com/english/2010/04/of-course-were-hole-fillers-and-why-no-one-should-depend-on-only-one-platform.html
1:05:47 – Palm up for Sale
– Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone, is seeking bids for the company as early as this week, according to three people familiar with the situation.
– HTC, Lenovo, Dell rumoured
– HTC favourite
– Still a good brand
1:06:59 – iPad Sales
– Sat only
– Over 300,000 iPads, by Thursday, 450,000
– iPad owners downloaded over 1,000,000 apps, by Thursday 3.5 million apps
– iPad owners downloaded over 250,000 books from iBooks, by Thursday 600,000 books
– 30,000 devices more than iPhones were purchased when they first went on sale
1:08:12 – Google Docs Updated
– Adds Google Drawings
– more of an online whiteboard. The app is designed to help people visualize ideas through flow charts, diagrams, and stencils.
– There is a chat window where participants can chime in. Images can be imported and moved around.
– no freehand drawing option.
– Google Drawings requires an HTML5 browser
– The real news, though, is that Google Docs and Spreadsheets is getting more realtime. There has always been a noticeable delay when new edits get saved and synced up, especially when more than one person is working on the same document. Google is addressing this delay with an entirely new architecture built from the ground up.
– Realtime collaboration – see what others are typing
– Commenting
– Rulers, tab stops, better image handling
– Spreadsheets – faster, move columns, auto fill
1:10:57 – Site Speed affects search ranking
– Matt Cutts talked about this last year
– A slow site could affect your Google rank
– There are 200 other ranking factors though – relevance still more important
– While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page.
– Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point
– Need to get our site updated 🙂
1:15:33 – MI5 Makes Non IT Literate Staff Redundant
– MI5 is ditching staff who lack computer skills in a programme of compulsory and voluntary redundancies.
– or if you read the Daily Mail…
– MI5 is making dozens of its older staff redundant as they do not have the computer skills to use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
– “Our enemies use every available method to attack including using technology.
– “We have to be aware of the imminent threats of cyber attacks and the old generation of MI5 have to be completely comfortable using computers and the latest technology.”
– Mr Mercer added: “There is no room now for the ‘old school tie’ or recruitment from just certain Oxbridge colleges. “We need people from all walks of life who can speak a range of languages and possess certain technical skill

Picks
Ian
Hipstamatic
– Good photo tool for iOS
– Lots of filters and borders – you too can make your shiny new iPhone take photo’s from the 70’s

Ian
Online password generator
– Online password generator. It’s in here because it’s a tool I constantly come back to.
– Creates secure passwords. Plenty of options for type of letter / punctuation / avoid similar letters/cars

What I want from iPhone OS 4.0

So it’s Thursday for the details on iPhone OS 4.0. What I’d like to see, not what I expect to see:

  • Multitasking. Let me run programs in the background. Make it easy to swap between running programs. Let me kill the battery life if i want to. To be fair, there’s probably only a handful of times that I’d find this useful for things like 1Password. In fact, it’s probably of more benefit on the iPad.
  • Unified Inbox. I connect to 9 different accounts and nothing annoys me more than Mail telling me I’ve new mail and I need to go back to accounts to see which one has the new mail. So frustrating. Unified Inbox, similar to Mail on the Mac would solve this problem.
  • Notification App. Notifications are a fudge to get around lack of multitasking. It works for one app but doesn’t scale. All notifications look the same, can’t recall old ones and if you get a few in a short timescale it just doesn’t work. One other thing – let me switch off notifications across all app’s, like during the night for example. So frustrating when you get pinged during the night.
  • Springboard improvements. Current front end doesn’t scale. Adding search helped but feels a work around. Gesture support to launch app’s or some sort of Expose would certainly help.

