DigitalOutbox Episode 132

DigitalOutbox Episode 132
DigitalOutbox Episode 132 – Apple vs Samsung, 4G in the UK and IFA gadgets

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
1:06 – Samsung to pay Apple over $1 billion
– The jury in the “tech trial of the century” ruled Friday that Samsung smartphones have infringed on a number of Apple’ core patents, including one for “bounce back” technology. Worse for Samsung, the jury has also found that the infringement was intentional, which could lead the judge to increase the $1.05 billion in total damages the jury awarded.
– Apple’s case is based on claims that Samsung “slavishly copied” its popular iPhone and iPad.
– The jury’s award was based on the determination that products like Samsung’s Galaxy tablet and assorted phones violated Apple’s patents. The infringements related to so-called “utility patents” that cover features like the way a smartphone screen reshapes and “double-tapping” functions.
– Apple also won rulings based on its “design patents” which covered the shape of its iPhones. The jury did not, however, side with Apple on its controversial “rectangle” design patent that related to the shape of the iPad.
– The jury also found that the patents are not invalid — which would have protected Samsung.
– The news for Samsung went from bad to worse as the jury found that Apple did not owe any damages related to its alleged infringement of Samsung’s patents. In the case of Samsung’s patents, the jury ruled that Apple didn’t infringe some of them in the first place. For two others, the jury found that Samsung had “exhausted” the patents and couldn’t enforce them against Apple.
– Tim Cooks view:
– Today was an important day for Apple and for innovators everywhere.
– Many of you have been closely following the trial against Samsung in San Jose for the past few weeks. We chose legal action very reluctantly and only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying our work. For us this lawsuit has always been about something much more important than patents or money. It’s about values. We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. And we do this to delight our customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy.
– We owe a debt of gratitude to the jury who invested their time in listening to our story. We were thrilled to finally have the opportunity to tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung’s copying went far deeper than we knew.
– The jury has now spoken. We applaud them for finding Samsung’s behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn’t right.
– I am very proud of the work that each of you do.
– Today, values have won and I hope the whole world listens.
– Not so sure that values won today
– Samsungs view:
– Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer,” Samsung said in a statement. “It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices. It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies. Consumers have the right to choices, and they know what they are buying when they purchase Samsung products. This is not the final word in this case or in battles being waged in courts and tribunals around the world, some of which have already rejected many of Apple’s claims. Samsung will continue to innovate and offer choices for the consumer.
– Microsoft seem happy – Bill Cox, Senior Director of Marketing at Microsoft – Windows Phone is looking gooooood right now.
– Bad for industry as a whole. Bad for consumers – potential to limit choice, push up prices. – This is only the first of many trials, re-trials appeals etc. Not what you want your major tech companies to be doing but thats the patent laws for you
– However, Samsung has been slavishly copying Apple and deserves to be punished
– Cheap way for Samsung to be no 2 in the market!
9:03 – Samsung at IFA
– Galaxy Note II.
– Now thinner and lighter, the new Note device comes with a redesigned S Pen stylus, a bevy of new software features layered atop Android 4.1, and an enlarged 5.5-inch display. Oh, and it now runs on a 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos processor. Wider SIII
– Series 7 Windows 8 Slates
– http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/29/3276599/samsung-series-5-series-7-slate-windows-8
– Samsung just showed off the upcoming Series 5 and Series 7 Slates — both are tablet and dock combinations that let each device act as a light, thin tablet, and a full-fledged laptop all at once. We’d seen an early build of the Slate 5 back at Computex, and not that much has changed since then.
– Samsung says the Slate 7 is geared toward power users, and as you might guess, it outpaces the consumer-facing Slate 5 in a number of areas. First is display resolution, where the Slate 7’s 1080p panel trumps that of the 1366×768 Slate 5. It also contains twice the amount of memory and storage you’ll find in the Slate 5, offering 4GB RAM and a 128GB solid state drive.
– In a nice bit of Samsung synergy, each device comes with an S Pen, which can be used in Windows 8 to do anything your finger would normally do. There’s also some Samsung-specific software, like Media Hub, which means if you buy a movie on your Galaxy S III you can also watch it on your Slate.
– Keyboard is a copy of the Macbook Air. Samesung strikes again.
– Others
– Ativ S – Windows powered phone. a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and an 8-megapixel rear camera paired with a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera.
– Galaxy Camera. Running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on a massive 4.8-inch HD LCD display, the Galaxy Camera aims to take the best of Samsung’s camera and phone departments and mix them up for something altogether unique. There’s a 16-megapixel backside-illuminated sensor within what is otherwise an unmistakably camera-shaped body, equipped with a retractable lens that provides 21x optical zoom.
– On the inside, we can look forward to a 1.4GHz quad-core processor, Wi-Fi, 3G, and 4G wireless options, although disappointingly there’s no SD card compatibility.
