Tech News Today 332

Tech News Today Episode 332

Tech News Today 332: Smells Like Tegra

Begun social networking wars have, G+ opens, Facebook fires back, NVidia says forget social networking, FIVE CORES!

Submit and vote on story coverage at technewstoday.reddit.com

Hosts

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

Top Stories

• Google+ Opens To Everyone, Adds Search, Expands Hangouts

• Google+ rolls out Hangouts for mobile phones, search, APIs, and opens the service to everyone
• Google+: 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99... 100. No invitation for Google Plus necessary
  • Google+ moves to beta, open to anyone
  • Also added search, Hangouts on the phone app for Android 2.3
  • Broadcast hangouts that allow others to watch
  • Screensharing, sketchpads, and Docs, can also name hangouts
  • Very first On Air hangout with will.i.am on Wednesday night, September 21.
  • Google is also starting to open up APIs to third-party developers.

• HTC Rhyme: Verizon’s female-targeted Android device with a bizarre charm indicator coming September 29th for $199.99
• HTC Rhyme official: 3G, 3.7-inch display, single-core CPU, headed to Verizon for $199 on contract
• HTC Rhyme with Sense 3.5 hands-on (video)
  • HTC Bliss now known as HTC Rhyme
  • 3.7-inch WVGA Super LCD display, 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 (MSM8655) CPU, 768MB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear camera, and a VGA front-facing shooter.
  • Plum Colored! comes with wireless dashboard speaker, armband, tangle-free headphones, a matching LED-infused charm, which plugs into the phone’s 3.5mm headphone jack and lights up when you receive a call or text message.
  • Comes to Verizon September 29th for $199.99. (Pre-orders start on the 22nd.) Silver version comes to Europe and Asia in October. Europe may get a sand-colred one called "Hourglass"

• NVIDIA Kal-El has fifth core, used for low-power computing
• NVIDIA releases Kal-El white papers, announces a fifth 'Companion' core for less demanding tasks
• Nvidia’s Quad-Core Kal-El Packing a Secret Fifth Core
  • Sure we wanted quad-core devices from Nvidia, but we can settle for whitepapers, right? Especially if they promise the magical FIFTH CORE!
  • The FIFTH CORE is a lower-frequency unit that functions independently of the four “power” cores (500 MHz)
  • it comes on when the processing power of the four central cores isn’t required, saving on power.
  • The 4 main cores can also be switched on or off individually.
  • Nvidia still promising to have Kal-el by the end of the year.

Discussion Stories

• Facebook Turns Newsfeed Into a Social Magazine to Highlight Big Pictures and Top Stories

• Interesting News, Any Time You Visit

• Wall Street Journal Unveils Facebook Edition, WSJ Social
  • Starting today, rolling out changes to newsfeed that make it more like a magazine
  • Instead of the “top news” and “most recent” toggle options, users will see a newsfeed with the most important items since they last visited
  • Alternate view scrolls down a sidebar and shows a live feed of nearly every action a users’ friends are taking across the site, including likes, statuses and comments.
  • Photo sizes double
  • On a sidenote, WSJ launched a Facebook edition. "WSJ Social" Free for the first month, afterwrads, subscriber content will only be available with subscription

• Google offers Ice Cream Sandwich guidance to Android app devs

• App developers must play nice with Ice Cream Sandwich if they want a bite

• Google tells developers how to prep for Ice Cream Sandwich
  • Google published technical guidance to help devs prepare for ICS
  • Shows how things like navbar will transition from small screen to big screen
  • Devs who made tablet-only apps w/o adhering to API may have broken apps on ICS phones
  • Google suggests changing the application manifest file to block the application from being installed on devices with small screens.
  • Devs who wish to recah pre-ICS customers will not be able to take advantage of the interface scaling
  • Google has already partially addressed this issue by backporting the Fragments framework and making it available as a static library for older versions of the operating system.

• Apple Final Cut Pro X update: answering concerns of "vocal customers"
  • Apple updated Final Cut Pro X and tried to sway critics back to loving the product. Adobe has seemed to benefit greatly with disappointment int he new FCP.
  • The update grants all users a free demo version of the software to try it out for 30 days.
  • Xsan and rich XML (import and export)
  • Media Stems, allowing users to export media elements into separate files for things like effects, dialogue, and so on.
  • Roles, which lets users tag tracks based on the stems they plan to export

News Fuse

• Researchers have discovered a problem in SSL that allows attackers to silently decrypt data that's passing between a webserver and an end-user browser." Full disclosure is scheduled for Friday September 23rd at the Ekoparty conference. The weakness only affects SSL 2.0 and TLS 1.0; however, many web servers still accept SSL 2.0, and TLS 1.1 The practicality of the attack remains to be seen.

