Tag: broadband

DigitalOutbox Episode 279

Chris and Ian discuss Drones, Macbooks and the Xbox 360

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DigitalOutbox Episode 268

Chris and Ian discuss Netflix, WhatsApp and Davey Cameron

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DigitalOutbox Episode 264

Chris and Ian discuss the Investigatory Powers Bill, Fast Broadband and Heart Twitter

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DigitalOutbox Episode 249

Chris and Ian discuss WWDC and a quick take on the Oculus Rift

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DigitalOutbox Episode 134

DigitalOutbox Episode 134
DigitalOutbox Episode 134 – 4G with EE, iPhone 5 and Nintendo Wii U

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2:37 – 4G hits the Uk – EE
– EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE LAUNCHES EE
– Everything Everywhere today announced the launch of EE – the UK’s most advanced digital communications company. EE will become the new name of the Everything Everywhere business and its network.
– EE will also be launched as a new superfast customer brand in the coming weeks. It is a brand born in the digital age, designed to serve both consumers and businesses, offering the UK’s only 4G mobile service and complemented by fixed-line fibre broadband.
– The new EE brand will stand alongside Orange and T-Mobile. Together they will provide mobile services to 27 million people, now served by the UK’s biggest and best network.
– The EE customer brand will launch with 4G services for consumers and businesses in the coming weeks. It will be the first brand in the country to offer a mobile 4G service – the pioneering new technology that offers superfast mobile internet at speeds typically five times faster than 3G speeds today.
– EE will also launch a fibre broadband service to homes and businesses with fixed-line internet speeds typically ten times faster than today’s average broadband speeds.
– Four cities – London, Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham – are switched on today for the company’s engineers to begin live testing and systems integration, in readiness for the customer launch.
– EE’s 4G network will cover a third of the UK population in 2012 – over 20 million people – and customers on the EE brand will also have access to the largest 3G network in the UK outside of the 4G cities. Further towns, cities and rural areas, will follow rapidly with 2013 population coverage to reach 70%, with 98% covered by 2014.
– EE’s 2012 launch schedule will see 16 areas of the country connected to 4G by Christmas – the UK’s four capitals and twelve further major cities. The 16 cities are London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Derby, Glasgow,
Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Southampton.
EE will offer a range of state-of-the-art devices alongside its superfast 4G mobile network with more to be announced shortly. Today, EE confirmed it is to launch the following 4G devices:
– Samsung Galaxy SIII LTE – with a 4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED display, you can watch videos on your mobile like never before. Innovative Smart Stay automatically recognises when you are looking at the phone, maintaining a bright display for
continued viewing pleasure.
– Nokia Lumia 920 – flagship Nokia Windows Phone 8 smartphone. Take bright, blur-free photos and videos in any light conditions with PureView technology – Optical Image Stabilisation and Carl Zeiss lens and view on a 4.5” PureMotion HD+ capacitive display.
– Nokia Lumia 820 – colourful, stylish, innovative design, with a 4.3 OLED WVGA screen. Capture great photos and movies with an 8MP Auto Focus camera, with Carl Zeiss optics and dual LED flash. Charge wirelessly without plugging in using a Wireless Charging Shell.
– The HTC One XL – high quality entertainment and precision navigation combine in this handset, thanks to a large 4.7” HD touchscreen display. Full HD video, and front and rear facing camera let you capture crisp, vivid photos and movies in high
quality wherever you are.
– Huawei Ascend P1 LTE – a powerhouse dual-core processor is packed in to this handset’s slim design. Take stunningly clear images or HD videos on an 8MP autofocus camera with LED flash and playback on the 4.3” high-res touchscreen.
– Huawei E589 Mobile WiFi – hook up to five devices to the EE 4G network, making your existing phone, laptop or digital screen superfast even if they’re not 4G. Long battery life of up to 10 hours, enjoy 4G wireless broadband anytime, anywhere.
– Huawei E392 Mobile Broadband stick – download and upload documents and files in super quick time on the go with this device. Make your laptop mobile and superfast, by hooking it up to the EE network. You’ll stay compatible with 3G too and seamlessly switch to the optimal connection.
– EE’s superfast fibre broadband service will launch at the same time to complement the company’s superfast 4G mobile service. It will be available to 11 million households and businesses by the end of the year reaching two thirds of UK households and usinesses by the end of 2014.
– The new EE stores – formerly Orange and T-Mobile shops – will serve customers of all three brands, giving them access to service and sales in twice as many locations as before.
– More than 10,000 EE staff have been trained, and will offer specialist advice in store, on the phone and on-line. The company as trained its Customer Team staff to become experts in mobile operating systems, meaning its customers will get a specialist service, regardless of which device they use. It is the only operator to offer dedicated expertise based around device operating systems.
– With the Orange and T-Mobile networks now combined, from today customers will begin switching over to the new seamless EE network, the largest in the UK. By the end of the year, all 27 million customers will be using the EE network. It means that Orange and T-Mobile customers can now get faster 3G service, with speeds of up to 21Mbps, and more coverage than ever before.
– Good? Focus on better 3G? Free wifi better?
12:19 – iPhone 5
– Stats
– 27% Market share in US this July for laptops
– No 1 in the US for laptops
– iPad – 62% market share last year, this year 68%
– Accounts for 91% of all web traffic from tablets – I don’t know what these other tables are doing – They must be in warehouses or on store shelves, or maybe in someone’s drawer.
– sold more iPads than any PC manufacturer sold of their entire lineup – 17 million last quarter, 84 million sold in total
– iPhone 5
– Like the 4 and 4S but taller 🙂
– Made from glass and aluminum
– 18% thinner, 20% lighter than 4S
– 112 grams
– It’s a 326ppi Retina display, four-inches. 1136 x 640 resolution. Same width, but taller.
– Apple apps all updated to support new res – old apps will run letterboxed
– 44% more color saturation: now fully sRGB, “it’s now the most accurate display in the industry.” Touch sensor is built into the display now.
– Ultrafast wireless technology. You can imagine the challenge our team faced: thinner, smaller… but we’ve added HSPA+, DC-HSDPA, and yes, LTE.
– Many worldwide partners including EE