– ATIV Tab, a Windows RT-packing cousin of the Galaxy Note 10.1. The new 10.1-inch slate isn’t quite as aggressive as its Android counterpart and centers on a 1,366 x 768 display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, a 5MP rear camera paired with a 1.9MP front-facing cam, and ports for micro-HDMI as well as USB. Dimensionally, the tablet is as light and skinny as you’d hope: it weighs 20.1 ounces (570g) and measures a slim 8.9mm thick.
15:06 – Sony at IFA
– Sony Tablet S
– http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/29/3276373/sonys-xperia-tablet-s
– The Xperia Tablet S is waterproof, and runs Android 4.0 on a Tegra 3 processor, but more than its pure power Sony’s promoting some of the software on the device. The Tablet S was a nifty IR-capable universal remote control, and Sony’s beefed up the functionality even more, adding support for macros so you can turn on a bunch of devices at once or easily tune to a certain channel with one press. Sony’s app also features a visual TV guide, which looks a lot like the Peel setup on some of the Galaxy Tabs we’ve seen.
– There are more software tweaks, too, like a “Guest Mode” that lets you quickly configure which apps and settings are available to a particular user — turning off the Play Store for your kid could be huge. Some of Sony’s cross-platform services also come preloaded, like PlayMemories and the Reader app.
– The accessories lineup for the Xperia Tablet S is where it could get really compelling. Sony’s offering a $99.99 Cover with Keyboard case that is the absolute spitting image of the Microsoft Surface’s Touch Cover — it’s light and thin, with a full keyboard stamped into the inside. There’s also a $99.99 docking stand, which raises the tablet up on a TV-like pedestal. Of course, the usual cadre is also here, a dock, charger, and keyboard-less stand.
– The Xperia Tablet S will be out September 7th, and you can pre-order today. The device will come with 16, 32, or 64GB of storage, and will cost between $399 and $599.
– Action Cam
– http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/29/sony-action-cam-hands-on/
– Action Cam — a fitting name given that it’ll live mounted anywhere from skydiving helmets to downhill skis — it’ll ship in late September or early October for $199. In a surprising twist, the incredibly small HD shooter will also be getting WiFi — that version will be available for $270. Both cameras are identical save for wireless functionality, but considering that WiFi enables remote configuration and viewfinder capability for framing your shots (there’s no video-capable LCD on the device itself), you’re gonna want to shell out the extra 70 bucks. Regardless of which flavor you choose, you’ll net a very capable camcorder with a 16-megapixel Exmor R sensor (great for low-light shooting) and fixed-zoom Carl Zeiss lens, complete with SteadyShot image stabilization, a 1080/30p capture mode and a 720p option at 120 frames per second, enabling some pretty slick slow-motion effects.
– The Action Cam is a modular system, so you can count on a bevy of accessories — there will even be a “Handycam Adaptor,” which comes complete with a 2.7-inch display and a familiar camcorder interface. More standard options include an adhesive mount pack ($20, though two ship with the cam), a bar/bike mount ($30), angle mount ($30), a replacement housing that’s waterproof to 60 meters and offers a standard tripod socket ($40 — you’ll get one in the box), two head straps ($25-30) and a suction cup ($30). It also uses removable storage (microSD), a swappable battery, and includes HDMI, USB and audio input jacks.
– Other
– Three new phones, top of the range has NFC and 13mp camera
– 20 inch touch screen PC running windows 8 – VAIO Tap 20
– XBR-84X900 – 84 inch television capable of upscaling content to 4K (that’s a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160) from any source, including things like digital photos from the PlayStation 3. As you can see from the picture above, the panel is a sizable stand-up unit with
20:24 – Amazon App Store hits Europe
– launching its Amazon Appstore for Android in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. We don’t know for sure that Amazon is planning to introduce the Kindle Fire internationally, but opening app stores abroad is a critical step toward that goal.
– The appstore, which will go by a few different names depending on the country, will offer the same features U.S. customers have been familiar with, including the popular Free App of the Day, personalized recommendations, customer reviews and one-click payments. Some of the apps will also be localized for each market.
– Developers will be able to take advantage of the Appstore for Android’s services like GameCircle, which offers leaderboards, game syncing and achievements, and in-app purchase. Amazon previously telegraphed the opening of the appstore abroad when it called for developers to submit their apps for international distribution in June.
– New Fires – Amazon announced this morning that the Kindle Fire is sold out, bringing the probability that the company will announce a new tablet at next week’s LA press event to roughly 1,000 percent. More surprising is Amazon’s claim that “in just nine months, Kindle Fire has captured 22 percent of tablet sales in the U.S.”
– Just over 6 million fires sold?
23:10 – Nook comes to the UK
– UK retailer John Lewis is to sell the Nook e-reader in all of its 37 stores.
– The Nook, made by US bookseller Barnes & Noble, is a rival to Amazon’s Kindle and is popular with magazine readers in the US. The Nook has not been for sale in the UK so far and John Lewis is the first company outside the US to sell the device, Barnes & Noble said.
– The company says that UK customers will have access to 2.5 million titles in its online store from October.
– Barnes & Noble has yet to confirm its UK prices, but the cheapest version currently retails for $99 (£63) on the Nook website in the US.
