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1:05 – SOPA protests
- The Stop Online Piracy Act is an act currently wending it’s way through american government. Key legislators have backed away from it, one of its central provisions was shelved and the Obama administration has denounced the more controversial aspects of the bill and hinted at a possible veto should something resembling SOPA land on his desk.
- However SOPA, despite being an American law, affects everyone!
- Order internet service providers to alter their DNS servers from resolving the domain names of websites in foreign countries that host illegal copies of videos, songs, and photos.
Order search engines like Google to modify search results to exclude foreign websites that host illegally copied material.
Order payment providers like PayPal to shut down the payment accounts of foreign websites that host illegally copied material.
Order ad services like Google’s AdSense to refuse any ads or payment from foreign sites that host illegally copied content.
(These rules don’t apply to domains that end in .com, .net, and .org, which fall under US law — the government has been seizing US domains used for piracy since 2010, and just seized 150 domains last month.)
- Large disapproval in the tech industry, wikipeida goes dark as do many sites on Jan 18th to highlight protest
- Many senators start to backtrack and withdraw their support – A freshman senator, Marco Rubio of Florida, a rising Republican star, was first out of the starting gate Wednesday morning with his announcement that he would no longer back anti-Internet piracy legislation he had co-sponsored. Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who heads the campaign operation for his party, quickly followed suit and urged Congress take more time to study the measure that had been set for a test vote next week.
By Wednesday afternoon, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and one of the Senate bill’s original co-sponsors, called it “simply not ready for prime time” and withdrew his support.
- Hopefully this will be the beginning of the end of SOPA
7:27 – Piracy student loses US extradition battle over copyright infringement
- A judge ruled on Friday that a 23-year-old student can be extradited to the United States for running a website posting links to pirated TV shows and films, despite significant doubts over whether such sites break any UK laws.
- The ruling threw Britain’s contentious extradition treaty with the US, which critics allege is greatly biased against UK nationals fighting their removal to America, under further scrutiny. It came just hours after a businessman from Kent lost an appeal against the decision that he should be sent for trial in Texas for allegedly plotting to send missile components to Iran.
Richard O’Dwyer, a computing student at Sheffield Hallam University, faces a potential 10-year term in a US jail despite never having been to America or using web servers based in the country. When still a teenager O’Dwyer set up a website, TVShack, which posted links to pirated material. It did not directly host any files, which meant, according to the student’s lawyers, that it acted as little more than a Google-type search engine and did not breach copyright.
- The defence team pointed out that the only UK prosecution of a similar site, TV-Links, ended last year with the case being thrown out.
- But the district judge, Quentin Purdy, ruled that O’Dwyer should nonetheless face trial in the US. “There are said to be direct consequences of criminal activity by Richard O’Dwyer in the USA, albeit by him never leaving the north of England,” Purdy said. “Such a state of affairs does not demand a trial here if the competent UK authorities decline to act, and does, in my judgment, permit one in the USA.”
- O’Dwyer said he planned to appeal.
11:10 – Google – What Were You Thinking
- In September, Google launched Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO). Whilst we saw aspects of their program that were competitive, we welcomed the initiative, as Kenya still has enough growth in it that every new entrant helps the overall market. We are also confident enough in our product, our local team, and our deep local commitment that we believe we can hold our own against any competition, playing fair.
- Shortly after that launch, we started receiving some odd calls. One or two business owners were clearly getting confused because they wanted help with their website, and we don’t currently offer websites, only a listing. Initially, we didn’t think much of it, but the confusing calls continued through November.
- Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.
- Furthermore, they now seem to have outsourced this operation from Kenya to India.
When we started this investigation, I thought that we’d catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue.
- I did not expect to find a human-powered, systematic, months-long, fraudulent (falsely claiming to be collaborating with us, and worse) attempt to undermine our business, being perpetrated from call centres on 2 continents.
- Someone, somewhere, has some questions to answer.
These are my personal top 3:
If Google wanted to work with our data, why didn’t they just ask?
In discussions with various Google Kenya/Africa folks in the past, I’d raised the idea of working together more closely in Kenya. Getting Kenyan businesses online is precisely what we do.
Who authorised this? Until we uncovered the ‘India by way of Mountain View’ angle, I could have believed that this was a local team that somehow forgot the corporate motto, but not now.
Who knew, and who SHOULD have known, even if they didn’t know?
- Update – Google mortified -
- “We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites.
