Tag: virgin

DigitalOutbox Episode 67

DigitalOutbox Episode 67
In this episode the team discuss Firesheep, Adobe, Samsung Tab and Cloud Backups.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
3:22 – FireSheep
– Firesheep takes almost everything required for stealing people’s Facebook and Twitter sessions – along with those from many other sites – and puts it into one attractively designed Firefox extension.
– Password stealing from open networks is nothing new, and the flaws that Firesheep exploits have been known for more than a decade
– However it required some knowledge and skill – this makes it easy
– Firesheep, though, has an easy-to-use interface and, perhaps most importantly, a cute name. To use it, you simply install it into Firefox and click a few buttons. One minor additional step, installing WinPcap, is required for Windows users.
– Cookies passed in the clear…cookie stores password – tada!
– 104,000 downloads in 24 hours
– Solution – https or turn on wpa for open access point and make password known to customers – cookie then encrypted
– Force major players like facebook and twitter to move to https
– Just remember – this is illegal!
7:04 – Google creating stringer privacy controls
– Appointing director of privacy across engineering and product management
– All employees to receive training on Googles privacy principles and are required to sign Googles Code of Conduct
– Every project now requires a privacy design document
– Finally, the street view cars and wifi capturing – a number of external regulators have inspected the data as part of their investigations (seven of which have now been concluded). It’s clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords. We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place. We are mortified by what happened, but confident that these changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users.
– Information Comissioners Office to re-investigate – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11614970
9:10 – Android hits 100000 Apps
– Rampaging app store
– Not much more to say
10:03 – Blekko
– http://mashable.com/2010/10/31/blekko-launch/
– http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/blekko-launches/
– http://www.skrenta.com/2010/09/crowdsourcing_search_relevancy.html
– Search is dead – everyone uses Google…or Bing
– Blekko’s alternative search engine — a $24 million venture-backed project that’s been three years in the making — is today launching its public beta.
– Blekko is designed to eliminate spam search results, allowing users to search just a subset of the web through its proprietary slashtag technology.
– The most significant upgrade to Blekko’s search engine is the addition of slashtags that auto-fire for queries that fall into one of seven categories: health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes and hotels. Every time a Blekko user’s query is determined to be in one of these categories, Blekko will automatically append the associated slashtag to the query and limit results to just the subset of URLs that fall under that slashtag.
– Basically slash tags tell Blekko to limit your search to a human-curated category of websites — a custom search. So say you want to find good resources for learning about arrays in PHP? Type “arrays /php.” Need a good pumpkin pie recipe. Yup, you guessed it — append the /recipes slash tag.
– Well, according to CEO and co-founder Rick Skrenta, it’s because the web is filling up with spam and low-rent webpages from content farms like Demand Media, saying the web now has 100 billion urls, most created by bots.
– “You need to bring large-scale human curation and combine it with algorithmic techniques to bring the quality back,” Skrenta said. “If you have the set of the top 150 health sites, you know what, you really can answer nearly any health question, and you know what, you really don’t want to be searching outside of that set.”
– More people use it and curate, the better the results?
15:56 – Microsoft in the money
– Microsoft Corp. today announced record first-quarter revenue of $16.20 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2010, a 25% increase from the same period of the prior year.
– Worth noting, also, that Microsoft’s fallen behind Apple in the revenue race. Although Microsoft’s still winning where it counts, posting $5.41 billion in net income to Apple’s $4.3 billion.
– net income by division:
– Windows and Windows Live: $3.32 billion
– Business: $3.39 billion
– Entertainment and Devices: $382 million
– the Online Division. Last quarter, the division lost $560 million for Microsoft. That’s better than the previous quarter when it lost a staggering $696 million, but it’s much worse than a year ago, when it lost $477 million. In the past year, Microsoft has lost well over $2 billion from the division.
– Major shift with silverlight – Silverlight is our development platform for Windows Phone – Bob Muglia – Microsoft’s SVP of the Server and Tools Business
– the technology has some “sweet spots” for media applications (presumably like Netflix, which uses Silverlight on the web), its role as a vehicle for delivering a cross-platform runtime appears to be over. “Our strategy has shifted,” is how Muglia put it.
– Instead, as they made clear during PDC, Microsoft is putting their weight behind HTML5 going forward. Hallelujah. But what if you’ve invested in Silverlight – like Netflix?
– http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/pdc-and-silverlight/
– More info…in a few months
– Also, every microsoft employee is to get a windows phone 7 device – 89,000 employee’s
– Another 1000 free WP7 handsets were handed out to Professional Developer Conference attendee’s
– Cost – $20 million but will generate a whole load of chatter
20:49 – Adobe Digital Publishing Suite
– The Digital Publishing Suite will let publishers create, produce, distribute and monetize their digital magazines and content across different devices and marketplaces.
– The Digital Publishing Suite is an add-on that will let publishers assemble editorial and advertising pages and then preview and test complete issues, including interactive elements.
– Issues can be previewed both in InDesign, an iPhone or iPad simulator, or on testing hardware units.
– Great publishing options, sending to multiple targets and devices
– Supports subscription options and brings a lot of analytics
– Price – $700 a month (per publisher not app) with a per issue cost on top
– Massive potential
24:32 – Adobe Air 2.5
– New version of Air for computers, smartphones and tablets and TV’s
– Big push for Adobe
– From engadget – Air will also come standard in RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, but it’s not just for fun, productivity and games there — Adobe told us that the PlayBook’s entire UI is built on Air.
– Wow. Great for Adobe, really poor for RIM?
– Confirmed on RIM’s tablet OS dev page – The initial release of the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK allows developers to create Adobe AIR applications. Leveraging Adobe design and development tools, the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR allows you to create rich, powerful applications like never before.
27:42 – iPhone Daylight Savings Bug Hits Europe
– Europeans’ recurring alarms are going off an hour later following the switch to Standard Time.
– Same bug that affected New Zealand and Oz
– alarms set never to repeat, or set to repeat every day, are unaffected; just the selective repeat alarms (only weekends, only weekdays) are getting munged
– In less than a week, Apple’s largest customer base, its US iPhone users, will likely have their recurring alarms go off an hour later, too, unless Apple can address the problem before November 7
29:23 – Coming Soon for Kindle
– we are making Kindle newspapers and magazines readable on our free Kindle apps, so you can always read Kindle periodicals even if you don’t have your Kindle with you or don’t yet own a Kindle. In the coming weeks, many newspapers and magazines will be available on our Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, and then we’ll be adding this functionality to Kindle for Android and our other apps down the road. Our vision is Buy Once, Read Everywhere, and we’re excited to make this possible for Kindle periodicals in the same way that it works now for Kindle books. More details when we launch this in the coming weeks.
– later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable – this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending.
36:52 – Samsung Galaxy Tab Launched
– Launches on O2 on Mon 1st Nov
– £599 on a range of pay an go tariffs
– http://www.reghardware.com/2010/11/01/samsung_galaxy_tab_tariffs/
– All prices compared – £499 – £599 for hardware depending on tarrif
– Average reviews too – http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/laptops-and-netbooks/samsung-galaxy-tab-903545/review?artc_pg=3
– Pros – good multitasking, flash support, camera
– Cons – juddery scrolling, lag, over sensitive accelerometer, battery life 4 hrs against claims of 7, gets hot when playing video, Android 2.2 not optimised for tablets (admitted by Google), worse screen outdoors than iPad (ouch), 7 inches a little too small for tablet, poor camera
– or great reviews – http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/01/samsung-galaxy-tab-review/
– Perhaps the best part about the Tab is that you don’t have to worry about the sluggish performance we’ve seen on other Android and Windows tablets. The entire experience is very snappy, and it kept up with us even when we had four or five applications open.
– On our taxing video rundown test, which loops a standard definition video at about 65 percent brightness and 3G off, but WiFi on, the Tab’s 4000mAh battery lasted for 6 hours and 9 minutes.
– After spending the last couple of days with the Galaxy Tab, we can confidently say it’s the best Android tablet on the market. Now, that’s not saying much given the state of the Android competition, but we can also assuredly say that the Tab is the first true competitor to Apple’s iPad.
42:11 – Virgin launches 100Mb Broadband
– Virgin Media today said it will begin increasing the maximum downstream broadband speed available via its network to 100Mbit/s, and maximum upload speed to 10Mbit/s.
– The gradual programme will take more than 18 months to cover the country, it said, and is due for completion in mid-2012. The first areas scheduled for upgrade, in December, are in London, the South-East and Yorkshire.
– The 100Mbit/s service will come with a new Virgin Media-branded combined cable modem and 802.11n router. It will launch at £45 per month as a standalone package, or £35 with an £11.99 per month phone line. The current top package costs £38 per month on its own.
– 10,000 sign up on first day (for interest)
45:38 – Nintendo makes a loss
– The Japanese computer games firm posted a net loss of 2bn yen ($24.7m; £15.6m) for the six months to 30 September. This compares with a net profit of 69.5bn yen for the same period in 2009.
– Nintendo’s sales for the first half of its financial year were down 34% to 363.16bn yen, partly due to lower demand for its Wii console.
– Need to innovate – 3DS a gimmick?
50:04 – Playstation Phone Leaks
– Familiar bumpers, slide out controls
– Android 3, usual tech specs
– No memory stick – microSD card
51:36 – Xbox 360 New Dashboard
– Restyled dash is out in time for Kinect
– Biggest features aren’t in UK – ESPN, Zune, Netflix
– However we get
– Improved voice chat quality
– Some minor stuff around re-orged content to make navigation easier i.e. for Kinect
– thats it but here’s a nice post on Xbox Live and NAT (Network Address Translation) – http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Live/EngineeringBlog/NATs-and-xbox-live

