Tech News Today 346

Tech News Today Episode 346

Tech News Today 346: Netflix's Split Personality

Netflix is really sorry, OK, come back!, Facebook finally releases an iPad app, Windows 8 gets faster and light.

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Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@sarahlane)
  • SarahLane.com
• Iyaz Akhtar (@Iyaz)
  • thisoldnerd.finitecomedy.com
• Lance Ulanoff (@lanceulanoff)

Top Stories

• Netflix abandons plan to split DVD services
• DVDs will be staying at netflix.com
• Netflix kills Qwikster after customers bash spinoff of DVD service
• Netflix kills Qwikster but still considering games
  • “It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs,” Hastings wrote. “This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.”
  • Prices remain the same.
  • Netflix Vice President of Corporate Communications Steve Swasey told CNET that video game rentals are still on the table.

• Yahoo Drops Out of Hulu Sweepstakes (Report)
• Hulu Sale Is Debated
• Yahoo out as Hulu mulls other bids, report says
  • Wall Street Journal reports Yahoo no longer bidding on Hulu
  • Dish Network, Google and Amazon all still interested.
  • Dish's bid of $1.9 billion is believed to be of the most interest to the sellers
  • Google, on the other hand, is willing to pay more than $2 billion, but has required Hulu to agree to certain conditions before it can complete the deal
  • According to the Journal, the board of directors is unsure if it really wants to sell the company, and could decide against it."

• Yang eyes Yahoo buyout with private equity
• Alibaba looks to break away from Yahoo, report says
  • Jerry Yang reportedly pursuing deal with private equity firms that would take Yahoo private.
  • Yang and co-founder David Filo would have to roll over their shares.
  • Silver Lake Partners, Providence Equity Partners, Hellman & Friedman and Bain Capital all mentioned by Reuters. Bloomberg reported last week that Alibaba is in talks with Silver Lake Partners and Digital Sky Technologies to file a joint bid for Yahoo.
  • Talks are reportedly informal and financial info will be sent this week
  • A buyer could sell off Yahoo's international assets, which include a partnership with Softbank in Yahoo Japan as well as about 40 percent stake in Alibaba.
  • According to Bloomberg Alibaba is in talks with Singapore's Temasek Holdings, a state-owned investment firm, to raise the cash to buy back Yahoo's 40 percent stake.

Discussion Stories

• Facebook’s Mobile App Platform and iPad App Are Finally Here — And They’re Apple-Friendly
• Facebook iPad app finally available today, iPhone app updated with new features
  • Facebook officially release their new iPad app today.
  • a few new features: ability to chat with friends, play Facebook games in full-screen mode, and watch high-resolution videos in the app. Uses Apple's in-app system.
  • made several improvements to Facebook for iPhone and Facebook’s mobile website, m.facebook.com. “In your next update, you’ll see a simplified navigation, faster search and access to more games and apps,” Facebook mobile engineer Leon Dubinsky wrote.
  • HTML5 versions of a selection of their apps and game titles others will take yout o native app
  • The combined native and Web app experience is only available on iOS for now. On Android and other phones with Web browsers, users will default

to the Web experience.

• • Ticker not there, but may be coming. No Timeline.
  • Now, when a friend sends you an invitation to play “Words With Friends,” and you view it on the Facebook app on your iPhone, you can click to play and be taken to the Words With Friends app. If you don’t have the app, you’ll be directed to Apple’s App Store. If you’re on an Android phone, you’ll be taken to an HTML5 version in your mobile Web browser.

• Preorders for iPhone 4S set one-day record
• iPhone 4S pre-orders are in the mail
• iPhone 4S antenna furthers Apple/Samsung patent war
  • Apple said the 4S set a record with more than 1 million units pre-ordered online in the first 24 hours.
  • Engadget reports shipping notifications started going out today
  • GSMArena reports Professor Gert Frølund Pedersen, professor at Aalborg University's Institute for Electronic Systems in Denmark believes the iPhone 4S antennae may tread on patents he and colleagues sold to Samsung. Apparatus and method for stabilizing terminal power in a communication system and Apparatus and method for selecting an antenna in a communication system patents.

• Windows 8 To Reduce Memory Footprint
• Windows 8 to reduce memory usage
  • Bill Karagounis, group program manager for Microsoft's Performance team
  • Memory combining searches system RAM for duplicate content and then frees up the duplicates to hold just a single copy.
  • Microsoft has removed 13 different services, changed a number of others from automatic to manual, and moved still others into a "Start on Demand" mode so they're not eating up memory
  • Consolidated various core but low-level components
  • Windows 8 will be smarter about which allocated memory to keep and which to free up.

