Tag: nokia

DigitalOutbox Episode 164

DigitalOutbox Episode 164
DigitalOutbox Episode 164 – Google I/O

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Shownotes
1:45 – Google I/O
– Just one keynote this year….that lasted for 3 ½ hours
– Notable absence – no new hardware. Unlike previous years there were no hardware announcement, but all attendees did get a Chromebook Pixel. There was however plenty of new software and services (but nothing on Google TV and no new version of Android). Key announcements…
– Google: 900 million Android activations to date, 48 billion app downloads

– Google announces Play game services, Android’s cross-platform answer to Game Center
– The platform will support cloud saves, thereby allowing users to save their progress or game state and pick it up on a separate device, as well as achievements and leaderboards using Google+.
– API will enable both turn-based and real-time multiplayer
– Google Play game services will be supported for titles on Android, iOS and the Web – truly cross platform

– Google Play services updated with new location, Google+ sign-in, and cloud messaging APIs
– 3 new location API’s including Geofencing and Activity Recognition API that will help users track their physical activity

– Android Studio
– It’s an IDE based on IntelliJ.
– This tool has more options for Android Development, making the process faster and more productive. A “live layout” was shown that renders your app as you’re editing in realtime.
– Tools to support beta testing and language translations

– Google takes on Spotify with Google Play Music All Access subscription service
– web and mobile interfaces feature millions of songs you can play instantly, recommendations, charts and playlists, and instant radio stations. The Spotify competitor launches today in the US for $9.99 a month, comes with a free trial month, and sign-ups before June 30th get it for $7.99.
– Everything from your Google Music locker is automatically pulled into Google Play Music All Access. Beneath the content you own, everything else an artist has ao All Access is automatically listed and plays at a tap. More countries will get Google Play Music All Access soon.

– Google redesigning Play apps and Play Store on the web
– Google turns the Samsung Galaxy S4 into a Nexus phone, coming June 26th for $649
– Unlocked
– Vanilla Android – no Samsung crapware added
– Should get quick updates of new Android releases

– Google takes on Apple in schools with Google Play for Education
– Play store for education – currently trialling now

– Google+ completely redesigned with new cards-based interface
– 41 new features
– Multi column stream (Like Facebook or Pinterest)
– Auto tag posts
– New features for hangouts and photos
– Photos
– automatically enhance the tonal distribution in an image, soften skin, sharpen certain parts of an image and remove noise – and all of those computations happen in the cloud.
– system can now analyze your images and kick out blurry photos, duplicates, images with bad exposure (which it will try to fix). It can also recognize good images with certain landmarks, for example, and detect faces and see if people are smiling and/or of those people are in your Google+ circles. It will also try to make some decision based on aesthetics. What used to take hours of work, Gundotra said, now happens automatically in the cloud and take seconds.
– Now that Google offers everybody 15GB of free storage, users an also upload 15GB worth of full-size images to Google+ Photos. In addition, the autobackup feature provides unlimited storage space for photos at sized under 2048px.
– “Awesome” – can automatically detect when an image is part of a series and stitch it together in one image or an animated GIF. “If we detect that you took a series of photos, in burst mode or otherwise, we can stitch them together,” Gundotra told us. To recognize these images, the system does a bit of analysis to make sure the background hasn’t moved.
– This is about more than animated GIFs, though. This new feature – which Google calls “auto awesome” – can also automatically create a group photo from a series of photos and pick the one where everybody is smiling. It can stitch together landscape photos to create panoramas and create HDR images from a series of photos where it detects bracketed exposures. All of this happens extremely fast, too, thanks to the power of Google’s data centers.

– Google unveils Hangouts: a unified messaging system for Android, iOS, and Chrome
– replaces the numerous Google services that currently help you have real-time conversations with other users, such as Google Talk, Google Voice and Google+ Hangouts.
– It will launch on most major platforms later today, including iOS, Android and the Web. (iOS works well, Android – doesn’t support Nexus 7)
– Conversations can either be one-on-one or in larger groups; the new Hangouts app can do both.
– As with many other apps, such as WhatsApp or even iMessage, conversations support multimedia content, including high-resolution photographs.
– Video chats as well
– Text, emoji, photos, video, see who’s typing, read receipts
– The service’s Google+ integration is one of the best features in the entire product: every photo that you or a friend posts is automatically saved in a private, shared album on Google+.
– One flaw – doesn’t bring in SMS, so not fully unified – Google confirm that SMS is coming soon

– Google adds button-free voice search in Chrome: just say ‘OK Google’
– You should, according to Google, be able to ask it when your upcoming flight is, and where your package might be in transit.
– Search getting a lot smarter – improving knowledge graph
– Making claims that search is only starting – next generation search coming….end of search as we know it

– Google Now updated to include voice reminders, emails, and public transit data
– new cards include a location-based Reminder feature, public transit travel times, and information about books, music, TV shows and video games that might be of timely interest to users.
– Reminder feature is based on time, people and location and can be set with simple voice commands using natural language processing. It’s like the geofenced Reminders that are used by Apple in iOS, but looks to be arguably more useful since it ties into the Google Now knowledge graph. Reminders takes Now further by giving users a way to actively set and retrieve content, which should help prove its worth among users who weren’t getting much out of the automated results previously being generated by the engine.

– Google Wallet comes to Gmail
– Google announced two important features regarding Google Wallet. The first is integration with Gmail so you can pay by sending an email. The second is the launch of the Google Wallet Instant Buy Android API, which lets developers integrate payment features into apps for selling physical goods and services.
– The first feature, which is rolling out “over the coming months” to all US Gmail users over 18 years old, means you can send money to whoever you want directly from Gmail. Recipients don’t need to have a Gmail address: any email will do. Google lets you send money for free as long as your bank account is linked to Google Wallet or using your Google Wallet Balance. There are “low fees,” however if you are sending money using your linked credit or debit card.

– Google redesigns Maps for mobile – Android, iOS incl iPad version coming this summer
– New look for Android, based on iOS
– iPad coming soon
– new floating search box is the highlight of the main map view, and it incorporates a new suggestion engine that will help you find relevant places nearby and more.
– new version of maps will also have live traffic incident reporting and re-routing.

– Google Maps integrates Google Earth and Street View in completely redesigned interface
– new version of Google Maps is heavily customized for every user, with knowledge about a user contributing to discovery of new places using the same data as Google Now.
– new service collates imagery from Google Earth, Google’s Street View and special projects including its space and underwater imaging. Instead of having to bounce around between products, you’ll now be able to get all of that in one place
– new overhead view, which is also rendered in 3D using WebGL, like Google Earth:
– Flight search and place reviews are now integrated fully into Google Maps, giving you the ability to search for directions including flights in one go. Reviews and ratings can be culled from top reviewers or your Google+ circles.

– Larry Page then came on stage, said a few statements (slammed Oracle – in it for the money, then went into a 45 minute Q&A. Most was fairly interesting but there was one bizarre statement..
– Google CEO Larry Page is holding a rare Q&A session with attendees of today’s Google I/O keynote, and he’s been offering up some pretty unfiltered answers. In response to a question about reducing negativity and focusing on changing the world, Page noted that “the pace of change is increasing” and said that “we haven’t adapted systems to deal with that.” Specifically, he said that “not all change is good” and said that we need to build “mechanisms to allow experimentation.” That’s when his response got really interesting. “There are many exciting things you could do that are illegal or not allowed by regulation,” Page said. “And that’s good, we don’t want to change the world. But maybe we can set aside a part of the world.” He likened this potential free-experimentation zone to Burning Man and said that we need “some safe places where we can try things and not have to deploy to the entire world.” Google is already well-known for coming up with some pretty interesting ideas — the idea of seeing what Page could come up with in this lawless beta-test country is simultaneously exciting and a bit terrifying.

