Tag: kindle

DigitalOutbox Episode 250

Chris and Ian discuss Taylor Swift and E3

Download
iTunes
M4A
MP3

Shownotes

Picks
Ian
Gestimer
– £2.29
– Gestimer is a beautiful Mac menu bar app for those little reminders during the day.
– Simply drag the Gestimer menu bar icon onto the screen to create your reminder.

DigitalOutbox Episode 222

DigitalOutbox Episode 222
DigitalOutbox Episode 222 – Minecraft, iOS8 and U2

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
2:26 – Microsoft is buying Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion
4:45 – Im leaving Mojang
7:27 – Android One Is Launching in India, but Its a Big Deal for Everyone
10:50 – Heartbroken Phones 4u team braces for up to 5,600 redundancies as company goes into administration
13:30 – Apple reveals 4m pre-orders for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in first 24 hours
14:38 – iOS8 launch
25:59 – Amazon unveils the £169 Kindle Voyage, a premium e-reader with haptic page-turning
29:16 – Amazon introduces the next-gen Fire HDX 8.9 tablet with the latest Fire OS 4 Sangria
31:37 – Destiny becomes UK’s biggest ever new game launch
32:45 – People hate U2

Picks
Ian
Humble Indie Bundle 12
– Pay What You Want
– SteamWorld Dig
– Hammerwatch
– Gunpoint
– Beat the Average
– Papers, Please
– Luftrausers
– Gone Home
– More to come…
– Pay at Least $10
– Prison Architect (Alpha Access)

Reading List

Unfortunately we aren’t able to bring you a podcast this week. Instead, here are the stories that caught our eye and are well worth reading. Normal service will hopefully resume next week.

Gary McKinnon’s U.S. Extradition Blocked On Human Rights Grounds
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/16/uk-government-blocks-hacker-gary-mckinnons-us-extradition-on-human-rights-grounds/
In a surprise to many the Home Secretary Theresa May blocked Gary McKinnon’s extradition on health grounds.

Gov.uk is live
http://www.gov.uk/
Gov.uk has moved out of beta to a live service. Really impressed with the look and feel of the site. More impressive is how open the development has been. Good job.

Xbox Music launched
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19948100
Microsoft launch a streaming music competitor to Spotify et all. Launching first on the new Xbox dashboard and coming soon to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. More interesting is the Android and iOS clients coming next year.

Surface priced and dated
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/16/microsoft-surface-price
Microsoft price and date the Windows for RT Surface tablet. Similar to iPad pricing but watching the ad for the Surface makes the keyboard cover the USP – so why doesn’t every Surface come with one? Microsoft also haven’t done a good job explaining Windows RT – http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-rt-redmond-problem-144554

Apple loses Samsung Appeal
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/18/apple-vs-samsung-u-k-appeal-court-upholds-galaxy-tab-not-cool-enough-to-copy-ipad-ruling/
Apple lose their appeal in the UK and will now have to run adverts saying that Samsung didn’t copy Apple…in a font no smaller than Ariel 14. Weird specific ruling.

Kindle PaperWhite hits the UK
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/12/kindle-paperwhite-uk/
Amazon bring the PaperWhite Kindle to the UK…but some people aren’t happy with uneven lighting issues – http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/13/amazon-acknowledges-uneven-lighting-on-the-kindle-paperwhite/

Raspberry Pi gets an update
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/15/raspberry-pi-model-b-512mb-ram/
Double the RAM for the same price – bargain.

GoPro’s new Hero3 is lighter, faster, higher res and has WiFi, comes in three flavors starting at $199
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/16/gopro-hd-hero3/
One of the best action camera’s gets a great update.

Boxee TV
http://blog.boxee.tv/2012/10/16/boxee-box-past-present-and-future/
New direction for Boxee, releasing a TV tuner that is US only and stopping updates to it’s Boxee Box. Shame and a poke in the eye for anyone outside the US.

Pirate Bay moves servers to the cloud
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19982440
Pirate Bay is moving much of it’s infrastructure to the cloud to stay ne step ahead of any future legal battles.

Unmasking the worlds biggest troll
http://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web
A must read story on how Reddit’s biggest troll, responsible for posting some vile material, was unmasked and outed. There has been much fallout including question marks on how Reddit is run. The troller known as Violentacrez has lost his job and now appeared on American TV to apologise for his actions.

Skydiver Baumgartner sets YouTube live view record
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19947159
The world watched Felix Baumgartner skydive from the edge of space setting many records including the most watched YouTube Live record with over 8 million viewers. The previous record was 500,000 for the London Olympics.

Google Data Centres
http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/
Google released lot’s of information about it’s secretive data centres which helps YouTube allow for 8 million continuous streams. SOme of the pictures are amazing – have you seen a data centre look so clean and colourful?

DigitalOutbox Episode 133

DigitalOutbox Episode 133
DigitalOutbox Episode 133 – Nokia, Motorola and Amazon on Fire

