Category: Podcast

DigitalOutbox Episode 55

DigitalOutbox Episode 55
In this episode the team discuss Antennagate, Windows Phone 7, Times Paywall and Xbox Kinect.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:04 – Anttenagate
– Featured on Top Gear
– Consumer Reports can’t recommend it
– Worse, Apple deleting numerous threads in support discussions about this
– Not the first time this has happened – horrible way to treat customers
– Rumours that in the face of this, it HAS to be recalled
– http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179164/Microsoft_exec_mocks_iPhone_4_dubs_it_Apple_s_Vista
– “It looks like the iPhone 4 might be their Vista, and I’m okay with that,” said Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer, in a keynote speech at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), which runs through Thursday in Washington, D.C.
– But I don’t know of anyone, anywhere returning the iPhone or saying their call reception is worse
– PR disaster
– 4.0.1 released – new formula for reception bars, taller and fatter now
– http://www.anandtech.com/show/3821/iphone-4-redux-analyzing-apples-ios-41-signal-fix
– Surely a phone works or doesn’t? Do bars matter?
– Press Conference
– http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/100716iab73asc/event/index.html
– Started with the iPhone Antenna Song – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKIcaejkpD4
– Then – Steve Jobs – “You know . . . we’re not perfect.”
– 3 million sold in 3 weeks
– This problem isn’t an iPhone problem – it’s an industry problem
– Apple spent $100 million in testing facility
– Also affects Blackberry, Android, Nokia
– (see http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/07/17/can-you-make-your-current-phone-lose-signal-depending-on-how-you-hold-it/)
– ‘Jesus, it must be a lot of users complaining about this’ — So what percentage have called AppleCare? 0.55% Just one half of one percent.”
– “In the early days of the iPhone 3GS return rates were 6%… below the average, we were happy with that… so for the iPhone 4? You think half the people must be returning their phones with what you read online… well it’s 1.7% — less than a third of the 3GS returns.”
– “Even though we think the iPhone 4 is superior to the 3GS antenna… it drops more calls per 100 than the 3GS. We’re being transparent. So how many more does it drop than the 3GS?” “This is hard data… the iPhone 4 drops less than one additional call per 100 than the 3GS. Less than one.”
– The first part is the software update, that fixes the way the bars report and other bugs, that’s out now. Second, people said the bumper fixes everything… ‘why don’t you give everybody a case’? Okay — we’ll give you a free case.”
– “We’re going to send you a free case. We can’t make enough bumpers. No way we can make enough in the quarter. So we’re going to source some cases and give you a choice.” Refund if you’ve already bought one
– “And if you’re not happy, you can bring the phone back. We’ll give you a full refund within 30 days. No restocking fee. We want to make everyone happy, and if we can’t make you happy we’ll give you a full refund.”
– Summary – Yes, it’s a problem but not exclusive to the iPhone however people don’t care as we can’t make enough to sell. We’ve had less returns than our previous bet selling phone which no one complained about. Still, we love our customers and we want to please them – they have been asking for a free bumper so they are going to get one.
OR
– Expert in PR strikes again?
– iPhone 4 perspective: .55% in this case is 165,000 complaints. 1.7% returns is 51,000 phones, +1 per hundred is at least 30K dropped calls.
– Tabloid journalism or the press getting their own back?
– Nothing better than kicking the big guys
– I love how most of the tweets I’m reading that are negative are from non iPhone 4 owners 🙂
– And what of those PR experts that said a recall was the only solution. Looking pretty dumb now.
18:18 – Windows Phone 7 Preview
– No caveats now: Windows Phone 7 is a waste of time and money. It’s a platform that no carrier, device maker, developer, or user should bother with. Microsoft should kill it before it ships and admit that it’s out of the mobile game for good. It is supposed to ship around Christmas 2010, but anyone who gets one will prefer a lump of coal. I really mean that.
– Seeing the UI in action across several tasks, not just in a highly controlled presentation, shows how awkward and unsophisticated it is
– And it’s not just the UI: Under the hood, Windows Phone 7 rests on creakingly old technology that the main competitors have all moved past.
– I was appalled, flummoxed, and stupefied by what I saw and the answers to the questions from the 15 or so developers in the audience. Also, it should be noted that minuscule attendance and the utter lack of passion in the room spoke volumes about Windows Phone 7’s ultimate fate as well. By comparison, about five times as many people attended a session on WebOS.
– The bottom line is this: Windows Phone 7 is a pale imitation of the 2007-era iPhone. It’s as if Microsoft decided in summer 2007 to copy the iPhone and has shut its developers in a bunker ever since, so they don’t realize that several years have passed, that the iPhone has advanced, and that competitors such as Google Android and Palm WebOS have also pushed the needle forward. Microsoft is stuck in 2007, with a smartphone OS whose feature checklist might match that era’s iPhone but whose fit and finish would look like a Pinto next to a Maserati.
– Engadget preview
– http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/19/windows-phone-7-in-depth-preview/
– Much more positive
– Idea’s are half baked which is a big risk for MS
– Gizmodo agree – a good, really good – raw components to build a great smartphone
24:10 – Wired predicts the iPad
– “The next iMac attac promises new lollipop laptops, a more serious series of professional machines, and a wireless handheld dubbed the iPad”
25:27 – Broadband Britain Delayed
– The government has dumped a commitment to deliver universal access to 2Mbit/s broadband by 2012.
– The culture secretary Jeremy Hunt said this morning that the previous government had failed to allocate enough funding to meet the schedule.
26:38 – The Times Paywall
– report from the web analytics firm Experian Hitwise that showed that two thirds of the Times and Sunday Times web traffic had melted away after the paywall went up at the beginning of the month.
– If true, better than expected by Times management who expected 90% drop
– But then this afternoon a site called Beehive City had some figures that may have made the champagne go flat at the Times. According to the site, just 15,000 people have signed up to pay for access to the papers’ two websites – and don’t forget that there was an opening offer of £1 for 30 days.
– Beehive City says more than 150,000 registered during the free trial period but it appears that only a small minority then opted to pay. The Times won’t confirm these figures, so why should we taken any notice of an obscure website?
As an aside…..
– BBC ‘rip off’ in perspective: licence fee = £2.80/wk (for TV, radio, websites). New Times paywall = £2/wk (for two websites).
32:36 – Amazon – EBook Outsells Hardcovers
– Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books—astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.
– Bezos again: “The growth rate of Kindle device unit sales has tripled since we lowered the price from $259 to $189.”
36:33 – Google Remains in China
– China consider Google’s latest tweaks satisfactory and have renewed their operating licence that lets them operate within the largest internet market.
– The “tweak” was basically to stop automatically forwarding from the chinese to the HongKong domain and instead have a manual click through.
– In reality, it doesn’t mean that Chinese citizens will get un-censored internet – the Chinese firewall prevents actual access to sites it doesn’t like but Google at least offers uncensored results.
– In a statement, Google made it clear that although it’s abiding by Chinese law, it’s not censoring.
“The products we are keeping on Google.cn (Music, Translate, Product Search) do not require any censorship by Google,” the company said in a statement. “All other products, like Web search, we are offering from Google.com.hk, and without censorship.”
38:21 – Terrorist Takedown
– Blogetery.com shut down – closing some 70,000 blogs – without notice by it’s ISP following FBI contact related to “links to terrorist material” and an al-Qaeda “hit-list”
– Platform owners/users given no notice.
– “The posted material, in addition to potentially inciting dangerous activities, specifically violated the BurstNet acceptable use policy”
41:26 – Jolicloud
– Web-Based Jolicloud OS Reaches 1.0
– OS is now completely built on HTML 5
– pre-dates Google’s forthcoming “Chrome OS” by well over a year
– ability to run both Web-based applications alongside traditional desktop apps like Skype
– provides access to files previously stored on the computer’s hard drive prior to the Jolicloud upgrade, so you don’t have to worry with backing up your files and photos before making the switch. (Although you should, just to be safe). In the future, Jolicloud plans to offer tools to move these files from the computer’s hard drive to the cloud prior to the upgrade, during the setup process
– 700 apps available in included App Centre
– Thanks to the OS’s Web-based nature, if you choose to install Jolicloud on multiple machines, your settings will remained synchronized between the devices as to how your apps are organized, which you’ve installed, which you’ve deleted, etc.
43:49 – Xbox S and Kinect Prices
– Sell out on launch day
– Retailers struggling to get new stock
– Restrictions form MS or a big hit?
48:03 – Old Spice Goes Viral
– Kinnect + Kinect Adventures = £129.99
– Console (4GB) + Kinect + Kinect Adventures = £249.99
– Pricey! £99.99 should have been the one to aim for…maybe thats the cut down price for next year
– No official date but expect November

