Tech News Today 458

Tech News Today Episode 458

Tech News Today 458: The Junior Johnnies In The Corner

Sparrow alights on iOS, Nokia working on a tablet, Kevin Rose merges his DNA with Larry Page, or maybe something less dramatic, and more.

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Hosts

• Tom Merritt (@acedtect)
  • TomMerritt.com
• Sarah Lane (@SarahLane)
  • SarahLane.com
• Iyaz Akhtar (@Iyaz)
• Jason Howell (@RayGun01)
• Wil Harris
  • channelflip.com

Top Stories

• Sparrow leaps from Mac to iPhone, but Apple limits its appeal
• iPhone Finally Gets Better E-Mail Option With Sparrow
  • The app offers a unique UI as well as compatibility with most IMAP accounts. But because of Apple's limits on background-processing APIs, the first version of Sparrow shipped without push notifications for new e-mails, which will undoubtedly limit its appeal as a true Mail alternative.
  • Ars spoke to developers Dominique Leca and Dihn Viêt Hoà to find out why push e-mail isn't supported. To use standard push notifications, Sparrow would have to store user names and e-mail addresses for each user's account on a remote server. That server would then check for new mail and send a push notification to a user's device.
  • "We used the VoIP API to put Sparrow in the background while keeping a network connection open to the server," Dihn told Ars."Sparrow is then 'suspended,' which means it will not use any CPU cycles. iOS will take care of the persistent connection, and it won't use much battery since nothing will be going back or forth on the network," he explained.

• Nokia working on own tablet: design chief
• Nokia: Yep, we're working on a tablet
  • Nokia design chief Marko Ahtisaari is spending a third of his time on creating a tablet for the cellphone maker said in an interview with Finnish magazine Kauppalehti Optio.
  • "We continue to eye the tablet space with interest, but have made no specific announcements," a company spokesman said on Thursday.
  • Ahtisaari didn't say, however, if the device will be running Windows 8, as expected, or when it might launch worldwide.
  • DigiTimes previously reported that Nokia was going to produce 200k units of the device - a 10-inch ARM device running WOA

• AnonOps claims Anonymous OS is fake
• Anonymous operating system prompts security warnings
• Anonymous Releases Their Own Operating System, Complete with Hacking Tools, and You Should Not Download It
• Anonymosus-OS: an OS for Anons
  • This week a modified Ubuntu distro dubbed “Anonymous OS” was released promising lots of hacker and security tools. Available at SourceForge
  • AnonOps have taken to Twitter to say that the OS is fake, and “wrapped in trojans”.
  • Anonymous OS says that is silly because it's Linux. "If any user believe that Anonymous-OS “is wrapped in trojans” or “backdoored OS by any Law enforcement Company or Hacker” please don’t download it!
  • 26,000 people have downloaded AnonOS
  • Rik Ferguson, director of Trend Micro's European security research efforts, said it was "a functional OS with a bunch of pre-installed tools that can be used for things like looking for (database) vulnerabilities or password cracking".
  • pale imitation of a version of Linux known as Back Track

Discussion Stories

• Kevin Rose Will Join Google
  • Liz Gannes at ATD reports that Rose is joining Google along with entire Milk team (8 ppl). Netting $1-2M each in talent acquisition. TC reporting deal was 15-30M, driven up in bidding war with FB
  • Milk/Oink reportedly not being bought. Oink announced shutdown yesterday, export options available. Website offline 3/31. Milk staff recently moved into a new office.
  • Rose said to be starting Google Monday to work on social. G+? Big name in tech. Has successful YouTube account.
  • acquisition of Digg from Google fell apart in 2008, reportedly in 200M range
  • Google+ account: publicly checked into Google Headquarters on 1/31, got a Nexus phone on 3/10.

• Google Gives Search a Refresh
• Report: Major Changes Coming to Google Search
• WSJ Says Big Google Search Changes Coming? Reality Check Time!
  • Google announced new search engine tweaks that will roll oout over the next few months: will present more facts and direct answers to queries at the top of the search-results page.
  • the company is aiming to provide more relevant results by incorporating technology called "semantic search," Amit Singhal, a top Google search executive, said in a recent interview that the search engine will better match search queries with a database containing hundreds of millions of "entities"—people, places and things—which the company has quietly amassed in the past two years.
  • Could mean more relevant ads
  • Danny Sullivan points out that none of this is really new. Googl arguably started doing semantic search in 2003 and blogged about it in 2009 and 2010
  • Honestly, it sounds like Google is just going to ramp up showing results that come from its Google Squared technology, as well as what’s been built since its Freebase / Metaweb acquistion.

