Tag: google

DigitalOutbox Episode 49

DigitalOutbox Episode 49
In this episode the team discuss Google IO.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
0:47 – British Net Use Increases
– British web users are spending 65% more time online than three years ago, according to research of net habits.
– average surfer spends 22 hours and 15 minutes on the net each month
– Social networking gains, IM drops, e-mail rising
2:16 – Newzbin Gone
– owe the MPA £230,000 just in interim costs
– owe a software development house over £500k
– Newzbin closed May 19th
– The original site owners have confirmed that, based on source code fragments examined by them, and supplied by a third party, the site source code does appear to have been stolen and is in the hands of unknown parties.
5:36 – Google IO Day 1
– WebM Project
– http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/webm-google-h-264
– open, royalty-free codec that can run in HTML5 browsers without the need for Flash
– Google is donating a much better codec, called VP8, which it acquired with its purchase of On2 Techchnolgies. The WebM Project is a new container file format for Web video. It includes the VP8 video codec, the open Vorbis audio codec, file extensions and a new mime type.
– Any video player can adopt it, including Flash. And, in fact, Flash is one of the 40 launch technology partners supporting WebM.
– Chrome, Firefox, and Opera browsers will all support WebM, and Google will give it a big push by making YouTube videos support it as well. IE9 will support it too
– Google Wave Now Open
– Mmm, ok then
– Tech looking for a purpose?
– 1 million active users
– Can add to Google Apps for Domain
– Google Buzz API
– Now available and open to devs
– Tweetdeck, Seismic quick to support
– Will this save buzz or at least increase it’s usage?
– Chrome Web Store
– it’s a new store for finding and buying applications for use online
– Plants vs Zombies available for example
– HTML5 being pushed heavily
– Sports Illustrated demo HTML5 mag
– Chrome Web Store provides developers a window to over 70 million people, according to Google. It’s available in Chrome and Chrome OS and will be available in the Chrome Dev Center soon. For now, Chrome only.
– App’s will update automatically if bought via store
– Google Font Directory
– http://mashable.com/2010/05/19/google-font-api
– http://code.google.com/webfonts
– Google’s cross-browser solution is similar to what companies like Typekit and Fontdeck are doing, that is, providing users with a library of available fonts that they can easily embed into their sites.
– Google’s solution is unique in that it is comprised of open source fonts. Google’s Font API can be integrated into websites using either HTML or using a JavaScript WebFont Loader co-developed with Typekit.
– While Google’s font library isn’t as robust as some competing solutions, it is open source. In fact, the fonts in the library can even be downloaded and used in other ways including print.
22:17 – Google IO Day 2
– Android Stats
– http://mashable.com/2010/05/20/google-reveals-android-2-2-and-more-live
– More than 60 compatible devices.
– 21 OEMs, 48 countries, 59 carriers.
– Announcement: 100,000 daily activations of Android devices every day.
– Shot across the bow of Apple: Android is growing faster than every other smartphone maker except RIM, makers of the BlackBerry.
– Announcement: 50,000 applications in the Android marketplace.
– Froyo
– Better support for Microsoft Exchange, as well as new device admin APIs.
– Application data backup API.
– Cloud-to-Device messaging API. You can send a message to Google’s servers and can trigger an Android intent.
– If you send directions to your phone, it automatically opens up maps. No need to launch applications.
– Tethering and portable hotspot. We knew this would be coming, but it’s very cool. Demo’d iPad tethered to Android phone
– 2x-3x Javascript performance improvement. In addition, the V8 codec (announced yesterday) is coming to Android
– Google Maps tilts in the Android browser based on compass.
– Voice triggers: Saying “call” and a contact triggers the call.
– The microphone is in the browser. They’re showing it off in Google Translate, where “Can you help me find the nearest hospital,” is not only translated, but it’s repeated via voice to others
– Gundotra is railing againts Apple for not playing Flash, telling a story about how his daughter couldn’t go to her favorite website (Nickelodeon) on an iPad and asked for an Android phone.
– Android apps finally support installation on SD Card. If there is no space on your phone, it’ll automatically place the app onto your SD card.
– One-step updating of apps announced. Much easier to update.
– Marketplace is much improved
– Buy an app from marketplace – sent to your phone – no need to desktop sync
– Also allows buying of music – web competitor to iTunes?
– Android Froyo can bring your entire home music library to your phone as a stream. So yes, all of your iTunes songs can be streamed onto your Android phone, so long as you have an Internet connection. They’ve bought Simplify Media – wowsers.
– Android – It plays nicely with Flash and HTML 5. It does native and web apps. It makes devices run faster than the iPad. It streams music from iTunes or any other desktop music library. It does painless, wireless tethering. It makes transferring apps from the desktop to mobile completely automatic.