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:40 – Nokia Windows Phone 8 event
– Lumia 920 announced
– Nokia has officially unveiled its new flagship smartphone, the Lumia 920. As expected, Nokia’s new Lumia has received a bump in specs over the previous iteration, with a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual core processor, a slightly larger 4.5-inch curved glass display with a 768 x 1280 resolution, a 2,000mAh battery, and the new Windows Phone 8 operating system. Nokia is calling its new display the “PureMotion HD+,” and says that it’s the “best smartphone display innovation” the company has ever made, with “better than HD resolution” and fast refresh rates — Nokia says it’s the “brightest smartphone HD display ever,” and also the “fastest LCD display ever shipped on a smartphone.” Nokia is also touting the PureMotion HD+’s daylight viewing capabilities, and says that the phone’s color tone and brightness automatically responds to sunlight.
– Nokia says the new Lumia will come in “vibrant colors” (the yellow, red, white, grey, and black pictured above), and features a one-piece polycarbonate body. As expected, Nokia is also pulling a couple of tricks out of its sleeve: it’s adding wireless charging for the Lumia 920, built on the Qi wireless power standard. Nokia is also incorporating its “PureView” camera technology, but just don’t get too excited: we’re looking at an 8.7 megapixel sensor in the 920, not the 41 megapixels in the PureView 808. Nokia says the 920 features a “floating lens” optical image stabilization system that allows for sharper photographs in low-light situations, a better app and camera interface, and 1080p video recording.
– The Lumia 920 and its budget companion the Lumia 820 have screens that respond to touch from gloves as well as bare fingers, internet connections that will work on European 4G networks, and can be recharged wirelessly on special charging plates.
– In a gimmick reminiscent of the Google glasses still in development, a City Lens app allows users to hold the viewfinder up to look at a city street. Software then recognises key places, showing the names of restaurants and shops in clickable boxes on the screen.
– CEO Stephen Elop declined to give specific pricing or release dates, but he did say that Nokia would be entering “select markets” with “intense focus” in Q4 of 2012.
– That lack of price and release date saw shares in Nokia drop 15% after the event
– Oh dear – http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview-ads-are-fraudulent
– Adverts for the 920 already proven to be fraudulent
– The new PureView camera might be amazing, but a bizarre easter egg has revealed that the company’s advertisements don’t give an honest view of its technology. Amid Nokia’s flurry of press today — if you haven’t heard, they released a new flagship phone along with some other gear — one video advertisement in particular caught our eye. In the ad, Nokia shows off the PureView’s image stabilization technology. The opening segment (which, importantly, isn’t qualified by a “screen images simulated” notice), shows a young man and woman cheerily riding bikes along a scenic river. As he films her breezily laughing, the ad shows side-by-side video — obviously intended to represent the phone’s video capabilities. On the left, Nokia shows the non-stabilized version, which, predictably, looks terrible, and on the right the ad shows the perfectly smooth capture, purportedly enabled by Nokia’s optical image stabilization technology. The only problem is that the video is faked.
– As you can see in the video and photo above, there’s a curious reflection in the window of the trailer in the background. It’s not a young man riding his bicycle alongside the cheerful model, but instead a big white van with a lighting rig and a cameraman standing in the doorway — with what appears to be a large camera rig. Whatever he’s holding, we can reasonably agree it’s not a Lumia 920. (Update: Nokia has confirmed this video was not shot with a 920)
7:01 – Motorola Press Event
– Motorola has just announced the Droid RAZR HD, updating its old flagship with a larger 4.7-inch screen, HD display, and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The RAZR HD comes with a 2,500mAh battery, a bit under the 3,300mAh RAZR Maxx but well above the 1,780mAh of the original RAZR. As with the first Droid RAZR, it will come with a higher-capacity Maxx variant. The company also touted the RAZR HD’s 1.5GHz dual-core processor and preinstalled Chrome browser, along with its LTE capacity. Outside the battery, screen, and processor, the specs aren’t too different from those of the original Droid RAZR. The phone comes with a Super AMOLED screen, albeit a higher-resolution one, and the same 8-megapixel rear camera. Like the RAZR, it includes 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory, expandable by microSD.
– A Jelly Bean update should be available at some point, but for now, it’s starting with Ice Cream Sandwich. As a good-faith gesture, versions of the RAZR HD running Jelly Bean are being shown off at the event. Motorola will also be offering a developer edition with an unlockable bootloader. Pricing hasn’t yet been announced, but the device should be in stores “before the holidays.”
– No release date, no price. When will they learn.
9:25 – Amazon Kindle Update
– Kindle Paperwhite
– It uses the expected new “paperwhite” screen technology for a sharper (212 ppi) and higher-contrast display, and also features a frontlight that brings parity with Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight. The interface has taken a page out of the Kindle Fire’s book by offering a “cover mode” homescreen that lets you swipe through your library. The device also uses the same X-Ray content analysis feature found on the Kindle Touch, has controls for the light, and lets you change the fonts.