As ever with Apple, rumour doesn’t always lead to actual features and they are masters at delivering just enough, which to be fair as a strategy has consistently paid off. However competition is hotting up. Their iPhone/iPod hardware is starting to look/feel behind the competition. Hopefully Thursday will demonstrate a step change for iphone OS 4.0

DigitalOutbox Episode 43

DigitalOutbox Episode 43
In this episode the team discuss iPad, iPad, iPad.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
0:37 – Digital Britain
– Drafted on Tuesday, Clause 18 will allow courts to grant injunctions against websites that aid copyright infringement. That sounds fine, I hear you say – well not when a website can be targeted based on “a location on the internet which the court is satisfied has been, is being or is likely to be [italics mine] used for or in connection with an activity that infringes copyright”.
– Yes people, Clause 18 proposes does indeed propose that courts should be allowed to bring injunctions against websites that do not, but that may in the future be used for copyright infringement. So that’s innocent until proven, oh hang on…
– Bloody Mandelson
8:28 – OS Data now Free
– After months of public consultation, OS OpenData was launched on 1 April by Communities Secretary John Denham.
– OS OpenData exists alongside an earlier data sharing scheme called OS OpenSpace, which is also available for free but operates with limitations.
– Doesn’t include paper maps much to the disappointment of ramblers
– http://opendata.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/
13:44 – Flash bundled with Google Chrome
– Adobe has announced that its Flash Player will be included with future versions of Google Chrome right out the gate
– Furthermore, updates to Flash Player will be delivered directly via Google Chrome’s updating system, ultimately minimizing security risks that tend to surface when using outdated software and components
– In addition, Adobe says it is working with Mozilla and Google and the “broader community” to create a new API for browser plugins.
– This new API, which will build off Mozilla’s NPAPI, which has been designed from the start to be both operating system and browser neutral.
– In essence, the goal of the new API is to allow plugins to more tightly integrate with host browsers, which in turn should benefit users in terms of performance and security.
– Is this a setback for HTML5?
– Seems to fly in the face of latest Google developments – is it to slapdown Apple and the growing movement against Flash with Apple products?
– Also part of Chrome OS – We plan to bring these benefits to Chrome users across all platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Google Chrome OS
19:59 – Wolfram Alpha Backtracks
– Mobile site is back
– iPhone app from $50 to $1.99
– Issues a refund to everyone who has bought the app at the dearer price
22:20 – iPad
– Reviews
– http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20100331/apple-ipad-review/
– http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/technology/personaltech/01pogue.html
– http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1976935,00.html
– Steven Fry meets Steve Jobs
– I have met five British Prime Ministers, two American Presidents, Nelson Mandela, Michael Jackson and the Queen. My hour with Steve Jobs certainly made me more nervous than any of those encounters.
– In the design department, Jobs saw the work of a young Briton called Jonathan Ive and asked for a meeting. Ive, underused and ignored for a year, turned up with a resignation letter tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. He left with instructions to unleash his talent. The result was the iMac
– [On leaving Apple:] Is this then the curtain dropping on your third act?” I ask. “Will you perhaps leave Apple on this high, a fitting end to your career here?” “I don’t think of my life as a career,” he says. “I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That’s not a career — it’s a life!
– http://www.suntimes.com/technology/ihnatko/2134139,ihnatko-ipad-apple-review-033110.article
– Overall – extremely positive with no flash support and camera being biggest complaints. Battery life – 10 hours +- 30 mins for amost all reviewers which is great
– http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/04/01/marvel-teams-with-comixology-for-ipad-app/
– Who needs flash – http://www.apple.com/ipad/ready-for-ipad/
– Flickr latest to offer html5 videos for ipad users
– Free netflix app for iPad this weekend
– Hulu iPad app in development
– Popular Science – http://berglondon.com/blog/2010/04/02/popularscienceplus/
– iPad worldwide – April 24th?
– iPad apps in iTunes
– Ian likes – Flight COntrol HD, Instapaper Pro, Articles, Things for iPad, Nat Geo World Atlas, Elements a visual exploration, Civ Revoluiton, Wall Street Journal, Geometry Wars Touch, Weather HD
– VNC and a few printing apps as well
– http://gizmodo.com/5507569/gizmodos-essential-ipad-apps – great round up
– gMail for iPad – http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/04/google-services-on-ipad-and-tablet.html
– iDisplay – http://www.shapeservices.com/en/products/details.php?product=idisplay&platform=iphone
– Use your ipad as an extended display! Fantastic

