Tag: Spotify

DigitalOutbox Episode 46

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

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

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

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

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

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

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

DigitalOutbox Episode 34

DigitalOutbox Episode 34
In this episode the team discuss Apple Tablet predictions, Google, Youtube and Open Data.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:16 – Apple Tablet and Event
– Apple Event Confirmed for 27th
– What could it mean?
– Creation? Canvas? Slate? iPad (Apple files request to take iPad trademark from Fujitsu)? iTablet? I guess it will be in colour
– iLife 10?
– iPhone OS 4 – multitasking, revamped interface
– Some gaming sites get invites – IGN, Kotaku
– Media will be major focus – harper collins, new york times, e-book/reader
– (There’s a sizable part of me that would absolutely love this to be a launch of some new iPhone colours – Chris)
– (Or indeed for this to be a new iPhone rather than be what everyone expects. Something radically different perhaps. Knock everyone sideways.)
– WSJ – Virtual keyboard, NYT, Conde Nast, Harper Collins, EA, best of TV service, also mentions Bing in iPhone, + Bing maps, itunes.com in June,
27:39 – Amazon Running Scared
– Gives away kindle for free – http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/20/amazon-kindle-free/
– Specific accounts, heavy readers. Buy a kindle, if you don’t like it ask for refund
– They’ll refund the money but let you keep the kindle
– Developers, developers, developers – http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/amazon-cracks-open-the-kindle/
– Kindle Development Kit – http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?ie=UTF8&docId=1000476231
– Already made available to select partners – EA for example
– Limited beta starts next month
– Same revenue share as iphone and they must pay for wireless costs – 15cents per mb
– How actively will Amazon police what makes it into the Kindle store? “The guidelines are what you might expect,” said Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman. On the forbidden list: Internet voice-calling software, advertising, offensive materials, the collecting of customer information without consent, and the use of the Amazon and Kindle brands.
– You don’t think Apple’s announcement next week is making them sweat?
29:54 – NY Times Paid Model
– From 2011, pay to access NYT
– Free access to set number of articles per month
– After that, time to pay
– Is that it? Is that what all the fuss was about?
30:48 – Google vs China Fallout
– The German government has warned web users to find an alternative browser to Internet Explorer to protect security.
– Wow.
– Microsoft rejected the warning, saying that the risk to users was low and that the browsers increased security setting would prevent any serious risk.
– However, German authorities say that even this would not make IE fully safe.
– However, Graham Cluley of anti-virus firm Sophos, told BBC News that not only did the warning apply to 6, 7 and 8 of the browser, but the instructions on how to exploit the flaw had been posted on the internet.
– France warns too
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8465038.stm
– Last week was Google vs China, this week Microsoft vs EU, next week Apple takes on…..
– Certa, a government agency that oversees cyber threats, warned against using all versions of the web browser.
– UK Govt Response
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/20/uk-government-internet-explorer
– Government departments have been issued an alert on how to deal with this particular incident and to mitigate against vulnerabilities in relation to particular versions of IE.
– A government user, operating on government systems, such as the GSi (Government Secure Intranet), will benefit from additional security measures, unlikely to be available to the average home computer user. These include tools which actively monitor for evidence of any malicious attacks
– Even though MS declared their browser secure (enough), they patch it anyway…
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8469632.stm
– “Out-of-band” update (update issued outside of normal schedule) issued to patch IE.
– MS say only exploits were made on IE6 and urge users to upgrade.
– In the mean time, web analytics company StatCounter say the Germany/France warnings and the news around this story has seen Firefox grab 40% market share to IE’s 45% and even overtake in certain regions (e.g. Germany and Austria)
– Google postpone phone launches in China
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8467491.stm
– 2 Android phones, due to launch with China Unicom, have been postponed following the hacking of human rights activists GMail accounts.
– Strained Relations between US and China
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8472683.stm
– Hillary Clinton’s speech calling for China to investigate the attacks and make the results open has not been received well in China…
– China sayng it could harm ties between the two countries
35:24 – Youtube Moves to Pay per view and Movie Rentals
– Only US to start with towards end of Jan.
– Users will be able to pay (around £2.50) to give themselves a 48hr period in which to watch the movie stream
– This is likely to expand to include pay-per-view events etc going forward.
– Trialling HTML5 too
– http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/20/youtube-html5/
– Today, YouTube is taking steps to let users work it into their everyday browsing experience: you’ll now be able to watch some of the site’s videos without a plugin, using the video and audio playback support included with HTML5
– Activate in Youtubes testtube – http://www.youtube.com/testtube
– Unfortunately, this isn’t being rolled out to all videos. You can only watch videos that aren’t being monetized and that haven’t been annotated (obviously YouTube hasn’t implemented overlays in its HTML5 player)
– Also cleaner new look – nice
– Vimeo also rolls out HTML5 support – death to flash!
– Indian Cricket to be streamed live, worldwide (except USA) on YouTube
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/20/youtube-live-indian-premier-league
– YouTube has bought the rights to the IPL and will stream live games to a world-wide audience (Apart from USA).
– Advertising and sponsorship revenue generated will be split between YouTube (Google) and IPL
40:12 – UK Govt launches Open Data
– Just under 3000 datasets available
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/20/tim-berners-lee-free-data
– People who have seen early versions of data.gov.uk say that it contains tools that make it “much easier for [government] departments to produce structured, linked data”. Harry Metcalfe, an independent developer who has developed and worked on a number of sites that use government data to produce public information, commented that “this is such an encouraging thing to see. No expensive procurement exercises for clunky, bespoke sites: instead we have the right tools for the job, joined together … this is how government IT should work
– Shadbolt said the underpinning principle was simple. “We believe that the government should establish the principle that all the public services should publish in reusable form all the objective factual non-personal data on which the public services run and are assessed and on which public decisions are based, or which is collected or generated in the course of public service delivery.”
– The UK has become a world showcase for open government data, with the launch today of a government website hosting 2,500 public data sets – more than the best-known rival, data.gov in the US.
– However…..
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/22/number_10_paf_database_petition/
– PAF will remain with Royal Mail and be charged for
– 24 hours after the much heralded launch of data.gov.uk, it slams the door in the hopes of many that the PAF would be available for all, or at least non profit and charatable organisations
42:38 – Dont Joke on Twitter
– 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!!
– A week after posting the message on the social networking site, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and questioned for almost seven hours by detectives who interpreted his post as a security threat.
– After he was released on bail, he was suspended from work pending an internal investigation
– He has been banned from the Doncaster airport for life.
– The civil libertarian Tessa Mayes, an expert on privacy law and free speech issues, said: “Making jokes about terrorism is considered a thought crime, mistakenly seen as a real act of harm or intention to commit harm.
– “The police’s actions seem laughable and suggest desperation in their efforts to combat terrorism, yet they have serious repercussions for all of us. In a democracy, our right to say what we please to each other should be non-negotiable, even on Twitter.”
45:28 – BT Fibre to Cabinet Pricing
– There will be a £50 connection charge for the basic package, which will upload at up to 2Mbit/s and a 20GB per month usage allowance.
– The other package, costing £24.99 per month, will be connected for free, upload at up to 10Mbit/s and have no data cap.
– Both require an 18-month contract and come with a free Home Hub.
– In reality, because it uses existing copper and aluminium wires into premises, BT’s service is typically likely to offer 20 to 30Mbit/s downstream. For most its performance is likely to rank between to Virgin Media’s 20Mbit/s “XL” package, which costs £20 per month, and the 50Mbit/s “XXL” at £28 per month.
– Rollout – http://www.buckconsult.co.uk/fttx/
– I’m live!!!!!!!!!!!
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/22/bt_infinity_p2p/
– P2P will still be throttled – BT has now also conceded that its traffic management equipment will restrict the bandwidth available to peer-to-peer protocols on both Infinity packages, as on its existing ADSL services.
– 4pm to 00:00 weekdays, 9am to 00:00 weekends
50:03 – Nokia launches Ovi Maps
– Free turn-by-turn navigation is now available for roughly 20 million Nokia handsets around the world.
– Maps are stored locally, and no continuous data connection is needed
– Traffic Information in 10 countries
– Lane assistance, speed trap warnings
– Pedestrian mode, including shortcuts only possible on foot
– Free Lonely Planet/Michelin travel guides
– Smart. Nokia in catchup mode.
52:49 – Chinatown Wars hits the iPhone
– Plays well
– Touchscreen controls a bit fiddly
– $9.99
54:27 – PS3 Motion Controllers Delayed
– The wand is now looking for an “Autumn” release date.
– Jump lost on Netal? Certainly looks interesting for Christmas 2010
– Even now, the PS3 appears to suffer it’s own design. The PS4 HAS to address development issues?
55:50 – Spotify Viral Marketing
– 5 best ads get free premium subscription for 3 months
– Comments suggest some users think the prize isn’t very generous.
– (but all the blurb is in French so I could just be making this up!)