Picks
Chris
WinToFlash
– A great little utility to make a bootable USB installation of Windows.
– Needed to re-install Windows XP on a Netbook and this utility turned a horrid process into a breeze. (The alternative online process given required 3 separate utilities, many many steps and was command-line driven…)

Ian
Carcassonne
– Great strategy game
– iPhone only but universal version in development
– Graphics and audio are top notch
Conquist
– Like Risk but better
– iPad only
– A few maps and modes but it plays very well
– Multiplayer but only local – shame

DigitalOutbox Episode 54

DigitalOutbox Episode 54
In this episode the team discuss Broadband news, why Apple are shocked and Facebook panics.

Playback
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Shownotes
1:45 – Government spends thousands on iPhone apps
– NHS Drinks Tracker £10,000
– NHS Quit Smoking £10,000
– Jobcentre Plus £32,775
– DVLA Masterclass £40,000
– A report by the Central Office of Information has revealed that the government spent £94m on website development and running costs and £32m on web staff in 2009 – 2010.
– By the end of May there were over 53,000 downloads of the Jobcentre Plus app, although critics have asked why someone who can afford both an iPhone and the expensive running costs would need a Jobcentre Plus app.
– Surely adapting web content to work on all phones is a better way forward
4:57 – BBC Website Spend
– The BBC spent £199.3m on its BBC Online service in 2009/10, according to its annual report – 12% more than the previous year.
– The outlay is 6% of the £142.50 annual licence fee, or the equivalent of £0.67 per month…
– BBC Online reaches 37% of the population each week and therefore costs 8.9 pence per user hour.
– On a per user user basis, that makes it amongst the most costly of the BBC’s main services, with only BBC Alba costing more.
– More than 18m iPlayer requests per week.
– Monthly mobile users up from 4.4m to 7.8m.
– External suppliers received 26% of BBC Online spend – slightly more than its 25% quota.
– At the same time, BBC Trust endorses the 25% budget reduction
– New BBC News coming soon too
9:55 – Finland Makes Broadband a Legal Right
– From 1 July every Finn will have the right to access to a 1Mbps (megabit per second) broadband connection.
– Finland has vowed to connect everyone to a 100Mbps connection by 2015.
– In the UK the government has promised a minimum connection of at least 2Mbps to all homes by 2012 but has stopped short of enshrining this as a right in law.
– The Finnish deal means that from 1 July all telecommunications companies will be obliged to provide all residents with broadband lines that can run at a minimum 1Mbps speed.
– It is believed up to 96% of the population are already online and that only about 4,000 homes still need connecting to comply with the law. In the UK internet penetration stands at 73%.
– The British government has agreed to provide everyone with a minimum 2Mbps broadband connection by 2012 but it is a commitment rather than a legally binding ruling.
13:14 – Race Online 2012
– UK digital champion Martha Lane Fox wants to get everyone of working age online by 2012
– The Networked Nation Manifesto, published today, also highlights the lack of net access “among the disadvantaged, unemployed and retired”.
– David Cameron backed the campaign, saying that “digital inclusion is essential for a modern dynamic economy”.
– However, the issue of who will pay for it all has yet to be addressed.
– Race Online 2012, is asking for people, who are already online, to sign up to volunteer, donate money or equipment, take part in organising events, or contribute their own ideas about how to get others connected.
17:03 – Prince reckons the Internet is Over
– “The Internet’s completely over,” he said. “I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”
– “The Internet’s like MTV,” the star said to The Mirror’s correspondent. “At one time, MTV was hip, and suddenly it became outdated.”
– “All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”
19:23 – Bye Bye Kin
– Microsoft has made the decision to focus on the Windows Phone 7 launch and will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned. Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones
– Less than 50 days on sale
– Already half price
– Sell off remaining stock
– Allegedly…..503 sold
– Actually – at least 8000
– Just a different way of saying…
– FAIL
22:53 – Apple Admit Signal Fault
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10490572.stm
– http://daringfireball.net/2010/07/translation_iphone_4
– To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.
– We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.
– Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.
– We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same— the iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologise for any anxiety we may have caused.
– As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.
– So not hardware but software….and software for all iPhones
– So why so many video’s of people stopping bandwidth with their finger if it’s just a display issue?
– Doesn’t add up…
– And was the formula wrong, or did they show more bars to make the iPhone look good?
30:55 – Section 44 Goes Bye Bye
– Police are to be stripped of the power to stop and search anyone for no reason, the Home Secretary has announced.
– Theresa May told the Commons she will immediately limit Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 so members of public can only be stopped if officers “reasonably suspect” they are terrorists. The threshold of suspicion will bring the Act into line with traditional stop and search powers.
– Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti hailed the withdrawal of the power today. “It is a blanket and secretive power that has been used against school kids, journalists, peace protesters and a disproportionate number of young black men,” she said.
– “To our knowledge, it has never helped catch a single terrorist. This is a very important day for personal privacy, protest rights and race equality in Britain.”
– Today’s announcement will be welcomed by photographers, who have battled police for the right to take pictures in public places in recent years. Often officers have used Section 44 to stop and search snappers when they are not suspected of doing anything wrong
32:02 – Google Life in a Day
– a historic cinematic experiment that will attempt to document one day, as seen through the eyes of people around the world.
