Tech News Today 250

Tech News Today Episode 250

Tech News Today 250: A Whole Bunch Of Hoo-nanny

$100,000 to drop out of school, OSX gets second malware variant, Internet taxes could get simpler/higher, and more.

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@sarahlane)
  • SarahLane.com
• Jason Howell (@raygun01)
  • JasonHowell.net
• Iyaz Akhtar
  • thisoldnerd.finitecomedy.com

Top Stories

• Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify
• Exclusive: Zynga About to File for IPO
  • Sources close to the deal told Forbes that Facebook will partner with Spotify to introduce a music streaming service that could launch in as little as 2 weeks.
  • FB users will see a Spotify icon on the left of the newsfeed
  • Would let FB users listen to music at the same time as their friends
  • Only in countries where Spotify already has a presence - so not the US
  • FB/Spotify is a partnership, no money involved
  • Zynga, the biggest provider of games on Facebook, is now the second-most valuable U.S. game developer, with a market capitalization of $8.2 billion on the SharesPost Inc. private- company exchange.
  • LinkedIn valued by SharesPost at $3B, turned out to be nearly $9B IRL

• Music, TV Are Next Social Frontiers: Zuckerberg
• Zuckerberg says not opening Facebook to under-13s
  • Speaking at eG8
  • said music and TV among the next products to become social through Facebook
  • Said he has been talking with Netflix about how to employ social tools
  • Facebook isn’t working on a service that would let children under 13, who are currently barred from the site, open accounts.
  • "Listening to music is something people do with their friends,” he said. “Movies, TV, news, books -- those types of things are things I think people just naturally do with their friends. I hope we can play a part in enabling those new companies to get built, and companies that are out there producing this great content to become more social.”

• Copyfight: EFF co-founder enters e-G8 "lion's den," rips into lions
  • EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow participated in a panel at eG8 on intellectual property with the heads of 20th Century Fox, Universal Music France, Bertelsmann, and a French publisher
    • "I may be one of very few people in this room who actually makes his living personally by creating what these gentlemen are pleased to call intellectual property. I don't regard my expression as a form of property. Property is something that can be taken from me. If I don't have it, somebody else does. Expression is not like that. The notion that expression is like that is entirely a consequence of taking a system of expression and transporting it around, which was necessary before there was the Internet, which has the capacity to do this infinitely at almost no cost."
    • "Trying to optimize towards scarcity, as you are by all of your methods, is not going to be in the benefit of creation, I promise you," he said. "It's not IP enforcement that gets you guys properly paid." In his view, payment comes from building a product that people actually want to buy—and the movie industry's repeated record box office takes in recent years show that people have no problem coughing up the cash for something of value.
    • "I am not against being compensated for what you do," concluded Barlow.
  • Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterand took Barlow to task for his dramatic statements. "I do not share this apocalyptic vision of some dictatorship that will be creeping back through the Internet into our lives to control our thoughts and the way in which we function," he said. Some controls on the Internet are eminently reasonable—we need "economic solutions to economic problems."
    • "If you're spending $5 billion on new artists, we're not getting our money's worth," Barlow cracked, and he reframed his argument in economic terms of scarcity and abundance.

Discussion Stories

• Apple admits scareware problem, at last
• Scam targets Apple App Store customers
• Apple will patch OS X to kill Mac Defender virus
• Apple acknowledges Mac Defender malware, promises software update
• New Mac Defender malware variant drops admin password requirement
  • Apple posted online support document Tuesday evening.
  • Instruct how to identify the program and get rid of it.
  • Update will come soon to hunt out and remove Mac Defender
  • Mac Guard, is making the rounds via SEO poisoning online
  • "Since any user can install software in the Applications folder, a password is not needed," - Intego blog
  • This package installs an application—the downloader—named avRunner, which then launches automatically. At the same time, the installation package deletes itself from the user’s Mac, so no traces of the original installer are left behind."--the company advises users to turn off "Open 'safe' files after downloading" in their Safari preferences

• Yahoo execs grilled on Alibaba spinoff disclosure
• Yahoo says makes headway in Alibaba talks
• Sources: Yahoo Spurned New Offer By Jack Ma For Part of Alibaba Stake
  • During Yahoo's Investor day, Carol Bartz, Jerry Yang and CFO Tim Morse defended themselves against questions over Alibaba's divesture of Alipay for 45 minutes.
  • Yahoo owns 43% of Alibaba. Yahoo is working with Softbank and Alibaba to make sure they get ""appropriate compensation"" for Alipay.
  • Alibaba said the transfer was done in order to meet Chinese regulations regarding foreign ownership of online payment companies.
  • There remains some dispute over when Yahoo learned of the Alipay sale. Alibaba has said its board, which includes Yang, was informed of the deal nearly two years ago.

