Tech News Today 415
From The Official TWiT Wiki
Episode 415 |
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Recorded: January 13, 2012 Published: January 13, 2012 Duration: 42:15 |
Contents |
Tech News Today 415: CES: I Want To Want The Windows Phone
From CES 2012: China's egg-throwing iPhone launch failure, Google caught stealing leads in Kenya, last thoughts on CES, and more.
Submit and vote on story coverage at technewstoday.reddit.com
Hosts
- Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
- Sarah Lane (@SarahLane)
- Iyaz Akhtar (@Iyaz)
- Jason Howell (@RayGun01)
- Patrick Norton
- tekzilla.com
Top Stories
- Chinese iPhone 4S launch turns into egg-throwing melee
- Egg-throwing
- Crowd too big, Beijing Apple store cancels sale
- Apple suspended the launch of the iPhone 4S in all of its mainland China stores
- Large crowds gathered and became unruly when the stores didn't open on time at 7 AM. Police ordered the stores to remain closed.
- Then people started throwing eggs
- Apple spoksperson Carolyn Wu told AP: "We were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd, and to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, iPhone will not be available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being, Customers can still order iPhone through the Apple Online Store, or buy at China Unicom and other authorized resellers."
- Under pressure, PIPA author to propose 'further study' on DNS blocking
- Sen. Leahy bows to pressure, pledges to amend Protect IP bill
- Internet blacklist power to be stripped from Senate's PROTECT IP Act
- Author of U.S. online piracy bill vows not to buckle
- Sen. Patrick Leahy said he would recommend more study be done on domain name provisions of Protect IP
- "I'm going to set aside these domain name provisions," Leahy told Vermont Public Radio. "That we'll hold back on, because I've listened to some of the concerns on those. I think there [are] easy answers to it, but let's set it aside, let's spend a year or so studying that part."
- Protect IP would still target financial transaction providers, Internet advertising services, and providers of "information location tools," or ILTs, including search engines and other Web sites.
- Senator Wyden: "Beyond the DNS provisions, the bill still establishes a censorship regime that threatens speech, innovation, and the future of the American economy. I remain firm in my intent to block consideration of the PIPA bill until these issues are addressed"
- Rep. Lamar Smith speaking on SOPA to Reuters: "It is amazing to me that the opponents apparently don't want to protect American consumers and businesses. Are they somehow benefiting by directing customers to these foreign websites? Do they profit from selling advertising to these foreign websites? And if they do, they need to be stopped. And I don't mind taking that on."
- Google Kenya accused of illegally scouring rival's database, stealing customers
- Facing Another PR Disaster: Google Accused Of Fraudulently Undermining A Kenyan Startup
- Updated: ‘Mortified’ Google To Act On Those Who Poached Rival’s Clients
- Google, what were you thinking?
- One of the recorded calls
- Kenyan startup Mocality CEO Stefan Magdalinski said in a blog post it discovered Google knowingly and systematically accessed its database in order to steal its customers after carefully monitoring internet traffic and setting up a successful sting operation to catch Google in the act.
- Mocality is a crowdsourced operation that built up a large directory of over 170,000 Kenyan businesses over the years. Google recently set up Getting Kenyan Businesses Online
- First Mocality started fielding calls from Kenyan business owners with questions about a supposed partnership / joint-venture Mocality had set up with the Internet search and advertising giant.
- Mocality noticed database calls from a single IP address, changed code so that IP got a special number, then started receiving calls from Google that tried to get them to sign up for a competing product by lying about a partnership with Mocality that doesn't exist.
- Google told TechCrunch “We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites. We’ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved.”
Discussion Stories
- RIM rumours resurface
- Has RIM Hired Goldman Sachs To Explore A Merger Or Sale?
- Rumour makign the rounds According to Fox Business news: RIM has hired Goldman Sachs to explore strategic options.
- “There are several roadblocks that make an acquisition of RIM unlikely,” Morningstar analyst Michael Holt recently wrote. “We believe RIM should entertain all options at this point, given the serious challenges facing the firm, but there is little evidence to suggest RIM’s board is open to offers at this point in time.”
- Stock initially rose 5% on the rumour but has flattened out
- Amazon and Microsoft among the usual suspects; PaidContent asks what about LG or Dell?