Picks
Ian
Amazon Web Services
– Free tier from 1st Nov for a year – http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/11/servers-for-nothing-and-bits-for-free.html
– 5gb/month of S3 storage, 15gb of internet data transfer (out and in), 25 SimpleDB machine hours, 750 hours of free time on an Amazon EC2 micro instance running Linux + a whole load more – setup a web app for free for a year
– Also reduced Amazon S3 storage prices – http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/11/what-can-i-say-another-amazon-s3-price-reduction.html
– Using Arq for backups
– http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/
– Keep multiple versions of a file (think dropbox)
– No limits on file size or number of files
– Flexible scheduling and bandwidth options

DigitalOutbox Episode 64

DigitalOutbox Episode 64
In this episode the team discuss broadband, 3D and Google TV.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:47 – Trio of Updates
XMarks – not dead after all
– http://blog.xmarks.com/?p=1945
– Surprised by feedback and volume of interest in company
– Setup a pledgebank to gauge interest on premium service – http://www.pledgebank.com/XmarksPremium
– Charging wasn’t original strategy
– Freemium models discouraging
– 1-3% pay in freemium model – 2% at evernote
– Xmarks costs over $2 million a year to run
– Free alternatives – but there isn’t!!!!!!!!!!!! Ah – 75% of their users are Firefox only
– Got to question Xmarks motives – CEO looking pretty lame in my opinion
– Surely this could have been avoided?
– BT Calls for Halt on Piracy Trials
– http://www.telecomseurope.net/content/bt-calls-halt-piracy-trials
– BT is calling for a freeze on legal requests for customer data from prosecutors of piracy cases, after hundreds of customer details were leaked online.
– A UK court has approved the telco’s request to hold off providing customer data in light of the scandal, and BT says it will challenge any further requests for information until a test case concludes. The case was due to be heard this week, but following the injunction is now scheduled to commence in January 2011. Comes on back of firm sending user details to ACS:Law via an unencrypted spreadsheet
– The firm is also reticent about providing private information on its users until it can be assured the data will be safe.
7:31 – Star Wars in 3D
– Starting with Phantom Menace in 2012, lucas to release all 6 movies in franchise
– One a year, same time each year
– Allegedly waiting for enough cinema screens before doing this
– With blu-ray editions next year, and 3d over the next decade…how many times does George Lucas want us to buy the same films? Joke.
9:56 – 3D TV Channels
– Skys 3D channel launched
– Virgin offers 3D movies on demand
– Opinion?
14:07 – Nintendo 3DS
– Predicted price point – £199
– Games market struggling in UK?
– Game profits down, shutting another 70 stores
– A lot of duplication out there though
17:15 – Virgin Increase Upload Speeds
– XXL – Up to 50mb down, Up to 5mb up
– XL – 20, 2
– M and L – 10, 1
– As part of the roll-out and in order to ensure fair usage of available capacity Virgin Media will be rolling out a new traffic management system at peak times, designed to adapt to network conditions to ensure time-sensitive and interactive uses – such as surfing or streaming high-definition video – remain unhindered by non-time-sensitive traffic such as peer-to-peer and newsgroup activity, reducing the possibility of annoying buffering that can occur when trying to watch TV online at peak times. Using smart network monitoring, the system will reserve at least 75 per cent of network resources for time-sensitive traffic, adjusting dynamically to overall network usage to ensure consistent performance for more customers.
– This needs updating 🙂 – http://www.virginmedia.com/myvirginmedia/traffic-management-table.php
22:02 – BT Seeks Fibre Hotspots
– Communities that are keen to obtain fibre-based broadband are being asked to publicly declare their desire for high-speed net access.
– BT will log responses to a website to get a better idea of the potential demand for fibre-based services.
– BT said it would commit to wire up the five exchanges showing the highest demand for fibre.
– Demand is defined as min of 1000 votes and then exchange compared on the % of premises served
– Surely smallest communities, those most affected by lack of bb, will only show a small demand
– story for smaller exchanges is not entirely pessimistic as BT are saying that where 75% of premises express an interest in fibre broadband they are happy to engage in discussion
25:09 – Google Blacklist
– Words that Google Instant doesn’t like
– Google Instant is erring on the side of caution, protecting the searcher from seeing something they may not want to see
– Search for my blog – ian dick blog – put space after dick and bang – no results – press return and you get results so what are they really protecting?
27:59 – Facebook Upgrade Photos
– hi-res photos, photo-download links, bulk tagging options and an elegant lightbox interface for viewing images from anywhere on the site.
– Lightbox similar to Flickrs
– Adverts on pages
– Threat to Flickr?
31:52 – Google TV
– Search web, channels and app’s from one place
– Full internet via chrome
– Apps! – Twitter, Pandora, Netflix, Amazon, Napster etc – dev access from next year
– Use phone as a remote control
– Customisable homepage mixing web, apps and channels
– Record, dual view, easy to use via Sony TV or Logitech set top box
– Looks really good – Apple TV, Boxee, Roku and Google TV – sport the trend?
36:03 – Fifa Woes
– Team play is broke on 360
– Biggest feature of Fifa, advertised everywhere and it’s broke
– Even one on one is a bit ropey
– Get more info from lead dev’s twitter stream than official website and forums
– EA don’t get it – people still quit games – you get the win but punish them for ruining the experience, people still repeatedly pause, or slow the game down hoping you’ll quit
– Bungie do – http://www.bungie.net/news/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=28998
– Weekly updates, cheaters being dealt with, new playlists this week fixing issues and changing playlists based on user voting