– On July 24, you have 24 hours to capture a snapshot of your life on camera. You can film the ordinary — a sunrise, the commute to work, a neighborhood soccer match, or the extraordinary — a baby’s first steps, your reaction to the passing of a loved one, or even a marriage.
– Kevin Macdonald, the Oscar-winning director of films such as The Last King of Scotland, Touching the Void and One Day in September, will then edit the most compelling footage into a feature documentary film, to be executive-produced by Ridley Scott, the director behind films like Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Thelma & Louise, Blade Runner and Robin Hood.
– The film will premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and if your footage makes it into the final cut, you’ll be credited as a co-director and may be one of 20 contributors selected to attend the premiere.
– Regardless of whether your footage makes it into the final film, your video(s) will live on on the “Life in a Day” channel as a time capsule that will tell future generations what it was like to be alive on July 24, 2010.
35:36 – Google App Inventor for Android
– http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/
– what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) tool for app development on the Android platform
– Instead of having to learn code (in Android’s case, Java), App Inventor is a piece of software that allows you to drag and drop certain elements common to many apps to build a mobile app from scratch.
– Google quote – To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.
– Plus – takes away barrier of entry
– Minus – could be a Frontpage for Android Apps
– Potentially excellent though
38:49 – Fring vs Skype
– Call Fring to Fring, Skype to Skype
– 3G or wi-fi
– Still amazed Apple haven’t brought out updated iChat to allow Facetime to iChat or vice versa
– It’s also a popular upgrade – http://www.fring.com/blog/?p=2303
– Fring says Skype has apparently blocked fring and threatened legal action against the startup.
– An hour or so ago, Fring reported on its blog that we had blocked their access to Skype. I want to make one thing absolutely clear: this is untrue. Fring was using Skype software in a way it wasn’t designed to be used – and in a way which is in breach of Skype’s API Terms of Use and End User License Agreement. We’ve been talking with Fring for some time to try to resolve this amicably.
– However, over time, Fring’s mis-use of our software was increasingly damaging our brand and reputation with our customers. On Friday, for example, Fring withdrew support for video calls over Skype on iOS 4 without warning, again damaging our brand and disappointing our customers, who have high expectations of the Skype experience.
– We actively encourage developers to build products that work with Skype, acting, of course in accordance with our various API licences. At the same time, Skype will rigorously protect our brand and reputation, and those developers that do not comply with our terms will be subject to legal enforcement.
– In this case, however, there is no truth to Fring’s claims that Skype has blocked it. Fring made the decision to remove Skype functionality on its own.
43:23 – Youtube Mobile Updates
– m.youtube.com
– a more polished UI and better load time
– uses plenty of HTML5 features, including the video tag.
– But most important is the fact that the web app has superior video quality when compared to native applications — namely the iPhone’s — and it will soon feature more content as well
– widely available, with support for nearly any HTML5 compliant mobile browser, including those on the iPhone and Android devices.
– The web app offered a number of advantages, including auto-complete in search and a UI that’s more consistent with the latest version of the YouTube webpage (the iPhone app still uses YouTube’s 5-star rating system, which was abandoned in January in favor of a binary ‘Like’ system). Most important, the video quality of the web application was leaps and bounds ahead of the iPhone app — Doronichev explained that this was because the iPhone app still uses a video streaming format that was developed for Edge, not 3G. Video on the HTML5 app looked much better, and was snappier to boot.
– http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/youtube-leanback-tv
– Leanback
– http://www.youtube.com/leanback
– site will immediately start playing videos from a feed of suggestions, based on other videos you’ve liked
– keyboard driven
– Rentals aren’t live for Leanback yet, but the YouTube team says that this is due to a technical issue, not a licensing one, and that it hopes to offer rentals in the next few weeks. And yes, ads will eventually make their way into Leanback as well
46:39 – Facebook Adds Panic Button
– The button, aimed at children and teenagers, will report abuse to the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) and Facebook.
– Once installed, the application appears on their homepage to say that “they are in control online”.
– The launch follows months of negotiation between Ceop and Facebook, which initially resisted the idea.
– a Facebook UK representative has contacted us to clarify that Facebook does not perceive this app as a “panic button.” “The app is opt-in, so young people choose to download it/bookmark it to their page in order to use,” she said. A similar button, seen on other sites such as Bebo, is “not opt-in and is simply a reporting link, not teamed with messages of how to stay safe or further info from CEOP,” she said
49:21 – Amazon Does Groceries
Beta for moment
– 22,000 products
– Won’t replace weekly shop for most
– Amazons angle is twofold – better if user buys in bulk
– Amazon Prime – unlimited free one day delivery for annual fee of £49
– Supermarkets typically charge between £4 and £6 but shoppers can choose specific time slots.

Picks
Chris
Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 6 (and designer Pro 6)
– A largely unknown gem of a piece of software. Vector based graphics program. Exceptionally fast rendering engine. Over time they have increased support for photo manipulation and now have a very powerful photo engine.
– £69 for the standard version.
– Pro comes with a £249 pricetag but comes with some pretty impressive web development features. Literally draw your site.
– Free trials as ever if you want to play.
– PC only – although there is an open source project for lunux

Ian
Osmos HD
– Game for iPad
– Ambient and addictive

DigitalOutbox Episode 53

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

Playback
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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 52

