Tag: broadband

DigitalOutbox Episode 48

DigitalOutbox Episode 48
In this episode the team discuss Android and iPad pricing.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
2:47 – Be Careful What You Tweet
– Fines £385, costs of £600
– The Tweet he sent to his 600 “followers” in the early hours of 6 January said: “Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week… otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!”
– The court heard he had now lost his job because of the prosecution.
– Be careful what you tweet
– Ridiculous
5:37 – Pirate Bay Offline
– several Hollywood film studios won an injunction against its bandwidth provider CB3ROB via a court in Hamburg
– It has no internet connection
– A Pirate Bay source told TorrentFreak that it is already working on a backup solution to bring the site online; the servers themselves haven’t been touched (or moved) rom their well-guarded – and highly secret – location; they simply need to be routed through another provider.
– Might not be that easy – running out of friends as movie and music industry pursue it
7:02 – Android OS pulls ahead of iPhone in smartphone market
– slips into second place behind RIM
– RIM 36%, Android 28%, iPhone 21%
– possibly to do with 2-for-1 sales at Verizon???? (Chris disagrees ;P )
– having a variety of handsets from different manufacturers obviously helps
– http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/10/android-os-pulls-ahead-of-apple-in-smartphone-market/
– Apple spokesperson responds by adding in ipod touches to the iphone sales figures and says “So what?” – http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100511/apple-on-npd-android-outselling-iphone-claim/?mod=ATD_rss
Chris – I think the impact of an upcoming new iPhone, plus people now buying iPad as well. Plus some VERY compelling Android devices that are now fairly ahead of the curve and maybe (just maybe) some backlash about Apple approach.
12:22 – Google stops selling Nexus One direct online
– U-Turn for search giant.
– Store “not lived up to expectations” people like to try before they buy with phones apparently.
– Customer service issues perhaps? Or simply a lack of marketing $ spent promoting Nexus one?
17:44 – Google WiFi collection blunder
– Google has admitted that for the past three years it has wrongly collected information people have sent over unencrypted wi-fi networks.
– came to light after German authorities asked to audit the data the company’s Street View cars gathered
– These snippets could include parts of an email, text or photograph or even the website someone may be viewing.
– As soon as we became aware of this problem, we grounded our Street View cars and segregated the data on our network, which we then disconnected to make it inaccessible
– Maintaining people’s trust is crucial to everything we do, and in this case we fell short. So we will be:
– Asking a third party to review the software at issue, how it worked and what data it gathered, as well as to confirm that we deleted the data appropriately; and
– Internally reviewing our procedures to ensure that our controls are sufficiently robust to address these kinds of problems in the future.
– In addition, given the concerns raised, we have decided that it’s best to stop our Street View cars collecting WiFi network data entirely.
– Henry’s just waiting for the lawsuits
22:27 – UK iPad Pricing
– Best for light/irregular 3G usage: Orange’s 5p/MB pay as you go tariff
– Best for regular 3G usage: Orange’s pay monthly £15 for 3GB
– Best for heavy 3G usage: Orange’s iPad Monthly £25 for 10GB
– Best for light/irregular 3G and wi-fi usage: O2’s £2 a day/500MB offer (unlimited wi-fi on 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)
– Best for regular 3G and wi-fi usage: O2’s £10 a month for 1GB offer (unlimited wi-fi on 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)
– Best for heavy 3G and wi-fi usage: O2’s £15 a month for 3GB (unlimited wi-fi on 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)
– O2’s unlimited wi-fi offering makes its offer best for customers who expect to use their iPad on the go.
– http://electricpig.co.uk/2010/05/17/ipad-uk-apple-approved-routes-to-an-ipad-discount/
– In a complete failure of foresight, Henry’s prediction of a network subsidised ipad looks increasingly unlikely.
– Henry is clearly rubbish at this prediction lark… 🙂
– Co-Pilot for the iPad!!! Stick that bad boy to the car windscreen!
30:50 – Get your eBook in the iBook store
– Lulu is a certified aggregator – will allow you to publish your book to iBook store – wow
– Must be valid epub file and have an ISDN number – Lulu will assign for free and convert to epub
– Pricing – 80% of profit after Apples cut – On a $9.99 book, for example, you will receive $5.60 .
– Apple can decline content – only one so far out of hundreds
34:28 – BT extend broadband rollout and OnLive
– Originally its fibre services, offering speeds of up to 40 megabits per second (Mbps), were due to reach around 40% of the population by 2012.
– A £1bn investment will see the project roll out to a further 20% of the population by 2015.
– Secretly OnLive has been operating a test site in Europe from a BT (British Telecommunications plc) data center in Wales since 2009. And I’m happy to report, that over the European Internet infrastructure, OnLive is AWESOME. We’ve tested OnLive across all of Western Europe spanning from the UK to Italy and from Scandinavia down to Spain.
– Today we are announcing that BT, the largest broadband operator in the UK, has formed a partnership with and has made an investment in OnLive. We’ll be working together with BT to bring the OnLive Game Service to the UK, such that it operates reliably and with high quality over the UK’s Internet backbone to BT’s broadband customers. BT has an exclusive right to bundle the OnLive Game Service together with their broadband service offerings in the UK, although UK gamers will also be able to order the OnLive Game Service directly from OnLive to run over any UK ISP.
– Once we get the US service up and running, we’ll be sharing more details, including when we’ll be starting a UK public Beta (with UK postcodes, no less). One thing I can say is when we do launch in the UK, gamers will have the benefit of everything we’ve learned from the US launch, as well as the latest OnLive features. Also, unlike the US launch, where we are ramping up with PCs and Macs, then introducing the OnLive MicroConsole™ HDTV adapter later, the UK will launch on PC, Mac and HDTV from the get-go. BT say later this year in UK
– BT has also taken a 2.6 percent stake in the company.
41:01 – Used Games Tax
– EA introduce $10 online pass
– Comes included with game
– Sell game, new owner has to pay $10 to get online
– Sneaky.
44:59 – Red Dead Redemption
– reviews starting to trickle out – Game Informer: 9.75/10, Games TM: 9.00. IGN 9.8/10. Eurogamer 8/10 (!losers)
– http://ps3.nowgamer.com/reviews/ps3/9197/red-dead-redemption – 9.3/10
– metacritic – 96 (based on 16 reviews)
– looks awesome
– My pre-order is being processed 🙂
46:20 – Nintendo – Apple is the enemy of the future
– Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata says battle with Sony is over, Apple is the ‘enemy of the future’
– this is a month after semi-transformed-Hulk Reggie Fils-Aime stated iPhone OS wasn’t a viable platform for game development
– battle with Sony is a “victory already won”