Picks
Ian
Screen Sharing Menulet
– Nice free tool to easily connect and screen share with all Macs on your network

Chris
Google Reader Play
– Google Reader Play a new way to browse interesting stuff on the web. It’s super easy to use – after you’ve read an item, just click the next arrow to move to the next one. Let us know which stuff you enjoy by clicking the “like” button, and we’ll use that info to show you more stuff that you’ll like.
– What kind of stuff do we include in Reader Play?
– The most popular items on the web
– Items that several of your friends have shared
– Other great stuff we think you’ll enjoy, based on your Reader Play history

Henry
Focus Booster
– For implementing the Pomodro technique time management – http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/faq.html

DigitalOutbox Episode 42

DigitalOutbox Episode 42
In this episode the team discuss iPad, politics, paywalls and the 3DS.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:50 – Google Shuts Down Chinese Search
– Chinese search shutdown, redirected to Google Hong Kong
– Users are being redirected for Google web, news and image search to the Hong Kong site, which sits outside of the Chinese firewall.
– Users are also being presented with simplified Chinese in addition to traditional Chinese and English results.
– Dashboard showing status – http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en
– China then blocks certain searches/results, so back to square one – Google is still censored as it was before, no?

– Gmail has that email attachment thingy! I.e. write “attached” in a document and don’t attach a file and it will warn you!
– It will also now warn you if it thinks you’ve been hacked. Bases this on if your account has been accessed in two different countries over a short time-period.
8:39 – Times and Sunday Times to charge from June online
– The Times and Sunday Times newspapers will start charging to access their websites in June,
– Users will pay £1 for a day’s access and £2 for a week’s subscription.
– Both titles will launch new websites in early May, separating their digital presence for the first time and replacing the existing, combined site, Times Online.
– The two new sites will be available for a free trial period to registered customers. And payment will give customers access to both sites.
– James Harding, editor of The Times, agreed that NI’s paywall strategy was a risk. “But it’s less of a risk than just throwing away our journalism and giving it away from free,” he told the BBC.
– Rebekah Brooks said the decision to charge came “at a defining moment for journalism… We are proud of our journalism and unashamed to say that we believe it has value”.
– Sun and News of the World next
– Privately they acknowledge they will lose 1000’s of regular readers and millions of casual readers but hope the cost is small enough to entice many
15:22 – Best Buy coming to UK
– Best Buy opens its first UK outlet, a superstore with with a 50,000 sqft shop floor, in Lakeside in May
– June for Southamption and Merry Hill, West Midlands, and later this year for Aintree, near Liverpool, and Croydon.
– 80 stores in UK over next 5 years
17:53 – iPad
– WSJ – $17.99 a month
– WSJ print is $29 a month
– But what about flash
– http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/29/brightcove_converts_time_nyt_flash_video_to_html5_for_ipad.html
– Brightcove’s partnerships with The New York Times and Time magazine will allow HTML5 to seamlessly replace Adobe Flash video content on the publications’ Web sites for compatibility with Apple’s iPad
– Brightcove Experience for HTML5, a framework for publishing and delivering interactive and advertising-supported Web video. The platform is available free to the more than 1,000 Brightcove customers in 42 countries.
– Monday’s announcement means it’s possible that video in the Adobe Flash format could be converted to HTML5 automatically for high-profile Web sites, perhaps as soon as the device’s April 3 U.S. launch. The company said its clients can now use the tool to build iPad-ready Web sites, and in the next year the platform will be expanded to support customization and branding of the player environment, advertising, analytics, social sharing and other capabilities.
– Magazines – same price as print version or cheaper – non add version of esquire for $2.99, $2 less than paper version
– http://www.macrumors.com/2010/03/26/ipad-app-store-reveals-launch-apps-top-seller-lists-app-details/
– iPad App Store shows many titles with ‘HD’ added or ‘for iPad’
– Also shows increased price point for many app’s – will that be an issue? $50 for omnigraffle for example
– http://www.tuaw.com/2010/03/29/first-look-kobo-for-ipad/ – nice book app for iPad
– http://www.apple.com/ipad/guided-tours/
– iTunes 9.1 this week?
– Just got 10.6.3 on Mac’s – support for iPads?
37:44 – BBC iPhone Apps Delayed
-BBC Trust asks for delay on BBC iPhone app after industry representation
– industry think it abuses BBC’s dominant position in news.
39:33 – Gifting iPhone Apps
– You can now gift app’s in iTunes
– Can only gift to people in same country but apart from that, same as gifting music
40:49 – A night at the Opera
– A lot of talk this week about whether Opera will get their browser approved into the App Store
– I would call the majority saying “No way”.
– Opera seem weirdly optimistic though.
– My call? Rejected – duplication of core functionality.
– We may well know by he time of the next cast!
43:47 – Nintendo 3DS
– New handheld system from Nintendo
– we know the system will use two screens, will have some sort of 3D, won’t require any sort of special glasses, and will be backwards compatible with current DS and DSi games.
– rumours are that the 3d will use camera’s to tracks your eyes position in relation to screen angle – very clever
– Maybe 720p screens, accelerometer for tile controls, possible 3g chip
– Released between now and March 2011
47:24 – Microsoft Game Room
– Now launched on Live for Xbox and PC
– Free download
– Design arcade rooms
– 30 games available now that cost – 260 points for game on one platform, 500 for game on pc and xbox
– Friends can visit your arcade
– Time warp facility to rewind back a game
– No better than mame really
48:48 – PS3 No More Linux
– April 1st update will remove ‘Install Other OS’ option form older PS3’s
– Newer slims can’t do this anyway, but will disappoint Linux fans surely…
– Security concerns is the reason, but it is optional…
– The consumer electronics giant said that the update will be optionally, but it cautioned that failure to upgrade will lock users out of the PlayStation Network. They will also be prevented from playing DRM-encumbered videos stored on a media server, and from viewing any Blu-ray Discs or PS3 games that require firmware 3.21.