– 2-5x performance increase for Android users…demo showed it outperforming iPad
– Ads
– Google’s railing against Apple iAds for costing way too much. They don’t mention Apple during the entire keynote, but there are so many subtle blows that you can’t help but notice.
– AdSense for Mobile Apps — AFMA. Serving contextually relevant ads in the web browser. The ads can take you to the Android marketplace, to another website, etc. It works within applications or web apps.
– They’re showing off banner ads. And now a new format: expandable ads by tapping the ad.
– There is now a click-to-call option for Google mobile ads, starting today.
– Yet another: expandable ad with Google Maps and directions and click-to-call.
– HTC Evo
– .3-inch display, 1 GHz processor, 4G network, 8MP camera, HD video recording and has an integrated kickstand. Front facing camera too. Looks amazing.
– Everyone at Google IO got one.
– Watched the keynote – two hours of Apple attack 🙂
– Never again will someone tell me only Apple keynotes are smug. Google out Appled Apple on that front.
42:35 – Google TV
– Key elements of Google TV: “Less time finding, more time watching,” “Control and personalize what you watch,” “Make your TV content more interesting” and “more than just a TV”
– Google TV lets you search TV shows just like you would Google Search. It provides results from the web and from TV. You can tune in directly to your show.
– Google TV lets you search through the entire web.
– The demo is getting hurt by bad Wi-fi and connectivity. They’re trying to show off search and navigation.
– They searched for House — as in the FOX TV show. In search, it shows full episodes not only from TV (FOX, USA, Bravo, etc), but also from Fox.com, Hulu.com, and Amazon
– Transition from TV to web is seamless. No changing inputs, no different remote controls.
– With one button, you can flip right back to TV.
– Google TV allows for PIP mode (Picture in Picture), allowing you to browse the web while still watching the game. You can track what’s happening in the game (say via Yahoo Fantasy Sports) while watching it. It’s also easy to switch so that the web is the PIP.
– Google is showing how Google TV is superior as a photo viewer, game player, etc.
– Broadband connectivity, it’s “easy” to integrate with your Cable or Satellite Box, and it has a strong processor: enhanced GPU for graphics (even 3D).
– Google TV input devices include a keyboard and a pointing device. It combines keyboard, remote, and mouse.
– Phones can also be paired to Google TV devices over WiFi. He is using a Nexus One to “speak to his TV.” You can use Google Voice Search on your TV.
– Multiple phones can be paired with the same Google TV.
– You can push whatever website is on your phone onto your TV from your phone. Very cool.
– http://www.google.com/tv/developer/ – Designing websites for Google TV
– It runs on Android, it uses Google Chrome and it runs Flash 10.1.
– Google TV automatically syncs your Android apps to your TV.
– YouTube Leanback announced: It pushes YouTube videos to your TV from your friends, YouTube’s recommendations, your subscriptions and favorites, etc.
– YouTube Leanback is a web interface, not an application just within Google TV. It’ll be available in the next few weeks.
– Now they’re talking about Google Listen, a product for Android that is now in Google TV. It allows you to search and subscribe to audio podcasts and audio shows. Oh, and it allows you to watch podcasts too.
– You can search Google Listen & Watch via the quick search box.
– Google TV is open-source on Android and Chrome. Platform, not a single product
– Hardware partners – Sony, Logitech and Intel
– Fall 2010
– Early 2011 will have updates with Android market, Google TV SKD, and TV Web APIs. In summer 2011, it will open source Google TV.
– It’s everyone against Apple – people catching up and overtaking
– Apple’s arrogance starting to bite?
50:06 – Google Secure Search
– Not on .co.uk yet.
50:49 – Facebook Roundup
– Continuing ground swell of negative articles against Facbook and privacy.
– Wallstreet Journal highlighting that advertisers are able to gain user details (something that isn’t supposed to happen).
– Campaign for “Deactivate your Facebook account Day” on May 31st.
– Facebook announce they will once more look at their privacy and simplify.
– Facebook kiss and make up with Zynga. Deal to keep Zynga games (farmville et all) on Facebook not announced but safe to say that Faceook aren’t taking 30% of their sales.
57:51 – Spotify New Accounts
– A Spotify account that allows full PC access without adverts but not phone access
– £10 gives you mobile access as well
– Also added spotify open -free, no invite but limited to 20 hours per month
– Lots of competition in this space now, price drop is evidence of that. Is Spotify struggling to make money?
59:44 – HP future with WebOS
– To be added to printers, netbooks, phones, tablets
– Also indicating that the purchase was for IP
– $1.2b well spent???
1:01:55 – Mubi Comes to PS3
– From Autumn, UK PS3 users can download Mubi
– independent, international and classic cinema
– 300 films at launch, quickly growing to over 1000
– streaming – not downloading
– pay per view, rent for a week, all you can watch monthly subscription and also free movies