- Lumia 900 to be released in March, says Nokia developer newsletter
- Lumia 900 and 710 commercials hit the web, Nokia fans rejoice
- Nokia developer newsletter says: The Nokia Lumia 900 phone runs Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5. It is the biggest and fastest smartphone yet. And it will become available exclusively through AT&T in March
- Paul Thurott said the date would likely be March 18th on Tuesday's Windows Weekly
- Commercial for the 900 and 710 posted to YouTube
News Fuse
- The Pirate Bay is dumping torrent files in favor of magnet links starting today. The change allows users to add torrents without downloading a file first. The magnet links will appear as the default links instead of the torrents.
- A Westminster Magistrates Court has ruled that 23-year-old British college student & TVShack link site operator Richard O'Dwyer can be extradited to the United States to face copyright infringement charges. The TVShack site linked to illegal copies of copyrighted works, but neither the servers nor O'Dwyer are located in the U.S. O'Dwyer will appeal the ruling.
- Stories are surfacing on the web about a failed 2009 Google/Facebook deal. AllThingsD says the leak "can clearly be traced back to Facebook." There are two sides on how the deal fell apart. Google says Facebook asked for a term that would stop Google from building its own social network. Facebook claims the deal failed because the two couldn't agree to manage private data.
- For the first time, Apple has released a full list of its major suppliers and a report on factory inspections available at apple.com/SupplierResponsibility. The inspections report found problems in handling of hazardous waste, overtime pay, and working hours. In an interview with the WSJ, Tim Cook said Apple will improve those factories by monitoring the plants at a "very, very micro level."
- You can learn a lot from Rupert Murdoch's personal Twitter account! His latest target? The failure of MySpace. To quote a recent tweet, "we screwed up in every way possible, learned lots of valuable expensive lessons,”. I'll say. News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005 and sold it for $35 million in 2011.
- The military judge presiding over the Bradley Manning case recommended that Manning be court-martialed for disclosing military cables to WikiLeaks. The judge said "reasonable grounds exist to believe that the accused committed the offenses alleged." The case now moves to another military body called the convening authority, which will make a final decision whether to court-martial Manning.
- CyanogenMod 9 will bring Ice Cream Sandwich to the HP TouchPad. Functionally, the team says nearly everything works well except for video playback and the camera. The team also says they hope to get something available for download soon.
- Fujitsu will sell an Nvidia Tegra 3 powered smartphone in a few weeks. The phone was spotted by TheVerge at CES under glass. The phone has some impressive specs with a 4.5-inch HD display, LTE, a 13.1-megapixel camera and it'll run Ice Cream Sandwich. And who knows it might come to North America too, since Fujitsu Senior Executive Vice President Hideyuki Saso told All Things D that North America is the manufacturer's eventual "priority market" Expect to hear more at Mobile World Congress.
- According to Bloomberg, LG may partner with Google to build a Nexus TV. Considering companies like Vizio are introducing their own skins to their version of Google TV, this does not seem too far-fetched.
Randomizer
Calendar
- Skype 5.5 beta for Mac launches today with an option to answer calls with or without video
- OnLive Desktop for iPad is now live in the App Store - Microsoft Office in the Cloud ,and it's free
- Ice Cream Sandwich has begun rolling Out to Select Motorola Xoom Owners. Motorola says it's just a small number for now while they test the upgrade. Chosen users got an email about it.
- Acer Iconia Tab A200 will be available this Sunday Jan 15th for $329.99
- Starting Monday Jan 16th, ViaSat begins offering 12 Mbps plans for $50 per month
INCOMING
"Hi guys,
The Lenovo yoga has really caught my attention as I am really looking for a device to be a win8 tablet and then an msoffice workstation when I need it. Previous convertible designs all look flimsy due to the swivel, so this design finally looks like something both sturdy and dual purpose. The obvious problem is the keyboard facing out in tablet form but in the same way the iPad has everyone using cases for tablets, couldn't there be some kind of case or smart cover made for this... If there is a case available, I will definitely buy this at launch.
Chris Moore Nagoya, Japan"
Sponsors
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Ford
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Production Information
- Edited by: Jason
- Notes:
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