Tag: Adobe

DigitalOutbox Episode 163

DigitalOutbox Episode 163
DigitalOutbox Episode 163 – Adobe MAX and Windows Blue

Playback
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Shownotes
1:17 – Windows Blue
3:33 – Microsofts Gates iPad Users Really Just Want a Surface
8:22 – Google’s decision to recognize Palestine could undermine peace efforts, Israel says
10:47 – Flipboard Brings Personalized Magazines To Android
14:18 – Adobe MAX
21:45 – Project Mighty smart stylus and Napoleon ruler
25:20 – BT offers free Premier League football in BSkyB battle
27:50 – EA confirms 10 percent of staff laid off in major restructuring
29:38 – 100 websites Capturing the digital universe

Picks
Ian
OneTab
– Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the OneTab icon to convert all of your tabs into a list. When you need to access the tabs again, you can either restore them individually or all at once.
– When your tabs are in the OneTab list, you will save up to 95% of memory because you will have reduced the number of tabs open in Google Chrome.

Chris
GeoGuessr
– Random streetview, guess the location, answer shown and points awarded
– Easy but fun….and smart

DigitalOutbox Episode 99

DigitalOutbox Episode 99
In this episode the team say Goodbye to Flash Mobile and Best Buy UK and hello to a little bit of Fenton.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:31 – Best Buy UK No More
– In a joint venture with CPW launched last year, Best Buy opened 11 giant outlets in the UK, employing some 1,100 staff, all of which will be shuttered.
– The battered retail sector forced Best Buy to freeze store expansion plans as losses for the joint venture tripled in the last full financial year. The JV is expected to be £35m in the red when half-year figures are released this week.
– “After conducting a thorough strategic review of our operations, we believe that our capital investment and ‘connectivity’ strategy should be prioritised within our Carphone Warehouse stores as they offer a higher and proven rate of return,” said Andrew Harrison, CEO of Best Buy Europe.
– Comet sold for £2 and lots of conditions around debt and pensions – a real struggle for electrical retailers right now
5:47 – Google + Brands
– Anyone can create a page
– Not necessary to authorise – easy to create duplicates – I did
– Can verify by adding code to your site and/or the Google+ button
– No shared admin but allegedly coming soon
– Feels pretty rushed – in fact it’s a mess
12:01 – Adobe kills development on Flash Mobile
– After many promises and many a key bullet point for Android devices, Adobe have announced that they will no longer produce/focus on Flash for Mobile browsers
– Steve Jobs wins? I think we all do – focus is on HTML5 and hopefully puts to an end the battery and CPU hog that is Flash on mobiles
– Most have said that mobile is the future of t’internet – does this mean an exit from Flash on the desktop too? 2-3 years left?
– Silverlight looks to be on the way out too – next release will be last release worked on by MS
16:04 – COD Modern Warfare 3 Sales Record
– Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has set a new record for the biggest ever entertainment launch. The game’s publisher, Activision Blizzard, has claimed that in the US and UK alone, the military shooter sold over 6.5m units within 24 hours of its launch on Tuesday, raising $400m in sales revenues.
– The figures are based on data from Charttrack as well as customer sell-through information. It is a third consecutive sales record for the Call of Duty series. 2009’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 4.7m copies in 24 hours earning $310m in revenue, while last year’s Call of Duty: Black Op hit 5.6m copies in its first day.
18:22 – 4G trial coming to London
– London will begin to switch on 4G high-speed mobile internet with the launch of the first large-scale public trial in Britain.
– Initiated by O2, Britain’s second largest operator with 22 million customers, the trial involves more than 25 masts covering 15 square miles in Canary Wharf, Soho, Westminster, South Bank and King’s Cross. It will run for nine months, and the equipment installed will eventually become part of O2’s first commercial 4G network.
– The technology is 10 times faster at navigating the internet than the current 3G networks, which often frustrate smartphone users because they are significantly slower than the average home broadbandconnection. The 25 masts in London will be able to carry more data than O2’s entire national 3G network.
– Britain’s 4G or long-term evolution (LTE) upgrade, expected to begin in earnest in 2013 after a much delayed spectrum auction, will make mobile networks powerful enough to handle video calls, high definition TV and live multi-player gaming. About 1,000 users will be invited to join the London trial, including staff at John Lewis department stores, O2 customers and selected small businesses.
21:00 – Virtual rush hour slows down broadband
– There is a virtual rush hour after the real one, and it slows down people who want to get things done there, too.
– New research has found that broadband download speeds in the UK drop by an average of 35% during the evening as millions of technology users go online and find themselves competing for the same bandwidth on phone lines in their area.
– The study by uSwitch.com analysed data from 2m broadband speed tests across Britain, and revealed a huge fluctuation in surfing speeds during peak and off-peak times.
– Those who navigate the web during the morning hours of 2am and 3am get the quickest download times, with a fastest average download speed of 9.6Mbps, analysts found.
– By contrast those who surf the web between 7pm and 9pm – the peak period when most people get home and go online – face the slowest times, with average speeds dropping by a third to 6.2Mbps.
23:11 – While in America
– Kindle Fire launches – ok to good reviews, some disappointed with software but that can be fixed
– iTunes match launches – generally positive, initially overwhelmed
– Google Music

Picks
Ian
Google Search for iPad
– Brings Chrome to iPad – almost
– Also enjoying Engadget Distro and Editions from AOL
Chris
Tiny Tower,Groove,W.E.L.D.E.R, Bought The Poke app as it brings much enjoyment through twitter…

DigitalOutbox Episode 96

DigitalOutbox Episode 96
In this episode the team discuss the Facebook Timeline, Amazons New Fire and the Apple iPhone 4S.