– Also, Argos, Blackwell’s, and Foyles. Just as like John Lewis, all three companies will be carrying the Nook Simple Touch and Nook Simple Touch with Glow Light
24:30 – Windows 8 Upgrade Price
– Upgrade price in the UK for Windows 8 is £24.99
– Anyone who purchased a Windows 7 PC since June 2nd of this year will be able to download the upgrade for £14.99
25:25 – UK will have a 4G service this year
– On Tuesday 21st Ofcom gave permission for the UK’s biggest mobile operator, Everything Everywhere, to re-use some of its old spectrum for a limited amount of 4G services instead of waiting for the official 4G spectrum auction early next year. From next month, it said, the company would have the ability to use part of its 1800 MHz range for high speed data services as a prelude to providing more services in the future.
– That move — the result of a consultation — will get a limited amount of 4G to customers who are craving it. Thats great. Right?
– But it has caused angry reaction from rival operator Vodafone, which launched a vociferous attack on the decision.
– “The regulator has shown a careless disregard for the best interests of consumers, businesses and the wider economy through its refusal to properly regard the competitive distortion created by allowing one operator to run services before the ground has been laid for a fully competitive 4G market.
– “Ofcom’s timing is particularly bizarre given the reports that Everything Everywhere is currently in discussions to sell some of its spectrum to 3, which Ofcom has previously been at such pains to protect with its over-engineering of the 4G auction.
– “This means the balance in the auction will fundamentally change.”
– Translation – WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
– Interesting – announcement on Sep 11. New iPhone announced Sep 12. 4G? iPhone? Putting 2 & 2 together?
– Three have bought some of the spectrum too – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/22/three_ee_spectrum_sale/
– Everything Everywhere has flogged its excess 1800MHz radio spectrum to rival mobile operator Three with one rather important condition.
– The European Commission required Everything Everywhere to get shot of the spectrum as a condition of the merger that created it. When Orange and T-Mobile eloped to form EE, the mammoth phone network was left holding almost half the UK mobile radio spectrum. So EE offered to sell off two 15MHz-wide blocks before the 4G mega auction, which it has now done, but it won’t let Three take possession until the last possible moment required by the EC: September 2013 for two 10MHz blocks, and September 2015 for the rest.
– Neither company will say how much money has changed hands, nor whether their shared 3G network deal will extend into 4G, though given the proximity of radio frequencies and existing agreements that seems likely. In fact the only detail they are sharing is that Three won’t get to take possession of its secondhand bands from Everything Everywhere until well after EE 4G monopoly has expired.
27:22 – Where did Tweetbot for Mac go
– Alpha pulled
– Twitter’s latest API Changes means now we have a large but finite limit on the number of user tokens we can get for Tweetbot for Mac. We’ve been working with Twitter over the last few days to try to work around this limit for the duration of the beta but have been unable to come up with a solution that was acceptable to them. Because of this we’ve decided its best for us to pull the alpha.
– Bastards
– Just to be perfectly clear, Tweetbot for Mac will still be available for sale in the near future, we are just stopping the public part of the alpha/beta testing. We wish we could continue on but we didn’t make the rules, we just have to live within them. Again sorry for the hassle and thank you very much to everyone that has provided valuable feedback during the alpha.
– Twitter.com has stopped displaying the names of third-party Twitter clients in tweets. It’s an outward sign of the service’s growing pains as it transitions away from a consumer client free-for-all.
– Twitter.com — as well as Twitter mobile apps — used to display a tweet’s app of origin in small, linked letters below each tweet, down with a smattering of other metadata. Under a tweet from VentureBeat, you might see something like “15 minutes ago via Hootsuite,” since we use Hootsuite internally to publish tweets.
– Those words will appear no more, we’ve confirmed with the company. The links disappeared from Twitter’s mobile apps a while ago, and a company spokesperson tells us this afternoon that the change has finally come to Twitter.com on the desktop as well.
“This is part of our work to simplify tweets and emphasize the content being shared,” we’re told.
– Twitter also launch certified products program
– http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2012/08/29/twitter-launches-certified-products-program-promote-services-leverage-data/
– The program will be used to put its stamp of approval on apps and services that help companies leverage its data to engage with customers.
– Twitter hate third party clients. Official.
– Sigh.
30:42 – Diaspora team hands keys over to the community
– After two years, $200,000 in Kickstarter cash, and a shifting focus to side projects, the Diaspora founders are stepping back to give control of the code for its data-liberating social network over to the community. In a blog post today, founders Daniel Grippi and Maxwell Salzberg explain that while they will still be playing an important role, they “want to make sure we are including all of the people who care about Diaspora and want to see it succeed well into the future.”
– The team says that the process will be gradual, noting that “many details still need to be stepped through,” but the recent opening of the project’s Pivotal Tracker (the software used to manage the Diaspora code) is a major step in that direction. Speaking to Betabeat, cofounder Salzberg said, “it speaks to the maturity of the project and that there are stakeholders other than the two guys who started it,” adding, “thousands of people love and use Diaspora every day so the community needs to have some decision-making power itself.”
32:31 – Sony shuts Psygnosis
– Sony has closed one of the UK’s oldest video game studios following a review of its operations.