Picks
Ian
HuffDuffer
– podcast aggregator
– bookmarklet
– popular
– tag driven
– search
– add rss of stuff you’ve huffduffed to itunes
– find new content that previously you’d miss or wouldn’t know was out there

Henry
Smack Talk
– iPhone app
– hours of fun talking like a hamster

Chris
Acer Aspire Timeline 1810TZ
– Netbook form factor but with good power under bonnet
– 11.3″ Screen
– Windows 7 Home Premium
– HDMI out
– Good keyboard.
– Ultra Low Voltage Dual Core processor
– 8 Hours battery life (6 full on media – 10 wi-fi/internet)
– Webcam
– Olympic edition due to have 4Gig RAM, 500Gig HD, Blue Tooth (64Bit) £550
– Standard edition 3Gig RAM, 250Gig HD £450

DigitalOutbox Episode 22

DigitalOutbox Episode 22
In this episode the team discuss Droid, Google Navigator, Shakeel gets struck off and not much Apple news.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:51 – Internet Turns 40
– Who could have predicted just how engrained it would become
5:26 – Google Maps Navigation
– Connected to net
– Free
– Search in plain english and by voice and search along route
– Traffic flow – shows traffic, easy to find alternative route
– Satellite and street view – great
– Android 2.0 at the moment. Great USP for Android phones – killer app. Google are ‘working with’ Apple in bringing it to iPhone
– UI looks great – if only the other Google app’s had same care and attention (harsh – web based gmail is great)
– Garmin and TomTom shares down 16 ans 20%!
– What happens if you’ve no signal?
– Reviews say it’s not bad but has major UI and usability issues.
13:06 – Droid and Android 2
– Droid
– Nov 6th, $199 (after $100 rebate)
– 3.7inch screen at 480×854 pixels
– Removable 16GB SD memory
– Removable battery
– 5MP camera
– Physical and virtual keyboard
22:46 – Twitter Lists
– Rolled out to all users
– Allows users to create lists of twitter users
– Lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you’ve created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to your lists. This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.
– Sounds trivial – replaces follow friday
– Allows groupings of users
– Some great lists out there – http://twitter.com/DigitalOutbox/podcasters
25:40 – Three Strikes Then Disconnect
– cost of monitoring to be spread between ISPs and Rights owners
– ISP’s preparing legal challenge saying proposals are “wrong in principle, and won’t work in practice”
– Lord Mandelson seems more and more clueless whenever he opens his mouth on this issue.
– From 2011 but bill heard in late November
30:59 – Spotify Drop Prices
– Now only £6.99 for the first 6 months – offer ends soon
– CTO has left the building, announced he’d was taking “a better offer” on twitter
– Competition stronger than ever, with a price war going on.
– Noticed that some tracks are now listed as “Premium members only”… hadn’t seen that before but time limited to certain artists and releases – Chris
– Some albums and tracks were released early to premium owners for a couple of months now….I think…maybe – ian
34:38 – Google Powermeter
– Partnered with first:utility, small energy supplier
– See power usage on the web, in igoogle
– Free service
– Also partnered with http://www.alertme.com/
– £69 for device and £3 monthly subscription
36:07 – Microsoft Watches Family Guy
– What a surprise, after seeing a recording of the half hour show, MS have pulled out saying that “the content was not a fit with the Windows brand”
– Apparently jokes about deaf people, the Holocaust and incest – normal Family Guy content then!!
– Chickens
37:27 – VMWare Fusion 3
– Excellent Windows 7 support
– Improved speed of XP too
40:50 – iTunes 9.0.2
– Apple TV 3 support
– Kills Palm pre sync
43:15 – Apple Patents
– iShoe
– head mounted mp3 player
46:43 – iPhone on Orange Nov 10th
– Day after O2 exclusivity finishes (Nov 9th, 2 years from original sale of iPhone)
– Prices….still no news
48:07 – Sky on the 360
– October 27th it’s launched…
– October 27th it’s removed…
51:57 – DSi XL
– New DS, exactly the same functionality, just bigger
– Q1 2010 in Europe – strange time to announce a new product next year
– Interested?
54:24 – Demon’s Soul
– bit of a sleeper hit, gaining a large following world-wide purely through word of mouth and high review scores
– ultra hard
– out in US now, published by Atlus.
– no UK availability, but it’s region free so you can import it from a site such as Video Games Plus for around £41 + P+P
– http://www.videogamesplus.ca/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=demon+souls

Picks
Shakeel
RedLaser
– surprisingly accurate, even with the crap iPhone 3G camera
– searches for items on Amazon and Google
– for me so far, more fun than of real use
– but … if i was out and saw something I wanted to buy, then it could come handy

Ian
Listorious
– The directory of awesome lists on twitter
– View lists by type/tag
– Great way of finding useful content
– Can add your list to listorious

Henry
Mockups
– demo version online allows you to create mockups of web apps, iphone apps etc
– export to PNG or XML, import from XML if you’re collaborating with someone.