Picks
Henry
Scrivener
– The best app for writing books or long form material
– Great research options
– Track content via outliner, index cards
– Mac only

Ian
Auto Smiley
– A computer vision application that runs in the background while you work.
– The software analyzes your face while you are working and if it detects a smile it sends the the ascii smiley face letters “: )” as keyboard presses to the front most application.
– Auto Smiley has many uses from just straight up convenience to enforcing honesty in your online communication 🙂

DigitalOutbox Episode 41

DigitalOutbox Episode 41
In this episode the team discuss Digital Economy Bill, IE9, CashGordon and the iPad cometh.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
0:55 – Digital Economy Bill Rushed Through Lords
– What is this? Covers broadband, dig radio, spectrum etc
– Clause 17 – enable govt to change copyright law without parliamentary approval – now scrapped
– Ammedment 120a – Lib Dems – Gives high court ability to serve an injunction against web site or ISP to stop serving copyrighted material
– DMCA in America enables takedown of content – the UK amendment takes down the whole site!
– Now Lib Dems want to change it and govt also want to make their own changes to the amendment
– Next stop commons
– Being rushed through
– Labels already know that this won’t be debated in commons
– http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/label-bosses-warn-debate-could-cost-the-disconnection
-[MPs] will have minimum input … from this point on. … John Whittingdate MP [DCMS committee] … has said this week it [the Bill] could be lost if enough MPs protest at not having the opportunity to scrutinise it. Whist true in constitutional terms, the hard politics of the situation makes it seem unlikely … Come the week of 29th March the main political focus is likely to be on the … Budget”
– This will allow all the decisions to be made in dirty last minute deals behind closed doors between the party whips in what they call “wash up”.
– This way, disconnection penalties could be agreed with no democratic scrutiny whatsoever.
– No debate.
– The memo, published by Cory Doctorow, shows BPI lobbyist Richard Mollett, who hopes to become a Labour MP at the next election, telling music bosses that if MPs do their job and debate the Bill, the BPI’s disconnection proposals may face defeat.
– E-petition – http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dontdisconnectus/?
– Panorama this week – http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rl4dl/Panorama_Are_the_Net_Police_Coming_for_You/
6:19 – 02 condemns lawyers targeting alleged file sharers
– O2 condemned the attempts “by rights holders and their lawyers to bully or threaten our customers”.
– The row centres around UK law firm ACS:Law and its client DigiProtect, a anti-piracy firm which represents a series of content owners.
– The firm is in the process of contacting thousands of alleged UK pirates and offers them the chance to settle out of court for around £500 per infringement.
– 02’s broadband customers are among those sent letters. “Where we are legally obliged to provide information and the correct paperwork is presented, we will comply with the law,” said an O2 spokesman. “But we prefer the ‘win-win’ approach of encouraging the development of new business models that offer customers the content they want, how they want it, for a fair price,” he added.
– ACS: Law says it has so far identified around 60,000 different UK IP addresses, which reveal the identity of individual computers. Expects to get 400 actual physical addresses for every 1000
– Experts argue that an IP address cannot be used as evidence in court because it is not proof that the owner of the PC was actually responsible for the downloading.
– Hundreds of people have complained to consumer watchdog Which?, saying that they have been wrongly accused, including pensioners who claim they don’t know how to download content. It has caused distress to some of the accused, particularly as some of the content they are accused of downloading is hardcore pornography.
– Law firm declined to identify any of the clients represented by DigiProtect, beyond saying “there are a variety, some in music, some computer games and some in adult content movies”.
9:55 – CashGordon
– http://www.flickr.com/photos/meg/4453821027
– Tories launch a campaign – tweet with the tag ‘cashgordon’ and it will appear on our homepage
– Now, what could possibly go wrong…
– Flickr image tells the story…