Picks
Ian
Springpad
– web, iphone, android – lets you save things you want to remember
– todo’s, recipies, movies, books
– tasks, list support
– can add friends, see what they are doing/adding/sharing
– slick iphone tool

Chris
Nike – Write the future

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 47

DigitalOutbox Episode 47
In this episode the team discuss Facebook, iPad and HTML5.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
3:31 – Facebook Privacy Mess
– In an attempt to reduce concerns about user privacy, Facebook has inadvertently opened a security hole that let 3rd parties view your friend requests and your private messages sent through the chat system.
– In trying to do the right thing… they still get it wrong!
– And they believe ignorance is bliss for their users
– Ethan Beard, director of Facebook’s developer network – Facebook Blames Riot Over Privacy On Media, Says Users “Love” The Changes
– “the reason that people use Facebook is to share information with their friends and to connect with things that are important to them.”
– My biggest issue is that there is no way to extract your information from facebook and the speed of privacy changes has happened too fast for people to keep up to date.
– There has been a change of stance to a default of locked down, to an assumption of openness.
– If something is made public by a policy change, you do not have the any option to completely remove previous content. Event “De-activating” content does not remove it. Facebook have also made changes so that whereas content was time-limited in the past, they now have the option to keep all content for as long as they want, regardless of whether you want to de-activate or not.
– Evolution of privacy on Facebook – http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
10:09 – Microsoft Cancels Courier
– At any given time, across any of our business groups, there are new ideas being investigated, tested, and incubated. It’s in Microsoft’s DNA to continually develop and incubate new technologies to foster productivity and creativity. The “Courier” project is an example of this type of effort and its technologies will be evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.
– Gutted.
11:55 – HP Kills Slate
– Hewlett-Packard has killed off its much ballyhooed Windows 7 tablet computer, says a source who’s been briefed on the matter.
– HP may also be abandoning Intel-based hardware for its slate lineup simply because it’s too power hungry. That would also rule out Windows 7 as an operating system.
– Wow
– Surely not – only site to report this and HP Slate was shown to investors after Palm acquisition
– iPad and Android the only real options?
– Chrome OS
– Other Linux mashups designed for different form factors.
– Can Linux react quick enough to offer a controlled tablet/touch focused interface?
15:16 – UK iPad Priced
– pre-order May 10
– release May 28
– £429/£499/£599 for WiFi
– £529/£599/£699 for 3G.
– Orange pricing
– http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/32979/orange-reveals-ipad-3g-rates
– Pay as you go, daily, weekly and monthly. With the PAYG option, each MB will cost 5p, up to a maximum of £40 in a month (so 800MB in total). This will appeal to users who will only use their iPad for emails or a bit of light surfing when out and about.
– Next up is the daily option at £2 for up to 200MB worth of data for you to use before midnight, this can be bought on an ad-hoc basis. The weekly option takes this limited data plan a bit further – £7.50 for 1GB’s worth of 3G data. It might be an idea to try out these plans before deciding whether you need to opt for the final option – the monthly plans.
– Orange has put two packages in place – Monthly 15 and Monthly 25, naturally costing £15 and £25 per month respectively. The major difference between them is either a 3GB limit or a 10GB limit, but both also grant access to 750MB Wi-Fi when away from home via BT’s Openzone
– Importantly, the iBook store will also be there for the May 28th launch
23:41 – Google Flurry
– Google Editions book
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10098111.stm
– Google book store
– Not tied to single device
