Tech News Today 336

Tech News Today Episode 336

Tech News Today 336: We Didn't Kindle The Fire

Amazon Kindle Tablet on Fire, Netflix's sad big announcement, Windows Phone spies on you, and more.

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
• Nilay Patel
  • thisismynext.com

Top Stories

• Amazon, Fox Streaming Deal Brings 11k Movies And TV Shows To Prime Instant VideoAmazon Prime getting Fox content, adding the Bluth family to its streaming offerings

• Most – But Not All – Big Magazine Publishers Sign On For Amazon’s Tablet

• On Wednesday, Amazon Will Unveil The “Kindle Fire”, ships second week of November

• The Amazon tablet will look like a PlayBook -- because it basically is.
  • Ahead of Wednesday announcement, Amazon announced adding Fox to its instant streaming service.
  • 2,000 titles including Arrested Development, Office Space, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, and The Wonder Years.
  • Looks like this is library content. Brings Amazon Streaming to a total of 11,000 movie/TV titles
  • MG Seigler at TechCrunch reports name will be "Kindle Fire"
  • Ryan Block at GDGT reports Quanta, which designed the PlayBook, also designed the Kindle Fire and used the Playbook as a hardware template
  • MG reports no email client included. So it IS like a Playbook!
  • Allegedly Android 2.1
  • Hearst, Conde Nast and Meredith all have deals to sell digital versions of their titles on the new device, according to industry sources.
  • No Time Inc.
  • Industry sources say publishers have tailored some of their titles for the seven-inch tablet that Amazon plans to unveil on Wednesday

• NYT: Netflix strikes deal with Dreamworks, will begin streaming movies, TV specials in 2013

• Netflix-DreamWorks deal is more spin than win
  • Netflix and Dreamworks Animation strike a deal worth $30 million
  • Netflix will begin offering exclusive access to the studio's new films in 2013, with Antz, Kung Fu Panda and other titles from its library slated to become available for streaming sometime thereafter.
  • Unlike previous deal with HBO, Dreamworks can continue to sell digital copies during the period of the Netflix deal.
  • HBO let Dreamworks out of its deal early. HBO just signed a deal with Summit.

• Samsung: Second Tablet Injunction? Asks 2.4 Percent Chip Royalty From Apple
• Apple: Samsung seeks 'excessive' price for patents
• Apple reduces Samsung tablet patent claims
• Verizon takes Samsung's side in spat with Apple
• Samsung accused of designing iPad clone in Australia
  • AUSTRALIA: Judge Annabelle Bennett may grant a brief injunction over the Galaxy Tab 10.1
  • Samsung revised the Tab and Apple has reduced patent claims to 3 (from 13) (with one more following later this week)
  • US: Verizon Wireless has filed on behalf of Samsung
  • "The requested injunction of certain Samsung products will harm Verizon Wireless and U.S. consumers," Verizon said in a court filing dated September 23.
  • NETHERLANDS: Samsung suing, claiming Apple is violating technology patents concerning areas like 3G technology
  • Apple says it pays license to Intel/Infineon
  • Apple accuses Samsung of “Patent Ambush” by withholding its patent rights until its technology becomes part of a standard
  • Samsung, according to Apple, is demanding 2.4 percent of the price of each chip to be paid in royalties.
  • (according to tweets from Andreas Udo de Haes, an editor at Dutch publication Webwereld)

Discussion Stories

• Windows Phone DOES transmit location information without user consent
• Judge shreds, dismisses iPhone privacy class-action
  • Rafael Rivera, one of the programmer behind the Windows Phone jailbreaking tool ChevronWP, decided to test the Windows Phone camera app to see what information, if any, it sent to Microsoft when the phone was reset to the ‘out-of-box’ experience.
  • In response to these packets was pin-point accurate positioning information - all before I granted the Camera application access to location data.
  • The information transmitted included:
    • OS Version
    • Device Information
    • Wireless access points in the vicinity of the handset, including MAC addresses and power levels
    • Various GUID-based identifiers

• HTC Amaze 4G and Samsung Galaxy S II: specs, release date, and prices for T-Mobile’s first 42Mbps phones
• T-Mobile: 90 percent of our smartphone owners use Android, 'ball is in Apple's court for iPhone 5'
• No iPhone in Sight, T-Mobile Doubles Down on Android
  • GigaOm's "Mobilize 2011"
  • HTC Amaze 4G from - 42Mbps *8-20 in practice) 4.3 inch qHD screen (540x960), 8-mpxl camera, dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S3, NFC, 1080p video recording $260
  • Galaxy S II - 42 Mbps 4.5 -inch screen 800x480 dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S3, NFC, 1080p video recording $230
  • online on October 10th and in stores on October 12th,
  • T-Mobile's CMO Cole Brodman revealed that over 75 percent of his company's phones sold in 2011 were smartphones, with 90 percent of those powered by Android
  • Brodman also said of the iPhone "the ball is in Apple's court. [We'd] love to have the iPhone... whenever Apple lets us know."