• HP has confirmed that it is currently laying off a number of people in its webOS General Business Unit, which was once called "Palm." AllThingsD reports that as many as 525 employees will be let go. Unless you've been under a rock, you probably already know that this is related to HP deciding to no longer produce webOS hardware.

• Engadget reports commericals teasing a new "perosnalized Wireless network" launching September 26 are from Cellular South a company that recently purchased several southern cell shops. Cellular South has 870,000 has customers in Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida and also made news today by filing a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia stating the proposed AT&T - T-Mobile merger would violate the Clayton Antitrust act.

• After being hacked, certificate authority DigiNotar has declared bankruptcy in the Netherlands. Vasco Data, DigiNotar's parent company, announced the news, but made clear to investors that Vasco's core business would continue even though DigiNotar will be liquidated.

• Google and Visa have struck a deal where Google will license Visa's NFC technology called payWave. That means that Google Wallet users will be able to link their Visa credit or debit cards. Google Wallet launched yesterday with support for only MasterCard's PayPass. Perhaps by the time Google Wallet is available everywhere, Google will have deals with every credit card company.

• Samsung news - we promise, it's not a lawsuit - Samsung will be make its Bada OS an open source platform. The news was reported by the Wall Street Journal citing the ever-talkative "person familiar with the situation." Considering the legal trouble many companies have had with Android, it may be a smart move for Samsung to bolster its own operating system.

• Instagrammers rejoice - Instagram 2.0 has just been released. It has new filters, a new UI, but the big news is larger images are supported. Instagram used to post photos at a measly 612 x 612. With 2.0, images can be as large as 1936 x 1936 on the iPhone 4. It's only available for iOS 4.2.1 and there's still no Android version.

• Way back in April, Amazon told the world that the Kindle would be able to borrow books from libraries in the United States. It's finally live… in beta… in Seattle. OverDrive will be powering the actual lending process which cold have been easier if Amazon was using the ePub format instead of its own AZW format.

• Logitech is bringing its Harmony universal remote control knowhow to iOS and Android. The free Harmony app will work in conjunction with Logitech's $100 Harmony Link device which turns your Wi-Fi input into IR commands for your home theater components. The app will have access to television guide data thanks to a partnership with Rovi. The Harmony Link won't ship until October, but Logitech is taking preorders now.

Randomizer

• Netflix Is Not Negotiating with Jason "@Qwikster" Castillo
  • According to Steve Swasey, VP of Netflix corporate communications, the company isn't thinking about marketing for Qwikster just yet.
• http://twitter.com/#!/sm/status/115962129189834752

Calendar

• Battlefield 3 open beta begins on September 29. If you've preordered the game via Origin, or if you own the Tier 1 edition of Medal of Honor, you'll be e-mailed with instructions telling you how to access the beta 2 days early, on September 27. On the PlayStation 3, the beta will also appear on September 27. The beta will end on October 10.

• AT&T, T-Mobile Merger Hearing Set for 2 pm Wednesday, September 21 in Washington DC, where all parties "shall be prepared to discuss the prospects for settlement," according to the order. This is the next step in the DOJ suing to block the merger. Also tomorrow September 21st, the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights will hold antitrust-related hearings on Google, titled “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?” where Eric Schmidt will testify on Google's behalf.

• reminder that our Facebook F8 coverage will be live on Thursday at 10 am Pacific

Email

"Tom,

I have a theory about why Microsoft doesn't want people to side load apps into the Metro system and it's not because of security. As you said, the apps are html5 based and capable of being run in a browser and that's the exact thing that they don't want you to do. Apps have and always will be used by OS developers as a way to sell their OS and/or hardware. My theory is that Microsoft wants you to only buy metro apps through their app store so that your running them on a Windows machine. If you had the ability to side load apps, then with the apps being written in html5, it would be easy to run them on any other mobile OS platform. If they did want this, then they'd just start a web app store so that anyone could use these apps. But they want you to use Windows 8, and therefore will be doing their best to make sure that their apps can only be run on Windows 8. I have no inside information, this is just a theory.

Daily podcast listener,

- Mark"

"Hello TNT Crew, love the show, go Sarah go:

I was on my way to work on set of a 3D feature film shooting here in Toronto when I see the new generation of TTC subway trains pulling into the station. So of course I pull out the best camera I have on me, the T Mobile G-Slate in this case and start rolling 3D video of my super quite ride north on the Yonge Street line with a stop at Wellsey station. I think this is an avenue where 3D could break though, when people catch amazing images and they happen to be in 3D people crane their necks and say ""what's that 3D stuff you got over there? Cool."" And that is how much of the Joe public will be introduced to 3D in their lives. As more of these cameras out there are 3D capable, people will be shooting even more watchable home-made 3D.

What does TNT think?

Cheers! (Liquid Friday is every day)

Name: see brick #83 Greg"

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jeff
• Notes:

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