Tech News Today 571
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Episode 571 |
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Recorded: August 23, 2012 Published: August 23, 2012 Duration: 53:45 |
Contents |
Tech News Today 571: It's Raining Ants
So many 'whys' answered on today's show. Why Facebook got Instagram, Twitter's cutting off APIs, and US hates 4G
Hosts
- Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
- Sarah Lane
- Iyaz Akhtar
- Jason Howell
- Patrick Beja
News Fuse
- Sony continued the process of taking over the former joint venture with Ericsson by announcing the headquarters will move from Lund, Sweden, to Tokyo. Sony Mobile also announced it will lay off 1,000 employees, about 15 percent of its staff, by March 2014. But hey, Sweden's nice right? I'm sure they can find jobs there... with Ericsson?
- Microsoft is changing its corporate logo for the first time in a quarter century! Yep, the logo we've come to know and love since 1987 is getting an update, with official unveiling at Microsoft's 23rd store, opening today in Boston. It will also appear at the Seattle and Bellevue Microsoft stores, as well as on the microsoft.com home page. The new logo is designed to "signal the heritage but also signal the future — a newness and freshness," said Jeff Hansen, Microsoft's general manager of brand strategy.
- LG’s mass producing lots and lots of displays with in-cell technology - that’s the one that embeds touch sensors in the display instead of requiring a separate layer. So why is this news? Oh, because LG supplies Apple with displays and people think those new LG displays are coming to the unannounced next iPhone due to the timing.
- By the time you hear this Instagram may already be Facebook's. More than four months since the announcement of the proposed acquistion, the FTC in the US and the OFT in the UK have both now approved the deal. Instagram gets the shaft a bit, as the IPO of Facebook stock and the subsequent decline int he value means the value of the purchase price has dropped from around $1 billion to around $750 million.
- HP has reported quarterly losses of $8.9B- the worst in its 73-year history—and CEO Meg Whitman warned that the news might continue through a multi-year turnaround. HP reported revenue of $29.7B, down 5% from the $31.2B from the same period in 2011, and saw sales declines in all of its core business units except Software, which saw revenue grow 18%, bolstered by its acquisition of Autonomy, completed last October.
- Zynga’s General Manager of Cityville Alan Patmore is leaving Zynga for Kixeye as VP of Product. Kixeye is also a gaming company that looks like a different animal compared to Zynga - its games include War Commander, Battle Pirates and Backyard Monsters. Zynga also recently lost its COO, John Schappert who departed after 15 months on the job.
- You know who doesn't want LTE? USA. Or at least almost half of the folks who live there. Investment firm Piper Jaffray surveyed 3,000 folks and found 47 % don't feel they need 4G LTE and 26% feel all 4G network technologies are the same. 55% of those surveyed said they are considering buying the next iPhone, 44% said they'd choose Verizon, 29% said AT&T.
- Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has released government documents showing that license plate readers, which include precise GPS location, date, and timestamps, in addition to the plate in question, are shared with an auto insurance umbrella organization. The documents include a memorandum of understanding from 2005 between the National Insurance Crime Bureau and the United States Customs and Border Protection agency. The NICB says insurance companies are members of the organization but don't automatically gain access to the LPR data, and that only authorized "Special Investigations Units" personnel from NICB member companies have access to such data "for theft prevention activities."
- September 5th is the mother of all announcement days, including new phones from Nokia running the next version of Windows Phone. According to The Verge's Tom Warren, sources say Nokia will reveal two phones, one code named Phi, will be a hero phone, successor to the Lumia 800 and 900. And the other code-named Arrow will be its plucky sidekick, learnign the business and questioning the hero's ideals and motivations while providing invaluable assistance... it's a mid-range phone.
- Sure, location services are great when you’re outdoors, but what about when you’re lost indoors? Nokia, Samsung, Sony and a number of other companies are teaming up to standardize technology used for indoor location services. Their super-team is called the In-Location Alliance and they’re going to start with Wi-Fi standards and Bluetooth 4.0. The alliance is 22 companies strong, but Apple and Google aren’t a part of the group.
Randomizer
- ‘Big moment’ as Mars rover Curiosity actually roves for first time in short test drive
Calendar
- Tomorrow, Friday August 25th marks one year for Tim Cook as CEO of Apple
Incoming
E-mail #1
My Amazon Cloud subscription will expire? I just got this message from Amazon. What kind of crap is that? They are certainly not dependable!
On August 26, 2012 your Amazon Cloud promotional subscription will expire. - steve c
Sponsors
Gazelle
Production Information
- Edited by:
- Notes:
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