• Internet fails to dethrone TV news (so far)
  • survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism about sources of local news
  • 74% get local news from TV (breaking news and weather, and ties with radio for traffic reports)
  • 55% word of mouth, 50% radio (traffic politics)
  • 50% newspaper (local events, crime reports, cultural events, and tax and local government news, and tie with TV as the top source for local politics. )
  • 47% Internet (Local services like restaurants and bars)
  • consumers have become very savvy about the number of news sources to use when trying to find out information about their local communities. Nearly two thirds of people surveyed used at least three primary sources for weekly local news, and 15 per cent used at least six per week.

News Fuse

• A JP Morgan report said that Apple had cut back its orders of iPad parts by 25%. People thought this meant that demand for the iPad was dropping which led to Apple's stock price to take a small hit. However some analysts think that JP Morgan got it wrong. Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray thought that JP Morgan misinterpreted Apple's supply chain information. Chris Caso, an analyst at Susquehanna, called the report misleading and argued that Apple's shift is just a scheduling adjustment and not a cut.

• Remember those rumors of a Facebook app for iPad? Lance Ulanoff over at Mashable is reporting Facebook will launch its long-awaited iPad app at Apple’s iPhone 5 launch event on Oct. 4. Former Facebook engineer Jeff Verkoeyen recently released a blog post saying that he headed up a team that built that very app - and that it had been feature complete for months. Verkoeyen has since modified that blog post to remove references to the time period and mentions of the app. He also announced that he's off to Google's mobile team.

• A blurry shot of a slide at a Google-sponsored event shows definitive proof that the Google Drive is coming! Apparently GDrive has been in existence since 2007 and has been internally tested, killed, and may just end up as a new name for Google Docs. You could upload files to Google Docs since last year. The rumors also say that you should expect some kind of Dropbox desktop syncing application.

• Three senators are less than thrilled with OnStar. The company said it would continue tracking former customers unless they opt-out. Senators Al Franken, and Chris Coons penned a letter the company that said that the move appears "to violate basic principles of privacy and fairness." Senator Chuck Schumer wrote to the FTC calling OnStar's decision "one of the most brazen invasions of privacy in recent memory."

• YouTube will be offering scheduled programs on new channels according to the Wall Street Journal. Google is currently getting all the deals done to bring fashion and sports content to YouTube. Programming could be ready in as soon as 60 days, but the service wouldn't officially launch until early 2012 with about a dozen channels.

• A new piece of software called Airshark can detect non-WiFi interference from things like Bluetooth devices, cordless phones, and microwaves using only regular WiFi cards. Airshark was developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Unlike other products like Wispy, Airshark doesn't need any extra hardware - you can just use Airshark on your laptop's stock WiFi card. Once interference is detected, the software can help fix those issues.

• Zynga's CityVille is coming to Google Plus today. Announcing the deal, Zynga said that CityVille is its largest game on Facebook and hopes to one day bring cross-platform compatibility. The question now becomes, will CityVille unseat Angry Bird from its position as the #1 game on Google Plus?

• ThisIsMyNext has details about the Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition. The tablet would have a 8.2-inch HD screen and weigh a little under a pound. What makes it the "Media Edition?" This Xoom 2 will have a subwoofer along with an integrated IR remote so you can control your home theater components. The Media Edition will also be pretty tough with a splash proof Gorilla Glass display with a magnesium and aluminum chassis.

• New Spotify users will no longer be able to join its service without a Facebook account. What if you don't want a Facebook account and still want to access Spotify? That won't be possible. However, if you were already using Spotify before its Facebook integration, you won't need to change anything. Spotify released a response to the backlash, speaking of FB connect - "Think of it as like a virtual ‘passport’, designed to make the experience smoother and easier, with one less username and password to remember."

Randomizer

• Virtual monkeys write Shakespeare

Calendar

• HTML5 developer conference takes place in San Francisco tomorrow September 27th.
• Also tomorrow the 27th, Google was founded! Except back in 1998. Happy 13th birthday eve, Google!
• Amazon's holding a press conference on Wednesday the 28th around what's now believed to be the Kindle Fire- starting at 7 am Pacific time, we'll be live here on TWiT
• Samsung’s first Windows Phone Mango handset has been elegantly named the Omnia W and it's launching in October
• AT&T Starts Throttling Wireless Users This Week - these are unlimited data plan smartphone users in the top 5 percent of the heaviest data users in a billing period. This doesn't apply to ATT customers on tiered plans, and ATT says the vast majority of unlimited plan users won't be affected.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic, will launch on December 20 in North America, and December 22 in Europe.

Email

"Hi TNT, In TNT334, you discussed concerns regarding Meg Whitman's enterprise experience. Wasn't Lou Gertsner, the person who turned around IBM in the 90s, from American Express and RJR Nabisco? He was an outsider from day number one and was proud of it until the end. In his book, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance, he points out that the fixes he did were unique to IBM because of it's culture and complexity. I think HP is close enough. Love the show.

Ainal"

"If Blockbuster streaming is only available to Dish customers, what could possibly make it any different than Dish on Demand that is currently built into every Dish set-top box? Why have two competing products?

To me, this service offers nothing of use to customers until it can be used by anybody regardless of content provider. All it is going to do is cannibalize DoD sales and eventually fail because it was a poorly-implemented (albeit potentially great) service.

Dylan Manthei Monroe, WI"

Sponsors

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• ad times: :34-:44 and 20:16-21:20

Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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