Tech News Today 351

Tech News Today Episode 351

Tech News Today 351: Too late To App-pologize?

Carriers will help you know your limits, BlackBerry's apology gift basket, Samsung keeps losing to Apple, 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)
  • thisoldnerd.finitecomedy.com
• Jason Howell (@raygun01)
  • JasonHowell.net
• Leslie Horn (@leshorn)

Topics

• Cellphone Users to Get Billing Alerts Under New Voluntary Standards
• B'bye, bill shock? FCC gets deal from carriers
• Under FCC pressure, mobile carriers adopt "bill shock" warnings
  • New voluntary plan Verizon, Sprint, ATT, T-Mobile wil send alerts when customers go over monthly voice, data or text-message limit
  • carriers will also provide alerts when consumers travel internationally, warning them that they may incur additional fees if they use their phones.
  • Plan wil go in place within next 12-18 months
  • CTIA struck agreement with FCC
  • The FCC will work together with Consumers Union to create a website to collect information about carrier compliance.

• iPhone 4S sets new record, sees 4 million unit sales in first weekend
• What Apple’s Big Weekend Means in the Global Smartphone Market
• Big mo: In one week, Apple iCloud hits 20M users; 25M use iOS 5
• Apple Shares Hit Yet Another Lifetime High
  • Apple reports they sold over 4 million iPhone 4S units over the weekend in seven countries
  • Estimate at unlocked prices, that's close to $3 billion in revenue. More than Google makes from mobile in one year. according to John Fortt at CNBC
  • 22 more countries get the phone October 28th
  • 25 million people are already using iOS, iCloud has added 20 million users in less than a week.
  • Apple stock peaked at $426.70 a share

• BlackBerry outage victims offered apps not cash
• BlackBerry cuts made roads safer, police say
• RIM Aims to Make Good for Outage With Free Apps
  • RIM is offering a bundle of twelve apps – usually collectively priced at over $100 from the BlackBerry App World – free,--enterprise customers will also get a month’s free Technical Support.
  • Apps will be available for download Wednesday
  • Traffic accidents in Dubai and Abu Dhabi fell during outage: In Dubai, traffic accidents fell 20 per cent from average rates on the days BlackBerry users were unable to use its messaging service. In Abu Dhabi, the number of accidents this week fell 40 per cent and there were no fatal accidents.
  • SIMS 3 – Electronic Arts
  • Bejeweled – Electronic Arts
  • N.O.V.A. – Gameloft
  • Texas Hold’em Poker 2 – Gameloft
  • Bubble Bash 2 – Gameloft
  • Photo Editor Ultimate – Ice Cold Apps
  • DriveSafe.ly Pro – iSpeech.org
  • iSpeech Translator Pro – iSpeech.org
  • Drive Safe.ly Enterprise – iSpeech.org
  • Nobex Radio™ Premium – Nobex
  • Shazam Encore – Shazam
  • Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant – Vlingo

Discussion Stories

• Google pulls Voice from Apple App Store due to crashes on iOS 5
• Google Voice pulled from App Store following iOS 5 crash
  • Google Voice removed app from iTune store after repeated complaints about crashing in iOS 5
  • Google Voice Product Manager Vincent Paquet told users late last week that the company has "found the sign in bug and have come up with a fix. We are testing it and will release an update as soon as we can.” Later told Engadget "We removed it so it did not affect additional users until the fix gets published."

• Samsung tries to stop iPhone 4S sales in Australia
• Samsung seeks iPhone 4S embargo in Australia and Japan
• Apple tells Samsung it will only license out 'lower level patents'
• Apple relies on Samsung chips despite patent war
• ITC judge says Apple did not infringe on HTC's patents in initial case, more rulings still to come
  • Samsung today filed an injunction request in an Australia court, saying that Apple's iPhone 4S, which launched on Friday, violates three wireless patents it holds relating to the use of wireless technology, including WCDMA and HSPA
  • In Japan, Samsung argues that those devices violate four of its patents realting to HSPA and user-interface elements.
  • Florian Mueller looked through the Australian filing by Apple last week and found Apple revealed that it is prepared to allow Android device makers the ability to license "some lower level patents." But Apple also wants to keep many of its inventions exclusive to its own iOS products.
  • According to Korea Times, Industry sources say that Apple will continue to use Samsung’s chips and technology for its next smartphone
  • ITC judge has now ruled on HTC's first complaint against Apple from back in May of 2010, finding no violation of the patents in question on the part of Apple"

• Amazon lockers come to NYC, no more getting caught by UPS in your PJs
  • New York joins Seattle and London with Amazon 'lockers'
  • giant, automated PO boxes, designated exclusively for Amazon purchases.