Picks
Henry
iAlertU
– Free
– Great alarm clock for Mac

Ian
HimmelBar
– Application launcher for Mac
– Searches app folders, presents apps to launch
– Can filter list so only certain apps are presented
– Can setup custom folders, with custom apps in each folder
– Free, fast, helpful

DigitalOutbox Episode 57

DigitalOutbox Episode 57
In this episode the team discuss the new Kindle and Phones, Phones, Phones.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:17 – Virgin Making Strides
– Adds customer base, increases profits
– Broadband grows – 43% of its broadband subscribers now take packages of 20Mbps or 50Mbps. Broadband growth was five times that experienced last year, with 28,100 net new customers added over the quarter
– Virgin Media has also confirmed plans to launch its 100Mbps broadband service by the end of the year, along with its first set top boxes enabled with technology developed by US DVR giant TiVo.
– will launch its first set top boxes featuring a new television and broadband interactive User Interface (UI) created by American firm TiVo.
– The new UI is designed to seamlessly blend linear TV and on-demand content, along with opening up a range of online functionality, such as recommendations engines and social media functions.
4:49 – Sky Soars
– Almost 10m subscribers
– 400,000 new HD subs
– 30% of its 9.86m customer base now takes Sky+ HD
– 50 HD channels by Christmas
– Average revenue – £508 per person
– £1bn profit in year to June
– The firm added 119,000 broadband customers in the second quarter to bring its total base to 2.6m. The service also reached profitability for the first time since it launched in 2006.
– 3D channel launches on Oct 1st for home users
– Only in pubs, hotels so far
– Films and sport the drivers
– Ryder cup in 3D
– Premiership football
9:51 – New Amazon Kindle
– The new handheld — slated to be released on August 27th — is 21 percent smaller and 15 percent lighter than the previous model
– has a 20 percent faster refresh rate on its E Ink
– graphite and white
– £109 wi-fi only and £149 for 3G version (free 3G from Vodafone)
– Smaller, faster, cheaper
– Jeff Bezos
– For the vast majority of books, adding video and animation is not going to be helpful. It is distracting rather than enhancing. You are not going to improve Hemingway by adding video snippets,” adding later, “there are going to be 100 companies making LCD [screen] tablets… why would we want to be 101? I like building a purpose-built reading device. I think that is where we can make a real contribution.”
– Amazon predicts they will sell more ebooks than paperbacks by end of 2011
– Surpass hard and paperback combined sales shortly after
– I think that looks really nice, especially compared to original version
– http://mashable.com/2010/08/05/kindle-store-uk/
– UK Store now launched
– features more than 400,000 titles (compared to the U.S.’s roughly 650,000)
– customers can purchase e-books in pounds, most of which range from
about £3 to £11
– UK shoppers can now read e-book reviews from fellow countrymen, and see which e-books are selling best locally, rather than across the Atlantic
16:31 – Google Cleared
– The “pay-load” data collected by Google’s Street View cars did not slurp up “meaningful personal details”, the UK’s privacy watchdog concluded today
– the company hadn’t grabbed information that “could be linked to an identifiable person.”
17:43 – Wave Goodbye
– Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked.
– We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.
– Wave has taught us a lot – yep – stop releasing products with no real world use case
20:44 – Jaibreak Me
– http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/browser-based_jailbreak_available_for_almost_all_i.php
– Works for all iphones, iPads, iPod touches
– The jailbreak works by navigating to the site in Apple’s default browser Safari and “sliding to jailbreak.” The process can take as little as a minute to download, declare that it’s added itself to the home screen, and tell you to “Have fun!”
– relies on the exploitation of an unpatched mobile Safari vulnerability
– Jailbreaking will void the warranty on a device, Apple says. However, the action is easy to undo by resetting a device to factory settings (and will be undone by downloading any new version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS).
– Some reports of bricks!
– Some users are reporting that this jailbreak interferes with Facetime and Multimedia Messaging on the iPhone 4.
– What’s so different with this jailbreak – sooooo easy
22:39 – iPhone Loses to Android in first half of the year
– With a margin of 27% to 23% of the US market, Google Android platform has shown continues rapid growth and has has edged past the Apple iPhone platform with new subscribers.
– So more people bought android phones in the first 6 months
– Android now sells 200k a day – http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/05/googles-schmidt-boasts-200k-android-devices-sold-daily-waxes-i/
– 21 phones, 4 providers against 1 phone and 1 provider
– Stolen/lost iPhone 4 probably killed iPhone 3GS sales
– Inevitable
– Move along, nothing here to see
24:56 – Blackberry Torch
– Too little, too late
– The Torch seems sluggish, underpowered, and dated from a hardware design standpoint, and BlackBerry 6, despite its new features and polish, still feels woefully behind the curve. To call the Torch the “best BlackBerry ever” wouldn’t be an understatement, but unfortunately for RIM and the faithful, their best isn’t nearly good enough.
– Android = Windows
– iPhone = Mac
– Blackberry/Windows Phone 7 = Corporate – Sun/IBM
29:48 – Every 2 Days We Create As Much Information As We Did Up To 2003
– Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003, according to Schmidt. That’s something like five exabytes of data, he says.
– “The real issue is user-generated content,” Schmidt said. He noted that pictures, instant messages, and tweets all add to this.
– Naturally, all of this information helps Google. But he cautioned that just because companies like his can do all sorts of things with this information, the more pressing question now is if they should. Schmidt noted that while technology is neutral, he doesn’t believe people are ready for what’s coming.
– “I spend most of my time assuming the world is not ready for the technology revolution that will be happening to them soon,” Schmidt said.