– A6 chip – twice as fast CPU and graphics
– Real Racing 3 – great graphics – console quality – could mean anything – Interesting, we’re seeing a two-player race — but an asynchronous race. “Time-shifted multiplayer” it’s called. I can challenge Vince one day, and he can race me the next.
– Battery life – exceeds 4S
– Camera – thinner due to design but still 8mp – same as 4S. Better low light performance
– 1080p video – better stability. 720p for front facing
– Connector – called Lightning
– Adapters will be available
– iOS6 – Maps, Safari, Passbook, Siri improvements – not much else
– Black or white
– Same price as 4S
– Pre order this Friday, launch Sep 21st
– iOS 6 – Sep 19th
– iTunes
– Stores – 2/3rds of downloads from iOS devices
– New store design for iOS – Same design runs across all stores, books, music, video.
– Sep 19th – iOS 6
– New iTunes for Mac and PC
– iTunes in the cloud built in
– New design
– More visual – design cues from iOS
– New mini player, easier playlists, artists can share photo’s with you???????????????????????
– Late October for new iTunes
– iPods
– Nano
– 2.5 inch screen
– Multitouch
– Lightning connector
– Volume buttons and home
– 7 colours
– FM tuner, widescreen video
– Nike + – no accessories required
– Bluetooth
– 16gb starting at $149 – october
– iPod Touch
– 6.1mm thin
– 88 grams
– Same display as iPhone 5
– A5 chip – not the A6 in the iPhone 5
– 40 hours battery, 8 hours video
– 5mp camera – better than previous gen by quite a distance
– iPod Touch Loop – press a button and you get a strap
– Siri
– 5 colours
– 32gb – $299 – october
– Earpods
– 3 years to design and develop new headphones
– Shipping as a standard accessory today
– Also with new touch, nano and iPhone 5
38:50 – Apple enables FaceTime video calls over 3G
– With Apple’s iOS 6 operating system, iPhone and iPad users can make FaceTime video calls over 3G. But will the UK’s mobile networks actually allow it? The answer seems to be yes.
– Wired.co.uk contacted all of the UK’s major mobile networks and spokespeople from Orange, T-Mobile, O2 and EE all confirmed that their customers will be able to use FaceTime over 3G out of their regular data bundles.
– Vodafone is a little different. A spokesperson explained that customers need to have VoIP included in their package in order to use FaceTime over 3G, as opposed to just using their regular data. Customers will need to upgrade to a package that includes this, or pay to add VoIP support to their current price plan. Customers who sign up for an iPhone 5, however, will get the VoIP service included as part of their package.
– Three has not yet confirmed its position on the feature.
40:16 – Nintendo announce Wii U Launch date
– Nintendo’s Wii U console will be launched across Europe on 30 November, the company announced on Thursday. North America will get the new machine first, however, with a 18 November release, while Japan must wait until 8 December.
– There will be two versions of the console at launch. The basic White pack comes with the machine, a GamePad, AC adaptors and an 8GB hard drive. The Premium Black edition features all that plus a Wii Sensor Bar, a copy of the launch game Nintendo Land and a subscription to the Nintendo Premium Network, which gives points to players for downloading games, and provides a 10% discount on digital titles.
– Pricing 8gb – £250, 32gb – £285
– The European launch of Wii U will be accompanied by nine games on day one. Key titles include Nintendo’s own New Super Mario Bros U and Nintendo Land, as well as the survival horror adventure ZombiU from Ubisoft and conversions of major hits Fifa 13 and Mass Effect 3.
– The big news of the European press event was that cult Japanese developer Platinum Games is working on a Wii U exclusive sequel to its critically lauded action adventure Bayonetta. Although many of Nintendo’s more casual fans will not have heard of this title, it was hugely popular among hardcore gamers. Indeed, the message throughout the European press presentation, hosted by Nintendo Europe head, Satoru Shibata, was that Wii U would be as much for experienced gamers as it is for family and casual audiences.
44:09 – Broadband red tape to be cut
– Brits will no longer be able to object to the arrival of “ghastly” fibre optic cabling cabinets outside their homes: Blighty’s new broadband minister has stamped her authority on moves to upgrade the nation’s internet infrastructure that sidestep local councils.
– Maria Miller, who replaced Jeremy Hunt earlier this week during Prime Minister David Cameron’s reshuffle, said she planned to legislate immediately following consultation, and added the government would – if necessary – use existing powers to put an end to local bureaucracy that she thinks is slowing down the rollout of faster broadband.
– She said: Superfast broadband is vital to secure our country’s future – to kick start economic growth and create jobs. We are putting in the essential infrastructure that will make UK businesses competitive, and sweeping away the red tape that is a barrier to economic recovery.
– The government means business and we are determined to cut through the bureaucracy that is holding us back.
– We on the networks desk at Vulture Central can’t help but sense a panicky tone to Miller’s statement. After all, the government is hoping to treat Britain to the fastest broadband network in any “major” European country by 2015.
– Hunt’s rhetoric was recently tweaked to say “major” Euro countries when the Department for Culture, Media and Sport – now headed up by Miller – spotted that it was foolishly aiming to have the best broadband network on the entire continent.
– Just yesterday, Parliamentary Under-secretary of State Ed Vaizey told Parliament which countries Blighty was actually competing with. He said:
– The Department for Culture, Media and Sport considers countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain as being the major European nations which we compare ourselves with regarding broadband speed and other key performance indicators.
46:09 – Great Google Drive update for iOS and Android users
– Updates for iOS
– Starting today, if you’re using the Drive app on your iOS device you can also edit Google documents, just as you can with the Android app. From your iPhone or iPad, you can create a new document, edit an existing one or format text. And, just like on your computer, you’ll be able to see other people’s edits instantly as they’re made.
– You’ll also notice other new improvements to the iOS Drive app. For example, you can now view Google presentations on your iPhone or iPad, including speaker notes, full-screen mode and the ability to swipe between slides. You can also create new folders, move files into folders and upload stuff (like photos and videos) from your device directly in the Drive app.
– Updates for Android
– We’re also updating the Drive app for Android phones and tablets today. You can now add comments, reply to existing comments and view tables in your Google documents. And you’ll have the same new abilities to view presentations and organize your stuff as your friends with iPhones do.
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DigitalOutbox Episode 131