DigitalOutbox Episode 52
In this episode the team discuss the new iPhone 4 and E3 keynotes.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:00 – iPhone 4
– 16GB – £499, 32GB – £599
– Unlocked, no white
– Bumper – £25 !!!!!!!!
– Apple online store swamped – much demand then?
– 600,000 pre-orders – http://mashable.com/2010/06/16/iphone-4-pre-order-stats
– Vodafone looking good option
– O2 not accepting new customers until end of July – existing customers only although that includes broadband customers
– iOS now out
– Same as gold master released on day of WWDC keynote
25:45 – New Mac Mini
– Gorgeous design. Tiny. Still no blu-ray. Unibody – No need for spatula’s
– Fast
– Expensive!
– If you’ve got the cash it’s a great HDTV device
– End of Apple TV?
– http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/15/apple-tv-mac-mini
– Rebadged to cheaper cloud solution maybe as per rumours?
29:09 – E3 Microsoft Keynote
– Call of Duty Black Ops
– 9/11/10
– Downloads first on 360 for 3 years
– Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid)
– MGS Rising
– Sword action – cut what you like
– Gears of War 3
– 4 player co-op
– More of the same
– Fable 3
– Oct 26th
– Mmm…more of the same but a revolution
– Halo Reach
– September
– Niiiice
– Kinect – Brand name for Project Natal
– Sign in by waving 🙂
– Voice recognition
– Looks to work well
– Video Kinect – video chat
– Tracks you as you move around
– ESPN – gold members for free
– Kinectimals – virtual pet
– Kinect Sports – from Rare? Hurdles (track and field), football, bowling, boxing, table tennis, volleyball
– Kinect joyride – racing but shit racing
– Kinect adventures – use entire body to play – hole in the wall – piss
– Your Shape from Ubisoft – fitness game
– measures physical dimensions
– looks interesting
– Dance Central – match dance moves to onscreen characters – new Rock Band?
– Kinect For Xbox 360
– Brand name for Project Natal
– Launched this year – Nov 4th in USA
– Star Wars next year – we can all be the fat kid being a jedi 🙂
– Pre-order via Game for £20 – no pricing this week!!
– Forza with kinect – virtual steering wheel, head turns camera
– Walk up to an around car – why couldn’t I do that with a joypad
– Coming 2011 – assuming thats Forza 4
– New Xbox 360
– Built in wifi N
– 250GB
– Same price – £199
– Whisper quiet allegedly
– 5 usb, hdmi, port for kinect
– Shipping to retailers today
– Available later this week
– Everyone in audience gets a new console
– First reports – it is quiet and it’s a good redesign
– July 16th in UK
40:54 – E3 Nintendo Keynote
– Goldeneye – Wii exclusive
– The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword – 2011
– Nintendo 3DS
– 3D screen on top
– No glasses required
– Verdict – gives a good illusion of depth – stare at the screen, don’t more head or effect is gone
– Touch screen on the bottom – touch and 3D don’t get along
– There’s a motion sensor and a gyro sensor in the 3DS. There’s one camera on the inside, and two camera lenses on the outside, so you can take 3D photos.
– Will show 3D Hollywood movies
– Kid Icarus demo’d – looks like a Wii game…on a 3DS
45:54 – E3 Sony Keynote
– 3D is the big push
– Wipeout looks amazing, other games not so – too much happening
– Move
– 40 devs working on Move games
– Sep 19th launch, $50, nv controller – $30, move+eye – $99
– Demo with Tiger Woods – looks very accurate
– Playstation Plus
– Exclusive in-game DLC and other content
– Free full games, changing each month
– Early access to demos and betas
– Auto-patching feature, which will detect, download and install updates
– $49 a year
– Also includes Qore
– Allows chatting across games
– Will work if only one person is a plus member
– GT5 – Nov 2nd……………2010
– Killzone 3 next year – 3D and Move support
– 3D looks amazing
– http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/06/killzone-3-in-3d-incredible-but-who-will-get-to-enjoy-it.ars
– Portal 2
– Next year and also steam cloud support
– PS3 will have ‘best version’ according to Valve
– steam provides the game with “auto updates, community features, downloadable content, and more.”

E3 Wrapup
– Meh unless you like gimmicky add-ons
– Missing titles – Last Guardian? Nothing from Valve apart from Portal…next year
– Lot’s of remakes and this year editions
– one more thing…
– Secret of Mana on the iPhone in 2010 – http://www.joystiq.com/2010/06/15/secret-of-mana-coming-to-iphone-this-year/
– Go on, one more – Crackdown 2 demo out today
54:59 – On Live Finally launches
– June 17 in US
– Free for first year thanks to AT&T partnership
– Then $4.95 a month after that
– First tests
– http://gizmodo.com/5567770/onlive-streaming-game-service-tested-at-home-finally
– Fast, less laggy than expected
– Fuzzy graphics
– Compressed – PS2 like
– Provided your internet is fast enough and you can deal with the fact that the graphical quality isn’t as good as it could be, this is quite a tempting offer. You gain the ability to able to play stuff on lousy hardware (and Macs!), spectate your friends and rent games instead of buy them, but lose a little bit of visual sheen. I think that’s fair.
58:05 – HP and Yahoo Printer Ad deal
– We did warm about this
– Yahoo and HP tie up to print ad’s directly to printers
– So not only do I pay extra for this printer, you then use up my expensive ink printing an ad I might not want
– SHITE!

Picks
Chris
Little Master
– Flash game.
– Actually has an element of cricket about it.
– Lovin the fact that they’ve put the flash game inside an iPad graphic!
– Bowlers start spinning / vary the pace. Hit different areas of the screen to score runs.

Henry
Todays Guardian
– not tried it on the ipad but keyboard navigation on a laptop/desktop is great.

Ian
Reeder for iPad
– best way to review and manage Google Reader content on the iPad
– fast, minimal graphics
– offline reading as well

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 50

DigitalOutbox Episode 50
In this episode the team discuss the iPad.