– Amazon is touting its patented light guide technology which keeps the lighting even across the screen and allows you to leave it on all the time without detriment to battery life — it’ll apparently last for eight weeks between charges. The touch technology means it has a thinner bezel, and at 9.1mm thin and 7.5 ounces Jeff Bezos describes the device as “thinner than a magazine, lighter than a paperback.” The Kindle Paperwhite is available for order today and will start shipping on October 1st. The Wi-Fi model will cost $119, and the 3G-enabled variant will go for $179
– Not clear if those prices are ad supported
– Kindle
– http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/6/3298072/amazon-69-kindle-update-announcement
– the company is dropping the price of its least expensive ebook reader to $69. While it doesn’t have the front-lit display of its newer sibling, a 12 percent drop from last year’s $79 price is nothing to sneeze at. The ad-supported wi-fi device is identical to last year’s model, down to the 6 ounce weight and 6-inch e-ink screen, but the company says it will offer the new fonts and crisper text of the Paperwhite devices.
– Kindle Fire
– http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/6/3296637/amazon-new-kindle-fire-tablet-7inch-launch-event-price
– Along with an all-new Kindle e-reader with illuminated paperwhite display and a lower-price standard Kindle, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just announced the new Kindle Fire tablet during a press conference today. The new Fire features a 7-inch display, a 40-percent faster processor, twice as much RAM, and longer battery life than the original model.
– Despite the upgrades, Amazon is actually dropping the price of the new Kindle Fire by $40 compared to the original model, as it will now sell for $159 when it starts shipping on September 14th.
– Kindle Fire HD
– http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/6/3296477/amazon-kindle-fire-HD-10-inch
– new Kindle Fire HD features 8.9-inch 1920×1200, 254ppi display. It features a laminated touch sensor for better visuals and 25% less glare. It’s powered by an OMAP 4470 processor from Texas Instruments, which Amazon says outperforms the Tegra 3. The Kindle Fire HD also includes stereo speakers, an upgrade over the Kindle Fire’s mono driver. Amazon has improved Wi-Fi networking by adding a dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz receiver, two antennas, and its new MIMO radio technology. For storage, the Kindle Fire HD offers 16GB of local hard drive space.
– Whispersync for voice – Syncs your book with your audiobook, so you can listen and read in tandem.
– “X-Ray for movies. If you were watching a movie on your Kindle Fire HD, wouldn’t it be cool if you could tap the actor on the screen and see ‘who’s that guy?'” Infor from IMBD which Amazon own
– Whispersync for games syncs levels and progress, so you’ve never forced to restart
– Mail, custom Facebook and Skype apps
– Kindle freetime – multiple profiles for kids – set times for different content types – 30 mins for reading, hour for games etc
– Kindle Fire HD, 16GB (funny storage joke Bezos), 7 inches. $199. Ships September 14th
– The 8.9-inch model? $299. Ships November 20th
– Kindle Fire HD with 4G LTE wireless – 8.9 inches, 32GB of storage — $499.
– New data plan, too. 250MB a month. 200GB of cloud storage, $10 Amazon credit. $49.99 a year. Pre-order today, ships Nov 20th
– Comparing to the iPad 3’s plan. Year 1 cost, $959 for iPad; $549 for Kindle Fire HD. But the data is tiny – 250MB a month???
– UK – The company will detail plans for the Uk shortly – BBC tonight
26:54 – BBC iPlayer launches mobile-download service
– Users of BBC catch-up service iPlayer can now download programmes to watch on phones, tablets and other mobile devices at a later date.
– They can save any programme for up to 30 days – but once they hit play, have to finish watching it within a week.
– Available on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices, the feature will be coming to Android devices soon. Last month alone there were 30 million requests for iPlayer programmes via a mobile or tablet, according to the BBC.
28:13 – Raspberry Pi to be manufactured in the UK
– The Raspberry Pi computer is being made in the UK for the first time.
– Before now every one of the credit-card sized machines have rolled off production lines in Chinese factories.
– But a deal signed between Premier Farnell, which distributes the Pi, and manufacturer Sony will see 300,000 of the gadgets produced on home soil. Since its launch in April, the device has been hugely popular and its creators said more than a million could be sold before the end of 2012.
– The UK-made Raspberry Pis will be assembled at Sony UK Technology’s factory in Pencoed, South Wales. About 30 jobs will be created as a result of the deal which will mean most of the Pis being distributed by Premier Farnell will be made in Britain.
– In a blogpost, Raspberry Pi community director Liz Upton said it chose Chinese manufacturers at the start of the project because it could find not find a UK manufacturer that could make them cheaply enough or was willing to take a risk on the bare-bones computer.
34:26 – Valve recruiting hardware engineers
– Valve Software has started searching for hardware engineers. The game maker has posted an ad seeking applicants for the post of “industrial designer”.
– The job description on the ad said Valve was “frustrated” by the lack of innovation in computer hardware and wanted to change that state of affairs.
– It is not yet clear what gadgets successful applicants will be working on but the ad suggests it could involve replacements for mouse and keyboard.
– Before now Valve has let it be known that it wants to expand beyond games into hardware but has revealed few details about those plans.
37:10 – Bruce Willis to fight Apple over right to leave iTunes library in will
– Bruce Willis is eyeing a legal bid to ensure he can pass on his iTunes library to his children when he dies, according to the Daily Mail.
– The Die Hard star is concerned that his extensive music collection will revert to Apple ownership on his demise and is looking into ways that might allow his three daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah, to legitimately inherit it. His lawyers are currently said to be looking at the possibility of setting up “family trusts” to act as legal holders of the downloaded music, but Willis is also prepared to consider taking Apple to court over the issue.
– “Lots of people will be surprised on learning all those tracks and books they have bought over the years don’t actually belong to them,” solicitor Chris Walton told the Mail. “It’s only natural you would want to pass them on to a loved one. The law will catch up, but ideally Apple and the like will update their policies and work out the best solution for their customers.”
– Willis is also considering supporting legal action currently underway in five US states to give people more rights to share music they have purchased.
– It’s a great story – but total bullshit from the Daily Mail, but really the Times and the Mail just copied it….as did The Guardian. Who checks this stuff?

Picks

DigitalOutbox Episode 119

DigitalOutbox Episode 119
DigitalOutbox Episode 119 – Twitter privacy issues, Facebook IPO and the Google Knowledge Graph