DigitalOutbox Episode 21

DigitalOutbox Episode 21
In this episode the team discuss Windows 7 and new Apple hardware. Game on.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:20 – Google Audio
– announcement next Wednesday 28th
– downloads? streaming? subscription? – unknown
– partnered with iLike, LaLa
– iLike = social music discovery service, available on Facebook, helps people share music recommendations, playlists
-LaLa = music streamed from browser (US only service)
– service to be integrated into Google Search
– US only (initially?)
3:11 – Twitter real time search deals
– Bing integration
– http://www.bing.com/twitter/
– Microsoft’s new integration with Twitter is essentially integrating Twitter search within Bing. It updates in real-time. Here’s the kicker though: you can search tweets by not only recency, but by relevancy.
– Microsoft is using information such as the number of retweets, captions, the quality of tweets, and keywords in order to sort tweets by relevancy.
– Bing will display the “hottest” (trending) topics on Twitter in the form of a tag cloud
– Google announcement – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html
– Google also announced Social Search
– Coming in labs soon
– The bottom of search results will soon have social networking information from your friends, like their Flickr photos or their status updates. It’s a blended search integration, similar to seeing news or image results.
– These are pulled from social networks connected to your Google Profile. The more that are connected, the more social information that will appear in search results.
– They have also improved searching for images using social networks. Images become more relevant using social networking data.
– Bing also announce Facebook data in search results coming soon
6:02 – Flickr introduces people tagging
– Allows you to tag people in photo’s
– people can be flickr members or non members
– lot’s of control around who can tag, whether you can be tagged etc.
– profile page updated to support this feature
7:48 – Windows 7
– breaks Amazon pre-order volume record
– more sales in first 8 hours of pre-order availability than total Vista was able to do
– The launch of Windows 7 has superseded everyone’s expectations, storming ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as the biggest grossing pre-order product of all-time at Amazon.co.uk, and demand is still going strong.
– Launch – http://gizmodo.com/5387614/live-from-the-windows-7-launch
– Amazon multi-touch Kindle app for Windows 7—full color photos, pinch zooming to enlarge text, looks awesome. Could be a much-needed killer app for Windows 7 tablets. Maybe. Sign up here – http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000426311
– Streaming to 16 different screens from one Windows 7 PC using Play-To feature is actually kind of impressive.
– Noteworthy Features
– Taskbar – more intuitive, can pin to taskbar, reorder app’s you have open, no more quicklaunch (quick launch still in – but hidden away.)
– Aero – hover over taskbar icon and window appears with content – aero peek, drag window to top – maximise – drag left or right to snap to half the screen – aero snap, throw cursor to bottom right – show desktop – just like expose
– Well done to MS on the interface – makes windows much better to use, focus on tasks, easier to use – a great upgrade to the interface which is welcome and puts it on a par with mac – needs an expose rip-off and it would be better than mac interface for usability
– libraries – virtual grouping of files and folders, folder can be on any computer or drive on home network – very powerful
– media sharing – stream to other computers on home network (or external network if credentials applied both ends)
– better search (5 seconds to index new files)
– quicker is debatable looking at many of the reviews – boot time’s on par with vista or worse
– ie8, media player, control panel aren’t really that good and haven’t changed much – probably use alternative browser and media player
– feels like a service pack with a new theme and a new app controlling desktop
– UAC can be customised. Default setting down one step on Vista (only asks for confirmation when app wants to make a change to computer, not when you make changes). Possible to step it down a couple more steps, firstly doesn’t dim (i.e. lock out) the computer awaiting confirmation and final step turns it off, not recommended by MS.
– Microsoft store
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Hk0ZCqRxg&feature=player_embedded
– It’s an Apple store…selling windows
– Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
– New Mac ads
– http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/#
– Broken Promises is actually pretty funny
– It’s boring, arrogant, twatty and flies in the face of tech buzz, therefore sounds out of touch. It was funny 3 years ago when MacOS was a huge step above – it is no longer funny or true… – Chris
26:59 – New Apple hardware
– Clearly waited until resident fanboi Shak was well enough to return to Digitaloutbox before releasing New Hardware.
– New Hardware – shak
– Mac Mini
– http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_mini
– Speed bump
– Double the RAM
– £499, 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB memory, 160GB hard drive
– £649, 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB memory, 320GB hard drive
– £799, 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB memory, Dual 500GB hard drives, Snow Leopard Server
– Macbook
– http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook?mco=MTA4MTY5NzU
– 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 memory, 250GB hard drive
– 7 hour battery (built in)
– 13inch LED screen
– Glass multitouch
– £799
– iMac
– http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?mco=MTA4MTU3NzI
– Bigger screens, true HD 16*9 ratio’s, backlit LED
– Can also act as a screen for other devices – consoles, blu-ray players etc. A first for the iMac
– SD card slot below superdrive
– First quad core option for an iMac
– Magic mouse
– Speed bump, higher disks, higher ram, lower price, new remote
– £949, 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 21.5″ 1920 x 1080 resolution, 4GB, 500GB
– £1,199, 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 21.5″ 1920 x 1080 resolution, 4GB, 1TB
– £1,349, 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo , 27″ 2560 x 1440 resolution, 4GB, 1TB
– £1,599, 2.66GHz Intel Core i5, 27″ 2560 x 1440 resolution, 4GB, 1TB

– Has Ian ordered one yet?
– Price is amazing for what you get – http://www.marco.org/222434049
– Magic Mouse
– http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MB829?mco=Nzc1MjM2OQ
– £55
– It loses the scroll ball found on the Mighty Mouse, but adds support for scrolling gestures. This mouse is also wireless, using Bluetooth, and has a four month battery life.
– no buttons at all and sports a “seamless multi-touch surface.” which roughly translates to “awkward in the extreme”.
– Remain unconvinced of it’s usefulness compared to my logitech revolution
– New remote (fugly?), airport extreme and time capsule now 802.11n, not draft n, 50% better performance, 25% better range
46:43 – Psystar
– sells Rebel EFI software on website allowing intel based PC’s to run OS X – Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, i7 or Xeon Nehalem
– 8MB download – $89.99 but currently listed with $40 discount
– requires 38 steps for installation
– Free to try with limited hardware functionality and 2 hours run-time
49:26 – Piracy and the App Store
– %age of pirated scores submitted in first week 80-90%
– Now most pirates will tell you that they just like to try before they buy. If it’s a good game, then they’ll buy it. Well, from this data we can conclude that 0% of pirates think the game is worth buying
– Apple not doing much
54:03 – Apple Slate?
– Off the record comment:
– If you look at the transcript of his chat, or the 8:20 mark in the video, you’ll see him refer to delivery of journalism to mobile platforms, and then he mentions the “impending Apple slate.
– Now on video
55:32 – Motorola Droid
– Android 2.0, same processor as iPhone, physical keyboard
– Advert takes it to Apple – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPYM-XTqcec
– First proper competition to iPhone?
1:00:43 – Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm on the 360
– Preview program – dash update then download individual packages
– Work like separate app’s n the 360
– Last.fm – nice, visuals alongside music – scrobbles tracks, can’t play in background
– Twitter – simple interface, can tweet, see trends, see recent tweets from friends, can’t click on links or view pics
– facebook – clunky at first but it’s ok – nice way of browsing friends pictures
– Add’s functionality but not wow

