Tech News Today 502

Tech News Today Episode 502

Tech News Today 502: He Of The Hoodie

Apple gets HTC phones seized, Google's answer to Bing's social search, Pirate Bay under attack, 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)
• Jason Howell (@RayGun01)
• Martin Giles
  • theeconomist.com

Topics

• HTC One X and Evo 4G LTE indefinitely delayed at US Customs for investigation of Apple patent infringement
• HTC shares slide as patent dispute delays US shipments
• Apple ITC win leads to HTC One X, Evo 4G LTE import holdup
• HTC One X delay benefits Lumia 900 at AT&T
  • HTC One X and Evo 4G LTE indefinitely delayed at US customs for potentially infringing an Apple patent
  • Apple won a wide-ranging exclusion order banning the importation of HTC Android devices at the International Trade Commission last December
  • ITC found that Android's messaging app and browser infringed upon Apple patent #5,946,647, which covers automatically converting things like phone numbers and email addresses into actionable links
  • Ban was delayed until April 19 to give HTC time to engineer around the patent. HTC says it has altered its design.
  • Customs and Border Enforcement has latitude for enforcement and its enforcement orders are completely classified. Phone was scheduled to launch on ATT and Sprint May 18.
  • HTC: "We believe we are in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with Customs to secure approval."
  • HTC shares dropped 6.6% to close at NT$411 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

• Google Revamps Search Results Pages With 'Knowledge Graph'
• Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings
• Google bringing new smarts to search with Knowledge Graph
  • Google Knowledge graph -Starting today with English-language signed in and eventually to all English language queries.
  • Summary box on right side with key information on many queries. (500 million people places, things with 3.5 billion attributes trigger)
  • Crawled hundreds of broad fact sources like Wikipedia, CIA Fact Book, etc.
  • Disambiguation - Search 'Andromeda' and the box allows you to narrow: TV show? Galaxy? Swedish Metal Band?
  • Summary boxes have details about the search topic: Great for people
  • Related facts int he box are clickable and lead out to other fact boxes
  • Report a problem lets you help improve results
  • Jack Manzel, Product Management Director of Search at Google told Rafe Needleman at CNET: "We do continue to work on how to make search semantic,but talking about it brings out the crazy people."

• Bigger iPhone Display: Why Apple Has No Choice
• Latest iPhone Rumor Points to 4-Inch Screen (Again)
• Rumor: Apple's 7.85" iPad will use thin-film touch technology
  • WSJ reports the next iPhone will be "at least four inches diagonally"
  • Reuters's sources also say the next iPhone will have a larger screen - also mentioning a 4-inch diagonal
  • The displays would be from companies including LG, Sharp and Japan Display [made up of Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba] (no specific mention of Samsung here - makes the iPad screen)
  • Production would begin next month
  • iPhone's had a 3.5 inch display since 2007
  • Digitimes reports the 7.85-inch iPad is launching in the 4th quarter
  • it'll use ""G/F2"" thin-film touch technology (glass, film)
  • means thinner and cheaper b/c current tech is "glass/film/film"
  • Technical: The G/F2 structure places the electrode on the top and bottom ends of the ITO [indium tin oxide] film, which will then be laminated onto the cover glass.

Discussion Stories

• Facebook increases IPO size
• Facebook ups IPO again -- this time with more shares
• Google exec to Facebook: Uh, your users aren't really shoppers
  • Facebook revised S-1 registration statement with SEC this AM, offering more Class A common stock, raises IPO number by almost 25%
  • FB now offering 421.2M shares of class A stock in Friday IPO. Increased amount of shares it will allow for overallotment from 50.6M to 63.2M. TOTAL: 484.4 million shares when it goes public.
  • But FB offering 180M shares of common stock in the IPO. stockholders get richer: that overallotment # will be offered by selling stockholders. called the "green-shoe" -- # of extra shares underwriters can sell if the deal is oversubscribed. The proceeds from the sale of shares by stockholders will be retained by stockholders, not FB.
  • EXAMPLE: Venture capital firm Accel Partners, for example, has increased its number of shares being sold in the IPO from 38.19 million to 49 million.
  • yesterday FB upped IPO price range from high of 34 to range of $34-38
  • if all 484.4M shares are sold, generates up to $18.4B. pre-S-1 revision it was $14.7 billion. would make this largest-ever technology IPO. The current leader is AT&T Wireless, raised over $10 billion in 2010.
  • General Motors' decision to stop its paid Facebook ads (WSJ estimates $10M of $1.1B in all U.S. ads), has some talking. Product leader of Google's *European* display-ad business Jason Bigler tweeted: ""Seriously folks, did you really expect consumers to be in transactional mindsets on Facebook?""
  • Nicholas Carlson at Biz Insider compares FB to TV: "Facebook does the same inexact thing: It sells ads targeted based on the kinds of people who will see them." vs. Google search-based ads which are obviously more targeted
  • David Hamilton at Cnet says it's all about social word of mouth and ads/campaigns & many more potential views