“We’ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved.”
- Also, vandalising OpenStreetMap -
- Alleged to make thousands of wrong edits
- Google sacked the contractors involved, but said it detected only 20 changes
15:55 – Jerry Yang quits Yahoo
- Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo!, has resigned from its board.
- Mr Yang founded the online company in 1995 with David Filo and was its chief executive from June 2007 until January 2009.
- His resignation comes two weeks after the company hired former PayPal executive Scott Thomson to be its new chief executive.
- Mr Yang annoyed some shareholders by turning down a $47.5bn (£31bn) takeover offer from Microsoft in 2008.
- The company’s current market value is about $20bn.
- Mr Yang has also resigned from the boards of Yahoo Japan and Alibaba Group and said in a statement: “The time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo!”
16:22 – A big year…for Flickr?
- Once the darling of photographers other sites like Shutterbug and 500px (and Google+ and Facebook) have taken much of the mindshare when it comes to photo’s
- Unloved, very little innovation and some big behind the scenes names leave the company
- No Flickr have started 2012…by removing some features
- They say it’s a big year so to start off, they are removing features that don’t meet their core vision
- Doing so will clear the decks for their upcoming announcements
- They are also hiring which is a good sign. Here’s hoping for some improvements.
17:29 – Kodak files for bankruptcy
- Kodak has filed for bankruptcy in a bid to survive a liquidity crisis after years of falling sales related to the decline of its namesake film business as digital cameras have taken over the market.
- Eastman Kodak Co, the photographic film pioneer, which had tried to restructure to become a seller of consumer products like cameras, said it had also obtained a $950m, 18-month credit facility from Citigroup to keep it going.
17:59 – Listen to music with Friends
- Today, with music services on Facebook, there’s a new way to listen with friends. This feature lets you listen along with any of your friends who are currently listening to music. You can also listen together in a group while one of your friends plays DJ.
- You can listen to the same song, at the exact same time—so when your favorite vocal part comes in you can experience it together, just like when you’re jamming out at a performance or dance club.
- Look for the music note in the chat sidebar to see which of your friends are listening to music. To listen with a friend, hover over their name, and click the Listen With button. The music will play through the service your friend is using. When a new song plays, you’ll come along for the ride, discovering new music while your friend DJs for you.
19:19 – Facebook Apps
- Facebook’s Open Graph app launch event is underway here in San Francisco, where over 60 new Open Graph websites and apps are either demo-ing or launching remotely. The apps can publish user activity back to Timeline and Ticker, even from offsite. Launch partners include Pinterest, Ticketmaster, Gogobot, Rotten Tomatoes, and many others. Carl Sjogreen, Facebook project manager, also announced that Facebook will now begin approving apps from third-party developers who aren’t partners.
The Open Graph platform was first announced at f8 in September. There, music, news reader, and video apps debuted showing how users could share what they listened to, read, or watched. With today’s launch, a wider variety of activity will begin to appear on Tickers, Timelines, and the Facebook news feed. This includes what users have pinned, tickets they’ve bought, trips they’ve planned, and movies they’ve reviewed.
22:07 – Facebook Verbs
- Already apps like Fab.com, Foodspotting, Foodily, Ticketmaster, Pinterest, Rotten Tomatoes, Pose, Kobo, Gogobot, and TripAdvisor have signed on to share these stories — which go beyond what we’re used to on Facebook.
“When we say anything we really mean anything,” Facebook Director of Product Management Carl Sjogreen said as he took the stage and announced that verbs like “knitting,” “shared” are now a part of Timeline story options.
- The new app actions are basically a conceptual expansion of actions posted by apps like Spotify and the Washington Post, and use verbs and nouns that go beyond the non custom actions like “listen” “watch” and “read” to “bought,””spot,””pose,””want,””love” and “become an expert.”
23:55 – Apple Education Event
- Apple® today announced iBooks® 2 for iPad®, featuring iBooks textbooks, an entirely new kind of textbook that’s dynamic, engaging and truly interactive. iBooks textbooks offer iPad users gorgeous, fullscreen textbooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, unrivaled navigation and much more. iBooks textbooks can be kept up to date, don’t weigh down a backpack and never have to be returned. Leading education services companies including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson will deliver educational titles on the iBookstore℠ with most priced at $14.99 or less, and with the new iBooks Author, a free authoring tool available today, anyone with a Mac® can create stunning iBooks textbooks.