Picks
Chris
Friv
– A plethora of flash games… Some bad. Some good. Some great.

Henry
Fish Text
– cheap international txts iphone app

Ian
Steam
– steam for mac….and pc.
– Front end on Mac is pretty poor
– 63 games at launch incl Civ 4, Braid, Portal
– Portal free until May 24th for both platforms too
– Downloading…slow….

DigitalOutbox Episode 39

DigitalOutbox Episode 39
In this episode the team discuss BBC cuts, broadband…plus our best pick ever!

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:31 – BBC Cuts
– Websites to half – online budget cut by a quarter
– Six Music and Asian network – six music is great!
– Cut on import spending
– Max spend on sport events of £300m
– Link out to newspapers, pull out of teen market, appease commercial rivals
8:00 – Google Bosses Convicted
– Italian court has convicted three Google executives in a trial over a video showing an autistic teenager being bullied
– The Google employees were accused of breaking Italian law by allowing the video to be posted online.
– Google removed the video within hours of being notified of its existence
– Convicted on privacy violations
– The UK’s former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said the case gave privacy laws a “bad name”.
– David Drummond, chief legal officer at Google and one of those convicted, said he was “outraged” by the decision.
– “I intend to vigorously appeal this dangerous ruling. It sets a chilling precedent,” he said.
“If individuals like myself and my Google colleagues who had nothing to do with the harassing incident, its filming or its uploading onto Google Video can be held criminally liable solely by virtue of our position at Google, every employee of any internet hosting service faces similar liability,” he added.
– Ramifications inevitable
– Scan content before allowing viewing? Impossible. (20hrs every minute uploaded? 1200 employees would be needed just to keep up and that wouldn’t cover the privacy issues raised in this case.)
11:57 – Google Streetview Fight
– Europe wants Google to refresh google streetview images every 6 months instead of every 12
– They also want Google to tell people they will be taking pictures ahead of them doing it
– Switzerland is suing Google, asking for images of walled gardens and private streets to be deleted
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/04/street_view_eu/
– Google says if EU gets it’s way “it would consider whether we want to drive through Europe again, because it would make the expense so draining”.
16:21 – Facebook News Feed Patent
– The world’s largest social network now own the patent for the news feed.
– Abstract: A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment is described. The method includes generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items, as well as limiting access to the news items to a predetermined set of viewers and assigning an order to the news items. The method further may further include displaying the news items in the assigned order to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewers and dynamically limiting the number of news items displayed.
– How can this be patented for something that was launched in 2006
– Flickr – news stream 2004, activity stream Jan 2006
– Twitter – July 2006
22:34 – Google Granted Location Based Advertising Patent
– Google was awarded last Tuesday a patent for location-based advertising, the potential bread and butter of a number of emerging mobile applications.
– covers using location for targeting, setting a minimum price bid for an ad, offering performance analytics, and modifying the content of an ad
– Now, companies like Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla and BrightKite have to be wondering what this means for them, as do some of the established big-time players, like Facebook and Apple.
24:11 – Apple Goes After HTC
– Apple has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the cell phone manufacturer.
– The suit involves “20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware
– We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.
– Why HTC and not Android?
– But that was from press release – actual lawsuit is…
– certain mobile communication devices including cellular phones and smart phones, including at least phones incorporating the Android Operating System (collectively, “the Accused Products”).
– It’s Google and Android and patents mention multi-touch
– Not for money…
– But the fact that the lawsuit was filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) as well as in a U.S. District Court in Delaware suggests that Apple is really going for the jugular. “The ITC does not award damages,” says Peter Toren, a patent lawyer with New York City law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. The only remedy the ITC can award is an order to stop the importation of the infringing product. HTC is based in Taiwan.
– Looks like Google may get involved. This may call Apple’s bluff. HTC getting the money of Google behind this lawsuit could lead to interesting results.
– Minority Report was out before the iPhone right? Seen as nearly all the gestures we use come from this concept (and no doubt other places before) they can go take a jump.