DigitalOutbox Episode 131
DigitalOutbox Episode 131 – Twitter API, John Browett and OnLive

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3:01 – Once a Dixons employee
– John Browett joined as head of retail at Apple late last year – he used to head up Dixons. We joked at the time that it didn’t seem the best hire and fit for Apple
– There were reports at the start of the week that Apple stores were reducing staff numbers
– In a communication with store leadership teams, senior vice president of retail, John Browett, who took the reins of Apple’s retail stores in April, said that the company had been trying a new staffing formula for its retail stores, leading some employees to see their hourly shifts cut and retail locations to be understaffed. This happened for a few weeks before the company decided to revert to its older system, hoping to rectify the problem.
– He instructed leadership teams to tell employees, “We messed up,” according to two people who were aware of the communication, which also stressed that while shift schedules were affected, no one was laid off. He also wanted employees to know that it was hiring new staff, these people said.
– Apple acknowledged the retail staffing changes. “Making these changes was a mistake and the changes are being reversed,” said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman. “Our employees are our most important asset and the ones who provide the world-class service our customers deserve.”
– Despite Apple’s claims that “no one was laid off”, we have indeed heard from several Apple employees who have been laid off in recent weeks, with several of them independently claiming that there have been others, although some have called the moves “isolated” while others have characterized them as “many”. ifoAppleStore reported yesterday that the cutbacks were made by Browett in an effort to meet profit goals and encourage the “bloated” store staffs to run “leaner”, despite the objections of retail veterans within the company.
– Idiot.
6:11 – Amazon to deliver parcels to UK cornershops
– Amazon is to step up its assault on the UK’s retail market by delivering parcels to nearly 5,000 corner shops and newsagents around the country.
– The online shopping giant has quietly started trialling the scheme on a small scale with items such as books and clothes, and plans to roll it out nationwide.
– Amazon has already built itself into a $109bn business by offering customers a highly convenient way to shop and this move will give it even more muscle with which to take on high street stores.
– Consumers will be able to collect their orders from local shops that are often open until late into the night, instead of having to wait in for orders or coming home to find a delivery note telling them to collect their parcel from the nearest Royal Mail depot.
– They will also be able to use the “Collect+” scheme to send unwanted items back to the retailer, making it easier, for example, to order clothes in several sizes and return those that do not fit.
– The scheme is likely to prove particularly popular with employees of the many UK companies which ban staff from having personal goods delivered to their work address.
– However, it is also expected to ignite fresh concerns amongst traditional retailers, who already fear that the Seattle-based shopping giant is driving them off the high street.
9:11 – Twitter announces API changes
– Three main changes:
– In version 1.1, we will require every request to the API to be authenticated. For developers who are already using OAuth when making API requests, all of your authentication tokens will transition seamlessly from v1.0 to v1.1. If your application is currently using the Twitter API without using OAuth, you will need to update your application before March 2013.
– Right now, in version 1.0 of the Twitter API we limit the number of authenticated requests applications can make to 350 calls per hour, regardless of the type of information the application was requesting. This “one size fits all” approach has limited our ability to provide developers more access to endpoints that are frequently requested by applications, while continuing to prevent abuse of Twitter’s resources. In version 1.1, we will provide per-endpoint rate limiting on the API. While an application that only accesses one endpoint may be more restricted, applications that use multiple endpoints will run into rate limiting issues less frequently. Most individual API endpoints will be rate limited at 60 calls per hour per-endpoint. Based on analysis of current use of our API, this rate limit will be well above the needs of most applications built against the Twitter API, while protecting our systems from abusive applications.
– To ensure that Twitter users have a consistent experience wherever they see and interact with Tweets, in v1.1 of the Twitter API we will shift from providing Display Guidelines to Display Requirements, which we will also introduce for mobile applications. We will require all applications that display Tweets to adhere to these. Among them: linking @usernames to the appropriate Twitter profile, displaying appropriate Tweet actions (e.g. Retweet, reply and favorite) and scaling display of Tweets appropriately based on the device. If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn’t adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key. we will require you to work with us directly if you believe your application will need more than one million individual user tokens. Additionally, if you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens.
– Caused lot’s of consternation, especially the user cap (100,000) – The maximum limit is 100,000 users, unless special permission is given by Twitter. If a client has more than 100k users currently, it can only ever grow to 200% of that. If users of the apps de-authorize their tokens for those apps, then they’re added back to that pool. That means that no third-party client can ever have more than 100k users, unless given special permission by Twitter or it already has over 100k right now, in which case it can have double the amount it has today. This move puts a life span on most for-pay clients, as they’ll reach a point where there is no longer any reason for them to continue offering these apps for sale.
– Display of tweets is confusing – no other social or 3rd party actions may be attached to a Tweet – so send to instapaper no more? Pocket developer says he has spoken to Twitter and pocket, instapaper etc are fine.
– Also, display guidelines and now ‘requirements’
– Marco Arment (Instapaper) has a very -ve post on the changes – http://www.marco.org/2012/08/16/twitter-api-changes
– I sure as hell wouldn’t build a business on Twitter, and I don’t think I’ll even build any nontrivial features on it anymore.
– And if I were in the Twitter-client business, I’d start working on another product.
– Paul Haddad (Tweetbot) has a more +ve post – http://tapbots.com/blog/news/dont-panic
– API – The changes to the v1.1 API requiring authentication won’t affect Tweetbot, all current API calls are already made using authentication.
– User caps – I can’t say that I’m thrilled with the idea of caps on the number of users, I feel that part of what makes the Twitter ecosystem interesting is the wide ranging apps available to it. I think we and others fill an important niche in that system not served by the current Twitter apps and would’ve much preferred to see some some other approach. Regardless the decision has been made, so let’s look at what this actually means to Tweetbot.
* Our user cap for Tweetbot for iOS is pretty huge (which is 2* our current users, not 100k)
* At the current rate our user base is growing we won’t hit that cap for a few years
* Our user cap for Tweetbot for Mac is also large and we don’t expect any problems given the smaller market
* Even if we were to run out of room all our current users will be fine
* User tokens are shared, so if you have a single account on both Tweetbot for iPad and Tweetbot for iPhone that’s only a single token
– Display req’s – We’ll be working with Twitter over the next 6 months to make sure we comply with these new requirements as much as possible. I don’t expect the changes to be huge, but we’ll keep everyone up to date as we know more.
– Meanwhile app.net got funded (nearly 800k) and has an amazing amount of app’s in development already.
– Does twitter care about it’s users? Or is it chasing business, advertisers, investors now rather than users? The people that launched the company are really no longer involved…
17:26 – Medium
– Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone are at it again. Having launched two new publishing platforms — Blogger in 1999 and, more recently, Twitter – the duo unveiled a new platform Tuesday that wants to make an “evolutionary leap,” based on what the pair has learned over the past 13 years.
– Called Medium, the new collaborative publishing tool lets different people contribute as much or as little as they want to themed “collections” of content. The idea, the founders said in a blog post Tuesday, is that people should be able to publish without “the burden of becoming a blogger” and worrying about developing an audience. The layout looks a lot like Pinterest, but contributions include both pictures and text.
– Does the world need another publishing site/tool?
19:06 – Branch
– Pick a topic, write a short comment and then invite others to comment – only if your invited can you comment
– The comment, or debate, is public – like Quora perhaps?
– Uses twitter as authentication a bit like Medium
– Advisers include Ev Williams and Biz Stone
20:51 – Is the UK heavy handed with Internet Trolls
– Police and prosecutors in the UK are accused of being “incredibly heavy-handed” when dealing with online trolls and abusive messages.
– It follows several cases where young people have been arrested, fined or jailed after posting insulting comments on their Twitter and Facebook accounts.