– To date Google has scanned over 12 million books, both in-print and out-of-print, giving it a greater selection of material than either Apple or Amazon.
– Works on any web enabled device
– books will be purchased directly from Google and also from retailers who will keep the majority of the money earned.
– Out in the summer
– Google buys BumpTop
– http://gigaom.com/2010/05/02/google-buys-bumptop-3-d-multi-touch-tablet-interface-on-the-way/
– For Android tablet?
– I tried it and didn’t like it as an interface
– However…for a touch driven device…maybe
– Looks nice. Some nice interface ideas. But surely power hungry for a tablet/touch device? Reminds me of Microsoft Surface.
– Google brings back Gmail to the UK
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10096107.stm
– Bye bye Googlemail.co.uk, hello gmail.co.uk. Long dispute finally resolved with uk owner of gmail.co.uk. Originally wanted £27 million from Google but no details of how much Google finally coughed up.
– Google Search changed
– http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/spring-metamorphosis-googles-new-look.html
– Streamlined
– Flattened logo
– Left hand side navigation – mostly hidden
– Also applies to mobile site
– Chrome Update
– http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/pedal-to-chrome-metal-our-fastest-beta.html
– Another speed jump
– Not only bookmakr sync, preference sync as well
– HTML5 features – geolocation, file drag and drop
– First beta to have Flash baked in and updated via auto-update mechanism
– To finish off, IE falls before 60% market share
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/04/internet_explorer_market_share_decline/
– 15 months to drop 10%
34:19 – Microsoft Stands with Apple on H264
– Microsoft said Thursday that Internet Explorer 9 will support the variety of Web video Apple built into Safari but not the one embraced by Firefox and Opera.
– “In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only,” Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch said in a blog post.
– His reasons for the support: the format is widely used in the computing industry, from video cameras to Google’s YouTube, it benefits from hardware decoding support that improves performance, and there are questions about the rights to use H.264’s chief rival today, Ogg Theora.
– Google’s Chrome supports both H.264 and Ogg Theora.
– The lack of one format being used across all formats undermines the move from Flash, costs website hosts and devs more cash
– But H.264 patent encumbered and is licensed by the MPEG-LA, with Apple and Microsoft members with patents in the patent pool so it’s in their financial interest to promote H.264. Licences don’t transfer downstream which may be a real problem for consumers in future.
40:36 – Scribd scrapping Flash moving to HTML5
– Scribd co-founder and chief technology officer Jared Friedman tells me: “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web page.”
– Documents will simply become very long Web pages. A new bookmark feature will help you keep your place in especially long documents. Scribd’s documents will be especially iPad friendly.
– Instead of downloading a book from Apple’s iBooks store or Amazon’s Kindle app, you can see if an electronic version is on Scribd and read it in your browser. Pinch and zoom to make the text bigger. No download necessary. The books and other documents are stored on the Web. They can be shared via Facebook and Twitter, or sent to a mobile phone.
– Documents and video moving away from plugin, especially Flash, dependancy
– Flash won’t die – just be less widely used, focussing more on interface, games, interactivity which it should do
– http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5 – test page
43:10 – Dropbox API
– Android app
– Native iPad app
– Mobile API – Dropbox Anywhere – Desktop API later this year
– Dev’s could integrate DropBox into their app’s via API – very exciting for mobile dev’s
– Why didn’t Apple include this – every iPhone/iPad owner gets 2GB of web space?
46:06 – Skype 5 Way Video Calling
– Within next week
– Windows first, Mac later this year
– Free for first three to four months, they paid for
– Great for our podcast 🙂