Picks
Shakeel
Superhero Squad
– Free online comic creator
– create a quick 3 panel comic strip or a multi-page comic book
– use predefined assets to create your design: backgrounds, characters, objects, sound f/x, speech bubbles
– good fun

Ian
Amazon on the iPhone
– allowing users to shop using their phone
– Among the features of the application, which is free from the Apple Store, is the ‘Amazon Remembers’ service. Users can take a photo of an item using the iPhone and email it to Amazon. The retailer will try and find an item like the one in the photo and email a list of suggestions to the user.
– Customers can also access more than one million Amazon.co.uk products using the phone. They are also able to access wishlists, payment details and use One Click ordering for products.

Chris
Broadband Speed Checker
– Broadband speed checker that places your result plus provider on map and lets you look around. Are you getting a good service in your area?

DigitalOutbox Episode 20

DigitalOutbox Episode 20
In this episode the team discuss Windows 7, people power on Twitter, Apple bugs and some great picks.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:20 – Windows 7 Review
– The conclusion? First all of all, you’ll get much better battery life running OS X on Mac laptops than running Windows.
– Secondly, performance-wise, Windows 7 is probably a better choice if you are a gamer (there are more games developed for Windows, anyway), even on Mac hardware.
– Third, if you can get by with just software designed by Apple and if money is not a big issue, you will be happy with a Mac. Examples of these software choices are iTunes, iLife, QuickTime, Safari, iChat, and so on (and you probably won’t need much more than those for daily entertainment and communication needs).
– Finally, if money is not an issue–and it definitely is for most of us–you should get a Mac anyway. It’s the only platform, for now, that can run both Windows and OS X.
5:03 – Family Guy to Promote Windows 7
– Full half-hour show of Family Guy related content with Seth MacFarlane and crew. No ads – other than the huge one of the show itself!
– Is this really a match? Can it work? It will be watched for sure but who’s going to gain? Family Guy probably isn’t.
6:33 – Sidekick Data Found
– Last week we reported about the cloud computing loss of data.
– Statement released by t-mobile/MS warning users not to turn off/hard reset their device otherwise all data would be lost.
– Appears that the data has now been recovered and they are more confident that nobody should lose out.
– Vulnerability of cloud data – out of our control. Hopefully will focus cloud services to ensure redundancy as well as consumers to their responsibility.
8:12 – Guardian Gagged
– Guardian gagged from reporting parliamentary proceedings
– Twitter, blogs go wild
– Most of the info is online anyway
– Trafigura employed legal firm Carter-Ruck, known for it’s media gagging expertese to enforce the ban which stopped the Guardian speaking about this : “To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.”
– Parliament order book lists the question – http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmordbk2/91014o01.htm – blogs started to piece the story together, spreading the news on twitter
– http://order-order.com/2009/10/12/guardian-gagged-from-reporting-parliament/
– Later, gag is lifted – http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/13/guardian-gagged-parliamentary-question – The existence of a previously secret injunction against the media by oil traders Trafigura can now be revealed.
– Wikileaks has the report – http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Minton_report:_Trafigura_Toxic_dumping_along_the_Ivory_Coast_broke_EU_regulations,_14_Sep_2006
– Does this highlight the futility of media gag’s?
– To many people can publish, too much information distributed, too easy to spread word quickly and effectively on twitter
12:09 – Jan Moir and Daily Mail
– Links death to unnatural causes and links gay marriage and death
– Spouts shite basically
– Twitter outrage, quite rightly so
– Response from Charlie Brooker
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/stephen-gately-jan-moir
– Daily Mail – orchestrated internet campaign
– PCC (Press Complaints Commission) under severe load – http://www.pcc.org.uk/
– Right wingers bemoan the lack of free speech
– So why did Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand get targeted by the Mail over Sachs comments and where was the freedom of speech there?
– Power of the mob, power of free speech on twitter, mass spread of information
– telegraph’s 50 things killed by the internet – 2) Fear that you are the only person unmoved by a celebrity’s death
– Digital pulse, soapbox for todays generation
– No where to hide for journalists and large corperations when power of the public can be harnessed in this way
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/16/jan-moir-stephen-gately-response
15:40 – Sir Tim Berners-Lee apologises to your fingers
– Sir Tim, inventor of the WWW was asked if there was one thing he would change about the net if he had his time again. He said the “//” after the “http:” are completely unnecessary!
– Bastard!
16:55 – Spotify moving ever closer to iTunes
– You can now buy DRM-free 320Kbs MP3’s direct from within the Spotify app.
– It’s like iTunes with full song/album preview against everything. If you want a track to keep, no problem. If you want to remove adverts and listen on the move, no problem.
18:24 – Sky Songs
– Launches Oct 19th, Can’t buy tracks, subscribe per month
– For £6.49 a month, users can download one “£6.49 album” or ten individual songs and stream as much music as they want for one month.
– For £7.99, users can download a “£7.99” album or 15 songs and have the same access to streamed music.
– All four major music labels on board
– PC only at the moment?
20:01 – 4OD Moves to Youtube
– Channel 4 has come to a deal with YouTube to hold all Channel 4’s back catalogue and stream in High Quality.
– Google and Channel 4 will split the revenue generated from ads on the Channel 4 content.
– 3 year deal, with all content expected available by early 2010.
– Channel 4 have the option to opt out of iPhone streaming but no decision has been made yet.
22:35 – Google Making Money
– $1.6bn profit off a total $6bn revenue for 3rd quater of year. 7% up on 2008.
24:41 – Snow Leopard Deletes All Your data
– Difficult to reproduce but seems linked to upgrade from Leopard and use of the Guest account.
– What happens, according to numerous reports, is that after logging in and out of a Guest account (which, upon logout, wipes out any data stored within the Guest account’s home folder), and then logging in to a regular account, people are finding that their regular account has been wiped too.
– Looks to occur only if you had guest account enabled prior to Snowy upgrade
– Apple, which is notorious for not commenting on these things, made the unusual step of acknowledging the problem to CNET.
– This is serious. It should never happen. Even Vista doesn’t do that!
– To prevent, if the Guest Account was enabled before you upgraded to Snow Leopard, pop in to your System Preferences and disable it. Close System Preferences and restart your computer. When you next log in, you can choose whether or not you want to re-enable the Guest Account. Doing so after following these steps ought to be safe, since the Guest Account will be recreated with all-new Snow Leopard settings which, it’s assumed, won’t delete all your valuable personal data. Note – community fix and not an official Apple policy. You could also just disable guest accounts if you never use them.
27:57 – Time Capsule Memorial Web Site
– Average lifetime of Time Capsule – 17months, 4 days – 212 people registered
– They get hot and capacitors look to be frying
– Not good for a device that’s to be used for backing up your data too
– Apple not acknowledging issue – surprise surprise
31:05 – Jailbreak for 3.1.2
– For Mac and Windows
– Let’s you install Cydia, etc
– Anyone tried it?
– iPhone 3GS now shipping with new bootrom, resistant to current jailbreaking techniques
33:45 – Layar for iPhone
– Augmented reality
– Lot’s of layars
– Works well and is free – 3GS only
40:10 – Radio App from Apple
– Tipped rumour that the FM chip in iPhone/iPod touch will be used for a new Radio app to be developed by Apple.
– Possible “Buy this song” functionality against currently playing track. Perhaps working in background just like iPod app.
43:58 – Dyson Bladeless fan
– uber-cool, uber-efficient but uber-expensive -£199 from Argos.
47:00 – Sky on the 360
– Channels
– G.O.L.D, Sky Real Lives, Sky Arts 1, Sky Movies 1 & 2, Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and Xtra, Sky Sports News, British Eurosport, ESPN
ESPN Classic, Sky News, National Geographic, National Geographic Wild, History, Eden, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Disney Channel
– Oct 27th
– SD only
– Even if you are not a Sky digital customer, you can now subscribe to Sky Player TV from £15/€18 a month for the Entertainment Pack. This includes the live broadcast of over 20 channels including National Geographic, ESPN Classic, G.O.L.D. and Disney Channel. You are also entitled to the free content available from these channels. You can also choose to upgrade this package to include Sky’s premium channels Sky Movies and Sky Sports, making a total of 21 live channels for your delectation. If you subscribe to Sky Multiroom account then you can watch all the live channels in your pack on your Xbox 360, at no extra cost! Sky Multiroom or Sky Broadband Unlimited customers can also watch Live TV on their Xbox 360’s at no extra charge. All other Sky TV customers can subscribe to watch Live TV on Sky Player for £9.75/€14.75 a month.