– Also, this – Every story I read about Google is ‘us versus some other company’ or some stupid thing, and I just don’t find that very interesting. We should be building great things that don’t exist. Being negative isn’t how we make progress. Most important things are not zero sum, there is a lot of opportunity out there.
– A few hours later they put out a cease and desist on Microsoft
– Following Google’s demands for Microsoft to remove its Windows Phone YouTube app, Microsoft has responded saying it’s happy to include advertising. Google sent a cease and desist letter to Microsoft recently, with concerns that the Windows Phone YouTube app does not display ads. “We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs,” says a Microsoft spokesperson.
– Microsoft appears to want to rectify the situation, noting Google CEO Larry Page’s comments at I/O today. “In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers.” Microsoft recently released an update for its Windows Phone YouTube application to support sign-in, downloads, and a full YouTube experience. The application has been available for just over a week, but Google has demanded that it be removed by May 22nd for violating its YouTube API rules.
32:52 – 50 Billion Downloads
34:10 – YouTube launches its paid subscription channels with select partners
37:05 – Google Unifies Its Free And Paid Storage Options
38:40 – Google completes the feedback loop
40:20 – Lulzsec hacker group handed jail sentences
40:58 – BlackBerry bringing BBM to Android and iOS this summer
43:51 – Nokia unveils the Lumia 925
46:18 – HTC First to be discontinued
47:25 – Windows Keeps Getting Better
47:57 – Players force EA to drop online pass for used games
49:35 – GT6 for PS3
52:29 – Chris Hadfield – the astronaut’s best tweets, photos and videos

DigitalOutbox Episode 148

DigitalOutbox Episode 148
DigitalOutbox Episode 148 – Apple slides, HMV is saved and Kims Mega

Playback
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Shownotes
0:58 – Quarterlies
5:33 – Atari files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
8:53 – Hilco takes control of HMV Brand
10:32 – Sony fined £250,000 after millions of UK gamers details compromised
13:10 – Kim Dotcoms Mega now open
16:28 – Surface Pro dated and Priced
20:53 – EE tweaks 4G pricing
25:15 – The Firefox Phone
26:46 – Twitter launches Vine
28:52 – Actual Facebook Graph Searches

Picks
Ian
Documents for iPad
Free file viewer for iPad
– Connect to lots of cloud services or load up docs from iTunes
– View lots of file types, audio files etc
– PDF support is great
– Replaced Goodreader for me – as fast if not faster PDF support and better front end

Hola
– Region unblocker chrome extension
– View hulu, pandora, fox, cbs content in the UK, or iPlayer around the world
– Free and it works – pretty slick

DigitalOutbox Episode 144

DigitalOutbox Episode 144
DigitalOutbox Episode 144 – Tweetro, iTunes 11 and iOS vs Android.

Playback
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Shownotes
1:29 – Twitter kills Tweetro
5:09 – Twitter extends discovery
7:15 – iTunes 11 finally out
10:17 – Nokia Here on iOS
12:58 – Apple looks to TomTom for help
16:54 – Why are iOS users more engaged than Android users
23:28 – Google Drive brings Spreadsheet support
25:43 – ‘Piracy’ student Richard O’Dwyer avoids US extradition
27:46 – EE increase it’s mobile broadband allowance
31:08 – Kickstarter sued over 3d printer
34:15 – Microsoft release Surface Pro pricing
36:34 – IE10 funny video from Microsoft
38:15 – Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ becomes most viewed YouTube video of all time
39:39 – Wii U Out Now

Picks
Ian
Fantastical for iPhone
– Easy to use calendar for iPhone
– Fast, syncs with iCal, far cleaner interface
– Quickest way to add calendar entries

Flashout 3D
– Nice Wipeout clone for iOS
– Fast, good graphics
– Weapons not so hot
– Steering is tricky but give it time ad you get used to it
– Fast!
– Next update will allow you to import own music (my Wipeout playlists are ready!)

DigitalOutbox Episode 133

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

Playback
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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 129

DigitalOutbox Episode 129
DigitalOutbox Episode 129 – Dropbox, Twitter and Outlook

Playback
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Shownotes
0:59 – Google Updates
– Update – 16gb Nexus now available, 3-5 day wait – https://play.google.com/store?hl=en
– Q – suspended while Google make it even better…and send out free dev units to those that have pre-ordered. Wow.
2:29 – Dropbox Security Breach
– Users a few weeks ago said they were being spammed with their dropbox only e-mail address
– Ian received e-mail overnight – Recently, passwords have been stolen from some Internet services. This is a problem because many people use the same password on multiple services, which is unsafe. As a precaution, we’ve reset your password and you can create a new one here. We haven’t detected any suspicious activity in your Dropbox, but we’re proactively taking steps to keep users safe.
– A bit odd as I do use separate passwords for sites – another friend reported same mail and he uses unique passwords too
– Blog post states: Our investigation found that usernames and passwords recently stolen from other websites were used to sign in to a small number of Dropbox accounts. We’ve contacted these users and have helped them protect their accounts. A stolen password was also used to access an employee Dropbox account containing a project document with user email addresses. We believe this improper access is what led to the spam. We’re sorry about this, and have put additional controls in place to help make sure it doesn’t happen again.
– Keeping Dropbox secure is at the heart of what we do, and we’re taking steps to improve the safety of your Dropbox even if your password is stolen, including:
– Two-factor authentication, a way to optionally require two proofs of identity (such as your password and a temporary code sent to your phone) when signing in. (Coming in a few weeks)
– New automated mechanisms to help identify suspicious activity. We’ll continue to add more of these over time.
– A new page that lets you examine all active logins to your account.
– In some cases, we may require you to change your password. (For example, if it’s commonly used or hasn’t been changed in a long time)
– At the same time, we strongly recommend you improve your online safety by setting a unique password for each website you use.
– So – Dropbox gets hacked but I’ve to change my unique and secure password?
6:32 – Robin Hood Airport tweet bomb joke man wins case
– A man found guilty of sending a menacing tweet threatening to blow up an airport has won a challenge against his conviction.
– Paul Chambers, 28, of Northern Ireland, was found guilty in May 2010 of sending a “menacing electronic communication”.
– He was living in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, when he tweeted that he would blow up nearby Robin Hood Airport when it closed after heavy snow. After a hearing at the High Court in London his conviction was quashed.
– Mr Chambers said later: “I am relieved, vindicated – it is ridiculous it ever got this far. “I want to thank everyone who has helped, including everyone on Twitter.”
– Mr Chambers said he had sent the tweet, which contained swear words, to his 600 followers in a moment of frustration after Robin Hood Airport, near Doncaster, was closed by snow in January 2010.
– He said he had never thought anyone would take his “silly joke” seriously.
– The message Mr Chambers tweeted stated: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”
– In their judgement, the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, Mr Justice Owen and Mr Justice Griffith Williams, said: “If the person or persons who receive or read it, (the message) or may reasonably be expected to receive, or read it, would brush it aside as a silly joke, or a joke in bad taste, or empty bombastic or ridiculous banter, then it would be a contradiction in terms to describe it as a message of a menacing character.”
7:32 – While others need to watch what they say on Twitter
– The media is fuming over Twitter’s decision to suspend the account of a British journalist who used the micro-blogging site to toss barbs at NBC’s decision to time-delay its Olympic coverage over the weekend. The episode raises questions about free speech and corporate control of social media platforms.
– For anyone who missed it, the brouhaha began this morning when sports site Deadspin reported that Twitter had cut off Guy Adams, an LA-based reporter for The Independent. Adams has been a standard bearer for the new #nbcfail hashtag and used his account to rattle off a series of British-inflected tirades about NBC’s time delay: “‘Sneak peak’ my arse”; ”tosspot”; “Matt Lauer would do well to shut up, wouldn’t he?” and so on.
– Adams apparently crossed a line when he published the email address of NBC executive Gary Zenkel and told followers to “Tell him what u think.” NBC complained to Twitter and shortly after the micro-blog site suspended Adams’ account.
– Critics have since called attention to the fact that Twitter has partnered with NBC’s parent company to promote the games, and suggested that the companies decided to shut down Adams’ account as an act of reprisal.
– In an email message to Adams, Twitter explained the account had been suspended because he had violated terms of service that forbid disclosing private information like a person’s telephone number or private email address. Deadspin and others have noted that gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com is a corporate address.
– So who is right? Did Adams overstep a boundary or are Twitter and NBC wrongfully censoring a journalist? Well, from a legal point of view, Twitter is in the clear. The company’s terms of service make it plain that it can boot users off the site anytime and for any reason.
– Twitter’s moral position is a lot more shaky. Its reason for tossing Adams is flimsy (the email he printed was not private) and, worse, they simply caused him to disappear altogether. If you search @guyadams on Twitter, the company will suggest users with similar handles but the original Guy Adams has simply vanished in the same way that disgraced communists would vanish from Kremlin photographs.
– 2 days later twitter reinstate account
– NBC removed complaint
– Twitter post about guidelines – http://blog.twitter.com/2012/07/our-approach-to-trust-safety-and.html
– As of earlier today, the account has been unsuspended, and we will actively work to ensure this does not happen again. Twitter while working with NBC on Olympic portal had encouraged NBC to raise complaint which was passed to Trust and Safety team who then acted….unaware that others in Twitter had encouraged the intial complaint
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/31/teenager-arrested-tweets-tom-daley
– Police have arrested a 17-year-old boy as part of an investigation into malicious Twitter messages sent to the Team GB diver Tom Daley after he and his team-mate, Pete Waterfield, missed out on a medal at the Olympics.
– The boy was held at a guesthouse in Weymouth, Dorset, hours after Daley, 18, retweeted messages he had been sent soon after finishing fourth in the 10m men’s synchronised platform diving event.
– A spokeswoman for Dorset police said: “A 17-year-old man was arrested by Dorset police officers in the early hours this morning at a guesthouse in the Weymouth area on suspicion of malicious communications. He is currently helping police with their inquiries.”
– Daley retweeted a message that said: “You let your dad down i hope you know that.” – There was much worse though – http://imgur.com/a/aHDr0
13:16 – Twitter users blamed for disrupting BBCs cycling coverage
– Olympic organisers have blamed spectators using Twitter for disrupting television coverage of the cycling road races. Viewers were left in the dark about timing and positions after electronic updates failed to reach commentators during both the men’s and women’s events.
– The BBC blamed the Olympic Broadcasting Service (OBS) for the lack of information which left commentator Chris Boardman using his own watch to estimate timings. But the International Olympic Committee said fans sending updates to Twitter while watching the race had in effect jammed transmissions of race information.
– Communications director Mark Adams said: “From my understanding, One network was oversubscribed, and OBS are trying to spread the load to other providers. We don’t want to stop people engaging in this by social media but perhaps they might consider only sending urgent updates.”
– The timings are sent to organisers via tiny GPS transmitters in competitors’ bikes but the messages were not being received during the races.
– Reality – O2 network couldn’t cope – “There was a capacity issue with Box Hill at the weekend,” an O2 spokesperson told The Register. “You can imagine that all of the people around that area were frantically using their phones so that was the reason for the over subscription.”
16:09 – Microsoft launch outlook.com
– The software giant is unveiling a brand new preview version of Hotmail today — Outlook.com. Although the old version of Hotmail will remain active, Outlook.com brings together all of its best features and more, accessible via the web, Exchange ActiveSync compatible clients, and POP3. Existing Hotmail users can upgrade to the preview version today — with options to rename an existing @hotmail.com address to @outlook.com or to add an additional alias to an account — and new Outlook.com users can pick an @outlook.com email address.
– Hotmail was much maligned so Microsoft had to go with a more trusted brand name – JOKER!!!!!
– Like Office 2013, Microsoft is describing its new email service as a “modern” one. Built with the same Metro design as Windows 8, Outlook.com brings together cloud connected accounts, data, and a familiar email service with a new look. Microsoft is also enabling threaded messaging by default and introducing Skype video web calling.
– Clean and fresh design
– Contact management has been greatly improved with an interface that’s nearly identical in looks and functionality to Windows 8. Outlook.com will import Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, LinkedIn, and CSV contacts and attempt to merge them into single contact cards. This works well for the most part, but there’s also an option to clean up any rogue contacts and merge information easily.
– Is this just a reskin of hotmail, windows live?
– Between now and Christmas Microsoft are refreshing and launching so much. Will it work?
21:19 – Digg Relaunched
– Simpler, cleaner and more visual
– No comments
– Based on facebook likes and tweets
– Still aims to bring you the best of the web
– Fresh start as old site cost about 15-20 times what the new one does
22:24 – Apple buys AuthenTec
– Amid fierce smartphone competition between Samsung and Apple that has spilled into a multinational patent battle, it looks like Apple may have opened yet another front on the M&A side: it is buying mobile security company AuthenTec — which had only just signed a deal with Samsung for Android devices — for $356 million.
– AuthenTec, among other things, makes fingerprint sensor chips that are used for security and identification purposes; these are embedded in computing devices. The news was first reported by Reuters; the full announcement was filed with the SEC.
– Just earlier this month AuthenTec had inked a deal with Samsung to cover security and device management services to cater to the “BYOD” trend — that is, workers taking their own handsets into their enterprise environment. The AuthenTec service would let IT managers quickly secure and authenticate those devices.
– Reuters reported the deal as $356 million — $8 per share of the company. But that’s actually a pretty cheap price, considering that before the company went public it had raised some $600 million (yes, million) in funding.
24:03 – The Lords look forward
– Broadband for all – an alternative vision is the result of a six month inquiry by the Lords communications committee which took in evidence from regulators, technicians and companies ranging from BT to tiny community projects such as Great Asby Broadband in Cumbria.
– And the conclusion is that the government is not being bold enough. The current target of getting speeds of 24Mbps to 90% of the country by 2015 or 2017 – the deadline date is unclear – may assure more bandwidth than most households need today.
– But the rate at which the internet has evolved in the past, with demand doubling every year or two, suggests the average home will need two or three times that speed come 2020.
– To deliver ever faster connections, the Lords committee has concluded that different technologies will be needed than the ones currently being paid for by the government and installed by BT. And it is worried about the final 10% of homes, the hardest to reach in the UK.
– It is far from certain that the government will achieve its target of giving these rural locations a minimum of 2Mbps. And that minimum only just meets the needs of the average household today.
– It will not be enough by 2015 for home workers, or for families raising teenagers doing their homework, watching video and calling friends on Skype.
– The 2Mbps figure was chosen because it is the minimum needed to deliver internet TV, but that is already changing. TalkTalk’s budget YouView internet TV service, launched towards the end of July, will require a minimum 3Mbps connection.
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jul/31/digital-television-internet-revolution
– The government should draw up plans to have every channel, including those from the BBC, broadcast over the internet, freeing up the spectrum for other uses such as mobile phones, the House of Lords suggested on Tuesday.
– “Eventually the case for transferring the carriage of broadcast content, including public service broadcasting, from spectrum to the internet altogether will become overwhelming,” the Lords communications committee said in its report on internet infrastructure.

