Tech News Today 249

Tech News Today
Episode 249


"The Nth Estate"Hosts: Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Iyaz Akhtar and Jason Howell Recorded: May 24, 2011 Published: May 24, 2011 Duration: 44:42 Transcript Previous episode – Next episode

Tech News Today 249: The Nth Estate

Google's mobile wallet, Sarkozy chides Internet, Windows Phone 7... POINT ONE!!! and more.

Hosts

Discussion Stories

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's e-G8 internet warning
Sarkozy questions 'neutral' net at e-G8 forum
Internet Needs Government Role to Avoid ‘Anarchy,’ France’s Sarkozy Says
Look Out, Pearson; Murdoch Is Serious About Online Education
France attempts to "civilize" the Internet; Internet fights back
- First e-G8 forum convened today to discuss the impact of the internet
- Zuckerberg, Jimmy Wales, Eric Schmidt, Rupert Murdoch all speaking
- France has the 3 strikes law for copyright infringement (alleged?)
- Jeff Jarvis challenged President Sakozy to sign an oath to "do no harm" to the internet.
- "Transcript of video: "The universe that you represent is not a parallel one free of the rule of law, free of morals, and more generally of the fundamental principles that govern social life in democratic countries. From the moment that the internet becomes a part of the lives of the majority of people it would be a contradiction to keep governments away from this immense forum. Nobody can or may forget that governments are in our democracies the legitimate representatives of the general will."
- "To forget this is to risk democratic chaos and hence anarchy.” (next line of speech from Bloomberg article)
- "I was invited to the e-G8 and declined," said author and activist Cory Doctorow recently. "I believe it's a whitewash, an attempt to get people who care about the Internet to lend credibility to regimes that are in all-out war with the free, open 'Net. On the other hand, I now have a dandy handwriting sample from Sarkozy should I ever need to establish a graphological baseline for narcissistic sociopathy."

Apple Risks IPad Production Loss of 500,000 After Blast
- Last Friday an explosion in a Foxconn factory in Chengdu killed three and injured at least 15. On the business side, the shut down of the factory may impact iPad 2 production. IHS Isuppli believes that Apple will lose half a million iPad 2s due to the blast. This will put greater pressure on Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen to make up for the deficit.
Foxconn closing polishing workshops for inspections
Foxconn Blast Could Cost Apple a Half Million iPads
- IHS iSuppli says may face a production loss of 500,000 iPad 2 tablets
- The total could be even greater if the suspension of operations at the facility lasts longer than a month
- Shaw Wu (Sterne Age) disagrees and says concerns are “overdone” and that production at other facilities is being ramped up to make up for the shortfalls.
- Hon Hai, the parent corporation of Foxconn, has announced the closure of all their polishing workshops pending inspections

Report: Twitter buys TweetDeck for $40 million
Twitter Adds A New Feature, Another Blindside for Third Party Developers? [email notification when RT'ed]
Twitter to Leave Empty CTO Post Unfilled
- CNN reports purchase agreement signed between TWeetDeck and Twitter
- $40 million cash and stock
- Twitter has just announced that it will begin sending email notifications to users when they're retweeted by someone they follow or when someone favorites one of their tweets.
- CTO position unfilled, could someone from TWeetDeck take the job?

80% of Mobile Video Views Happen on Apple Devices http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2011/05/23/23gigaom-80-of-mobile-video-views-happen-on-apple-devices-85930.html "- report by video monetization startup FreeWheel. ""Q1 2011 Video Monetization Report"" - 80% of mobile video views happen on Apple iOS devices. The iPhone and iPod touch each account for about 30 percent of all video views that happen on mobile devices, with the remaining 20 percent being attributed to Android - iPad accounts for 20% - mobile video viewing accounts for just one percent of all online video views - Mobile views peaked during Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, and also during the March Madness tournament " "The data in this report comprises 10 billion video views and 5.5 billion video ad views in Q1 2011 "

News Fuse

The Russians have a way to make you talk - sort of. Russian forensics firm Elcomsoft has figured out a way to break the 256-bit encryption of Apple's iOS, but it requires physical access to the iOS device. Encrypted software backups on your computers are not subject to this crack. So the next time someone wants to borrow your iPhone, you might want to think twice.

Apple's building up its patent stockpile. The company picked up 200 patents and pending patents from Freescale. What do the patents cover? Details are almost nonexistent, but Ars Technica thinks the patents are related to wireless communication hardware technology.

Since so many people visit YouTube daily, YouTube has come up with another way to make money. The video site will sell the first preroll ad that viewers see per day to advertisers. YouTube is calling this "First Watch" and has already tested it with Virgin Mobile and Hotels.com. According to Baljeet Singh, senior product manager for video monetization at YouTube, millions of people are watching the First Watch ads with a 1% click-through rate - in the industry, that's a high rate (even though it sounds tiny).

Way back in 2008, the EU slapped Microsoft with a $1.3 billion fine for failing to comply with a European Commission order. Well, Microsoft is like an elephant - it's big, moves sort of slowly, but never forgets. The company has told an EU court today that the antitrust fine was excessive and "most undeserved"! You tell 'em, Microsoft!

Cisco is on the defensive after being sued by a group from the Falun Gong spiritual movement. The group claims that Cisco helped the Chinese government create and maintain "Golden Shield," otherwise known as the Great Firewall of China. The Falun Gong movement is banned by the Chinese government. Cisco says it doesn't operate networks in China and does not customize products to "facilitate censorship or repression."

Amazon's 99 cent Lady Gaga album had some unintended side effects. Apparently, a huge amount of demand overloaded Amazon's servers. This led Amazon to tweet "We're currently experiencing very high volume. If you order today, you will get the full @ladygaga album for $.99. Thanks for your patience." Today's deal is on Jay-Z's "Reasonable Doubt" for $3.99. Good luck, Amazon

Want to know how ISPs are messing with your traffic.? ShaperProbe, a research tool from a team at Georgia Tech detects "traffic shaping" and determines who does it and how it's done. They've published a paper on their findings, which indicate that cable ISPs do much more "shaping" than telcos, with Comcast and Cox being the most aggressive, even slowing down uploads. AT&T and Verizon do not traffic shape in either direction.

is making a new Ghost Recon game free-to-play called "Ghost Recon Online." To make money, because companies like to do that, the game will have plenty of microtransactions. You won't be able to play the game until the beta hits in a few months, but you can apply for the beta at Ubisoft's site by either signing up for a UPlay account or just forking over your email address.

Sony Hack of the day

Calendar

Email

"Hi TNT crew,

I just like to clear up something about foxconn suicides. Foxconn has about 920,000 , or almost a million employees.

In 2010, foxconn had 14 suicidal death out of 920000. In comparison, the US in 2007 has 11.3 suicidal death per 100000 people, or about 100 people when translated to the foxconn size.

Not to say that suicide is not a terrible thing, I'm just saying that foxconn's suicide controversy is a little bit overhyped by the media

Love the show,

Ultimatebuster"

"I've been using Skype for Asterisk (Digium's native Skype client for their PBX software) since it was in beta 2 years ago. Today, I received an email from Digium stating that Skype (read: Microsoft) has decided to end the agreement that made the integration possible, and Digium will stop selling the module on July 26th. Support for us existing users will be there for the next 2 years, with Skype's option to renew at that time, but I'll believe that when I see it. - Brian Smith"

Production Information

Edited by: Jeff
Notes:

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Tech News Today 249

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