Tim Stevens is back to chat with us about HBO Now, ResearchKit, a new 12-inch MacBook and the Apple Watch pricing.

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A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guest: Tim Stevens, editor-at-large CNET.com

Headlines: 

Oh that watch. We finally have the details. An Apple Watch app comes first along with iOS 8.2 today. Thats how you’ll manage app selection and installation. It also will have a magnetic charger that snaps to the back after you exhaust the 18 hours of normal use battery life. The aluminum-bodied Sport collection comes in silver and space grey. $349 for the 38mm and $399 for the 42mm. The Apple Watch Collection has more band options and comes for $549 to $1049 for the 38 mm and $599 to $1099 for the 48mm depending on what band you choose. Finally the Apple Watch Edition collection comes in solid gold and if you have to ask you can’t afford it, but it starts at $10,000. You can preorder and get an in-store demo starting April 10 and the watches begin shipping April 24 in 9 countries.

Apple announced a new 12-inch MacBook with a 2304 x 1440 screen a new trackpad that can gauge how hard it’s clicked and a fanless unibody construction. Most of the insides are batteries leading to a 9 hour battery life for browsing. The laptop has 802.11ac WiFiu and Bluetooth 4 but only one USB-C port for power, data, display and of course USB. It comes in silver, space grey and gold starting at $1299 for 256 GB and $1599 for 512 GB shipping April 10.

Apple also announced ResearchKit, an open source framework for creating diagnostic apps to conduct health research. Examples included a Parkinson’s, asthma, diabetes and breast cancer. Apple never sees the data and the user of the app decides what data is shared with the app maker.

Techcrunch reports open source Saleforce rival SugarCRM has acquired Stitch mobile platform and iOS app to help salespeople follow and close deals. Stitch provided analytics to make email and documents more useful while using machine intelligence to surface better sales opportunities. SugarCRM will shut down Stitch and roll its tech into the core Sugar application.

PC World reports that Samsung has released a free web version of its Internet streaming music service, Milk. The browser version has a linear slider to fine tune taste, and introduces keyboard shortcuts. The free version has no ads, but you’re limited to skipping six songs, there’s also a paid version that lets you skip all you want. Music streams at 128Kbps and you’ll still need a Samsung device to use it on a phone, tablet or TV.

GigaOm reports that German webmail providers including Deutsche Telekom and United Internet will roll out a browser plugin next month designed to make end-to-end PGP encryption easier to use. It will work on the German government backed De-mail system as well. United Internet developed the plugin with the Mailvelope OpenPGP project and the code will be published. The plugin will become available in April for Chrome and Firefox.

Cryptic tech invite alert! CNET reports that T-Mobile sent out invitations to an upcoming New York event with the words “This one’s a real piece of work.” The press-only event is scheduled for Wednesday March 18th in Manhattan. Presumably it will not be a collection of opinionated mothers sitting on stage discussing their beloved son’s latest girlfriend.

Remember FriendFeed? Remember Facebook bought it in 2009? Well you can forget about it. Platform posts and messages will go away April 9.

News From You:

Zuntax sent us an Engadget report about a cell phone privacy nugget embedded deep in federal drug case. The defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence, which the court denied. But within that ruling, the judge determined that police officers need a warrant to get phone location data, because a cell phone user has a reasonable expectation that their position data will remain private, even when limited to information about what cell tower was used. The ruling isn’t legally binding, but does serve as a notice to police not to play fast and loose with evidence gathering, at least not in California.

KAPT_Kipper and MacBytes sent us the BBC report that a solar powered aircraft “Solar Impulse-2″ completed its first leg of an around-the-world trip. The aircraft took off from Abu Dhabi and landed in Oman after a 12 hour flight. The pane will circumnavigate the globe over the next five months. Andre Borschbeg and famed baloonist Betrand Piccard will swap piloting duties. The plane has 17,000 solar cells lining the top of the wings, and uses lithium-ion batteries to store power for night flying.

habichuelacondulce sent in the Bloomberg report that Tesla said it is cutting jobs in China. The Chinese Economic Observer reported the company would reduce staff by 30%. Tesla spokesman Gary Tao said the changes started at the beginning of the year. CEO Elon Musk said in January that Chinese sales were slow because of concerns over charging.

