Tech News Today 195

Tech News Today Episode 195

Tech News Today 195: Those Darn Thieving Glassblowers

A 64GB iPhone 4, Verifone and Square faceoff, Kinect sets a world record, and more.

Hosts

• Sarah Lane (@sarahlane)
  • SarahLane.com
• Jason Howell
  • JasonHowell.net
• Darren Kitchen
  • hak5.org
• Shannon Morse
  • hak5.org

Topics

• 64GB iPhone 4 Hands-on & Video!
• 64GB iPhone 4 Prototype Leaked from Foxconn (Update). Engadget went to the Sin Tak shopping mall in Hong Kong, found it. seller wanted HK$13,500 (US$1,734) but this doesn't really prove whether it's a legit Foxconn prototype. serial number is invalid, but model number indicates that this device was manufactured in early 2010, which probably means Apple decided not to release a 64GB version of the iPhone 4 last year
• 64GB iPhone 4: fact or fiction?

• White iPhone 4 to go into production, shipments in April

• Verifone calls out Square for gaping hole, publishes app to demo
• VeriFone's sq-skim.com provides a sample skimming app to download and use. they've also sent notices to Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and JP Morgan Chase, which handles Square's processing.

• Kinect holds Guiness World Record as fastest selling consumer electronics device - beats all that iPad hype, iPhone 4 numbers.

Discussion Stories

• HP to put a WebOS in every PC in 2012
• HP’s Move *[http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-09/apotheker-seeks-to-save-hp-s-lost-soul-with-software-growth.html Could Give webOS Needed Scale, Help Its PCs Stand Out
• CEO Leo Apotheker promised this during a presentation to 4000 Indian staff.. .he also stressed India more as a market than a source of low-cost labor for product development, as it did under his predecessor Mark Hurd. . also that WebOS will be in addition to Microsoft Windows, in order to expand the WebOS platform and make it more attractive to developers.

• Microsoft's music/video services futures: The plot thickens with 'Ventura'.
  • instead of Zune? In addition to?
  • Will we see Ventura in future Xbox consoles, Windows Phones, and Windows PCs?

• New net rules set to make cookies crumble. The European e-Privacy directive which comes into force in the UK in late May is demanding ""explicit consent"" must be gathered from web users who are being tracked via cookies and marketed to based on their internet habits. Excluded by the directive are cookies that log what people have put in online shopping baskets.

• Study: Negligence cause of most data breaches. Malicious or criminal attacks are the most expensive and make up the fastest-growing category, with 31 percent of all breaches involving malice or crime. Negligence was the most common threat, with 41 percent of all breaches, according to the ""2010 Annual Study: U.S. Cost of a Data Breach"" which was conducted by the Ponemon Institute and based on data supplied by 51 U.S. companies across 15 different industry sectors.. sponsored by Symantec.

• Apple TV now has MLB.tv live baseball and NBA Live game streaming. Joins Roku and Boxee who've carried MLB for a couple years. Requires an Apple TV software update. NOT part of any Apple TV App Store -- it's hard-coded into Apple TV, like Netflix app is. Business Insider
• Hulu Plus on TiVo apparently being tested, live streaming to iPad apparently being considered

News Fuse

• Whiners gonna whine, and apparently Twitter's gonna listen. The infamous iPhone app's new Quick Bar has been updated following complaints that it popped up over tweets as users scrolled. A Tuesday update now pins the Quick Bar to the top of the news feed and no longer overlays tweets. It now sits above the search bar, still disappearing as you scroll down. Good game, whiners.

• The BlackBerry PlayBook is shaping up to compete with Apple's iPad in the entertainment market. RIM scored a deal with 7digital to provide an iTunes-like music experience. The deal gives the tablet access to about 13 million pay-per-track songs. The PlayBook is officially due to ship in March, though many believe April is the more likely release window.