– Campaign groups and experts from Oxford University say the punishments are heavier than in other countries. But police insist if a law is broken they will take action.
– Bernie Hogan from the Oxford Internet Institute monitors what happens in other countries. He said that although the UK was “leading the way” in cracking down on this type of online abuse, by comparison “we are incredibly heavy-handed”.
– The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) disagrees. In a statement is says: “People have a right to publish their views but when these views become indecent, threatening or offensive then the individuals they affect also have the right to report them. “The police will assist with any prosecution.”
23:05 – First truly digital Olympics
– BBC celebrated Olympics by releasing some amazing data behind their online effort
– Record breaking browsers to BBC Sport online – with 55m (global) and 37m (UK) browsers to the BBC Sport site in total across the Games, and an average of 9.5m (global) and 7.1m (UK) browsers per day, easily breaking all previous records (previous record for a single day was 7.4m global and 5.7m UK)
– Video drives viewing across all online platforms – with 106m requests for BBC Olympic video content across all online platforms, more than double seen for any previous events
– First truly mobile games – with 9.2m UK mobile browsers to the BBC’s Olympics coverage, making up 34% of all daily browsers to BBC’s Olympic coverage, and 12m requests from mobiles for video throughout the Games
– Opening up the breadth of the Games via BBC Red Button – with 23.7m viewers to the 24 SD, HD and Freeview streams throughout the Games, and every single stream seeing at least 100,000 viewers
– Over a 24 hour period on the busiest Olympic days, total traffic to bbc.co.uk exceeded that for the entire BBC coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2010 (matches) – on the busiest day, the BBC delivered 2.8 petabytes, with the peak traffic moment occurring when Bradley Wiggins won Gold with over 700 Gb/s
– The London 2012 Olympics were the first truly mobile Games. Audiences accessed BBC’s content in ground-breaking numbers on mobile devices, continuing the trend to watch video on-the-go with:
– 1.9m download of BBC’s Olympics mobile app for iOS and Android smartphones
– 40% of browsers accessing BBC’s Olympics coverage were from a mobile at weekends (30% during the week) – averaging 34% per day
– 9.2m UK mobile browsers throughout the Games, with 2.8m UK mobile browsers on the peak day
– On TV, the BBC’s Red-Button service opened up the breadth of Olympic content to audiences with the simple press of a button.
– 23.7m people viewed the 24 live SD, HD & Freeview streams throughout the Games for at least 15 minutes
– Audiences viewed specialist sports such as Judo and Weightlifting in considerable numbers
– Every single Red Button stream received 100,000 viewers at some point during the Games
– this has really been the multi-platform Games, where audiences have consumed our content across PC, mobile, tablet and connected TV at different times of the day.
Our data below splits out the four screens across 24 hours, to reveal some key insights:
PC usage maxes out during the week at lunchtime and during mid-afternoon peak Team GB moments
Mobile takes over around 6pm as people leave the office but still want to keep up to date with the latest action
Tablet usage reaches a peak at around 9pm: people using them as a second screen experience as they watch the Games on their TVs, and also as they continue to watch in bed
28:21 – Jeremy Hunt pledges fastest broadband network in Europe by 2015
– The UK will have the fastest broadband network of any major European country by 2015, the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has pledged.
– The commitment marks a firming up of the government’s original target to create the “best” superfast broadband network in Europe by the end of this parliament, and follows a critical House of Lords’ report into the national broadband strategy published last month.
– “To really be the best you need to be the fastest,” Hunt told broadband experts at “Silicon Roundabout”, the area around Old Street on the fringes of the City of Londonwhere many technology firms and start-ups are based. “I am today announcing an ambition to be not just the best overall, but specifically the fastest broadband of any major European country. Indeed we may already be there.”
– Garbage – from Akamai – UK average measured connection speed according to Akamai is 5.6 Mbps, an improvement of 20% on last years result, but still only places us at 15th position across Europe, (21st in the global table).
30:27 – Netflix reaches 1,000,000 subscribers on the UK
– Netflix has said it has hit the 1 million subscriber mark in the UK and Ireland, just over seven months after the US subscription video on demand service launched in the countries.
– The company, which launched in the UK and Ireland on 9 January, is aiming to take on rivals including Amazon-owned LoveFilm and BSkyB.
– Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, said that the milestone proved that there is a significant appetite for a new rival to offer cut-price subscription packages of on-demand films and TV shows.
– Netflix claims that hitting 1 million registered users in the UK and Ireland in seven months was four times faster than Twitter managed on a global basis, and nearly twice as fast as Facebook and location-based service Foursquare.
– Hastings said the US company intends to pry premium Hollywood movie rights away from BSkyB, promising to be “really aggressive in our bidding.”
31:41 – Onlive sold to another company
– OnLive confirmed today that its assets have been sold to a new, still unnamed company. OnLive will continue to operate its services during the transition and the new company is backed “by substantial funding,” said a spokeswoman for Steve Perlman, the chief executive of OnLive.
“We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly formed company and is backed by substantial funding, and which will continue to operate the OnLive Game and Desktop services, as well as support all of OnLive’s apps and devices, as well as game, productivity and enterprise partnerships,” the company said in a statement. “The new company is hiring a large percentage of OnLive, Inc.’s staff across all departments and plans to continue to hire substantially more people, including additional OnLive employees. All previously announced products and services, including those in the works, will continue and there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services. We apologize that we were unable to comment on this transaction until it completed and were limited to reporting on news related to OnLive’s businesses. Now that the transaction is complete, we are able to make this statement.”
– Employees at the Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters of OnLive walked in and out during the afternoon, declining to comment. Some of them left with boxes full of their belongings.
– Earlier in the day, Perlman held an all-hands meeting where he told the staff that the company was being dissolved. Later on, everybody received a packet. Some of those packets were invitations to join the new company. We have heard that the number might be about 70 people. We hear that many employees are very upset, particularly those with exercised stock.
– Joystiq is reporting that the company has been sold to a third-party and that at least 50 percent of the staff was laid off. A former employee told Joystiq that employees were not getting severance and that OnLive was dealing with operating costs of $5 million a month.
– Despite its claim of two million users, our source says that the average peak amount of concurrent users was around 1,800. The two million number accounts for anyone who has signed up for the service; actual usage was remarkably lower.
35:25 – Call of Duty Black Ops 2
– Significant changes to the multiplayer game
– Calling eSports “a major, major initiative for us,” game design director David Vonderhaar says that Call of Duty is already a sport, but it needs the production, the personality, and the means to broadcast that sport to a wider audience. To help make that happen, Treyarch is building new tech for Black Ops 2 to more easily reach the masses, through in-game livestreaming and color commentary tools branded CODcasting.
– Black Ops 2’s broadcasting tools are simple to use. CODcasters simply join a multiplayer game as a spectator and are given the ability to see all the action in a multiplayer game from different views for play-by-play coverage. (To prevent cheating, live streams of multiplayer matches are delayed a few seconds.)
– During CODcasting matches, viewers will see a score panel at the top of the screen. “Score panel is our way of linking this to sports,” says Mike Rufail, Treyarch’s in-house eSports advisor. “Essentially, when you flick the channel over to a sports broadcast, you immediately will find out what the score is, how much time is left in the game, who’s in the lead. It’s very necessary information.”
– With League Play, Vonderhaar says he wants Black Ops 2 multiplayer to be fun at every level, not just for the hardcore Call of Duty player who spends hours each night honing his headshots. To address that, Treyarch is introducing skill-based matchmaking for Black Ops 2 multiplayer, an attempt to ensure that players are competing with others of a similar skill level.
– Treyarch is proposing seven seasonal brackets, in which players will be placed based on their performance as time goes on. Black Ops 2 will find an initial bracket for you somewhere after a few games, but players are expected to move up and down in their ranking as they win and lose in their division. They won’t be competing against the entirety of the Call of Duty-playing masses, but a smaller pool of about 500 to 1000 players near their skill level, Vonderhaar says.
37:45 – Simcity for the Mac
– Will launch in Feb, same time as PC
– Origin also coming to Mac later this year