Picks
Chris
Astraweb Hosting
– Pay as you go – topsmart $25 = 180Gb – doesn’t expire. ($10 25Gb)
– Perfect.
– You can have monthly sub if you want – but why would you.

Ian
Sabnzbd
– Open source newsreader
– Fast, feature rich
– Great for my mac mini
– Controlled via web client, easily extendable

DigitalOutbox Episode 53

DigitalOutbox Episode 53
In this episode the team discuss the iPhone 4 – don’t hold it that way.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
0:53 – Google Investigated by UK Police
– UK’s Metropolitan Police is to investigate Google over its capture of data from unsecured wi-fi networks, following a complaint from human rights group Privacy International.
– The data, scooped up by Google’s Street View cars, may put the firm in breach of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).
– It is likely that the police will interview Google staff in the UK.
– Joins German, French and USA authorities in investigating breach
– Surely stuff and nonsense – won’t come to anything
3:03 – Police don’t need a law to stop a photographer
– Two police officers stopped a teenage photographer from taking pictures of an Armed Forces Day parade – and then claimed they did not need a law to detain him.
– photographing police cadets on Saturday when he was ordered to stop and give his personal details by an adult cadet officer who claimed he needed parental permission to capture images of the cadets.
– After arguing his rights in a series of protracted legal debates with officers, the sixth former says he was pushed down a set of stairs and detained for breaching the peace until the parade passed.
http://www.met.police.uk/about/photography.htm
6:31 – Flickr Refresh
– Photo’s bigger, page cleaner and wider
– More info about photo – location, dates, camera
– Navigation controls better
– Actions menu – less distraction on the screen
– Lightbox – nice black background for viewing
– Favourites now integrated with comments
8:23 – British IP Streaming Record
– Breaking – BBC streams of England match peaked at 800,000 – breaks previous record of 350,000 set yesterday with budget,world cup, wimbledon
– 800,000 concurrent viewers is a pretty massive figure for online streaming.
– The difference between broadcast and IP is that if two people watch on their laptop in my home network, then that means my network has to cope with two sets of 896kbps streams. If four people watch, that’s four sets of 896kbps streams, or 3.5 meg. And if all 800,000 viewers were given the same bitrate, that meant a total of 716,800Mbps – or 716.8Gbps if you like it better that way.
15:06 – Virgin to launch 400Mbps
– Virgin already offer 50meg broadband and they will be upgrading this to 100meg broadband by the end of the year, speeds which already offer some of the fastest in the UK.
– Virgin aren’t standing still though, they are preparing their network to launch 400Mbps broadband with modems and routers which support this available at the end of the year, although no launch date for products of these speeds is in sight.
– Do gen public need that speed?
– Would increased upload speeds make a difference?
– What about focusing on latency, lag and reducing the throttling rather than casing speed headlines
18:28 – XXX Domain Name Approved
– The .xxx domain name has been approved
– Split opinions on whether this is a good thing or bad
– Easier to identify porn – filter it out etc
– But porn companies don’t want to use it for those reasons…
19:53 – Apple Storing and Sharing Location Info
– Apple’s new privacy policy contains a small new paragraph of big importance: it gives the company license to store “the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device” and share it with “partners and licensees.”
– there seems to be no effective method of opting out of the data storage and sharing, as you’ll need to agree to the new terms and conditions before downloading new apps or any media from the iTunes store.
– However you can opt out of iAd’s
– http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100621/apple-heres-how-to-opt-out-of-our-targeted-ads-but-not-our-location-tracking/
– Apple and its partners use cookies and other technologies in mobile advertising services to control the number of times you see a given ad, deliver ads that relate to your interests, and measure the effectiveness of ad campaigns. If you do not want to receive ads with this level of relevance on your mobile device, you can opt out by accessing the following link on your device: http://oo.apple.com. If you opt out, you will continue to receive the same number of mobile ads, but they may be less relevant because they will not be based on your interests. You may still see ads related to the content on a web page or in an application or based on other non-personal information. This opt-out applies only to Apple advertising services and does not affect interest-based advertising from other advertising networks.
– Google and Yahoo also allow you to opt out of ad’s. Facebook doesn’t.
24:22 – Bing for iPhone Updated
– Visual Scanning – like Google goggles
– lets you scan barcodes and cover art on the fly using your iPhone camera. Users can thus scan the barcode of any product or the cover art of books, CDs, DVDs, or video games, after which they will see descriptions and occasionally also reviews, prices and links to merchant websites.
– You can now connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts and see combined status updates from your friends from within the Bing app. For any type of search from the free Bing app for iPhone and iPod touch, you will also be able to see both Web results and relevant results from your contacts across social networks.
– Only available, for free, in US store
– Just like BBC app, paid for by UK licence fee payers, but only available in US store
28:07 – iPad Sales
– 1 million in 24
– 2 million in 60
– Now 3 million in 80
– 11,000 iPad app’s, over 225,000 apps in total
– Magical
34:16 – iPhone 4
– 1.7 million sold in three days
– http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/06/28iphone.html
– How many are still waiting, how many were turned away
– Queue
– Costs
– Death grip!
– http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphone-4-reception-issues-youre-holding-th/
– http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/25/hey-apple-youre-holding-it-wrong/
– http://mashable.com/2010/06/25/apple-iphone-4
– All phone’s have antenna at bottom – regulatory requirements
– http://twitpic.com/1zwoun – Nokia 6126 manual advises not to hold at bottom
– Tape fix – http://www.marco.org/733115343
– Connection and network better, quality better
– Screen – incredible
– Camera
– Performance – so fast
– Battery life
– Facetime
– Anything else? Grr…bumper
1:04:02 – Daily Mail Makes Stuff Up
– Quotes a fake twitter account @ceostevejobs
– Says Steve Jobs reveals that iPhone 4 may be recalled
– Lazy journalism but how many will know it’s wrong?
– Story now removed

Picks
Ian
Live Train Map for London Underground
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jun/22/underground-live-map-possibilities
– Built by Matthew Somerville of MySociety at Science Hack Day over the weekend
– uses the new Transport for London API
– Somerville has also built a similar live-updating map for network trains from all the major termini (it defaults to Birmingham New Street, but there’s a menu offering all the choices). Again, splendid stuff, using data pulled – scraped, actually – from the National Rail website. (National Rail doesn’t offer an API.)
– http://traintimes.org.uk/map/
also

DigitalOutbox Episode 51

DigitalOutbox Episode 51
In this episode the team discuss WWDC – iPhone 4.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:33 – Government to publish entire spending database
– The government will today give the public free access to its accounting books for the first time, publishing the entire contents of its spending database – a total of 24m individual entries documenting where public money comes from, what it is spent on and whose pocket it ends up in.
– The complex, 120GB Combined Online Information System (Coins) database won’t, however, be accessible to the public until an industry has emerged to analyse and digest the information.
– Tom Steinberg, the founder of mySociety, a non-profit organisation that runs several democracy websites in the UK, was this week appointed to a new government committee chaired by the cabinet minister Francis Maude to look at how to open up government data further.
– Also publishing rates of hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA on a weekly basis.

