Tech News Today 294
Episode 294 |
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Recorded: July 28, 2011 Published: July 28, 2011 Duration: 45:35 |
Contents
Tech News Today 294: Spotify Got Squatified
Sprint going LTE? Google wants to speed up your website, glow-n-the-dark dogs, and more.
Submit and vote on story coverage at technewstoday.reddit.com
Hosts
- Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
- Sarah Lane (@sarahlane)
- Jason Howell (@raygun01)
- Iyaz Akhtar
- Patrick Beja
- Julio Ojeda-Zapata
Top Stories
- Nintendo posts earnings, drops 3DS from $249 to $169 August 12th, current owners get 20 free games
- 3DS drops to $169.99 in August, early adopters given free games
- On August 12th the price of the Nintendo 3DS drops from $249 to $169
- gamers that have logged into the eShop at least once before the price cut will be 10 free NES virtual console games September 1st, plus 10 more Game Boy Advance virtual console games -- that Nintendo is not planning on releasing to the general public -- before the end of the year.
- slashed its financial projections for the year from ¥110 billion to just ¥20 billion.
- Ars Ben Kuchera: "Isn't this why we all bought a 3DS to begin with, to play previous-generation Nintendo games in 2D?"
- LightSquared to buy 4G from Sprint for billions
- Sprint deal moves LightSquared a step closer to entering 4G market
- Sprint Shares Fall as Company Inks Deal With LightSquared, Loss Widens
- FAA report allegedly based on old LightSquared plan says LightSquared Rollout Will Kill 794 People
- 15-year agreement Sprint provides LTE ground service and 3G roaming
- Lightsquared expects to roll out LTE services in its first US markets during the second half of 2012
- Lightsquared pays Sprint $9 billion over 11 years (claim it will save them $13 billion)
- Sprint gets a $4.5 billion purchase credit towards LTE service, can purchase up to 50% of Lightsquared capacity
- FCC still needs to approve
- Earnings: Gained a million customers (wholesale and prepaid mostly, lost 101,00o postpaid) lost $847 million
- Sony, Sharp and Fujitsu earnings all bring bad news, only Toshiba says something nice
- Sony makes a loss as quake and tsunami hit production
- Motorola Mobility Swings to Loss on Various Charges, As Revenue Rises
- Sony - ¥15.5 billion ($200 million) compared to ¥25.7 billion profit for the same quarter last year. Earthquake, PSN outtage Slow Bravia TV, PC and camcorder sales too.
- Fujitsu also lost ¥20.4 billion, earthquake, stronger yen, lack of consumer demand.
- Sharp: operating profit of ¥3.5 billion (down 84.4% over last year) weak demand for TV's. Transitioning to small displays for iPhone and iPad.
- Toshiba: slight rise in net quarterly profit to ¥470 million due to demand for its power systems and home appliances
- Motorola Mobility: on Friday said that its sales for the past quarter totaled $3.3 billion, up 28 percent from a year ago, but swung to a loss when including various charges. Expect profitability in Q4
Discussion Stories
- Nielsen: Android accounts for 39 percent of smartphones in the US, Apple is the top device maker
- Android Still Dominates Phones, But What About the Rest of Mobile?
- New numbers from Nielsen -- Android largest smartphone OS in the US, with 39 percent Q2
- iOS 28% making Apple largest device maker
- RIM 20%
- Windows 9%
- These numbers have barely budged from last month
- June 30, 2011 Nielsen Numbers for comparison
- Android 38%
- iPhone 27%
- RIM BlackBerry OS 21%
- Windows Mobile 9%
- Symbian 2%
- HP WebOS 2%
- Palm OS 1%
- WP 7 1%
- Other 1%
- BT ordered to block links to Newzbin 2 website
- British Telecom ordered to blacklist Usenet search engine
- Hollywood goes to war on pirates
- A high court has ruled BT (ISP) must block Newzbin 2
- Newzbin is the reincarnation of a site shut down previously in the UK. It's a Usenet search engine often used to find movies and TV shows.
- "In my judgment it follows that BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin 2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes."
- BT and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which brought the case, will be back in court in October to work out how the blocking will work. MPA suggests using child porn filters.
- "The Studios have made it clear that this is a test case," the judge wrote. "If they are successful in obtaining an order against BT, then they intend to seek similar orders against all the other significant ISPs in the UK."
- Google’s New Page Speed Service Promises to Speed Up Your Website
- Google to speed up, host customers' Web sites
- Tom's Web page tested in the service
- Following on PageSpeed extension, and API, comes the Page Speed service from Google. Free and invite only for now, will start charging.
- Google essentially grabs your website, caches it and serves it from the company’s extensive network of servers around the world.
- Point your DNS at Google's servers - Google rewrites the pages -"Now you don't have to worry about concatenating CSS, compressing images, caching, gzipping resources, or other Web performance best practices." - Ram Ramani
- Google says on average, pages served from Page Speed are between twenty and sixty percent faster.