Picks
Ian
TVCatchup
– Watch 11 channels live on the iphone
– Works well over 3G
– Happy, happy days
– Free

Chris
SpaceSniffer
– A visual representation of space taken up on a disk. Files and folders all represented by blocks on the screen relative to their filesize. Folder blocks contain their constituent files as smaller blocks.
– Hypnotic to watch a scan taking place. Slick ability to zoon in on areas.
– And is very useful in idenfying where you lose all those Gb’s on your once empty HardDrive.
– Going to be useful for clean install of Windows 7.

Henry
Caffeine
– tiny Mac OS X program that sits on the menu bar and stops your mac going to sleep

DigitalOutbox Episode 18

DigitalOutbox Episode 18
In this episode the team discuss why we’ve grown to 3 1/2 people.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:25 – Google Wave
– Biggest news of the week – trending topic on twitter for a couple of days
– EBay auction for an invite going for £20-£60! Madness!
– IM on steroids or really the future for communicating online?
3:17 – ICANN and UK Broadband
– The US Government has relaxed its hands on control of the internet
– Specifically giving ICANN – the body responsible for regulating the internet – autonomy and opening it up to global comment.
– The move recognises the global nature of the Internet and eases worries about impartiality in the EU and other regions.
6:53 – Internet Overtakes TV advertising Money
– The UK has become the first major economy where advertisers spend more on internet advertising than on television advertising, with a record £1.75bn online spend in the first six months of the year.
– 4.6% year-on-year increase
– The internet now accounts for 23.5% of all advertising money spent in the UK, while TV ad spend accounts for 21.9% of marketing budgets.
– TV advertising fell about 17% year on year in the first half, to about £1.6bn
9:05 – Freeview Retune
– The freeview retune has meant that more people can now receive channel 5 – but many have lost ITV 3 and 4…
– 20,000 or so older boxes expected to break completely.
– Retune needed to enable Freeview HD.
– Advice is for people to try and re-tune again to see if the channels come back.
14:34 – Microsoft Security Essentials
– guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software
– Free as long as you’ve bought Windows
– XP, Vista, Windows 7
17:35 – Bing Bust?
– Search market share slipped in September in USA and Globally – now 3.3%
– Google – Gained 2% to 80% of US market, 90.5% of global market
– Competition is good – look at the products and innovations from Google in the last 1-2 months
– Better search options in Google
– http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/01/google-adds-new-options-to-make-search-more-timely-less-spammy-and-more-personal/
– http://mashable.com/2009/10/01/google-search-options/
– IE 7 & 8 are only there thanks to Firefox! Need competitors to Google.
21:21 – Spotify allows downloads
– Download playlists for offline listening
– Will they be DRM’d?
– Is this really needed?
25:01 – Apple buys PlaceBase
– Is this as protection against Google?
– Will future iPhone OS replace Google maps?
– Whats about the app’s that have been developed using Google Map’s through API’s?
26:58 – iPhone coming to Orange and Vodafone
– No tariff, price or dates yet
– Orange say they will be cheaper than O2, not sure if that’s handset or monthly tariff though
– Orange, which has had 65,000 reservations for the handset in just a couple of days, claims wider, faster 3G coverage than O2, with 93% of the population, compared with O2’s 80%.
– http://www.vodafone.com/start/media_relations/news/group_press_releases/2009/iphone_uk_ire.html
– http://shop.vodafone.co.uk/shop/mobile-phone/iphone-3gs
– Vodafone say early 2010 for them to start selling 3G and 3GS
– Virgin Media want iPhone too
30:44 – New iMac’s and Mini’s?
– New iMac’s and Mini’s all but confirmed?
– Further orders of iMacs and low cost Mini will go unhonoured
– Plus, new touch based mighty mouse???????
– http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/02/new-apple-bluetooth-keyboard-arrives-at-the-fcc-new-mouse-rumor/
– New keyboard and mouse
– Adverts released early point to new hardware
– http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/03/apple_ads_hint_at_thinner_imacs_lighter_macbooks_cheaper_mac_minis.html
– John Gruber bets on new keyboard/mouse showing alongside blu-ray imacs.
– http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/10/02/engadget-keyboards-mice
37:48 – Tablet and TV Rumours
– Will be announced on or before Jan 19th, released May-Jun 2010
– Currently a 10.7inch screen – 2 models, one with 3g, one without
– Display around 720p
– still has to receive final approval from Steve Jobs, something the source claims only has about an 80 percent chance of right now.
– Apple in discussions with print publications … oo-er – shak
– http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/09/30/apple_contacted_print_publications_about_tablet_report.html
– possible new use/reason for the Tablet
– apple reaching out to print publications about releasing content on iTunes
– Tablet been through several iterations and project reset by SJ while Apple decided how people would use the tablet – as we’ve discussed many times
– eventual goal – possibly hybrid content drawing from audio, video, interactive graphics – the next gen of print content??
– Apple TV Update – Rumour Alert!! – shak
– According to Boy Genius Report’s tipster thinks an updated Apple TV could be in development accompanied by a touch screen remote control.
– same tipster who correctly reported on iPhone homescreen organisation and social networking components in iTunes 9
– http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/09/29/apple-working-on-a-touchscreen-remote-for-upcoming-apple-tv/
45:50 – iPhone Appstore – 2 billion downloads
– 9 months to hit 1 billion – number of downloads accelerating
– Just over a year to deliver 1.5 billion, 76 days for the next 1/2 billion
– Issue now is discovery and breaking your app in the store – difficult
– http://www.apple.com/iphone/apps-for-everything/
47:19 – Dropbox for iPhone
– Gives access to your Dropbox account
– Fast, can browse folders, open files, images, music, video
– Can fav files to access them offline
– Can share a file from the app – generate an e-mail to send to friends
– Take photo’s and video’s and store in dropbox
48:00 – PCalc Profanity Filter
– No more boobbies
– From TLA Systems and James Thomson, Glasgow based iphone developer
– believe it when you see it