Playback
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Shownotes
1:17 – Facebook F8
– What Zuckerberg showed was a beautiful new Profile that is much more visual than anything Facebook has done before. To be honest, it looks a bit like a really nice Tumblr blog. It has three main parts:
all your stories
all your apps
a new way to express who you are – And it goes all the way back to when you were born.
– Music
– Greater integration with Spotify et all
– Tracks played are listed on Facebook – click on track and it will open Spotify and synchronise playback
– Spotify also open to all and gifting 6 months subs to all new users worldwide
– News
– News app’s will highlight what your reading on your wall
– Others can click and read post
– Can like etc from within app
– Guardian, Washington Post, The Daily partnering at launch
16:06 – HP Gets a New Boss
– Meg Whitman has been named president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, replacing fellow HP board member Leo Apotheker
– The move follows several months of angst capped by high drama in August, when Apotheker confirmed reports that the company might sell or spin off its big PC business and nuke its tablet effort. That, along with his plan to drop more than $10 billion to buy Autonomy Corp. PLC, sparked a furor that has yet to subside.
– Whitman was lauded for building eBay into an online auction powerhouse, but her later years there were marred by a disastrous $2.5 2.6 billion purchase of Skype in 2005. Two years later, eBay took a $1.4 billion write-off on that deal.
18:36 – Scots want .scot
– The Scottish government has asked the UK culture minister to back its bid for a .scot domain when applications for new top-level domain names open in January.
In a letter sent to Ed Vaizey today, Alex Neil, Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment in Scotland, said that the .scot domain would bring together “a worldwide family of Scots” and give them a place “to demonstrate that identity online”.
– The new domain would pay for itself too, claims Neil, “we believe there is strong demand for a dot-scot domain and that it should be run as a public resource on a not-for-profit basis that will quickly become self financing.”
– The Scottish government has officially thrown its backing behind DSR, the Dot Scot Registry, a campaign group that has been preparing its bid for the domain since it was announced two years ago that new TLDs would be introduced.
– If it would pay for itself, why doesn’t the Scottish government buy it? Twats.
21:02 – Technology in the Docks
– An unfortunate 19-year-old last week received a harsh lesson in the subtleties of courtroom policy over photography. The teenager was sitting in the public gallery of Luton crown court last Friday when he received a message from a friend asking him where he was. To explain why he couldn’t talk, he recorded a shot on his BlackBerry’s camera and sent the picture to her of the courtroom. The police officers in the dock noticed.
– The phone was seized and the youth, Paul Thompson, was taken down to the cells under arrest. An hour later Thompson reappeared in court, was charged with contempt of court and sentenced to two months in prison.
– Swift justice, undoubtedly. Judge Barbara Mensah told Thompson:
There are notices all around the court building about not taking photographs in court. This is a serious offence and the message must go out that people cannot take photos.
– Contempt of court is one of those offences for which a wide range of punishments may be imposed. There do not appear, as yet, to be any specific sentencing guidelines on how to deal with snap-happy mobile users. Last September, the Ministry of Justice revealed that 24 people were at that time locked up for a variety of contempt offences.
22:23 – Mobile coverage expanded in £150m plan
– George Osborne has promised £150m of government money to get mobile coverage to 99% of the UK, ensuring even the most remote beauty spots will no longer escape the chirping of portable phones.
– The chancellor’s money, to be gathered from government department underspends, will ensure up to 6 million more people will be able to get a signal. Mobile coverage reaches 95% of the UK, although in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland masts only reach 90% of locations.
– The money will be used to pay for new masts, with procurement expected to begin next year. Osborne hopes to improve coverage for voice calls and data connections for internet services.
– Voice signals should reach more rural areas by 2013, while data connections will come when the networks begin to roll out 4G spectrum. The government’s auction of 4G airwaves is due to take place next summer, with faster data networks up and running by the following year, although there are fears it could be delayed.
26:04 – Amazons new Kindles
– Kindle Fire
– the Kindle Fire is a 7-inch tablet running Android and functioning as a “souped-up version of the Kindle.” To reach that keen price, Amazon has eschewed the integration of a camera, microphone or 3G, though the Fire will come with WiFi and a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime. Prime membership typically costs $79 per year and grants the benefits of free two-day shipping and access to Amazon’s video-streaming service.
– the Kindle Fire has a Gorilla Glass-protected, multitouch-capable IPS display, a TI OMAP4 dual-core processor, and at 14.6 ounces (413g), a pretty lightweight frame. The resolution on that screen is 1024 x 600, same as on RIM’s BlackBerry Playbook, and the Kindle Fire’s physical dimensions are 7.5 x 4.7 x 0.45 inches (190 x 120 x 11.5mm). There’s 8GB of built-in storage and the battery’s rated to last for eight hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback (with WiFi switched off). A 3.5mm headphone jack is naturally included as is a pair of top-mounted stereo speakers.
– On the software front, we’re told that Amazon has “painted over the rough surfaces” of Android with its own, more accessible user interface and has closely tied the device with its content library. That includes the Amazon App Store, which has grown to number over 10,000 applications, and what’s described as a “lightning-fast web browser” running on Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing engine. Calling it Silk, Bezos explains that it splits the workload between the Kindle Fire and Amazon’s cloud, doing some backend hocus pocus to streamline what gets to your device. All other media and content on the Kindle Fire will also be backed up to the cloud, so you can delete things without a care. One final note of software import: the Fire supports Flash!
– Magazines, books, video, apps, games, music, web – A true consumption device all backed up to the cloud…for free
– In addition to all of the digital content we associate with Amazon, including video, audio, and Kindle e-books, the company has announced that the Kindle Fire Newsstand will stock “100 exclusive graphic novels” from DC Entertainment. Titles include Watchmen, Batman: Arkham City, Superman: Earth One, and Green Lantern: Secret Origin. If comics aren’t your style, you can look forward to seeing “hundreds of magazines and newspapers” available in Fire-optimized form, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Wired, Elle, The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, and a particular favorite around the Verge offices, Martha Stewart Living. As an added bonus, Kindle Fire customers will enjoy free three-month access to a selection of 17 Condé Nast publications.
– The Kindle Fire will ship in the US (and only in the US, there are no plans for an international launch yet) on November 15th for $199 and pre-orders are now being taken at the link below.
– Great at that price as well – really is a great shopfront for Amazon
45:01 – Samsung and Microsoft licencing deal
– They decided to cross-license their patent portfolios. This would better protect both companies from outside attacks moving forward.
Past that, Samsung will pay Microsoft royalties for all phones and tablets running the Android platform.
– 7th Android company to reach agreement with MS over Android
– Google aren’t happy:
– “This is the same tactic we’ve seen time and again from Microsoft. Failing to succeed in the smartphone market, they are resorting to legal measures to extort profit from others’ achievements and hinder the pace of innovation. We remain focused on building new technology and supporting Android partners.”
– Microsoft’s response, via a tweet from Microsoft’s head of communications, Frank Shaw
– let me boil down the Google statement they gave to @parislemon, from 48 words to 1: Waaaah.
49:14 – Firefox 7
– Improved memory handling
– Improved performance
– Version 7? 4 came out in March this year!
50:47 – New delicious launches
– Delicious relaunch
– Now with stacks – group links together and share – looks more visual
– Buggy, RSS issues, some character issues
– Pinboard looking far better compared with the refreshed giant
51:30 – Adobe acquires Typekit
– Adobe has acquired Typekit
– Team will remain, Typekit will remain a standalone product, as well as become a vital part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud.
54:46 – Onlive Finally Launches in the UK
– Gamers will gain access to nearly 150 top-tier titles on Thursday asOnLive, the on-demand cloud gaming service, launches in the UK. Consumers can sign up for free at and stream triple-A games via almost any broadband Internet connection to their HDTV, PC or Mac. OnLive says the service will soon extend to iPad and Android tablets.
– OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman says the cloud-gaming service can offer game experiences on virtually any connected device.
– “OnLive is incredibly excited to bring instant-play, on-demand cloud gaming to the UK,” said Perlman. “It’s an entirely new way of experiencing top-tier video games, anywhere, anytime with awesome cloud-powered features and community unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.”
– Among the titles on offer through OnLive’s service are recent releases such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, DiRT 3, Homefront and F.E.A.R. 3. Players can also gain access to top-rated titles such as Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
– Gamers who sign up for OnLive’s services have several offers in front of them. First-time buyers can purchase their OnLive PlayPass Game for just £1.
56:51 – BBC coming to Xbox by year end
– Microsoft announce TV content deals for Xbox
– BBC, LOVEFiLM, Channel 4 and Channel 5 are all coming to Xbox Live later this year
– Finally
59:20 – Apple Keynote
– iOS 5
– Top ten features – Notifications, iMessage, Reminders, Twitter Integration, Newsstand, Camera, Safari, Mail, PC Free
– Free update, October 12th
– iCloud
– iTunes in the cloud
– Photo sharing
– Oct 12th for iCloud enabled iOS iWork apps
– New – Find my Friends – See where friends and family are, temp sharing option, simple privacy, worst looking interface ever
– iTunes Match – $25 a year, says it will stream music as well, End Oct for US, end of the year for other countries
– iPod Nano
– Updated
– Swipe between icons
– Tracks walks and runs
– Added 16 new clock faces due to popularity of watch cases
– $129 for 8GB nano, $149 for 16GB, available today – £115, £129
– iPod touch
– No 1 portable games device
– Now comes in white and black
– $199 for 8Gb, $299 for 32, $399 for 64 – available October 12th – £169, £249, £329
– iPhone 4S
– Same externally, all new internally
– A5 chip (not in the iPod touch!)
– 2x CPU, 7x graphic performance
– Improved battery life!
– Download speeds doubled – 14.4Mbps theoretical maximum
– Has both GSM and CDMA – a world phone finally
– Camera – 8 Megapixel, more light, high end IR filter, five element lens, 2-3 times quicker at taking pictures – quite an impressive camera upgrade
– Video recording – 1080p, real-time video image stabilization, real-time temporal noise reduction
– Airplay mirroring
– Siri – intelligent voice recognition – some great demo’s, whats the weather, read my messages etc – will it work with Glaswegian accent though? Answer that Apple! Can set up invites, query Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha – very nice. Dictation support as well – speak in your natural language
– White and black
– Same pricing as iPhone 4 – with 16, 32 and 64gb versions
– iPhone 4 – $99, iPhone 3GS – free
– Pre-order from Oct 7th
– Released – Oct 14th
– no iPhone 5, no Facebook blah blah blah
1:29:04 – Zune killed
– Zune finally removed from sale in the US, no new players will be launched

Picks
Henry
Machinarium
– Great game now out for iPad 2 (only – don’t buy if you’ve an iPad 1)
Visualize
– Free and paid options
– take photo’s and put them together in a montage
– scrapbook app
Ian
Frozen Synapse humble bundle
– Edge gave it a 9, describing it as a top-down, turn-based Counter-Strike…normally $25
– Supports multiplayer 🙂
– 55 single player missions
– There are a wealth of game modes besides – ones which demand territorial control, hostage rescue, or the plundering of data – each of which can be played ‘dark’, meaning that only the last known location of enemy troops is visible to you. Then there’s the matchmaking, in-built chat and integration with YouTube: this is a sizable offering. Yet, thanks to its gripping central tenets of simultaneous scheming and emergent multiplayer, you may never even notice.
– Pay over the average ($4.50) and you get Trine, Survivor and a couple of other games – total bundle price is $49
– Deal ends on October 12th
Chris
Chrome Experiments
– I have a feeling that I have already had this as a pick. But things have moved on. Incredibly impressive browser based demos, games, features experiments. WebGL has moved things on hugely. Unbelievable that they can now render in a browser what used to take a supercomputer weeks of computation.

