Tech News Today 358

Tech News Today Episode 358

Tech News Today 358: Silicone Glacier

Were Nokia Windows Phones worth the wait? RIM pleads reliability, Apple and Facebook make power plays, 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
• Simon Dingle
  • simondingle.com

Top Stories

• Nokia Hopes Services, Design Will Make Its First Windows Phones Stand Out
• Nokia Lumia 800 pictures, video, and hands-on preview
• Nokia Lumia 800′s retail packaging turns up at Nokia World
• Nokia Lumia 800 hits UK carriers this November, Xbox 360 used as bait
• Nokia Lumia 710 announced running Windows Phone
• Why no front-facing camera on first Windows Phones from Nokia?
• Nokia’s new Windows Phones not coming to US until ‘early 2012,’ promised LTE and CDMA
  • Sea Ray became official as the Nokia Lumia 800 for €420 ($580) unsubsidized
  • single-core 1.4GHz Snapdragon, 16GB internal, 800 x 480 3.7-inch AMOLED screen, Zeiss lens (camera button), Mango, quad-band GSM 14.4 Mbps HSDPA, 8 mpxl cam
  • Free 25GB SkyDrive, NokiaDrive tbt nav, Mix Radio (no sub or login), ESPN sports hub
  • Pre-order now shipment in November to UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands (Orange offering free Xbox 360 with handset upgrade)
  • "portfolio of products coming" US early 2012, China first half 2012 -- CDMA and LTE on the way
  • Nokia Lumia 710 €270 (about $375) unsubsidized
  • diff from 800 in 8GB internal, 5mpxl camera
  • Swappable rear colors.
  • Asia first with Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan to follow.
  • Mary Jo Foley asked why no front-facing camera? The answer, according to at least some Nokia representatives with whom I spoke at the show, is there just wasn’t enough time to add it to the handsets

• Nokia Asha family of colorful low-end phones announced: 200, 201, 300, and 303 (hands-on video)
• Nokia unveils Purity HD Stereo Headset with a little help from Monster
• Nokia Kinetic Display: Phones of tomorrow will be bendy
• Nokia's kinetic future: flexible screens and a twisted interface (video)

• Live from Nokia World 2011: First look at Kinectimals for Windows Phone
  • New Series 40 line Asha 200, 201, 300, 303
  • 200 easyswap SIMs, ship eoy 201 ship Q1 both: loud speakers€60 ($85) - most inexpensive Nokia has ever made
  • 300 - candybar, numeric keypad 1 GHz, €85 ($120) Q4, 303 - QWERTY €115 (about $160) eoy both: HSPA touchscreens
  • ALL: made of polycarbonate and come with a Nokia Browser that compresses data, angry birds
  • Purity HD Stereo Headset by Monster, headphones and earbuds
  • Demo-ing Kinectimals game on WinPho that can go between phone and xbox
  • “Nokia Kinetic Device” - Bending forward with two hands zooms out of whatever is on screen for example, while twisting the top left hand corner away from you allows you to click to the next menu item.

• RIM: We have 'an unprecedented track record of reliability'
• RIM delays PlayBook update, Messenger to come later
  • BGR had this as an exclusive yesterday, RIM made it official.
  • RIM confirms PlayBook OS 2.0 delayed until February, still no BBM in sight

• RIM unveils cloud service for Microsoft Office 365 users
  • U.K. and Ireland managing director Stephen Bates told Mobile News Online in an interview "We have an unprecedented track record of reliability," Estimated U.K. BlackBerry service uptime was at 99.97 percent over the past 18 months.
  • Late yesterday RIM confirmed rumor that PlayBook OS 2.o until February. meaning no email app until then either.
  • "As much as we'd love to have it in your hands today, we've made the difficult decision to wait to launch BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers and end-users," wrote David Smith, a senior vice-president for the PlayBook.
  • Will not incorporate BBM,
  • Beta will roll out to Early Adopter Program "shortly"

Discussion Stories

• Sprint announces Q3 earnings: net subs reach five year high, net losses at $300 million
• Sprint's iPhone: Early pain, long-term gain?
• Sprint Posts Loss, But Adds New Customers Ahead of Landing iPhone
• Clearwire Soars; Sprint Discloses Tentative Deal On LTE
  • Operating revenues $8.3 billion (about two percent higher than Q3 2010) net losses of $301 million
  • new wireless net subscribers reached a five year high, with 1.3 million customers hopping onboard.(lost about 44,000 net postpaid )
  • expects more loyalty and bigger profits from customers who choose the iPhone. iPhone was best launch ever for any device on Sprint.
  • Hesse: lifetime value for the iPhone customer to be at least 50%, yes, at least 50% greater than a typical smartphone use
  • In addition to LightSquared will work with Clearwire on LTE rollout. Wholesale deal to be announced soon.

• Apple Granted Patent For Slide To Unlock
• the patent itself
• Apple Awarded Second Slide-to-Unlock Patent, Targeting HTC?
  • Points out a MS patent which actually could be bigger trouble IMO"
• MS Patent Application
  • approved Apple's patent on the slide to unlock gesture used on iOS devices. Interestingly, this patent was earlier dismissed in Europe due to prior art.
  • Patent number 8,046,721 describes a gesture for unlocking a device on a touch screen that starts with contact on a touch-sensitive display at a predefined location, and then "continuously moving the unlock image on the touch-sensitive display."
  • in August, the Dutch judge said the U.S. patent was invalid in his court because the slide-to-lock gesture was seen a year before the first iPhone, in the Neonode N1m Windows CE-based phone.
  • "In addition, there is a need for sensory feedback to the user regarding progress towards satisfaction of a user input condition that is required for the transition to occur."