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:08 – Twitter Updates
– Will support Do Not Track
– Twitter says it will honour requests from users who do not want their online behaviour tracked, the company said on Thursday, in contrast with web companies such Google and Facebook whose business models rely heavily on collecting user data.
– Twitter announced that it will officially support “Do Not Track,” a standardised privacy initiative that has been heavily promoted by the US Federal Trade Commission, online privacy advocates and Mozilla, the non-profit developer of the Firefox web browser.
– Thats GOOD however
– Micro-blogging site Twitter is to start recommending users for you to follow, based on your recent web browsing history. The site calls these ” tailored suggestions,” and it will track your footsteps across the web by using integrated Twitter buttons and widgets as surveillance outposts. So, every website with a “Tweet this” button will log your visit.
– Then, the social network can recognise which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular websites, and recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days. It’s specifically targeted at new Twitter hatchlings, as it hopes to provide them with a relevant list of accounts to follow as soon as they’ve made an account. Right now, Twitter has a default handful of popular users — including Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian — that it shows to all new sign-ups.
– There’s an obvious privacy worry, but Twitter’s Othman Laraki writes, “we are committed to providing you with simple and meaningful choices about the information we collect to improve your Twitter experience.”
– Thats NOT SO GOOD however
– Twitter now sends weekly e-mail digest
– Twitter just added a new feature that sends you a weekly email with the most popular tweets and links from people you follow.
– Sadly, Twitter signs you up without asking you, so you’ll have to take some action to get rid of them. You could wait until it comes and unsubscribe directly from the email, but if you want to stop them before they start, just head to Twitter’s Settings > Notifications > and uncheck the “Weekly digest of Stories & Tweets from my network” box at the bottom. Save your changes and you should never have to see one of those buggers make its way into your email.
– Thats POOR
5:12 – Facebook IPO
– Finally hits the stock market for $38
– Banks keep the price at just over $38 on day one but shares in Zynga drop 13% and they are suspended
– Monday sees Facebook drop
– It’ s a bubble!
– Facebook gets suited because some information only given to institutional investors…http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/23/us-facebook-lawsuit-idUSBRE84M0RK20120523
12:21 – Facebook Camera
– Facebook on Thursday announced a new application for the iPhone and iPod Touch called Facebook Camera, which is intended to make it easier to take pictures and share them on Facebook.
– Dirk Stoop, a Facebook product manager for photos, said that the application was much faster than the current Facebook app for Apple’s iOS, and that it puts photos at the center of the experience.
– “We can basically show you more photos on the app, so we can make a more immersive experience around your photos,” Mr. Stoop said. “On the side of publishing these photos, Facebook Camera lets you upload much higher resolution photos at up to 2,048 by 2,048 pixels wide.” The standard Facebook application uploads lower-resolution pictures.
The application will also finally bring photo filters to Facebook.
– Facebook Camera will offer 15 filters, and will also include tools for cropping and straightening photos, much like the photo editing tools within Apple’s photo app. The filters will include cool, light, bright, golden, cream and neon. “They are stylistic in nature, they are not just enhancements,” Mr. Stoop said.
– It might seem strange for Facebook to release a camera application with built-in filters just weeks after announcing plans to buy Instagram, the social photo app. But Facebook Camera is aimed at a different audience. Instagram has 40 million users, while Facebook has 900 million. This leaves a large swath of people who are not on Instagram but are actively taking photos and uploading them to Facebook. The filters in Facebook Camera were developed by Facebook and are not borrowed from Instagram.
14:20 – HP to lose 27000 employees
– Restructuring
– 27,000 employees to go worldwide
– The company said the cuts – about 8% of its workforce – will reduce costs by up to $3.5bn (£2.2bn) a year.
– HP employs about 350,000 people worldwide and about 20,000 in the UK.
18:22 – Yahoo Axis
– Yahoo introduced its new Axis browser tonight, with versions for the Apple iPad and iPhone, as well as plugins for the top desktop browsers.
– The company briefed a media army on the product and the consensus is that it’s very good. My favorite headline from Gizmodo: “Yahoo Came Out With Its Own Web Browser and It Actually Doesn’t Suck.”
– It’s a slick offering, which essentially eliminates the texty link-filled search page for one of pretty visual tiles and pull-downs and more. Think Pinterest of search and you have the general idea.
– iPad app is nice but US only for the moment – won’t replace my browser but something different. It’s more than handsome enough, it runs very smoothly (thanks mostly to its WebKit underpinnings), and your bookmarks sync between devices quickly once you make sure you’re logged in.
– Not sure if it’s a browser as such
21:43 – Google finally gets Motorola
– Google has today announced that it has closed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, buying the Illinois-based device maker for $40 per share in cash for a total of $12.5 billion.
– As widely expected, Sanjay Jha is stepping down as CEO and Dennis Woodside, Google’s former Americas head, will take the helm at Motorola Mobility, which will be operated as a standalone company. The company says the acquisition will help Google “supercharge” the Android ecosystem: while Motorola will be making devices using the platform, it will also remain open.
– “It’s a great time to be in the mobile business…I’m confident Dennis [Woodhouse] and the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come,” Page writes.
26:06 – Google launches the Knowledge Graph
– The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query. This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do.
– Google’s Knowledge Graph isn’t just rooted in public sources such as Freebase, Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook. It’s also augmented at a much larger scale—because we’re focused on comprehensive breadth and depth. It currently contains more than 500 million objects, as well as more than 3.5 billion facts about and relationships between these different objects. And it’s tuned based on what people search for, and what we find out on the web.
– Helps you get a good summary of the search topic and go deeper if you wish to
28:26 – Waterstones teams up with…Amazon
– Waterstones will sell Kindles in their own stores and also the best Kindle experience
– The thinking seems to be that since we all like browsing in bookshops, and we all like reading on digital devices, combining the “singular pleasures of browsing a curated bookshop” with the “best digital readers” will make for the best of both worlds. But that seems to fundamentally misunderstand the appeal of the digital reading experience. Full disclosure: I don’t use a Kindle, but price aside, the attraction of the Kindle experience seems to be that you can have lots of books, straight away – neither of which is usually much of a problem when you’re standing in a bookshop. And the risk that Waterstones runs is that by welcoming its greatest rival onto the high street it puts Amazon’s device into the hands of its most committed customers.
– The terms of the deal won’t be announced until the autumn, but the success or failure of this deal will be determined by what people think digital reading is
– Basically says Kindle is the device/platform for reading books. Amazon wins.
30:36 – O2 rolling out 42Mbps 3G to major UK cities
– UK mobile network operator O2 has confirmed it is currently rolling out a variant of DC-HSPA which will support connections of up to 42Mbps. Although the dual-cell HSPA technology can support impressive speeds, the technology will still operate as 3G ahead of the 4G spectrum that is being planned for the UK. British owners of the latest iPad or Nokia Lumia 900 (devices that support DC-HSPA) will be able to take advantage of the speeds providing their local mast has been upgraded. O2 says it’s rolling out to “major UK cities,” but there’s no word on exact locations.
– Three is also planning to rollout a 42Mbps version of DC-HSPA over the summer and T-Mobile / Orange are planning to support the technology later this year. Vodafone, the fourth major UK network operator, started to rollout a variant of DC-HSPA last year, but with support for up to 28.8Mbps — the company says it has no plans to support the 42Mbps variant.

Picks
Henry
Swordigo
– £1.49
– Nice platform/adventure.
– Quite easy but nicely done.

Ian
Habit List
– £1.49
– Helps create good habits and break bad ones
– Add a habit, pick frequency, track how often you keep or break habits
– Looks great – finding it very handy