 

Discussion Section Links:  Apple Keynote

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/9/8177087/macbook-port-adapter-accessory

https://gigaom.com/2015/03/09/how-much-apple-watch-costs-when-it-goes-on-sale/

Pick of the Day: 

My pick of the day is your old android phone if you have one. They make great dedicated remotes for your Chromecast. If you old phone won’t sell for much, wipe it and install just your entertainment apps. You may get a little extra speed out of the old phone if you can root it and install a ROM without any bloatware like Cyanogenmod. Improve battery life by putting into airplane mode, and then just turning on WiFi.
Steve in the OC

Messages:

Hey Tom it’s been a busy week, but I seem to recall you talking about wireless device charging vs USB ports recently… Just to be clear; some systems like the Powermat being installed at Starbucks does charge the device via inductive coils with the ability to also send data back to Starbucks.

The power receiver changes the load presented to the transmitting coil, the frequency of this load change allows the system to read the ID of the device being charged. So the system CAN track users. When built into a device it would be unclear to the user how much access this system would have to other data stored on the device. After market adapters most likely would only be able to ID the same adapter since the adapter would only connect to the on board battery.

For public charging, I’ll stick with a USB cable that only has the power pins connected.

<tips tin foil hat>

=====

Tom et al.,

This is Steve from ‘getting the rain out of our system, before SXSW starts’ Austin. After hearing Darren talk about Club Mate on the show yesterday, I thought your listeners might want to know that it is now being widely distributed in the US. In Austin alone there are seven retailers selling it, and The 2600 Club in Brooklyn will ship you a case anywhere in the US.

This link has a tool to show the retail locations near you:

http://club-mateusa.com/

Order form to buy via mail:

http://store.2600.com/clubmate.html

I hope that you find this useful:

– Steve

-Ron

=====

PODCAST AWARDS

Also Podcast Awards! Remember yesterday, and the day before, when we told you how you could vote for your favorite podcast in the Podcast Awards? Well guess what, you can vote again today! For example, you could vote for DTNS in the technology category, but you can also support Night Attack in the “Mature” and “Video” categories. Also you can vote for The Instance, Film Sack and our good friends at The Morning Stream and Night Attack. I guess you could also vote for Serial. But only once. Vote once a day at http://www.podcastawards.com/ until March 24th.

Monday’s guest: Tim Stevens

Darren Kitchen is back to talk about arrests of malicious hackers in the UK and US and things he learned from NON-malicious hackers in Europe in February. Drones, Club-Mate and more! And yes Len Peralta is here to illustrate it.

MP3

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Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

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A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta

Check out Len’s amazing DTNS artprov:

http://lenperaltastore.com/products/there-and-hack-again-dtns-3-6-15-print

Headlines: 

ReCode reports Apple executives have been promising music labels it will not have a free tier for digital music when it launches its own subscription streaming service later this year. Apparently Eddy Cue and Jimmy Iovine have been trying to convince labels to distribute music with Apple first, for a service targeted at $8 a month.

Also something about Apple releasing a watch Monday. Apparently 9to5 Mac’s Marc Gurman knows somebody with one of the watches and it gets 5 hours of battery life with heavy use – the ability to see your heart rate at any time— 8 GB of storage— unlinked music playing. All kinds of stuff. Gurman’s usually right about this kind of thing.And we’ll find out for sure on Monday. When Apple actually announces the watch.

ZDNet reports that Oracle has begun bundling the Ask.com toolbar with its latest release of Java 8 Update 40 for Mac. The Ask toolbar has bundled with Java for Windows for several years. The option to install the toolbar must be unchecked by the user during installation.

eWeek reports that Microsoft published a security advisory yesterday, March 5, saying that all supported versions of Windows are vulnerable to the FREAK technique. Microsoft has issued workarounds for Windows Vista and newer. Windows Server 2003 does not have a workaround. Microsoft has seen no evidence of the attack in the wild but will issue an update, possibly out of band. Both the browser and server must be vulnerable for the exploit to work. You can visit https://freakattack.com/ for information on browser patches.

