DigitalOutbox Episode 17

DigitalOutbox Episode 17
In this episode the team discuss Microsoft Courier, Pay for your broadband and music, Google innovates and PS3 news from the Tokyo Game Show.

Playback
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Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
0:49 – Digital Britain – time to pay!
– 50p tax on landlines to go ahead
– Presented in bill before christmas
– Is this the right thing to do?
5:17 – Music At War
– Two camps emerging. Those that think that everything possible should be done to eliminate illegal file sharing. Although I can’t find details of what they are suggesting.
– Another camp saying that what’s the point in trying to stop file-sharing – nothing will work anyway.
– And now the two camps are at war.
– Come up with a sensible solution. Fight clever. Work with new technology and the new music listener – don’t fight a losing battle to protect old infrastructure.
– Lily Allen and artists come to some agreement on piracy stance
– http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/09/lily_unites_musicians_against.html
– http://www.featuredartistscoalition.com/showscreen.php?site_id=161&screentype=folder&screenid=2990&newsaction=showitem&newsid=2588&dc=6&sn=News
– We the undersigned wish to express our support for Lily Allen in her campaign to alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry and to condemn the vitriol that has been directed at her in recent days.
– Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional.
11:18 – Charge for iPlayer?
– Lorraine Heggessey, chief executive of TV production company Talkback Thames.
– Industry want to charge micro-payments for catch up services but BBC scuppering this.
– BBC have no plans to charge. Licence fee covers this content.
13:31 – Google Chrome Frame
– Plugin for IE 6(and 7 & 8) that replaces rendering engine in IE6 with Chrome
– Will this force Microsoft to be more aggressive on moving from IE6?
– http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10360850-56.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware
– “With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers,” Microsoft said. “Given the security issues with plug-ins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plug-in has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take.”
– So, time to remove Silverlight?
18:10 – Google SideWiki
– Commenting for the web?
– Needs google toolbar
– Not original, been tried before and failed but will it be successful due to Google’s brand and market share?
– Yet another comment source – fragmentation of the conversation although there is an api
22:42 – Push GMail
– Google sync now support gmail
– Setup exchange account on iPhone to get push calendar, contacts and gmail
– Google working around Apple’s limitations and choices
– Only 1 exchange account available on iPhone
25:26 – Picasa 3.5
– Face recognition, similar to picasa albums online
– Share albums based on name
– Better geotagging and uploading/sharing options
26:15 – Bing increases market share
– From 8.9 to 9.3% in US market.
– OK it’s only a small increase but considering everyone said it was impossible to even steal a small share away from Google was impossible.
– May mean that Bing is a default choice for some users now.
27:21 – Apple Acknowledges battery concerns
– Users can log battery issues with Apple
– Also can install Battery Life Logging and report issues back to Apple
– http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/09/20/apple-seeking-info-iphone-31-users-reporting-poor-battery-life/
30:01 – USB IF Sides with Apple
– Palm issues dismissed
– Your letter also states that:
“Palm will shortly issue an update of its WebOS operating system that uses Apple’s Vendor ID number for the sole purpose of restoring the Palm media sync functionality.”
I attach for your information the USB-IF’s adopted and published policy regarding Vendor Identification Numbers (VIDs). Under the Policy, Palm may only use the single Vendor ID issued to Palm for Palm’s usage. Usage of any other company’s Vendor ID is specifically precluded. Palm’s expressed intent to use Apple’s VID appears to violate the attached policy.
Please clarify Palm’s intent and respond to this potential violation within seven days.
– GET OUT!
34:48 – iTunes Update
– Resolves issues browsing the iTunes Store.
– Addresses a performance issue where iTunes may become unresponsive.
– Fixes a problem where iTunes may unexpectedly quit.
– Fixes a problem syncing Podcasts in playlists to iPod or iPhone.
– Fixes a problem sorting albums with multiple discs.
– Addresses an issue with the Zoom button not switching to Mini Player.
– Improves application syncing for iPod touch and iPhone.
– Genius is now automatically updated to show Genius Mixes.
41:37 – Tiny Blu Ray PC
– Like a Mac mini – but with BluRay (kind of what we were talking about last week) £650 or £450 without the BluRay.
– Comes with media centre remote.
– Don’t know what kind of storage it has but media centre seems pretty good at streaming.
42:22 – Microsoft Courier
– A booklet, not a tablet
– Late prototype
– Touch and stylus driven,camera,7inch screens
49:24 – Sony at Tokyo Game Show
– Sony Motion Controller
– Japan release March
– Spring 2010 for rest of the world
– 4-5 million units worldwide
– Old games will be adpated to support it
– 250GB PS3 Slim
– Oct 1st
– On Amazon for £285 – bundles on the way
– PS3 Firmware issues – ian
– Tam mentioned this…
– http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/09/25/ps3-3-0-3-01-firmware-update-making-blu-ray-drive-unusable/
– Issues with 3.0 and 3.0.1 for people
– Been perfect for me
– God of War 1 & 2 bundle to include E3 demo of God of War 3
– PS3 Rumour Leaks
– wants to sell all PS2 titles on PSN – PS2 emulator ??
– special “Japanese Import” section for titles only released in Japan – ie Yakuza 3
– leaked document mentions possibility of Dreamcast titles appearing on PSN