DigitalOutbox Episode 95

DigitalOutbox Episode 95
In this episode the team discuss Windows 8, Facebook and Google+ War and that man Hunt.

Playback
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Shownotes
1:11 – Windows 8
– Windows 8, the next version of Microsoft’s operating system, will sport a dual interface aimed at both tablet and desktop computers, and the company will approve or reject third-party apps for the tablet version.
– Although Windows 8 will run on both Intel and ARM chip architectures, apps will have to be recompiled for the latter; there will be no virtualisation of Intel apps to run on ARM chips, which are already used in Apple’s iPad, Android tablets and HP’s discontinued TouchPad.
– Furthermore, applications for the ARM version of Windows 8 will only be available through the “Windows Store” – and only apps compiled to use its “Metro” touch interface will appear there.
– Windows 8 is expected to be released to the public in about a year’s time.
– Windows 8 is an OS with a dual personality: for tablets, and for desktops.
– The tablet side, called Metro, is a new user interface built from the ground up for touch control, and borrowing from the design used for Windows Phone 7. Instead of a Start menu with small icons, Windows 8 has chunky tiles, used both for launching applications and to display information. Run a Metro app and it fills the entire screen – a style Microsoft calls the immersive user interface.
– Internet Explorer 10 nicely demonstrates this immersive style. Browse the web, and all you see is the web page. If you need to see the address bar or other controls, you swipe the screen at top or bottom to display the application bar. Tap the page again and the controls disappear.
– There is one concession to PC-style multitasking, which is the ability to have two apps side by side. In this mode, one app occupies most of the screen, but another app runs alongside it.
– Another feature of Metro is “Charms”. Flick the screen on the right, and five icons appear, labelled Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings. These form a common user interface for performing standard tasks: searching, sharing content on social media such as Twitter or Facebook, interacting with devices like printers, or changing application settings.
– Although it is still Windows, Metro is properly described as a new platform, since it is not fully compatible with the old Windows API (Application Programming Interface). A wide range of programming languages is supported, but Microsoft is particularly promoting JavaScript, HTML and CSS – in other words, web technologies extended with Windows-specific libraries to create apps that use the internet Explorer engine as a runtime.
– While Metro in Windows 8 looks similar to Windows Phone 7, it is quite different under the covers, and Sinofsky says that will continue to be the case. “We’ve shown how code can be shared, but running the same apps on both is still a ways away, primarily because of the form factor,” he said.
– 5000 Samsung tablets running WIndows 8 handed out at Build
– Developer preview available to download now – Ian has running in VMware on Lion
– 2 browsers in Windows 8 – Metro browser and IE 10
– Metro browser will be plugin free – no Silverlight, no Flash – HTML5 only
– Big statement on battery life, usability and where the industry is heading
– Considering tablets are going to be mostly Metro driven and run on ARM it’s going to be an interesting year for technologies like Flash
10:46 – Ballmer admits lacklustre Windows Phone 7 sales
– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer expressed disappointment atWindows Phone 7 sales during Microsoft’s financial analyst meeting Wednesday.
– “We haven’t sold quite as many as I would have liked in the first year. … I’m not saying I love where we are, but I am very optimistic on where we can be,” Ballmer said.
– The Windows Phone 7 platform was embraced by many of the world’s largest phone manufacturers, including Samsungand HTC, both of whom soon plan to launch devices based on the next version of WP7 or Mango. However, these mobile giants have the majority of their chips invested in Google‘s Android — and that’s where most of their smartphone sales come from.
– This leaves Microsoft with only one big and really dedicated WP7 partner — the stumbling Finnish giant Nokia. “With Nokia we have a dedicated hardware partner that is all-in on Windows Phones. They are not doing something on Android,” Ballmer said.
13:32 – Intel and Google in Android chip-making partnership
– The move is aimed at giving Intel greater access to the fast-growing mobile devices sector.
– Intel is the world’s biggest chipmaker in the computer and server market.
– However, it has so far played second fiddle to Cambridge-based designer ARM Holdings in the market for low power consumption chips.
– End of Wintel?
16:19 – Google Wallet launches
– limited to just the Nexus S on Sprint so even the Nexus S for both T-Mobile and AT&T will have to wait until a deal is struck with those carriers. Users have access to a Google Wallet application that can quickly be set up using a Google sign-on. From there, you can choose to load up a MasterCard credit card from Citibank, which will directly pull from your accounts. Or you can do what I did, which is load up funds on to a Google Prepaid Card with funds from other credit and debit cards. You have to fill out all the address information to add funds from a card.
– Once your Prepaid Card is provisioned, you can choose to make that the default payment card with one click. You will need to set a PIN to unlock Google Wallet but you can set the time-out for 1, 5, 15, or 30 minutes. That’s helpful when you want to unlock Google Wallet in line so you pay quickly. You can attach location to your payment history but it doesn’t record the actual store you visited, just an approximate address.
– While you’re out and about, you just go to any PayPass enabled point of sale terminal and in lieu of a card, you can just tap your phone to pay and get a buzz on your phone to confirm the purchase. You will need to wake up the phone because of security reasons, the NFC chip won’t work until that happens. And if the time-out period has expired on the lock for Google Wallet, you will also need to enter your PIN before completing a transaction. From Google Wallet you can see an updated balance on your pre-paid card but again there is no detailed history about what you bought or where.
– Google Wallet is tied to both Google Offers and Google Shopper. Users can search for local deals on Google Shopper and save them to their Google Wallet. They can apply their deals automatically through retailers and businesses who have enabled single tap and pay; their discount is deducted from their purchase. Many other offers, however, just require a user to show their phone coupon to an employee for instant redemption. You can also add loyalty cards to Google Wallet. That’s helpful for customers who forget their loyalty cards and it’s good for businesses who have enabled single tap and pay, so one wave of Google Wallet can also be recorded in existing loyalty programs.
– When works a advertised, it’s great according to reviews
– Some glitches though – sometimes they couldn’t make payment. Payment options limited, no payment history but it’s early days. Tis the future
19:18 – Google + Updates
– Big news – nine new features
– Hangouts on your phone – Android now, iOS soon
– Hangouts on Air
– just start a normal hangout, and you’ll have the option to broadcast and record your session. Once you’re “On Air,” up to nine others can join your hangout (as usual), and anyone can watch your live broadcast:
– Hangout extras
– Screensharing: for when you want to show off your vacation photos, your high score, your lesson plan or whatever else is on your screen
– Sketchpad: for when you want to draw, doodle, or just scribble together
– Google Docs: for when you want to write, plan or present something with others
– Named Hangouts: for when you want to join or create a public hangout about a certain topic (like fashion or music or sports…)
– Hangouts APIs
– Search in Google+
You’ve been asking for it, and we’ve been busy building it, so today we’re bringing Google’s search expertise to Google+. Just type what you’re looking for into the Google+ search box, and we’ll return relevant people and posts, as well as popular content from around the web.
– Anyone can sign up for Google+—no invitation required.
25:01 – Facebook Launches Subscriptions
– Facebook is rolling out another key new feature: a one-way follow model called Subscriptions. It’s sort of like Twitter, sort of like Google+, and it massages one of the service’s biggest pain points for users who have a lot of friends (or who want to share their status updates broadly).
– Here’s how it works. As you browse around the site, you’ll notice that some users have a button at the top of their profile that says ‘Subscribe’. Click it, and you’ll start seeing that user’s status updates in your News Feed, just as if you were their Facebook friend. But there’s a big difference: unlike normal Facebook friends, the people you subscribe to don’t have to approve your subscription request, and there’s no limit on how many people can subscribe to any given user.
– Facebook says the feature will appeal to anyone looking to reach a broader audience, like journalists, artists, and political figures. To start sharing your own posts publicly, head to the new tab beneath your profile photo that says Subscriptions. Click it, and you’ll have the option to broadcast your public updates to anyone who has subscribed to you. Note that you’ll only syndicate updates that are marked Public; updates shared with Friend Lists won’t be seen by your subscribers.
– Of course, Facebook has offered a similar feature called Pages for years now, which was meant for nearly the same thing (you’ll find that many journalists and politicians have already created Facebook Pages… because that’s what Facebook told them to do). The difference here, Facebook says, is that users no longer have to maintain two separate entities; they can just use the site’s sharing settings to decide which content they want to share very broadly, and what will only be shared with friends.