Reuters reports that Apple will be added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average after the close of trading, March 18th and AT&T will be removed. The Dow Jones tracks 30 stocks considered representative of the US economy. The Dow Jones Average was created in 1896. AT&T was added in 1916. It was removed in 2004 but reinstated in 2005 after a merger with SBC.

The BBC reports the UK National Crime Agency’s National Cyber Crime Unit co-ordinated the arrests of 56 people suspected of crimes like data theft, fraud and writing viruses. 25 separate ops were carried out across England, Scotland and Wales. A suspected Lizard Squad member was arrested in Leeds — which we will now spell with 3’s— and an arrestee in London is suspected of being part of D33d which is already spelled with 3’s. The NCA also visited 70 firms to inform them their servers were vulnerable to attack. They even set up four ppo-up shops to give security advice and check devices for malware.

The Next Web reports the US Department of Justice charged three men with hacking into US email service providers. Viet Quoc Nguyen allegedly hacked 8 providers obtaining more than 1 billion addresses. Giang Hoang Vu allegedly sent spam to tens of millions of the addresses. Both men are vietnamese but were living in the Netherlands. Canadian David-Manuel Santos Da Silva was indicted for allegedly helping the two purported hackers launder the money.

ReCode reports Amazon has opened an online store on Alibaba’s Tmall.com marketplace in China. Tmall offers virtual storefronts. Amazon also operates its own ecommerce site in China.

The Sydney Morning Herald is reports that starting April 1st Australia’s Telstra will give customers access to a limited set of their metadata – for a fee. Metadata information includes who was called, time, location and duration, but does not cover contents of the communication. It also doesn’t include who called you. The policy reversal came after SMH’s Ben Grubb lodged a complaint with Australia’s Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim. Australia is considering data retention laws that wopuld require telcos to store 2 years of customers metadata for law-enforcement access.

 

 

 

 

News From You: 

thelouisguy sent us this story from CBC that Alain Philippon of Quebec has been charged with hindering or preventing border officers from performing their role because he refused to give Canadian border security the password to his phone. According to the Candian Border Services Agency the minimum fine is $1000 up to a maximum of $25,000. Philipon plans to fight the charge. Travelers crossing most borders have a reduced privacy rights. The Canadian Border Services Agency would not say why Philippon was asked for the password. IN astatement the agency said, “Officers are trained to look for indicators of deception and use a risk management approach in determining which goods may warrant a closer look.”

HobbitfromPA sent us the Phandroid post that only owners of the Nexus 6 will be able to use Google’s wireless carrier announced earlier this week at Mobile World Congress. The Wall Street Journal has the sources on this. Google’s service will combine WiFi with LTE using other carriers networks. We’ll no doubt hear more about it at Google I/O, May 28.

Discussion Section Links: 

https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/LondonAerospace

https://spacefed.net/wiki/index.php/Spacenet

Pick of the Day: ProfessorMesser.com via Brandon Pierce

This site is geared toward helping people get CompTIA Certifications. Features:

– Full course streaming videos on the site and Youtube (free!) covering all topics for the A+, Network+, Security+ and Windows 7 certifications
– Videos & mp3 are available DRM free for purchase
– Live study groups for the A+, Network+ and Security+ on the weekends, with a chatroom for discussion and questions
– Chat is also available on the site 24/7 for questions
– PDF study notes for purchase
– Study quizzes

I got my A+ and spent only $20 on study materials.

Messages:

Hi Tom,

Derek from lovely “wait did we really go straight from fall to spring?” Eugene, Oregon here. In my (just thought of) capacity as DTNS AWS Co-executive producer I thought I’d weigh in on the discussion of MLB Advanced Media’s capacity for things like WWE and HBO.

In the first keynote of the 2014 re:Invent conference last November the CTO of MLBAM gave a brief talk on the tools and architecture that they are able to leverage with AWS to achieve greater and greater scale all the time. As someone who oversees an AWS based SaaS product that gets millions of pageviews a day I can tell you that capacity is a much more complicated equation than just number of servers but the tools to achieve truly elastic and practically limitless capacity are getting better on a daily basis. For a company as sophisticated as MLBAM running on a platform like AWS the past means very little in being able to predict how they will fair with the new load from HBO Now.