Playback
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Shownotes
1:50 – Facebook Privacy Updates
– Facebook is to revise its privacy settings within weeks to make it simpler for people to keep their information private, according to Mark Zuckerberg, its founder and chief executive of the giant social network
– Admits they missed the mark in trying to provide a lot of granularity
– But Zuckerberg insisted that concerns that Facebook is selling personal data to advertisers were misplaced. “We do not give advertisers access to your personal information,” he said. “We do not and never will sell any of your information to anyone.”
– May 26th – new features demo’d, goes live over the coming weeks
– Guide – http://lifehacker.com/5548375/a-guide-to-facebooks-new-simpler-privacy-controls
http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/
6:15 – Dell Streak
– Dell Streak to launch on the UK in June on O2
– 5in tablet device
– Android powered, 3G and wi-fi connectivity, 16GB of storage, GPS and two cameras; one on the front and one on the back.
– Unlike many other Android tablets, owners will be able to download applications from the Android Marketplace. Google has blocked some tablet makers from installing the marketplace app on many devices larger than a mobile phone.
– Hello Dell, hello competition
8:28 – Xbox In Trouble
– The two men primarily responsible for Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division are leaving the company.
– J Allard, a senior VP of design and development who worked on the Xbox and Zune, and Robbie Bach, the division’s president, will both be stepping aside as CEO Steve Ballmer takes more direct control of the department. Remaining execs in the division will report directly to Ballmer.
– Doesn’t sound good
– Surely hurts the Xbox platform
10:09 – iPlayer Beta Launches
– updated site is certainly much cleaner, with TV and radio separated. For new users, the site is divided into two categories: Featured and Most Popular.
– iPlayer will make recommendations, stored in local cookies or via BBC ID. If you use the latter option (BBC ID is currently used to make comments on the 606 message boards and has 1m+ users), you can access these recommendations from any of the 25 devices supported by iPlayer. So if you bookmark a programme at work, your iPlayer at home will remember to download it after broadcast.
– The BBC ID is key to a couple of other new features. Once you’re logged in, you can recommend content to your friends on Facebook and Twitter without leaving the site. The My Friends category that appears alongside Featured and Most Popular displays which programmes your friends are recommending
– integrated Windows Live Messenger function. This allows you to see what your friends are watching right now, jump in on their viewing experience and start a conversations, so you can OMG over The Apprentice in real time, together.
– TV Channels menu will soon include non-BBC offerings such as ITV Player and 4oD. Searching iPlayer for any programme, broadcast on any channel, will take you to the relevant site. Sky is noticeable by its omission; Huggers said that they would “welcome the participation of Sky” but that the BBC hadn’t heard back from the Murdoch-controlled broadcaster
– No dedicated iPhone or iPad app but anew mobile version will appear in a few weeks
– iPlayer will work on the iPad from Friday 28th – it does and it’s wonderful. Full screen, great quality – all from a web app
13:25 – Apple bigger than Microsoft
– (if measured by Market cap. – profits and revenues still less)
– But is it as evil?
15:58 – Cloud based Apple TV
– http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/new-apple-tv/
– The new architecture of the device will be based directly on the iPhone 4, meaning it will get the same internals, down to that A4 CPU and a limited amount of flash storage — 16GB to be exact — though it will be capable of full 1080p HD (!).
– The device is said to be quite small with a scarce amount of ports (only the power socket and video out), and has been described to some as “an iPhone without a screen.”
– the price-point for the device will be $99.
– Apple is moving away from the model of local storage, and will be focusing the new ATV on cloud-based storage (not unlike Amazon’s streaming scheme, though we’re talking instant-on 1080p, a la Microsoft)
– For those still interested in keeping their content close, there will be an option to utilize a Time Capsule as an external storage component, but the main course will be all about streaming
– Surely app store will feature too
21:41 – Bing on the iPhone
– Multiple sources at Google tell us that in informal discussions with Apple over the last few months Apple expressed dismay at the number of core iPhone apps that are powered by Google. Search, maps, YouTube, and other key popular apps are powered by Google. Other than the browser, Apple has little else to call its own other than the core phone, contacts and calendar features.
– Interesting – new sources are saying “It’s more complicated than this” and not to expect Google search to be removed from the iPhone next month. Also hearing that Google isn’t paying anything like $100 million/year to Apple for the search rights to the iPhone.
23:50 – Skype over 3G
– http://mashable.com/2010/05/29/skype-for-iphone-3g-calls
– Skype 2.0 launched yesterday and allows calls over 3G
– Finally
– The catch?
– After August 2010, Skype will start charging a “small monthly fee” for use of the 3G calling feature
25:41 – iPad UK Launch
– Hardware
– Software
– Frustrations – iTunes, workflow
– Verdict
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTSDPKktbUk ipad and velcro match made in heaven
1:10:44 – Google Sued
– Lauren Rosenberg walked onto a highway because Google told her to and got hit by a car.
– Rosenberg, who apparently takes things very literally, was reading the directions on her Blackberry and thus wasn’t privy to the warning that shows up when you access walking directions on a computer:
– Deer Valley Drive, also known as Utah State Route 224, was one such route, and following Google’s instructions to brave it on foot, Rosenberg was hit by a car and is now suing the company for $100,000

Picks
Shakeel
iPad

Ian
FT Mobile Edition
– FT on the go
– Looks fantastic on the iPad

Henry
Rework
– “Rework- Change the way you work forever”
– A book by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson- creators of 37signals (Basecamp – online project management software).
– Short pithy chapters. Interesting read.

DigitalOutbox Episode 49

DigitalOutbox Episode 49
In this episode the team discuss Google IO.

