DigitalOutbox Episode 9
In this episode the team discuss the latest tech news.
Playback
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Shownotes
– Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Google DDoS
– Down for a couple of hours plus service impacted rest of the day
– Num 3 story on BBC news….perspective?
– Rumour now is that this was a DDoS against one person – http://mashable.com/2009/08/07/twitter-facebook-2/
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8190786.stm
– Russia to blame? – pro-Georgian blogger, known as Cyxymu, said he had been targeted for “telling the truth about the Russian-Georgian war” in his writings.
– Ev interview on Newsnight – awful journalism and editing – he looked bemused
– End of free news
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8186701.stm
– Will charge customers for news content across all it’s websites
– Would you pay to look at The Sun online?
– $3.4bn loss
– Agree that if they are successful other sites will follow
– Make content “better and differentiate it from other people”
– Google News Archive
– http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/extra-extra-updates-from-our-growing.html
– http://news.google.com/archivesearch
– Quadrupled the amount of newspapers
– Now have articles dating back to mid 1700’s
– All searchable – great resource
– Skype under threat of closure from licence issue
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/01/ebay-case-threatens-skype-shutdown
– Turns out eBay only gets issued a licence for the technology underlying the Skype service.
– The Skype founders company, Joltid, who issues the licence looks now as though it’s going to pull the plug on the licence over copyright infringement arguments.
– Skype was bought by eBay for $3.1billion – something which could now be worthless without the licence.
– It’s unclear what this will mean for users – whether eBay will develop it’s own tecnologies to continue to support the platform, whether we’ll all need to find a new service or whether Joltid will buy back Skype for a reduced rate.
– Friends Reunited sold for £25 million
– Bought by ITV for £125 million in 2005
– Bought by BrightSolid (owned by DC Thomson)
– Really bought for Genes Reunited as Brightsolid run Find My Past
– Is it relevant anymore – Facebook, Twitter taken over (London is top twitter using city in the world)
– Delicious.com upgrade
– New homepage – focus on recently bookmarked and tweeted messages
– No longer waits for a volume of bookmarks to show on homepage which takes time
– More focus on realtime
– Adding timelines and tag filtering to search
– Can tweet as you add links, sending to friends etc
– Flickr Search
– Much improved search
– Points to groups, photographers, tag clusters and places as well as photo’s
– Size control on photo’s
– Can search for creative common images as well
– Easily see notes, views, fav’s against each image
– Real opportunity to make flickr the place for quality image searching on the web but…
– Can’t sort by views, comments etc
– Can’t query by any of the camera metadata that flickr currently hold
–
– Both these show how yahoo can still compete but, is delicious still relevant? Is it too little too late?
– Windows 7 ‘E’ Cancelled – sanity prevails
– http://windows7news.com/2009/08/02/windows-7-‘e’-canceled/
– The European – ‘E’ – versions of MS Windows 7, due to be shipped without an internet browser, have been cancelled.
– It now looks as though the only sensible solution to the whole saga has been chosen as the way forward. The user will now be offered a selection of popular browsers to install from a menu.
– The solution still needs to be agreed officially but looks likely to be spread out across the windows suite of operating systems.
– Those who’ve ordered the ‘E’ versions already will most likely receive simply the full version of the operating system.
– This should also open the way for upgrade versions of the software to be sold – rather than forcing users down a full clean install of their computer.