– http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jun/02/hospital-infections-mrsa-cdiff-data
– Already, shows the government spent £1.8bn on consultants last year
– Guardian already has a database up and running – http://coins.guardian.co.uk/coins-explorer/search
– Also, it was published via bittorrent
4:17 – Sky and Virgin
– Sky buys Virgin TV channels
– At the same time, Virgin for an increased fee, will be able to show Sky Sports and Movies in HD and will also get access to Sky’s basic HD channels
– http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/news/a223210/sky-unveils-anytime-vod-service.html
– Sky announce Anytime +, their VOD service
– When it launches later in the year, Anytime+ will offer around 1,000 hours of content from Sky Arts, Sky Movies, Sky1 and Sky Sports, along with material from other broadcasters, such as ESPN and National Geographic. A “key focus” for the service will be movies, with around 500 being made available at launch.
– Anytime+ will be offered without charge to all Sky customers with IP-enabled Sky+ HD boxes. However, access to premium content such as sport and movies will depend on the subscriber’s package.
– initially only be made available to Sky customers with a Sky Broadband connection, meaning anyone on another internet service provider will miss out
– Allegedly until service is stable
10:26 – Intel Dealys USB 3
– Intel is holding up USB 3.0 adoption by delaying its motherboard chipset until 2012.
– The USB 3.0 spec was introduced in November 2008 and it looks like it’s going to be another two years before the mightiest computing chip-maker on the planet gets the trivial-to-design-and-build chipsets needed out of its fabs.
– Anyone think Intel had a hidden agenda here? Is the company trying to make the market more receptive to Light Peak, its new optical connect?
11:15 – Office Web Apps Now Live
– Word, Excel and Powerpoint with 25gb of storage
– Basic but probably more functional than Google equivalents
– Real time collaboration
12:06 – HP and Google Tackle Cloud Printing
– Handy for printing from your phone or iPad.
– I just see a massive opportunity for spam. Just now, the pile of spam faxes to be binned in the office every day is bad enough, but can you imagine how annoyed you’ll be when your expensive photo paper is defaced by images from the murkier recesses of the internet.
13:11 – Google Phasing Out Windows
– search giant is abandoning Windows due to concerns over security
– slowly phasing out the use of Windows internally since January
– new hires are no longer offered Windows PCs — the choices are now an Apple Mac computer or a PC loaded with Linux
– Most are moving to Mac
– Change with Chrome OS coming?
– Important to state that this hasn’t been officially confirmed by Google (although it is coming from a number of internal sources apparently.) Stems from vulnerabilities in operating system/IE uncovered in the China hacking.
– It’s happening – Leo Laporte’s ex engineer who went to Google was offered Mac or Linux only
– Microsoft responded “Google’s not so secure either”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20006509-265.html and http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/06/01/windows-and-security-setting-the-record-straight.aspx
15:06 – iPhone 4
– iPad –
– http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/05/31ipad.html
– Pretty amazing sales figures
– Thats one every 3 seconds
– Thats a lot of fanboys 😉
– It’s like the opposite of what normally happens. If you ask people ahead of time, they say they would buy a product when in fact they won’t. This time, everyone said they wouldn’t get one, couldn’t see what it was good for (even after the keynote) and that they wouldn’t pay any more than £400 for one… then they go and get one, at launch, for £800.
– and when we say “people”, it’s obviously not just Ian and Shak.
– iBook minor updates (notes, PDF’s, 1 click bookmark) + coming to iPhone
– 22% of ebook sales
– Farmville on iPhone
– over 225,000 apps in the App Store , 15,000 apps submitted every week, 95% of all apps are approved in 7 days
– iPhone 4
– Thinnest design – as per Gizmodo phone – glass and stainless steel
– Retina Display – at 326 pixels per inch, it’s more pixels than the human retina can see (when the device is held 10 to 12 inches from your face), 960×640, giving it four times as many pixel as the iPhone 3GS. The 800:1 contrast ratio is also four times better than the iPhone 3GS
– A4 chip, better battery life
– gyroscope
– 5mp camera, LED flash, 720p 30 fps recording, $4.99 for iMovie
– iOS 4 (renamed and out on June 21st for current users, gold master today)
– Bing added to iPhone search
– iAds (from 1st July)
– Facetime – wifi only video chat, Open standard
– Launches 24 Jun, 16GB $199, 32GB $299 – good price
– More notable for what wasn’t announced
– Safari 5 came out after keynote – fast, reader view, signed extensions
– xCode 4 also demo’d at WWDC
– All Things D D8 Conference video – full length Steve Jobs vid
46:56 – Adobe Digital Publishing Platform
– magazine viewer technology is but one step in Adobe’s overarching Digital Publishing Platform effort, which will eventually extend to cross-platform app delivery of magazines, books, newpapers, and retail catalogs, but which for now is limited to one magazine on the iPad.
– We expect to use this technology to deliver more of our publications over the coming months,” said Thomas Wallace, editorial director of Condé Nast, Wired’s parent company
– Adobe says that the Digital Publishing Platform will be based on a combination of its Creative Suite 5, which it launched in April of this year, and technologies from the “web analytics and online business optimization software and services” company Omniture, which it acquired for $1.8bn last October. At its creative core is Adobe’s latest version of its QuarkXPress-killer, InDesign CS5.
– The magazine viewer software has not yet been released to developers, but according to Adobe’s Digital Publishing Platform roadmap (PDF), it’s due this summer at Adobe Labs.
– And, no, Apple isn’t making a Flash exception by allowing the Wired app into its App Store store. The Digital Publishing Platform generates applications in Objective C, as per Apple’s demands.
– Ambitious and potentially market grabbing move by Adobe – should Apple not have been doing this alongside announcement of iPad – everyone expected it
50:20 – Green Tech
– No note on pricing but should be available by the end of the year.
– Is this an improvement on existing dynamo/chargers already on the market?
– Orange Power Wellies
– http://newsroom.orange.co.uk/2010/06/06/here-comes-the-hot-stepper-orange-unveils-the-orange-power-wellies/
– Coverts heat from your feet into electricity
– Ideal for Glastonbury

Picks
Chris
Lego Printer
– A fully functioning lego printer! Superb. Complete with lego foremen sitting at control stations and lego horses turning cogs!
– Henry – http://prezi.com/ online Flash based presentation tool. A way to put an end to death by powerpoint?