Playback
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Shownotes
0:47 – British Net Use Increases
– British web users are spending 65% more time online than three years ago, according to research of net habits.
– average surfer spends 22 hours and 15 minutes on the net each month
– Social networking gains, IM drops, e-mail rising
2:16 – Newzbin Gone
– owe the MPA £230,000 just in interim costs
– owe a software development house over £500k
– Newzbin closed May 19th
– The original site owners have confirmed that, based on source code fragments examined by them, and supplied by a third party, the site source code does appear to have been stolen and is in the hands of unknown parties.
5:36 – Google IO Day 1
– WebM Project
– http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/19/webm-google-h-264
– open, royalty-free codec that can run in HTML5 browsers without the need for Flash
– Google is donating a much better codec, called VP8, which it acquired with its purchase of On2 Techchnolgies. The WebM Project is a new container file format for Web video. It includes the VP8 video codec, the open Vorbis audio codec, file extensions and a new mime type.
– Any video player can adopt it, including Flash. And, in fact, Flash is one of the 40 launch technology partners supporting WebM.
– Chrome, Firefox, and Opera browsers will all support WebM, and Google will give it a big push by making YouTube videos support it as well. IE9 will support it too
– Google Wave Now Open
– Mmm, ok then
– Tech looking for a purpose?
– 1 million active users
– Can add to Google Apps for Domain
– Google Buzz API
– Now available and open to devs
– Tweetdeck, Seismic quick to support
– Will this save buzz or at least increase it’s usage?
– Chrome Web Store
– it’s a new store for finding and buying applications for use online
– Plants vs Zombies available for example
– HTML5 being pushed heavily
– Sports Illustrated demo HTML5 mag
– Chrome Web Store provides developers a window to over 70 million people, according to Google. It’s available in Chrome and Chrome OS and will be available in the Chrome Dev Center soon. For now, Chrome only.
– App’s will update automatically if bought via store
– Google Font Directory
– http://mashable.com/2010/05/19/google-font-api
– http://code.google.com/webfonts
– Google’s cross-browser solution is similar to what companies like Typekit and Fontdeck are doing, that is, providing users with a library of available fonts that they can easily embed into their sites.
– Google’s solution is unique in that it is comprised of open source fonts. Google’s Font API can be integrated into websites using either HTML or using a JavaScript WebFont Loader co-developed with Typekit.
– While Google’s font library isn’t as robust as some competing solutions, it is open source. In fact, the fonts in the library can even be downloaded and used in other ways including print.
22:17 – Google IO Day 2
– Android Stats
– http://mashable.com/2010/05/20/google-reveals-android-2-2-and-more-live
– More than 60 compatible devices.
– 21 OEMs, 48 countries, 59 carriers.
– Announcement: 100,000 daily activations of Android devices every day.
– Shot across the bow of Apple: Android is growing faster than every other smartphone maker except RIM, makers of the BlackBerry.
– Announcement: 50,000 applications in the Android marketplace.
– Froyo
– Better support for Microsoft Exchange, as well as new device admin APIs.
– Application data backup API.
– Cloud-to-Device messaging API. You can send a message to Google’s servers and can trigger an Android intent.
– If you send directions to your phone, it automatically opens up maps. No need to launch applications.
– Tethering and portable hotspot. We knew this would be coming, but it’s very cool. Demo’d iPad tethered to Android phone
– 2x-3x Javascript performance improvement. In addition, the V8 codec (announced yesterday) is coming to Android
– Google Maps tilts in the Android browser based on compass.
– Voice triggers: Saying “call” and a contact triggers the call.
– The microphone is in the browser. They’re showing it off in Google Translate, where “Can you help me find the nearest hospital,” is not only translated, but it’s repeated via voice to others
– Gundotra is railing againts Apple for not playing Flash, telling a story about how his daughter couldn’t go to her favorite website (Nickelodeon) on an iPad and asked for an Android phone.
– Android apps finally support installation on SD Card. If there is no space on your phone, it’ll automatically place the app onto your SD card.
– One-step updating of apps announced. Much easier to update.
– Marketplace is much improved
– Buy an app from marketplace – sent to your phone – no need to desktop sync
– Also allows buying of music – web competitor to iTunes?
– Android Froyo can bring your entire home music library to your phone as a stream. So yes, all of your iTunes songs can be streamed onto your Android phone, so long as you have an Internet connection. They’ve bought Simplify Media – wowsers.
– Android – It plays nicely with Flash and HTML 5. It does native and web apps. It makes devices run faster than the iPad. It streams music from iTunes or any other desktop music library. It does painless, wireless tethering. It makes transferring apps from the desktop to mobile completely automatic.
– 2-5x performance increase for Android users…demo showed it outperforming iPad
– Ads
– Google’s railing against Apple iAds for costing way too much. They don’t mention Apple during the entire keynote, but there are so many subtle blows that you can’t help but notice.
– AdSense for Mobile Apps — AFMA. Serving contextually relevant ads in the web browser. The ads can take you to the Android marketplace, to another website, etc. It works within applications or web apps.
– They’re showing off banner ads. And now a new format: expandable ads by tapping the ad.
– There is now a click-to-call option for Google mobile ads, starting today.
– Yet another: expandable ad with Google Maps and directions and click-to-call.
– HTC Evo
– .3-inch display, 1 GHz processor, 4G network, 8MP camera, HD video recording and has an integrated kickstand. Front facing camera too. Looks amazing.
– Everyone at Google IO got one.
– Watched the keynote – two hours of Apple attack 🙂
– Never again will someone tell me only Apple keynotes are smug. Google out Appled Apple on that front.
42:35 – Google TV
– Key elements of Google TV: “Less time finding, more time watching,” “Control and personalize what you watch,” “Make your TV content more interesting” and “more than just a TV”
– Google TV lets you search TV shows just like you would Google Search. It provides results from the web and from TV. You can tune in directly to your show.
– Google TV lets you search through the entire web.
– The demo is getting hurt by bad Wi-fi and connectivity. They’re trying to show off search and navigation.
– They searched for House — as in the FOX TV show. In search, it shows full episodes not only from TV (FOX, USA, Bravo, etc), but also from Fox.com, Hulu.com, and Amazon
– Transition from TV to web is seamless. No changing inputs, no different remote controls.
– With one button, you can flip right back to TV.
– Google TV allows for PIP mode (Picture in Picture), allowing you to browse the web while still watching the game. You can track what’s happening in the game (say via Yahoo Fantasy Sports) while watching it. It’s also easy to switch so that the web is the PIP.
– Google is showing how Google TV is superior as a photo viewer, game player, etc.
– Broadband connectivity, it’s “easy” to integrate with your Cable or Satellite Box, and it has a strong processor: enhanced GPU for graphics (even 3D).
– Google TV input devices include a keyboard and a pointing device. It combines keyboard, remote, and mouse.
– Phones can also be paired to Google TV devices over WiFi. He is using a Nexus One to “speak to his TV.” You can use Google Voice Search on your TV.
– Multiple phones can be paired with the same Google TV.
– You can push whatever website is on your phone onto your TV from your phone. Very cool.
– http://www.google.com/tv/developer/ – Designing websites for Google TV
– It runs on Android, it uses Google Chrome and it runs Flash 10.1.
– Google TV automatically syncs your Android apps to your TV.
– YouTube Leanback announced: It pushes YouTube videos to your TV from your friends, YouTube’s recommendations, your subscriptions and favorites, etc.
– YouTube Leanback is a web interface, not an application just within Google TV. It’ll be available in the next few weeks.
– Now they’re talking about Google Listen, a product for Android that is now in Google TV. It allows you to search and subscribe to audio podcasts and audio shows. Oh, and it allows you to watch podcasts too.
– You can search Google Listen & Watch via the quick search box.
– Google TV is open-source on Android and Chrome. Platform, not a single product
– Hardware partners – Sony, Logitech and Intel
– Fall 2010
– Early 2011 will have updates with Android market, Google TV SKD, and TV Web APIs. In summer 2011, it will open source Google TV.
– It’s everyone against Apple – people catching up and overtaking
– Apple’s arrogance starting to bite?
50:06 – Google Secure Search
– Not on .co.uk yet.
50:49 – Facebook Roundup
– Continuing ground swell of negative articles against Facbook and privacy.
– Wallstreet Journal highlighting that advertisers are able to gain user details (something that isn’t supposed to happen).
– Campaign for “Deactivate your Facebook account Day” on May 31st.
– Facebook announce they will once more look at their privacy and simplify.
– Facebook kiss and make up with Zynga. Deal to keep Zynga games (farmville et all) on Facebook not announced but safe to say that Faceook aren’t taking 30% of their sales.
57:51 – Spotify New Accounts
– A Spotify account that allows full PC access without adverts but not phone access
– £10 gives you mobile access as well
– Also added spotify open -free, no invite but limited to 20 hours per month
– Lots of competition in this space now, price drop is evidence of that. Is Spotify struggling to make money?
59:44 – HP future with WebOS
– To be added to printers, netbooks, phones, tablets
– Also indicating that the purchase was for IP
– $1.2b well spent???
1:01:55 – Mubi Comes to PS3
– From Autumn, UK PS3 users can download Mubi
– independent, international and classic cinema
– 300 films at launch, quickly growing to over 1000
– streaming – not downloading
– pay per view, rent for a week, all you can watch monthly subscription and also free movies

Picks
Ian
Springpad
– web, iphone, android – lets you save things you want to remember
– todo’s, recipies, movies, books
– tasks, list support
– can add friends, see what they are doing/adding/sharing
– slick iphone tool