– Now spinning that CashGordon was hacked by Labour stooges….in the Telegraph
– http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100030915/cashgordon-com-is-hacked-by-labour-stooges-the-online-election-gets-nasty/
– Wasn’t hacked, just poorly implemented as it didn’t block HTML or Javascript
14:29 – Windows Phone 7 Series
– Silverlight, XNA, Blend
– Developer tools available now
– Future looking really bright for MS with this updated platform
– But wait…….
– No copy and paste
– LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
– Suck it Windows fanboiz – http://blog.chrisgran.de/post/455131811/paul-thurrott-on-windows-phone-7-series
– Paul Thurrott on iPhone 1.0 on 2007 – And what’s up with the lack of cut/copy and paste? This is a basic OS feature that Apple included in the first Mac OS almost 25 years ago. It’s inexplicably missing from the iPhone, unavailable in any application or the wider system itself. Unreal.
– Windows Phone 7……There have been weird complaints this week, and you can almost feel the anti-Microsoft brigade chipping away at the patina of perfection that Microsoft has tried to erect around its new baby. The multitasking is limited. Users will only be able to get apps from the Marketplace, and not from third parties. Gasp! Is it true that there’s no copy and paste?
– No matter. Windows Phone combines those very few things that were right about Windows Mobile—primarily some business functionality—with a much wider set of new functionality that is exciting in both scope and possibility.
18:22 – IE9
– http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/ie9-may-actually-be-a-great-browser/
– Focus on performance and wait for it….HTML5
– Platform preview available today
– CSS3 features such as opacity, rounded corners, and selector APIs. SVG is now supported, something of a surprise given the company’s efforts to promote its Silverlight plug-in for rich graphics in the browser. It is not yet clear, however, whether the Canvas element is supported.
– Support for the audio and video tags is also promised, though it is not in the current preview. Microsoft showed H.264 720p video running directly in the browser.
– Same as chrome and safari – firefox video support of ogg theora only is looking like an isolated stance
– New javascript engine – better than Firefox, slightly behind other 2
– 6 times better than IE8
– IE9 also makes full use of hardware acceleration, speeding up HTML and graphics rendering, including that for the new SVG support.
– Throwing dev code, resource and testing behind JQuery
– MS supporting open source and open standards. Nice. Well played MS
– One more thing……
– No XP support
22:20 – Germans Running out of Browsers
– German government has issues warning that people shouldn’t be using Firefox…
– Browser security issue has come to light that Firefox are currently fixing.
– Following similar advice regarding IE, Germans are a little short of options for browsing!
24:05 – Opera Downloads Doubled
– Opera says their browser downloads have doubled since MS introduced the browser selection screen
– Not just Opera….
– http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE62L1KE20100322
– IE down 1% in UK, Italy by 1.3% and France 2.5% in March compared to Feb
25:25 – Google TV
– Google, Intel and Sony working on Google TV
– Bring web to living room through set top box
– The partners envision technology that will make it as easy for TV users to navigate Web applications
– Google intends to open its TV platform, which is based on its Android operating system for smartphones, to software developers.
– The three companies have tapped Logitech, which specializes in remote controls and computer speakers, for peripheral devices, including a remote with a tiny keyboard.
– Imagine a version of google TV setup to auto download, unpack and move to the correct folder TV and Films
29:03 – iPad is coming
– Kindle for iPad…exept it’s Kindle Apps for Tablet Computers including the ipad
– Won’t be ready for April 3rd
– Will allow for browsing/buying books from Kindle store
– Supports read on one device, continue on another
– Bookmarks, notes, annotations
– Customise screen fonts, brightness, layout etc to suit your needs
– Barnes & Noble also coming to iPad, and many magazines too
– http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/first_looks_magazines_on_the_ipad.php
34:11 – Football Real Kick
– Plays football by blowing air out of the iPhone
– Hilarious!
35:28 – 17 Month Old baby using iPhone
– Even a 17 month old baby can use it