Ian
iPad Walls
– Great site for iPad wallpapers

DigitalOutbox Episode 39

DigitalOutbox Episode 39
In this episode the team discuss BBC cuts, broadband…plus our best pick ever!

Playback
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Shownotes
1:31 – BBC Cuts
– Websites to half – online budget cut by a quarter
– Six Music and Asian network – six music is great!
– Cut on import spending
– Max spend on sport events of £300m
– Link out to newspapers, pull out of teen market, appease commercial rivals
8:00 – Google Bosses Convicted
– Italian court has convicted three Google executives in a trial over a video showing an autistic teenager being bullied
– The Google employees were accused of breaking Italian law by allowing the video to be posted online.
– Google removed the video within hours of being notified of its existence
– Convicted on privacy violations
– The UK’s former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas said the case gave privacy laws a “bad name”.
– David Drummond, chief legal officer at Google and one of those convicted, said he was “outraged” by the decision.
– “I intend to vigorously appeal this dangerous ruling. It sets a chilling precedent,” he said.
“If individuals like myself and my Google colleagues who had nothing to do with the harassing incident, its filming or its uploading onto Google Video can be held criminally liable solely by virtue of our position at Google, every employee of any internet hosting service faces similar liability,” he added.
– Ramifications inevitable
– Scan content before allowing viewing? Impossible. (20hrs every minute uploaded? 1200 employees would be needed just to keep up and that wouldn’t cover the privacy issues raised in this case.)
11:57 – Google Streetview Fight
– Europe wants Google to refresh google streetview images every 6 months instead of every 12
– They also want Google to tell people they will be taking pictures ahead of them doing it
– Switzerland is suing Google, asking for images of walled gardens and private streets to be deleted
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/04/street_view_eu/
– Google says if EU gets it’s way “it would consider whether we want to drive through Europe again, because it would make the expense so draining”.
16:21 – Facebook News Feed Patent
– The world’s largest social network now own the patent for the news feed.
– Abstract: A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment is described. The method includes generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items, as well as limiting access to the news items to a predetermined set of viewers and assigning an order to the news items. The method further may further include displaying the news items in the assigned order to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewers and dynamically limiting the number of news items displayed.
– How can this be patented for something that was launched in 2006
– Flickr – news stream 2004, activity stream Jan 2006
– Twitter – July 2006
22:34 – Google Granted Location Based Advertising Patent
– Google was awarded last Tuesday a patent for location-based advertising, the potential bread and butter of a number of emerging mobile applications.
– covers using location for targeting, setting a minimum price bid for an ad, offering performance analytics, and modifying the content of an ad
– Now, companies like Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla and BrightKite have to be wondering what this means for them, as do some of the established big-time players, like Facebook and Apple.
24:11 – Apple Goes After HTC
– Apple has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the cell phone manufacturer.
– The suit involves “20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware
– We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.
– Why HTC and not Android?
– But that was from press release – actual lawsuit is…
– certain mobile communication devices including cellular phones and smart phones, including at least phones incorporating the Android Operating System (collectively, “the Accused Products”).
– It’s Google and Android and patents mention multi-touch
– Not for money…
– But the fact that the lawsuit was filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) as well as in a U.S. District Court in Delaware suggests that Apple is really going for the jugular. “The ITC does not award damages,” says Peter Toren, a patent lawyer with New York City law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. The only remedy the ITC can award is an order to stop the importation of the infringing product. HTC is based in Taiwan.
– Looks like Google may get involved. This may call Apple’s bluff. HTC getting the money of Google behind this lawsuit could lead to interesting results.
– Minority Report was out before the iPhone right? Seen as nearly all the gestures we use come from this concept (and no doubt other places before) they can go take a jump.
– This modern trend for patenting every single sneeze that happens during development is getting ridiculous – however the fact that US appear willing to grant the patents on those sneezes is even more farcical. It’s a waste of money and time and we end up paying for it by more expensive products and also for a delay in tech innovation.
30:13 – App Store Crackdown
– 5000 app’s and counting removed from AppStore
– Apple has changed policy on app’s, removing an app if its overtly sexual
– Seeing as there is an age rating feature on the iPhone, why do this now?
– 7 new rules
– http://www.tuaw.com/2010/02/21/apples-7-commandments-of-app-sex/
– I have spoken with Apple, and the following are the new rules:
No images of women in bikinis (Ice skating tights are not OK either)
No images of men in bikinis! (I didn’t ask about Ice Skating tights for men)
No skin (he seriously said this) (I asked if a Burqa was OK, and the Apple guy got angry)
No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs
No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex – all banned
Nothing that can be sexually arousing!!
No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content (not sure how Playboy is still in the store, but …)
– From developer of Wobble
– Probably a good move as more adult content could be found in lots of categories
– Phil speaks!
– “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see”
– “When asked about the Sports Illustrated app, Mr. Schiller said Apple took the source and intent of an app into consideration. “The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” he said.”
– Now wi-fi detectors are being removed
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/04/wifi_stumbling_iphone/
– Wi-Fi detection is something of a niche: there were never more than a handful of such applications in iTunes.
– But now even those have vanished as Apple decided they were using a “private framework”, and has pulled them off the shelves without explanation or apology.
– This is complete bullshit
– Why do Playboy and Sports illustrated get a pass but 500 other app’s don’t?
– Why do things like comics and other app’s get a 17 warning and Mobile Safari doesn’t?
– Fix it so that these app’s don’t appear if your parental settings prohibit it
– I don’t care about buying these app’s, it’s the hypocrisy and the app store built on moving sand
– Apple are getting themselves into tricker and tricker waters. Other main platforms all have better solutions.
– Android – free for all
– Win Mo 6.5 = controlled app store but anything goes if you want to install from other locations.
– Soon, they will control the sites you can visit on the internet. Then control the views you’re allowed to have. Exclude people from using the products who aren’t worthy. Where does this stop? They’re as bad as China.
38:50 – iPad News
– April 3rd in US
– Pre-order wi-fi and 3G from March 12th but pick up wi-fi only from 3rd
– Late April in UK
– With sterling crashing, £400+ is expected price now
– WSJ a lock in for iPad
– http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/04/penguins-ipad-formatted-books-shown-off-making-waves/
– Penguin books show options for iPad – future of books?
43:03 – We7
– Another music streaming option for UK
– £4.99 a month for advert free, higher quality streaming of music
– Millions of tracks
– £9.99 – iPhone app support (which is free), Android coming soon
– Similar to Spotify – offline playlists, 192kbps, no adverts
44:08 – Browser Choice
– From 1st March millions of Windows users in Europe will get to choose their default browser
– Choices are: Avant
Chrome
Firefox
Flock
Green Browser
Internet Explorer
K-meleon
Maxthon
Opera
Safari
Sleipnir
Slim
– Only guaranteed to see it if IE is default browser
– Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer browsers are randomly ordered on the first section of this screen.
– Lots of bitching still. Some complaining about sideways scroll to see lesser known browsers. Others complaining that 5 of the browsers use Trident (IE based renderer) 3 use Gecko 1 webkit and one opera based so not as much choice as it appears…
47:43 – Virgin to offer 100Mb in 2010
– Virgin Media to offer 100Mb/s by end of 2010
– No word on pricing
– Virgin currently offers three broadband packages: 10Mb/s, 20Mb/s and 50Mb/s, priced at £20, £30 and £38 per month on a broadband-only subscription.
– Also extending 200mb/s trial to Coventry
– Virgin Media’s chief executive, Neil Berkett, said: “There is nothing we can’t do with our fibre-optic cable network, and the upcoming launch of our flagship 100Mbps service will give our customers the ultimate broadband experience.”
– Ian – got my first BT Infinity Mail Shot – up to 40Mb, 2Mb up, 20GB limit, throttling in place, £50 activation, 18 month contract
50:17 – PS3 – The Fat Death
– We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.
– One day later…fixed
54:00 – iPhone Competitor from Sony
– Sony set to launch Sony Online Service to take on iTunes and provide games, music, films to PSP, Sony Ericsson phones and they’re also planning a PSP phone and a tablet.
– Hopefully better than the PSP Go, and is it too little too late anyway?