Picks
Shakeel
Droplitz
– iPhone game
– Addictive, £0.59

Ian
Canabalt
– iPhone game – £1.79
– Based on flash game of same name
– Simple, stylish with great music – perfect

Chris
Xtranormal
– Make movies just by typing in a script. Virtual actors / scenes.
– Seen some great funny vids already.
– Save / share / upload to youtube.

Spotify Launches Offline Mode

Spotify launched a new feature today to it’s desktop client – Offline Mode. Premium users selecting a playlist will now have the ability to click an ‘Available offline’ button which will download the tracks locally for playback when not connected to the internet. I tried the service this afternoon and the results can be seen in the video below.

Spotify are really stepping up and offering something different to the current digital music stores. Stream for free in lower quality with ad’s or pay for great quality music that you can access from anywhere, offline or online. Not only that but with the addition this week of PayPal as a payment option they are making it easier than ever to subscribe to their service. Couple that to 4 million tracks available via search and many great playlists available online and you’ve got a very compelling service. It’s enough to keep me subscribing for another month after the launch of their iPhone app a few weeks ago. Over to you Apple?

DigitalOutbox Episode 15

DigitalOutbox Episode 15
In this episode the team discuss the Apple keynote edition. We’re more awake this week – if you get to the end though you deserve a medal. And a kip!

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:58 – WordPress Hack Outbreak
– Is WordPress the Windows of blog tools?
– Hackers exploiting old version to spread comment spam and diguide links to dubious (spyware/malware) sites
– If your running anything but 2.8.4 you’re at risk
– Easy to update now – one click
– If you customise then updating is more hassle
– Posterous, tumblr even hosted wordpress a better option?
– If you keep vigilant, you should have nothing to fear
– Is wordpress targeted because of it’s size, ease of hacking – both?
– RSS Cloud
– Push notification of blog updates
– http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/rss-in-the-clouds/
– The idea is to deliver news faster, without relying on a single company to do all the work.
– Lazyfeed and river2 support RSS Cloud – others to follow? The biggie is Google reader though.
– Enabled on wordpress.com, plugin too
– After the Deadline
– http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/08/automattic-acquires-spellcheck-plug-in-after-the-deadline/
– Really smart spelling, style and grammer checker
– Plugin – enabled on wordpress.com
7:34 – DSG Facebook Action
– DSG have said they are disturbed by reports that an unofficial facebook group for staff of DSG has seen disparaging comments about their customers posted by staff.
– They will investigate and follow up with action where appropriate.
– Aren’t all PC World customers stupid by definition? They are buying in store when they could by better and cheaper anywhere online!
– Wider issue of paranoid companies starting to sensor their employees even out of work…
10:20 – T-Mobile and Orange Merger
– Merger creates the biggest UK company in the mobile market. (Around 37%).
– O2 current leaders with 27%
– Deal expected to commence in November.
13:10 – Lies, Damned Lies…and Google
– Many stats have UK/Euro focus – way!
– More or Less: Behind the stats
15:55 – Steve Jobs at the Keynote
– Apple Event
– It’s Steve!
– iPhone 3.1
– App store update – genius for app’s
– New list – apps by revenue – is this to support premium app’s i.e. Tom Tom
– Longer backups!
– Save video from mails to photo roll
– 75,000 app’s, 1.8 billion app store downloads (excluding updates) (Really? An average of 36 downloads per device?)
– 50 million iPhone OS devices in existence (30 million iphones)
– Games demo’s – getting quite advanced looking! Nova and Madden look superb
– iTunes 9
– update UI (a bit odd?)
– http://static.maniacalrage.net/bucket/itunes/
– easier to get album info – click on i, all tracks
– uses webkit and html5 for some of the ui
– inconsistent across Mac UI
– Application organisation on iPhone – finally
– Genius Mix – not too bad – genre mixes more than anything else
– No speed improvement (not 64 bit)
– LP’s
– Animations, lyrics, videos etc
– Extras
– DVD extras really
– Better sync options
– Sync by genre, artist
– Sync photos by album, faces, events
– Movies now have better options
– Ringtones
– 30,000 ringtones
– They cost
– Home Sharing
– allows iTunes media to be copied and shared among 5 authorized computers in the same household, with settings available to make copying new purchases automatically
– Currently lax controls on this and apparently you can authorise a remote computer. Share apps and music, then unauthorise again. Effectively stripping and sharing content between accounts. This is sure to be addressed soon.
– Limited social networking – twitter, facebook, upload mix to imix for friends – only share from the store, not your library
– Wish List – add store stuff to wish list – just like Amazons
– This replaces shopping cart – eveything is now one click to buy! Click Buy, it’s bought. Be careful!
– Pre media sync – get out!
– Media organisation
– http://www.tuaw.com/2009/09/10/itunes-9-focus-itunes-media-organization/
– iTunes now automatically adds new music to your library from a watched folder they quietly added to the iTunes Music folder structure. Apple did its darndest to sneak this new feature in under the radar among several who-cares features, but for our money, it’s absolutely the best feature to come to iTunes 9. So how does it work? Just find the folder named Automatically Add to iTunes in your iTunes Music folder (~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Automatically Add to iTunes/ in OS X; C:\Users\Your Username\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes\ in Windows). Any music that finds its way into that folder will automatically be imported into iTunes.
– iTunes Media organization. It moves your folders around into a much more logical structure, with separate folders for audiobooks, iPhone apps, movies, music, podcasts, ringtones, TV shows, and voice memos.
– iPod Touch – 64 gb, reduced prices 8 – £149, 32 – £229, 64 – £299
– No camera!
– 50% faster – what does that mean? Faster than previous Touch?
– Shuffle – reduced prices, colours – 2 – 45, 4 – 59
– Classic – 160gb – 189
– iPod Nano – 8 – 115, 16 – 135
– Camera and mic, speaker
– It’s a video only camera, no stills!
– FM Tuner
– Pedometer
– Spotify on the iPhone
– Awesome
– No last.fm, no background app
– Could background running of a streaming service be an iTunes 9 announcement?
– 4 million tracks to choose from
– C64 Emulator
– Shak?
– Pay per game – deals being made with original IP owners
– Why are people so excited? All games ranged from pretty pap to utter cack…
– Pulled by Apple. They asked for Basic to be removed – dev hid it instead of removing (like Yelp), then told everyone, then Apple removed it. New version uploaded without Basic now. Keep pants on everyone.
– Flickr app
– Official from Yahoo/Flickr
– Free
– Quick
– Upload photo’s and video
– 10.6.1 Update
– Flash, security, minor bugs
– New ad – http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/
1:17:47 – Dreamcast is 10!
– 10 years old!
– memories, thoughts?