Picks
Ian
LastHistory
– visualizing last.fm listening history

Mac Mini Media Centre – What Else?

Our last few posts on using a Mac Mini as a Media Centre device have focussed on using Media Centre software like Plex and Boxee to playback locally stored content. While this is my main reason for buying a Mini there is a lot more you can do with it – listen to radio, stream audio and video and play games.

Radio
There are many way to listen to radio via the Mac. The most obvious is via iTunes which comes preloaded with hundred’s of stations. However searching is limited, the streams don’t contain many popular stations and it feels like a tacked on option. If you are serious about your radio there are two options that really stand out

Radioshift can be thought of as a PVR for radio. At the heart of the application is the Radio Guide. Using the guide you can search for stations or individual shows and subscribe to them in the application. The big plus is seeing individual radio shows. You can use Radioshift to subscribe to a show and listen to it live but more impressive is that the application can record the show just like Sky+ does for TV. Radioshift will record multiple shows at the same time and even wake the Mac form sleep so it never misses a show.

The guide is impressive and had a lot of UK content although some of the local stations didn’t have a show list. You also get to see what is popular now and filter stations by genre, location or by full text search. Playback is simple via the application which will also install any missing plugins to maximise the amount of stations it can support. There is no built in audio editor but Radioshift can hand off editing to any installed editor. You can also export audio into iTunes making it easy to listen to recordings on your iPod or iPhone.

Another option for radio is Snowtape. This is a very similar application to Radioshift but with a slightly slicker front end. Snowtape uses an online directory to make radio shows available although I’ve found it to be less complete than the guide in Radioshift. Also, Snowtape includes a built in editor unlike Radioshift. Either app will act as a great recorder for radio so you can’t really go wrong but despite Snowtape being a slightly stronger app I’d choose Radioshift for it’s greater guide.

Streaming
There are many streaming music options now available online. The most obvious one is Spotify. Download the client and over 6 million tracks are available for free. There is a premium option available that improves the audio quality and removes the adverts…which aren’t too obtrusive although the client has got very busy with the random adverts that appear on it. I look forward to the day that Remoteless, an iPhone app that offers full control of Spotify from the iphone, supports a Mac helper app as it’s Windows only at the moment. When that day comes I can switch off the TV and the front end of Spotify and use the iPhone to control my music. Bliss.

Another streaming option is last.fm. More well know for music scrobbling and keeping stat’s on what you and your friends listen to, you can also setup a custom radio station and stream music for free, or stream what your friends are listening to. Grooveshark is a more US centric streaming site which is Flash based and free as long as you don’t mind adverts. Similar to last.fm, you can build up playlists and it has a pretty comprehensive library.