– Palm complain again to USB Implementers Forum
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/05/palm_uses_apples_usb_vendor_id/
– Palm Pre changed vendor ID to Apple to foil latest iTunes update
– Says Apple are being anti competitive
– Should develop their own media player – can’t see how it’s anti competitive
– Get out
– Gary McKinnon
– Lost legal appeal against extradition
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/31/mckinnon_judicial_review_reaction/
– Will try and appeal to Supreme Court and Obama
– Arrested in 2002 hacked into 97 computers
– Hacked from UK, comp’s were in USA
– Now diagnosed with mild form of autism
– Terrorist charges in USA, faces 70 years in jail, fears for his mental health and welfare
– O2 data fail
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/05/o2_data_down_yet_again/
– Third time in three weeks
– Half a million text tweets since launching last week
– No explanation for the outages
– O2 loses iPhone exclusivity
– http://www.9to5mac.com/october_9_o2
– October 9th – other networks to sell 3G
– T-Mobile selling iPhones in the UK
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/03/t_mobile_i_phone/
– No publicity
– Limited to a small amount per week for people spending >£75 a month
– Apple
– Apple try to gag teenager with exploding iPod
– http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/5963015/Apple-tries-to-silence-man-and-his-daughter-over-exploding-iPod.html
– http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article6736587.ece
– Offered to refund money but denied liability
– Would only payout if owner signed a letter
– “agree that you will keep the terms and existence of this settlement agreement completely confidential”, and that any breach of confidentiality “may result in Apple seeking injunctive relief, damages and legal costs against the defaulting persons or parties”.
– Eric Schmidt resigns from Apple board
– Android and Chrome OS are conflicts of interest
– Eric has been an excellent Board member for Apple, investing his valuable time, talent, passion and wisdom to help make Apple successful,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest. Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s Board.
– FCC inquiry a factor as he is on the board of two out of the three companies at the centre of the inquiry?
– New hardware reference found in iPhone OS beta
– http://theappleblog.com/2009/08/05/mystery-product-reference-found-in-iphone-os-beta/
– iProd1,1 alongside standardMuxPTPEthernet
– Tablet with high speed wireless internet?
– iMac refresh/new features?
– http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/08/07/apples_next_imacs_rumored_with_compelling_new_features.html
– Blu-ray?
– Price drop?
– September?
– Prolific app developer banned from app store
– http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2009/08/05/banned-app-store-developer-auctioning-off-business/
– Had 900 app’s, mostly crap
– Planned to grow company and have around 10,000 app’s in app store by year end
– A good app store story
– Apple censors a dictionary
– http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/ninjawords
– Removes objecitonable words
– Still forces a 17+ rating
– Words like ass and screw omitted
– Didn’t apply this to dictionary.com’s app
– http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/phil_schiller_app_store
– Response from Phil Schiller
– Apple insisted on 17+, not the removal of words – that was the developer’s decision
– Developer since agreed
– Apple listening….communicating???
– Sex Offender app removed
– Dev may raise suit against Apple
– Rumour that e-book readers may be removed due to concern over copyright ownership
– Tom Tom for iPhone Priced?
– £113.85
– Includes suction mount for car and software
– Good value?
– CoPilot Live United kingdom – £25.99, lot’s of positive reviews, top 25 (no 11) in UK app store
– Gaming
– 80GB PS3 discontinued in Japan, rumours: either 160GB finally releases in JPN or … PS3 Slim http://gizmodo.com/5329524/80gb-ps3-discontinued-in-japan-one-step-closer-to-the-ps3-slim
–
– Gadgets ‘n Stuff
– Nikon launches S1000pj, first compact camera with built-in VGA projector, 12.1MP, 5x zoom, 2.7” LCD, $430 http://www.europe-nikon.com/product/en_GB/products/broad/1850/overview.html
– Pioneer SC-LX72 £1699, SC-LX82 £1799-£2000 – both with intimidating features: Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master audio decoding, DLNA audio streaming and internet radio access, and Class D amplification, 1080p up-scaling, 24p support, Five HDMI inputs and two outputs. http://www.trustedreviews.com/home-cinema/news/2009/08/04/Pioneer-Announces-SC-LX72–SC-LX82-AV-Receivers/p1
Picks
– Shakeel – HTML 5 Canvas examples, work with FireFox 3.5 and Safari 4, unable to try in IE but hear it don’t work or some bits do work but veeeeeeery slowwwwwwwwly
– http://www.phpguru.org/static/html5-canvas-examples
– From Ian (I know it’s your pick but try and mention this, slow I guess due to twitter DDoS) – http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/ – 0 lines of flash
– Ian – App Store Expense monitor
– http://wetfish.de/
– Free – lets you know how much you’ve spent in the app store – £165.07
– Let’s you edit prices as some prices have changed so you can get the true price of what you’ve paid – I’m nearer £185