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DigitalOutbox Episode 128

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

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

Picks

DigitalOutbox Episode 117

DigitalOutbox Episode 117
DigitalOutbox Episode 117 – Pirate Bay, John Lewis Broadband and Google Drive

Playback
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Shownotes
0:49 – Pirate Bay blocked in the UK
– File-sharing site The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK internet service providers, the High Court has ruled.
– The Swedish website hosts links to download mostly-pirated free music and video.
– Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must all prevent their users from accessing the site. A sixth ISP, BT, has asked for more time to consider its position.
– “Sites like The Pirate Bay destroy jobs in the UK and undermine investment in new British artists,” the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) said.
– The BPI’s chief executive Geoff Taylor said: “The High Court has confirmed that The Pirate Bay infringes copyright on a massive scale. “Its operators line their pockets by commercially exploiting music and other creative works without paying a penny to the people who created them. “This is wrong – musicians, sound engineers and video editors deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else.”
– In November 2011, the BPI asked the group of ISPs to voluntarily block access to the site. The request followed a court order to block Newzbin 2, a site also offering links to download pirated material.
– The ISPs said they would not block the site unless a court order was made, as is now the case.
– Virgin Media told the BBC they will now comply with the request, but warned such measures are, in the long term, only part of the solution.
“As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media complies with court orders addressed to the company but strongly believes that changing consumer behaviour to tackle copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price.”
– http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-unblock-the-pirate-bay-111004/
– The UK Pirate Party is also prepared for the block and is offering a reverse proxy which allows blocked Internet users to access The Pirate Bay. – http://tpb.pirateparty.org.uk/
– With censorship and plans to monitor traffic, is it time to configure a VPN?
3:25 – John Lewis Broadband
– John Lewis Broadband offers no activation fees, freephone support and a free wireless router. There are three packages, all on 12-month “no hidden catches” contracts.
Standard – up to 16Mbps, 20GB cap, £24.50 a month
Unlimited – up to 16Mbps, No limit, £31.50
Fibre – up to 38Mbps, 100GB cap, £38.50
– In the any questions section of its website John Lewis Broadband says it uses traffic management. Also the service will “let you know if you’re approaching your package’s limit. Once you’ve reached it you can buy more gigabytes for £5 per 5GB”.
– This is not the budget end of the market, where Tesco Broadband plays, for instance.
– Never knowingly…?
4:46 – Facebook buys Patents from Microsoft
– Facebook announced today that it will pay $550 million to Microsoft for the right to 650 patents and patent applications. Microsoft acquired those patents and hundreds of others in a deal with AOL earlier this month.
– The move comes as Facebook wades deeper into the waters of patent litigation while it readies for an IPO expected in May. The social network is in a major patent lawsuit with Yahoo and is also wrestling with dozens of smaller patent suits.
– The Facebook purchase is especially intriguing, however, as it suggests a deepening strategic alliance between Facebook and Microsoft . The latter was an early investor in the social network and both companies have common rivals in Google and Apple.
– Microsoft acquired 925 AOL patents and patent applications in an auction for $1 billion. Shortly after, reports stated that Facebook had been an unsuccessful bidder in the auction.
6:16 – Skydrive Improves
– Today, we’re excited to take another big step towards our vision by making SkyDrive far more powerful. There are new storage options, apps that connect your devices to SkyDrive, and a more powerful device cloud that lets you “fetch” any file from a Windows PC. Taken together with access from popular mobile phones and a browser, you can now take your SkyDrive with you anywhere, connect it to any app that works with files and folders, and get all the storage you need—making SkyDrive the most powerful personal cloud storage service available.
– Here’s what’s available for use, starting now:
SkyDrive for the Windows desktop (preview available now). View and manage your personal SkyDrive directly from Windows Explorer on Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista with this new preview app available in 106 languages worldwide.
Fetching files through SkyDrive.com. Easily access, browse, and stream files from a remote PC running the preview app to just about anywhere by simply fetching them via SkyDrive.com.
SkyDrive storage updates. A new, more flexible approach to personal cloud storage that allows power users to get additional paid storage as their needs grow.
SkyDrive for other devices. We’ve updated the SkyDrive apps on Windows Phone and iOS devices, bringing better management features and sharing options to those devices. We’re also releasing a new preview client for Mac OS X Lion, letting you manage your SkyDrive right from the Finder.
– So to claim your free 25gb, you need to upgrade to that option on the skydrive site
9:17 – Dropbox Improves
– We’re super excited to announce a whole new way to share: now you can send a link to the files or folders in your Dropbox!
– Sharing with friends and family is easy! Once you’ve saved that video of your niece’s birthday party to Dropbox, just make a link to send to grandma and she can simply watch online — no download required! This saves you the hassle of having to re-upload or attach it to an email.
– Dropbox for Windows and Mac Updated with Auto Photo Uploading and Up to 3 GB of Additional Free Space
– Windows/Mac: The desktop Dropbox client has been updated with the ability to automatically upload photos from SD cards and smartphones directly to Dropbox. When you do so, you’ll get a free 500 MB of space and if you continue to upload pictures you can get up to 3GB of additional space.
11:51 – Google Drive
– Just like the Loch Ness Monster, you may have heard the rumors about Google Drive. It turns out, one of the two actually does exist.
– Today, we’re introducing Google Drive
Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items.
Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just… there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.
Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner and more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip into Drive, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time.
– You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.
– So more free than dropbox but less user friendly?
Privacy issues? PC Mag
17:54 – Apple
– they’ve got loads of cash ($110 billion). Nothing more to say, is there? Well,
– Looks like Tim Cook doesn’t quite want to go as “thermonuclear” on rival phone makers as Apple founder Steve Jobs did. Cook didn’t sound so eager to pursue patent infringement suits against Samsung, Motorola and HTC on today’s quarterly earnings call.
“I’d highly prefer to settle versus battle,” Cook said on Apple’s earnings call today. “But you know the key thing that’s very important is that Apple doesn’t become the developer to the world.” He added very pointedly, “I’ve always hated litigation. We need people to invent their own stuff.”
– WWDC – June 11th – 15th – nothing more to say. iOS 6? Mountain Lion?
– could buy Amazon and Nokia and RIM http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/04/24/apple-could-theoretically-buy-amazon-nokia-and-rim-with-its-pile-of-cash/
22:19 – O2 Mobile Wallet
– Mobile network O2 has launched a smartphone app that allows users to transfer up to £500 via text message.
– It also allows customers to “digitise” their debit and credit cards to speed up purchases from online stores.
– The firm also intends to allow users of phones with near-field communication (NFC) chips to make contactless payments in high street shops.
It is the latest of several firms to charge retailers a transaction fee for making it easier to shop.
– The service will be free to consumers at first, but O2 said that it would charge 15p for each money message sent by text at a later date.
– The network provider said that more than 100 retailers had agreed to accept payments from the service. They include Debenhams, Comet, Sainsbury’s Direct and Tesco Direct.
– Users can also benefit from a search facility that compares how much goods cost, the ability to load money onto the app from their debit cards and a “transaction history” that keeps track of what they have spent.
– The firm said it had held off introducing contactless payments as only a handful of retailers had installed the necessary systems.
– O2 and its rivals Vodafone and EverythingEverywhere are working on a national mobile payments service – dubbed Project Oscar. They had hoped to have it up and running in time for the London Olympics. But the project is held up in Brussels, subject to an anti-competitive investigation.
24:45 – Visa launches v.me
– European digital wallet
– Launching this Autumn
– Combine bank accounts, credit cards into a payment service accessed via username and password
– It’s PayPal!
– Web only – mobile app’s and NFC…soon
25:32 – Spectrum is 30
– Released on April 23rd in 1982, the machine typified the British approach to industrial design – utilitarian but also idiosyncratic and characterful. It should have been buried by its more powerful contemporary, the Commodore 64, but somehow this strange little slab of plastic and rubber earned itself a considerable slice of the nascent home computingmarket, especially in Britain.
– Partly its success was about price. Since the launch of the ZX80 computer two years earlier, restless British inventor Clive Sinclair had been interested in computing for the masses.
Using cheap components and a minimalistic approach to design, he was able to manufacture machines at a lower cost than rivals such as Acorn, Apple and Tandy. The computer’s rubber keys, for example, were created from a single sheet, with a metal overlay to separate them – much less expensive than producing a conventional keyboard.
– So while the BBC Micro started at £235 for the Model A option and the C64 hit the shelves at around £350, the Spectrum launched at just £125 for the 16k version or £175 for the mighty 48k.
– Fond memories anyone?

