Tech News Today 485

Tech News Today Episode 485

Tech News Today 485: Sheep Are Awesome

Intel Ivy Bridge gets real, Microsoft arms Facebook for the patent wars, Cable TV comes to the Internet, 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)
• Jason Howell (@RayGun01)
• Dana Wollman
  • engadget.com
• Loyd Case
  • uncertainty.com

Top Stories

• Intel's Ivy Bridge chips launch using '3D transistors'
• 13 Quad-Core Intel Ivy Bridge Chips Expected
• Intel's Ivy Bridge processors launch today, but dual-core and low-voltage MIA until later in spring
• Ivy Bridge CPUs, 28nm graphics cards facing shortages right on launch
• Intel launches 22nm Ivy Bridge processors: here's what you need to know
• Intel's third-generation, Ivy Bridge review roundup: integrated graphics see a big bump
• Acer ships desktops with quad-core Ivy Bridge chips
• Ivy Bridge Processor: Leaner and Meaner
  • Intel announced Ivy Bridge 13 quad-core processors, for laptops and desktops
  • Dual-core and ultra-low voltage chips, for ultrabooks "later this spring". -- Although The Verge reports most of the chips are 77W TDP while the i7-3612QM is 35W TDP.
  • Models have a "3" at the beginning where Sandy Bridge had a "2" 2.9GHz Core i7-3920XM
  • world's first 22 nanometer product (Sandy Bridge is 32 nm), big difference from Sandy Bridge is the integrated graphics performance
  • You want the chips with HD Graphics 4000 50% boost in game frame rates. HD Graphics 2500 10-20% higher over HD Graphics 2000 -- PC Perspective, Anandtech, Tom's Hardware all have theor benchmarks out.
  • Overall chip power is about the same as Sandy Bridge.
  • Ivy Bridge chips will sue the LGA-1155 socket so no need to buy a new motherboard. Though new motherboards will add USB 3.0 PCIer 3.0 and Thunderbolt support. Also every new board supports the onboard processor graphics.
  • Ivy Bridge devices would be capable of handling high-definition video conferences and 4K resolution cameras
  • ComputerWorld reports Acer on Monday started shipping desktopswith Ivy Bridge.
  • "There will be 50% more supply than we had early in the product cycle of our last generation," - Kirk Skaugen, who is spearheading the launch, told the BBC.
  • Digittimes reporting: Although Intel will start selling its Ivy Bridge processor on April 29, the limited supply of Ivy Bridge processors means it is not expected to be able to satisfy downstream PC vendors' strong demand.

• Microsoft and Facebook announce $550m patent deal for patents bought from AOL
• In Pricey Microsoft Patent Deal, Facebook Delivers Another Smackdown to Yahoo Lawsuit
• Microsoft’s Top Lawyer: We Never Wanted All of AOL’s Patents
• Rather Than Pay Yahoo’s Troll Tax, Facebook Built A Patent Fortress
• Facebook's patent spree: There's more where that came from
• New S-1: Facebook’s Yearly Revenue Growth Up 45 Percent, But Down Six Percent From Last Quarter
  • Microsoft will pay AOL a billion dollars for ownership of 925 patents plus a license to 300 additional patents AOL isn't selling.
  • Facebook will give Microsoft $550 million for 650 of those 925 patents, plus a license to the remaining 275 patents Microsoft isn't selling. Facebook will not get a license to the 300 patents AOL licensed to Microsoft.
  • It's probably safe to assume Microsoft is getting a license to the 650 patents it's selling to Facebook, but we're trying to confirm that now.
  • ATD reports: Microsoft and Facebook began working on a deal the day after Redmond emerged as the winner of the AOL patents.
  • Facebook general counsel Ted Ullyot: "This is another significant step in our ongoing process of building an intellectual property portfolio to protect Facebook's interests over the long term."
  • Reactions
    • Yahoo! - “Nothing about today’s action changes the fact that Facebook continues to infringe our patents. Companies who purchase patents are often working from a position of weakness and take these actions to strengthen their portfolio. We see today’s announcement as a validation of our case against Facebook.”
  • Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith: “We have a very high regard for the value of the Yahoo patent portfolio. It’s an important portfolio that reflects all of the tremendous value Yahoo brought to this space, and we are very sensitive to the importance of our relationship with Yahoo and our relationship with Facebook.”
  • Josh Constine at TechCrunch points out Facebook has bulked up from 56 patents at the start of the year to 1461
  • Facebook IPOs mid-May
  • Facebook updated it's S-1 filing today. Essentially releasing an earnings report. Revenues 1.058 billion up 45% for the year down 6% from last Quarter. Current private share price estimated at $30.89

• Creative Cloud: Adobe's new all-access CS6 subscription priced at $50/month
• Adobe announces CS6 pricing and pre-orders, estimated delivery May 7th
  • Adobe offering Creative Cloud for $50/month on a yearly subscription, or $75 month-to-month.. 14 of Adobe's new CS6 applications. Good for those who need access to Creative Suite products here and there or beyond trial periods.
  • Photoshop and Premiere Pro can be licensed alone for $19.99 per month on a one-year contract, $30 month-to-month
  • version for small business users, called Creative Cloud Team, will be available for $70 a month in the second half of the year.
  • Creative Cloud includes 20GB of cloud storage for saving/syncing files. Free users of Creative Cloud get 2GB storage, 30-day trials of all CS6 apps.
  • Last year CS 5.5 offered Photoshop (not Extended Edition, retail $699) for $35/month, Design Premium Suite ($1,899 retail) for $95 per month, and CS 5.5 Master Collection ($2,599 retail) for US$129 per month w yearly commitment, now no more tiers
  • CS6 now includes the new Adobe Mercury graphics engine for Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro software, and a new application called Muse, "a radical tool that enables designers to create and publish HTML5 web sites without writing code."