Picks
Shakeel
Snippet
– sits on menu bar
– nice and clean interface
– pop-up menus and mini-windows, very little clutter
– easily search for your snippets of code, copy then paste into new projects.
– search by tags
– no need to hunt through previous/old projects
– easily create new snippets from any text
– select type of code, add tags
– primarily designed for programming but just as useful for storing other regularly used information
– for blocks of text, can copy a small selection instead of the whole lot, all from a mini pop-up window
– when code or text is copied, focus automatically returned to the last used app

Ian
Halo 3 ODST
– Co-op
– Firefight
– Multiplayer maps
– Good Value

Chris
MS Windows 7 Parties
– Ooooooo Mmmmmm Ggggggg

DigitalOutbox Episode 5

DigitalOutbox Episode 5
In this episode the team discuss the Pirate Bay, iPhone app’s, game news and a bit more on Mobileme.

Playback
Listen via iTunes
Listen via M4A
Listen via MP3

Shownotes
– Pirate Bay Sold
– http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-sold-to-software-company-goes-legal-090630/
– https://thepiratebay.org/blog
– http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-closes-its-tracker-removes-torrents-090630/
– http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bays-peter-sunde-discusses-the-sites-future-090630/
– You can buy shares in the company
– New trackers – originally closing tracker but then moving to new tracker tech
– Monitisation options
– Potentially massive implications – TBP tracker contains over half of all torrent users
– We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site
– Talking to the BBC, Pandeya said that he plans to make legal file sharing (which is what The Pirate Bay will be focused on from now on) more attractive than illegal file sharing by paying the users for sharing files. He also plans to pay the content providers that provide the files, and he plans to raise money from the ISPs by reducing their traffic overload.
– “Let’s say a popular song comes out. Rather than a million downloads from a site – which would cause a considerable strain on that ISP – we can take that song and put it out on P2P,” he says.
– Spokesman for Global Gaming Factory X said they would remove all illegally hosted content – but Pirate Bay has none according to their legal argument, no?
– Sounds like Napster 2………but is it bull? PirateBay do like to play games.

– One size fits all mobile charger in Europe
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/technology/newsid_8124000/8124293.stm
– Phones won’t come with charger, buy one if you need one
– MicroUSB to be standard
– Not legal, voluntary
– Under the accord, the companies, including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Apple, Motorola, Research in Motion and Samsung, are committed to developing the charger.90% of euro market

– News
– Poor Palm Pre build quality: http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre/188040-horrible-build-quality.html
– Palm Pre coming to O2
– XHTML2 is officially dead, HTML5 is the new king
– http://gdgt.com/ – Gadget site – review/wikipedia for gadgets, users control specs, review, aggregator – already a big community
– That Microsfot ad – http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/02/microsoft-makes-users-sick-pulls-ad/

– iPhone/Mac
– Steve Jobs officially back at work
– Birdfeed: yet another Twitter app for iPhone, £2.99, caching
– iPhone 3GS jailbreak with PurpleRa1n
– Augmented reality using 3GS compass
– Pocket Universe
– http://web.mac.com/john_kenn/craicdesign/index.html
– http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=306916838&mt=8
– Plot position of planets, stars, constellation outlines
– Nearest Tube
– http://www.acrossair.com/apps_nearesttube.htm
– Still to be approved
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fZk0HaIs4s
– Another giant robot in Japan, Wakamatsu park will get a Tetsujin robot in October http://www.kobe-tetsujin.com/
– F-22 Raptor photographed going super sonic http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=73057

– Games
– Fable III ? rumours
– Worms 2 – Fantastic update
– Battlefield 1943 – Wed 8th July, 7 years since 1942, three maps with 4th released once 43 million kills have been registered

– Mobileme
– Do you use
– Whats good and bad
– Ease of use
– Calendar sync
– Contacts
– Bookmarks
– iDisk
– Photo Gallery
– Online tools
– Application sync
– Back to my mac
– Find My iPhone
– Alternatives
– Costs?

Picks
– GeekTool – http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/
– GeekTool is a PrefPane (System Preferences module) for Panther or Tiger to show system logs, unix commands output, or images (i.e. from the internet) on your desktop (or even in front of all windows). Use File mode to monitor MacOS X activity with /var/tmp/console.log or /var/log/system.log, or Shell mode to launch custom scripts or commands like “df” to check space left on filesystems, “uptime” to monitor load of your machine… FInally, Image mode helps you monitor bandwith usage, CPU loads, memory availability of your server, via tools like MRTG or RRD.
(closest Windows equivalent – Rainmeter http://code.google.com/p/rainmeter/)
– Flogr – http://code.google.com/p/flogr/