Picks
Henry
TunnelBear
– easy to use VPN
– free for 500mb per month
– $4.99 pm for (unlimited) or $49.99 for a year

Ian
ScoTutor for Mac
– for Mac or iOs
– Free for a limited time
– Great tutorial app for those new to Mac’s
– 150 minutes all about the Mac – great if you’ve just picked up a Mac, or you parents for example have just started on a Mac.
– ScoTutor for iPad also now free, on Mac and iPad

DigitalOutbox Episode 102

DigitalOutbox Episode 102
In this episode the team discuss Google+, Netflix launching in the UK, Virgin Doubling Up and CES

Playback
Listen via iTunes
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Shownotes
0:57 – Google Search plus your World
– Big search engine update – personal results appear alongside web results in Google
– Basically, Google+ is everywhere
– Twitter annoyed
– Google surprised – it was Twitter that pulled out of their search deal
4:19 – Netflix launches in the UK
– Netflix is available now and anyone can get a one month free trial: click-to-watch TV programmes and films streamed instantly over the Internet to your smart TV, game console, computer, tablet or mobile device. After the free trial, it costs just £5.99 or €6.99 per month
– PS3, Xbox, Wii, iOS and PC/Mac – limited Android and Smart TV support
– Quite a good range of content both American and British though nothing much from last year or two. Price seems not bad. Speed and quality good.
– Get recommendations via Facebook friends
6:32 – Roku to launch in the UK
– Launched by end of Jan
– The entry-level Roku LT will sell for £49.99 (about $77) and the top of the line Roku 2 XS, which comes with a motion-aware remote control for online gaming, will sell for £99.99. That’s a bit of a premium over U.S. pricing, where both models sell for $49 and $99, respectively. Sales will be online and through Amazon.co.uk only for the time being, but the company said that it is going to add additional retailers in the coming months.
7:50 – Zeebox and Sky tie up
– Sky has bought a 10% equity stake in Zeebox, in a deal reportedly worth upwards of $15m, which was founded by BBC iPlayer developer Anthony Rose and former EMI board director Ernesto Schmitt.
– Will appear in Sky’s apps this summer
12:25 – CES
– Lots of tablets
– Lot of Ultrabooks
– Lots of TV’s
– Kinect for Windows
– Anything catch the eye – Samsung Smart TV’s and the 55” OLED
– The rest is all meh…
14:03 – iTunes Match
– False start on Thursday 15th, but launches on Friday 16th
– £20.99 yearly subscription
– Overwhelmed at first
– Ian – 11,500 library – uploaded 11GB of music (1500 tracks), but matched the others. 6,500 were of better quality than I had already – downloading was fast
16:08 – Virgin Doubling Speeds
– Virgin Media is to invest more than £100m on a programme that will more than double the broadband speed for most of its 4m internetcustomers.
– Virgin Media, which has tested speeds of up to 1.5Gb a second in a trial of tech businesses at the so-called Silicon Roundabout in London, is to spend £110m on the 18-month upgrade programme.
– The company says that those who subscribe to its up to 10Mb service – 74% of its 4.1m internet subscribers – will see their speed double to 20Mb.
– Those on its up to 20Mb tier, 12% of the total subscriber base, will see their speed tripled to 60Mb.
– The 9% who take 30Mb broadband will rise to 60Mb.
– And the 5% who take services from 50Mb to 100Mb will rise to a speed of between 100Mb and 120Mb.
– The top-tier speed – at 120Mb it will be the quickest offered in the UK – will enable customers to download a high-definition movie in about five minutes.
– BT’s response – “It is no surprise to see that Virgin are following our lead by doubling speeds. We announced we would do this for our fibre products last autumn and so they are trying to catch up with us.” Cocks 🙂
18:03 – Microsoft taking pirates to court
– Microsoft has accused high-street retailer Comet of pirating 94,000 Windows Vista and Windows XP recovery CDs and selling them to consumers.
– The software giant announced this morning that it had filed a suit against Comet Group PLC, accusing the group of manufacturing counterfeit discs at a factory in Hampshire and selling them through its UK retail outlets. Comet has 248 stores across the UK. A spokesperson for Microsoft was unable to say where the suit has been filed.
– The allegedly counterfeit recovery discs were then sold to customers who had bought desktops and laptops running Windows, Microsoft said. Microsoft’s associate general counsel for worldwide anti-piracy and anti-counterfeiting David Finn called Comet’s actions “unfair to customers” in this morning’s statement.
– “We expect better from retailers of Microsoft products – and our customers deserve better, too,” he said.
– In an official statement, Comet told The Reg it had sought legal advice from “leading counsel” to “support its view that the production of recovery discs did not infringe Microsoft’s intellectual property.”
21:41 – School ICT to be replaced by computer science programme
– The current information and communications technology (ICT) curriculum in England’s schools is a “mess” and must be radically revamped, the education secretary has announced.
– From September it will be replaced by a flexible curriculum in computer science and programming, designed with the help of universities and industry.
Michael Gove called the current ICT curriculum “demotivating and dull”.
He will begin a consultation next week on the new computing curriculum.
– “Instead of children bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word or Excel by bored teachers, we could have 11-year-olds able to write simple 2D computer animations,” he said.
Computer games entrepreneur Ian Livingstone, an adviser to Mr Gove, envisages a new curriculum that could have 16-year-olds creating their own apps for smartphones and 18-year-olds able to write their own simple programming language.
27:25 – rFactor 2 and Skyrim
– rFactor 2 Beta released! Whoop. £29.99 – “Pre-purchase” basically, buy the game now and you get access to the Beta (planned to run for around 6 months.)
– initial impressions – still not at the bleeding edge of graphics… but the underlying simulation appears stronger than ever!
– Skyrim – addicted. Enought said. Too many hours.