– This modern trend for patenting every single sneeze that happens during development is getting ridiculous – however the fact that US appear willing to grant the patents on those sneezes is even more farcical. It’s a waste of money and time and we end up paying for it by more expensive products and also for a delay in tech innovation.
30:13 – App Store Crackdown
– 5000 app’s and counting removed from AppStore
– Apple has changed policy on app’s, removing an app if its overtly sexual
– Seeing as there is an age rating feature on the iPhone, why do this now?
– 7 new rules
– http://www.tuaw.com/2010/02/21/apples-7-commandments-of-app-sex/
– I have spoken with Apple, and the following are the new rules:
No images of women in bikinis (Ice skating tights are not OK either)
No images of men in bikinis! (I didn’t ask about Ice Skating tights for men)
No skin (he seriously said this) (I asked if a Burqa was OK, and the Apple guy got angry)
No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs
No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex – all banned
Nothing that can be sexually arousing!!
No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content (not sure how Playboy is still in the store, but …)
– From developer of Wobble
– Probably a good move as more adult content could be found in lots of categories
– Phil speaks!
– “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see”
– “When asked about the Sports Illustrated app, Mr. Schiller said Apple took the source and intent of an app into consideration. “The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” he said.”
– Now wi-fi detectors are being removed
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/04/wifi_stumbling_iphone/
– Wi-Fi detection is something of a niche: there were never more than a handful of such applications in iTunes.
– But now even those have vanished as Apple decided they were using a “private framework”, and has pulled them off the shelves without explanation or apology.
– This is complete bullshit
– Why do Playboy and Sports illustrated get a pass but 500 other app’s don’t?
– Why do things like comics and other app’s get a 17 warning and Mobile Safari doesn’t?
– Fix it so that these app’s don’t appear if your parental settings prohibit it
– I don’t care about buying these app’s, it’s the hypocrisy and the app store built on moving sand
– Apple are getting themselves into tricker and tricker waters. Other main platforms all have better solutions.
– Android – free for all
– Win Mo 6.5 = controlled app store but anything goes if you want to install from other locations.
– Soon, they will control the sites you can visit on the internet. Then control the views you’re allowed to have. Exclude people from using the products who aren’t worthy. Where does this stop? They’re as bad as China.
38:50 – iPad News
– April 3rd in US
– Pre-order wi-fi and 3G from March 12th but pick up wi-fi only from 3rd
– Late April in UK
– With sterling crashing, £400+ is expected price now
– WSJ a lock in for iPad
– http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/04/penguins-ipad-formatted-books-shown-off-making-waves/
– Penguin books show options for iPad – future of books?
43:03 – We7
– Another music streaming option for UK
– £4.99 a month for advert free, higher quality streaming of music
– Millions of tracks
– £9.99 – iPhone app support (which is free), Android coming soon
– Similar to Spotify – offline playlists, 192kbps, no adverts
44:08 – Browser Choice
– From 1st March millions of Windows users in Europe will get to choose their default browser
– Choices are: Avant
Chrome
Firefox
Flock
Green Browser
Internet Explorer
K-meleon
Maxthon
Opera
Safari
Sleipnir
Slim
– Only guaranteed to see it if IE is default browser
– Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer browsers are randomly ordered on the first section of this screen.
– Lots of bitching still. Some complaining about sideways scroll to see lesser known browsers. Others complaining that 5 of the browsers use Trident (IE based renderer) 3 use Gecko 1 webkit and one opera based so not as much choice as it appears…
47:43 – Virgin to offer 100Mb in 2010
– Virgin Media to offer 100Mb/s by end of 2010
– No word on pricing
– Virgin currently offers three broadband packages: 10Mb/s, 20Mb/s and 50Mb/s, priced at £20, £30 and £38 per month on a broadband-only subscription.
– Also extending 200mb/s trial to Coventry
– Virgin Media’s chief executive, Neil Berkett, said: “There is nothing we can’t do with our fibre-optic cable network, and the upcoming launch of our flagship 100Mbps service will give our customers the ultimate broadband experience.”
– Ian – got my first BT Infinity Mail Shot – up to 40Mb, 2Mb up, 20GB limit, throttling in place, £50 activation, 18 month contract
50:17 – PS3 – The Fat Death
– We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.
– One day later…fixed
54:00 – iPhone Competitor from Sony
– Sony set to launch Sony Online Service to take on iTunes and provide games, music, films to PSP, Sony Ericsson phones and they’re also planning a PSP phone and a tablet.
– Hopefully better than the PSP Go, and is it too little too late anyway?