DigitalOutbox Episode 113

DigitalOutbox Episode 113
In this episode the team discuss Game, Racists, Kindle Touch and Paper.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:42 – Game Enters Administration
– Enters administration
– Immediate closure of 277 stores in the UK and Ireland.
– Administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said 2,104 employees would be made redundant this week.
– The remaining 333 stores will stay open as the administrators search for a buyer for the business.
– PwC said that the retailer had suffered from high fixed costs and an ambitious international expansion. “Our priority is to continue trading the business as normal while we continue to pursue a sale,” said one of the administrators, Mike Jervis. “The recent job losses are regrettable, but will place the company in a stronger position while we explore opportunities to conclude a sale.
– PwC also said that all gift cards for Game and Gamestation had been suspended, meaning that customers would not be able to use them to buy merchandise and no cash exchange would be offered.
– http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/game-to-exit-administration-tomorrow-rbs-consortium-wins-race/093563
– Sources close to the negotiations are certain that a deal to save the retailer is incredibly close, with a likely exit from administration as early as tomorrow (Friday March 30th).
– Furthermore, multiple sources have told us that it will be the RBS-led bank consortium – and not GameStop or OpCapita – that will seal the deal.
6:10 – Racist twitter user jailed for 56 days
– A student who admitted posting racially offensive comments on Twitter about footballer Fabrice Muamba has been jailed for 56 days.
– Swansea University student Liam Stacey, 21, from Pontypridd, admitted inciting racial hatred over remarks about the Bolton Wanderers player, who collapsed during a FA Cup tie at Tottenham.
– Stacey broke down in tears as he was led away to begin his jail term.
– A second year biology student at Swansea, Stacey was arrested after his comments on the social networking site were reported by other users.
– A number of people challenged Stacey on Twitter following his first comment, and he responded with a number of offensive posts aimed at other Twitter users.
– Last week the court heard how Stacey posted the offensive comments shortly after the former England Under-21 star collapsed during the FA Cup quarter-final at White Hart Lane on 17 March.
– Magistrates were told police forces across Britain received complaints following the comments.
– Stacey tried to “distance himself” from the tweets by claiming his account had been hacked, the court was told. He later tried to delete his page but was arrested the following day at his student house in Swansea.
– When interviewed by police, Stacey said he had been drinking since lunchtime on Saturday and was drunk when he made the comments.
– Stacey was initially released on bail pending sentence and was ordered not to use Twitter and other social networking sites.
11:06 – Kindle Touch hits the UK
– The Kindle Touch will be available for delivery from 27 April, five months after it went on sale in the US. Unlike in America, there will not be a discounted version with adverts.
– The Touch is being sold for £109 with wi-fi, and £169 with both wi-fi and 3G connectivity, with no monthly fee.
– In the States, the units cost $99 and $149 for the Wi-Fi and 3G editions with adverts, $139 and $189 without adverts
– Still no Kindle Fire!
– What does Bezos do with his billions? Finds Apollo 11 F1 engines and plans to raise then from the Atlantic ocean – they are only 14,000 feet below the surface – http://www.bezosexpeditions.com/engine-recovery.html
15:40 – Harry Potter ebooks finally available
– All seven of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books are now available to download in e-book format from Pottermore, having been initially scheduled for last October.
– The first three can be bought for £4.99 (compared with their paper price of £6.99) and the last four can be bought for £6.99 (compared with their £8.99 printed price). Alternatively the whole lot can be bought as a bundle for £38.65. The titles can be read on e-book devices and platforms including Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Google Play — although iBooks is conspicuously not listed. The audiobooks are more pricey, at £17.99 and £32.99 respectively or £167.34 for the bundle.
– landmark move because you can only buy the books on Pottermore, but can fulfil the orders of those books through the Kindle platform. So although you find a shop front for the books atwww.amazon.co.uk/pottermore, the user is directed through to Pottermore to purchase the e-books, which will then be seamlessly pushed to their Kindle Library. Otherwise the books are available in ePub format, which is compatible with a wide range of readers, including Apple devices.
17:49 – Dot scot on the way
– The UK government has reportedly granted Dot Scot Registry, a not-for-profit company, with approval to apply for .scot, a new internet top-level domain.
– The wannabe registry can now apply to domain name policy oversee ICANN for .scot, paying a $185,000 (£116,970) application fee for the privilege.
– Under ICANN rules, any proposed new gTLD that purports to represent a geographic region needs to get a letter of approval or non-objection from the relevant local government. Dot Scot Registry now has that letter, according to The Scotsman.
19:19 – Friends Reunited Relaunches
– Early social networking pioneer Friends Reunited has been relaunched.
The UK-based network, which began in 2000, now invites users to sign up for its new “memories”-based service.
– The original site was bought by ITV for £175m in 2005, only to be sold for £25.6m four years later to online publishing group Brightsolid
– The site’s owner, Brightsolid, believes a host of professional archive content coupled with users’ own material will help make Friends Reunited the choice of social network for people keen to partake in online nostalgia.
– The site has teamed up with the Press Association and the British Library to allow users to attach old material – including newspaper clippings – to their own “memory box”.
– These boxes can be shared on various other networks online – including Facebook, where users can add a Friends Reunited app to their profile.
– The service is currently free to use – although Mr Kuyl said revenue-generating options were being considered further down the line, including inviting brands to offer their own nostalgic material, such as old cars, to be added to users’ memories.
22:02 – Shitter
– New startup will deliver your tweets on toilet rolls

Picks
Ian
Paper
– a blank slate of paper devoid of settings panels, menus, and adjustable line widths.
– team behind it had an interesting history: a handful of them spent several years at Microsoft, with a good chunk of that time focused on the Courier
– Fountain pen is only tool at startup
– Free app but £6 for 4 tools – Write (ballpoint), Sketch (pencil), Outline (marker), and Color (watercolor paintbrush)
– Simplicity and clear toolbar free UI is really nice. Great for sketching, but here’s the funny. A stylus really helps.
– Undo is really nice – hold two fingers on iPad and rotate anti clockwise – step through additions removing one at a time
– Share – twitter, facebook, tumblr and e-mail

Wind Map
– Lovely visualisation of current wind flows in the US
– Team hope to expand ot other countries if they can find the data feeds they need