For viewers that are interested the talk from the MLB CTO is in the day 1 keynote and starts at the 16 minute mark here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp0Qv4N3uXQ

Derek “Bishma”
Software Architect

=====

PODCAST AWARDS

Also Podcast Awards! Remember yesterday, and the day before, when we told you how you could vote for your favorite podcast in the Podcast Awards? Well guess what, you can vote again today! For example, you could vote for DTNS in the technology category, but you can also support Night Attack in the “Mature” and “Video” categories. Also you can vote for The Instance, Film Sack and our good friends at The Morning Stream and Night Attack. I guess you could also vote for Serial. But only once. Vote once a day at http://www.podcastawards.com/ until March 24th.

Monday’s guest: Tim Stevens

Veronica Belmont and Justin Young are on the show to help fend off Apple rumors and talk about MLBAM’s OTHER opening day, the purported launch of HBO Now in time for the April 12 premier of Game of Thrones.

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? click here

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guests: Veronica Belmont of Sword and Laser and Justin Robert Young of Night Attack and Jury Talks

Headlines: 

Mobile World Congress? Tech reporters are most concerned with how to smuggle jamón iberico out of the country in their pants. GDC? Hungover. BUT This coming Monday is an Apple announcement. And so the rumors are flooding in to fill the gap! Here. We. Go.

Bloomberg says the never announced 12.9-inch screen iPad will be delayed until September for manufacturers. Some people call the delay of rumored products “starting.”

The WSJ adds the imaginary product will have a more power-efficient Oxide LCD screen and a USB 3.0 port. The WSJ adds the imaginary product will have a more power-efficient Oxide LCD screen and a USB 3.0 port.

WSJ ALSO says a 12-inch MacBook Air will be announced Monday.

And 9to5 Mac reports Apple will NOT announce a new live streaming music service Monday.

TechCrunch says that mythical service will debut at WWDC in June

I can confirm from asking myself that Apple will also not announce a car, a television, or a space rocket or Monday.

The Verge reports that Office 2016 for Mac is about to catch back up to Windows. The last version was released in 2010. Microsoft today announced a preview program for the new Office 2016 for Mac. Major points: Cloud services will be integrated directly into the suite of programs, Word will get co-authoring, and Excel keyboard shortcuts are now consistent between Mac and PC versions. Microsoft wants it ready in time for summer. The company has not yet announced pricing or exact availability dates, but a standalone version is expected.

The Verge reports Imgur has launched a new iPhone app that gives viewers an endless row of swipeable pictures with titles. To comment, like or dislike, or read comments just double tap the picture. When you first open the app the most “viral” images are shown to you first but there are also options for random and latest submissions as well. You can’t upload through the app yet, but that feature is in the works. A new version for Android is also coming soon.

Fit-solidation is official. TechCrunch reports Fitbit confirmed the acquisition of FitStar, makers of a personal training app that creates customized workouts with celeb athletes like NFL star Tony Gonzalez and yogi Tara Stiles. FitStar has two million registered iOS users. Fitbit co-founder and CEO James Park says the company also plans to expand FitStar to other platforms.

Look out Progressive Insurance, TechCrunch reports Google is launching “Google Compare for Auto Insurance” which lets California shoppers compare rates from different insurance providers. The option will pop up after a consumer does a Google search for “car insurance” or by going to google.com/compare. Google plans to offer it other states later in the year. While the move could help bolster revenue for Google through commissions many high profile insurance brokers like Progressive, State Farm, Allstate and GEICO have declined to work with Google. TechCrunch speculates that Google might also be doing this to learn about pricing risk in advance of self-driving cars.

Engadget reports that 2009 is back! I mean, RockBand is back! Rock Band 4 is coming to Xbox One and Playstation 4 later this year. Harmonix says all previous songs will work in Rock Band 4. The company wants to make old peripherals work but there will also be new peripherals. Also no news on Rock Band Network. This will be a platform for DLC it seems. Harmonix will talk more about Rock Band 4 this weekend at PAX East in Boston, and in June at E3 2015.