Picks
Henry
Attachment Scanner for Mail.app
– Don’t you just hate it when you send an email referring to an attachment, but forget the attachment?
– That never need happen again with this mail plugin for OS X. It scans your email for words like attach, attachment, attached etc and if there’s no attachment in those emails, it simply pops up a message box asking if you still want to send the message anyway.
– Simple, invisible, free.

Shakeel
Words with Friends
– £1.79 or Free
– turn based Scrabble type word game
– over 500,000 players
– 20 simultaneous games
– Push notifications tell you when it’s your turn
– invite friends through Facebook and Twitter
– very addictive
– some dirty sneaky cheaters cheesing me off though

Ian
Plants vs Zombies
– Superb game for iPhone
– Perfect pick up, play, stop 20 mins later…or 2 hours
– 300,000 copies sold in……………..9 days!
– More than $1 million in sales
– Current fav games

DigitalOutbox Episode 28

DigitalOutbox Episode 28
In this episode the team discuss Google, JooJoo, Boxee and Tweeting during sex.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:56 – Google Search Event
– innovations combining these trends and mobile phones. Search by sight. Search by location, and search by voice.
– Near Instant Voice Translation
– showed a demo of “talk in English, run voice recognition, translate into Spanish, then do voice synthesis in Spanish.” So basically a Babel fish
– bake location into the Google.com homepage. New feature: “Near me now” on Google.com mobile. Hit Near Me now and it shows you nearby restaurants, coffee shops, Bars, ATMS. Hit the down arrow, and it will show all the locations nearby.
– Today we have a new version of Google Mobile Maps for Android. Among new features are What’s Nearby feature. Longpress on a location hit What’s Nearby, and it has a list of nearby POIs.
– Google Goggles
– Take a picture of an item, and use that picture as the query. Say you have a bottle of wine to see if it’s any good. Take a picture. Looks it up, shows it has hints of apricots, etc. It’s in labs for two reasons. It’s nascent. Works in certain types of objects in certain categories. We want to be able to do any image. Today you have to frame a photo. In the future, just have to point at an object. We’re a long way from that. But today marks the beginning of that journey.
– Crap name
– How long before face recognition search?
– Great demo – http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/07/google-goggles-video
– Currently android only but will come to iPhone
– Google Real-Time Search
– http://google.com/trends / http://google.co.uk/trends
– http://www.google.com/search?q=google%20goggles&hl=en&gl=us&esrch=RTSearch&rtfu=1260216053&usg=9073
– Does a query for “Obama” into Google, results page comes up. Latest results for Obama streaming in. There is a widget on the standard results page, with results sliding by. They’re nested in the standard results page. This is the first time any search engine has integrated real time web into the results page. Google’s Matt Cutts just tweeted something, and it immediately showed up in the search results. This is huge.
– This is the first time we are presenting real-time web on the results page. What you see in this realtime section. Is a scroll bar to the right. You can scroll back and go forward. Shows the source (twitter.com). This is a comprehensive real-time web. With Tweets. News Articles, blog articles.
– New link under search options. “Latest results”. In addition to old ones, “Past hour, past 24 hours, past week, past year”. Available today. iPhone and Android
– Google trends is also leaving labs today.Rolling out real time search product over the next couple of days. You can always go to Google.com/trends page and clicking on a hot topic will show Google’s real time results.
– Two huge new partner announcements. Facebook will be providing us with a feed from Facebook Pages (shared publicly, obviously). Appearing in Google’s real time results. The second is MySpace.
– Q: How much real-time data are you crawling?
A: We’re crawling a lot of content ~1 billion pages a day. Many sources. Both new sources, and if a company announces a new product and does a release, we get that. And new blog posts. So we’re casting a very wide net. The key here is comprehensiveness of realtime integration.
– Q: How do you prevent spammers from taking advantage of real-time search results.
A: We have the best systems in place to prevent gaming of the system. Our spam lead out here (Matt Cutts) runs the best spam prevention team that there is out there. We have had experience with this for so long. We’ve developer algorithms so we can counter things almost before they happen. Real-Time is moving from minutes to seconds.
7:26 – Broadband Tax Details Revealed
– Alistair Darling in pre-budget report. £6 a year for all fixed line phone users so that people in Wales can have Broadband.
– Superfast broadband to 90% of the country by 2017… 2 0 1 7!!! In technology time-scales that’s just plain ridiculous.
– “It is estimated that the broadband tax would raise around £170m a year, which is some way short of BT’s estimate of £5bn needed to provide super-fast fibre services to every UK home.”