– Sony Liverpool employed about 100 workers. It dated back to 1984 when it was known as Psygnosis. The Japanese company bought the developer in 1993.
– Its early titles included Barbarian and Shadow of the Beast for the Amiga and Atari ST.
– It was perhaps best known for later PlayStation releases including the Wipeout racing game series.

Picks
Ian
Sticky Notifications
– $3
– Sticky Notifications lets you leave quick, easy reminders for yourself.
– Works with Notification Center or Growl.
– Growl not required, even on Lion.
– Automatically opens URLs in reminders.
– Retina Display ready.
– Integrates with System Services.
– Automator support.
– Trigger via URLs, e.g. with Alfred.
– GateKeeper-aware.
– Menubar icon can be hidden.
– Open at Login option.

Bark
– A growl plugin that displays Growl notifications in Notification Center
– Free
– Retains low level control over notifications that Growl brings

DigitalOutbox Episode 131

DigitalOutbox Episode 131
DigitalOutbox Episode 131 – Twitter API, John Browett and OnLive

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
3:01 – Once a Dixons employee
– John Browett joined as head of retail at Apple late last year – he used to head up Dixons. We joked at the time that it didn’t seem the best hire and fit for Apple
– There were reports at the start of the week that Apple stores were reducing staff numbers
– In a communication with store leadership teams, senior vice president of retail, John Browett, who took the reins of Apple’s retail stores in April, said that the company had been trying a new staffing formula for its retail stores, leading some employees to see their hourly shifts cut and retail locations to be understaffed. This happened for a few weeks before the company decided to revert to its older system, hoping to rectify the problem.
– He instructed leadership teams to tell employees, “We messed up,” according to two people who were aware of the communication, which also stressed that while shift schedules were affected, no one was laid off. He also wanted employees to know that it was hiring new staff, these people said.
– Apple acknowledged the retail staffing changes. “Making these changes was a mistake and the changes are being reversed,” said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman. “Our employees are our most important asset and the ones who provide the world-class service our customers deserve.”
– Despite Apple’s claims that “no one was laid off”, we have indeed heard from several Apple employees who have been laid off in recent weeks, with several of them independently claiming that there have been others, although some have called the moves “isolated” while others have characterized them as “many”. ifoAppleStore reported yesterday that the cutbacks were made by Browett in an effort to meet profit goals and encourage the “bloated” store staffs to run “leaner”, despite the objections of retail veterans within the company.
– Idiot.
6:11 – Amazon to deliver parcels to UK cornershops
– Amazon is to step up its assault on the UK’s retail market by delivering parcels to nearly 5,000 corner shops and newsagents around the country.
– The online shopping giant has quietly started trialling the scheme on a small scale with items such as books and clothes, and plans to roll it out nationwide.
– Amazon has already built itself into a $109bn business by offering customers a highly convenient way to shop and this move will give it even more muscle with which to take on high street stores.
– Consumers will be able to collect their orders from local shops that are often open until late into the night, instead of having to wait in for orders or coming home to find a delivery note telling them to collect their parcel from the nearest Royal Mail depot.
– They will also be able to use the “Collect+” scheme to send unwanted items back to the retailer, making it easier, for example, to order clothes in several sizes and return those that do not fit.
– The scheme is likely to prove particularly popular with employees of the many UK companies which ban staff from having personal goods delivered to their work address.
– However, it is also expected to ignite fresh concerns amongst traditional retailers, who already fear that the Seattle-based shopping giant is driving them off the high street.
9:11 – Twitter announces API changes
– Three main changes:
– In version 1.1, we will require every request to the API to be authenticated. For developers who are already using OAuth when making API requests, all of your authentication tokens will transition seamlessly from v1.0 to v1.1. If your application is currently using the Twitter API without using OAuth, you will need to update your application before March 2013.
– Right now, in version 1.0 of the Twitter API we limit the number of authenticated requests applications can make to 350 calls per hour, regardless of the type of information the application was requesting. This “one size fits all” approach has limited our ability to provide developers more access to endpoints that are frequently requested by applications, while continuing to prevent abuse of Twitter’s resources. In version 1.1, we will provide per-endpoint rate limiting on the API. While an application that only accesses one endpoint may be more restricted, applications that use multiple endpoints will run into rate limiting issues less frequently. Most individual API endpoints will be rate limited at 60 calls per hour per-endpoint. Based on analysis of current use of our API, this rate limit will be well above the needs of most applications built against the Twitter API, while protecting our systems from abusive applications.
– To ensure that Twitter users have a consistent experience wherever they see and interact with Tweets, in v1.1 of the Twitter API we will shift from providing Display Guidelines to Display Requirements, which we will also introduce for mobile applications. We will require all applications that display Tweets to adhere to these. Among them: linking @usernames to the appropriate Twitter profile, displaying appropriate Tweet actions (e.g. Retweet, reply and favorite) and scaling display of Tweets appropriately based on the device. If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn’t adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key. we will require you to work with us directly if you believe your application will need more than one million individual user tokens. Additionally, if you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens.