- The new iBooks 2 app is available today as a free download from the App Store™. With support for great new features including gorgeous, fullscreen books, interactive 3D objects, diagrams, videos and photos, the iBooks 2 app will let students learn about the solar system or the physics of a skyscraper with amazing new interactive textbooks that come to life with just a tap or swipe of the finger. With its fast, fluid navigation, easy highlighting and note-taking, searching and definitions, plus lesson reviews and study cards, the new iBooks 2 app lets students study and learn in more efficient and effective ways than ever before.
- iBooks Author is also available today as a free download from the Mac App Store and lets anyone with a Mac create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books and more, and publish them to Apple’s iBookstore. Authors and publishers of any size can start creating with Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. iBooks Author lets you add your own text and images by simply dragging and dropping, and with the Multi-Touch™ widgets you can easily add interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote® presentations and 3D objects.
- Apple today also announced an all-new iTunes® U app giving educators and students everything they need on their iPad, iPhone® and iPod touch® to teach and take entire courses. With the new iTunes U app, students using iPads have access to the world’s largest catalog of free educational content, along with over 20,000 education apps at their fingertips and hundreds of thousands of books in the iBookstore that can be used in their school curriculum, such as novels for English or Social Studies.* The iTunes U app is available today as a free download from the App Store. Over 500,000 lectures, videos and books
- Some of these books are massive – 2.7GB for example? A 16GB iPad isn’t going to be an option really
- While impressive, they remind me of Encarta!
- Love the look of notes and study cards though – they look great
- Seemingly the new iBook format is wrapped epub – not another format war?
- Create a book in iBooks Author – must be sold via Apple or given away for free
- iBooks and iTunes U content updates – always fresh. Pretty impressive – the book is finally an app?
- A whole 8 textbooks available today
33:20 – Worlds first self healing iPhone case….from Nissan
- Nissan on Monday announced the company’s new Scratch Shield case for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. The case is made of ABS plastic that is designed to create a rigid, robust and tighter-fitting case. Perhaps the most exciting news is the case’s unique ability to heal itself. Nissan’s Scratch Shield paint is the world’s first paint technology that allows fine scratches to quickly mend themselves. The paint is the same that is featured on numerous Nissan and Infiniti automobiles throughout the world. When damage occurs to the coating, the chemical structure is able to react to change back to its original shape and fill the gap, thus “healing” the blemish. The healing process takes between an hour and a week depending on the damage.
- Released…later this year
34:25 – Lucas calls it quits
- George Lucas has announced his retirement from the movie business.
The director blurted the news to the New York Times in an extensive interview centred on Lucasfilm’s upcoming flick, Red Tails.
- “I’m retiring,” Lucas told the paper. “I’m moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff.”
- While reports suggest a fifth Indiana Jones movie is in the pipeline – a rumour Lucas was hesitant to quash – Red Tails is apparently the last blockbuster in the man’s plans.
- Long-time Lucas producer Rick McCallum fuelled the claim saying: “Once this is finished… He will have completed his task as a man and a filmmaker.”

Picks
Henry
Blue Icicle
- USB converter and mic preamp combo that allows you to connect any XLR microphone directly into your computer via USB
- Good quality
- Easy to setup

Playback
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Shownotes
1:16 – Paypal sues Google
- Mentioned PayPal on last podcast in regards Google Wallet and how they would fight to retain their control – hours after we finished PayPal sued Google
- The complaint (embedded below) alleges “misappropriation of trade secrets, and “breach of fiduciary duty.” It revolves around Osama Bedier, who was the VP of Platform, Mobile, and New Ventures at PayPal before he was recruited to work at Google by Android chief Andy Rubin, Google co-founder Larry Page, and Bedier’s former PayPal colleague Stephanie Tilenius (who now heads up Commerce and Payments at Google, and I interviewed yesterday onstage at Disrupt NYC).
The lawsuit reveals that Google was negotiatiating with PayPal for two years to power payments on mobile devices. But just as the deal was about to be signed, Google backed off and instead hired the PayPal executive negotiating the deal—Bedier.
- Inferring that Google bought the knowledge and then used it to launch google Wallet
3:41 – SeeSaw Closes
- SeeSaw, UK based video TV venture to close
- At its launch in February last year, SeeSaw offered 3,000 hours of free programmes including Skins, Kingdom and Doc Martin. Three months later it began offering paid-for content, with 1,000 hours of shows including South Park and Spooks, and struck deals with US broadcasters including MTV and NBC Universal.