– Apparently, the Conservatives have pledged to scrap the tax if they win the election next year… So we should probably just ignore this until it goes away? But is there a need for this tax?
10:12 – Web Firms Oppose Digital Britain Clause
– Facebook, Google, Yahoo and eBay
– Want removal of clause 17 that gives any future Secretary of State powers to change copyright law as they see fit.
11:06 – Postcode Data to be free in 2010
– Currently organisations that want access to datasets that tie postcodes to physical locations cannot do so without incurring a charge.
– Following a brief consultation, the postcode information is set to be freed in April 2010.
– As part of this push, the government said it would start “consulting on making Ordnance Survey mapping and postcode datasets available for free reuse from April 2010.”
– The dataset that is likely to be freed is that which ties postcodes to geographic locations. Many more commercial organisations use the Postcode Address File (PAF) that ties post codes to addresses. Currently access to either data set incurs a charge.
– Harry Metcalfe, who helped sites get at postcode data, said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the decision to open up the OS data sets.
“If the right data is released in the right way, this will be a positive development,” he said.
– Unlikely to be the PAF – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/10/ordnance_survey_data_postcode_paf/
– Woo hoo – just hope it’s released without strings.
12:50 – US Games Company sues British Blogger
– In an internet defamation case that lawyers say could set an “extraordinary precedent”, an American games company is suing a British blogger in the Australian courts.
– Evony, an online games company registered in the US state of Delaware, is suing Coventry-based blogger Bruce Everiss for libel over a series of allegations made on his website. In a bizarre twist, however, Evony has decided not to pursue its case in Britain or America, but 10,000 miles away.
– A hearing in Sydney on Monday will determine whether or not the supreme court of New South Wales has jurisdiction – with the potential to set a precedent for the way defamation laws are applied to the online world.
– Evony’s owners, who boast that the game has more than 11 million players worldwide, have accused Everiss – a 30-year veteran of the computer games industry – of damaging their reputation with a series of claims made on his blog. Among the allegations that Evony is objecting to are claims that the game is exploitative and has links to another company that is already being sued for fraud by Microsoft.
– Evony’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment, but have previously said that the company intends to seek worldwide damages – a move believed to be a first in a case of this kind.
– The blogger himself, who does not intend to make an appearance in Sydney, has responded angrily to the action and accused Evony of libel tourism.
– He has suggested that if the case is allowed to proceed “it will create a precedent and open the floodgates for anyone to litigate anywhere against anyone they don’t like”.
15:44 – Facebook Changes Privacy Controls
– Facebook has rolled out its long touted updates to the privacy controls. Great.
– They are fine grained and allow you to control many aspects. They are clear and well implemented.
– But why the heck does it default to fully open!
– As a user, you are presented with a box informing you to update your settings.
23:15 – Tweet During Sex
– Best man rigs bed to tweet while couple are having sex – start time, end time, frenzy rating
– http://twitter.com/newlywedsontjob
26:03 – Google Chrome Beta for Mac
– Finally comes to the mac
– No extension support (there is in dev build) – in fact bookmakrs manager, app mode, task manager and gears support missing
– No flash blocker!
– Very fast though, faster than safari, for me anyway
– Needs xmarks support before I can use it seriously
– Also announced Extensions (previously dev only)
– http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/08/chrome-extensions-live/
– https://chrome.google.com/extensions
– Rem The Milk, Xmarks, Adblock etc etc – happy days
30:16 – UStream Live Recorder
– Live video streaming finally comes to iPhone
– 10-20 secodn delay but quality is fine
– App is free
– record videos right to the web, and allow others to watch them as they’re being recorded. These videos can also be archived so that people can watch them later, if they choose.
– easy to automatically tweet out when you go live, as well as to do things like share the videos on Facebook and YouTube. The live broadcast can also send out your location, if you’re into that sort of thing. The app also allows for chatting with viewers, and yes/no polling.
33:46 – Tesco iPhone Pricing
– For the 3Gs, £20 x 12 months + £407 = £647 or £60 x 24 months + £50 = £1,490
– Highest cost per month on 3GS or 3G but appealing 12 month contract instead of 18 or 2 years
– £60 – unlimited but limited by Fair Usage Policy…which is 1 TB of data!