– The recommendation comes months after most of the country’s 26m television households retuned their sets from analogue to digital, with two regions – the north-east and Northern Ireland – due to complete the process by the end of October. Digital switchover increased the number of terrestrial channels from five to 50, but the internet can transmit an unlimited amount of content, at a lower cost.
– However, Britain will need a better broadband network to cope with future technologies, the committee concluded after a wide-ranging, six-month investigation. It raises the alarm over the way Britain’s network is being built, describing government strategy as “flawed” and liable to widen the digital divide between those communities with fast internet access and those living in broadband blackspots.
– “If broadcast services move to be delivered via the internet,” said committee chair Lord Inglewood, “then key moments in national life such as the Olympics could be inaccessible to communities lacking a better communications infrastructure.”
– BT, TalkTalk, Sky and Virgin Media are moving rapidly to connect more television sets to the internet, so that they can offer video on demand as well as conventional TV channels.
– TalkTalk’s YouView box, unveiled last week, offers internet access to libraries of TV series and films for viewing on demand, as well as conventional channels broadcast over the internet rather than through an aerial. BT this summer spent £738m on acquiring Premier League football rights to boost its own internet TV service, BT Vision.
– The committee says the airwaves are better suited to mobile, and their use for TV could be considered “wasteful”. It says the date for a second switchover could be some years away, but recommends that the government, regulators and the industry start planning now.
– “People will perhaps feel fed up, but going from analogue to digital may not be the whole journey,” said Inglewood. “Now we are finding we may go from digital to internet.”
– A broadband connection could become a universal right, he said, as and when all channels including public service broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV are delivered over the web.
– However, services including YouView require a connection of at least 3 megabits per second. With an estimated 14% of UK homes unable to get even 2Mbps, according to telecoms watchdog Ofcom, swaths of the population could be left out of the next phase of the TV revolution. Government targets promise only that everyone will be able to get 2Mbps by 2015, with 90% getting 24Mbps.
– Steve Jobs – “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
27:20 – Nokias new product launch
– Digitaloutbox was wrong – we said Nokia was dead but here we go – a new product from out of nowhere
– Nokia is promoting its flagship Lumia with nail polish to match the new pink 900 model. The “Nokia Lumia Pink” polish, designed by Duality Cosmetics, looks to be even more limited than the AT&T-exclusive pink phone itself: it’s only available at one-day pop-up salons in Dallas, Denver, and Los Angeles, where Nicki Minaj nail stylist Kandi Banks will offer pink, possibly phone-themed manicures and pedicures.