DigitalOutbox Episode 99

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

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

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

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

DigitalOutbox Episode 98

DigitalOutbox Episode 98
In this episode the team discuss Nokia Windows Phones, iOS battery woes and why Britain loves it’s data.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
0:43 – Nokia Windows Phone Revealed
– Lumia 800
– The 800 sports a curved 3.7-inch WVGA ClearBlack AMOLED display, a single-core 1.4GHz processor, and 512MB of RAM. Mobile photographers will find much to like about the 8-megapixel camera with a f/2.2 Carl Zeiss lens, and the 16GB of onboard storage should hold quite a few cat pictures. The specs won’t exactly set anyone’s world on fire, but the design might: like the N9 before it, the Lumia 800 features a stunning unibody design that’s shaped out of a slab of durable polycarbonate material.
– The style-conscious among you will also be glad to know that the Lumia 800 comes in three colors: black, cyan, and magenta. Surprisingly, the Lumia 800 is already on its way to France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK in time for a November launch. Customers in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan will be able to nab one by the end of the year, but domestic Windows Phones fans will have to wait until early 2012.
6:14 – Android passes iOS in total app downloads
– Android commanded 44 percent of overall mobile app downloads compared to 31 percent for iOS.
– According to ABI, Android has much bigger install base compared to iOS, with 2.4 users for every iOS user worldwide. By 2016, that gap is expected to grow to 3:1. But even with the bigger footprint, iOS users still download more apps individually than average Android users by a 2 to 1 ratio.
– Apple is still the No. 1 focus for most developers because of the fact that it’s a better place to monetize apps; Ovum predicts iOS will still generate more in paid download revenue in 2016 with iOS making $2.86 billion compared to $1.5 billion for Android. As I wrote about before, Apple customers are also more interested in downloading a wider variety of apps, which is helpful for developers.
9:23 – Apple admit iOS 5 battery issues
– “A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” Apple said in a statement to AllThingsD. “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”
– Apple didn’t say exactly what the “few bugs” were, but leading candidates right now are iCloud sync and notifications. Apple has just posted a developer beta for iOS 5.0.1, with the following changelog:
– iOS 5.0.1 beta contains improvements and other bug fixes including:
– Fixes bugs affecting battery life
– Adds Multitasking Gestures for original iPad
– Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
– Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation
– Contains security improvements
13:21 – Siri does not understand the Scots
– Problems with Scots accent
– Really. So surprised…
17:10 – Mobile britain – all about the data
– Staggeringly, 97% of all the traffic that now travels through our network is data. That’s amazing.
– It’s even more amazing when you know that since June last year and September this year (just 14 months) we’ve seen a 427% increase in data usage on Three for smartphone customers. Downloading apps, streaming movies, getting around town with Google Maps, even checking in on Facebook – it all adds up, and you’re doing it now more than ever.
19:57 – Home data rates are staggering too
– The average home broadband user downloads 17 gigabytes (GB) of data each month, equivalent to streaming 12 hours of high-definition content from the BBC’s iPlayer, as data use has increased sevenfold over the past five years, says a new report.
– At the same time 97% of UK premises – and 66% of the country – can get a voice signal outdoors from each of the mobile networks O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone, while 73% of premises and 13% of the country can access 3G data signals, according to research by the communications watchdog Ofcom.
– Internet service providers confirmed that customers’ data demands have increased dramatically as people have begun to adopt video catchup services and “cloud” services such as YouTube, Flickr and Facebook.
– Virgin Media told the Guardian that customers on faster lines use proportionally more data: those on its 10 megabit per second (Mbps) lines use about 19GB a month on average, while those using its 100Mbps lines consume 130GB. As the figures are averages, though, some people using filesharing networks may be downloading considerably more, said a Virgin spokesperson. TalkTalk said the average user downloads 13GB. BT declined to give figures.
22:19 – Netflix to hit UK in early 2012
– Netflix today said it will offer “unlimited TV shows and films streaming instantly over the internet to TVs and computers for one low monthly subscription price”.
– Streaming only, no DVD rentals
– Another step to cutting Sky or Virgin?
– No idea on price or range
– Dropped 800,000 subscribers in latest figures, and despite healthy revenues has said that they will move to net loss with roll out in UK & Ireland
– Shares dropped 37% – ouch
25:46 – SeeSaw goes Bye Bye
– The British streaming television service, SeeSaw, has been closed down.
– The website had been online less than two years, offering content from BBC Worldwide, Channel 4, Channel Five and several production companies.
– A group of investors led by Criterion Capital Partners took a majority stake in the business in July. CCP also owns the social network Bebo. Experts said the business was squeezed out by bigger players in the online video market.
– SeeSaw was created by the media services company, Arqiva, in February 2010. It used assets from the aborted catch-up TV platform, Project Kangeroo, which had been rejected by the UK’s competition regulator.
– It offered a range of free-to-watch programmes supported by advertising, with an optional fee to turn the adverts off. It also had premium pay-to-watch shows.
26:58 – BT given 14 days to block Newzbin 2
– BT has been given 14 days to block access to a website accused of promoting illegal filesharing “on a grand scale” by Hollywood studios, in the first high court ruling of its kind under UK copyright law.
– Wednesday’s court order also allows for the blocking of any other IP or internet address that the operators of the Newzbin2 site might look to use to continue to offer copyrighted content to users.
– The judge said that limiting the blocking order to the Newzbin2 site would be “too easily circumvented to be effective” because the site’s owners have already made available software that could allow users to get around a BT block.
– He backed the studios’ proposal that BT should also move to block “any other IP address or URL whose sole or predominant purpose is to enable or facilitate access to the Newzbin[2] website”.
– “Furthermore, I do not consider that the studios should be obliged to return to court for an order in respect of every single IP address or URL that the operators of Newzbin2 may use,” he added.
– The court said BT must foot the bill for the cost of implementing the web block on Newzbin2. BT, which argued that the creative industries should pay, has estimated the cost to be about £5,000 and £100 for each subsequent notification.
– App launched by Newzbin to get around the block
30:34 – Borrow Kindle books…if your a prime user…and live in the US
– The new Lending Library turns your Kindle into a sort of virtual library, with currently 5,000 titles you can borrow from Amazon, including 100 New York Times bestsellers. You can borrow one book a month by going to the “Kindle Owners’ Lending Library” in the Kindle Store on your Kindle device. Books with the Prime icon can be borrowed for free for the month (as long as you’re a Prime member). Correction: There are no due dates, but you can only have one book out at a time.
– Only works with Kindle devices – not Kindle software
– So prime in the US gives you lending and free streaming as well as the free day shipping
– UK is free next day shipping only – will that change when the content dels are in place
33:19 – HP Reverses
– Will retain PC division
– Now that the Personal Systems Group is staying part of HP, the board of directors feels that it can “drive profitable growth” and assist other parts of HP’s business.
– Web OS seemingly still for the chop – tablets will use Windows 8
– But they are still trying to maintain developer interest by offering cheap tablets to them…
34:57 – Google+ Updates
– Google+ now works for Google App users – finally
– Launches Whats Hot
– Exposing popular posts, not just from your circles
– Ripples
– Visualise how a story was shared
– Experimental but nice
– Creative Kit
– Add filters, effects, text to your images with ease
– After a release that the tech community loved – and praised fairly universally – pretty sure that takeup is pretty inconsequential… Can it survive? Not a daily visit on my we travels any more.
– Another Bing?
38:15 – Google TV Updates
– It’s coming to UK soon so worth mentioning this update
– Reworked UI – proper 10 foot interface
– New apps
– Android Marketplace
– Doesn’t replace Sky or Virgin, but to be used alongside those devices
41:01 – Google Reader Updates
– Removed sharing
– Everything through Google+
– Can’t follow others
– New design shows more white, shows less er page, is harder to understand
– iOS Gmail app released
– Basically a wrapper around a web app
– Attachments and notifications only real difference
– Except notifications are broke
– Only supports one gmail account
– An hour after release they pull the app and apologise
– Google figure out a way to get around the iOS limitation of 100 beta testers
– Seriously though – why do this?
48:24 – Facebook Stats
– Ahead of new trusted Friends feature, Faceook unleashed some pretty amazing stats
– every day, “only .06%” of Facebook’s 1 billion logins are compromised. Or, to put it another way, 600,000 logins per day are compromised.
– Less than 4% of the content shared on Facebook is spam (vs. 89.1% of email is spam)
– Less than 5% of Facebook users experience spam on any given day
– 50% of Facebook’s 750+ million users login to Facebook every day (wait, aren’t we up to 800 million now? Must be an old infographic).
– The average user has 130 friends
– People spend over 700 billion minutes on the site per month
52:41 – Batman and other games
– Batman
– Another epic and deeply atmospheric chapter. Powerful end to story as well.
– Clever sandbox environment/story as well.
– Finishing main story line represents under 50% of game completion with challenge maps, side missions and riddlers tropies/riddles making up remainder.
– Serious no no… save game issues still… Extremely easy to corrupt a save file and then all progress lost. Only option to start again. Happened to me at 25% and a search around the internet turned up plenty more pissed off people. Also, issue with game failing to recognise downloaded content and then failing to load. Again, big no no.
– Battlefield
– Uncharted 3
– GTA V trailer – return to San Andreas
– MW3 just around the corner
– Threats from MS they will ban players playing early… even if you bought a legit copy, legitimately… Like to see the fallout from that one?