- Some pages may not render properly and you can blacklist them from the service
News Fuse
- Yahoo's former BFF, Alibaba announced it developed a mobile OS which is based on Linux. Dubbed "Aliyun," the OS will be able to run Android apps as well as web apps. The Aliyun handsets will first hit China next month. Alibaba is also working on an English-language version expected to be completed by the end of the year.
- Alibaba Confirms Aliyun, Its Cloud-Powered Mobile and Tablet OS
- You a big OLED fan? VP of AU Optronics Paul Peng says that large OLED televisions will simply not be commercially feasible until the year 2014 due to poor yield rates. Maybe he wants to tell LG that, because the company is planning to introduce a 55-inch OLED next year. So does that mean that LG is taking a loss on its next TV or are they from the future?
- 29 universities in the United States are banding together for the Gig.U project. The project aims to build a broadband infrastructure not only to their campuses, but also to surrounding businesses and individuals. Gig.U is not looking for government dollars and hopes that broadband companies and private investors will help fund the effort.
- Spotify just launched in the United States and it's already been sued for patent infringement by PacketVIdeo. So what patent is it? It's patent number 5,636,276 which covers a device for the distribution of music information in digital form" and it's from 1995. Now, PacketVideo didn't do the R&D behind the patent, the company simply bought it years ago, which in all fairness gives the company rights to sue anyone. Welcome to America, Spotify!
- South Korean social network Cyworld has been hacked. According to the Korean Communications Commission, data like phone numbers, names and email addresses from 35 million accounts on Cyworld were compromised. The agency says that the source of the hack led them to an IP address based in China.
- Want to play "Driver: San Francisco" from Ubisoft? Well you better have an always-on Internet connection because otherwise, you can't play. The news came via a tweet by an Ubisoft developer and echos a statement on Steam's pre-order page. Ubisoft tried this before with "Assassin's Creed 2" which caused a backlash. Maybe this time, gamers will be cool with this?
- Depending on how you look at it, Twitter has made it very convenient to see sponsored messages in your feed or Twitter has cluttered your feed with ads. If you follow a brand or company, you will see promoted tweets from that brand highlighted in your timeline. Twitter clients like Twitter for iPhone or TweetDeck will not display the ads. Alternatively, you could always unfollow companies.
- In its quarterly report, Logitech announced a loss of $29.6M and that its CEO, Gerald P. Quindlen is leaving the company. Logitech also explained that more units of the Logitech Revue with Google TV were returned than were purchased. To get sales moving, the Revue will get a $150 price reduction down to $99.
- A new Swiss study suggests that there is no connection between brain cancer in children and cell phone usage. The study covered 998 children between the ages of 7 and 19 over a four year time span. 352 of them were diagnosed with brain cancer and used a cellphone 20 or more times. The researchers then looked at the location of the tumors, but the location did not correspond to where a cell phone would be located.
Randomizer
Calendar
- The BBC has launched their "global" iPlayer app for customers in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. download and offline access to BBC programs which customers in the UK can't do. 7 euro/month, 50 euro/year
- The Motorola Photon 4G ready for order on Sprint's site, it's scheduled to ship July 31st.
- Skype 5.5 for Windows is now available, and has that deeper Facebook integration
- RIM has released BBM 6 which does some cool new stuff - chat within apps and both view and download your friends' favorite apps from lists on their BBM profiles.
- Tomorrow, July 29 is the 12th Annual SysAdmin Appreciation day!
- The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights announced today that it will hold a hearing, “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?” on September 21 at 2:00 PM. And Eric Schmidt will be there.
- The Droid Bionic will come this September according to Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha in an interview with CNET.
"Just some food for thought about interpreting those Nielsen results...sure, how many people watch video on a device is important - but more important is how much they watch. If only 3% are watching video on iPads, they could be watching 4-times as much as those who watch on other devices such as a laptop. This could total change what the study means for businesses.
Keep up the great work! Mark Hermonat, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada"
"Hey gang -
This is in reference to Ford cutting out CD players in their cars. As an enjoyer of music I have next to no use for CDs unless I'm collecting from my favorite band. Otherwise, downloads are fine for me. However, as a children's comedian/musician CDs are still very relevant. 9 times out of 10 moms request physical media because it's easier to play in the mini-vans, etc. As a dad, I keep a booklet of CDs in our car for the kiddos to enjoy while my wife and I listen to podcasts.
I love how forward thinking Ford has been, and I hope they keep it up, but I think a lot of families still want the good ol' plastic disc option. It's kept my business going. Just my two cents.
Keep up the great work.
Mr. Vic the Comedian for Kids and Families"
Sponsors
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Production Information
- Edited by: Jason
- Notes:
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