Tech News Today 497

Tech News Today Episode 497

Tech News Today 497: Don't Worry, I'm In My Pod Sack

Ultrabook? So over. SLEEKBOOK! The great Zuck hood scandal, A Bioshocking delay, and more.

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Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@SarahLane)
  • SarahLane.com
• Iyaz Akhtar (@Iyaz)
• Chad Johnson (@omgchad)
• Scott Johnson (@scottjohnson)

Top Stories

• HP Laptop Launch Includes AMD 'Sleekbook'
• HP Announces New Ultrabooks, Introduces ‘Sleekbooks’
• HP's new laptop lineup: Will it be sexy enough?
• HP unveils Envy Spectre XT Ultrabook, other thin-and-lights in various sizes
• HP on laptop design similarities with Apple's: it's a struggle as we drive to simplicity
  • 14 and 15.6-inch HP Envy Sleekbook 4 pounds, measures just 20mm thick, and features HP's Beats Audio with two speakers and a subwoofer, 14-inch version has 500 GB hard drive, 8 hours battery. (15-inch w/AMD CPU shipping June 20 for $599.99 -- 14-inch $699.99 on May 9)
  • 14- and 15.6-inch HP Envy Ultrabooks Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge configurable (Shipping May 9 at $749.99 and $799.99)
  • Envy Spectre XT - All-metal body, 13.3-inch ultrabook 3.07 pounds, 14.5mm thick, Ivy Bridge, 4 GB memory, 128 GB SSD, 8-hour battery Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 10 (shipping June 8 -$999.99)
  • July 25, Pavillion brand, several models, $480-$800
  • vice president of industrial design, Stacy Wolff: "I think if you look at the new Spectre XT, there are similarities in a way, not due to Apple but due to the way technologies developed. Apple may like to think that they own silver, but they don't. In no way did HP try to mimic Apple. In life there are a lot of similarities."

• AOL Offers Up an Earnings Beat, But a Disappointing Ad Number
• Tim Armstrong: AOL Plans to Invest in TechCrunch and Engadget, Not Sell Them
• Sources Say AOL Seeking Buyers for Engadget and TechCrunch, Arrington “Not In The Least Bit Interested”
• AOL revenue: $529 million 22 cents beating expectations
  • Domestic display ad sales shrank 1 percent
  • Traffic down 4 percent year-over-year
  • Sarah Lacy at Pandodaily.com reported several sources told her AOL was shopping Engadget, TechCrunch for $70-100 million. 6-months to a year to evaluate.
  • "We are planning to invest in those properties, not sell" them, Mr. Armstrong said in an interview with Ad Age. He admitted that the company has spoken with outside entities about partnerships that would lead to increased investments in TechCrunch and Engadget, but that right now AOL is leaning toward "investing ourselves."

• Zuckerberg’s Hoodie a ‘Mark of Immaturity,’ Analyst Says
• Wall St. Analyst Defends Criticism Of Facebook Founder’s Hoodie
  • Facebook's doing its Roadshow to get investors excited about its IPO
  • Mark Zuckerberg has been making the rounds - first on Monday in NY wearing his hoodie
  • Michael Pachter, analyst for Wedbush Securities, says that wearing a hoodie to a meeting is a sign of Zuckerberg's lack of seriousness
  • “Mark and his signature hoodie: He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much; he’s going to be him,” Pachter said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “I think that’s a mark of immaturity. ...I think he’s got to show them the respect that they deserve because he’s asking them for their money.”
• Pachter said Zuckerberg “is well-suited to be the chief product officer, the chief user-experience officer, to manage the design of the user interface, to decide every feature that goes in.”
  • “I personally could care less what Mr. Zuckerberg wears and when he wears it,” Pachter told TPM.
  • Pachter and Wedbush issued the first “buy” recommendation for Facebook at a price of $44 per share, nine dollars over Facebook’s own upper-limit pricing recommendation.
  • Pachter did compare FB to Apple, talking about a genius running a company

Discussion Stories

• Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality
  • The Netherlands adopted legislation to safeguard an open and secure internet in The Netherlands, first country in Europe to put net neutrality into law
  • NN prohibits IPs from tampering with the traffic of their users. The law allows for traffic management in case of congestion and for network security, as long as these measures serve the interests of the internet user. A technical error in the law might still be corrected in a vote on 15 May.
  • also the law has an anti-wiretapping provision, restricting IPs from using wiretapping technologies, such as deep packet inspection (DPI). They may only do so under "limited circumstances", or with explicit consent of the user, which the user may withdraw at any time. wiretapping requires a warrant
  • law also includes a provision that internet providers can only disconnect users in a very limited set of circumstances, like in the case of fraud or when a user doesn’t pay his bills.
  • provisions are part of the implementation of the European telecommunications rules
  • Chile was the 1st country in the world to adopt net neutrality law
  • The technical error is an exception in the law that lets users request an ISP to filter their Internet traffic by blocking certain services and applications based on ideological grounds. It's a clause added to the proposed law last year when the Dutch Labor Party accidentally voted in favor of an amendment proposed by the Reformed Political Party. Parliament wants to nullify this religious exception clause by adding it to an unrelated law concerning traffic regulation on May 15, which nobody expects to pass. so the religious exception shouldn't become law.