Picks
Ian
Mountain Tweaks
– Key features:
– Small app, but extremely powerfull!
– Brand new tweaks!
– Works with both Lion and Mountain Lion
– Free
– Enable Airdrop on old hardware
– Enable colours in the Finder sidebar
– Disable many animations
– Remove Spotlight icon
– Disable gatekeeper
– Highlight non-retina images
– Remove leather from Contacts (ML)
– Remove leather from Calendar (ML)

DigitalOutbox Episode 127

DigitalOutbox Episode 127
DigitalOutbox Episode 127 – Marissa Mayer, Office 13, Apple Woes and don’t criticise the Olympics

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:05 – O2 Compensation
– The firm says customers who pay monthly will get back 10% of their July subscription, the equivalent of three days’ charges, applied to their September bill.
– Pay-as-you-go customers will get back 10% on their first top-up in September.
– All customers, even those who were not affected, will also be given a £10 voucher to spend in one of its stores.
2:14 – UK Texts more than Talks
– Mobile voice calls in decline for the first time ever, as more switch to text and online communications
– Newer ways of communicating led by 16-24s, with texting and social networking more frequently used than either phone calls or face to face communications
– The average Briton now sends 50 texts per week
– Two fifths of UK adults now own a smartphone, with the same proportion saying their phone is the most important device for accessing the internet
– Tablet ownership has jumped from 2% to 11% in 12 months
5:29 – Marissa Mayer is Yahoos new CEO
– Marissa Mayer, one of the top executives at Google, will be the next chief of Yahoo, making her one of the most prominent women in Silicon Valley and corporate America.
– The appointment of Ms. Mayer is consider a coup for Yahoo, which has struggled in recent years to attract top talent in its battle with competitors. One of the few public faces of Google, Ms. Mayer, 37, has been responsible for the look and feel of some of the search company’s most popular products.
– The move to Yahoo is an opportunity for Ms. Mayer to step out on her own and claim a bigger stage. Ms. Mayer, an engineer by training whose first job at Google included computer programming, was behind the famously unadorned white search home page and the way users interacted with Gmail, Google News and Google Images. She also sat on Google’s operating committee, part of a small circle of senior executives who had the ear of Google’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
– Marissa Mayer, the Google (GOOG) executive who today was named Yahoo’s (YHOO) new chief executive, is pregnant.
– Mayer told Fortune exclusively that her first child is due October 7. It’s a boy!
“He’s super-active,” Mayer told me in a phone call tonight, three hours after Yahoo announced her appointment. “He moves around a lot. My doctor says that he takes after his parents.”
– Great move by Yahoo – bold and looks to have put someone in place that will actually do something with the assets they have.
9:29 – Office 2013
– a “modern” version of the software that is used on a billion PCs worldwide. Cloud-connected and designed to work well on Windows 8 tablets, Office 2013 signals a shift to document collaboration and anywhere any device access. Notably, Microsoft is introducing an on-demand subscription version of Office 2013 that can be streamed from any Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC, with the ability to sync settings and documents.
– Perhaps the biggest change to Office 2013 isn’t the way it looks or its features, but rather the way documents are delivered along with some important under-the-hood changes. Microsoft is really pushing the ability to create a Word document on a Windows PC and edit it on a Windows Phone, Windows 8 tablet, or any Windows 7- or Windows 8-based PC with an internet connection. Home users can store documents in Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage and businesses can use a range of the company’s SharePoint offerings. Office 2013’s big innovation is its ability to let users stream a full-featured version of Office to a PC with personal settings intact — an on-demand Office suite whenever you require it.
– Office on demand is a powerful aspect to Microsoft’s Office 2013 subscription offering, providing a way to access a full version of Office wherever you are. The service lets you stream a full-featured Office application to any internet-connected PC running Windows 7 and Windows 8, providing access to the settings and documents you use regularly. Simply put, you can sign in to a streaming version of Office at a friend’s PC and finish a document; the app will then be removed from the PC once it’s closed. This all requires an Office 365 Home Premium subscription, but its ease-of-use makes it a compelling prospect for users who are comfortable using Microsoft’s Office suite and require more document editing functionality than Google Docs or Microsoft’s own Office Web Apps provide. Despite this, you can still opt to simply buy a standalone version of the Office 2013 desktop software and utilize SkyDrive as an online storage hub for documents. You won’t get the streaming Office 2013 apps, but you’ll benefit from the cloud and avoid having to pay a subscription fee.
– Lots of different editions – Office 365, the company’s software plus services platform for Office, will power Office 2013 as a subscription service for those who want to avoid the up-front costs of a perpetual license and take advantage of some of the on-demand features. Available in Home Premium, Small Business Premium, Pro Plus, and Enterprise — Office 365 has a variety of offerings that are flexible based on needs, but like many of its other products there’s still no one size that fits all. The new Home Premium product allows a family to install Office 2013 on up to five PCs and get an additional 20GB of online SkyDrive storage to share documents online. Home Premium includes access to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Access, and Publisher through an Internet-connected Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC. Documents and settings, and even the actual apps will roam across whatever PC you choose to use Office 365 with. Other editions, like ProPlus and above, include additional user accounts and access to apps like InfoPath and Lync — designed for businesses. Office 365 will also include access to Office for Mac.
– Metro look and feel – A Touch Mode feature is present in each Office 2013 application, but it does very little. Although hit targets become larger, making it slightly easier to navigate with touch, and it’s easy to navigate or type data in documents, the feature feels a little gimmicky and is hidden away from immediate view.
– Word – open, edit and save pdf’s, embed web video, better layout options
– Outlook sees most improvements, but mostly back end
– OneNote look nice – could be great on a surface device
15:43 – Nokia Woes
– The woes at the Finnish mobile phone company Nokia continue to mount, with further losses in its main division in the second quarter of 2012, and a €220m (£170m) write-off on unsold stock of its smartphones.
– Nokia also admitted its high-profile attempt to break back into the US smartphone market with its new range of Lumia phones, running Microsoft’s Windows Phone software, had led to only about 600,000 sales in the US – down on the 1.5m sold in the same period a year ago when the company was only offering its outdated Symbian software.
– The mobile phone division recorded an operating loss of €474m, its second successive quarter of losses, on revenues down 26% year-on-year to €4.02bn. Overall, the company recorded a loss, including one-off restructuring costs, of €826m compared to a loss of €487m in the same period in 2011. Without the restructuring costs, losses would be €327m.
– Elop said Nokia had delivered 4m Lumia smartphones in the second quarter, and that he expected Microsoft’s launch of the new Windows Phone 8 software in the autumn would be “an important catalyst”.
– Existing Lumia phones won’t run the new Windows Phone 8 software…
18:15 – Man assaulted for wearing digital eye by McDonalds staff
– Steve Mann pioneered and wears a digital eye glass
– Think a more permanently attached Google Glass
– On the evening of 2012 July 1st, my wife and children and I went to McDonalds at 140, Avenue Champs Elysees, Paris, France, after a day of sightseeing (8 museums and other landmark sights, as part of a boat cruise package), and while we were standing in line at McDonalds, I was stopped by a person who subsequently stated that he was a McDonalds employee, and he asked about my eyeglass (digital computer vision system, i.e. EyeTap).
– Because we’d spent the day going to various museums and historical landmark sites guarded by military and police, I had brought with me the letter from my doctor regarding my computer vision eyeglass, along with documentation, etc., although I’d not needed to present any of this at any of the other places I visited (McDonald’s was the only establishement that seemed to have any problem with my eyeglass during our entire 2 week trip).
– Since I happened to have it with me, I showed this doctor’s letter and the documentation to the purported McDonalds employee who had stopped me in the McDonalds line.
– After reviewing the documentation, the purported McDonalds employee accepted me (and my family) as a customer, and left us to place our order. In what follows, I will refer to this person as “Possible Witness 1”.
– We ordered two Ranch Wraps, one burger, and one mango McFlurry, from a cashier who I will refer to as “Possible Witness 2”. My daughter handled the cash to pay Possible Witness 2, as my daughter wanted to practice her French. Possible Witness 2 complimented my daughter on her fluency in French.
Next my family and I seated ourselves in the restaurant right by the entrance, so we could watch people walking along Avenue Champs Elysees while we ate our meal.
– Subsequently another person within McDonalds physically assaulted me, while I was in McDonand’s, eating my McDonand’s Ranch Wrap that I had just purchased at this McDonald’s. He angrily grabbed my eyeglass, and tried to pull it off my head. The eyeglass is permanently attached and does not come off my skull without special tools.
– I tried to calm him down and I showed him the letter from my doctor and the documentation I had brought with me. He (who I will refer to as Perpetrator 1) then brought me to two other persons. He was standing in the middle, right in front of me, and there was another person to my left seated at a table (who I will refer to as Perpetrator 2), and a third person to my right. The third person (who I will refer to as Perpetrator 3) was holding a broom and dustpan, and wearing a shirt with a McDonald’s logo on it. The person in the center (Perpetrator 1) handed the materials I had given him to the person to my left (Perpetrator 2), while the three of them reviewed my doctor’s letter and the documentation.