– Facebook adds that this isn’t the end of Pages by any means — they say that feature will still appeal to brands and major celebrities, because Pages can be managed by multiple admins and can be customized with applications. Pages also offer Insights (Facebook’s analytics tool), whereas Subscriptions don’t. Fortunately, Facebook is allowing users to merge their Pages with their profiles, so you don’t have to rebuild your audience if you want to use the Subscription feature.
– Maybe a coincidence but Google+ has started an arms race with Facebook…and Twitter hasn’t really changed much in the last 6 months
26:52 – Facebook Updates News Feed
– Alongside subscribe and smart lists, now comes updated news feed
– Now, News Feed will act more like your own personal newspaper. You won’t have to worry about missing important stuff. All your news will be in a single stream with the most interesting stories featured at the top. If you haven’t visited Facebook for a while, the first things you’ll see are top photos and statuses posted while you’ve been away. They’re marked with an easy-to-spot blue corner.
– News Feed often has a time lag. Usually when you’re on Facebook, a lot of your friends are too. Until now, there hasn’t been an easy way to see and chat with your friends about photos, articles, and other things they’re posting in real-time. The new ticker helps you do just that.
– Ticker shows you the same stuff you were already seeing on Facebook, but it brings your conversations to life by displaying updates instantaneously. Now when a friend comments, asks a question or shares something like a check in, you’ll be able to join the conversation right away. Click on anything in ticker to see the full story and chime in – without losing your place.
33:51 – Carol Bartz Fired
– Carol Bartz fired by Yahoo board
– She’s not happy as it was done via a phone call
– Is it any surprise – not innovating, can’t think of anything they’ve done in last 2 years that stands out
36:17 – Guardian App now on Android
– The app – which is free to download and is available from the AndroidMarket worldwide – includes the latest news, sport, comment, reviews, videos, podcasts and picture galleries from guardian.co.uk.
– A full list of features and further information is available from our FAQs, but there are two bits of functionality that we’re really excited about.
First, the homescreen is highly customisable – if you like football, you could do away with the usual mix of news and sport and instead see the top five stories from our Premier League page followed by the latest from your favourite team and then Barry Glendenning’s most recent posts. If you want in depth coverage of a particular story, you can add that topic to your homescreen – UK riots or phone hacking, for instance. This level of customisation has also influenced the offline reading options. Rather than manually selecting what you want to download, there is one button that allows you to download your homescreen and your favourites. Alternatively, you can schedule this download to take place at a certain time each day – for example via Wi-Fi before you leave the house and go offline.
– Ad-supported and free unlike iPhone which is subscription (but cheap)
– iPad app nearly ready!
38:29 – Adobe works around iOS Flash Limitations
– Ardent iOS supporters have been clamoring for true Flash support for years, and with the announcement of their new version of Flash Media Server, Adobe completely fails to deliver. Instead, they’ve managed to update their media server with a way to get streaming Flash video running on Apple’s myriad iOS devices.
– Alas, while you can’t start working through your backlog of artsy Flash games, Flash Media Server 4.5 allows content producers to easily to get their Flash content onto iOS devices without any additional headache.
– While older versions of the media server served up video streams in the F4F format, the update has added support for the HTTP Live Streaming format, which iPads and the like can handle just fine.
– The media server system, according to ZDNet, detects the device’s level of Flash-capability and will switch over to using the HLS format when it sees an iOS device. It’s actually pretty ironic: in order to make Flash video streaming work, the new version of Media Server actually has to un-Flash the content and wrap it in another, more iOS-friendly container.
39:35 – Lion passwords can be changed by any local user
– In Lion the permissions for the user’s shadow files are still restrictive and prevent tampering; however, the need for direct access can be bypassed in because the system holds the password hashes in the system’s directory services, which any user can look up. As a result, the hashes can be extracted without needing to supply admin privileges, and then be run through various hacking tools and scripts to recover the user’s password.
In addition to being able to extract the password hashes for a user, any user can also directly change another user’s password, including those of system admins, merely by supplying the following command in the Terminal (substituting USERNAME for the short name of the target account):
dscl localhost -passwd /Search/Users/USERNAME
When run, this command will appear to give an error, but if you enter the same new password at all prompts then the target account’s password will be changed. This is particularly notable, because once an admin’s password is changed, the hacker can log in as that the admin account and have full access to the system.
Overall this issue in Lion means that any user (even nonadmins) can extract or change the password of another user’s account, provided they have access to the directory, such as via the Terminal utility. However, this problem does have two limitations:
Local access
The first is that the hacker needs to have access to local accounts your system, which means that you will have had to set the hacker up with an account beforehand. This hack can be done remotely with SSH connectivity, but the hacker would need to already know a local account username and password to do this. Alternatively the hacker can approach a system that is already logged in and change the passwords of accounts on it, but in this case the hacker would still need local physical access to do this.
Directory service access
Besides local access, the hacker then needs to have access to the system’s directory services (such as via the Terminal). Even if a hacker can log into the system, without access to the directory setup then the hacker will not be able to modify account information.
44:04 – Waterstones enters ereader race
– The British company’s managing director, James Daunt, told Radio 4 that it planned to enter the market with both an electronic book store and an actual reader by spring of 2012. Mr. Daunt claimed he was inspired by the success of the Nook, and the challenge it posed to Amazon’s Kindle, to finally take a stab at ushering the UK chain into the 21st century.
46:16 – Hunts anti-piracy drive
– Jeremy Hunt, CUNTure Secretary, has delivered a hard-hitting speech, calling on net firms, advertisers and credit card companies to cut ties with websites that link to unlawful content.
– Many of the changes mooted by Mr Hunt are destined for the new Communications Act which is due to become law towards the end of the current Parliament in 2015.
Suggested measures include:
A cross-industry body, perhaps modelled on the Internet Watch Foundation, to be charged with identifying infringing websites against which action could be taken
A streamlined legal process to make it possible for the courts to act quickly
A responsibility on search engines and ISPs to take reasonable steps to make it harder to access sites that a court has deemed contain unlawful content or promote unlawful distribution of content
A responsibility on advertisers to take reasonable steps to remove their advertisements from these sites
A responsibility on credit card companies and banks to remove their services from these sites.
– The hope is that the tough new measures will sit alongside the already controversial anti-piracy legislation outlined in the Digital Economy Act (DEA).
– The DEA remains in a state of suspended animation as the government waits for the European Parliament to approve changes to it.
– For its part, Google said that it felt that its current anti-piracy policies were sufficient.
It operates a takedown process in which it removes links identified as infringing copyright. Last year it removed three million items from its search engine.
50:12 – Newzbin 2 fights upcoming block
– In July, BT was ordered to block access to Newzbin2 after legal action by the Motion Picture Association (MPA).
– The MPA said the member-only Newzbin2 site brings together pirated movies and music put on Usenet discussion boards.
– The block is to be enforced via BT’s Cleanfeed system which is more usually used to stop people visiting sites that peddle images of child sex abuse.
– Before the block goes into effect in mid-October, programmers who work for Newzbin2 have been working on software they claim will be able to defeat the blocking system.
– On 14 September, the first version of the Windows program Newzbin2 members will use to get at the site was released. Versions for Apple’s OSX and Linux are planned.
According to file-sharing news site TorrentFreak, Newzbin2 is not willing to reveal how the code attempts to get around the Cleanfeed block.
– However, TorrentFreak ran some tests using network sniffing software and found that the program relies on encryption to hide communication between users and Newzbin2.
– Another technique it uses is to route all traffic through a well-established system known as TOR, which masks the identity of users and what they are trying to look at.
52:36 – Court bans man called Peter from calling himself Peter Because he is accused of being Anonymous
– A man called Peter has been banned from using the name “Peter” on the internet as a bail condition after being charged today with unauthorised use of a computer.
Peter David Gibson, 22, from Hartlepool, was among three men and one unnamed 17-year-old charged at the City of Westminster Magistrates Court this morning for offences in connection with the LulzSec and Anonymous hacks.
– The court records state that bail has been granted on the following conditions:
1) Not to be part of any internet relay and not to participate in any internet relay action.
2) Not to use the internet using the name “Peter”.
– The reason given was “to prevent reoffending”.