– Caused lot’s of consternation, especially the user cap (100,000) – The maximum limit is 100,000 users, unless special permission is given by Twitter. If a client has more than 100k users currently, it can only ever grow to 200% of that. If users of the apps de-authorize their tokens for those apps, then they’re added back to that pool. That means that no third-party client can ever have more than 100k users, unless given special permission by Twitter or it already has over 100k right now, in which case it can have double the amount it has today. This move puts a life span on most for-pay clients, as they’ll reach a point where there is no longer any reason for them to continue offering these apps for sale.
– Display of tweets is confusing – no other social or 3rd party actions may be attached to a Tweet – so send to instapaper no more? Pocket developer says he has spoken to Twitter and pocket, instapaper etc are fine.
– Also, display guidelines and now ‘requirements’
– Marco Arment (Instapaper) has a very -ve post on the changes – http://www.marco.org/2012/08/16/twitter-api-changes
– I sure as hell wouldn’t build a business on Twitter, and I don’t think I’ll even build any nontrivial features on it anymore.
– And if I were in the Twitter-client business, I’d start working on another product.
– Paul Haddad (Tweetbot) has a more +ve post – http://tapbots.com/blog/news/dont-panic
– API – The changes to the v1.1 API requiring authentication won’t affect Tweetbot, all current API calls are already made using authentication.
– User caps – I can’t say that I’m thrilled with the idea of caps on the number of users, I feel that part of what makes the Twitter ecosystem interesting is the wide ranging apps available to it. I think we and others fill an important niche in that system not served by the current Twitter apps and would’ve much preferred to see some some other approach. Regardless the decision has been made, so let’s look at what this actually means to Tweetbot.
* Our user cap for Tweetbot for iOS is pretty huge (which is 2* our current users, not 100k)
* At the current rate our user base is growing we won’t hit that cap for a few years
* Our user cap for Tweetbot for Mac is also large and we don’t expect any problems given the smaller market
* Even if we were to run out of room all our current users will be fine
* User tokens are shared, so if you have a single account on both Tweetbot for iPad and Tweetbot for iPhone that’s only a single token
– Display req’s – We’ll be working with Twitter over the next 6 months to make sure we comply with these new requirements as much as possible. I don’t expect the changes to be huge, but we’ll keep everyone up to date as we know more.
– Meanwhile app.net got funded (nearly 800k) and has an amazing amount of app’s in development already.
– Does twitter care about it’s users? Or is it chasing business, advertisers, investors now rather than users? The people that launched the company are really no longer involved…
17:26 – Medium
– Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone are at it again. Having launched two new publishing platforms — Blogger in 1999 and, more recently, Twitter – the duo unveiled a new platform Tuesday that wants to make an “evolutionary leap,” based on what the pair has learned over the past 13 years.
– Called Medium, the new collaborative publishing tool lets different people contribute as much or as little as they want to themed “collections” of content. The idea, the founders said in a blog post Tuesday, is that people should be able to publish without “the burden of becoming a blogger” and worrying about developing an audience. The layout looks a lot like Pinterest, but contributions include both pictures and text.
– Does the world need another publishing site/tool?
19:06 – Branch
– Pick a topic, write a short comment and then invite others to comment – only if your invited can you comment
– The comment, or debate, is public – like Quora perhaps?
– Uses twitter as authentication a bit like Medium
– Advisers include Ev Williams and Biz Stone
20:51 – Is the UK heavy handed with Internet Trolls
– Police and prosecutors in the UK are accused of being “incredibly heavy-handed” when dealing with online trolls and abusive messages.
– It follows several cases where young people have been arrested, fined or jailed after posting insulting comments on their Twitter and Facebook accounts.
– Campaign groups and experts from Oxford University say the punishments are heavier than in other countries. But police insist if a law is broken they will take action.
– Bernie Hogan from the Oxford Internet Institute monitors what happens in other countries. He said that although the UK was “leading the way” in cracking down on this type of online abuse, by comparison “we are incredibly heavy-handed”.
– The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) disagrees. In a statement is says: “People have a right to publish their views but when these views become indecent, threatening or offensive then the individuals they affect also have the right to report them. “The police will assist with any prosecution.”
23:05 – First truly digital Olympics
– BBC celebrated Olympics by releasing some amazing data behind their online effort
– Record breaking browsers to BBC Sport online – with 55m (global) and 37m (UK) browsers to the BBC Sport site in total across the Games, and an average of 9.5m (global) and 7.1m (UK) browsers per day, easily breaking all previous records (previous record for a single day was 7.4m global and 5.7m UK)
– Video drives viewing across all online platforms – with 106m requests for BBC Olympic video content across all online platforms, more than double seen for any previous events
– First truly mobile games – with 9.2m UK mobile browsers to the BBC’s Olympics coverage, making up 34% of all daily browsers to BBC’s Olympic coverage, and 12m requests from mobiles for video throughout the Games
– Opening up the breadth of the Games via BBC Red Button – with 23.7m viewers to the 24 SD, HD and Freeview streams throughout the Games, and every single stream seeing at least 100,000 viewers
– Over a 24 hour period on the busiest Olympic days, total traffic to bbc.co.uk exceeded that for the entire BBC coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2010 (matches) – on the busiest day, the BBC delivered 2.8 petabytes, with the peak traffic moment occurring when Bradley Wiggins won Gold with over 700 Gb/s
– The London 2012 Olympics were the first truly mobile Games. Audiences accessed BBC’s content in ground-breaking numbers on mobile devices, continuing the trend to watch video on-the-go with:
– 1.9m download of BBC’s Olympics mobile app for iOS and Android smartphones
– 40% of browsers accessing BBC’s Olympics coverage were from a mobile at weekends (30% during the week) – averaging 34% per day
– 9.2m UK mobile browsers throughout the Games, with 2.8m UK mobile browsers on the peak day
– On TV, the BBC’s Red-Button service opened up the breadth of Olympic content to audiences with the simple press of a button.