– After all three of them reviewed this material, and deliberated on it for some time, Perpetrator 2 angrily crumpled and ripped up the letter from my doctor. My other documentation was also destroyed by Perpetrator 1.
– I noticed that Perpetrator 1 was wearing a name tag clipped to his belt. When I looked down at it, he quickly covered it up with his hand, and pulled it off and turned it around so that it was facing inwards, so that only the blank white backside of it was then facing outwards.
– Perpetrator 1 pushed me out the door, onto the street.
– The computerized eyeglass processes imagery using Augmediated Reality, in order to help the wearer see better, and when the computer is damaged, e.g. by falling and hitting the ground (or by a physical assault), buffered pictures for processing remain in its memory, and are not overwritten with new ones by the then non-functioning computer vision system.
– As a result of Perpetrator 1’s actions, therefore images that would not have otherwise been captured were captured. Therefore by damaging the Eye Glass, Perpetrator 1 photographed himself and others within McDonalds.
21:40 – Apple ordered to run Samsung didn’t copy ad’s
– A UK judge has ordered Apple to publish announcements that Samsung did not copy the design of its iPad, according to the Bloomberg news agency.
– It said the judge said one notice should remain on Apple’s website for at least six months, while other adverts should be placed in various newspapers and magazines.
– It follows the US company’s failed attempt to block sales of the South Korean firm’s Galaxy Tab tablets.
– Apple has not commented on the news.
– The order did not feature in Judge Colin Birss’s judgement published on 9 July, but Bloomberg said the matter was discussed in the court following the verdict.
– It said the notices must make reference to the court case and should be designed to “correct the damaging impression” that Samsung’s tablets had aped the look of Apple’s products.
23:08 – Apples in-app purchasing circumvented
– a Russian developer has published a method of obtaining in-app purchases from iOS apps for free. First noticed by Russian blog i-ekb.ru, the “in-app proxy” method does not require a jailbreak, can be completed by novices in three steps using just an iOS device, and allows users to install in-app content for free. The hack also works on all devices running iOS 3.0 to 6.0. We confirmed the method works (at least temporarily), and the published instructions are starting to get attention, so we decided to publish this story as a warning to the Apple developer community.
– The hack appears to come from Russian developer ZonD80 who posted the above video demonstration. ZonD80 also appears to run a website called In-AppStore.com, where donations are being accepted to support the development of the project and help keep servers up and running. The developer explained the three steps of the hack, which include the installation of CA certificate, the installation of in-appstore.com certificate, and the changing of DNS record in Wi-Fi settings. After the quick process, users are presented with the message pictured above when installing in-app purchases, opposed to Apple’s usual purchase confirmation dialog. The fact that this hack is being used to steal in-app purchase content is perhaps just as troubling as the developer’s terms of service. Below is a list of data processed through the devs servers as part of the process (but again, we are imploring readers not to try this):
-restriction level of app
-id of app
-id of version
-guid of your idevice
-quantity of in-app purchase
-offer name of in-app purchase
-language you are using
-identifier of application
-version of application
-your locale
– Developers concerned – in app purchasing is a major source of revenue
– Apple has responded to The Loop regarding the situation with the following statement:
“The security of the App Store is incredibly important to us and the developer community,” Apple representative Natalie Harrison, told The Loop. “We take reports of fraudulent activity very seriously and we are investigating.”
– One of the suggestions for a method by which Apple could improve the security of In App Purchasing was to include a unique identifier in validation receipts, and we’ve received word that developers are now seeing something along those lines coming from receipts issued by Apple since late yesterday. The receipts carry a new field called “unique_identifer” that appears to include the Unique Device Identifier (UDID) for the device making the In App Purchase – 5 days after the above report Apple has updated the purchase process
26:08 – Apple reverses course on EPEAT environmental standard
– Apple has posted a letter from retiring senior VP of hardware engineering Bob Mansfield to its website, walking back the company’s abandonment of the EPEAT certification for its eligible products. Per the letter:
– We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.
– There’s a corresponding statement from EPEAT president Robert Frisbee on the organization’s site. It was only last week that Apple’s 39 EPEAT-eligible products were pulled from the industry registry at the company’s request.
– As recently as this Tuesday, Apple’s PR team was pointing out that the company’s environmental efforts are continuing and include many areas of progress not covered by the outdated EPEAT standards. It’s likely that the “loyal Apple customers” who raised their concerns with Mansfield and Apple management included many large institutional and government accounts, which may have purchasing rules mandating EPEAT-eligible gear when possible.
– Both Mansfield and Frisbee emphasize that this experience has strengthened the collaborative efforts of Apple and EPEAT, and that Apple’s input will be crucial in evolving the standard to deal with more modern devices.
28:32 – Betaworks Acquires Digg
– Betaworks, the company behind bit.ly, news.me, Chartbeat and a number of other successful products, has acquired the social news site Digg.com for an undisclosed amount. Betaworks’ founder John Borthwick will become the new CEO of Digg. The site’s current CEO Matt Williams will join Andreessen Horowitz as Entrepreneur in Residence after the Betaworks transition is complete. Digg’s founder Kevin Rose joined Google a few months ago after the search engine acquired his latest startup Milk.
– Betaworks promises to turn Digg “back into a startup,” with low budgets, a small team and fast update cycles. None of the remaining Digg employees, it seems, are moving to Betaworks. Instead, the News.me team will take over the management of the site. Betaworks, says Digg, will soon unveil a new “cloud-based version of Digg” that will complement News.me’s iPhone and iPad apps.
– According to Digg’s outgoing CEO Matt Williams, his team “considered many options of where Digg could go, and frankly many of them could not live up to the reason Digg was invented in the first place — to discover the best stuff on the web. We wanted to find a way to take Digg back to its startup roots.” Betaworks says it’s planning to “build Digg for 2012.”
– Update: Rumor has it that the price was just $500k, but that number doesn’t really make a lot of sense, given that the site still gets enough traffic to make more than that in a year by just selling ads. Talking to AllThingsD, Digg CEO Matt Williams confirmed that “the overall consideration is significantly larger” and includes a combination of cash and equity. Another source close to the negotiations tells us that the price was indeed not $500k. We haven’t been able to pinpoint the exact price yet.
31:56 – Now TV Launched
– BSkyB is to launch its internet service Now TV on Tuesday, with the aim of taking on rivals such as Netflix and LoveFilm, offering movies for £15 a month or up to £3.49 per view.
– The service, which will launch this week on PC, Mac and some Android smartphones, will initially only offer Sky Movies content at launch with access to 600 films and 11 channels.
– However a typically aggressive rollout plan will see Sky Sports content including Premier League, cricket, rugby and golf before the end of the year, as well as channels including Sky1, Sky Arts and Sky Atlantic.
– Now TV will be priced at £15 a month for customers who want to access Sky Movies content, with a “pay and play” option of selecting individual films from 99p to £3.49.
– Sky is aiming to break beyond its pay-TV roots and target the 13m UK households who refuse to sign up for what can be costly subscription packages.
– BSkyB has more than 10m pay-TV customers, however the number of new sign ups has dwindled to as low as 15,000 per quarter.
– The launch of Now TV is seen as potentially as important as BSkyB’s move into the broadband market in 2006, a move to protect and grow its business model to tap into shifting consumer viewing habits such as watching TV on mobile and handheld devices.
– “We are targeting the 13m non-pay TV households out there with a no commitment, no contract way of delivering Sky content they want in a dip in and dip out way,” said BSkyB managing director of sales and marketing Stephen van Rooyen. “The whole idea is to have something ‘not Sky’, it is purposely designed to attract new customers.”
– BSkyB intends to roll out the availability of Now TV rapidly to other devices including iPhone, iPad, Microsoft Xbox and Roku, while the company is also in discussions to bring it to the PlayStation 3.
36:04 – You can’t link to Olympics website if you say something mean about them
– For years, we’ve highlighted the overaggressive nature of the Olympics in over-protecting their intellectual property — even to the level of getting host countries to pass special IP laws that only apply to the Olympics. But this sense of ultimate entitlement seems to pervade everything that the Olympics does. It was recently noted that the terms of use for the London 2012 website include a restriction on how you can link to the site:
Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format. You may not use any link to the Site as a method of creating an unauthorised association between an organisation, business, goods or services and London 2012, and agree that no such link shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services) in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner. The use of our logo or any other Olympic or London 2012 Mark(s) as a link to the Site is not permitted. View our guidelines on Use of the Games’ Marks.
– Either way, this claim that you can’t link to their site in a “derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner” has inspired the creativity of the internet, it appears. Specifically, lots of folks have taken to Twitter to share their own derogatory or otherwise objectionable statements along with links to the website.

