Tech News Today 199

Tech News Today Episode 199

Tech News Today 199: Japan Update and IP Rant

Goodnight Zune, the lie of network congestion, and a focus on what's going on in Japan with our listener reports, and more.

Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Brian Brushwood (@shwood)
• Jason Howell
  • JasonHowell.net

Topics

• Zune hardware apparently dead, software and services live on
  • Microsoft will cease development of its family of Zune-branded music players due to weak demand and a desire to focus on its smartphone platform. Dave McLauchlan, Senior Business Development Manager for Zune - We were completely frank about this year's Zune hardware being the WP7 phones, and we continue to both sell and fully support the Zune HD line of products. And as I've promised – we continue to bring new apps and games to the platform. More of those are in the works, I promise you.
• Microsoft says Zune isn't exactly dead, that it doesn't want to go in the cart

• TWCable TV app for iPad now available, but Dish has something to say about being 'first with live streaming'live TV streaming of 32 cable channels. through iOS app.

• BT to UK Infinity subscribers: no more usage caps!
  • "As BT continues to invest in the network and network bandwidth we can now remove these restrictions and ensure the experience of the wider customer base," declared Mayuresh Thavapalan, general manager of Consumer Broadband at BT Retail. "On completion there will be no individual user controls targeted at atypical users on our BT Total Broadband and BT Infinity products." Meanwhile in the US - Starting May 2, AT&T will impose 150GB monthly limits on its currently uncapped DSL service, while its fiber-to-the-node U-Verse subscribers will get 250GB.
  • industry analyst Dave Burstein posted on Twitter that AT&T lied to the Wall Street Journal about congestion.
  • EVEN IF IT ISN'T COSTLY, TELCOS ARE GETTING SQUEEZED AND DON'T HAVE A LOT OF MONEY TO SPEND ON INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS? AT&T posted $20 billion in net income (on revenues of $124 billion) for 2010. 7.8 Billion of that profit was for wireline. TOO MANY PEOPLE USING TOO MUCH BANDWIDTH IS HARD TO FIX RIGHT? Unlike cable, In DSL each customer has a connection to the Co and a aggregated in a DSLAM (am stands for access multiplexer). BUT ITS REALLY COSTLY? It is relatively inexpensive to upgrade the DSLAM and backhaul connection to relive congestion. Other congestion problems may occur at local regional switches and routers.EVEN IF IT ISN'T COSTLY, TELCOS ARE GETTING SQUEEZED AND DON'T HAVE A LOT OF MONEY TO SPEND ON INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENTS? AT&T posted $20 billion in net income (on revenues of $124 billion) for 2010. 7.8 Billion of that profit was for wireline. OK BUT COSTS ARE RISING RIGHT, YOU HAVE TO PLAN FOR TOMORROW? AT&T's expenses to operate its networks, pay its employees, do network engineering and planning, buy gear, and even pay the property taxes on its many small network buildings around the country dropped by 3.2 percent in 2010.
• Is AT&T's new 150GB DSL data cap justified?
• Markey Says He's Watching AT&T Caps Carefully

Discussion Stories

• Apotheker Sets Hewlett-Packard on a Cloud-Centric Path
  • HP Strategy Day in San Francisco, California. -- HP will launch its own public cloud service platform and a related open application store (2011-2012). HP TouchPad coming June, webOS for PC beta by year's end. HP plans to ship 100 million webOS devices, including tablets, phones, PCs and printers.
  • Apotheker Sets Hewlett-Packard on a Cloud-Centric Path. "We will ship webOS tabs and Windows tablets. We just need the right version of Windows to do that."
• Leaked retailer info: HP Touchpad arriving in June for $499
• Hewlett Packard CEO unveils move into cloud computing
• HP promises App Store and Microsoft love in webOS world
• HP VARs (value-added resellers) wary of Apotheker's cloud vision
• Apotheker’s Keynote: The Reviews From Analysts Are Mixed

• Cutting Prices Is the Only Way To Stop Piracy
  • The Media Piracy Project, published last week by the Social Science Research Council - The three-year study into media piracy in emerging economies concentrated on countries such as Russia, Mexico and India.
• Congress told that Internet data caps can discourage piracy

• In Silicon Valley, no immediate threat to supply chains from Japan disaster
  • Most industrial complexes located in south. The two most pressing concerns for industry are damage to the transportation infrastructure and reliability of power, said Dale Ford, senior vice president at IHS iSuppli. It could take as long as two months to resolve those problems, he added. "It's really too early to tell what is going to change and what is not," said Jim Handy, the principal analyst at Objective Analysis.

• AT&T makes calling Japan free until the end of March (update: Verizon, Sprint, and Dish, too)
• Tech Companies Respond to Japan Quake With Resources, Support
• Google collecting quake refugee lists via mobile photos
• Japanese Publishers Cancel, Delay Disaster Games Following Deadly Earthquake
• Radiation: Dose and Risk
• From Tokyo to Calif., radiation tracking gets crowdsourced
  • "A live geiger counter at altTokyo.com updates a graph with data every 60 seconds, and a uStream channel broadcasting the digital display of another Tokyo geiger counter was drawing more than 14,000 viewers earlier today." Radiationnetwork.com, a crowd-sourced radiation-monitoring network of roughly a dozen or so unofficial monitoring sites around the United States, updated every three minutes. So far, all monitoring stations report radiation measurements well within normal background levels.