News Fuse

• Chinese search company Sohu.com reports Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma has raised enough money to acquire Yahoo. Ma was speaking at an event held by Taobao Mall, an Alibaba subsidiary, where he made it known he had raised $20 billion in cash reserves. That $20 billion figure is based on Yahoo's current valuation.

• Samsung announced it sold 30 million Galaxy S and Galaxy S II's around the world since the S series launched in June 2010. What's the break down of that 30 million? 20 million came from sales of the original Galaxy S and the remaining 10 million are Galaxy S IIs.

• NoScript is now available for Android. If you're unfamiliar with NoScript, it stops JavaScript, Flash, Java and other plugins from running if they are considered malicious. This isn't a stripped down version - its developer said that the mobile version "provides all the major security features of its desktop counterpart." The dev also said that it "should work on Maemo too."

• Amazon's Kindle Fire will squeeze the company's profit margins even lower because of the Kindle Fire, according to analysts. Barclays predicts Amazon will sell 4.5 million Kindle Fires. Amazon is losing $10 per unit on the Kindle Fire according to IHS. Put those two pieces of information together and you can see why Ben Schacter of Macquaire Capital thinks Amazon may have a quarter in 2012 with negative operating margins.

• According to AndroidPolice.com, Ice Cream Sandwich will come with a photo editor built into the "Android Gallery" app. The site got its hands on a bunch of icons for functions like crop, rotate, and other editing commands which are baked into the Gallery APK. ICS will also have 19 filters so you can vignette and sepia to your heart's content.

• Energy usage is about to get more social. Facebook has partnered with Opower and the Natural Resources Defense Council to make a social energy application so its users can see their energy use compared to their friends and national averages. Commonwealth Edison, the City of Palo alto and Glendale Water & Power users will be able to import their data into the energy app when it launches in early 2012.

• News Corp, champion of paywalls everywhere will NOT place "The Sun" behind a paywall and will restructure to generate more revenue from ads according to Paid Content. This is may seem a bit strange considering News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch has publicly called for all of his news sites to charge for content. But I think it shows that Rupert Murdoch doesn't champion paywalls, so much as making money. A new mobile app for The Sun will be also be available, but that app won't be free.

• The air was a little less sweet over the weekend, because Sesame Street's YouTube page was hacked... and all videos were deleted and replaced with hardcore porn. It took Google a little over 20 minutes to take down the hacked YouTube channel. The Sesame Street channel has since been restored - in the "About this user" section, there is now an apology for the incident and a recommendation that for child-safe video, visit SesameStreet.org.

• Order has been restored because ICANN will be the new home of the time zone database. A copyright infringement case took down the time zone database relied upon by pretty much every Linux distro. Astrolabe Inc. is suing Arthur David Olson, the current coordinator of the database, saying he owes the company royalties.

Randomizer

• CMU Researchers Turn Any Surface Into A Touchscreen

• Remember those faster-than-light neutrinos? Great, now forget 'em

Calendar

• Happy birthday IMDB - you are 21 today and are going to be very hungover tomorrow!
• The Novell-Microsoft trial has begun in Salt Lake City... Utah-based Novell Inc. is accusing Microsoft Corp. of anti-trust behavior in the mid-90s. Novell says Microsoft monopolized the PC business and harmed Nortell's business, including the once-mighty word processing program WordPerfect. Nortell originally sued in 2004.
• BlackBerry DevCon Americas starts tomorrow, October 18 and runs through the 20th in San Francisco.
• Apple earnings due tomorrow October 18th
• Also tomorrow, Verizon and Motorola are unveiling something. Could it be the Motorola Droid RAZR? Images of this phone leaked out today.

INCOMING

Email

"Hello Twiteans,

It appears that iOS 5 was rushed and wasn’t fully ready. I sort of suspected this as beta 7 was rather unstable and nothing more stable was released before the launch date.

But the show stopper is the new Music app on the iPad. For listening to podcasts it is totally worthless. They have removed the 1/2x, 1x, 2x button, the back 30 seconds button and the blue ball to show which ones have not been listened to yet.

Having listened to you guys at 2x since your first day, even when they fix the bug, listening to you at 1x without a way to change it to 2x would be listening to you at half speed from my point of view. I love your show, but not that much.  ;-)

Thanks, John Rutherfurd"

"Greetings TNT Crew,

I went out to see "Real Steel" last night, the robot boxing movie set in 2020. Low and behold, user interfaces for controlling some of the chrome dipped combatants were HP branded! From that moment on, I knew. The engineers down at HP finally found hardware that makes webOS shine; 15 foot tall mechanical hand to hand combatants that fight without relent. No wonder their Touchpad fell on it face. It didnt have the 'punch' the users craved.

Nex ~Dragonblight Server"

Sponsors

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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