Chris
Nike – Write the future

DigitalOutbox Episode 48

DigitalOutbox Episode 48
In this episode the team discuss Android and iPad pricing.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
2:47 – Be Careful What You Tweet
– Fines £385, costs of £600
– The Tweet he sent to his 600 “followers” in the early hours of 6 January said: “Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week… otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!”
– The court heard he had now lost his job because of the prosecution.
– Be careful what you tweet
– Ridiculous
5:37 – Pirate Bay Offline
– several Hollywood film studios won an injunction against its bandwidth provider CB3ROB via a court in Hamburg
– It has no internet connection
– A Pirate Bay source told TorrentFreak that it is already working on a backup solution to bring the site online; the servers themselves haven’t been touched (or moved) rom their well-guarded – and highly secret – location; they simply need to be routed through another provider.
– Might not be that easy – running out of friends as movie and music industry pursue it
7:02 – Android OS pulls ahead of iPhone in smartphone market
– slips into second place behind RIM
– RIM 36%, Android 28%, iPhone 21%
– possibly to do with 2-for-1 sales at Verizon???? (Chris disagrees ;P )
– having a variety of handsets from different manufacturers obviously helps
– http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/10/android-os-pulls-ahead-of-apple-in-smartphone-market/
– Apple spokesperson responds by adding in ipod touches to the iphone sales figures and says “So what?” – http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20100511/apple-on-npd-android-outselling-iphone-claim/?mod=ATD_rss
Chris – I think the impact of an upcoming new iPhone, plus people now buying iPad as well. Plus some VERY compelling Android devices that are now fairly ahead of the curve and maybe (just maybe) some backlash about Apple approach.
12:22 – Google stops selling Nexus One direct online
– U-Turn for search giant.
– Store “not lived up to expectations” people like to try before they buy with phones apparently.
– Customer service issues perhaps? Or simply a lack of marketing $ spent promoting Nexus one?
17:44 – Google WiFi collection blunder
– Google has admitted that for the past three years it has wrongly collected information people have sent over unencrypted wi-fi networks.
– came to light after German authorities asked to audit the data the company’s Street View cars gathered
– These snippets could include parts of an email, text or photograph or even the website someone may be viewing.
– As soon as we became aware of this problem, we grounded our Street View cars and segregated the data on our network, which we then disconnected to make it inaccessible
– Maintaining people’s trust is crucial to everything we do, and in this case we fell short. So we will be:
– Asking a third party to review the software at issue, how it worked and what data it gathered, as well as to confirm that we deleted the data appropriately; and
– Internally reviewing our procedures to ensure that our controls are sufficiently robust to address these kinds of problems in the future.
– In addition, given the concerns raised, we have decided that it’s best to stop our Street View cars collecting WiFi network data entirely.
– Henry’s just waiting for the lawsuits
22:27 – UK iPad Pricing
– Best for light/irregular 3G usage: Orange’s 5p/MB pay as you go tariff
– Best for regular 3G usage: Orange’s pay monthly £15 for 3GB
– Best for heavy 3G usage: Orange’s iPad Monthly £25 for 10GB
– Best for light/irregular 3G and wi-fi usage: O2’s £2 a day/500MB offer (unlimited wi-fi on 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)
– Best for regular 3G and wi-fi usage: O2’s £10 a month for 1GB offer (unlimited wi-fi on 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)
– Best for heavy 3G and wi-fi usage: O2’s £15 a month for 3GB (unlimited wi-fi on 7,500 BT Openzone and The Cloud hotspots)
– O2’s unlimited wi-fi offering makes its offer best for customers who expect to use their iPad on the go.
– http://electricpig.co.uk/2010/05/17/ipad-uk-apple-approved-routes-to-an-ipad-discount/
– In a complete failure of foresight, Henry’s prediction of a network subsidised ipad looks increasingly unlikely.
– Henry is clearly rubbish at this prediction lark… 🙂
– Co-Pilot for the iPad!!! Stick that bad boy to the car windscreen!
30:50 – Get your eBook in the iBook store
– Lulu is a certified aggregator – will allow you to publish your book to iBook store – wow
– Must be valid epub file and have an ISDN number – Lulu will assign for free and convert to epub
– Pricing – 80% of profit after Apples cut – On a $9.99 book, for example, you will receive $5.60 .
– Apple can decline content – only one so far out of hundreds
34:28 – BT extend broadband rollout and OnLive
– Originally its fibre services, offering speeds of up to 40 megabits per second (Mbps), were due to reach around 40% of the population by 2012.
– A £1bn investment will see the project roll out to a further 20% of the population by 2015.
– Secretly OnLive has been operating a test site in Europe from a BT (British Telecommunications plc) data center in Wales since 2009. And I’m happy to report, that over the European Internet infrastructure, OnLive is AWESOME. We’ve tested OnLive across all of Western Europe spanning from the UK to Italy and from Scandinavia down to Spain.
– Today we are announcing that BT, the largest broadband operator in the UK, has formed a partnership with and has made an investment in OnLive. We’ll be working together with BT to bring the OnLive Game Service to the UK, such that it operates reliably and with high quality over the UK’s Internet backbone to BT’s broadband customers. BT has an exclusive right to bundle the OnLive Game Service together with their broadband service offerings in the UK, although UK gamers will also be able to order the OnLive Game Service directly from OnLive to run over any UK ISP.
– Once we get the US service up and running, we’ll be sharing more details, including when we’ll be starting a UK public Beta (with UK postcodes, no less). One thing I can say is when we do launch in the UK, gamers will have the benefit of everything we’ve learned from the US launch, as well as the latest OnLive features. Also, unlike the US launch, where we are ramping up with PCs and Macs, then introducing the OnLive MicroConsole™ HDTV adapter later, the UK will launch on PC, Mac and HDTV from the get-go. BT say later this year in UK
– BT has also taken a 2.6 percent stake in the company.
41:01 – Used Games Tax
– EA introduce $10 online pass
– Comes included with game
– Sell game, new owner has to pay $10 to get online
– Sneaky.
44:59 – Red Dead Redemption
– reviews starting to trickle out – Game Informer: 9.75/10, Games TM: 9.00. IGN 9.8/10. Eurogamer 8/10 (!losers)
– http://ps3.nowgamer.com/reviews/ps3/9197/red-dead-redemption – 9.3/10
– metacritic – 96 (based on 16 reviews)
– looks awesome
– My pre-order is being processed 🙂
46:20 – Nintendo – Apple is the enemy of the future
– Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata says battle with Sony is over, Apple is the ‘enemy of the future’
– this is a month after semi-transformed-Hulk Reggie Fils-Aime stated iPhone OS wasn’t a viable platform for game development
– battle with Sony is a “victory already won”

Picks
Chris
Friv
– A plethora of flash games… Some bad. Some good. Some great.

Henry
Fish Text
– cheap international txts iphone app

Ian
Steam
– steam for mac….and pc.
– Front end on Mac is pretty poor
– 63 games at launch incl Civ 4, Braid, Portal
– Portal free until May 24th for both platforms too
– Downloading…slow….

