Tech News Today 121

Tech News Today Episode 121

Tech News Today 121: Wanna Play Airport, Billy?

MySpace's Apple moment, Gov't wants to kill your cell phone, Does Orb win the set-top box war?

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Kirsten Sanford (@drkiki)
  • KirstenSanford.com
• Jason Howell
  • JasonHowell.net
• Nate Lanxon
  • wired.co.uk

Top Stories

• MySpace 'Mashup' adds Facebook Connect
• -or "Hell Freezes Over As MySpace Fully Surrenders To Facebook"

• Swedes detain Wikileaks founder in absentia

• Exclusive: Woz misquoted! 'Almost every app that I have is better on the iPhone'
• -Steve Wozniak: Android will be the dominant smartphone platform

Other Stories

• P2P lawyers face discipline for demanding cash from innocents

• OnLive unveils a $99 gaming console [1]

• Orb Wants To Bring All of Hulu to the TV [2]

• US May Disable All Car Phones, Says Trans. Secretary

News Fuse

• The US Air Force and US Army troops have been warned to be careful using sites like Facebook on GPS-enabled devices like BlackBerry. New location services like Facebook Places could inadvertently reveal troop locations to the enemy. The warning, posted on an internal website and sent to commanders, concerns new technology allowing users to pinpoint their location on the map.

• Dell is doing OK in these troubled times. The company reported earnings that killed the Street’s expectations, though sales fell a bit short of them. The PC maker reported a profit of 45 cents a share on revenue of $15.4 billion. Analysts had expected it to report 32 cents per share on $15.7 billion. Insert you're own Dude you're getting joke here.

• Joan Jett may not give a damn about her bad reputation, but Twitter does. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said the company calculates a reputation score for every user, which the company uses internally as part of its Who to Follow formula. That score may eventually become part of Twitter's public-facing features.

• Your camera may soon come with a SIM card. The GSM Association, said a task force of members including AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, China Mobile, and Deutsche Telekom has begun working on adapting SIM cards so they can be embedded in many more devices than phones. Carrier plans will have to get a lot more flexible if they expect people to have multiple devices on a data plan.

• Who do you believe? India? or RIM? A senior official from India's Home Ministry said that an agreement is near that would give the Indian government access to the encrypted data on RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise Service. RIM officially calls that staement "inaccurate" and "misleading." But not wrong RIM? RIM firmly states they have not and will not change current security policies for India or anyone.

• Right this instant, somewhere, someone is enjoying Sex.com. Because Escom has finally sold the domain for $13m through a deal brokered by Sedo, following an order from bankruptcy court. Escom bought Sex.com in 2006 for $12m plus $2m in equity, and had hoped it could get $20m from a buyer. They found themselves unsatisfied I'm afraid.

• Want to use your new Windows Phone as a USB hard drive? The fine folks at MobileTechWorld.com have found you can turn your Windows Phone into a mountable drive by modifying just three entries in the registry of your Windows desktop PC. Once done, you'll be able to drag and drop files from the phone to that computer and any other Windows machine with the modified registry.

• I just got back from the LA Auto show where Toyota launched an all-electric version of its latest RAV4. And this one is apparently 'powered by Tesla.' The RAV4 EV is on the fast track to production, with the combined forces of Toyota's Technical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and a team from Tesla Motors. The partnership will build 35 'Phase Zero' test versions of the latest RAV4 EV next year, with production launch expected in 2012. Unfortunately, even with the cool-factor of the Tesla, it's still a RAV4.

Kickers and Weird Science

• Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect To See World

Calendar

• Kin ONEm and Kin TWOm back at Verizon

• Palm Pre 2 available unlocked from HP for $450, ships within 24 hours

• Dell Inspiron Duo finally official, can be yours the first week of December for $549

• Changes to the Android Marketplace begin to rollout this evening ahead of Gingerbread.

• Help pick the best moments of TWiT and TNT

Voicemail

• Justin in California: Think of the kids.

Email

"Hey TNT Crew,

Just listened to episode 120. In discussing the leaked 36 minutes of Harry Potter, you mentioned a similar leaking of Tron Legacy. A few weeks ago, there was something called Tron Night, where they screened a 20-minute preview of the film. Not sure if there was a similar extended preview of Harry Potter, but that could be one explanation.

Love the show. Haven't missed an episode yet.

Paolo DLR"

"Hey TNT crew,

I know this isn't really a current topic, but a strange phenomenon has appeared here in South-Africa and I couldn't help but wonder if this is just a local thing:

The 3 carriers here have been pushing Blackberries very aggressively. Especially the lower end Curve models. One can get a Curve on contract now for relatively cheap including 'free' data on the BIS access point. Because mobile data is so expensive, this is a big lure. Also because of 'free' email and BBM, it has become very popular with the female population. As anecdotal evidence, my wife recently got one, and all her friends at work recently upgraded their contracts to get BB's as well. They continue to communicate after hours on BBM (on a social level), something they really only did via Facebook recently. Also all of them are now a LOT more active on Facebook and Twitter via mobile.

Now this is counter to the notion that Blackberries are business phones which are only used by business men. What's also interesting is that all these friends of my wife upgraded from Nokia and Samusing/LG feature phones. Does this mean that instead of taking on the smartphone market, that Blackberry is taking over the feature phone space? Could it be that Blackberry is starting to eat Nokia's lunch?

Love the show and all that Rinus Brand (rinbrand in the chatroom) Cape Town South-Afri"

Sponsors

GE

• Ecomagination.com/challenge
• GE #4
• ad times: :49-1:02 and 27:03-28:16

Ford

• Drive One #3
• ad times: :35-:49 and 10:45-12:16

Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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