Picks
Shakeel
Free on iTunes
– free content to download (every week?)
– Free single of the week
– The Inbetweeners: Series 2 – first 4 episodes currently FREE!!
– good way to build your library for free
– try stuff you probably wouldn’t normally bother with, only to be pleasantly surprised
– Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – 40 Day Dream

Ian
Madden on iPhone
– Good version of Madden
– Controls a bit fiddly
– Graphics good though

Chris
Trials HD
– XBox Arcade – PC as well I believe.
– Kick-start in your living room!
– Great game. Around £10. Good looking.
– Axpansive – user content. Starts easy, gets mega hard. Highly adictive.
– Frustrating at times but has the “one more go” in spades.

Spotify iPhone App

Spotify PlaybackToday was the day that Spotify finally landed on the iPhone. Many thought that when Spotify announced they had submitted an app to Apple that they had no chance of getting it approved. The many were wrong. I fired up the Appstore this morning, saw the app and thought I need to try this. So I updated to Spotify premium and downloaded the app. 5 minutes later I had access to over 4 million tracks as long as I had a wi-fi or 3G signal. Wow.

Trying this at work meant relying on a 3G signal. Luckily I usually get a really good signal. On firing up the app for the first time I signed in and my playlists were sync’d. Not only were they sync’d, but really quickly too. I could easily spot collaborative playlists due to the difference in colour. I selected one of the Pitchfork top 100’s, hit Shuffle and four seconds later the track started. The audio quality was excellent. Selected next track and a couple of seconds later it started. I was really impressed with the speed – none of this content was stored locally and audio quality wise it was better than Last.fm although I felt caching speed was much the same. I’ve embedded a video from Spotify that shows off the app in action (if only you could record video on the iPhone as easily as taking a screenshot – do you hear me Apple?).

In practice the app is easy to use, quick and feels like an Apple supplied app. Some of my thoughts so far:

  • Swipe to change tracks is lovely. Far easier than reaching for a button.
  • Song position and iPod volume control in the same place and look the same. Confused me today.
  • Play/pause on headphones doesn’t work in Spotify but starts iPod instead. Grrr. Hopefully a future update will support this.
  • Unplug the headphones, no pausing off track like the iPod. Not a biggie but nice to have.
  • Resuming Spotify resumes exactly from where you shutdown – in a playlist, searching or in the middle of playback of a track. Remember that when your listening to Girls Aloud and you shut the app down. Potentially embarrassing demo next time you start Spotify.
  • No artist information, bio, lyrics etc. Missed opportunity or room to grow in future versions of the app.
  • Creating playlists or adding to existing playlists is easy. Updating to/from Mac/PC client is also fast. However you can’t add multiple tracks to a playlist easily i.e. search for U2, finding lot’s of tracks but I can’t select multiple tracks and add them to a U2 playlist. One at a time only.
  • No Last.fm scrobbling.
  • Sharing of tracks or playlists form the iphone isn’t possible yet.
  • The biggest issue is nothing to do with Spotify. Apple won’t allow background applications so if you want to surf, check twitter etc then you need to close Spotify. The excellent resume features soften the blow but the built in iPod app which does run in the background has a big advantage.
  • Offline playlists works a treat – very impressive. From digging around I understand there’s a limit of 3,333 tracks that can be stored offline. Thats a lot of tracks!

Reading through that list could leave you thinking the app isn’t very good but that would be the wrong conclusion. It works really well, so much so that it’s made me seriously consider Spotify premium as great value for money. £120 a year for that much content is a bargain, especially at the quality and speed it’s available. Firing up search and looking for an artist, any artist, and seeing the myriad of songs available returned via a quick search is very liberating and a great demo of where cloud computing could take us. Spotify is a digital distribution model that works that people are willing to pay for.

I still wonder about Apple though. Everyone said they wouldn’t approve Spotify. It’s an iPod killer, who would use the iTunes store instead of this? The fact they approved it seemed to be at a time when the FCC investigation into Apple, Google and AT&T was underway. This was a different Apple. A changing Apple. I wonder if it is changing, and that they too will have a streaming option available in iTunes 9 and a future iPhone upgrade. If they did then the appearance of Spotify would make a lot more sense. Apple needs to do something with their new datacentre.

To conclude, Spotify on the iPhone is a brilliant addition to an already great platform (I mean Spotify and Apple in this case). More features over time would be welcomed. If your already a premium user this is a no brainer as the app is free. The real test will be how many people will convert from free to premium Spotify. I’ve signed up for a monthly subscription that can be cancelled at anytime. Going on today’s usage I will be keeping that subscription going but only when October hits will I truly know if it’s value for money. I’ll be sure to report back then.

One last thing – playlists. There are quite a few sites that have sprung up to help spread and share playlists. Some of the best are:

SpotifyLinks
ShareMyPlaylists
We Are hunted (opens Spotify)

If you know of anymore then leave a comment and link. Now, get listening!

DigitalOutbox Episode 8

DigitalOutbox Episode 8
In this episode the team discuss Microsoft loves Yahoo, Twitter and some Apple hate. Honest.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
– Microsoft & Yahoo deal
– http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com
– http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090729/yahoo-ceo-carol-bartzs-letter-about-the-yasoft-deal/?mod=ATD_rss
– All about competing with Google
– Leaves Yahoo looking pretty weak – if they don’t do search what do they do? Mail, Flickr. Link/lander page?
– 10 year agreement – long time in internet timeline
– Google AdWords vs. Microsoft AdCenter and Google AdSense vs. Microsoft PubCenter – thats it
– They don’t mention Google by name – “the market leader” or “the competitor’
– There’s no upfront payment.
– The deal requires regulatory approval and isn’t expected to close until 2010.
– The company’s don’t expect to see the full benefits of the deal until 24 months
after regulatory approval.
– While the companies claim Yahoo! “will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers”, most of the value is and will be derived via the self-service channel – which Microsoft will
now control.
– The deal could put Yahoo!’s affiliate/syndicated search business at risk.
– The deal’s 10 year length may put Yahoo at Microsoft’s mercy given that there’s only one other supplier — Google.
– Combined they have 40% ad market share in the US, 8% market share in the UK.
– We have a plan where some Yahoo engineers over time may move over to Microsoft.
– Yes, there are certainly many Yahoo search employees who will be asked to take jobs at MSFT. There will also be search employees [who get redeployed]. Unfortunately there will be some redundancies in Yahoo. This is a transition over the next 2 and half years. Nothing will change until we get regulatory approval, but yes, there will be redundancies, but in the future.