– £20 – low minutes and texts
– Different but a bad different from current UK deals
– http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49304500,00.htm?s_cid=82
– cnet uk analysis implies that when you compare like for life cost of ownership over the same period, Tesco deals are best out there.
38:07 – Apple Sues Nokia
– Nokia sued Apple in Nov for 10 patent infringements
– apple now sues Nokia for 13 patent infringements
– “Other companies must compete with us by inventing their own technologies, not just by stealing ours.” That was the only official Apple statement we’ve yet seen on the matter, by Bruce Sewell, Apple’s General Counsel and senior vice president.
44:47 – Boxee Beta and Boxee Box
– private beta with a new and improved look
– users are greeted by a dashboard with three columns in the form of a newsfeed, featured content and a program queue
– newsfeed offers starred content and comments from Boxee, Twitter and Facebook friends
– center column is reserved for featured community content
– the program queue lets you to keep track of your Netflix queue and latest Boxee-related TV subscriptions
– In the past users were asked to differentiate between their local and web files. Boxee Beta mixes local and web content in recognition that users simply want to watch their favorite programs regardless of the formats or location of files
– plan to open up the Beta to the public on Jan 7th (at CES) – Over the next 4 weeks we will gradually release invitations to our early access users
– Also announced Boxee Box
– http://mashable.com/2009/12/07/boxee-box-dlink/
– Hardware partner is D-Link
– Wi-fi enabled, SD slot, HDMI, SPDIF and RCA Audio connections, plus two USB ports – full specs in Jan
– $200
– Design is pretty unique – height of a coke can
– But would your money be better spent on a laptop/mini-desktop that you can install the software on and use for other purposes?
50:50 – Google Phone
– A Google branded android phone which, if rumours are true, will be sold unlocked
– Game changer
– Android dogfood – http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/12/android-dogfood-diet-for-holidays.html
– The phone itself is being built by HTC, with a lot of input from Google. It seems to be a tailored version of the HTC Passion or the related HD2 (Unlocker scored some leaked pictures back in October which are of the same phone).
– From tweets: Yeah, it’s a hot, sexy mess. And I mean that in a good way. Similar form-factor to the iPhone, but with a smooth-brushed-metal-looking shell instead of a glossy one. And perhaps a smidgen lighter. Super fast, speech-to-text in EVERY app, awesome “live wallpapers” in the background that respond to touch in really beautiful ways. Like water ripples that emanate out from a touch.
– Rumours of January launch, but is it not just a rebrand of another phone?
– Called the Nexus One, It’s built by HTC, Google put a lot of effort into tweaking the stock Android interface, they’ll sell the phone direct online, and you’ll BYO service plan
55:43 – Milestone Sells Out In UK
– Retailer eXpansys is reporting that the just-launched Droid clone for GSM became “the fastest selling gadget in the website’s 11 year history, even more successful than the iPhone” when it sold out inside of three hours on its site on top of the roughly 1,000 preorders they had taken prior to the 10th.
– Expansys is a reasonably big seller in the UK, but only the geeks know it exists.
– The general public in the UK haven’t a clue what a milestone/droid is.
– It is only with Expansys exclusively for 2 weeks. From 21 December Play.com will also have it and from next year, it should be sold at phone shops from different networks
58:48 – Crunchpad is now the JooJoo
– Is available as pre-order (shipping within 8-10weeks) on thejoojoo.com – $499. Desktop stand $30.
– Boot to the internet in 9 seconds – fastest out there
– Could deliver HD on the go (Although it only mentions HD YouTube, Hulu and other Internet sites… screams – NOT 720p to me.)
– It’s a web browser with a touch interface – too dear, people will wait for Apple, damaged goods. (But what if Apple device does cost rumored $1000)
– After a long background story about how and why he partnered with Arrington on the Crunchpad (”I guess I had him at hello”), Rathakrishnan got down and dirty: “Unfortunately, Michael was unable to deliver. Michael was completely unable to deliver.” Rathakrishnan also criticized Arrington’s Internet-celebrity approach to talking up the Crunchpad before its launch. “Publishing pictures of an unfinished product on a blog … is not a recipe for success,” he said. In Rathakrishnan’s version of the story, Arrington spent his time blowing hot air about what he was going to do, while Fusion Garage did all the work to finish the design and build the product.
– Chris – But this clearly worked as there has been more buzz around this than plenty of other MID’s.
– http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10410960-250.html
– First hands on – good, fast to boot, no app’s, no storage, web browser and touch screen – too focussed, too expensive