Picks

DigitalOutbox Episode 123

DigitalOutbox Episode 123
DigitalOutbox Episode 123 – Microsoft Surface, Windows Phone 8 and NeverSeconds

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
0:47 – Microsoft Surface
– Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, unveiled two new tablet PCs at a closely guarded press event in Los Angeles.
– He said the new devices – called Surface – were part of a “whole new family of devices” the company is developing. The devices will run versions of Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8 operating system, a system the company hopes will allow it to make up ground in mobile computing lost to Apple and Google’s Android.
– “We want to give Windows 8 its own companion hardware innovations,” Ballmer said.
– The 9.3mm thick device has a magnesium case, features a 10.6-inch HD widescreen display, an integrated kickstand and weighs less than a kilo (1.5lbs). The device comes with a detachable keyboard and trackpad that attach magnetically to the tablet.
– At the presentation, Ballmer and Steven Sinofsky, the president of Microsoft’s Windows division, stressed Surface’s computing power.
– Sinofsky called the device a “tablet that’s a great PC – a PC that’s a great tablet”.
– Strange – called Surface a PC…but it’s clearly a tablet
– Count iPad as PC’s and Apple dominate 🙂
– Oop’s – crashes on demo
– No price, no release date, no battery life
– Business tablet? Certainly seems so. I’m quite taken with the design…but I was with the courier and it was vapour
– Confusing – arm and intel, Surface for Windows RT and Surface for Windows Pro
– Constantly talk about pc’s and tablets
– Enterprise empathised – TPM chip support. Does feel like a true pc in a tablet is the pitch
– If your a partner, how do you feel today? Microsoft believe only they can deliver a Windows device that truly matched their vision for Windows 8? Or that tablets up to know have been lacklustre? Partners seemingly didn’t really know about it.
– Is this a rush preview prior to Google I/O? Should Google have been doing it’s own hardware all along? Or is it Apple envy? Is it a fresh start – a new chapter as some has called it for Microsoft?
– Whole keynote was a bit odd – rushed, nervous presenters, hardware failing. But EVERYONE is talking about Microsoft
13:44 – Windows Phone 8
– NFC, dual- and quad-core support are all set, and Microsoft has shifted over to the NT kernel for Windows Phone 8 to make it even easier for developers to code for its mobile and desktop ecosystems. There’s a new Wallet hub, deeper integration of Skype, and an updated Start Screen interface with support for small tiles.
– Despite the improvements and hardware support, Microsoft will not release this particular update to existing devices. Instead, the company plans to rollout a Windows Phone 7.8 update separately that will bring some of Windows Phone 8’s user interface changes to existing devices, but many of the other improvements will require new hardware.
– Wow – so buy a Lumia right now and you won’t get Windows Phone 8. Rubbish.
– Launches this fall
– Shared core with Windows 8
– Manufacturers will be able to re-use the same hardware drivers they build for Windows 8 on Windows Phone 8.
– Multi core support, up to 720p screen size, micro SD support
– IE10
– Outperforming all other phones on SunSpider test
– NFC
– Mobile Wallet
– if the phone has NFC and a “secure SIM” from your carrier, you can make payments. Thats what carriers want, thats why they remove google wallet. allegedly
– Windows Phone 8 will include Nokia’s mapping technology – It will use NAVTEQ data, offline map support, map control for developers, and turn-by-turn directions.
– WP8 will support encryption (he mentions BitLocker), secure boot, LOB App deployment, Device Management, and Office.
– New start screen – Large “double-wide,” standard medium, and small. – a lot more content on the screen
– Lots of developer stuff – shared code etc.
– Deeply integrated VoIP.
– A Skype call feels just like a regular cell call — Skype can be fully integrated and feel like a phone call. The Caller ID even looks the same.
– Microsoft is hoping to do Siri one better by letting developers integrate speech response and recognition directly into apps for Windows Phone 8. APIs will be available for building in standard speech controls, which can then be run from the main search function. In a demo of Audible, which Microsoft partnered with for the voice features, the app was able to recognize a search for “Game of Thrones,” then pause it or skip to the next chapter based on voice prompts.
19:12 – Nokia to cut another 10000 jobs by end 2013
– Nokia will lay off 10,000 jobs globally and close plants by the end of 2013 in a further drive to cut costs, the company said on Thursday.
– The cuts mean that it will close some research and development projects, including in Ulm in Germany and Burnaby in Canada.
– The Finnish phone-maker said it would also close the manufacturing plant in Salo, but would keep its research and development operations there.
– Last year, Nokia announced more than 10,000 layoffs, aimed at cutting operating expenses by €1bn (£800m) by 2013.
20:06 – Amazon appstore launches in the UK
– the company has just announced that it is now taking submissions for apps to be distributed in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, with more countries to be added “in the near future.” Amazon already had a retail presence in all these countries, but this marks the first time an Appstore has opened outside the United States.
– The obvious question this raises is whether this is the first step to international distribution of the Kindle Fire, which relies heavily on Appstore content. For now, the Appstore provides an alternative to the Play Store for any Android users abroad. In time with the launch, Amazon is also tweaking its distribution agreement, giving developers 70 percent of list price rather than either 70 percent of the app’s sales price or 20 percent of list price.
21:48 – Online snooping scheme to costs £1.8 billion
– The government’s “online snooping” scheme to track email, Facebook, Twitter and other web use comes with an official pricetag of at least £1.8bn and an official warning that the figure may well prove to be an underestimate, the Home Office has revealed.
– Ministers have already agreed to pay all the costs of the scheme, which will require phone and internet companies to collect and store for 12 months the records of internet and mobile phone use in Britain for access by police and intelligence services.
– The Bill extends the range of data telecoms firms will have to store for up to 12 months
It will include for the first time details of messages sent on social media, webmail, voice calls over the internet and gaming in addition to emails and phone calls
The data includes the time, duration, originator and recipient of a communication and the location of the device from which it is made
It does not include the content of messages – what is being said. Officers will need a warrant to see that
But they will not need the permission of a judge to see details of the time and place of messages provided they are investigating a crime or protecting national security
Four bodies will have access to data: Police, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the intelligence agencies and HM Revenue and Customs
Local authorities will face restrictions on the kinds of data they will be able to access
– Rachel Robinson, policy officer for Liberty, said: “It’s good that local councils won’t be able to watch the entire population but even law enforcement should be targeting suspects – not all citizens.
26:02 – Neverseconds is banned…then reprieved
– Martha Payne started a blog – a photo of each days school dinners
– Got lots of traction quickly – many were shocked at the quality of the food
– Support from Jamie Oliver, Nick Nairn etc
– Visits from local councillors and food seemed to improve – also told they could have unlimited fruit and veg
– Photo’s from around the world of other school dinners – Martha would post her lunch, rate it for health and taste and also a hair count
– Wednesday – photo in the papers of her and Nick Nairn – Time to fire the dinner ladies – a joke title as there was a pic of martha, nicj nairn and flames as she was cooking
– Thursday – headmistress calls Martha and says she can no longer take pics of her lunches – sad post on blog from Martha and her father. She’d raised £2000 for Marys Kitchen with the aim to raise £7000 and had just over 2 million hits
– Friday – picked up by media outlets, twitter and Facebook – outrage at banning a 9 year old.
– Lunchtime Friday – council leader overturns decision – Martha can blog again
– By Sunday, 5.5 million hits and over £75,000 raised for Marys kitchen
– Great blog – well done Martha
31:34 – Louise Mensch launches rival to Twitter
– Tory MP Louise Mensch has made her debut as an internetentrepreneur, with the launch of a new social network hoping to win over Twitter addicts “who find Twitter frustrating”.
Mensch launched the US-only social network, the almost eponymousMenshn.com, on Tuesday as a topic-based site allowing people to debate by subject rather than monitor a stream of often divergent tweets.
Mensch told the Guardian that the site was not named after her. “It’s a play on the word mention,” she said. “We like it and think it will work fine on a chat site”.
– Mensch added: “This is an idea that I’ve had since Christmas. I’ve been a passionate user of social media since the days of AOL chatrooms, and that was the inspiration really.” The parliamentarian launched the site in collaboration with Luke Bozier, a former Labour political adviser.
– Bozier told the Guardian: “We were both frustrated at the way Twitter doesn’t focus on topics. We both love Twitter, but if you want to focus on the election there’s no obvious place to do that online. Twitter is just too random. We wanted to encourage people to have conversations rather than broadcast their thoughts.”
– However, British fans of the high-profile MP for Corby must wait until later this summer to defect to Menshn, which is presently focused only on this year’s US election.
Mensch and Bozier have incorporated a private company, MenschBozier Ltd, for the fledgling website in which they are the only shareholders and own an equal stake.
– The Tory MP told TechCrunch that the site has attracted early interest from venture capitalists, although Bozier told the Guardian there are no plans to introduce advertising to the site or for it to be party political.
– Initially, Menshn will only host three strands for discussion: the US election, the Barack Obama campaign, and the Mitt Romney campaign. Users of the forum can join chats and subscribe or block others on the site.
– Popular posts will be displayed prominently on the site and new users automatically follow 100 people who Menshn defines as highly-rated. Not limited to 140 characters but 180
– This seems a dud already – surely it’s just forums? And forums where the topics are locked and limited
33:19 – BBC lets you rewind and restart live tv
– The BBC has unveiled a new feature for its iPlayer video on demand service that ensures you’ll never miss the beginning of a show again. Called Live Restart, the feature does just what its name implies — it lets you restart and rewind live TV shows. You don’t need to have been previously watching or recording the show in order to use the feature, and it goes back as far as two hours. “So, if you’re stuck in a traffic jam, or delayed on the tube and miss the critical start of your favourite BBC programme when you get in, with one click you can skip back to the beginning of that live programme,” explains Henry Webster, the BBC’s executive product manager in media services. The new feature is launching today on the PC, while the BBC says that the mobile, tablet, and smart TV versions of iPlayer will receive the functionality later on this year.
36:04 – Facebook buys Face.com
– After about a month of speculation, Facebook has finallyannounced its acquisition of Israeli facial recognition technologyFace.com.
– We’ve heard from multiple sources that the acquisition price was around $100m, with others reporting that the price was between $80m-$100m. This is absolutely not an acqui-hire, as Facebook will be taking full advantage of the company’s technology and the advancements it’s made on mobile — perhaps to finally include mobile tagging options for photos.
– As Face.com’s speciality is mobile facial recogition, it could potentially allow you to upload a photo to Facebook while on the go, instantly receive suggestions of whom to tag, and confirm the tags with one click.
37:07 – Worlds first tax on IE7
– The Australian online retailer Kogan.com has introduced the world’s first “tax” on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) browser.
– Customers who use IE7 will have to pay an extra surcharge on online purchases made through the firm’s site.
– Chief executive Ruslan Kogan told the BBC he wanted to recoup the time and costs involved in “rendering the website into a antique browser”.
– The charge is set to 6.8% – 0.1% for every month since the IE7 launch.
– Mr Kogan said it was unlikely that anyone would actually pay the charges. His goal is to encourage users to download a more up-to-date version of Internet Explorer or a different browser.
– Mr Kogan told the BBC his customers were very happy and he had received a lot of praise for his efforts.