Picks
Ian
Halo Reach
– Fantastic update
– Single player and co-op is good
– Multiplayer is quite awesome

Henry
Cupidtino
– Cupidtino is a beautiful new dating site created for fans of Apple products by fans of Apple products!
– Find the apple fanboy/girl of your dreams.

Chris
Movie Peg
– £5 a lot for a bit of plastic for sure… still.
– Like the idea.

DigitalOutbox Episode 46

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

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

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

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

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

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

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

DigitalOutbox Episode 42

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

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

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

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

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

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

DigitalOutbox Episode 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 38

DigitalOutbox Episode 38
In this episode the team discuss Windows Phone 7 Series, Google Buzz and ChatRoulette. Plumbing the depths.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
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Shownotes
0:58 – Windows Phone 7 Series
– Brand new UI
– Fresh, fun, colourful, connected, customisable
– Different to everything else
– Zune HD is similar
– very little visual flair besides clean typography and transition animations
– I love it – makes iPhone look old (Ian’s comment by the way)
– I really like but do wonder about the battery life on something that active and connected
– dictating rigid specs for 7 Series devices (a specific CPU and speed, screen aspect ratio and resolution, memory, and even button configuration)
– doing away with carrier or partner UI customizations such as Sense or TouchWiz
– Looks like they have started from scratch – great move
– The app’s are clean, stripped down, minimalist
– Zune intergrated for music and radio
– Xbox Live
– No games to demo but
– Will have games
– turn based games supported
– Friends list
– Messages
– Achievement points
– Avatars
– Dev opportunities mentioned in videos
– Social networking
– Status updates from friends across social networks
– Really nicely done
– Apps – old apps won’t work
– 6 months until this phone launches
– Outlook looks really nice!
– Serious competition to iPhone
– I’m using an old phone!
– Game on. Three way fight – Apple vs Google vs Microsoft
14:24 – Google Buzz
– Google Buzz is a grass
– Automatically shows your followers, even those ones auto created based on your e-mail habits
– http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-buzz-start-up-experience-based-on.html
– Will suggest followers rather than automatically creating them
– Will no longer auto connect to picasa and google reader shares
– Tab allowing you to show/not show buzz or disable completely
– Lots of Buzz users and improvements already
– Privacy issue – now more visible option to not show followers/people you follow on your public profile
– Ability to block anyone who starts following you
– More clarity on which of your followers/people you follow can appear on your public profile
– Noisy, can’t see easily whats new
– At least google are responding quickly to the privacy concerns
20:19 – New Google Products
– Google Goggles Translation
– http://mashable.com/2010/02/17/google-goggles-translation/
– At Mobile World Congress Google demo’d experimental Android visual search app that can translate the text in captured images.
– German – English only at the moment.
– Expected uses – street signs and menu items. So know when travelling in Germany with your Android phone, you’ll know exactly what kind of sausage you’re ordering.
– Chrome for Mac
– http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/bringing-extensions-to-google-chrome.html
– Now supports extensions in the beta release
– Also supports bookmarks sync
– Fast!
– Could replace Firefox as my cross platform browser
25:34 – BBC to release iPhone apps
– BBC have announced they will be developing smartphone apps to deliver it’s news and sport content
– Text, images, sound and video content.
– Not going down well with Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) – say it will cripple a developing market.
29:04 – Wired coming to iPad
– Wired Magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson announced at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference on Friday that the publication would be releasing its content for the iPad by summer.
– Readers can sift through the contents horizontally and when they find an article they want to read, touch and drag their finger on the first page vertically to browse through the pages up and down.
– They can also turn the device horizontally to take advantage of the automatically-rotating display to view two pages side by side like a magazine and zoom out to see thumbnails of the content all at once.
– The device allows for integrated media so readers can read a product review and touch a photo to jump into a video of the product. Advertisements can also be interactive. Clark touched a Camaro ad to flip it around 360 degrees.
– Will this be cheaper than paper?
– Despite all the Apple/Adobe hate, the app was created on Adobe Air and migrated to ipad with Adobe tools.
34:52 – Fisher Price iXL
– Starting ’em young. It’s tech for kids aged 3-6.
– When I were a lad we got the the fisher price radio or record player – if we were lucky. Kids these days don’t know they’re born with their kindle/iPad like things.
36:12 – Sony exist OLED Market
– Stops selling in Japan – still active in EU and USA
– 2 years after 11″ OLED it’s ow pulling out audio
– Is OLED really the future, long term at least?
– 11″ is still £3500
– LG – big screen OLED in 2012
– 7 years until they fall to todays LCD values
41:11 – PleaseRobMe
– Site aggregates public check-ins form foursquare and twitter that say they have left home
– Got a lot of press but they aren’t out to help robbers
– Trying to show dangers of sharing so much locational information online and how it could be abused
– i.e. service knows your home and knows you’ve left…not smart
– They’ve now removed the ability to search by location and username
43:31 – ChatRoulette
– All the bizarre of the internet in one place

Picks
Ian
Quix
– Extendable Bookmarklet
– http://quixapp.com/help/#basic-commands
– Works well in safari (cmd 1 to open) and in chrome and firefox with right extension – not so hot in IE
– Can extend it with your own commands