Voicemail

• Jason in Japan: Japan Tragedy

Email

"Hey Tom and the TNT Crew,

I'm an English teacher living in Tokyo and I wanted to share some of the websites I'm using to stay up to date on the latest developments. RSOE (http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php) has a list of all disasters around the world including the information and position of the earthquakes soon after they happen as well as information about the nuclear plants. It's all over the news now, but yesterday in Tokyo the radiation levels spiked to about 8 times above normal background levels for a short time. Although Tokyo is 150mi (250km) away from the failing plant in Fukushima (Fu-ku-she-ma), there's always a risk for radioactive materials to be carried in the wind. The Natural Research Lab has a page tracking the radiation in Tokyo (http://park18.wakwak.com/~weather/geiger_index.html) as well as a live ustream video of a Geiger counter in Tokyo (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/geiger-counter-tokyo). Aftershocks here have been occuring consistantly, and as I was writing this there was a M6.0 that hit about 75mi (125km) SW of Tokyo. Given everything that's happening combined with planned rolling blackouts, a lot of companies are shutting down for a while including Sony.

Keep up the great work, Steve Conning (Tokyo, Japan)"

"Some news today, no rolling black outs near kamiooka, in Yokohama. Every area is going to be subjected to this until the end of April as stated today. These blackouts take down stop lights, trains, and residential areas. Many people were caught off guard today as train lines either shut Dow. Partly through the day or never started, my wife works in Tokyo ward Nd attempted to go in to work but didn't make it.

Many folks where I work made it in but found out the trains would stop running before leaving work. Arrangements were to be made to let them go early as they would have a long walk or bus ride. ride sharing is coming up so those with cars can help those without get close to or at home. Some folks walked up to 4 hours Friday to get out of Tokyo.

Eric Jones"

News Fuse

• Apple won't be losing dominance in the tavlet market anytime soon. IN fact competitiors may have a hard time clearing their inventory. Market researcher DisplaySearch said Apple will likely be the dominant tablet maker through 2012, when the playing field will level out. The company portends that in 2016, 260 million tablets will be shipped, a 333 percent increase from estimated 2011 sales.

• Internet Explorer 9 Arrived yesterday and was greeted with warm reviews. It's been nearly two years since IE 8 and it looks like the time spent developing 9 paid off. Internet Explorer 9 brings much better web standards support, better performance and hardware acceleration for faster graphics and animations on supported PCs. Reviewers seem to also be taken by the new minimalist interface.

• New Adobe Flash Player, new Adobe Flash Player vulnerability. Adobe announced a flaw that may cause crashes and potentially permit the hijacking of systems. The issue also affects the company's Reader and Acrobat software products. t Adobe has found it's being actively exploited "in the wild" via a .swf file embedded in an Excel spreadsheet. A fix will come in a patch at the beginning of next week

• According to Bloomberg, Google plans to install "thousands" of VeriFone Near Field Communication readers, the ones that allow wireless payments, at merchants in New York and San Francisco. Google's test "may combine a consumer’s financial account information, gift-card balances, store loyalty cards and coupon subscriptions on a single NFC chip on a phone," and begin within four months. Rumours also are out that the next iPhone will NOT have NFC.

• There's a lot of controversy out today from developers who accuse Apple of intentionally slowing down Web apps in order to nudge people towards the app store. The issue revolves around the fact that javascript acceleration exists in the browser in iOS but not int he rest of the OS. That means a web app saved as a link on the home screen will run slower than one run in the browser. The debate is whether this is a bug or a feature.

• Paying to watch a movie on the Web? You probably gave your money to Netflix. NPD says Netflix owns 61 percent of the market for digital movies, with Comcast running a distant second at eight percent. There’s a three-way tie for third between DirectTV, Time Warner Cable and Apple. NPD also says digital video “now makes up one quarter of all home video volume.”

• The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the cable industry's trade organization, has a new boss, but he's a familiar face. Former FCC chair Michael Powell, will become the cable industry’s top lobbyist. He replaces former National Cable & Telecommunications Association president Kyle McSlarrow, who said last week that he’ll be joining Comcast Corp.

• Goodbye Google Gears, Google's first attempt at providing offline access to web apps. Google is removing the software from Chrome, indicating the definite wind-down of the project. here will be no new Gears releases, and newer browsers such as Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 will not be supported. We will also be removing Gears from Chrome in Chrome 12. Gears is survived by standards like HTML5's Application Cache.

Kickers and Weird Science

• Nintendo posts first 3DS advert for the US, whets growing appetites (video)

Calendar

• Apple Postpones iPad 2 Launch in Japan
• HTC Arrive up for $50 pre-order at Wirefly, requires new Sprint account and two-year contract
• Verizon waives Xoom and Galaxy Tab activation fees retroactive to March 1
• Verizon Wireless stops being coy, confirms HTC Thunderbolt for March 17th at $249.99
• Sony Ericsson Spain confirms Xperia Play for €649 on April 1st
• T-Mobile Sidekick 4G from Samsung announced, coming 'later this spring'
• Apple's Schiller says White iPhone coming in spring
• Watch the TWiT studios get built

Sponsors

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jeff
• Notes:

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