Picks

DigitalOutbox Episode 116

DigitalOutbox Episode 116
DigitalOutbox Episode 116 – Twitters IPA, Nokia Woes and Windows 8

Playback
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Shownotes
1:07 – Twitter introduces the Innovators Patent Agreement
– Like many companies, we apply for patents on a bunch of these inventions. However, we also think a lot about how those patents may be used in the future; we sometimes worry that they may be used to impede the innovation of others. For that reason, we are publishing a draft of the Innovator’s Patent Agreement, which we informally call the “IPA”.
– The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees’ inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What’s more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended.
– This is a significant departure from the current state of affairs in the industry. Typically, engineers and designers sign an agreement with their company that irrevocably gives that company any patents filed related to the employee’s work. The company then has control over the patents and can use them however they want, which may include selling them to others who can also use them however they want. With the IPA, employees can be assured that their patents will be used only as a shield rather than as a weapon.
– We will implement the IPA later this year, and it will apply to all patents issued to our engineers, both past and present. We are still in early stages, and have just started to reach out to other companies to discuss the IPA and whether it might make sense for them too. In the meantime, we’ve posted the IPA on GitHub with the hope that you will take a look, share your feedback and discuss with your companies. And, of course, you can #jointheflock and have the IPA apply to you.
6:38 – Nokia in Trouble
– In its latest quarterly results, the Finnish handset maker said things were “mixed” in the face of “greater than expected competitive challenges”, as it posted a loss of €1.3 billion ($1.8 billion).
– The problem stems in large part from dramatic falls in mobile sales. Despite the recent launch of the lower-priced Lumia 900, net sales for the first quarter were €7.4 billion — down 29 percent on the same period last year — and Nokia witnessed falls from top to bottom. There was a 52 percent drop in smartphone sales revenue on the same time last year, and a 32 percent reduction in revenue from featurephones.
10:37 – Apple make flashback removal tool available
– Apple has released an update for Java on Macintosh computers running Mac OSX 10.6 and 10.7 (“Snow Leopard” and “Lion”) which it says gets rid of the Flashback malware that has affected as many as 600,000 Macs worldwide. The tool is available through the company’s built-in Software Update system.
– Symantec published research on Thursday night as the tool was released which suggests that the number of infected Macs has dropped precipitously since the existence of the infection was publicised. It says that the number of infections fell from 600,000 on 6 April to 380,000 on 10 April, to around 270,000 on 11 April – suggesting a dramatic cleanup rate among Mac owners.
13:27 – Windows 8 will come in three flavours
– Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT
– Windows 8 will be the mainstream consumer edition. The Pro version will bring a number of features that most mainstream consumers don’t necessarily need to Microsoft’s next operating system. These include encryption, virtualization, PC management and domain connectivity. Both Windows 8 Pro and the mainstream consumer edition will be available in 32 bit and 64 bit versions. Microsoft will also offer an enterprise version of Windows 8. Microsoft has not shared any details about the pricing of these editions yet.
– Windows 8 Pro, according to Microsoft, was designed “to help tech enthusiasts and business/technical professionals obtain a broader set of Windows 8 technologies.”
– The RT edition – which is meant for machines that run on ARM chips – will come with touch-optimized editions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. While there will likely be desktops that will run Windows on ARM, this edition is mostly geared towards tablets (though the other Windows 8 versions can obviously also run on x86-powered tablets).
– Until now, it also wasn’t quite clear if Microsoft also planned to include its Media Center in Windows 8. Judging from today’s announcement, Media Center will only be an option for Windows 8 Pro users and will be “available as an economical ‘media pack’ add-on.”
– Microsoft will also offer an enterprise version of Windows 8 that will include all of the features of Windows 8 Pro. This version will also feature a number of tools “for IT organization that enable PC management and deployment, advanced security, virtualization, new mobility scenarios, and much more.”
– So that’s six editions really 🙂
16:23 – Ikea to sell TVs
– Ikea to sell TV’s, blu ray players and sound systems
– However they will be integrated into Ikea furniture
– “We’ve had very clear signals from customers that there is a need to be able to buy and integrate home electronics with the furniture in a simple way,” said Tolga Öncu, sales chief at IKEA Sweden, told Reuters.
– Ikea’s electronics come from Chinese CE giant TCL.
– The product range – called Uppleva: it means ‘Experience’ – will go on sale in Sweden in June, before being rolled out to other countries in the autummn. The UK won’t get a look-in until 2013
18:21 – Pocket
– Now called pocket
– Updated look and feel on iOS and Android – much better image and video support
– Now free – looks to be a great update
20:01 – Game selling EA titles
– Mass Effect 3 and Fifa Street now in stores and online
– Nintendo also back in stores
– Good to see Game back in business it seems
21:25 – Halo 4
– 6th Nov
– Microsoft said it marked a “new beginning” for the series, which it confirmed would now continue for the next decade.
The new game will be set four years after Halo 3 and see the game’s hero, Master Chief, “confront his destiny and face an ancient evil”.
– First game since 343 Industries took over the reigns from Bungie

Picks
Henry
Myscript Memo
– universal app iOS.
– Free to download but exporting OCR’d txt is an in app purchase.
– Only works in portrait mode. OCR happens once you’re finished rather than as you type. Works well – multiple language support and you can add your own vocabulary. Nice palm rest feature so you don’t write with your palm and finger.

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
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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 91