• Interplay's Brian Fargo finds fan funding for Wasteland sequel
• Gamer pays game creator $10K as an apology for pirating his game
  • close to a million dollars contributed directly by fans just over two days after the launch of a Kickstarter project to fund Wasteland 2
  • Wasteland creator and Interplay founder Brian Fargo, who gamers might know for his work on the Fallout, Baldur's Gate, and Bard's Tale series, writes on the Kickstarter page that this was probably the last chance for a Wasteland sequel to get made, thanks to consistent disinterest in such an old-school, top-down RPG from publishers.
  • Eight backers paid over $10,000 to earn attendance at a private party with members of the Wasteland 2 team, as well as a shrine in their honor inside the game world.
  • Min-Liang Tan, the founder of pro-gaming peripheral company Razer, has given $10,000 to games developer Brian Fargo as an apology for pirating his game Wasteland a couple of decades ago.

News Fuse

• iFixit does what it does best and tore apart the new iPad. Inside is a giant 11,560 mAh battery which explains how the iPad can manage to have the same battery life with that high res screen and LTE. That's about double what the iPad 2 contained.

• Cloud-based service, Incapsula, announced their research shows that 51 per cent of website traffic is non-human. Zombies? Aliens? Not so interesting sadly. Most of it is automated software programs; with many programmed for the intent of malicious activity. Approximately 49 per cent are genuine humans. But we're certain that someday it will include zombies.

• PayPal introduced its Square competitor called "PayPal Here." The triangular-shaped device attaches to an iPhone via the headphone jack and works in conjunction with the new PayPal Here app. The merchant only needs to punch in an amount and the buyer can swipe the card. Additionally, you can use the camera to scan the card or checks. PayPal charges a flat 2.7% rate.

• Bloomberg Businessweek reports that after Apple found out that Path was uploading contact information, CEO Tim Cook and other executives called Path's Dave Morin to Apple HQ where they proceeded to grill him. The same report also profiles a service called GTekna which gets apps to the list of Apple's most popular program slots. Its methods were not detailed.

• PlayBook users, get excited! Just a few days after announcing a keyboard dock for the PlayBook, RIM confirmed that it will bring BlackBerry 10 to its tablet "at some point after the launch" of the first BB10 handsets.

• Cisco announced it is buying itself a little something - the NDS Group, a software maker that specializes in content streaming and security to the tune of $5 billion in cash. The purchase is meant to bolster Cisco's own video service like Videoscape. NDS currently includes clients like DirecTV and British Sky Broadcasting.

• The CEO and founder of Yammer announced via Twitter that any Yahoo employee who moves to his company, Yammer in the next 60 days will receive a $25,000 signing bonus. So if you're not already a Yahoo employee - you've got 60 days to get into Yahoo then quit for Yammer for a bonus. Good luck.

• Yonhap News Agency reports that South Korea fined Samsung, LG and Pantech and several carriers for defrauding consumers by inflating the price of cell phones. The total combined fine is roughly $40 million (US). SK Telecom was hit with the biggest fine of nearly $18 million (US).

• You know who likes tequila? Microsoft Office! "Agaves" are web extensions to bring third-party functionality to Office clients, according to sources with knowledge of Office 15 plans. Web developers will be able to create an area that lets webpages interact with documents and deliver content with extra features. You'll find the Agaves through Microsoft's Office Marketplace, or from private stand-alone Agaves at organizations.

Randomizer

• The laser unprinter

Calendar

• Blizzard confirms Diablo III Launching May 15th. with pre-orders starting today on the Blizzard website.
  • Diablo III costs $59.99. For $99.99, a collector's edition.
• Amazon Appstore is one year old! users can enjoy birthday discounts this week on such apps as Plants vs. Zombies, Fruit Ninja, Wolfram Alpha, and Splashtop Remote Desktop.
• tomorrow was the original launch date of the Steve Jobs biography

INCOMING

Voicemail

• Internet coffee maker history
  • Trojan_Room_coffee_pot

• Use all the data!
  • related link for jason to drive him crazy --> useallthedata.com

Email

"Hey TNT,

I am writing to you because I want to bring up a concern I have about the tablet life cycle. Today, phones last about 2 years before they become dated (more like 2 months for Android). Obviously this is the case more so for Android since there is more variety in hardware and software versus Apple's annual new iPhone and full control of hardware and software updates.

Holding on to a phone for more than 2 years and you risk not being able to get the new OS updates or a full OS update. This hasn’t been a major concern for most people because we buy phones at subsidized rates with a contract of $300 or less depending on model and deal at the time. Also, we have been conditioned to get a new phone every two years by the carriers with programs like the old New Every 2 from Verizon.

Now applying that model to tablets concerns me... High end tablets can be pretty expensive, costing from $499 and up. Is the tablet hardware going to last longer than the phone hardware or will they also start to show their age every two years? Are we going to be expected to buy a new tablet every 2 or 3 years to be able to take advantage of all the OS updates?

Maybe Amazon's Kindle Fire and the rumored Google Nexus Tablet have the right idea with a tablet at a $200 price point.

Just curious on your opinions on the subject. Am I wrongfully concerned? Am I the only one thinking that far ahead??

Enjoy the Show!!

-- Daily Listener, Chris Fatica Cleveland, OH"

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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