Discussion Stories

• NimbleTV to Offer Cloud-Based TV, DVR Anywhere
• Start-Up Aims to Stream Pay TV Onto Web Devices
• NimbleTV
  • A startup called NimbleTV plans to offer packages of television channels that a customer buys through a distributor like Dish Network, then streams the package onto the Web,
  • Instead of just paying NimbleTV for the service, like Aereo, you have to pay for a cable subscription first, then an additional charge to NimbleTV for the place-shifting and unlimited storage DVR service
  • Beta testing begins today, with NimbleTV paying for 26 channels itself and not requiring a subscription package for testers.
  • NimbleTV says it has the same functionality as a Slingbox and DVR, but without the actual boxes.
  • NimbleTV itself will include a monthly fee, probably around $20, though the company would not comment.
  • NimbleTV will launch a pilot program in New York City this summer, which will let users buy satellite service.
  • Its site says it will offer TV packages from the US or any other country
  • NimbleTV is backed by the Tribune Company, owner of 23 TV stations, as well as Greycroft Partners and Tribeca Venture Partners, two venture capital firms.

• SkyDrive for Windows Phone updated to version 2.0, includes multi-select and permissions options
• SkyDrive for Windows and OS X Lion app now available with new paid storage plans
• It’s Personal Cloud Week! SkyDrive Reduces Free Storage and Adds Desktop Apps; Dropbox Does Links.
• Dropbox update adds public link to any file or folder
• Dropbox simplifies sharing with file viewer and folder links
  • SkyDrive reducing free amount to 7GB supposedly based on the amount of storage 99.94% of people use.
  • Existing users can lock in the fee 25GB by clicking on an offer int he interface at skydrive.com. Users with 4GB or more already stored will be upgraded automatically
  • SkyDrive for Windows will allow users to drag-and-drop files (up to 2GB in size) to and from SkyDrive folders. Similar to Dropbox, all files and SkyDrive content will be managed in one central folder that syncs with Microsoft's online cloud storage.
  • Microsoft added new desktop clients for Windows and Mac (preview releases today) and updated Windows Phone and iOS apps.
  • New for pay plans: 20 more gigabytes for $10 per year; 50GB for $25; and 100GB for $50.
  • Windows Phone SkyDrive app features a multi-select tool, UI updates, and new folder permission options.
  • Dropbox also updated their service adding the ability make any file have a public, read-only link, without having to sign up for Dropbox. (SugarSync and Cubby already do this - this was in the beta previously)
  • CEO Drew Houston told Forbes that a photo auto-upload feature would be making its way to iPhone sometime soon.

• Samsung teases its ‘Next Galaxy’
• Samsung sing-up website/teaser video
• Samsung Galaxy S III gets first confirmed carrier
• Samsung’s Galaxy S III sign up page goes live
  • Samsung released teaser videos for the next Galaxy phone
  • AndroidCommunity.com reports: Samsung launched a sign-up page for those that want up to the minute details as soon as they are available, along with teaser videos. thenextgalaxy.com
  • One of the teaser videos advises smartphone buyers not to act like sheep. “With technology that fits in this easily, you can now stand out from everyone else,”
  • CNET reports that an unnamed person in the British telecom industry has said that the new phone could be a relatively small update, with a 4.7-inch screen, 1 GB of RAM and is likely not going to be called the Galaxy S III. Its main new feature, according to the report, is called “Human Interaction,” a feature that will be able to tell when a user is looking at the phone and lock when he or she looks away.
  • Slashgear reports: Vodafone UK has confirmed it will carry the next Galaxy

News Fuse

• That fresh cut grass smell can only mean one thing - baseball season.. um. maybe two things. Earnings season! Netflix announced its quarterly financials with revenue at $870 million with a loss of 8 cents a share which beat expectations. Netflix also announced it had 23.41 million subscribers in the U.S. with 26 million users worldwide. How's Wall Street reacting to these numbers? Shares are down in after hours trading.

• Microsoft's Skype division blessed Windows Phone with an official version of Skype today. The app is available for free and will offer video and voice calls on WiFi and cellular networks. However, Skype will work only on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango - Tango users, you're out of luck for now. If you can run the app, it has some limitations as it cannot send SMS and cannot retrieve Skype voice messages.