DigitalOutbox Episode 91
In this episode the team discuss Lion, Quarterly Numbers and the new Macbook Air and Mac Mini’s.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:11 – The Hackers Get Hacked
– Looks like hacker group LulzSec is back in action, this time redirecting the homepage of the Murdoch-owned The Sun (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/) to a fake story about Murdoch’s death from a drug overdose located on the Murdoch-owned URL used to broadcast theLondon Times’ redesign http://www.new-times.co.uk/sun. After the amount of requests caused a 404 failure on the Times site, the group then redirected The Sun’s homepage to the @LuzSecTwitter account. (The original page is archived at http://freze.it/pX)
– From what I can see the fake story was meant to mirror an actual The Sun story about the latest development in the messy Murdoch/New Corp/News of the World scandal, “Ex News of the World journalist found dead.” After about 10 minutes of being up (and I swear the real Sun homepage was redirecting) the fake story was pulled from the UK Times site.
– E-mails also grabbed
5:13 – Apple Earnings
– Cupertino just reported its best quarter ever, with earnings of $7.79 per share, revenue totaling $28.57 billion, and a net profit of $7.31 billion. We know you’re probably more interested in sales figures, however, and as you might expect, Apple’s continued to ship iPhones and iPads at a steady pace, with 20.34 million smartphones and 9.25 million tablets sold last quarter. It’s also shipped 3.95 million Macs — a 14 percent jump over Q3 2010’s numbers. Fewer iPods made it out the door this quarter, however, totaling 7.54 million compared to the 9.41 million Apple sold in Q3 2010.
7:26 – Google Earnings
– “We had a great quarter, with revenue up 32% year on year for a record breaking over $9 billion of revenue,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “I’m super excited about the amazing response to Google+ which lets you share just like in real life.”
– £3.5 billion in profit
– 550,000 android activations per day
13:30 – Microsoft Earnings
– The US technology giant Microsoft said its annual revenues hit a record of $69.94bn (£43.4bn).
– Sales of the company’s Xbox 360 videogame console and its Office software helped fuel the growth.
– Net income at the world’s biggest software maker jumped 23% to 23.15bn for the year.
– The figures, which beat forecasts, showed final quarter revenues reached a record high of $17.37bn, leading to profits of $5.87bn.
– Sales rose 8% to $17.37 billion, a boosted chiefly by sales of Office, Xbox and server software behind Microsoft’s push into cloud computing.
– Microsoft’s business division, which sells the Office suite of programs, including Outlook, SharePoint and Excel, was the company’s biggest seller in the quarter, increasing sales by 7% to $5.8bn.
– The company’s online services unit, which runs the Bing search engine and MSN internet portal, increased sales by 16.5% to $662m, but saw losses increase to $728m as it struggles to fight competitor Google.
– One weaker spot was sales of its widely-used Windows product, which are slowing as tablet PC sales eat into demand for traditional PCs.
16:43 – Nokia Earnings
– The Finnish phone-maker Nokia crashed to a loss for the second quarter as its smartphone and mobile business collapsed, leaving it in third place in the sector behind Samsung and Apple, and with no clear sign of any improvement in the short term.
Overall the company made a loss of €368m despite receiving a one-off payment of €430m from Apple to settle a long-running patent dispute. Revenues fell overall by 7% to €9.3bn.
– The company’s mobile revenue, normally the stalwart of its business, fell by 20% year on year to €5.47bn and made a loss of €247m, as the number of phones sold dropped by the same amount, to 88m – both figures not seen since 2006. Its existing Symbian smartphone business, which it has said that it will phase out in favour of phones using Microsoft Windows Phone from later this year, fell by 30% year on year to just 16.7m.
– The Navteq mapping and Nokia Siemens Network (NSN) businesses offered no comfort either, both racking up operating losses of €58m and €111m respectively, although sales at NSN were up by 20%.
20:11 – Lion
– Out for £21
– Digital download only
– Ian – speedier, like Mission Control, restore, versioning and some nice touches but overall a bit meh
– Ian – love Mail – hateful design choices on iCal and Address Book
– Ian – gestures is very nice, full screen turning to a Space is good…but OTT on a 27” iMac
– Ian – natural scrolling – disabled as use windows so much – too much adjustment
– August – available from Apple stores on USB stick
– http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/
– Lion has Recovery options and new Air and Mini can be recovered from the Internet
– iTunes 10.4 – 64 bit, Cocoa, Full screen
– iWork – updated to support full screen and versioning
– Xcode – 4.1 now free on the app store
37:19 – New Apple Hardware
– Airs – double the speed, more ram, better chip, backlit keyboard and thunderbolt – same price – lovely
– Mini – thunderbolt, better chip, no drive – cheaper – £650 down to £525
– White Macbook – dead
– The 27-inch Thunderbolt Display has an LED-backlit, 2560-by-1440 pixel, 16:9, in-plane switching (IPS) screen, which Apple says has a brightness of 375 cd/m2 and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. A single two-ended cable attaches to a Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook Pro or Air, one lead going to the notebook’s MagSafe power port, and the other to its Thunderbolt port.
-The display has three powered USB 2.0 ports, plus one FireWire 800 and one Gigabit Ethernet port, all connected to its Thunderbolty host – MacBook Pro or Air, Mac mini, or iMac – through that single Thunderbolt cable. The display also has its own Thunderbolt port so you can daisy-chain up to five more Thunderbolt devices
– The display also has Apple’s FaceTime HD camera – an upgrade from the earlier iSight camera – and a 2.1 speaker system with 49 watts of oomph. There’s also an ambient light sensor that’ll adjust display brightness based on the level of lighting in its surrounding environment.
– £900
44:40 – Apple updates International App Store Prices
– Apple update international pricing
– Uk – £0.59 is now £0.69
– Apple’s iWork apps now cost £13.99, up from £11.99, on the Mac App Store in the U.K., while the popular iOS versions have jumped from £5.99 to £6.99.
– Most rises around 10-15% – £1.19 per issue will now pay £1.49 – a 25 per cent price rise
– No warning – magazines running adverts caught out
– Lion price of £20.99 should have been a clue of impending changes in price points
– Certainly interesting that no pre-warning!
46:37 – HTC (Android) Infringes two Apple Patents
– ITC judge prelim judgement finds in favour of Apple – HTC infringes Apple in two areas…
– Decision needs ratifying by a panel.
– Will outcome be ban of product? Damages? Technology Licence?
– And now HTC are willing to negotiate with Apple
50:19 – Fake Apple Stores in China
– Fake stores, look real, sell real products
– Same branding, staff where same brands
– Staff even thought it was real
– Apple are aware…and China are now shutting them down.
51:52 – Illegal Film Downloads up 30% in UK
– The number of illegally downloaded films in the UK has gone up nearly 30% in five years, new figures suggest.
– That research, from internet consultancy firm Envisional, indicates that the top five box office movies were illegally downloaded in the UK a total of 1.4 million times last year.
– Film industry bosses say it is costing £170m every year and putting thousands of jobs at risk.
– But it’s not just illegal film downloading that’s on the rise – research suggests people are illegally downloading more TV shows too.
– The top five most popular shows were illegally downloaded a total of 1.24 million times in the UK last year. That’s a 33% increase from 2006 figures.
– Surely that just reflects the larger capacity broadband that we’re all now getting our hands on (well, some of us at least). Again – the end game is surely that better legit delivery methods need to be put in place. This takes time – so no doubt we’ll see more letters being sent in the mean-time.
53:15 – Cheaper broadband for rural users
– Up to 3m homes and businesses in rural parts of the UK could receive better value broadband services by the end of the year, following an Ofcom decision to force BT Wholesale to reduce the amount it charges other internet service providers (ISPs) to use its networks.
– The communications regulator has ruled that BT must reduce its charge to ISPs each year, by a rate of at least 12 percentage points below inflation. For example, if the RPI inflation rate is 5%, BT will have to cut its charges by 7%.
– The ruling is to take effect by mid-August 2011 and remain in force until 31 March 2014, and paves the way for cheaper broadband prices for millions of consumers and businesses in less densely populated areas across the UK.
– The rural areas set to benefit from the change include parts of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as Norfolk, Yorkshire, Cumbria, Northumberland, the south-west of England and other areas. These are predominantly areas lacking in competition among ISPs.
55:12 – Govt releases more data
– Following their pledge and success of data released so far, Cameron has announced another set of data that will be published and available to public and devleopers
– NHS, Education (single portal to compare schools), Crime (more detailed local crime maps), Transport (rail data will be hot), Govt financial transactions – every spend above £500
57:11 – Google detects and warns on malware
– “Recently, we found some unusual search traffic while performing routine maintenance on one of our data centers. After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or “malware.” As a result of this discovery, today some people will see a prominent notification at the top of their Google web search results.”
– Windows malware only
58:43 – Google to kill labs
– Google just announced it is ending its Labs program, in an effort to focus more on its existing products, For many of Google’s hard-core or even medium-core users, certain labs features have become essential tools to personalize the apps to their needs.
– a Google spokesman said that Gmail Labs, Calendar Labs and other Labs will not be shut down, merely the Labs program that brought us such applications as Google Goggles and Google Reader. There are still cool affected apps, but it’s not the end of my personal world.
– 20% projects still exist though
1:00:42 – Think with Google
– The new online channel will feature each new issue of Google’s Think Quarterly along with Think Voices, which showcases the shared experiences and insights of marketing leaders, digital influencers and academics. The content is filled with bite-sized TED-like videos for inspiring ideas on topics like the latest in digital technology, the future of marketing and how to channel innovation to inspire your business decisions.
– add link to youtube channel

Picks
Henry
Halftone
– Halftone goes beyond typical “photo filter” apps to give images a unique, vintage style that makes them look like they came from an old comic strip.
– Easy to use
Comic Life
– Make comics on teh iPad
– Again easy to use with lots of effects that can be added to images

Ian
Conquist 2
– Great strategy game for the iPad
– Lots of singleplayer options – variations on Risk
– Now includes multiplayer