- But third-party internet TV aggregators have strugged to compete with broadcasters’ own in-house on-demand services, and SeeSaw failed to gain a significant following compared to rival offerings such as the BBC’s iPlayer, ITV Player and Channel 4′s on-demand service, 4oD.
- We first covered this back on Episode 37 and said we couldn’t see a reason to use this over iPlayer, 4OD etc
7:15 – Lodsys responds to Apple
- Sues developers and chases Android dev’s too
- Says if it has improperly targeted a developer it will give them $1000
12:09 – Apple responds to Malware
- Security update that spots and removes MacDefender and will update daily for new varients
15:24 – Twitter in UK Legal Landmark
- Twitter has been forced to hand over the personal details of a British user in a libel battle that could have huge implications for free speech on the web.
- The social network has passed the name, email address and telephone number of a south Tyneside councillor accused of libelling the local authority via a series of anonymous Twitter accounts. South Tyneside council took the legal fight to the superior court of California, which ordered Twitter, based in San Francisco, to hand over the user’s private details.
- It is believed to be the first time Twitter has bowed to legal pressure to identify anonymous users and comes amid a huge row over privacy and free speech online.
- Ahmed Khan, the south Tyneside councillor accused of being the author of the pseudonymous Twitter accounts, described the council’s move as “Orwellian”. Khan received an email from Twitter earlier this month informing him that the site had handed over his personal information. He denies being the author of the allegedly defamatory material.
- “I don’t fully understand it but it all relates to my Twitter account and it not only breaches my human rights, but it potentially breaches the human rights of anyone who has ever sent me a message on Twitter.
- “A number of whistleblowers have sent me private messages, exposing any wrongdoing in the council, and the authority knows this.”
- He added: “I was never even told they were taking this case to court in California. The first I heard was when Twitter contacted me. I had just 14 days to defend the case and I was expected to fly 6,000 miles and hire my own lawyer – all at my expense.
22:41 – Twitter Integrates photos and improves Search
- New version of search – more relevant tweets – huge opportunity for twitter in realtime search
- Also show relevant photos and videos
- Speaking of photo’s…
- Over the next several weeks, we’ll be releasing a feature to upload a photo and attach it to your Tweet right from Twitter.com. And of course, you’ll soon be able to easily do this from all of our official mobile apps. A special thanks to our partner Photobucket for hosting these photos behind the scenes.
- For users without smartphones, we’re working with mobile carriers around the world so you can also send photos via text message (MMS). Share what’s happening in your world, anywhere you are.
24:38 – Eric Schmidt D9 Revelations
- Google is the default search engine for Apple computers and iOS devices (iPhone and iPad). Google Maps also gets featured placement. That’s going to continue. “We have a very,very good search partnership” and map relationship with Apple, Schmidt said, saying that deals on both have been renewed.
- Schmidt said repeatedly that it would be “useful” to get social data from Facebook or elsewhere to improve its own products: “From Google’s perspective, it would be useful to have the information; it would make our products better.” Later, when asked if Google might need to buy Twitter or some other company, he said: “Our social strategy does not acquire the acquisition of any company, because we can get people to give us that information.”
- Google has facial recognition technology, but it’s uncomfortable with how it might be used, so it has withheld it. That’s apparently pretty unique for Google. “As far as I know, it’s the only technology that Google built and stopped,” Schmidt said.
- “Four years ago, I wrote memos on identity and did nothing …. I clearly knew I had to do something, and I failed to do it,” Schmidt said. Why – “I think I was busy,” Schmidt said. “CEOs should take responsibility. I screwed up.
- Mossberg said that Bing seems to have more direct answers in some cases. “There’s that in some narrow cases,” Schmidt said.
There you go — one of the top three execs at Google admitting that Bing beats Google, even if it’s in a narrow case. I’m sure there have been some statements like that before, but they’re few and far between.
32:07 – Button Plague
- Twitter launch Follow button
- The Follow Button is to establish connections with other Twitter users remotely. So if we were to add a Follow Button to the sidebar on DigitalOutbox, with one click, you could follow our account
- Different from the tweet button that tweets content
- Google +1 for websites
- Do you want to +1 a page while you’re on it. After all, how do you know you want to suggest that recipe for chocolate flan if you haven’t tried it out yet?