News From You: 

ccastro425 posted the Engadget story about a laser from LockHeed Martin that can stop a car from more than a mile away. The fiber-optic laser called ATHENA burned through the engine manifold of an F150. It works by “spectral beam combining which involces taking multiple laser modules and pointing them to the same place. Like the death star. And no the truck didn’t explode, just stopped running.

AB-ee-CHWAY-lah-con-DOOL-say submitted the PC World report that Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, said Microsoft is opening up app development for the Xbox One. Windows developers will be able to port their apps to the Xbox. Microsoft wants to make Xbox Live accessible through the API to all game developers no matter how big.

Michsineath submitted this topic. The Cost of eBooks in France and Luxembourg won’t be going down anytime soon reports Reuters. Judges at the European Court of Justice today, dismissed arguments by both countries that ebooks should be treated as goods not a service. EU rules allow member states to set lower VAT rates on printed books, however the European Commission decided that France and Luxembourg’s application of those rates to electronic books was illegal. Statista predicts ebook sales in Europe are expected to account for a fifth of book sales in Europe by 2017 up from 4.5% in 2013.

 

Discussion Section Links:  HBO NOW?

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/03/hbo-now-coming-this-spring-for-15-per-month-with-apple-as-launch-partner/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/4/8149579/hbo-now-streaming-service-name-pricing-report

http://consumerist.com/2014/12/09/hbo-seeks-streaming-video-help-from-major-league-baseball/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mlbs-streaming-tech-unit-goes-pro-1424718022

http://www.techhive.com/article/2888298/major-league-baseball-might-spin-off-its-video-streaming-operation.html

https://gigaom.com/2014/12/09/hbo-gone-cto-leaves-after-hbo-outsources-streaming-service/

http://www.cnet.com/news/nba-espn-deal-drafts-streaming-only-service-for-cord-cutters/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeuLion

 

Pick of the Day: Mohiomap via Michelle

Dear Tom, Jennie, today’s guest and behind the scenes DTNS team,

I would like to recommend Mohiomap, to DTNS followers. This developing site is a visual cloud based, free, curation tool, currently combines, Google drive, Evernote and Dropbox, with more services in the pipeline to be added.

Certainly helps to visualise and manage all the resources one has stored across these various platforms. IMHO A new service worth checking out, supporting, testing and giving feedback too.

https://www.moh.io/mohiomap/welcome.php

Thanks for the great show.

BFN
OOROO
Michelle not from lovely Cleveland

Messages: PODCAST AWARDS

Also Podcast Awards! Remember yesterday, and the day before, when we told you how you could vote for your favorite podcast in the Podcast Awards? Well guess what, you can vote again today! For example, you could vote for DTNS in the technology category, but you can also support Night Attack in the “Mature” and “Video” categories. Also you can vote for The Instance, Film Sack and our good friends at The Morning Stream and Night Attack. I guess you could also vote for Serial. But only once. Vote once a day at http://www.podcastawards.com/ until March 24th.

Friday’s guest: Darren Kitchen and Len Peralta

Jonathan Strickland joins the show to give us some more insight on VR as we see new announcements from Sony’ Project Morpheus, Valve’s Vive and more.

MP3

Using a Screen Reader? click here

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here or giving 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guest: Jon Strickland,  writer, howstuffworks  and host of FWThinking.com

Headlines: 

Ars Technica reports Sony Worldwide Studios president Shu Yoshida announced that the Project Morpheus VR headset will come to consumers in the first half of 2016. Morpheus will have a 5.7-inch 1920 x 1080 OLED display with a 100-degree field of view and a 120 Hz refresh rate. The headset will also have 9 LED trackers for 360-degree tracking. Separately Sony announced it has sold 20  million PlayStation 4 units worldwide as of March 1, making it the fastest selling game console the company has ever made.