Chris
Baby Head Swap Images

DigitalOutbox Episode 37

DigitalOutbox Episode 37
In this episode the team discuss Google and your friends, sitting in a tree, b-u-z-z-i-n-g. Plus, Chris and his jowls.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:17 – Warner Stops Streaming
– Warner music will not continue to licence free streaming services.
– Not clear whether this affects existing licences with Spotify / Last.fm etc.
– CNET UK report Warner bands include “Arctic Monkeys, My Chemical Romance, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Talib Kweli, Green Day, Biffy Clyro, Marina and the Diamonds, and that nice Michael Bubble. Warners stalwarts Metallica already refuse to stream their music, the grumpy gets.”
– Warner Music want to see subscription models. They don’t like downloads or add supported free services which they see as not returning enough money. They believe a subscription model could reach a far wider audience than downloads… even for people not interested in buying music….
– What? More than a free, ad supported service? He’s deluding himself. As ever, they are looking at the music being listened to and trying to monetize every last bit – not taking into account that people will just not listen if they charge – or just as likely, listen to stolen copies instead – just because to them it’s not worth the money.
4:44 – Google Social Circle
– If you have a Google profile and are logged in, search results form social circle now displayed at bottom of first page of search results
6:34 – Google Buzz
– Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting
– Built into gMail
– Key feature #1: Auto-following
– Key feature #2: Rich, fast sharing experience
– Key feature #3: Public and private sharing
– Key feature #4: Inbox integration
– Key feature #5: Just the good stuff
– We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences).
– Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.
– On your phone, Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location.
– Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question “where were you when you shared this?” can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place.
– Webapp for android and iphone
– Facebook in gmail or is it more like Friendfeed?
– We’ve relied on other services’ openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system
– Any item in Buzz can become a conversation.
– We put these Buzz conversations into you Gmail inbox. And if someone comments while you’re looking at it in your inbox, comments come in in realtime.
– Things go to your inbox when people comment on your stuff, or when they comment on your comments.
– Also when someone @replies you – just like Twitter. When you type @ and an initial, you get an autocomplete to see who you want to send it to from your contacts.
– Will be rolled out to gmail users across the world in the next few days
– Google Buzz was presented as a destination site, but a look at its APIs and developer roadmap indicate that it may actually intend to be a platform – the central hub for a world of distributed social networking
– Google Buzz data can be syndicated out to other services using the standard data formats called Atom, Activity Streams, MediaRSS and PubSubHubbub
19:10 – Google Fibre Network
– Up to 1gbps at prices US are used to paying for normal BB
– Are we scared of Google yet 🙂 Google Earth less of an application, more of a mission statement.
20:43 – UK Video Games Sales Drop
– Over-the-counter unit sales of console games were down six per cent compared to 2008’s figure.
– Sales of games for handheld devices dropped a whopping 25 per cent, according to GfK Chart-Track.
– partly due to last year’s 62 per cent drop in PlayStation 2 game sales.
(Yes but you can buy 8 PS2 games at £5 compared to 1 PS3/Xbox360 game at £40. No wonder unit sales are down. Revenue’s still quite healthy – Henry)
– software sales for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were up last year, while Wii game sales were down about ten per cent on 2008.
– Console sales dipped by 24 per cent between 2008 and 2009.
25:40 – Glitch
– Glitch is a massively-multiplayer game, playable in the browser and built in the spirit of the web.
– The game will launch by the end of 2010
– From co-founder of flickr
– For starters, it’s all one big world. Which means everyone is playing the same game and anyone’s actions have the ability to affect every other player in the game.
27:30 – iMac Fixes
– Production halted
– The Apple Discussions forum on the topic now has some 271 pages (up from 191 a couple weeks ago) of comments/complaints and over 500,000 views (up from 400,000 a few weeks ago). It has more views than all the other threads combined — by far.
31:50 – Opera for iPhone
– to be launched next week
– We plan to reveal Opera Mini for iPhone in an exclusive press and partner preview during the 2010 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona
32:57 – SeeSaw
– Invites now going out
– TV from BBC, C4, C5
– Limited range, not new progs
– Adverts before watching
– So so quality
– Can’t see why I’d use this over iPlayer or 4OD – less ad’s on 4OD for same content
– Looking to add more content through the year, mulling over subscription model
37:24 – Vodafone does a Ratner
– On twitter says…is fed up of dirty homo’s and is going after beaver
– Hacked?
– We’re really sorry. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. Please keep your faith in us.
– I guess not.

Picks
Ian
Movist
– Alternative to VLC
– Minimal
– Crap icon
– Excellent keyboard support
– fast and great file support
– Movist it’s a beautiful, minimal player, with great support for codecs and, most of all, huge room for improvement.

Virtual Revolution
– 4 part series on the internet and web
– First two parts have been excellent
– Catch series on iPlayer
– Web site allows you to view episodes, clips, twitter and flickr feeds, blog – very nice

Henry
Inkscape
– Opensource drawing package.
– Cross platform
– SVG files

Shakeel
Tripit
– FREE!
– forward your individual trip detail confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com and your whole trip, from flight, car hire and hotel details are saved so all the details can be viewed and accessed from one location.
– very useful for frequent flyers/travellers
– TripIt Pro – 30 day free trial, $69 per year
– gain itinerary monitoring and mobile alerts
– track frequent flyer points

Chris
AnyDVD
– AnyDVD SlySoft (79€)
– Enables copying of copy protected content you own.
– Also enables region free viewing.