Picks
Ian
if this then that
– Put the internet to work for you by creating tasks that fit this simple structure:
– So I’ve created a task – e-mail me if it’s to Snow in Glasgow tomorrow
– If I post to Instapaper, copy the photo to Facebook as well
– Reminders based on events, calendar etc can be alerted via text message
– Popular recipes – http://ifttt.com/recipes?sort=most_popular

DigitalOutbox Episode 83

DigitalOutbox Episode 83
In this episode the team discuss Rural Fibre Network, Adobe 5.5 updates and Spotify Caps.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:28 – Rural Fibre network across UK
– Fujitsu is planning a joint venture with Virgin Media, TalkTalk and Cisco to roll out 1Gbit/s fibre technology to five million homes in the UK, but the project hinges on BT’s Openreach division providing access to its underground ducts and telegraph poles.
– Fujitsu said it was effectively targeting rural areas in the UK where BT engineers won’t be laying fibre.
– “The proposals will provide future-proofed connectivity to five million households and beyond that would otherwise be unlikely to benefit from commercial investment in next generation digital networks,” it said.
– Fujitsu added that it planned to offer the “vast majority of areas” fibre optic cabling that runs directly to the home, rather than to the local cabinet. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t break down the numbers of how many people would benefit from fibre-to-the-premises on its network.
– Fujitsu said it was “willing” to invest between £1.5bn to £2bn in the project, but at the same time is relying on government funds of around £500m.
– BT, which has divvied up £2.5bn to deliver its own fibre broadband network to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2015, will finalise its ducts and telegraph poles pricing structure for other ISPs in the summer. But Ofcom could yet be asked to step in and regulate the process if the company’s rivals aren’t satisfied with the figures.
The telecoms giant today questioned Fujitsu’s plans. BT told The Register that it was unclear from Fujitsu’s announcement how much private investment the joint venture would pump into the project.
– “BT’s network is open to others on an equal and non-discriminatory basis and whilst it is encouraging that Fujitsu and the other companies are making welcome pledges, they do need to be clear that this will be on an open, equal access basis as BT has committed.
– “We do look forward to Virgin confirming that they will open their infrastructure to enable all companies to have the opportunity to invest in a new fibre future.”
7:04 – Official Steve Jobs Autobiography
– This isn’t a joke
– The first official biography of Steve Jobs will be making its debut in early 2012.
– The book, iSteve: The Book of Jobs, is being penned by famed biographer Walter Isaacson, the former CEO of CNN and managing editor of Time. While very little is known about the contents of the book, Isaacson did manage to obtain unprecedented access to Apple, Jobs and even his family. Simon & Schuster will publish and distribute the book.
– This will be Isaacson’s fourth biography, following Kissinger: A Biography, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and Einstein: His Life and Universe.
9:21 – Adobe Project Launches
– Photoshop Touch SDK
– Three app’s for ipad
– Eazel, Nav and Color Lava
– Out in May
– Eazel – Paint via your fingers, transfer to Photoshop
– Nav – Customize toolbars, control Photoshop, select open documents
– Color Lava – Mix colors, cretae swatches, share with photoshop
– Creative Suite 5.5
– http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/201104/041111AdobeCreativeSuite5.5.html
– Moving to 24 month lifecycle for major point releases
– .5 releases 12 months after major point release
– .5 release isn’t free – $299 or £318
– Lots of new features in this release
– Also introduce software leasing
– Photoshop for $35 a month for example
20:49 – YouTube to Stream Royal Wedding
– YouTube plans to live stream the wedding of Britain’s Prince William and Catherine Middleton on April 29, the online video service announced Tuesday.
– The live stream, hosted on the official Royal Channel, will run for four hours beginning at 10 a.m. BST (9:00 a.m. GMT, 2:00 a.m. PT, 5:00 a.m. ET).
– A multimedia live blog will accompany the stream — a YouTube first — with commentary, historical information, additional footage and an integrated Twitter feed from the staff at Clarence House and St. James’s Palace.
– 2 billion across world are expected to watch the event – TV, web and mobile
24:09 – Cisco Shutter Flip
– Cisco has just issued a release stating that in a strategic plan to “align its operations,” the company will exit parts of its consumer businesses and realign the remaining consumer business to support four of its five key company priorities: core routing, switching and services; collaboration; architectures; and video. One of the casualties of this realignment: Cisco’s video camera Flip business, which was part of its $590 million acquisition of Pure Digital.
– As part of the plan, Cisco will close down its Flip business and “support current FlipShare customers and partners with a transition plan.” Cisco will also refocus its Home Networking business and will integrate Cisco umi into the company’s Business TelePresence product line. As part of the transition, Cisco plans to eliminate 550 jobs.
– So Cisco is focusing on its enterprise customers, and is basically shutting down its consumer facing products. The writing was on the wall for the Flip video business. In a world where consumers can now record and stream video directly from their iPhone, Android or BlackBerry phone, Flip’s video camera business is no longer novel or useful.
27:44 – Flock Closes
– Social browser Flock is no more
– Recommends moving to Chrome or Firefox
29:57 – Spotify Bring in New Caps
– [I]t’s vital that we continue offering an on-demand free service to you and millions more like you,” the company said in its announcement, “but to make that possible we have to put some limits in place going forward.”
– Free account holders today are able to listen to up to 20 hours of music on-demand, song by song and album by album, each month. The new limits will allow 20 hours for the first 6 months of any user’s new account. After 6 months, free listening will be cut down to 10 hours.
– A sign of upcoming US launch ?
35:57 – Ad Supported Kindle
– Amazon launching Ad supported Kindle in US
– $25 less than wifi model – from $139 to $114 – why not $99???
– Amazon says that the ads will only show up on the Kindle’s home screen and screensavers — they won’t appear when you’re actually reading.
40:28 – 2010 Top Entertainment Titles
– 8 DVDs, 13 albums and nine video games in top 40
– Top 40 is as follows:
1. Call of Duty: Black Ops [Activision Blizzard] – 3,266,298
2. Avatar [20th Century Fox] – 3,001,769
3. FIFA 11 [Electronic Arts] – 2,390,231
4. Toy Story 3 [Walt Disney Studios] – 2,082,461
5. Progress (Take That) [Universal Music] – 1,933,205
6. The Twilight Saga: New Moon [Entertainment One] – 1,889,187
7. The Twlight Saga: Eclipse [Entertainment One] – 1,334,490
8. Inception [Warner Home Video] – 1,328,290
9. Just Dance [Ubisoft] – 1,305,338
10. 2012 [Sony Pictures] – 1,298,705
11. Crazy Love (Michael Buble) [Warner Music] – 1,289,304
12. Now That’s What I Call Music 77 [EMI Music/UniversalMusic] – 1,255,006
13. The Hurt Locker [Elevation Sales] – 1,247,604
14. Up [Walt Disney Studios] – 1,236,066
15. Sherlock Holmes [Warner Home Video] – 1,217,637
16. Red Dead Redemption [Take-Two] – 1,135,559
17. The Fame (Lady Gaga) [Universal Music] – 1,104,504
18. The Hangover [Warner Home Video] – 1,024,546
19. Alice In Wonderland [Walt Disney Studios] – 943,220
20. Shrek Forever After – The Final Chapter [Paramount] – 928,726
21. Wii Fit Plus [Nintendo] – 920,811
22. Just Dance 2 [Ubisoft ] – 903,866
23. Loud (Rihanna) [Universal Music] – 881,588
24. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood [Ubisoft] – 880,755
25. The Defamation of Strickland Banks (Plan B) [Warner Music] – 867,698
26. Nanny McPhee & The Big Bang [Universal Pictures] – 831,572
27. Iron Man 2 [Paramount] – 826,595
28. Wii Sports Resort [Nintendo] – 818,554
29. Now That’s What I Call Music 76 [EMI Music/UniversalMusic] – 807,764
30. Sunny Side Up (Paolo Nutini) [Warner Music] – 807,751
31. The Element of Freedom (Alicia Keys) [Sony Music] – 806,340
32. Lungs (Florence & The Machine) [Universal Music] – 789,847
33. District 9 [Sony Pictures] – 781,336
34. Halo: Reach [Microsoft] – 781,331
35. Alvin & The Chipmunks – The Squeakquel [20th Century Fox] – 781,327
36. Clash Of The Titans [Warner Home Video] – 766,681
37. Sex And The City 2 [Warner Home Video] – 765,961
38. Recovery (Eminem) [Universal Music] – 764,875
39. Sign No More (Mumford & Sons) [Universal Music] – 746,461
40. Come Around Sundown (Kings of Leon) [Sony Music] – 729,001
49:55 – Georgian Woman Cuts off Internet
– 75 year old woman, digging for metal, cuts off Internet for entire country
– Georgia provides 90% of internet access for neighbouring Armenia
– She accidentally sliced through a cable – cutting off net access for up to 3.2 million peoplefifi
– Took 5 hours to get issue fixed
– Oops

Picks
Chris
Blue Yeti Pro
– 24bit/192Khz (4x CD quality)
– USB + XLR
– Tri condensor capsule array…!
– Built in headphone socket for monitoring
– 4 paterns
– Mute
– Gain
– £210
– Huge!
– But plug and play
– Not sure how much better than Rock Band mic!!!
Ian
Day One
– Simple journaling app for Mac and iOS
– Sync via dropbox
– Reminder support
– Use it far more than other richer journaling app’s
– Just works for me