Picks
Ian
F.Lux
– Makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.
– Mac only
– Free
Chris
3D Laser Mapping
– Next gen Street View?
Henry
Action Movie FX
– Free app for iOS that allows you to add effects to your movies
– Great for blowing up your colleagues

DigitalOutbox Episode 100

DigitalOutbox Episode 100
In this episode the team discuss New New Twitter, Spotify App’s, new iOS apps and make some predictions.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:32 – New New Twitter
– Redesign web and mobile clients
– As a company, create the simplest, fastest service in the world that will allow us to reach every person on the planet. Went through entire service. Mobile, web, got it down to four key elements.
– Home Timeline (browser-style “home” icon). First navigational element. Simple, clean, universe of tweet is now contained within the tweet on multiple platforms. Web site, iPhone, Android, HTML5 mobile, Tweetdeck, etc. Retweets, favorites, etc. all right there. Additionally, click on tweet, copy embed code, stick in the story. Everything follows it in. Wasn’t just a change in the interface. Not just adding a couple features to Twitter. Product engineers, infrastructure engineers focused on making it as fast as possible.
– Connect (@ symbol). We wanted to create the easiest way to reach others. Enter username. Or retweet. Where you’re being mentioned. Any conversations that you have. Everything that you’re doing socially on Twitter is in here.
Discover (# symbol). The newest navigation element. When people see a hashtag on a billboard, can click on the symbol, enter the tag they say, and relevant conversations will surface. Come to Twitter and want to see what’s happening in your world. More than 250 million tweets per day, we’ll surface whatever seems relevant to your world. Discover experience is personalized, so the more you engage, the more personalized they’ll become. Activities. What tweets are my friends following. Who are friends following.
Me (profile outline icon). We wanted to group everything that happens about you in one specific area. Favorites, media, tweets. Wanted to tell more compelling stories. Profile pages for individual users much richer. Media: pictures, videos, etc. Best place to represent yourself on the internet. Also for brands.
– Also providing bigger branding pages
– Twitter for iPhone and Android also available right now. Downloading app unlocks new version on web site. Roll out new version to 100% of users in the next few weeks.
– Tweetdeck also rewritten for Mac – native and no longer written in Adobe Air but missing many of the power features of Tweetdeck
8:04 – Spotify Apps
– Not a pivot, but Spotify is adding apps
– Spotify is letting third party developers expand on its functionality using its API and offering the results to users in a new HTML5 app directory, CEO Daniel Ek announced today in New York.
– Developers have already have already built apps with features like the ability to find and purchase concert tickets, a way to display a song’s lyrics on-screen through TuneWiki and deeper Last.fm integration for better music recommendations.
– Rolling Stone cofounder and publisher Jann Wenner took to the stage to sing Spotify’s praises, just before Ek unveiled the application that Rolling Stone built to work within Spotify. It takes publication-curated playlists to a new level with a rich HTML5 interface and more room for editorial content.
– The move attempts to rebrand Spotify as more of a platform, much as Facebook once did when it opened up the ability for developers to build applications on top of the social network. It’s a wise move for Spotify, which faces a rapidly-expanding user base and only a limited capacity to roll out new features itself. By opening up its platform to developers, Spotify allows for more rapid innovation without distracting itself from the core product.
– Other available apps include SongKick, The Guardian, Billboard and Soundrop, presumably with plenty more to come. Any developer can code apps for Spotify but they do have to be approved by the company before appearing in the directory.
– Loving this – great playlists – really helps with discovery
– Brought me back to Spotify…but don’t know for how long
11:39 – Super Connected Cities coming to the UK
– The government will take £100m from the £5bn national infrastructure investment pot over the course of this Parliament in a move to speed up broadband networks in selected urban areas. Rural areas, meanwhile, have been passed over. George Osborne announced the extra cash that the likes of BT and Virgin Media will be able to bid for in his autumn statement today.
– “The government will invest £100m to create up to 10 ‘super-connected cities’ across the UK, with 80-100 megabits per second broadband and city-wide high-speed mobile connectivity,” said the government in its National Infrastructure Programme report, which was published immediately after the chancellor finished his mini budget speech in the Commons today.
– “There will be a particular focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and strategic employment zones to support economic growth. Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff and London will all receive support from this fund, and a UK-wide competition will decide up to six further cities that will also receive funding.”
– That investment comes on top of the £530m Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funds already dished out by the government to local authorities and Scotland.
Over the government’s next fiscal year (2012-2013), £20m will be allocated to help fun “super-connected cities”. In 2013/14 a further £60m will be spent, then in 2014/15 the final £20m left in that pot will be used.
– But, surprisingly, no extra cash was set aside by Osborne today for rural areas that are crying out for investment in broadband.
14:58 – Ofcom 2012/2013 Plans
– The auctioning off of the 800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrums for 4G internet is coming as soon as the British FCC has booted off the remaining TV services that still use ’em.
– It’s will open an online complaints site (for when the Saturday evening show of your choice offends you), crack down on slow broadband speeds and keep the airways clear for the Olympic Games.