• How will states tax Internet downloads? Congress may decide

• Digital downloads and taxation, HR 1860:
  • Legislation: "No State or local jurisdiction shall impose multiple or discriminatory taxes on or with respect to the sale of digital goods or digital services." **A "multiple tax" is defined as one in which that State or locality "gives no credit with respect to a tax that was previously paid on or with respect to the sale or use of such digital good or digital service to another State or local jurisdiction."-----This legislation is strongly supported by the Download Fairness Coalition, The Coalition includes Apple, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Verizon, and, most notably, Amazon.
  • Example:
    • "Imagine you are sitting in Dulles airport in Virginia, waiting for a flight back to Florida," Dennis Ross (R-FL) began in his opening remarks. "You download a music file from Apple, which is headquartered in California. The music is sent to you via a server in Oklahoma."
    • Without a "clear national rule," he warned at the hearing, "all four states may attempt to tax the transaction."

• Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses
  • PayPal founder, Facebook Investor Paul Thiel
  • The Thiel Fellowship: 20 under 20 has selected 20 students between 14 and 20
  • Each get $100,000 to drop out of school and start a business
  • The first group was announced today.

News Fuse

• This morning the Xbox Live Marketplace was experiencing outages. Microsoft says the cause is "an internal operational error." Users had issues with browsing indie games on the 360 or Xbox.com and browsing games for Windows, but you could still play online. Microsoft seems to have made progress, but there is still a Service Alert listed at the Xbox Live site. Conspiracy theorists everywhere are probably blaming bored Sony hackers.

• Amazon responded to B&N's new Simple Touch Reader by offering a 3G Kindle for $164. That's price drop is subsidized since you'll get served ads with that cheaper Kindle. Kindle battery life also doubled last night. Amazon recalculated its battery life numbers using Barnes & Nobles' method (1/2 hour of reading per day) and guess what? Kindle battery life is now 2 months as long as wireless is turned off.
  • [Kindle battery life doubles overnight http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-20066005-82.html]

• Twitter says if it has to hand over data about its users, it will alert its users first. This statement stems from tweets about a UK celebrity controversy covered by a super-injunction. A super-injunction stops the press from reporting about the controversy and the existence of the super-injunction is also unreportable. Tony Wang, general manager of Twitter's European operations says "Platforms should have responsibility not to defend the user, but to protect that user's right to defend him or herself.

• Apparently, Steve Ballmer doesn't speak for Microsoft officially. Recently, Ballmer mentioned that the next version of Windows will be called Windows 8 and the company is looking forward to new Windows systems next year. A spokesman for the company said, "It appears there was a misstatement. … To date, we have yet to formally announce any timing or naming for the next version of Windows."

• Minecraft is coming to Android and iOS, but Sony Ericson's Xperia Play will get it first. The game will be customized for the Play's controller, but launch date and pricing are still unknown. Perhaps the Minecraft devs are waiting for a giant gaming event to make an announcement. Conveniently, there is a gigantic gaming event around the corner in E3.

• Acer's share of the PC market dropped 20.4% in the first quarter of this year compared to Q1 of 2010. IHS iSuppli thinks that the iPad and other tablets are responsible for gobbling up Acer's marketshare since Acer heavily relied on netbooks. An NPD report stated that the majority of iPad purchasers weren't even in the market for a PC, but a new Retrevo survey says that the iPad took away 1 out of every 3 netbook sales. So maybe iSuppli is right.

• Game rental company Gamefly has acquired Direct2Drive, which offers PC games via direct download (it's a Steam competitor). Gamefly already sent its customers games via snail mail. Its acquisition of Direct2Drive may give Gamefly a one-two punch similar to Netflix. Thanks to "themoke" for the tip.

• Virtualization company BlueStacks wants to bring Android apps to Windows. Now technically, you could already run Android apps on Windows if you ran a virtual machine, but BlueStacks is gunning for a more seamless experience. Its dream may come true because the company has raised some $7.6 million in funding. Android apps on Windows? What's next? Windows Phone 7 apps on Windows too?

Randomizer by Josh Dill

• Born to be Viral: Transformer turns into a helicopter

Calendar

• Yawn, Tweetdeck deal with Twitter closed last night for 40-50 million as expected.
• Opera Mini 6 released for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch
• It's International Towel Day (First celebrated in 2001, two weeks after the death of Douglas Adams)
• 50 years since Kennedy's "moon shot" speech
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will ship with Android 3.1 on board, said to be 'a few days away'
• LG Revolution finally dated, ships tomorrow May 26 with Netflix for Android preinstalled
• New laws on websites and Cookies come into effect in the EU May 26th, this relates to how businesses relay to people how they use cookies, and how they explain how to ‘opt out’ if there's an objection
• Gingerbread finally coming to Droid X Friday
• Sprint, Motorola holding event on June 9th, but for what?
• AT&T bringing LTE to five cities this summer: Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and San Antonio

Email

"Hey TNT Team!

I was listening to your show last night and heard how excited you were about how Windows Phone 7 will show you your Email, SMS, and other messages in a single inbox. I would be remiss as a BlackBerry fanatic if I didn't mention that all BlackBerries made in the past few years will show your emails, SMS, facebook notifications, twitter messages, and anything else that app developers want to include in your inbox. RIM publishes an global inbox API that lets developers add custom notifications into your inbox, but also allows users to determine what applications can and cannot fill your inbox if you don't want to see them. Just had to throw that out there.

Love the show!

--Drew"

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Production Information

• Edited by: jason
• Notes:

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