AirVideo
AirVideo is an app for the iphone that will display streamed video from your Mac or PC. Once the server app is installed you can add local video sources which can then be accessed from the iPhone. The app will also access video content from iTunes meaning all video located on your Mac Mini will be accessible on your iPhone, no matter what size phone you have.

In practice I’ve found the streaming to work extremely well on video formatted for the iPhone. Playback is smooth and the application responds quickly. This is of course locally over wi-fi but if you setup your router correctly you can access your content from anywhere in the world. However playback is a little more pixelated with this method and buffering, as expected, takes longer too.

One other feature of Air Video is that it will convert video to an iPhone friendly format. Many formats are supported – mp4, m4v, mov, avi, wmv, asf, mpg, mpeg, mkv, 3gp, dmf, divx, flv – and conversion takes place live. Locally the converted video was quite pixelated but it was acceptable. It also took a while for playback to start but considering that I was converting an mkv then it was to be expected. This is a great add-on for the Mac Mini and makes your video content truly portable.

Gaming
One of the area’s I wanted to explore was game emulation, specifically MAME. MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is an application that tries to recreate the hardware of old arcade machines in software. Using MAME you can then use ROMS to play thousands of arcade games from yesteryear. I have a lot of ROMS so I was keen to setup MAME. There are two main versions of MAME for the Mac. Mame OSX is a port of MAME, is easy to install and run and presents games in it’s gui window. While this worked fine I found a better option in SDLMAME.

SDLMAME can be run as a 64 bit binary but what I like the most is it runs full screen, making the most of the ROMS and recreating more accurately the feel of the old arcade. The front end though needs a keyboard to search and find ROMS. The keyboard is also needed to play the old games. Thats whats let’s it all down – the lack of an old controller.

Well, there’s an app for that. More accurately, there’s a driver for that. If you’ve a wired 360 pad then installing this driver will allow the 360 pad to work and control the Mac. This is great and makes a big difference to MAME. The driver also has one more trick up it’s sleeve.

The driver has support for the Mad Catz Arcade FightStick. With this and SDLMame it feels like an arcade machine from yesteryear. What a great combination! Of course there are many other emulators out there including SNES, N64 and PS-X which all work well and support the 360 pad.

There are some good resources online for getting SDLMame up and running. I used the forums at ShoRyuKen to find out the best Mame options on the Mac. Brian also pointed out this Youtube tutorial for compiling SDLMame using Xcode. Finally there’s a board just for SDLMame on the Emuversal bulletin board that also has links to M+Gui which provides a GUI front end to many Mame tools and works well on the Mac.

Conclusion
I’ve covered a few other suggestions for making the most of your Mini but one obvious omission is broadcast TV. I’m not using the Mini for live TV but there are some great solutions from Elgato for watching, recording and also streaming content to your iPhone. If there is any other software that makes sense for the Mini then please leave a comment with your suggestions.

The next post will focus on content. How to make it from DVD’s and CD’s, where to find it on the internet and how to build your own low maintenance Tivo using your Mac Mini.