Picks
Henry
Attachment Scanner for Mail.app
– Don’t you just hate it when you send an email referring to an attachment, but forget the attachment?
– That never need happen again with this mail plugin for OS X. It scans your email for words like attach, attachment, attached etc and if there’s no attachment in those emails, it simply pops up a message box asking if you still want to send the message anyway.
– Simple, invisible, free.

Shakeel
Words with Friends
– £1.79 or Free
– turn based Scrabble type word game
– over 500,000 players
– 20 simultaneous games
– Push notifications tell you when it’s your turn
– invite friends through Facebook and Twitter
– very addictive
– some dirty sneaky cheaters cheesing me off though

Ian
Plants vs Zombies
– Superb game for iPhone
– Perfect pick up, play, stop 20 mins later…or 2 hours
– 300,000 copies sold in……………..9 days!
– More than $1 million in sales
– Current fav games

DigitalOutbox Episode 26

DigitalOutbox Episode 26
In this episode the team discuss Pirates of Westminster.

Playback
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Shownotes
1:36 – News Corp and Bing
– De-index from google
– Paid (assumption) to index exclusively with Bing
– Rumoured by a few prominent technologists last week but now reported in FT
– However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.
– Minus point – Fragmentation of search, exclusive indexing – stinks
– Plus point – competition for Google
– Microsoft is not afraid to buy search market share, which is what it’s doing with the Yahoo search deal and even its Cashback program. But with these latest talks, it is literally trying to buy the news, or at least exclusive access to the news.
4:40 – Pub fined for copyright infringement
– Client of The CLoud
– A pub owner has been fined £8,000 because someone unlawfully downloaded copyrighted material over their open Wi-Fi hotspot, according to the managing director of hotspot provider The Cloud.
– fine had been levied in a civil case, brought about by a rights holder, “sometime this summer”
– If you were a business why would you sign up to something like the cloud – would put the fear into any business
8:00 – Lawyers target thousands of illegal filesharers
– ACS:Law will send out 15,000 letters in the new year
– Offer chance to settle out of court for a few hundred pounds
– “A lot are accused of downloading pornography,” Jaclyn Clarabut of Which? told BBC News. “People find it distressing or embarrassing and pay up.”
9:53 – Virgin Trialling CView
– Virgin Media will trial deep packet inspection technology to measure the level of illegal filesharing on its network, but plans not to tell the customers whose traffic will be examined
– The system, CView, will be provided by Detica, a BAE subsidiary
– The system will look at traffic and identify the peer-to-peer packets. In a step beyond how ISPs currently monitor their networks, it will then peer inside those packets and try to determine what is licensed and what is unlicensed, based on data provided by the record industry.
– In the pitch document, Detica said that as well as aggregate data, CView could be used to categorise filesharers and apply technical measures against them, or target them to be sold legal alternatives. Virgin Media’s spokesman said it has no plans to use such features.
– Interesting story following on from similar ones we’ve done – my only issue is that it involves BAE which is a bit of a conflict for me. Paranoid. Me?
14:12 – Google Image results hit the headlines
– Racist, highly offensive doctored image of Michelle Obama appeard at no.1 of image results
– Was temporarily removed when the host was found to have malware but them re-instated when it moved to a “clean” host.
– Problem exasperated with blogs linking their indignation.
– Google posted advert above the result explaining why it’s not their place to sensor results.
– Image since been removed from original website and no longer at top of results.
– Google shows related search: michelle obama ape – how is that related to me searching for michelle obama
18:26 – New Apple Worm
– Serious this time
– specifically targeting people in the Netherlands who are using their iPhones for internet banking with Dutch online bank ING
– worm changes the root password from the default of “alpine” that Apple set in the factory firmware, making it more difficult for users to secure their devices
– recommended method to remove this malware from your iPhone is to restore the Apple factory firmware using iTunes.
– This worm, like the others, only attacks jailbroken iPhone and iPod Touch devices.
20:18 – iMac Woes
– Cracked screens or DOA’s
– Not good, quite widespread looking at the forums
– Urban myth…alway avoid 1st gen Apple models
23:18 – iPhones coming to Tesco
– Price war, or at least some price cuts?
– Jointly owned by O2 and Tesco (Tesco Mobile that is)
26:09 – iPlayer App Coming to iPhone
– The BBC has posted a monthly press pack which includes iPlayer imagery for what appears to be a future version of the iPlayer for iPhone.
– In the image it’s clear that there is a downloads option and what appears to be a live stream option. The iPhone in the image is connected to a Wi-Fi network indicating that the Wi-Fi restriction for the current iPlayer website could still be in place.
– No comment from the BBC
– Would be their first iPhone app
27:59 – Tivo back in the UK
– Tivo to return to UK on Virgin Media’s new HD box
– TiVo is set to develop a converged television and broadband interactive interface – which will be the tech that powers Virgin Media’s next gen, high-def set-top boxes.
– Very exciting – their software is often regarded as ‘the best’.
– At the same time Tivo is dying in america – 8% of active DVR’s in America – same level as 2004, ouch!
30:34 – iPlayer on the 360
– According to sources close to the BBC’s Future Media and Technology department, a deal between the two parties has still been unable to be reached because Microsoft’s strategy of charging for all content on its Xbox Live platform is incompatible with the BBC’s public service remit
– Microsoft only wants to offer its users access to platforms it can charge for as this is the model it is pursuing.
– The BBC cannot charge the British public for access to the iPlayer as it is already included in the licence fee
– Barmy
– When do I pay for Facebook or twitter?