• Bioshock Infinite’ won’t be shown at E3 this year, gets new release date
• Bioshock Infinite's won't be coming until February 26, 2013, in order to make a number of "tweaks and improvements"
  • The original Bioshock was also delayed for several months as its original ship date drew near, Studio head Ken Levine says. "Because the Big Daddies weren't the Big Daddies you've since come to know and love. Because Andrew Ryan's golf club didn't have exactly the right swing. Because Rapture needed one more coat of grimy Art Deco."
  • You won't see any of the game at E3 or GamesCon either
  • "That way, the next time you see our game, it will be essentially the product we intend to put in the box" - Levine

• Sprint's Tri-Fi Hotspot will do LTE, WiMax, 3G on May 18
• The 4G LTE Tri-Fi Hotspot, made by Sierra Wireless, will support three of Sprint's data networks: 4G LTE, 4G WiMax, and 3G.
  • a microSD slot that enables file sharing, and its use as a digital media server. It also has a 3600mAh battery.
  • The hot spot will cost $99.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and with a two-year service agreement. Monthly data plans start at $34.99 for 3GB, and ratchet up to $49.99 for 6GB, and $79.99 for 12GB.
  • Coming May 18

News Fuse

• Checking in on those two love birds Oracle and Google, Google filed for a new trial on copyright claims in Oracle's IP lawsuit over Android in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California because the jury delivered a partial verdict. Also, Andy Rubin was back on the stand and said that Android engineers were not aware of Sun's patents saying, "It's not reasonable to go searching through all this paperwork, not for an engineer."

• Andy Rubin: I didn't know about Sun's patent portfolio

• Dan Loeb of Third Point, 6% owner of Yahoo, and all around helpful fellow has suggested that Yahoo ditch Scott Thompson based on that resume mess and install either CFO Tim Morse or Yahoo's head of global media, Ross Levinsohn as interim CEO. Third Point also reiterated Thompson be fired and install four of director candidates chosen by… Third Point!

• Huawei is building up its United States presence by showing off its CloudEngine 12800, a next-gen data center switch, at Interop, a networking conference. It will be able switch up to 48 Terabits per second. For some perspective, that would be about three times the average for the industry.

• Approximately 55,000 Twitter usernames and passwords were posted to Pastebin but no one is taking credit for it. Twitter said it alerted affected users to reset their passwords and that more than 20,000 of the accounts appear to be duplicate and spam accounts that have been already suspended. Twitter told CNet that Twitter itself is not compromised.

• Twitter Downplays Breach That Exposed Passwords

• Bloomberg reports that Deutsche Telekom is discussing a merger of its T-Mobile business with MetroPCS. The deal would be a stock-swap and Deutsche Telekom would control the combined entity. Other options include an outright sale of T-Mobile. Bloomberg says that T-Mobile is being shopped to a number of companies.

• Apple released OS X 10.7.4 which patches up that FileVault bug that allowed for access to passwords. Also included in the over 700 MB update is Safari 5.1.6, SMB printing updates and our favorite - improved compatibility with certain British third-party USB keyboards. But seriously, get the update for your security.

• The project serves people who are often called communists, the project claims to benefit the worker and aims to circumvent the running dogs of capitalism. The project is called Sputnik of course. And it's from Dell. Dell has launched a six-month exploratory effort that will pair Dell’s XPS13 Ultrabook with Ubuntu 12.04, aiming to meet the needs of software developers.

• I like what you did there comparing communists and RUMOUR MILL! -- Seattle blog TechFlash reports rumors are flying that Microsoft is pitching its Windows Phone as the platform Facebook should use to launch its supposed smartphone. Microsoft owns 1.6 percent of Facebook and sold $550 million worth of patents to the social network, so the two companies ARE pretty chummy. But wait... there's one more rumour.. Digitimes reports we get a new iPhone in September and a mini iPad in August and another 10-inch iPad in the fourth quarter.

• Well let's finish off with some hard news. Facebook launched a new beta program that allows developers to charge a flat fee for apps - that's right paid Facebook apps are here. The program covers apps both on Facebook.com and HTML5 apps. Facebook also launched its "App Center" a place where you can find... apps. It will be rolling out on the web, iOS and Android apps in the coming weeks.

Randomizer

• Anti-WiFi Wallpaper Available Next Year

Calendar

• Wolfenstein 3D' turns 20 years old, play the free browser version today
• Startup watch: tomorrow is LA Demo Day in Santa Monica
• Evo 4G LTE out on May 18th for $199.99 from Sprint
• ICANN says that it's planning to reopen the gTLD application process on May 22, giving people until May 30 to submit their applications.

INCOMING

Voicemail

• Steve from TN wants a self-driving car

Video Message:

• Dwayne from NY talks about Google support

Email

"Tom and Posse,

One way they could massively increase a potential carrier Wi-Fi network is to utilize the huge home router install base for a carrier like AT&T (which at least in Cleveland seems to be the de facto choice for cheap high speed). Imagine if you opted in to a program that gives you a discount on service, and in exchange you download an update to your router to allow it to be a Passpoint hotspot. There would have to be some limits, probably capping bandwidth and limiting the number of overall connections so your home service doesn't stink, but I think it would be a great way to rapidly deploy a very usable Wi-Fi supplementary data network.

Rich in Lovely Cleveland"

"In my opinion, [Toll Free Data] could go one of two ways. The first is a net neutrality concern, However what if it was like a toll free number where in an ideal situation, it is free to all users. Therefore, if Facebook is a free data service, then Facebook will pay the appropriate fees to the appropriate carriers just as a toll free number owner pays the appropriate fees to the appropriate carriers.

Just my 2 cents, Frank"

Sponsors

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Production Information

• Edited by: Chad
• Notes:

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