DigitalOutbox Episode 80

DigitalOutbox Episode 80
In this episode the team discuss Twitter threatening dev’s, IE9, iPad 2 and bye bye to the Zune.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:06 – Twitter – Don’t compete with our apps
– Twitter has taken some time today in their developer forum to talk a bit about the state of the ecosystem and give some guidance.
– Platform lead Ryan Sarver notes that Twitter views a “consistent user experience” as very important to them. And it’s something they’re going to hold third-party developers to a very high standard to maintain. But they don’t want them to mimic Twitter’s own experience with their native apps in order to do this. They’ve updated the API Terms of Service to reflect all of this.
– “Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no,” Sarver writes very matter-of-factly.
“If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve your user base, but we will be holding you to high standards to ensure you do not violate users’ privacy, that you provide consistency in the user experience, and that you rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of Service. We have spoken with the major client applications in the Twitter ecosystem about these needs on an ongoing basis, and will continue to ensure a high bar is maintained,”
– So if your a developer what are Twitter happy with you developing:
– Publisher tools. Companies such as SocialFlow help publishers optimize how they use Twitter, leading to increased user engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time.
– Curation, Realtime data signals, Social CRM, entreprise clients, and brand insights, Value-added content and vertical experiences.
– This hasn’t gone down well – Craig Hockenberry points out what Iconfactory’s Twitterrific brought to the Twitter platform – http://furbo.org/2011/03/11/twitterrific-firsts/ – First use of tweet, first use of bird icon, first native mac client, first char count, first to support replies and conversations (with help from Twitter engineering), first native iPhone client
– Twitter killed my app – http://aaron.vegh.ca/2011/03/twitter-killed-my-app/
– Some twitter stats to show you size (where’s identica?)
– http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/14/new-twitter-stats-140m-tweets-sent-per-day-460k-accounts-created-per-day/
– It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day from the first Tweet to get to the billionth Tweet. In a given week, users send a billion Tweets. Users are now sending 140 million Tweets, on average, per day, up from 50 million Tweets sent per day, a year ago. The all-time high in terms of Tweets sent per day was 177 million sent on March 11, 2011.
– In terms of Tweets per second, the all time high was 6,939 Tweets per second after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day. This compares to the previous record of 456 Tweets per second when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009.
– Twitter says that 572,000 accounts were created on March 12, 2011, with 460,000 new accounts per day over the last month on average. Mobile users are up 182 percent over the past year. And Twitter currently has 400 employees, up from 8 in January 2008.
10:25 – ISPs to Provide Better Traffic Management Info
– BSkyB, BT, O2, TalkTalk, Three, Virgin Media and Vodafone have all agreed to provide better information on traffic management, which should help customers understand why connection speeds vary.
– While such information is already available in many cases, in order for consumers to have a better handle on the data, the indicators must be understandable, accessible, comparable and verifiable. The info will therefore be published in a ‘Key Fact Indicator’ table that summarises the practices in a standardised format. These will be available on the ISPs’ websites by the end of June.
– The tables can be accessed directly by the consumer, but also used by price comparison websites and the like to inform potential customers of the best options available to them.
– Antony Walker, head of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, which facilitated the move, reckons it “will not only help to ensure consumers are better informed about the services they buy and use, but will also provide a clearer picture for policy makers of the way in which traffic management is actually used in the UK market”.
14:00 – Facebook Comment Box Plugin
– Facebook updates it’s comments box plugin – comment via Facebook account or Yahoo
– Forces people to use real name – deter spamming?
– Improved moderation tools
– Can send comments to wall, get notifications when others comment – fine on low traffic sites – comment on Techcrunch though and boom – spam tastic
– No Google or Twitter sign in available but it was rumoured
– Facebook marches on
– http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/06/techcrunch-facebook-comments
– Techcrunch – less quantity, better quality
– Less anonymity = less trolls
20:06 – Google – Hide sites directly in search
– Similar to Chrome plugin launched a few weeks ago
– Click on block site to remove site from your search results
– Saved to your Google account so follows you around
20:52 – Google Maps Navigation now routes around traffic
– Google Maps Navigation has added traffic re-routing to it’s Android app
– Will take account of current and historic traffic levels when calculating best route
– Free!
– Traffic data is crowd sourced from other users to try and work out best available route
24:00 – Adobe Launches Wallaby
– Wallaby, a system it is launching today to convert basic Flash files — such as animations and banner ads — into code that will work on iOS.
– an AIR program that allows you to drag and drop a Flash file into it, at which point the system analyzes the file and outputs a sequence of HTML-friendly files that produce the same effect. By using HTML, CSS and SVG, the company says most simple Flash files can be recreated in ways that will work on Apple mobile products.
– I spoke to Adobe’s Tom Barclay about the launch, who said that the project had a specific purpose — to make Apple’s Flash ban less painful for developers — but pointed out that it was still very much experimental.
“There’s still room for improvement, but I think we’ve addressed a very specific use case for banner ads on iOS,” he told me.
– While it can port over simple animations and transitions, there’s a lot of information that it can’t handle: notably ActionScript instructions (which are used to program inside Flash) don’t convert, although Barclay suggested that they may come into the picture further down the line. Similarly, some of Flash’s higher-end features — such as filters and blend modes — aren’t being ported through Wallaby yet. And it doesn’t convert audio and video because HTML5 has its own dedicated tags for those.
26:29 – Conde Nast UK invests in iPad publishing
– Wired UK will release monthly app editions for iPad starting with its May issue, with British GQ making its tablet debut on the App Store with its July issue. Meanwhile, Vogue UK is to receive more “special edition” iPad issues throughout the year.
– For now, the publisher is focusing on iPad and iPhone only, although its thoughts are turning to other devices such as the raft of Android tablets about to go on sale, and RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook.
– For now, the pricing model will remain one-off purchases, too. Apple’s recently introduced subscription billing system is also on Condé Nast’s agenda, but only if the terms are right, according to Read. “We’re in discussions with Apple in the US about how we might reach a subs arrangement that suits both sides.”
– The publisher will also launch 21 iPhone apps across seven of its magazine brands this year, including GQ, Glamour, Vogue and Wired.
29:52 – Apple Updates
– iOS 4.3
– iTunes 10.2.1
– Safari 5.0.4
– XCode 4 – Released – free for developers who pay $99 yearly or $4.99 on app store for non developers
– Benchmarks for iPad2 are very impressive – http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performance-explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked
– Online backlog – 4-5 weeks now for delivery, physical stores sold out
– One More Thing
– Jon Bon Jovi
– Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it..
– God, it was a magical, magical time…I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’ Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.
38:54 – App Updates
– Flipboard – faster, instagram support
– Instapaper – faster, more social in that you can find liked reads from your twitter connections, can share to more places including Pinboard, can now search sync’d content – one of my fav apps just got better
41:14 – IE9 now released to mainstream
– Ars calling it the “most modern browser there is”
– Doesn’t work on anything before Vista.
– I’ve not had a chance to use yet. Speed graphs look good. Standards support looks much improved. Certainly a good thing. And with IE trying hard to now kill off IE6 – fingers crossed, those will move straight up to the latest version and save lots of development headaches!
44:09 – Kinect is record breaker
– Kinect officially fastest selling consumer electronic device ever… Guinness certified.
– “Fastest selling consumer electronics device in 60 days…”
45:38 – Zune Player is no more
– End of hardware. Software and service still live.

Picks
Chris
Droid@Screen
– Recently used to do my blog post on Android OS. It’s a desktop java app that can output your Android screen in a window! Fantastic! OK, you have to jump through a few hoops. You need to have the Android SDK and also the debug USB driver, but once that’s all up and running, you just load the .jar file and off you go.
– Used in conjunction with Camtasia/Jing you can then record the window.
– FPS is an issue – 30fps is fastest it offers and that’s not to say that you get 30 updates of the screen every second! It’s jerky at best but as a way of showing how Android works, I couldn’t find a better option out there at the moment.
– It’s also delightfully geeky!
Ian
Zite
– Magazine app for the iPad
– Displays content based on twitter followers, google reader and what you read as you use the app
– Like the front end, slower than Flipboard but not a dealbreaker