• Skype for Windows Phone version 1.0 released, no longer considered beta

• According to Bit9, a security firm, IT professionals are most concerned from attacks from hacktivist groups like Anonymous. However, more money is being spent on the prevention of phishing attacks and malware instead of addressing hacktivist attack mainstays like SQL injections and DDOS attacks. IT security also told Bit9 that their biggest concern was infrastructure servers like DNS servers, domain controllers and credential servers.

• The days of the 17-inch MacBook Pro may be drawing to a close. According to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will likely stop making the 17-inch notebook this year citing lack of shipments. Kuo also accurately predicted the death of the white plastic MacBook. Rumors place the next line of MacBook Pros to hit the market as soon as this month.

• Asus officially launched the Transformer Pad 300. Spec rundown time: 10.1-inch screen with a 1280 x 800 resolution, quad-core 1.2GHz Tegra 3 and Ice Cream Sandwich. The 16GB model is $379, but for $20 more you get 32GB of storage. The tablet will come in three colors - red and white later this year with the blue version coming first.

• Russian security firm Dr. Web says that the number of Mac OS X machines infected with Flashback is still around 650,000. This number is contrary that of Symantec and Kaspersky which claimed the number had diminished substantially. However, Symantec's Liam O Murchu said that Dr. Web's numbers were accurate after comparing analytic data. Apple has since released a malware removal tool available via Software Update.

• Verizon's Droid Does site just unveiled the new Droid Incredible 4G LTE by HTC. It comes with a dual core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB internal storage and a 4-inch qHD LCD display. The site showed a $299 price tag as well, however, the page for the new Incredible is no longer available at Verizon's site.

• Remember DNS Changer? It's the botnet that the FBI shut down in Estonia, but the FBI kept certain servers running to allow infected machines to have proper Internet access. The FBI will no longer act as a middle man as of July 9th. If your machine is still infected with DNS Changer then you may lose Internet access on that date. To check if your machine is infected check out DCWG.org.

• DNSChanger: FBI Warns Infected Computers Will Lose Web, Email Access in July

Randomizer

• Valve employee manual describes the greatest workplace I've ever heard of

Calendar

• 7 years ago today, the first YouTube video was uploaded. It is titled "Me at the Zoo" and shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The vid's still available.
• it's the Sinclair ZX Spectrum's 30th Anniversary! this microcomputer launched in 1982 by Sinclair Research (Cambridge, UK). The machine is thought of by many as inspiring a generation of programmers, software and game designers in the UK.
• Tomorrow is Apple earnings
• Wed April 25th, 3-day The Next Web conference starts in Amsterdam

INCOMING

Email

"I have been watching the Google, Oracle law suit and I wanted to throw in my two cents. First off, I am not a professional programmer. Most of the programming I do is for the controls of my robot (plug: 610bob.com/robot), but I do know Java for the desktop as well for Android, AS3, and C/C++ which is my language of choice. I liked Tom's explanation of what is happening, but I felt that API's implantation, rather then use may better help people understand Oracle's absurdity in this case. The implementation of API's change across languages, but they can all be boiled down to one specific fact. API's are just an agreed upon location in memory were a programmer can call upon it and either give data, receive data, or both.

Think of it like this. There are two neighborhoods. Lets call one G and the other O. Neighborhood O has a specific place for an ice cream truck to park. It sit right across from the school. If the neighborhood kids want to get chocolate, they need to go to this specific location. Neighborhood G wants to allow there kids similar access, but doesn't feel like retraining their kids since most of the them came from Neighborhood C. So neighborhood G parks a chocolate ice cream truck in front of their school.

Basically, Oracle is suing Google for parking Google's ice cream truck in front of the school. The fundamental fact is that APIs are meant to be shared. If that changes, it will have a grave effect on programming. But to be honest, I don't know what frightens me more. The fact that Oracle is willing to cause massive collateral damage because they are mad at google, or that the fate of programmers everywhere is in the hands of a jury that probably doesn't even know the first thing of programing.

Josh Cawood"

"Hello TNT Crew, I have been a huge fan of google since day one and have never had a problem until today. About a month ago I took a picture with my android phone. The picture involved myself killing a spider and performing an inappropriate gesture towards it (giving it the bird), I'm petrified of spiders so when I had my glorious moment I proceeded to email that picture (from my android phone as an attachment through my personal gmail account) to my wife in hilarity. So it's a month after that situation, and today I sent my wife an E-mail, totally unrelated to previous events. She opened the email (From her personal Gmail account), the Contact information that shows up on the top right corner showed a ""Recent Pictures"" showing a picture of me flipping off the spider. That picture was never posted as a profile picture, added to any library, album, NOTHING (Double Checked in case I did it on accident). It was only sent from that one email. I wasn't even aware gmail did that. Depending on the situation that could turn out bad. I would hate for someone to be looking over her shoulder whom I would not want to see that inappropriate picture. Worst part is I have no control over it what so ever. This is now changing my feelings towards Google. Google + advertisments EVERYWHERE, were already testing my nerves.

Thank

P.S. Feel free to summarize as you please on the air

Trevor Smith"

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Production Information

• Edited by: Jason
• Notes:

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