• Fab.com Turns Up Social Volume Again
  • Fab.com called "fastest to 1 million users" in commerce is known for social features
  • One of 2 e-commerce outlets to roll outFacebook “Action Links,” which enable users to “Fav” Fab items they see on Facebook.
  • In December rolled out a "live feed" - Now you can filter the live feed by Facebook friends
  • Added price of items to live feed as well - can add to cart right from live feed
  • Swapped out Google + buttons for Pinterest buttons

• Pirate Bay Under DDoS Attack From Unknown Enemy
• Massive DDoS attack keeps The Pirate Bay offline for over a day
• Pirate Party proxy link to the Pirate Bay with "down" notice
• The Pirate Bay Facebook page
  • The Pirate Bay has been down for over 24 hours -
  • Confirmed on their Facebook page it's DDoS
  • Last week TPB criticized Anonymous for DDoSing ISP Virgin Media
  • "We do NOT encourage these actions," the Pirate Bay said, also on its Facebook page. "We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us. So don't fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship."
  • BUT TPB does not think it's Anonymous DDOSing them
  • From Facebook: "Just to clarify, we KNOW that it is NOT Anonymous who is behind the ddos attack. Stop spreading rumours like that. We may not agree with Anonymous in everything, but we both want the internet to be open and free."

There, now carry on with whatever it is you were doing <|:)

News Fuse

• Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology have achieved 3Gbps data speeds wirelessly using the terahertz band. The terahertz band is currently unregulated and is between infrared and microwaves. That top speed is sustainable to around 30 feet, so it could be great for short-range high bandwidth things like your home theater perhaps. The previous record was set in November by chipmaker Rohm, but that was a paltry 1.5Gbps.

• T-rays produce 3Gbps short-range wireless, make WiFi pout in the corner

• You can fool some of the people some of the time, but it sure is hard to fool Redditors. An elaborate hoax created by students enrolled in the "Lying About the Past" course at George Mason was debunked by Redditors. The hoax revolved around a fake serial killer supported by a number of Wikipedia pages that were fact-based and within Wikipedia's rules. Redditors noticed the timestamps of the articles and the limited number of editors of those pages to unravel the ruse.

• By now, you've probably heard that the Kodak company happened to run a small nuclear facility in its research lab in upstate NY. But why? The Physics Buzz blog says Kodak's R&D team would check for very small impurities in chemicals and using Neutron Activation Analysis was the best way to go. The blog also says that similar facilities (about the size of a refrigerator) can also be found on some university campuses.

• Samsung lost $10 billion of its market capitalization today after a DigiTimes report stated that Apple would obtain memory from Elpida instead of Samsung. SK hynix, another past Apple DRAM supplier, took a 9% hit as well. Micron is currently in talks to acquire Elpida's business because Elpida's in bankruptcy protection.

• Gartner says sales of mobile phones were down 2% worldwide for the quarter. This is the first time the market declined since Q2 of 2009. Gartner says the dip is due to slowing demand in Asia-Pacific as some users are waiting for the next crop of devices. In the quarter, Apple and Samsung were the only two vendors in the top 10 to gain market share and together make up over 49% of smartphones sold.

• Oracle and Google have come up with a roadmap of where their trial could go at the request of the presiding judge. Amongst a number of things, the two sides stipulated that current jury will no longer work on copyright issues and no further copyright work will occur until after an appeal or new trial. The case still hinges on Judge Alsup's ruling if APIs are indeed copyrightable.

• The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, better known as ACTA, is under fire by a number of American law professors. In an open letter, the group asks the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to review ACTA as an Article II treaty or for Congress to review it as an ex post Congressional-Executive agreement. Any other way, the group says, would be unconstitutional.

• Sony's upcoming adaption of Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography has a screenwriter and it's Aaron Sorkin. The news comes from Sony directly as a press release. Sony has yet to make any announcements as for who will play Steve Jobs in the film.

Randomizer

• Russian researchers build partial android for bizarre mind-transfer project (video)

Calendar

• Windows Mobile Marketplace shutdown (originally the 9th)

INCOMING

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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