– 23.7m people viewed the 24 live SD, HD & Freeview streams throughout the Games for at least 15 minutes
– Audiences viewed specialist sports such as Judo and Weightlifting in considerable numbers
– Every single Red Button stream received 100,000 viewers at some point during the Games
– this has really been the multi-platform Games, where audiences have consumed our content across PC, mobile, tablet and connected TV at different times of the day.
Our data below splits out the four screens across 24 hours, to reveal some key insights:
PC usage maxes out during the week at lunchtime and during mid-afternoon peak Team GB moments
Mobile takes over around 6pm as people leave the office but still want to keep up to date with the latest action
Tablet usage reaches a peak at around 9pm: people using them as a second screen experience as they watch the Games on their TVs, and also as they continue to watch in bed
28:21 – Jeremy Hunt pledges fastest broadband network in Europe by 2015
– The UK will have the fastest broadband network of any major European country by 2015, the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has pledged.
– The commitment marks a firming up of the government’s original target to create the “best” superfast broadband network in Europe by the end of this parliament, and follows a critical House of Lords’ report into the national broadband strategy published last month.
– “To really be the best you need to be the fastest,” Hunt told broadband experts at “Silicon Roundabout”, the area around Old Street on the fringes of the City of Londonwhere many technology firms and start-ups are based. “I am today announcing an ambition to be not just the best overall, but specifically the fastest broadband of any major European country. Indeed we may already be there.”
– Garbage – from Akamai – UK average measured connection speed according to Akamai is 5.6 Mbps, an improvement of 20% on last years result, but still only places us at 15th position across Europe, (21st in the global table).
30:27 – Netflix reaches 1,000,000 subscribers on the UK
– Netflix has said it has hit the 1 million subscriber mark in the UK and Ireland, just over seven months after the US subscription video on demand service launched in the countries.
– The company, which launched in the UK and Ireland on 9 January, is aiming to take on rivals including Amazon-owned LoveFilm and BSkyB.
– Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, said that the milestone proved that there is a significant appetite for a new rival to offer cut-price subscription packages of on-demand films and TV shows.
– Netflix claims that hitting 1 million registered users in the UK and Ireland in seven months was four times faster than Twitter managed on a global basis, and nearly twice as fast as Facebook and location-based service Foursquare.
– Hastings said the US company intends to pry premium Hollywood movie rights away from BSkyB, promising to be “really aggressive in our bidding.”
31:41 – Onlive sold to another company
– OnLive confirmed today that its assets have been sold to a new, still unnamed company. OnLive will continue to operate its services during the transition and the new company is backed “by substantial funding,” said a spokeswoman for Steve Perlman, the chief executive of OnLive.
“We can now confirm that the assets of OnLive, Inc. have been acquired into a newly formed company and is backed by substantial funding, and which will continue to operate the OnLive Game and Desktop services, as well as support all of OnLive’s apps and devices, as well as game, productivity and enterprise partnerships,” the company said in a statement. “The new company is hiring a large percentage of OnLive, Inc.’s staff across all departments and plans to continue to hire substantially more people, including additional OnLive employees. All previously announced products and services, including those in the works, will continue and there is no expected interruption of any OnLive services. We apologize that we were unable to comment on this transaction until it completed and were limited to reporting on news related to OnLive’s businesses. Now that the transaction is complete, we are able to make this statement.”
– Employees at the Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters of OnLive walked in and out during the afternoon, declining to comment. Some of them left with boxes full of their belongings.
– Earlier in the day, Perlman held an all-hands meeting where he told the staff that the company was being dissolved. Later on, everybody received a packet. Some of those packets were invitations to join the new company. We have heard that the number might be about 70 people. We hear that many employees are very upset, particularly those with exercised stock.
– Joystiq is reporting that the company has been sold to a third-party and that at least 50 percent of the staff was laid off. A former employee told Joystiq that employees were not getting severance and that OnLive was dealing with operating costs of $5 million a month.
– Despite its claim of two million users, our source says that the average peak amount of concurrent users was around 1,800. The two million number accounts for anyone who has signed up for the service; actual usage was remarkably lower.