Picks
Chris
Jetpack Joyride
– Great game for iOS devices
– Using different weapons try and fly for as long as possible
– Good graphics and sound
Ian
idonethis
– Mails you once a day, you reply with events you’ve done that day
– Email only – can’t edit via website
– Calendar viewable online or shared via secret url into Google Calendar or iCal
– Nice way of tracking events – can be exported from site

DigitalOutbox Episode 96

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

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

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

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

DigitalOutbox Episode 93

DigitalOutbox Episode 93
In this episode the team discuss England Riots, Google buying Motorola and future games roundup.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:42 – England Riots
– Social Media to blame…
– Off course not…but was used for good
– The @RiotCleanup Twitter page has amassed more than 50,000 followers in fewer than 10 hours and is consistently broadcasting cleanup locations and times, along with other pertinent information regarding the initiative.
On Facebook, a similar page has emerged as the central location for information on the world’s largest social network.
And for a more static look at where the action is, riotcleanup.co.uk is being constantly updated with cleanup location information. In an email interview with Ian, the creator of the website and resident of rural Shropshire, England, he explained:
“I was sitting at home following the #londonriots hashtag — then I saw #riotcleanup start to appear. I am not in London, but wanted to do something. Near enough simultaneously, I registered riotcleanup.co.uk as someone else got the Twitter account @riotcleanup going. Then, I just knocked something together as fast as possible and uploaded it!”
– Beyond the riot cleanup, another effort to catch and prosecute looters has taken root, with the Tumblr account “Catch A Looter” accepting and posting images of looters for identification.
– Zavilla – http://zavilia.com/ – posting up pictures from the riots asking people to submit names of those they can identify
– Unless off course you read the Daily Mail, Express or Sun – then twitter is to blame for the riots
– Blackberry helping police as will T-Mobile/Orange
– 16 year old Glaswegian arrested over attempts to incite a riot via Facebook
– Twitter traffic sky rockets during riots
– Off course, the government need to blame something – http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/11/david-cameron-rioters-social-media
– Social media tools have responsibility
– Home secretary to meet Facebook, Twitter and RIM to discus their responsibiliites
– Why not the mobile phone providers?
– A move to disconnect potential rioters would mark a huge shift in Britain’s internet policy, with free speech advocates likely to accuse the government of ushering in a new wave of online censorship.
– Scotland Yard has made a string of arrests of people suspected of inciting the violence across England by using BlackBerry Messenger, Twitter and Facebook.
– Cameron urged Twitter and Facebook to remove messages, images and videos that could incite more unrest across the country. “All of them should think about their responsibility and about taking down those images,” he said.
– Greater Manchester Police use twitter to reveal details of those convicted – http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/08/11/greater-manchester-police-tweeting-names-dates-of-birth-and-addresses-of-looters/
– Names, DOB’s, Addresses are sent out via their twitter account
– Info already available due to court appearance, but making it much more available
– Back to Facebook – http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/08/16/uk-man-gets-4-year-jail-sentence-for-setting-up-facebook-riot-page/
– UK Man gets 4 years in jail for setting up facebook riot page
– a 22-year old Latchford man named Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan has been charged with organizing some of the actions after setting up a page on Facebook.
– While that might seem extreme for merely setting up a Facebook page, Assistant Chief Contable Phil Thompson believes otherwise:
“If we cast our minds back just a few days to last week and recall the way in which technology was used to spread incitement and bring people together to commit acts of criminality it is easy to understand the four year sentences that were handed down in court today.”
11:28 – Google buys Motorola Mobility
– Google just announced that it is acquiringMotorola Mobility. The search and online advertising company is buying the company for approximately $12.5 billion (or $40 per share), in cash. The price represents a premium of 63 percent to the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares last Friday. Google had about $39 billion in cash at last count.
– The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing. Motorola Mobility will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. Google will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business.
– It’s also a move to build up the company’s patent portfolio, he adds, as it will “enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies”.
– 17000 patents, 7500 pending patents (Google only had 1000 patents prior to this)
– Although announcement talks up Android and patents, Motorola Mobility also makes TV hardware
– Now fully vertically aligned like Apple
– If seen as purely as a patent buy, thats $18 billion on big patents this year alone
– Motorola Mobility is what used to be the Mobile Devices division of Motorola until January 2011.
– A few years ago, Motorola bet its future in the mobile devices market by going full Android, launching the “Droid” – initially on the Verizon network – on November 6, 2009. The “Droid X” and “Droid 2″ followed in 2010.
– Big question now is: how will HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Acer, Lenovo and other Android device makers respond to this news? – http://www.google.com/press/motorola/quotes/
– It’s all about defending Android – allegedly
17:26 – HP to buy Autonomy…and spin off hardware business
– $10 billion for autonomy
– Spin off hardware…which includes web-os
– Post pc world, dominated by iPad and Apple, Google and Android – no profit in hardware for HP
– 250,000 touchpads unsold at best buy
– Look at IBM – top 5 company in world and mostly all software and services
21:39 – LinkedIn makes a dick move
– LinkedIn users are upset that the company has taken the Facebook approach in regards to online privacy with a recent change to the privacy policy. Under the guise of providing more privacy controlto the user, the social network has automatically opted-in its 100 million users into the social advertising program without informing them of the change beyond a blog post.