19:12 – Carrier IQ
– Carrier IQ software secretly installed on millions of mobile phones reports most everything a user does on a phone. Numbers called, text messages, websites visited, passwords – everything. Shudder.
– Android only…..so everyone thought
– On Blackberry and iOS too
– But then a lot of carriers said it wasn’t installed – certainly not in the UK
23:52 – Jawbone UP
– Released recently but having charging and bricking issues
– Jawbone is offering consumers who have problems a full refund, no questions asked, even if they choose to keep their $99 device. Or they can ask for a new device. Consumers can request their refund starting Dec. 9 here. People who received an UP as a gift will also be able to participate in the refund. As an alternative to the refund, Jawbone is also offering users credit toward a purchase of another Jawbone product.
– The company said it will resume taking orders once the issues have been fixed. And it will continue to push out software updates.
– Finally, Fitbit can be bought in the UK – £79.99 – from end of December
26:33 – Netherlands Anti-Piracy Group caught Pirating
– Anti-piracy group BREIN is caught up in a huge copyright scandal in the Netherlands. A musician who composed a track for use at a local film festival later found it being used without permission in an anti-piracy campaign. He is now claiming at least a million euros for the unauthorized distribution of his work on DVDs. To make matters even worse, a board member of a royalty collection agency offered to help the composer to recoup the money, but only if he received 33% of the loot.
29:53 – RIM take a charge
– announced it will book a $485 million write down on its large PlayBook tablet inventory in the company’s fiscal third quarter.
– The struggling Canadian device maker said it shipped around 150,000 PlayBooks to its channel partners during Q3, but sell-through to end users over the same period was higher than that amount, indicating retailers had leftover inventory. By comparison RIM shipped 200,000 tablets during its fiscal second quarter, and half a million in Q1 when the PlayBook first went on sale.
– In a statement RIM said it will require “an increase in promotional activity” to drive sales to end users, blaming weak demand on the competitive tablet market and the delay in the release of its PlayBook OS 2.0 software update.
31:52 – Web OS is Open Sourced
– HP to open source Web OS
– Say’s that new HP hardware will use Web OS
– Says they will make updates to it
– Reality is it’s dead? Android is the open source winner in the mobile and tablet space – can’t see it ever getting traction
33:08 – Facebook buys Gowalla
– Talent buy or killing a rival?
– Won’t buy app or data
– Service will wind down in January – plan to provide a way of exporting data
35:43 – Path v2
– For iOS and Android
– Private social network – quite lovely – so many novel design features
38:15 – Flipboard
– Really well done implementation of the iPad app
39:41 – iPlayer Update
– Now for iPhone, iPod Touch
– Also supports Airplay
– Streaming over 3G
– The Android version of the app remains restricted to wi-fi connections for the time being, but the BBC said a web version of the software would support 3G streams soon.
– The BBC said it had worked closely with network operators, but analysts fear it could put their systems under strain.
40:20 – Micorsoft release iOS Apps
– Skydrive – simple cloud app
– Kinectimals – good version of Xbox game
41:44 – GTA III for iOS and Android
– High end devices only
– Dec 15th – $4.99
– iOS: iPad 1 and 2, iPhone 4 and 4S, iPod touch 4th Generation
Android Phones: HTC Rezound, LG Optimus 2x, Motorola Atrix 4G, Motorola Droid X2, Motorola Photon 4G, Samsung Galaxy R, T-Mobile G2x
Android Tablets: Acer Iconia, Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Dell Streak 7, LG Optimus Pad, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1, Sony Tablet S, Toshiba Thrive
– Virtual controls will be awkward?
42:44 – Skyrim
– Don’t look too close, and it’s absolutely beautiful – and soooo atmospheric.
– Personally find it quite hard but a fantastic time-sink.
– Only scratched the outer surface but impressed.
– Paul has got totally consumed by this game – which is extremely unlike him.
44:06 – XBox Dash Update
– New look – Metro UI
– New features – cloud storage of profile, Windows Phone app, iOS app – big surprise, voice search via connect, beacon
– Better?
– BBC not available until 2012, still not sure what will actually appear

Predictions
Ian
– Best Tech – iMac, Airport Extreme, Fitbit, Halo Reach
– Worst Tech – PS3
– 2012 Predictions
– iPad 3 – retina display iPad – will be buying
– See the new Xbox
– New Wii a flop compared to previous Nintendo consoles
– Apple growth slows – reaching a saturation point on iOS
Chris
– Best Tech – iPad 2 is a great bit of kit that has seeped into my daily routines. Love my Blue Yeti Pro mic.
– Worst Tech – Not so much worst tech – but annoyance that some of the biggest moves have been “US Only” this year. Kindle Fire is now rumoured for UK in new year… but still no announcements on content deals. iCloud ahead of the curve of peoples internet connections. No tablets taking it to Apple yet. PS hate the magic mouse. I know it’s not a “this year” thing! But I detest it that much, this one spans the ages.
– 2012 Predictions
– I will lose some of my life to rFactor 2,Looking forward to Mass Effect 3 and surely new Ghost Recon will be out! PS3/XBOX rumours will ramp up – if one gets announced, the other will be hot on the tails. Believe that they want current boxes to last till 2013 though. Surely iPlayer WILL make it to XBOX this year!!!
– Siri to iPad 3. Apple need some bigger (less incremental) products to herald the “post Jobs” era. Return of the “One more thing”. A lot of Bull Crap will be spread about iPad 3 and iPhone 5 that never materialises.
– Haven’t seen the “next big thing” that I see killing it next year… guess that’s the state of the economy… So an evolution year likely. Tweaks rather than revolution.
Henry
– Best Tech – iPad 2, trello.com
– Worst Tech – NFC – not so much bad tech as just not delivering on promise.
– 2012 Predictions
– Samsung to become #1 mobile manufacturer by market share
– Apple will not release a TV