35:25 – Call of Duty Black Ops 2
– Significant changes to the multiplayer game
– Calling eSports “a major, major initiative for us,” game design director David Vonderhaar says that Call of Duty is already a sport, but it needs the production, the personality, and the means to broadcast that sport to a wider audience. To help make that happen, Treyarch is building new tech for Black Ops 2 to more easily reach the masses, through in-game livestreaming and color commentary tools branded CODcasting.
– Black Ops 2’s broadcasting tools are simple to use. CODcasters simply join a multiplayer game as a spectator and are given the ability to see all the action in a multiplayer game from different views for play-by-play coverage. (To prevent cheating, live streams of multiplayer matches are delayed a few seconds.)
– During CODcasting matches, viewers will see a score panel at the top of the screen. “Score panel is our way of linking this to sports,” says Mike Rufail, Treyarch’s in-house eSports advisor. “Essentially, when you flick the channel over to a sports broadcast, you immediately will find out what the score is, how much time is left in the game, who’s in the lead. It’s very necessary information.”
– With League Play, Vonderhaar says he wants Black Ops 2 multiplayer to be fun at every level, not just for the hardcore Call of Duty player who spends hours each night honing his headshots. To address that, Treyarch is introducing skill-based matchmaking for Black Ops 2 multiplayer, an attempt to ensure that players are competing with others of a similar skill level.
– Treyarch is proposing seven seasonal brackets, in which players will be placed based on their performance as time goes on. Black Ops 2 will find an initial bracket for you somewhere after a few games, but players are expected to move up and down in their ranking as they win and lose in their division. They won’t be competing against the entirety of the Call of Duty-playing masses, but a smaller pool of about 500 to 1000 players near their skill level, Vonderhaar says.
37:45 – Simcity for the Mac
– Will launch in Feb, same time as PC
– Origin also coming to Mac later this year

Picks

DigitalOutbox Episode 80

DigitalOutbox Episode 80
In this episode the team discuss Twitter threatening dev’s, IE9, iPad 2 and bye bye to the Zune.

Playback
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Shownotes
2:06 – Twitter – Don’t compete with our apps
– Twitter has taken some time today in their developer forum to talk a bit about the state of the ecosystem and give some guidance.
– Platform lead Ryan Sarver notes that Twitter views a “consistent user experience” as very important to them. And it’s something they’re going to hold third-party developers to a very high standard to maintain. But they don’t want them to mimic Twitter’s own experience with their native apps in order to do this. They’ve updated the API Terms of Service to reflect all of this.
– “Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no,” Sarver writes very matter-of-factly.
“If you are an existing developer of client apps, you can continue to serve your user base, but we will be holding you to high standards to ensure you do not violate users’ privacy, that you provide consistency in the user experience, and that you rigorously adhere to all areas of our Terms of Service. We have spoken with the major client applications in the Twitter ecosystem about these needs on an ongoing basis, and will continue to ensure a high bar is maintained,”
– So if your a developer what are Twitter happy with you developing:
– Publisher tools. Companies such as SocialFlow help publishers optimize how they use Twitter, leading to increased user engagement and the production of the right tweet at the right time.
– Curation, Realtime data signals, Social CRM, entreprise clients, and brand insights, Value-added content and vertical experiences.
– This hasn’t gone down well – Craig Hockenberry points out what Iconfactory’s Twitterrific brought to the Twitter platform – http://furbo.org/2011/03/11/twitterrific-firsts/ – First use of tweet, first use of bird icon, first native mac client, first char count, first to support replies and conversations (with help from Twitter engineering), first native iPhone client
– Twitter killed my app – http://aaron.vegh.ca/2011/03/twitter-killed-my-app/
– Some twitter stats to show you size (where’s identica?)
– http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/14/new-twitter-stats-140m-tweets-sent-per-day-460k-accounts-created-per-day/
– It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day from the first Tweet to get to the billionth Tweet. In a given week, users send a billion Tweets. Users are now sending 140 million Tweets, on average, per day, up from 50 million Tweets sent per day, a year ago. The all-time high in terms of Tweets sent per day was 177 million sent on March 11, 2011.
– In terms of Tweets per second, the all time high was 6,939 Tweets per second after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day. This compares to the previous record of 456 Tweets per second when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009.
– Twitter says that 572,000 accounts were created on March 12, 2011, with 460,000 new accounts per day over the last month on average. Mobile users are up 182 percent over the past year. And Twitter currently has 400 employees, up from 8 in January 2008.
10:25 – ISPs to Provide Better Traffic Management Info
– BSkyB, BT, O2, TalkTalk, Three, Virgin Media and Vodafone have all agreed to provide better information on traffic management, which should help customers understand why connection speeds vary.
– While such information is already available in many cases, in order for consumers to have a better handle on the data, the indicators must be understandable, accessible, comparable and verifiable. The info will therefore be published in a ‘Key Fact Indicator’ table that summarises the practices in a standardised format. These will be available on the ISPs’ websites by the end of June.
– The tables can be accessed directly by the consumer, but also used by price comparison websites and the like to inform potential customers of the best options available to them.