Ars Technica reports Nvidia announced the Shield game console, running Android TV on a Tegra X1 chip capable of handling 4K video. It can also access games from Nvidia’s GRID cloud-gaming service which should come out of beta in May. Users can choose a subscription tier at 720p 30 fps or 1080p 60fps and starting in June buy or rent additional games from the GRID store. Users with a GeForce-powered PC can also stream their entire Steam library to a Shield on the same network. Shield will be available in early May for $199 including one gamepad.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/03/shield-set-top-box/

http://shield.nvidia.com/support/nvidia-grid/faq/1

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9046/nvidia-grid-game-streaming-service-to-become-commercial-service

As the Verge tells it, in a surprise appearance at Epic Games’ GDC 2015 event, NVIDIA co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang announced the Titan X, Nvidia’s most powerful GPU to date. The GPU will contain 8 billion transistors and 12 GB of VRAM. Sites like Anandtech have speculated the GPU to be an enlarged Maxwell processor possibly featuring a 384-bit memory bus. Nvidia’s own GPU technology conference happens in two weeks and more details about Titan X are expected then.

Engadget reports on Valve’s announcement of a VR input System and Lighthouse, a room-scale tracking system that will work with Valve VR headsets like the Vive coming from HTC later this year. The system can integrate into TVs, monitors, headsets, input devices or mobile devices and will be made available freely to hardware manufacturers. Valve will make a developer version of their VR headset available this spring.

Polygon reports Valve will release Steam Link in November, for streaming games from computers running Steam at 1080p and 60 Hz. It will cost $50, the same price as the Steam controller. . Steam Machines will also launch in November. Valve also introduced a successor to their Source game engine Source 2 for free. A special version will be compatible with the Vulkan 3D graphics API. No release date though.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/3/8145263/valve-steam-link-steam-controller-pricing-release-date

The Verge reports Oculus Chief Technology officer John Carmack said that Oculus will go forward “as hard as we can” to sell the next version of the Samsung Gear VR. While Carmack couldn’t say the date he said they had one and pointed out Samsung has two big announcements per year. The next one of those would be an autumn announcement when a new Galaxy Note is usually unveiled. No word on the PC version of the Oculus.

Cnet reports that Instagram is expanding the types of ads it shows, introducing a “carousel” that allows advertisers to post a sequence of photos and a link to a website. Instagram said the goal is to make it easier for users to interact with a brand. No word on actual Instagram users getting a carousel.

GigaOm reports a study from the Alliance for Affordable Internet shows that for more than two billion people, fixed-line broadband costs 40% of monthly income and mobile broadband 10%. The UN affordability target is 5% of monthly income. Almost 60% of global households are unconnected. Women and the rural poor have the hardest time affording Internet. Costa Rica, Colombia and Peru received top marks for having solid affordable infrastructure rollout plans. Policy areas that need attention include competition-friendly environments and good spectrum allocation.

Yesterday, Patrick and I were wondering if former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was using AOL or Yahoo for her personal email account that she used while in officer. Turns out she was much smarter than that. Engadget reports the former Secretary of State ran her own email server while in office. The Associated Press learned that Clinton used an email server registered to her home. It’s not clear where the server was or who ran it. If the server was in her house, she would have even had the Secret Service offering physical protection.

Mashable has a story up covering Uber’s acquisition of mapping start-up deCarta. deCarta focuses on location-based features, including mapping, local search and turn by turn navigation. 30 out of 40 deCarta employees will remain with Uber once the deal closes, including the CEO and President Kim Fennell. deCarta will continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Uber, but will still use its own name. The mapping software will be used internally according to Uber.

 

News From You: 

Singularity alert! Ajax-Rex sent us this mind-blowing Gizmodo report. Jan Scheuermann, a 55-year-old quadriplegic woman with electrodes in her brain, has been able to fly an F-35 fighter jet using “nothing but her thoughts.” DARPA director Arati Prabhakar announced the breakthrough at the first Future of War conference and said, “Jan’s thinking about controlling the airplane directly. For someone who’s never flown—she’s not a pilot in real life—she’s flying that simulator directly from her neural signaling.”

habichuelacondulce sent us this story from Mashable about a preview version of Google Contacts that merges Gmail and Google Plus contact info. The app automatically pulls info Google + profiles and adds contextual information like meetings or email exchanges. The new Google Contacts also has a redesigned tool to fix duplicate contact information and quickly merge multiple entries. Google will roll out the updated Contacts to Gmail users over the next few weeks.