Picks
Ian
Handbrake
– DVD ripping utitlity and also acts as a video convertor
– Free
– Now 64 bit for Leopard and Snow Leopard (only 10% perf improvement)
– Over 1000 updates in latest version
– Improvements especially around h.264 encoding

Hans Rosling
– Makes statistics interesting
– Gapminder – over 200 indicators of global development mapped over time – fascinating
– Can make your own – Google bought the tech behind gapminer and you can use the Google Gadget called Motion Chart. It allows everyone to make a Gapminder-like bubble graph that you can publish on your web-page or blog.

Chris
Browsershots
– THE mother of all cross browser page checks.
– Type in a URL and select from tonnes of browser/operating system combinations across Linux, Mac and PC. (I counted 82 combinations available)
– Sit back and wait for the cue to run through and deliver back the screen grabs.
– Not interactive but as an overall comprehensive check, it can’t be beaten.

Down For Everyone or Just For Me?
– Another “Does exactly what it says on the tin.”
– Type in the URL and check whether the site you’re trying to view is down for everyone or just with you!

DigitalOutbox Episode 2

DigitalOutbox Episode 2
In this episode the team discuss Digital Britain, Virgin Media, Windows 7, Project Natal and Steve Jobs all without mentioning the iPhone. Almost.

Playback
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Shownotes
– Mobile Phone Privacy – New UK directory of mobile phone users – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/09/mobile_phone_directory/
– http://www.118800.co.uk/
– http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article6459097.ece
– You can become ex-directory by texting the letter ‘E’ to 118800 from the mobile phone that you want to be made ex-directory. Standard network charges apply. Or you can call us on 118 800 or 0800 138 6263 from the phone you want to be made ex-directory. But remember that 0800 calls will be charged by your mobile phone company. The first time 118 800 contacts you please note that you will be sent an SMS reminding you about how to become ex-directory. Please allow 4 weeks for your details to be made ex-directory

– E3 Round-up
– Sony
– PSP Go
– Motion Controller – very accurate, imagine God of War with two of those in your hands
– God of War 3, Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain, Agent (Rockstar exclusive), The Last Guardian, Assassins Creed 2, Mod Nation Racers (LBP for racing?), Final Fantasy 14, Gran Turismo 5 – still no release date!
– Nintendo
– Mario Galaxy 2
– Vitality add-on for Wii
– Metroid from Team Ninja
– Very tired compared to Sony and Microsoft

– Palm Pre
– great reviews, appstore lacking – http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/03/palm-pre-review/
– Some real world issues – http://sanford.blogspot.com/
– No on screen keyboard – want to type in horizontal you need to rotate – clumsy
– Touchstone – slow charging, also gets hot in use
– Based on reviews, a great alternative to iPhone
– Windows 7 – Oct 22
– WWDC
– New Macbook Pro 15″
– Built in battery like 17″
– Typical user – 5 years of use – 1000 charges before degradation
– SD card slot instead of expresscard
– You can get up to 3.06 GHz Dual Core 6MB Level 2 Cache, Up to 8GB of memory, 500GB hard drive. Or 256GB SSD
– Starts at $1699 (2.53 ghz) – $300 less than current starting price
– $2000 to get 9600M GT
– 13″ Macbook and 17″ Pro updated also
– 13″ gets integrated battery and SD slot as well
– New screen also
– FW 800
– $1199, now called Macbook Pro
– OS X
– Attacking Windows 7 – fundamentally it’s just another version of Vista
– Rewritten 90% of Leopard – bug tastic
– Gain 6GB of disk space by installing SL
– Expose built into dock – answer peek features of windows 7
– Safari 4 released today
– Focussing on performance improvements in SL
– Quicktime – major improvements, back end and UI, frameless – looks gorgeous
– All major system apps in SL – 64 bit
– Grand Central Station – better thread management with multiple cores, Open CL – basically faster and more powerful O/S
– Exchange support in SL built into Mail, iCal, Address Book
– Out in September for $29. Wow. Family pack – $49. People will still pirate! Developer preview out today
– iPhone
– 50,00 app’s in the app store, SDK download > million times, more than 40 million iPhones and iPod touches
– OS 3.0
– Major update – 100 new features
– Cut/Copy/Paste
– Landscape keyboard in all key apps
– MSS app
– 29 carriers out of 79 countries will support MMS on launch of 3.0 – O2 logo at the keynote – how much?
– Spotlight search across all app’s, including mail on server, launch apps from spotlight
– iTunes – rent and purchase movies from the phone + tv shows, audiobooks, music videos
– Better parental control
– Tethering with mac or pc, usb or bluetooth, 22 carries in 42 countries, not at&t
– Faster javascript, better media streaming
– Autofill – remember username and passwords for websites (turn on keylock)
– HTML 5.0 support
– Find my iPhone, MobileMe customers only, lose phone, log into browser, tells you where it is, from browser send a message or sound to phone whether it’s in silent or not so if in the home it will sound out until you find it, if it is lost/stolen you can send a remote wipe, find later – plug in and restore from backup
– 1000 new API’s, App Purchase – make financial transactions from within the app, mag subscriptions, same money cut as app’s
– Peer to Peer for games
– Accessories now supported via dock connection
– Push notification
– App’s demo’d – Gameloft – Asphalt 5, Airstrip – Airstrip CC – remote monitoring of patients, Scrollmotion – books and magazines bought from the app, Tom Tom – with optional hardware attachment enhancing GPS – handsfree calling – powers phone – summer, ngmoco – Stardefense – featurepacks – launch today with update for 3.0 around time of 3.0 release, pasco – remote sensor monitoring, zipcar – zipcars available in your area – embedded maps, line6 + planet waves – connect iphone to guitar amp and add effects and control amp
– OS 3.0 – Free, $9.95 for touch, out on June 17th
-iPhone 3GS
– Same form factor
– 2-3 times faster (app loads and web pages)
– Open GL ES 2.0 support, HSDPA (7.2Mbps)
– 3 megapixel auto focus camera
– auto exposure, auto light balance
– tap to focus
– auto macro
– captures video
– 30fps, audio, auto focus
– Videos shown alongside pictures, can edit videos on the phone
– share videos – e-mail, MMS, MobileMe, Youtube
– Voice dialing
– Voice Control
– Digital compass
– Voiceover
– Nike+ support
– Improved battery
– $199, $299 for 32gb
– black and white
– iPhone 3G 8gb – $99
– Out Jun 19th

Picks
– Wired magazine
– Macbites