DigitalOutbox Episode 36

DigitalOutbox Episode 36
In this episode the team discuss the iPad and Tech quarters.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:35 – Apple Reports
– Steve J – “If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company.”
– Steve J – “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”
– 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, a 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter — and up 17.6 percent from the previous quarter.
– Meanwhile, Apple sold 3.36 million Macs, which was a 33 percent increase over the year-ago period.
– iPod sales totaled 21 million, which was down 8 percent versus a year ago.
– Overall, the company posted revenue of $15.68 billion and a net profit of $3.38 billion.
– That means revenue was up about $4 billion versus a year ago, while profit was up over $1 billion. Gross margin was 40.9 percent, up from 37.9 percent a year ago.
– Apple also notes that it has gained another $5.8 billion in cash for the quarter, which should push its war chest very close to $40 billion.
2:14 – Microsoft in the Money
– Net income for the period rose to $6.66 billion, or 74 cents a share, from $4.17 billion, or 47 cents a share in the same period last year. Meanwhile, revenue rose 14 percent to $19.02 billion.
– Windows 7 helped – exceptional demand for it
– Analysts had been expecting earnings of 59 cents a share, and $17.9 billion in revenue. audio
2:52 – iPad Discussions
– It’s 0.5-inches thin, weighs just 1.5 pounds. Thinner and lighter than any netbook. 9.7-inch IPS LED display.”
– 1024-by-768
– ad is powered by our own custom silicon. Our own chip. It’s called the A4, and it screams.” 1GHz.
– 16, 32, or 64GB of flash storage. “It’s got the latest in wireless: 802.11n, WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.”
– All the usual suspects: accelerometer, compass, speaker, mic, dock connector. And it’s got battery
– We’ve been able to achieve 10 hours of battery life.
– Apps run out of the box
– Pixel double – run full screen
– New SDK out today including iPad tools. iPhone 3.2beta – under an nda
– Demos
– NYTimes app looked really nice
– Brushes – very smart
– iBooks
– Looks like a bookshelf – Delicious Library!!!!!!!!
– Delicious Library dev tweeted – first Apple steal all my employees, now they copy my app’s look
– Tap right or left to change the page — or drag the page manually
– Browse TOC, change the font or the font size, all the standard stuff.
– “And that is iBooks.” Big applause. “We use the ePub format, the most popular open book format in the world, and I’m very excited about this.
– We think the iPad is going to make a terrific e-book reader not just for popular books, but for textbooks as well.”
– Deals with HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette.
– Will this be available in UK?
– Can I read books on
– iWork
– Pages, Keynote, Numbers for iPad – $9.99 each
– Easily connect to projector with small cable
– The iPad syncs over USB with iTunes exactly like an iPhone or iPod touch.
– So when you sync, you sync everything. Photos, music, movies, TV shows, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, apps…”
– Every iPad has the latest and greatest WiFi. But we’re going to have models with 3G built in as well.”
– The first is up to 250MB per month — a fair bit of data, most people will get by on that — for just $14.99.”
– If you feel you need more, we have an unlimited plan for just $29.99.
– Real breakthrough prices. We’ve got a breakthrough deal with AT&T who is providing the service
– We think it’s a phenomenal offering. So what about internationally?
– We hope to have our international deals in the June-July timeframe.
– We think we can do a lot in June, we’ll start on that tomorrow. However all models are unlocked and use GSM micro-SIMS.
– So $499 / – 16gb, 599 / 729- 32gb, and 699 / 829 – 64gb.
– Cheaper than iPhone
– We will be shipping iPads in 60 days.”
– 90 days for 3G
– Dock!
– Keyboard dock
– Case
– So what is iPad?
– Netbook killer?
– Laptop killer?
– iPhone killer?
– http://flyosity.com/ipad/the-ipad-is-for-everyone-but-us.php
– http://joehewitt.com/post/ipad/
– iPad is an incredible opportunity for developers to re-imagine every single category of desktop and web software there is. Seriously, if you’re a developer and you’re not thinking about how your app could work better on the iPad and its descendants, you deserve to get left behind.
– True, iPad 1.0 has a lot of limitations which make it hard to be compared to a laptop today. We’re not there yet, people, but does it really take that much imagination to see how we will get there? Apple clearly wants to increase its investment in iPhone OS and reduce its investment in Mac OS X. At some point in the near future, Apple will adapt iPhone OS to even larger screens, add multi-tasking, and release something like a laptop or iMac with the OS. When it happens, it will make perfect sense, because by then there will be orders of magnitude more iPhone/iPad apps on the App Store than there ever were for Mac OS X and Windows.
– http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/359224392/i-need-to-talk-to-you-about-computers-ive-been
– http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html
– http://lit-n-lat.blogspot.com/2010/02/ipad-and-mac-development.html
– Okay, I’ll admit it: when I saw that what everybody had expected all along had actually been realised – that the iPad was essentially a large iPod Touch – I was gutted; gutted because of the implications for Scrivener, which currently runs only on the Mac. Perhaps the biggest disappointment and frustration for me as a developer is that, in a way, I feel that Apple’s decision to use the iPhone OS for a tablet that is ostensibly intended as an entry into the netbook niche of the market (rather than saying straight up that it is something completely different to a netbook) is a bit of a two-fingers-up to us indie Mac developers; developers who have been quietly contributing great applications (at least, I like to think Scrivener is a great application…) to the Mac platform, and who have even persuaded users of other platforms to switch (I’ve lost count of the number of users who have e-mailed me to say that they bought a Mac just to use Scrivener – perhaps the biggest compliment of all).
– Adobe comment – “It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers. And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.” – http://theflashblog.com/?p=1703