DigitalOutbox Episode 47

DigitalOutbox Episode 47
In this episode the team discuss Facebook, iPad and HTML5.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
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Shownotes
3:31 – Facebook Privacy Mess
– In an attempt to reduce concerns about user privacy, Facebook has inadvertently opened a security hole that let 3rd parties view your friend requests and your private messages sent through the chat system.
– In trying to do the right thing… they still get it wrong!
– And they believe ignorance is bliss for their users
– Ethan Beard, director of Facebook’s developer network – Facebook Blames Riot Over Privacy On Media, Says Users “Love” The Changes
– “the reason that people use Facebook is to share information with their friends and to connect with things that are important to them.”
– My biggest issue is that there is no way to extract your information from facebook and the speed of privacy changes has happened too fast for people to keep up to date.
– There has been a change of stance to a default of locked down, to an assumption of openness.
– If something is made public by a policy change, you do not have the any option to completely remove previous content. Event “De-activating” content does not remove it. Facebook have also made changes so that whereas content was time-limited in the past, they now have the option to keep all content for as long as they want, regardless of whether you want to de-activate or not.
– Evolution of privacy on Facebook – http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
10:09 – Microsoft Cancels Courier
– At any given time, across any of our business groups, there are new ideas being investigated, tested, and incubated. It’s in Microsoft’s DNA to continually develop and incubate new technologies to foster productivity and creativity. The “Courier” project is an example of this type of effort and its technologies will be evaluated for use in future Microsoft offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.
– Gutted.
11:55 – HP Kills Slate
– Hewlett-Packard has killed off its much ballyhooed Windows 7 tablet computer, says a source who’s been briefed on the matter.
– HP may also be abandoning Intel-based hardware for its slate lineup simply because it’s too power hungry. That would also rule out Windows 7 as an operating system.
– Wow
– Surely not – only site to report this and HP Slate was shown to investors after Palm acquisition
– iPad and Android the only real options?
– Chrome OS
– Other Linux mashups designed for different form factors.
– Can Linux react quick enough to offer a controlled tablet/touch focused interface?
15:16 – UK iPad Priced
– pre-order May 10
– release May 28
– £429/£499/£599 for WiFi
– £529/£599/£699 for 3G.
– Orange pricing
– http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/32979/orange-reveals-ipad-3g-rates
– Pay as you go, daily, weekly and monthly. With the PAYG option, each MB will cost 5p, up to a maximum of £40 in a month (so 800MB in total). This will appeal to users who will only use their iPad for emails or a bit of light surfing when out and about.
– Next up is the daily option at £2 for up to 200MB worth of data for you to use before midnight, this can be bought on an ad-hoc basis. The weekly option takes this limited data plan a bit further – £7.50 for 1GB’s worth of 3G data. It might be an idea to try out these plans before deciding whether you need to opt for the final option – the monthly plans.
– Orange has put two packages in place – Monthly 15 and Monthly 25, naturally costing £15 and £25 per month respectively. The major difference between them is either a 3GB limit or a 10GB limit, but both also grant access to 750MB Wi-Fi when away from home via BT’s Openzone
– Importantly, the iBook store will also be there for the May 28th launch
23:41 – Google Flurry
– Google Editions book
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10098111.stm
– Google book store
– Not tied to single device
– To date Google has scanned over 12 million books, both in-print and out-of-print, giving it a greater selection of material than either Apple or Amazon.
– Works on any web enabled device
– books will be purchased directly from Google and also from retailers who will keep the majority of the money earned.
– Out in the summer
– Google buys BumpTop
– http://gigaom.com/2010/05/02/google-buys-bumptop-3-d-multi-touch-tablet-interface-on-the-way/
– For Android tablet?
– I tried it and didn’t like it as an interface
– However…for a touch driven device…maybe
– Looks nice. Some nice interface ideas. But surely power hungry for a tablet/touch device? Reminds me of Microsoft Surface.
– Google brings back Gmail to the UK
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10096107.stm
– Bye bye Googlemail.co.uk, hello gmail.co.uk. Long dispute finally resolved with uk owner of gmail.co.uk. Originally wanted £27 million from Google but no details of how much Google finally coughed up.
– Google Search changed
– http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/spring-metamorphosis-googles-new-look.html
– Streamlined
– Flattened logo
– Left hand side navigation – mostly hidden
– Also applies to mobile site
– Chrome Update
– http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/pedal-to-chrome-metal-our-fastest-beta.html
– Another speed jump
– Not only bookmakr sync, preference sync as well
– HTML5 features – geolocation, file drag and drop
– First beta to have Flash baked in and updated via auto-update mechanism
– To finish off, IE falls before 60% market share
– http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/04/internet_explorer_market_share_decline/
– 15 months to drop 10%
34:19 – Microsoft Stands with Apple on H264
– Microsoft said Thursday that Internet Explorer 9 will support the variety of Web video Apple built into Safari but not the one embraced by Firefox and Opera.
– “In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only,” Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch said in a blog post.
– His reasons for the support: the format is widely used in the computing industry, from video cameras to Google’s YouTube, it benefits from hardware decoding support that improves performance, and there are questions about the rights to use H.264’s chief rival today, Ogg Theora.
– Google’s Chrome supports both H.264 and Ogg Theora.
– The lack of one format being used across all formats undermines the move from Flash, costs website hosts and devs more cash
– But H.264 patent encumbered and is licensed by the MPEG-LA, with Apple and Microsoft members with patents in the patent pool so it’s in their financial interest to promote H.264. Licences don’t transfer downstream which may be a real problem for consumers in future.
40:36 – Scribd scrapping Flash moving to HTML5
– Scribd co-founder and chief technology officer Jared Friedman tells me: “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web page.”
– Documents will simply become very long Web pages. A new bookmark feature will help you keep your place in especially long documents. Scribd’s documents will be especially iPad friendly.
– Instead of downloading a book from Apple’s iBooks store or Amazon’s Kindle app, you can see if an electronic version is on Scribd and read it in your browser. Pinch and zoom to make the text bigger. No download necessary. The books and other documents are stored on the Web. They can be shared via Facebook and Twitter, or sent to a mobile phone.
– Documents and video moving away from plugin, especially Flash, dependancy
– Flash won’t die – just be less widely used, focussing more on interface, games, interactivity which it should do
– http://www.scribd.com/documents/30964170/Scribd-in-HTML5 – test page
43:10 – Dropbox API
– Android app
– Native iPad app
– Mobile API – Dropbox Anywhere – Desktop API later this year
– Dev’s could integrate DropBox into their app’s via API – very exciting for mobile dev’s
– Why didn’t Apple include this – every iPhone/iPad owner gets 2GB of web space?
46:06 – Skype 5 Way Video Calling
– Within next week
– Windows first, Mac later this year
– Free for first three to four months, they paid for
– Great for our podcast 🙂

Picks
Ian
Halo Reach
– Fantastic update
– Single player and co-op is good
– Multiplayer is quite awesome

Henry
Cupidtino
– Cupidtino is a beautiful new dating site created for fans of Apple products by fans of Apple products!
– Find the apple fanboy/girl of your dreams.

Chris
Movie Peg
– £5 a lot for a bit of plastic for sure… still.
– Like the idea.

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
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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.