DigitalOutbox Episode 40

DigitalOutbox Episode 40
In this episode the team discuss Steam on Mac, Facebook vs Daily Mail, MIX10 and more Google news.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:58 – Facebook to Sue Daily Mail
– I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you
– however the author didn’t use Facebook, and advised Daily Mail not to say facebook
– The following day Daily Mail apologised in print and online and changed the title
– However they didn’t change the URL which is used by search engines….changed later in the day
– Facebook still considering action
– Doubt it
– Scare mongering Daily Mail – they love this type of stuff – Feb 2009 – Using Facebook rasie risk cancer – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1149207/How-using-Facebook-raise-risk-cancer.html
– Nazi’s!!!!!!!!!
5:23 – Google Apps Marketplace
– App Store for enterprise app’s
– Built your app, not necessary to use app engine
– Sell app in Marketplace
– One time fee of $100, not per app, just a one time fee
– 20% revenue share – one of the lowest in the industry
– Currently, 25 million users, 2 million businesses using google
– Step closer to cloud O/S, especially for corporations
– 50 launch partners including Zoho – very interesting
10:10 – Google Maps Improvements
– US only – 150 cities, 12000 miles of bike routes
– Also, 95% of Britain now available on streetview
13:41 – A Place for Porn
– ICANN are reconsidering the dot.xxx domain for pronography.
– In a move that was previously dropped due to outraged American conservatives, ICANN will once again consider offering up .xxx domains for sites delivering sexual content.
– No news on whether it is going ahead yet and past experience has shown that there will be stumbling blocks.
– Only a voluntary scheme – but sounds like a sensible scheme to me.
15:53 – MIX10
– Some big launch partners – Associated Press, Citrix, EA Mobile, Foursquare, Namco, Pangeonce, Pandora, Seesmic, Shazam, and Sling
– Very iPhone in running
– Seesmic, which is the same Silverlight code that runs on Windows and the Mac. Again, it’s very similar to what you’d expect, just wrapped up in the WP7S UI.
– http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/15/microsoft-tells-its-windows-phone-7-series-developer-story/
– Silverlight and XNA at it’s core
– Microsoft is kicking things off on the right foot by offering a free package of developer tools to would-be WP7S coders that includes both Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone and the Silverlight-focused Expression Blend for Windows Phone, pretty much everything you need to start building apps in preparation for the platform’s anticipated launch toward the latter part of the year.
– Developers are going to be treated to a host of must-have services out of the gate, including accelerometer support, location-based APIs using Microsoft’s own Location Service, a newly-announced Microsoft Notification Service for pushing notifications regardless of whether an app is running (sound familiar?), hardware-accelerated video with integrated DRM and support for Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming tech, multitouch, and camera / microphone access.
– The Marketplace has evolved from an app store to a content “destination,” housing apps, casual and premium Xbox Live games, music, and customized carrier stuff in one spot
22:43 – ITV1 HD
– ITV1 on April 2nd on Virgin, Sky and Freeset on a normal channel instead of red button
– In time for world cup
– Also means Scottish viewers get to see a greater choice of TV – nice one
24:59 – iPhone Gaming
– GDC this week, iphone has it’s own summit separate to mobile gaming
– 16 panel discussions specifically on the iPhone – most important mobile gaming platform?
– Doodle Jump now surpassed 3 million sales
– 1 million in mid-december, now another 2 million in just over 2 months!
– Streetfighter and Tekken soon available on iPhone
28:48 – Steam coming to the Mac
– It’s officially official: Valve will bring its Steam online distribution service and titles from its massive library of hit games to the Mac this April
– Steam is the pre-eminent digital distribution platform for PCs. With more than 1,000 games and 25 million user accounts, Steam is by one estimate responsible for more than 70 percent of digital game purchases. Bringing the service to Macs means wider selection, quicker updates and more episodic content for Apple’s traditionally game-deprived computers.
– If players already own the PC versions of Valve games, they’ll get Mac versions at no extra charge through a feature called Steam Play.
– By using the Steam Cloud feature that the company introduced in 2008, players can save in-progress games online, then call up those saved games no matter which version they’re playing. If you’re playing Half-Life 2 on your home PC but then head out on the road with your MacBook, you can continue your game-in-progress.
– “We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation,” said John Cook, director of Steam development, in Monday’s press release.
– “We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac and the Xbox 360,” Cook said. “Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.”
– Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows, the company said.
– Fantastic news
33:01 – On Live Launching
– Launches June 17th
– $14.99 a month, then users will purchase games and rentals on an a la carte model on top of that. You’ll be able to purchase multiple months at a time to get a discount on the service
– Mac, PC only
– TV adaptor later this year
– International announcements….later this year
39:17 – Playstation Move
– Sony announces name of motion controller – Playstation Move
– 20 titles supported by year end
– PS3 console + move bundle will launch plus a starter pack will launch with Playstation Move, Playstation Eye + game for under $100
– There’s also the subcontroller – an additional peripheral for use with more hardcore titles like SOCOM, which benefit from analogue stick input i.e. the nunchuck!

Picks
Ian
Air Video
– Stream videos to your iPhone
– Works for almost any videos
– Saves having to convert to suitable format