DigitalOutbox Episode 67

DigitalOutbox Episode 67
In this episode the team discuss Firesheep, Adobe, Samsung Tab and Cloud Backups.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
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Shownotes
3:22 – FireSheep
– Firesheep takes almost everything required for stealing people’s Facebook and Twitter sessions – along with those from many other sites – and puts it into one attractively designed Firefox extension.
– Password stealing from open networks is nothing new, and the flaws that Firesheep exploits have been known for more than a decade
– However it required some knowledge and skill – this makes it easy
– Firesheep, though, has an easy-to-use interface and, perhaps most importantly, a cute name. To use it, you simply install it into Firefox and click a few buttons. One minor additional step, installing WinPcap, is required for Windows users.
– Cookies passed in the clear…cookie stores password – tada!
– 104,000 downloads in 24 hours
– Solution – https or turn on wpa for open access point and make password known to customers – cookie then encrypted
– Force major players like facebook and twitter to move to https
– Just remember – this is illegal!
7:04 – Google creating stringer privacy controls
– Appointing director of privacy across engineering and product management
– All employees to receive training on Googles privacy principles and are required to sign Googles Code of Conduct
– Every project now requires a privacy design document
– Finally, the street view cars and wifi capturing – a number of external regulators have inspected the data as part of their investigations (seven of which have now been concluded). It’s clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords. We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place. We are mortified by what happened, but confident that these changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users.
– Information Comissioners Office to re-investigate – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11614970
9:10 – Android hits 100000 Apps
– Rampaging app store
– Not much more to say
10:03 – Blekko
– http://mashable.com/2010/10/31/blekko-launch/
– http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/blekko-launches/
– http://www.skrenta.com/2010/09/crowdsourcing_search_relevancy.html
– Search is dead – everyone uses Google…or Bing
– Blekko’s alternative search engine — a $24 million venture-backed project that’s been three years in the making — is today launching its public beta.
– Blekko is designed to eliminate spam search results, allowing users to search just a subset of the web through its proprietary slashtag technology.
– The most significant upgrade to Blekko’s search engine is the addition of slashtags that auto-fire for queries that fall into one of seven categories: health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes and hotels. Every time a Blekko user’s query is determined to be in one of these categories, Blekko will automatically append the associated slashtag to the query and limit results to just the subset of URLs that fall under that slashtag.
– Basically slash tags tell Blekko to limit your search to a human-curated category of websites — a custom search. So say you want to find good resources for learning about arrays in PHP? Type “arrays /php.” Need a good pumpkin pie recipe. Yup, you guessed it — append the /recipes slash tag.
– Well, according to CEO and co-founder Rick Skrenta, it’s because the web is filling up with spam and low-rent webpages from content farms like Demand Media, saying the web now has 100 billion urls, most created by bots.
– “You need to bring large-scale human curation and combine it with algorithmic techniques to bring the quality back,” Skrenta said. “If you have the set of the top 150 health sites, you know what, you really can answer nearly any health question, and you know what, you really don’t want to be searching outside of that set.”
– More people use it and curate, the better the results?
15:56 – Microsoft in the money
– Microsoft Corp. today announced record first-quarter revenue of $16.20 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2010, a 25% increase from the same period of the prior year.
– Worth noting, also, that Microsoft’s fallen behind Apple in the revenue race. Although Microsoft’s still winning where it counts, posting $5.41 billion in net income to Apple’s $4.3 billion.
– net income by division:
– Windows and Windows Live: $3.32 billion
– Business: $3.39 billion
– Entertainment and Devices: $382 million
– the Online Division. Last quarter, the division lost $560 million for Microsoft. That’s better than the previous quarter when it lost a staggering $696 million, but it’s much worse than a year ago, when it lost $477 million. In the past year, Microsoft has lost well over $2 billion from the division.
– Major shift with silverlight – Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone – Bob Muglia – Microsoft’s SVP of the Server and Tools Business
– the technology has some “sweet spots” for media applications (presumably like Netflix, which uses Silverlight on the web), its role as a vehicle for delivering a cross-platform runtime appears to be over. “Our strategy has shifted,” is how Muglia put it.
– Instead, as they made clear during PDC, Microsoft is putting their weight behind HTML5 going forward. Hallelujah. But what if you’ve invested in Silverlight – like Netflix?
– http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight/
– More info…in a few months
– Also, every microsoft employee is to get a windows phone 7 device – 89,000 employee’s
– Another 1000 free WP7 handsets were handed out to Professional Developer Conference attendee’s
– Cost – $20 million but will generate a whole load of chatter
20:49 – Adobe Digital Publishing Suite
– The Digital Publishing Suite will let publishers create, produce, distribute and monetize their digital magazines and content across different devices and marketplaces.
– The Digital Publishing Suite is an add-on that will let publishers assemble editorial and advertising pages and then preview and test complete issues, including interactive elements.
– Issues can be previewed both in InDesign, an iPhone or iPad simulator, or on testing hardware units.
– Great publishing options, sending to multiple targets and devices
– Supports subscription options and brings a lot of analytics
– Price – $700 a month (per publisher not app) with a per issue cost on top
– Massive potential
24:32 – Adobe Air 2.5
– New version of Air for computers, smartphones and tablets and TV’s
– Big push for Adobe
– From engadget – Air will also come standard in RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, but it’s not just for fun, productivity and games there — Adobe told us that the PlayBook’s entire UI is built on Air.
– Wow. Great for Adobe, really poor for RIM?
– Confirmed on RIM’s tablet OS dev page – The initial release of the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK allows developers to create Adobe AIR applications. Leveraging Adobe design and development tools, the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR allows you to create rich, powerful applications like never before.
27:42 – iPhone Daylight Savings Bug Hits Europe
– Europeans’ recurring alarms are going off an hour later following the switch to Standard Time.
– Same bug that affected New Zealand and Oz
– alarms set never to repeat, or set to repeat every day, are unaffected; just the selective repeat alarms (only weekends, only weekdays) are getting munged
– In less than a week, Apple’s largest customer base, its US iPhone users, will likely have their recurring alarms go off an hour later, too, unless Apple can address the problem before November 7
29:23 – Coming Soon for Kindle
– we are making Kindle newspapers and magazines readable on our free Kindle apps, so you can always read Kindle periodicals even if you don’t have your Kindle with you or don’t yet own a Kindle. In the coming weeks, many newspapers and magazines will be available on our Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, and then we’ll be adding this functionality to Kindle for Android and our other apps down the road. Our vision is Buy Once, Read Everywhere, and we’re excited to make this possible for Kindle periodicals in the same way that it works now for Kindle books. More details when we launch this in the coming weeks.
– later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable – this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending.
36:52 – Samsung Galaxy Tab Launched
– Launches on O2 on Mon 1st Nov
– £599 on a range of pay an go tariffs
– http://www.reghardware.com/2010/11/01/samsung_galaxy_tab_tariffs/
– All prices compared – £499 – £599 for hardware depending on tarrif
– Average reviews too – http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/laptops-and-netbooks/samsung-galaxy-tab-903545/review?artc_pg=3
– Pros – good multitasking, flash support, camera
– Cons – juddery scrolling, lag, over sensitive accelerometer, battery life 4 hrs against claims of 7, gets hot when playing video, Android 2.2 not optimised for tablets (admitted by Google), worse screen outdoors than iPad (ouch), 7 inches a little too small for tablet, poor camera
– or great reviews – http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/01/samsung-galaxy-tab-review/
– Perhaps the best part about the Tab is that you don’t have to worry about the sluggish performance we’ve seen on other Android and Windows tablets. The entire experience is very snappy, and it kept up with us even when we had four or five applications open.
– On our taxing video rundown test, which loops a standard definition video at about 65 percent brightness and 3G off, but WiFi on, the Tab’s 4000mAh battery lasted for 6 hours and 9 minutes.
– After spending the last couple of days with the Galaxy Tab, we can confidently say it’s the best Android tablet on the market. Now, that’s not saying much given the state of the Android competition, but we can also assuredly say that the Tab is the first true competitor to Apple’s iPad.
42:11 – Virgin launches 100Mb Broadband
– Virgin Media today said it will begin increasing the maximum downstream broadband speed available via its network to 100Mbit/s, and maximum upload speed to 10Mbit/s.
– The gradual programme will take more than 18 months to cover the country, it said, and is due for completion in mid-2012. The first areas scheduled for upgrade, in December, are in London, the South-East and Yorkshire.
– The 100Mbit/s service will come with a new Virgin Media-branded combined cable modem and 802.11n router. It will launch at £45 per month as a standalone package, or £35 with an £11.99 per month phone line. The current top package costs £38 per month on its own.
– 10,000 sign up on first day (for interest)
45:38 – Nintendo makes a loss
– The Japanese computer games firm posted a net loss of 2bn yen ($24.7m; £15.6m) for the six months to 30 September. This compares with a net profit of 69.5bn yen for the same period in 2009.
– Nintendo’s sales for the first half of its financial year were down 34% to 363.16bn yen, partly due to lower demand for its Wii console.
– Need to innovate – 3DS a gimmick?
50:04 – Playstation Phone Leaks
– Familiar bumpers, slide out controls
– Android 3, usual tech specs
– No memory stick – microSD card
51:36 – Xbox 360 New Dashboard
– Restyled dash is out in time for Kinect
– Biggest features aren’t in UK – ESPN, Zune, Netflix
– However we get
– Improved voice chat quality
– Some minor stuff around re-orged content to make navigation easier i.e. for Kinect
– thats it but here’s a nice post on Xbox Live and NAT (Network Address Translation) – http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/EngineeringBlog/NATs-and-xbox-live

Picks
Ian
Amazon Web Services
– Free tier from 1st Nov for a year – http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/11/servers-for-nothing-and-bits-for-free.html
– 5gb/month of S3 storage, 15gb of internet data transfer (out and in), 25 SimpleDB machine hours, 750 hours of free time on an Amazon EC2 micro instance running Linux + a whole load more – setup a web app for free for a year
– Also reduced Amazon S3 storage prices – http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/11/what-can-i-say-another-amazon-s3-price-reduction.html
– Using Arq for backups
– http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/
– Keep multiple versions of a file (think dropbox)
– No limits on file size or number of files
– Flexible scheduling and bandwidth options

The Photographer’s Ephemeris

The Photographer’s Ephemeris is a great tool for landscape photographers. Using the tool you can pick a location anywhere in the world and work out not only the sunrise and sunset times but also the angle of the sunrise/sunset so if your wanting to plan a sunrise across a river or a mountain range you can work out the best time of year to do the shot.