– European Windows 7, XP and Vista owners get to choose browser
– http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/29/microsoft-giving-europeans-with-windows-xp-and-vista-choice-of-b/
– Choose from 10 browsers – IE8 installed but on first launch users get to choose a different browser
– Update to XP and Vista users means they will get same option
– MS bending over backwards…looks a good solution though

– Broadband UK
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8171074.stm
– http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4014-ofcom-finally-publishes-final-broadband-report.html
– People still not getting advertised speeds
– Virgin Media (10Mb) fastest compared to the others (8Mb)
– Doesn’t take account of throttling etc
– Sky – customer base increasing
– O2 & BE – customer base increasing

– Palm Pre
– Web OS 1.1 – iTunes syncing works again
– System: … “Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (8.2.1).”

– Twitter
– Twitter 101 guide for business
– 1000’s of spammers deleted from twitter
– New homepage coming soon
– Launched Wednesday
– Search focussed
– See popular topics by minute, day, week
– Changed ‘updates’ to ‘tweets’
– More aggressive Twitter?
– Be careful what you tweet – person is being sued for their tweet – http://mashable.com/2009/07/28/woman-sued-tweet/
– O2 launched their text tweet service early – Monday.

– Apple
– Tablet
– September launch or early next year
– 10 inch touchscreen/tablet
– Same OS as iPhone
– This has been rumoured for years
– Cocktail – interactive booklets, sleeve notes alongside music
– Prize – still rumoured at $800-$900

– Time Capsule now 2TB
– http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MB996/Time-Capsule-2TB?mco=NzE0MTY
– 2TB for £349 – same price as 1TB was
– 1TB now £229
– 500GB discontinued

– Suicide factory worker at Foxconn
– 4G iPhone lost
– Family claim worker was beaten and bullied
– Family got $52,600 + $4385 every year while a parent is alive compensation and girlfriend got a free Mac laptop

– iPhone Hack Alert
– http://mashable.com/2009/07/30/iphone-hack/
– A text with a single square character – turn off phone
– Apple told about this at start of July
– No fix yet
– Couple of weeks before hackers build tool to exploit this?
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8177755.stm
– O2 announce Friday that a fix will be available on Saturday to address issue
– Hear nothing from Apple
– 3.0.1 released on Friday
– 250 Meg download
– Allegedly addresses the text security issue
– The also release a statement – We appreciate the information provided to us about SMS vulnerabilities which affect several mobile phone platforms. This morning, less than 24 hours after a demonstration of this exploit, we’ve issued a free software update that eliminates the vulnerability from the iPhone. Contrary to what’s been reported, no one has been able to take control of the iPhone to gain access to personal information using this exploit.

– iPhone 3GS security
– Encrypted but ‘easy’ to hack
– Can copy all disk contents within 2 mins
– Demo’d to Wired magazine

– Google Latitude
– Not an app but a web app
– No location in the background – real shame
– Google said Apple requested Latitude as a web app, not an actual applicaiton
– Surely Brightkite is a better option?

– Spotify for iPhone
– http://www.spotify.com/blog/archives/2009/07/27/spotify-for-iphone/
– Waiting for Apple approval – will it get it?
– Playlists sync’d, updated pushed automatically
– Offline playlists – download music to iPhone for playback later
– Premium subscribers only (£9.99 a month or £119.88 – no saving but you get 30 invites – wow, not)

– Official Google Voice App blocked
– Other Google Voice app’s removed from App Store
– Is AT&T behind the move but still stinks?
– http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/27/apple-is-growing-rotten-to-the-core-and-its-likely-atts-fault/
– http://www.riverturn.com/blog/?p=455
– Blog post from developer of Google Voice app that was pulled
– Horrible conversation with Apple rep
– Want Google Voice? There is no app for that. Except on Android and Blackberry. Blackberry on AT&T.
– Will this encourage jailbreaks? Switchers to Palm/Android?
– One of the unofficial Google Voice app’s now on Cydia – jailbreak time if you use Google voice?
– http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/31/i-quit-the-iphone/
– Now the FCC are to investigate the Google Voice issue:
– Earlier today, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) sent out letters to Apple, AT&T and Google, readable here [FCC’s letter to Apple, to AT&T & to Google] asking each company about its involvement in the Google Voice app rejections. The agency is asking Apple to explain why the Google app was rejected and the third-party apps removed, if any VoIP apps have been approved, and whether there are general rules and regulations covering application approvals (something many developers would also love to know).
– Will ask Google if other Google Voice app’s were allowed, whether Apple explained why the rejection took place and what is Androids approval process
– Will ask Apple why Google Voice was removed as well as third party app’s, if any VOIP app’s have been approved (Google Voice isn’t VOIP) and also what general rules covering approvals are in place
– Will ask AT&T whether they were consulted on this, if any VOIP app’s run on their network and for a list of rejected app’s while explaining how some are approved for 3G enabled services like Sling

– iPhone dev’s backlash?
– http://www.polarbearfarm.com/blog/?p=124
– http://carpeaqua.com/2009/07/28/where-do-i-sign-up/
– http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/152606616/im-furious-with-apple-and-at-t-right-now-with
– Rejections are final straw
– Turning into a $0.99 store – consumer expects app’s to cost this now
– Why would you spend months developing an app for it to be rejected?
– Poor developer relations
– Is it sour grapes from the established Mac development community?
– Hardly. If your app connects to 3rd party server or the web it needs a NC-17 rating. Instapaper now comes with a warning. Where’s the warning in Safari, iTunes or Mail?
– http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/apple-secrecy-does-not-scale.html
– Where’s the Apple bloggers?
– Microsoft, Adobe all have their dev’s blogging and being open to a certain extent, open once they’ve publicly announced something at least
– Jailbreaking could disable towers
– http://theappleblog.com/2009/07/29/apple-claims-jailbreaking-could-disable-transmission-towers/
– Desperate
– Surely bull?

– Secret of Monkey Island hits the iPhone
– 350mb
– Swap between new and old graphics with one swipe
– Space Invaders Infinity Gene

– Wipeout

Picks
– LittleSnapper 1.5 and Ember
– LittleSnapper
– http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/
– $24 ($15 off)
– Capture desktop (full, area, window, timed), webpage
– Create collections, add tags
– Annotate pictures
– Store in library
– Export to flickr, pdf and Ember
– Ember
– http://emberapp.com/
– Inspiration rather than Flickr type images
– Focus on design, screenshots, websites etc
– Explore via collections or tags
– Free and paid options
– Limited amount of uploads and collections
– 1Password