– Antony Walker, head of the Broadband Stakeholder Group, which facilitated the move, reckons it “will not only help to ensure consumers are better informed about the services they buy and use, but will also provide a clearer picture for policy makers of the way in which traffic management is actually used in the UK market”.
14:00 – Facebook Comment Box Plugin
– Facebook updates it’s comments box plugin – comment via Facebook account or Yahoo
– Forces people to use real name – deter spamming?
– Improved moderation tools
– Can send comments to wall, get notifications when others comment – fine on low traffic sites – comment on Techcrunch though and boom – spam tastic
– No Google or Twitter sign in available but it was rumoured
– Facebook marches on
– http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/06/techcrunch-facebook-comments
– Techcrunch – less quantity, better quality
– Less anonymity = less trolls
20:06 – Google – Hide sites directly in search
– Similar to Chrome plugin launched a few weeks ago
– Click on block site to remove site from your search results
– Saved to your Google account so follows you around
20:52 – Google Maps Navigation now routes around traffic
– Google Maps Navigation has added traffic re-routing to it’s Android app
– Will take account of current and historic traffic levels when calculating best route
– Free!
– Traffic data is crowd sourced from other users to try and work out best available route
24:00 – Adobe Launches Wallaby
– Wallaby, a system it is launching today to convert basic Flash files — such as animations and banner ads — into code that will work on iOS.
– an AIR program that allows you to drag and drop a Flash file into it, at which point the system analyzes the file and outputs a sequence of HTML-friendly files that produce the same effect. By using HTML, CSS and SVG, the company says most simple Flash files can be recreated in ways that will work on Apple mobile products.
– I spoke to Adobe’s Tom Barclay about the launch, who said that the project had a specific purpose — to make Apple’s Flash ban less painful for developers — but pointed out that it was still very much experimental.
“There’s still room for improvement, but I think we’ve addressed a very specific use case for banner ads on iOS,” he told me.
– While it can port over simple animations and transitions, there’s a lot of information that it can’t handle: notably ActionScript instructions (which are used to program inside Flash) don’t convert, although Barclay suggested that they may come into the picture further down the line. Similarly, some of Flash’s higher-end features — such as filters and blend modes — aren’t being ported through Wallaby yet. And it doesn’t convert audio and video because HTML5 has its own dedicated tags for those.
26:29 – Conde Nast UK invests in iPad publishing
– Wired UK will release monthly app editions for iPad starting with its May issue, with British GQ making its tablet debut on the App Store with its July issue. Meanwhile, Vogue UK is to receive more “special edition” iPad issues throughout the year.
– For now, the publisher is focusing on iPad and iPhone only, although its thoughts are turning to other devices such as the raft of Android tablets about to go on sale, and RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook.
– For now, the pricing model will remain one-off purchases, too. Apple’s recently introduced subscription billing system is also on Condé Nast’s agenda, but only if the terms are right, according to Read. “We’re in discussions with Apple in the US about how we might reach a subs arrangement that suits both sides.”
– The publisher will also launch 21 iPhone apps across seven of its magazine brands this year, including GQ, Glamour, Vogue and Wired.
29:52 – Apple Updates
– iOS 4.3
– iTunes 10.2.1
– Safari 5.0.4
– XCode 4 – Released – free for developers who pay $99 yearly or $4.99 on app store for non developers
– Benchmarks for iPad2 are very impressive – http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performance-explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked
– Online backlog – 4-5 weeks now for delivery, physical stores sold out
– One More Thing
– Jon Bon Jovi
– Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it..
– God, it was a magical, magical time…I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’ Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.
38:54 – App Updates
– Flipboard – faster, instagram support
– Instapaper – faster, more social in that you can find liked reads from your twitter connections, can share to more places including Pinboard, can now search sync’d content – one of my fav apps just got better
41:14 – IE9 now released to mainstream
– Ars calling it the “most modern browser there is”
– Doesn’t work on anything before Vista.
– I’ve not had a chance to use yet. Speed graphs look good. Standards support looks much improved. Certainly a good thing. And with IE trying hard to now kill off IE6 – fingers crossed, those will move straight up to the latest version and save lots of development headaches!
44:09 – Kinect is record breaker
– Kinect officially fastest selling consumer electronic device ever… Guinness certified.
– “Fastest selling consumer electronics device in 60 days…”
45:38 – Zune Player is no more
– End of hardware. Software and service still live.

Picks
Chris
Droid@Screen
– Recently used to do my blog post on Android OS. It’s a desktop java app that can output your Android screen in a window! Fantastic! OK, you have to jump through a few hoops. You need to have the Android SDK and also the debug USB driver, but once that’s all up and running, you just load the .jar file and off you go.
– Used in conjunction with Camtasia/Jing you can then record the window.
– FPS is an issue – 30fps is fastest it offers and that’s not to say that you get 30 updates of the screen every second! It’s jerky at best but as a way of showing how Android works, I couldn’t find a better option out there at the moment.
– It’s also delightfully geeky!
Ian
Zite
– Magazine app for the iPad
– Displays content based on twitter followers, google reader and what you read as you use the app
– Like the front end, slower than Flipboard but not a dealbreaker