- Today, we’re releasing +1 buttons to the whole web. As a result, you might start seeing +1 appear on sites large and small across the Internet.
- All competing with Facebook Like button
34:54 – Amazon launch Mac Download Store
- Amazon launches Mac Download store
- 250 titles including MS Office
- No way for independents to submit titles – for now – works with established software sellers only
- Downloads unlimited, linked to your Amazon account
- Another shot across Apple’s bow’s but will Apple users really care with the Mac App store built into OS X?
40:48 – Microsoft make more money from Android than from Windows Phone 7
- Microsoft gets $5 for every HTC phone running Android, according to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, who released a big report on Microsoft this morning.
- Microsoft is getting that money thanks to a patent settlement with HTC over intellectual property infringement.
- Microsoft is suing other Android phone makers, and it’s looking for $7.50 to $12.50 per device, says Pritchard.
- A rough estimate of the number of HTC Android devices shipped is 30 million. If HTC paid $5 per unit to Microsoft, that adds up to $150 million Android revenues for Microsoft.
- Microsoft has admitted selling 2 million Windows Phone licenses (though not devices.) Estimating that the license fee is $15/WP phone, that makes Windows Phone revenues to date $30 million.
- So Microsoft has received five times more income from Android than from Windows Phone.
44:12 – BT to embrace IPTV
- British Telecom will change the bulk of its broadband network to use multicast routers as from next year – this will mean that full IPTV services, using quality of service protocols, could then be launched for the first time on the BT network.
- at the Connected TV Summit in London last week Steve White, head of information systems and technology for IPTV at BT, said that the BT network was being upgraded to multicast to allow full IPTV. When asked why, White said: “It’s too expensive renting DVB-T multiplex space to deliver Sky Sports to BT Vision customers, so we want to send it multicast.”
- A multicast network uses a Type D internet addressing system whereby content is sent from one point in a network to another, and any branch along the way can opt to also access that address, or not. It is the basis of the Internet Group Management Protocol and is the basis of modern IPTV systems and saves a huge amount of bandwidth, because each TV channel only has to be sent around a city fiber network once, not as multiple unicast copies. Most public broadband networks across Europe do not cater for multicast, except where they have been specifically upgraded for IPTV.
- Potential for BT to launch hundreds of IPTV channels up to HD quality
48:00 – Apple launch iWork on iPhone
- Keynote, Pages and Numbers now available for iPhone
- Universal version so if you’ve bought them for iPad you can now use them on your phone
- £5.99 each or free if you have them for iPad
- Key part of iCloud next week?
51:49 – Call of Duty Elite
- Activision is set to launch a new social gaming platform for fans of its multi-million selling Call of Duty titles. The long-expected service, named Call of Duty Elite, will feature detailed multiplayer gaming statistics, community elements and user-generated content sharing.
- Downloadable map packs and other similar offerings for all subsequent Call of Duty game releases will be included in the monthly subscription fee.
- A public beta will begin in the summer, with a launch following in autumn. Vitally, basic multiplayer gaming will remain free of charge, despite fears that Activision would seek to monetise online play.
- Elite is essentially a thorough online matchmaking service, combined with elements of FaceBook, YouTube and the “Autolog” in-game social networking concept developed by EA for its Need for Speed titles. Players will create a single Elite profile, which then unites their experiences in all CoD titles. Access Elite via console, PC or mobile
- 4 sections – Career – stats on your CoD games, heatmaps of matches etc – Connect – extension of basic matchmaking, search for players by topic, eg photography, groups and clans – Compete – prize events – Improve – hints and tips
- Price – less than other competing services – rumours of $5 a month

Picks
Chris
The Website Is Down
- Very funny videos for anyone in IT
Henry
Polychord for iPad
- Music creation app for iPad
- Easy to use with loads of features

The theme is fully changeable via CSS so the look and feel is totally in your control. The real options are around the photo’s you bring back from Flickr. You can bring all, a set or filter via a tag. I’ve chosen the tag route as it means I can pick photo’s from any of my sets to display. The sites I’ve set-up can be found here. One issue is that the photo’s can take a while to load from Flickr so I intend to set-up a mysql database locally and store the photo’s there instead. You can also view sets and a tag cloud on your Flogr installation and by selecting a photo the metadata and comments from Flickr are displayed.

This is the solution I’ve always wanted – photo’s hosted on Flickr but key ones picked up and displayed on a separate blog. Lovely app that’s free to download and enjoy.