DigitalOutbox Episode 27

DigitalOutbox Episode 27
In this episode the team discuss Apple Lala, Google gaga.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
2:29 – Johnston Press Charge for Online Content
– The Johnston Press websites will either ask users to pay £5 for a three-month subscription to read the full articles, or direct them to buy the newspapers for 6 regional newspapers
– Sites in the pilot scheme include the Worksop Guardian, the Ripley & Heanor News and the Whitby Gazette. The Northumberland Gazette is also included in the trial. In Scotland, the Carrick Gazette and Southern Reporter are taking part. They own The Scotsman that does similar. FT also charges
– Johnston, which owns more than 300 papers across Britain and has suffered from a drop in advertising revenues, says the introduction of “paywalls” is an experiment to assess the impact of charging for content.
– Once you start restricting access on the websites, if you have content that can broadly be found somewhere else, then you really restrict the number of people coming to websites,” the Guardian’s director of digital content Emily Bell told the BBC. “I think it’s great that people are experimenting with lots of different models because undoubtedly we need to find more money in the market,” she added.
5:40 – Google Changes News Service
– Google limits access to free news
– Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google
– Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription websites.
– Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.
– Change to spiders and robot – can index only preview pages – first couple of para’s only, subscribed content locked away
– If a publisher chooses to have spiders crawl their articles in this manner, they will be labeled with “subscription” within Google News
– Google blinked
8:46 – Google Public DNS
– Google launches DNS resolver
– http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/
– Easy to change
– According to Google’s FAQ, the company will only keep temporary logs and erase all the information it collects through the public DNS service within 24 to 45 hours. The company promises not to keep any information that is linked to IP addresses in its permanent logs.
– I’ve switched – it’s fast but any faster than opendns?
– test via this site – http://www.manu-j.com/blog/opendns-alternative-google-dns-rocks/403/
– test shows opendns still faster, for me in the UK at least
16:05 – Google Dictionary
16:37 – Google UK Property Dimension
18:10 – Bing Maps Beta
– Needs Silverlight
– Street View (Street Side in Bing), Photosynth, Apps
– Nice animations, slick but hate the need for plugin
– Many of the features are US only at the moment
– Google search event this Monday – isn’t competition great
24:13 – Apple buys Lala
– Lala, unlike Apple’s iTunes, lets users play the music they own from the Web — or in tech industry parlance, from the cloud.
– Is it buying the company or the engineering talent?
– Lala’s engineers have built a service that music enthusiasts say is very easy to use. Lala scans the hard drives of its users and creates an online music library that matches the user’s collection, making it painless (and free) for people to get their music in the cloud.
– is this what the massive data centre that Apple is building is for?
– 2010 – the year of streaming wars
27:36 – iTunes 12 Days of Christmas
– 26 Dec – 6 Jan
– Free song or music video, app, TV episode or film
– Offer runs for 24 hours each day
28:55 – Square
– Let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone
– small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack
– Device is free, works on iPhone and Droid
– Receipts via e-mail, sms
– Sign with your finger on iPhone screen
– Associate photo with account so vendor can check it is actually you
– Looks awesome – quick and a great way to pay
32:39 – End of the Crunchpad
– It’s no more – another mythical tablet bites the dust
– Breakup of the team, grubby takeover attempt by hardware partner – they got screwed basically.
– Looks like it was days/weeks from demo/launch
– Now to be settled in court – this will run and run
– Only one side of the story at the moment
– Could someone not step in and save it? Something smells fishy.
– Media event planned for Monday – Chandrasekar “Chandra” Rathakrishnan, founder and CEO of Fusion Garage, (who arrington blamed for killing the crunchpad) will speak to reporters (give his side of the story) and demonstrate “the device” both in a video call and in private briefings scheduled for later Monday at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco
37:12 – GT5 Time Trial Demo
– Dec 17th, Time Trial Competition
– participants will be able to race a Nissan 370Z around a new Gran Turismo 5 circuit. The fastest times recorded in each of the 20 participating countries will be advanced to a national final. An elite group of 20 drivers will then secure a place at the GT Academy.
– Still on track for March 2010 release
39:20 – World Cup shot in 3D
– Up to 25 games shot in 3D
– Using Sony tech
– No announcements on broadcasting – in the coming months more will be announced
– selected games will be broadcast live at “Fan Fest” locations in seven cities around the world: London, Berlin, Mexico City, Paris, Rio De Janeiro, Rome, and Sydney
– World Cup in 2006 saw many jump on the HD bandwagon – will 3D see same take up?

Picks
Ian
Click 2 Flash
– safari
– Block evil Adobe Flash
– Displays nice grey background allowing you to click if you want to use it
– Improve cpu, better battery life
– Higher quality YouTube, Play videos in QuickTime (H.264), not Flash

Chris
TrueCrypt
– The mother of all encryption
– Creates an encrypted drive that, once mounted works on the fly.
– Can encrypt a whole drive. Can encrypt a whole system. Can create mini encrypted areas (mount them as drives.)
– Can even create a “false bottom” drive if you want.
– PC, MAC & Linux