• Apple’s Secret Solar Farm
• Facebook to build server farm on edge of Arctic Circle
  • The Charlotte Observer reports that Apple has been issued the permits necessary to prepare a 171-acre parcel of vacant land next to its massive data center in Catawba County.
  • “Project Dolphin Solar Farm A Expanded,”
  • Meanwhile Telegraph reports Facebook will build a multi-million 'mini town' 62 miles South of the Arctic Circle. to house all its computer servers
  • First server farm outside US in in Luleå, northern Sweden, to be announced officially on Thursday morning -- average temperature, it's around 2C [35.6F].
  • "The climate will allow them to just use only air for cooling the servers," said Mats Engman, chief executive of the Aurorum Science Park, which is leading the push to turn the city into a 'Node Pole', luring in other international computing giants.---120MW of power, enough to supply 16,000 detached homes, and costing some £45m a year. Local hydroelectric power runs with 50% surplus.

News Fuse

• Some of you may have noticed that Twitter looks different. Twitter is testing a redesign that allows you to expand tweets and view videos within the timeline by clicking a new "open" button. So instead of the expansion happening in the right pane, the expansion occurs in the timeline itself. Commands for favorites, retweets and reply have also moved to the top of each tweet.

• Blogtoppen.se, a Swedish blog portal, said that 90,000 of its users' data are public including account info of journalists and politicians. Newspaper Aftonbladet reports that another 57 sites and 180,000 users are at risk. A hacker by the handle sc3a5j claims he perpetrated the attack to show how unsafe users' information are. This is the largest security breach in Swedish history and the Stockholm Police is investigating.
• Swedish password hacking scandal widens 210,000 login details dumped ...
• A blog post on Kaspersky Lab's Threat Post sheds some light of the Duqu malware. Unlike Stuxnet, Duqu is limited to "an extremely small number of targets" and has been found in Iran and Sudan. Kaspersky cited the work of Hungarian research lab Crysys for the analysis. Duqu's sophistication suggests that it is not the work of script kiddies, but of a state actor said Security Now's Steve Gibson.
• Software security company ESET found new OS X malware in the wild. It's called OS X/Tsunami and it takes over your computer, receives commands via IRC to DDoS sites or have the remote user download files. The malware is actually a port of the Linux/Tsunami trojan horse. OS X users, your best bet is to be careful what you download and keep your system up to date.
• The Wall Street Journal reports that the Yahoo board of directors are ready for a permanent CEO. Last month, Yahoo fired Carol Bartz and installed CFO Tim Morse in the position on an interim basis. Wall Street Journal's source said that Yahoo's original plan was seeking a sale, but now the board thinks a permanent CEO is necessary for a direction in case of no sale.
• Cnet reports that Coldplay's latest album "Mylo Xyloto" will not be availble for streaming on services like Spotify, Rdio, and Rhapsody. Coldplay's label EMI said "We always work with our artist and management on a case by case basis…" which suggests Coldplay made the call. Cnet's sources say that Coldplay wants the entire album heard as a whole and not broken up into singles - but that's an odd argument considering individual album tracks are available on iTunes.
• Citing two people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports HP will start offering servers that use ARM chips made by Texas-based Calxeda, which is partly owned by ARM. Officially, neither company have commented about the situation. HP already ruffled Microsoft's feathers by going with webOS for its consumer tablet back a while ago, so irritating Intel must be on its to do list.
• LG reported its Q3 financials and it's not good. The handset unit reported a loss of $124 million, which is its sixth consecutive quarter with a loss. As a whole, LG reported an operating loss of about $28 million. LG tried to soften the news by saying it expects to have improved earnings in the next quarter.
• There's a new version of Firefox and it's called "Firefox with Bing." Guess what it does? It uses Bing as the default search engine in the awesome bar, search bar and home screen. This version doesn't replace the standard Firefox which uses Google as its default search, it's just another option. Firefox makes the vast majority of its money from search providers.

Randomizer

• Man builds smartphone dock into prosthetic arm

Calendar

• Windows XP is 10 years old, and is like one of those old workaholics that has to be forced into retirement kicking and screaming

• Google rolled out v15 of Chrome to its "stable" channel. Not a huge update, some minor cosmetic changes, including a new tab page and cleaner looking Chrome store

• Droid RAZR pre-orders go live on Verizon tomorrow 10/27, and will ship before November 10th to subscribers who pay the $299 on contract price. No word yet on in-store launch dates.

• There's a grand-opening party this Saturday, 10/29, at the Kleinrock Internet Heritage Site on the UCLA campus, with a historical reconstruction of the lab where the Internet was born in 1969. The birthday party of sorts starts at 1:00 pm. There will be drinks, snacks, and Internet pioneers to gawk at.

• Next Wednesday 11/2 at 10 pm ET, PBS will air a one-hour special called "One Last Thing" on the life and career of Steve Jobs that features interviews and footage with Jobs, along with anecdotes from those who knew him.

• just in time for the holidays, Nintendo DSi XL bundles are arriving on November 6th - $170 for each package deal that includes Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem!

• the Tango video calling service for Windows Phone Mango is rolling out Monday, November 7th

INCOMING

Email

Tom, Just wanted to give you props for trying to pronounce Habichuela Con Dulce. It's a sweet bean liquid dessert from the Dominican Republic that is especially popular around the Easter holiday. For some wiki on it just visit --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habichuelas_con_dulce --- and for recipe you can check out ---http://www.dominicancooking.com/979-habichuelas-con-dulce-sweet-creamed-beans.html --- . Might sound like some kind of crazy dessert but if you asks someone from Latin America , the Caribbean but specially someone from Dominican Republic they'll say its great. Thanks again I enjoyed the show. Just passing some info in case you guys would like to try it.

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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