News Fuse

• RIM faces another black eye as BlackBerry service failed across Europe, the Middle East and Africa starting at 11 Am local time today, leaving BlackBerry users able to make calls and send texts and that's about it. Telcos in the area pointed the finger at RIM in posts on Twitter. RIM says some people are affected they sincerely apologize and they're are working on it.
  • BBC is reporting that email services have been restored after the outage affected millions of users.
  • BlackBerry Twitter

• Andy Lees talked about the future of Windows Phones with AllThingsD. Lees says that LTE will come to Windows Phone handsets when LTE becomes more power efficient. As for dual-core phones, Lees says to expect those when more software will be ready to take advantage of more cores. He was quick to talk up current gen devices since he obviously wants you to buy some - Lees says he suspects single core Windows Phones "will be faster in usage than any dual-core phone you put against it."

• Sony Pictures may have the rights to Walter Issacson's upcoming biography of Steve Jobs according to the blog Deadline New York. Mark Gordon, Producer of "Saving Private Ryan," Mark Gordon is rumored to be on board producer. So who plays Steve Jobs? - Noah Wyle's done it a couple times - once in the movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" and again on stage at Macworld 1999.

• Google introduced Dart in a preview form today. Google calls it "a language for structured web programming." If you use Dart, your code can run in a virtual machine or you can use a compiler to turn your Dart code into JavaScript. There's no Dart VM in Chrome - yet. The first tools are already available at dartlang.org and they're open source.

• Microsoft's taking a solid lead in game console sales. And as expected that's bad news for Nintendo. The company sold 360,000 Xbox 360s in the month of September according to Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. The PS3 came in second with 260,000 . Nintendo only sold 190,000 Wiis.

• Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam announced that Amazon would start collecting sales tax in the state in 2013 unless a national solution is addressed first. The Governor said he'd work with Amazon to try to find a national solution as well. Amazon will bring 3500 full time jobs with benefits to Tennessee as well as 2000 seasonal jobs.

• RIM will update some of its phones with a new NFC-based data sharing feature called "BlackBerry Tag." Tag will come to the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 as well as the Curve 9350 & its variants. Users can bump together handsets, to share photos, links, contacts and add each other to BlackBerry Messenger quickly.

• This week, Motorola Mobility's 3LM wants to make Android more enterprise-friendly. 3LM's solution will encrypt all your data on an Android device, allow for enterprise resource access, and is designed to secure data from any Android application. 3LM says that out of the box, its software works with 300,000 apps. Businesses can either run 3LM's server software or buy a hosted service by 3LM, although pricing has yet to be announced.

• The Wall Street Journal reports Google and Sonic.Net will hand over emails of Wikileaks volunteer Jacob Applebaum to the US government. The companies resisted handing over the data but the U.S. obtained a secret court order forcing them to comply. Applebaum's emails are a part of the ongoing investigation of Wikileaks, although there are no charges against Applebaum.

Randomizer

• Create your own 3D figures with the iModela USB 3D printer

Calendar

• CyanogenMod-7.1 Released! Today!
• the TiVo Premiere Elite is the Albert Pujols of DVRs... it records four shows simultaneously, has 2TB hard drive, & is available now
• CTIA apps and enterprise kicks off in San Diego starting tomorrow - Samsung's delayed their big announcement but CTIA rolls on as planned Samsung Stratosphere lands on Verizon October 13th: LTE and QWERTY for $150
• T-Mobile Galaxy S II pre-orders begin today, should land in stores October 12th
• Acer’s Aspire S3 ultrabooks arrive in the US October 16th.. price tag: $900
• Motorola Spyder will be introduced on October 18th... they've released a little teaser video that has it all... cars, guns, women, the number 42... just not any phone visuals
• Apple's planning a celebration of Steve Jobs’ life for October 19th, 10am PT - Tim Cook has sent out an internal email to Apple employees to plan for the event in the outdoor amphitheater of Apple’s Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino.
• The Linux Foundation announced today the first ever Automotive Linux Summit. Takes place in Japan on November 28, 2011

INCOMING

Email

"Hey TNT Crew,

I was just reviewing the tidal wave of information regarding the new iPhone, iCloud and iOS5 announcements yesterday. One thought that struck me as odd was the fact that Apple offers a 16GB, 32GB and 64GB iPhone... even after the introduction of iCloud. My question is: why would anyone pay the extra money for more internal storage on an iPhone when you can get 50GB of iCloud storage for $100 per year? Unless you're planning on loading a lot of apps, doesn't it make more sense to buy the 16GB model and then stream your media content from the cloud? I understand that carrier data caps might be a concern, but it makes perfect sense, to me, when you're on wifi. It seems like even more a no-brainer for the iPod Touch. What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

Josh Dill"

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Production Information

• Edited by: Tony
• Notes:

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