• Remember Trumpet Winsock, the shareware program that brought TCP/IP functionality to Windows machines back in 1994-1995 and gave millions internet service? Creator Peter Tattam says he made very little money from the program as it was widely distributed but rarely paid for. A group of folks over at Hacker News convinced Peter to set up a Paypal account for donations. If you're so inclined, the account is payments@petertattam.com

• Chinese born US resident Sixing Liu was arrested by federal agents for allegedly passing on sensitive defense related data to China. US Customs and Border Protection agents seized a computer containing not-for-export sensitive data on his return from China in November. Liu had given a presentation at a technology conference in Shanghai without informing his employer.

• OpenLogic, provider of open source products and services, examined the code of 635 of top mobile applications in the Apple App Store and Android Market Place, and identified 52 applications that use the Apache license and 16 that use the GPL license, yet only 29 percent of those apps were in compliance with their respective licenses. In short, 70 percent of iPhone and Android open source apps violate licenses. Good thing big companies who hold licenses don't care about things like that.

• Google is considering an appeal following a guilty verdict by a French court after a copyright ingringement suit brought on by film producer Monodovino. The documentary makers and photographers complained that Google made their work available on its search engine or Google video, despite demands for removal. Google is no stranger to these complaints. They recently won one in Spain and lost one in Italy.

• Lenovo's 10-inch, Android LePad tablet appears to have a new stage name. Based on a few FCC filing, it's now going by the "Skylight slate" which you may remember was also the name of a Lenovo smartbook that never saw the light of day. Same specs as what was at CES but probably won't appear in the US until Honeycomb has been ported over.

• Google's released a new SDK for its open source and royalty-free VP8 video codec, promising faster encoding and improved video quality. Format hasn't changed, just the software around it. It's the second major update to the platform and it's known as Bali. According to a Google blog post, on x86 processors, Bali encodes 4.5 times faster than the initial V8 SDK release in "best" mode and 1.35 times faster than previous release. No word yet on when MPEG LA's release party will take place.

Kickers and Weird Science

• Bill Gates No Longer World's Richest Man Thanks to Philanthropic Work
  • Last year, Gates gave away $28 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, leaving him with ""only"" $49 billion.If he hadn't, his $88 billion net worth would have topped the current richest man in the world, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim and his $60 billion- Forbes annual ranking

Calendar

• Google to kill Gizmo5 VoIP on April 3
• iOS 4.3 is go!
• IE9 Launching at SXSW
• SXSW coverage Saturday and Sunday 3/12 and 13
• Track Tom

Voicemail

• Matt from Philly: Why all the Spotify love??

• Russ: Alltel iPhone

Email

"Dear TNT crew,

Two days in a row, you have shined the cheese-shaped beacon in the sky, calling for my help. I am late to answer, not because of my country's proverbial laziness, but because I was busy consulting with mimes in paved streets with cars from the 50s and accordion players in the background.

So here you go: Ep 193: How do you say "don't open attachments" in French? "N'ouvrez pas les pièces jointes!" (noo-vray pa lay pee-ayss joo-ant). Thank you in advance for conveying that important message to the world. Ep 194: Does "Disruptive Telephony" have anything to do with France?

The site owner is apparently ""Dan York"". No one with York in their name could have any amount of French in them.

Additionally, the site looks like it was designed in 1998, which is way too advanced technology for French web designers.

You're welcome.

-- Patrick Beja"

"Over the last couple of weeks, I have heard from numerous friends that they have received calls from a Microsoft Technician responding to a fault they reported by pressing the ""send to Microsoft or report to microsoft"" button after a crash?

They then took them through this supposed fault finding tour of their computers pulling up fault logs etc .. Of course the end result is ""do you have a credit card"" and are offered protection for $190 per year. I told them not to give their credit card details nor visit any site they may ask you to go to during the calls, in fact I recommend they just hang up or say their Mummy is not home. The upshot is I received a call within days of my friends from a charming Indian fellow, he explained he was a Microsoft Technician and had reports from my windows os that there were issues, I explained to him that could be right, the biggest issue is I use Mac OS, immediately the phone was disconnected. These people know your name and seem to be using a database from somewhere.

Great show guy's, I teach computing to Adult Learning here in Aldinga Beach South Australia and myself and our clients listen as often as we can.

Good work.

James"

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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