– When a LinkedIn user views a third-party advertisement on the social network, they will see user profile pictures and names of connections if that connection has recommended or followed a brand. Any time that a user follows a brand, they unwittingly become a cheerleader for the company or organization if it advertises through LinkedIn.
– In order to opt out of social advertising, the LinkedIn user has to take four steps to escape third-party advertisements:
– Hover over the user name in the top right hand corner of any LinkedIn page and click ‘Settings’. On the Settings page, click ‘Account’. On the Account tab, click ‘Manage Social Advertising’. Uncheck the box next to “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising.” and click the save button.
– Users also may want to opt out of receiving email from LinkedIn advertisers. This setting also allows LinkedIn advertising partners to spam users with promotions during email marketing campaigns if the user follows the brand. To opt out of this setting, click the Email Preferences tab and click on the ‘Turn on/off partner InMail’ link to locate the check box.
24:46 – Amazon release cloud based Kndle Reader
– Amazon may have changed its Kindle iOS app to comply with Apple’s revised in-app subscription policy, but the retailer has now come out with its own, web-based alternative, known as the Kindle Cloud Reader. Compatible with both Chrome and Safari, the new app is essentially a browser version of the Kindle eBook reader, providing PC, Mac and Chromebook users with access to their digitized libraries.
– The tool also offers local storage, allowing for offline reading, though Amazon’s device limit still applies, so if your library’s already strewn across multiple gadgets, the app’s reading functionality may be limited.
– The company unveiled the Cloud Reader today with relatively little fanfare or explanation, but its site highlights the service’s main attractions, including its iPad optimization
– Build around the app store restrictions
– Interesting to remember that first iPhone had no iPhone and told developers to build web apps, now dev’s are building web app’s to get around Apple restrictions.
26:57 – Apple win suit to block Samsung 10.1 sales in Europe
– A new ruling by a regional court in Dusseldorf, Germany has granted Cupertino a preliminary injunction, blocking the sale and advertising of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 across Europe, save for the Netherlands.
– Samsung can still appeal the ruling — in the meanwhile, however, the decision will stand. According to The Telegraph, the likely appeal will take about a month to be heard by the judge who granted the injunction.
– Samsung responded – The company notes that all products already distributed to retailers in Germany will not be affected by the decision. And naturally, Samsung promises to fight to have the injunction lifted.
– Looks really bad – Samsung didn’t defend themselves, Apple’s legal submissions look dubious (i.e. made up) and it’s now been reversed to just Germany
32:40 – Orange Film To Go
– Allows Orange customers to rent a free movie every week
– Text FILMTOGO to 85060 for redemption code
– Can be used on a Thursday, then normal iTunes rental conditions apply
– Although free, txt message costs 35p
34:24 – iPlayer updates for TV
– The app – launching initially on the Sony PlayStation 3 games console, which has run the browser-based version of iPlayer since 2008 – has been built from scratch and includes new features such as viewer recommendations. HTML5 based and will roll out to TV’s and connected devices over the coming months
– Daniel Danker, the BBC’s general manager of programmes and on demand, said that iPlayer viewing on internet-connected TVs increased five fold in the six months to July, reaching 3.1m programme requests a month.
– “We’re going beyond the tech-savvy. We’re making iPlayer easier to use for the mainstream audience,” Danker said. “With today’s announcement, we’re transforming iPlayer in its most natural home.”
36:15 – Sony Price Cuts
– PS3 now cut to £199, street price may be £180
– a new cheaper version of its PSPhandheld console, with a price point of €99 will be launched before christmas
– won’t have wi-fi support and I still can’t see it getting sales
37:56 – Slimmer Cheaper Wii
– Nintendo will launch a redesigned Wii gaming console in Europe by the end of 2011.
– The updated console will be part of a new Wii bundle, which will include “the newly configured Wii console in white, a Wii Remote Plus controller, Nunchuk, and copies of Wii Sports and Wii Party,” the company announced Wednesday.
– The device will be cheaper and slimmer than the original Wii. Nintendo did not announce the bundle’s price or release pictures of the new Wii. The console also will be designed to stand horizontally rather than vertically like the current Wii. Additionally, the new Wii will not be backward compatible with Gamecube games.
40:10 – Onlive UK Launch Date
– Launches in UK on September 22nd
– OnLive has claimed that more than 100 “top tier” titles will be available from the launch date. It is yet to announce specific games, but has told the Guardian that it is in the process of licensing most of the catalogue currently available in the US. Many major publishers including Ubisoft, THQ and Square Enix have partnered with OnLive to make games such as Assassin’s Creed, Homefront and Batman: Arkham Asylum available via the instant-play technology. However, the two biggest game publishers Electronic Arts and Activision have yet to announce any supporting titles.
– Users will be able subscribe for free at the official UK website. They can then choose to rent games for a limited periods, buy unlimited access to specific titles or pay a monthly fee to access the OnLive PlayPack Bundle, which gives unlimited access to a large chunk of the OnLive line-up. UK prices are yet to be announced, but in the US, most titles offer a three-day pass for $5.99, a five-day pass for $8.99 or a full price of $20-$60. The PlayPack bundle is $9.99 a month
– Can play on Mac, PC, iPad and Android tablets and via set top box
– Partnering with BT but will work on any broadband platform
– Still sceptical but time will tell
43:39 – Google+ Games
– Rolling out across the platform
– 16 games available initially
– Hopefully won’t pollute like facebook did
– It’s got Angry Birds!
47:32 – End of games drought
– Gears of War 3 – 20/09/11
– FIFA Soccer 12 – 30/09/11
– Forza – 14/10/11
– Batman: Arkham City – 21/10/11
– Battlefield 3 – 28/10/11
– Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception – 02/11/11
– Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – 08/11/11
– The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – 11/11/11

Picks
Ian
Lion Tweaks
– The application has been developed to quickly turn off numerous exclusive features of Lion; the list includes, enable 2D-dock, remove system window animation, remove mail window animation, disable auto-spelling correction, change iCal and Address Book leather UI to aluminum look, enable permanent scrollbars, show hidden files, disable crash dialog popup.