– Microsoft comment – “It is a humorous world in how Microsoft is much more open than Apple,” Brandon Watson, the director of product management in the developer platform at Microsoft, told me in an interview yesterday. With Microsoft’s platforms, developers can build whatever they want, and target a broad array of devices using the same skill set, he added. Watson claimed that many developers of applications for the iPhone OS–which the iPad uses–are not making money. Developing applications for the iPhone and iPad is expensive, he said, because iPhone OS uses the Objective-C language rather than Microsoft’s more pervasive .NET platform. And Apple’s control over the platform has alienated some people that make software for its products, he said.
– Jobs town hall : On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.
– About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.
22:17 – Amazon Drops Macmillan Books
– Books published by Macmillan mysteriously poofed from Amazon on Thursday 28th….1/6th of its book catalogue
– Not just elctronic books for the Kindle – all Macmillan books from Amazon – paper as well
– The reason, according to the NYT, is that Amazon is punishing the publisher for arguing that the price of Kindle books should go up to $15.
– Then capitulate…….
– http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle/forum/ref=cm_cd_tfp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=Tx2MEGQWTNGIMHV&displayType=tagsDetail
– Dear Customers:
– -Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.
– We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.
– Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!
– Thank you for being a customer.
25:56 – iPhone OS 3.2
– contains rudimentary support for video calling
– hooks to accept and decline a video conference, flip a video feed (which suggests a front-facing camera) and — most importantly — run the video call in either full screen mode or in just a portion of the screen
– supports file downloads and local storage in the browser
– a spell checker with multiple dictionaries and user-added entries
– much richer text support for apps
– the ability to selectively draw to external displays
– cation-aware ads in Maps and possibly other programs that use the Maps API
– file upload ability in Safari
– modifiable cut / copy / paste menu
– prototype support for a “handwriting keyboard.”
27:52 – Google Voice on the iPhone
– Via web and HTML 5, not the app store
– m.google.com/voice
– The new Google Voice mobile web app doesn’t offer a clear way to add contacts through the mobile interface,
– its call history function falls short and there are other things that are funky about it.
– It’s fast, but it’s still just not as fast and responsive as a native mobile app.
– Perhaps that will change with time. It does feel nice, though, and has a very attractive interface.
29:30 – Google Drop IE6 Support
– The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively.
– Google Docs and Google Sites first affected
– As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products — as well as new Docs and Sites features — won’t work properly in older browsers.
……..and still the issue rumbles on
– DoH tells NHS to drop IE6
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/01/doh_ie6/
– In a technology bulletin published by the department’s informatics directorate on 29 January 2010, it advised NHS trusts using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 on either Windows 2000 or Windows XP to move to version 7 of the browser.
– “We’ve advised NHS trusts to upgrade to IE7 as early as possible,” said a spokesperson
32:14 – Sky Launches 3D TV Channel
– Sky has announced that its UK-first dedicated 3D TV channel will begin rolling out in pubs from April to broadcast live Premier League games in 3D
– The 3D TV service will work with all existing Sky+ HD boxes and will “initially” be available at no extra cost to customers already signed up to the broadcaster’s top TV package and the Sky HD pack, the company told us today.
– You will need a 3D-ready TV, of course. Models from the likes of Sony, Samsung, LG and Panasonic will all be compatible, Sky said.
– As 3D TV models become more “widely available” in the consumer market, Sky+ HD customers will also get access to the channel. By then, Sky 3D will offer a wider range of content, including movies, sport, documentaries, entertainment, and the arts.
– New customer or upgrading to Sky+ – get a Sky HD box by default
– http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a199912/sky-to-provide-hd-boxes-as-standard.html
– The receiver will cost £49 with a £30 installation fee for new customers, or £99 and £60 installation for existing subscribers.
– Box will be free if you subscribe to HD
– Also launching the long-rumoured 1TB box, available for £249, it’ll store around 240 hours of HD content.
– http://www.sky.com/shop/3d/home/
– Test broadcast over weekend – reviews mixed – http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2010/02/01/sky_3d_football/
– Tunnel shots and certain camera angles were great
– Close-ups of players, managers and assembled fans was what made 3D great. But the effect was totally lost while watching the pitch action in a widescreen at-a-distance shot. Players didn’t stand out from one another and I didn’t feel as though free kicks would hit me in the face.
– Kudos to LG: its 3D TV performed flawlessly throughout. Each (good) 3D shot was crisp, clear and immersive. It had an amazing viewing angle, allowing me a good spec from any point in the room.
37:23 – PS3 Hacked
– hacker George Hotz (already known in the iPhone community) has made a strong claim: that he has cracked the PS3
– What will it mean?
– 5% Hardware / 95% software. Still not cracked everything including memory but enough to trick the console into doing what he wants.
38:07 – OnLive Beta Reports
– Negative report last week
– News blackout at the moment so surprising to read this
– Onlive comment – reporter shouldn’t have had access, he was lucky to get it working at all
– other beta testers step forward but don’t want to be named…but jerky, graphics a bit poor. No surprise really

Picks
Ian
LaunchBar
– €24
– Replaced Quick SIlver for me
– Launcher
– Search and control iTunes
– Clip history
– Up to 40 items
– Remembers history after restart
– Clip Merge
– Search spotlight from launchbar
– Can take text and send on to other app’s
– Support custom searches, indexing and actions

Henry
ZooTool
– Visual bookmarking tool
– Free