DigitalOutbox Episode 24

DigitalOutbox Episode 24
In this episode the team discuss Modern Warfare 2.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:02 – Big Brother Is Watching
– Home office to push ahead with plans to require communication companies to record all transactions
– Home office worried that existing legislation relates to phone rather than net
– Content of communication not recorded – but source and destination logged
– Internet service providers and telecommunication companies will be legally required to store records of all personal communications for one year
– That data will be made available to a wide range of 653 public bodies including police, fire and ambulance services, the Financial Services Authority, prison governors and local councils. Obtaining access to the data won’t even require the permission of a judge; authorization from a senior police official or equivalent department head at a local authority will suffice.
– Cost – £2 billion over next 10 years. Yeah, right. Double that estimate please. Wankers.
5:01 – Murdoch to Block Google Indexing
– As part of the push to charge for content from the Murdoch empire, it looks like Rupert may be looking at ways to block google indexing.
– According to Murdoch, Google’s indexing of headlines and intro paras is not fair use and represents illegal use of his content.
– Happening within months and quarters, not weeks
– Highlights the problem facing all content creators. How to get the $$ (or ££) return on investment?
– It’s possibly the most foolish business decision since Electrolux turned down Dyson.
11:33 – Google buys Admob
– AdMob is a mobile advert vendor on device such as iPhone and others
– Many iPhone apps that display adverts are served by AdMob
– AdMob have served almost 125.5billion ads and counting
– the deal will make Google the market leader in mobile advertising … evil
– apparently Apple were also interested in AdMob before Google purchased it
14:15 – Google Go
– Another new programming language
– http://golang.org/
– combines the performance and security benefits associated with using a compiled language like C++ with the speed of a dynamic language like Python
– All about speed and flexibility
– Mascot is……..Gordon The Gopher
– should you learn it? Good advice from last year by Giles: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/12/no-new-language-in-2009-new-habits.html
17:00 – Bing Maps UK
– At last, bye bye multimap
– Great London maps
– Ordnance Survey maps – superb!
– Nearby Stations
– Explore wikipedia, photo’s, tweets
– Walking routes, draggable routes, embedable maps
20:38 – Worm attacks iPhone
– Only on jailbroken phones
– Only if default password isn’t changed after installing ssh
– Harmless worm, changes background picture to rick astley but source code made available – other nastier versions surely to follow
– make jailbreaking easy, this is what can happen
– Shoddy reporting from BBC
22:45 – 10.6.2 Update
– fixes the much publicised ‘loss of data when logged in as Guest’ bug amongst others.
24:16 – Apple wins Attack of the Clones
– Apple has won its case against the clone Mac maker Psystar.
– Are EULAs a good thing? This case proves that they’re clearly enforceable by law, at least in the US.
28:24 – Modern Warfare 2
– MP typical aghast reaction to game – another MP reacts to give gamers a voice (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8342589.stm). This is an 18 certificate game. This is a game played by adults. WHEN will MPs realise that gaming is not the preserve of kids and that the average age of gamers is over 30!!!
– Controversial scene – on side on terrorists mowing down civilians in an airport
– Was the scene really that bad when you get constantly abused on Live?
– Case in point – first night of mulitplayer and three guys from liverpool talk about how this game makes them feel like a paki – ha ha – you even look like a paki – ha ha – i’m going to shoot your paki ass etc etc – when will we address those kind of issues instead of worrying about an 18 certificate game and some action scenes
– also – they were kids – why were they playing the game – whole big nasty issue around certification and the lack of policing by parents
– As for the game, single player excellent but a little dull (I hate single player games)
– Multiplayer — two hours of play and every map different. Felt lost, maps disorientating, weapons rubbish, everyone better etc etc. Halo tactics don’t work here. Then start to get a few double kills etc. First five kill streak, drop in a missile – awesome. Start to level up, create a class, get a better gun. Lovely. By the end of the night I was grinning. Great game. Bad – no party chat in some multiplayer modes means you have to listen to absolute fucking morons. Bad call from Infinity Ward
39:35 – XBox Banhammer
– Just ahead of Modern Warfare, MS has banned multiple consoles from XBOX live.
– No exact figures given, but perhaps 600,000 accounts banned.
– All MS have said is – a small proportion of the 20,000,000 live users have been banned.
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_10000000/newsid_10002900/10002915.stm
– Raz – 25 year old and he’s gutted
– Twat – shouldn’t have pirated then
– MS confirm it’s permanent – of course it’s fucking permamnent
– Tell you what, lets call FAST, get the police around and arrest or fine you for software piracy. Fanny.
44:25 – Natal Priced and Dated
46:15 – iPlayer for Wii
– WHEN for my 360!!! I’m more than happy to swap the Sky Player/Twitter/Facebook etc for an iPlayer channel.

Picks
Shakeel
Paint.net
– Paint.Net: a free Photoshop alternative for Windows
– a great program for developers for doing photo editing without having to purchase Photoshop
– offers many Photoshop-like features and offers almost everything for the average user/developer
– layers, special f/x’s, unlimited Undos
– received it’s first update in years, now at version 3.5
– now includes blurs and distortion f/x’s
– improved performance
– visual makeover (enhanced for Aero/Glass)
– growing online community, many tutorials, even plugins are available

Ian
Viewfinder
– small focussed app for the mac
– flickr browser, searcher, downloader
– great keynote integration

Henry
Teleport
– teleport lets you use a single mouse and keyboard to control several Macs.
– Simply reach an edge of your screen, and your mouse teleports to your nearby Mac, which also becomes controlled by your keyboard. The pasteboard can be synchronized, and you can even drag & drop files between your Macs.
– Freeware, but please donate by paypal.
– If you’d like a Windows equivalent, try Synergy – http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/index.html

Chris
Best of Youtube
– Does exactly what it says on the tin.
– Also available as a Vodcast throgh iTunes.