Picks
Shakeel
Beat It
– Part beat machine, part rhythm (re)creation, totally addictive
– http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/beat-it/id335583964?mt=8
– listen to a track, lay down the beats, match the beat
– super retro 8-bit pixel-art graphics
– http://games.glu.com/game/beat-it

Ian
TuneChecker
– Find the cheapest price of music on the web
– Doesn’t compare quality of the music though so mileage may vary
– Also highlights free tracks
– Developed by moneysavingexpert.com

I Love Stars
– Sits in menu bar and shows you rating, lets you rate iTunes tracks
– Flash or play sound 3/4 way through playback of unrated song
– Supports keyboard shortcuts
– Free

Chris
Acrobat
– Adobe’s online suite. Includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation apps.
– Online PDF creation.
– Online meetings – whiteboards, webcams, mics, screen sharing and even screen control.
– Online repository for files.
– All run from Flash player.
– Free account limited to 5 PDF creations per day and 3 people limit in meetings. (Premium subscriptions available to raise limits.)

Tam
Free-OCR.com
– Free-OCR.com is a free online OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool. You can use this to perform OCR on any image you supply.
– This service is free, no registration necessary. We also do not need your email address.
– Just upload your image files. Free-OCR takes either a JPG, GIF, TIFF BMP or PDF (only first page).
– The only restriction is that the images must not be larger than 2MB, no wider or higher than 5000 pixels and there is a limit of 10 image uploads per hour.
– Supported by ad’s but a nice way of getting some OCR done quickly, for free without installing software