Photographer’s Ephemeris is free and is an Adobe Air application so is multi platform. It’s easy to install and use and the results are great. Alongside the Air application a version has been written for iOS devices. This however is not free, currently retailing for £5.49 in the UK. This version is iPhone only at the moment but an update is coming which will move the application to being universal with iPad support.

The application is similar to the desktop version but I find it easier to use via the touch interface. Like the desktop version moonrise and moonset angles/times are also included alongside the ability to find out when the sun will appear from behind a hill – ideal for scouting out locations prior to a shoot.

It’s app’s like these that I find so compelling on mobile devices. Focussed, simple to use but very helpful.

DigitalOutbox Episode 51

DigitalOutbox Episode 51
In this episode the team discuss WWDC – iPhone 4.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:33 – Government to publish entire spending database
– The government will today give the public free access to its accounting books for the first time, publishing the entire contents of its spending database – a total of 24m individual entries documenting where public money comes from, what it is spent on and whose pocket it ends up in.
– The complex, 120GB Combined Online Information System (Coins) database won’t, however, be accessible to the public until an industry has emerged to analyse and digest the information.
– Tom Steinberg, the founder of mySociety, a non-profit organisation that runs several democracy websites in the UK, was this week appointed to a new government committee chaired by the cabinet minister Francis Maude to look at how to open up government data further.
– Also publishing rates of hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA on a weekly basis.

– http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jun/02/hospital-infections-mrsa-cdiff-data
– Already, shows the government spent £1.8bn on consultants last year
– Guardian already has a database up and running – http://coins.guardian.co.uk/coins-explorer/search
– Also, it was published via bittorrent
4:17 – Sky and Virgin
– Sky buys Virgin TV channels
– At the same time, Virgin for an increased fee, will be able to show Sky Sports and Movies in HD and will also get access to Sky’s basic HD channels
– http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a223210/sky-unveils-anytime-vod-service.html
– Sky announce Anytime +, their VOD service
– When it launches later in the year, Anytime+ will offer around 1,000 hours of content from Sky Arts, Sky Movies, Sky1 and Sky Sports, along with material from other broadcasters, such as ESPN and National Geographic. A “key focus” for the service will be movies, with around 500 being made available at launch.
– Anytime+ will be offered without charge to all Sky customers with IP-enabled Sky+ HD boxes. However, access to premium content such as sport and movies will depend on the subscriber’s package.
– initially only be made available to Sky customers with a Sky Broadband connection, meaning anyone on another internet service provider will miss out
– Allegedly until service is stable
10:26 – Intel Dealys USB 3
– Intel is holding up USB 3.0 adoption by delaying its motherboard chipset until 2012.
– The USB 3.0 spec was introduced in November 2008 and it looks like it’s going to be another two years before the mightiest computing chip-maker on the planet gets the trivial-to-design-and-build chipsets needed out of its fabs.
– Anyone think Intel had a hidden agenda here? Is the company trying to make the market more receptive to Light Peak, its new optical connect?
11:15 – Office Web Apps Now Live
– Word, Excel and Powerpoint with 25gb of storage
– Basic but probably more functional than Google equivalents
– Real time collaboration
12:06 – HP and Google Tackle Cloud Printing
– Handy for printing from your phone or iPad.
– I just see a massive opportunity for spam. Just now, the pile of spam faxes to be binned in the office every day is bad enough, but can you imagine how annoyed you’ll be when your expensive photo paper is defaced by images from the murkier recesses of the internet.
13:11 – Google Phasing Out Windows
– search giant is abandoning Windows due to concerns over security
– slowly phasing out the use of Windows internally since January
– new hires are no longer offered Windows PCs — the choices are now an Apple Mac computer or a PC loaded with Linux
– Most are moving to Mac
– Change with Chrome OS coming?
– Important to state that this hasn’t been officially confirmed by Google (although it is coming from a number of internal sources apparently.) Stems from vulnerabilities in operating system/IE uncovered in the China hacking.
– It’s happening – Leo Laporte’s ex engineer who went to Google was offered Mac or Linux only
– Microsoft responded “Google’s not so secure either”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20006509-265.html and http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/06/01/windows-and-security-setting-the-record-straight.aspx
15:06 – iPhone 4
– iPad –
– http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/05/31ipad.html
– Pretty amazing sales figures
– Thats one every 3 seconds
– Thats a lot of fanboys 😉
– It’s like the opposite of what normally happens. If you ask people ahead of time, they say they would buy a product when in fact they won’t. This time, everyone said they wouldn’t get one, couldn’t see what it was good for (even after the keynote) and that they wouldn’t pay any more than £400 for one… then they go and get one, at launch, for £800.
– and when we say “people”, it’s obviously not just Ian and Shak.
– iBook minor updates (notes, PDF’s, 1 click bookmark) + coming to iPhone
– 22% of ebook sales
– Farmville on iPhone
– over 225,000 apps in the App Store , 15,000 apps submitted every week, 95% of all apps are approved in 7 days
– iPhone 4
– Thinnest design – as per Gizmodo phone – glass and stainless steel
– Retina Display – at 326 pixels per inch, it’s more pixels than the human retina can see (when the device is held 10 to 12 inches from your face), 960×640, giving it four times as many pixel as the iPhone 3GS. The 800:1 contrast ratio is also four times better than the iPhone 3GS
– A4 chip, better battery life
– gyroscope
– 5mp camera, LED flash, 720p 30 fps recording, $4.99 for iMovie
– iOS 4 (renamed and out on June 21st for current users, gold master today)
– Bing added to iPhone search
– iAds (from 1st July)
– Facetime – wifi only video chat, Open standard
– Launches 24 Jun, 16GB $199, 32GB $299 – good price
– More notable for what wasn’t announced
– Safari 5 came out after keynote – fast, reader view, signed extensions
– xCode 4 also demo’d at WWDC
– All Things D D8 Conference video – full length Steve Jobs vid
46:56 – Adobe Digital Publishing Platform
– magazine viewer technology is but one step in Adobe’s overarching Digital Publishing Platform effort, which will eventually extend to cross-platform app delivery of magazines, books, newpapers, and retail catalogs, but which for now is limited to one magazine on the iPad.
– We expect to use this technology to deliver more of our publications over the coming months,” said Thomas Wallace, editorial director of Condé Nast, Wired’s parent company
– Adobe says that the Digital Publishing Platform will be based on a combination of its Creative Suite 5, which it launched in April of this year, and technologies from the “web analytics and online business optimization software and services” company Omniture, which it acquired for $1.8bn last October. At its creative core is Adobe’s latest version of its QuarkXPress-killer, InDesign CS5.
– The magazine viewer software has not yet been released to developers, but according to Adobe’s Digital Publishing Platform roadmap (PDF), it’s due this summer at Adobe Labs.
– And, no, Apple isn’t making a Flash exception by allowing the Wired app into its App Store store. The Digital Publishing Platform generates applications in Objective C, as per Apple’s demands.
– Ambitious and potentially market grabbing move by Adobe – should Apple not have been doing this alongside announcement of iPad – everyone expected it
50:20 – Green Tech
– No note on pricing but should be available by the end of the year.
– Is this an improvement on existing dynamo/chargers already on the market?
– Orange Power Wellies
– http://newsroom.orange.co.uk/2010/06/06/here-comes-the-hot-stepper-orange-unveils-the-orange-power-wellies/
– Coverts heat from your feet into electricity
– Ideal for Glastonbury

Picks
Chris
Lego Printer
– A fully functioning lego printer! Superb. Complete with lego foremen sitting at control stations and lego horses turning cogs!
– Henry – http://prezi.com/ online Flash based presentation tool. A way to put an end to death by powerpoint?

Ian
iPad Walls
– Great site for iPad wallpapers

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
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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.