Hurmoth pointed us to the Verge article about Sling TV adding new channels to it’s $20 a month Internet TV service. AMC and IFC are comign to the basic plan. Sling also announced a new “Hollywood Extra Plan” That includes 4 movie channels from Epix, plus Sundance TV for $5 a month. Meanwhile the International Business Times says “sources familiar with their plan” say HBO will launch its Internet-only service, called HBO Now next month for $15 a month. Game of Thrones premieres April 12.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/04/us-timewarner-hbo-apple-idUSKBN0M02DW20150304?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews

And Jonathan Strickland sent us the Next Web story that Maxis shut down its Emeryville studio. EA said that the changes “do not impact our plans for The Sims” as it is “consolidating Maxis IP development” to other studios Maxis employees will be given “opportunities to explore other positions within the Maxis studios and throughout EA

Discussion Section Links: 

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/03/valve-lighthouse-vr/

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/04/valve-vr-input/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/01/htc-vive-vr-headset-with-valve/

http://www.htcvr.com/

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/03/sony-ps4-gets-vr-with-project-morpheus-in-early-2016/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/03/04/why-not-to-fear-the-impact-of-virtual-reality-goggles-on-your-long-term-health/

http://gizmodo.com/silly-virtual-reality-headphone-goggles-are-almost-read-1689381653

http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/04/mindleap-game-system-is-powered-by-players-brainwaves-no-controller-needed/

https://gigaom.com/2015/03/04/mindmazes-headset-brings-your-brainwaves-into-virtual-reality/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/4/8146523/htc-vive-valve-vr-headset-hands-on-preview

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/04/htc-vive-hands-on/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/04/weta-epic-games-vr-gdc-hobbit/?ncid=rss_truncated

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/03/03/2311201/amd-enters-virtual-reality-fray-with-liquidvr-sdk-at-gdc?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

https://gigaom.com/2015/03/02/mary-lou-jepsen-formerly-of-google-x-takes-job-at-oculus/

 

Pick of the Day: 

Greeting Tom, Jennie and Jonathan:

I wanted to pass along a podcast that I have been listening to, The Star Wars Minute. As of this email, they are on minute 33 of Return of the Jedi and it is the second most entertaining podcast I listen to. The premise of the show is that the host break down each original trilogy, one minute at a time. As a bonus they also did a couple of shows of the infamous Holiday Special.
You can get the podcast at http://www.starwarsminute.com/

I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I have.

Sent from a mobile device
Matt

Messages:

I’ve been thinking about Pebble doing another Kickstarter and the reason’s behind it. Certainly it’s an easy way to drum up media attention, and pays lip service to fans who want to feel some kind of “ownership” over the product’s success. But what if another reason is to give developers some raw sales numbers just prior to the Apple Watch launch. Pebble recently crowed that they’ve sold one million watches, now they can show that they can bump their marketshare substantially just on a presale announcement of a new product. As of today they’ve got pledges for about 75,000 Pebble Time products, that’s a 7.5% increase in user base in 7 days (probably less because of repeat buyers, but still impressive growth). Now instead of having to wait until the Apple Watch launch to start talking about how well the product sold, they can directly point to hard numbers of watches. While its hard to imagine the Apple Watch not being a sales success, the estimate of how many will sell is pretty variable, giving Pebble critical time now to make their case to developers as a growing viable platform. I think the people at Pebble are pulling a brilliant move to get customer and developer support prior to actually releasing their product – admittedly I type this with a Pebble on my wrist and I’m biased in this regard.

Rich from Lovely Cleveland

====

Hi Tom,

I have enjoyed your discussions on the possible future for Smart Watches, and thought I would give my limited insights.

I bought a pebble that was reduced in last year’s black Friday sale, more out of curiosity than anything else. My wife was horrified when she saw me wearing it, as there is it certainly couldn’t be accused of being a thing of beauty.

There are some things it does really well:-
(1) Allows me to have my phone on silent, and alerts me of calls with the caller id by a vibration on my wrist. You can reject calls with a press of a button which is great for the mountain of “caller unknown” spam calls I get.

(2) The notifications of new e-mail, text messages, or even CNN breaking news are nice to have, and again let me know if there is anything urgent I need to react to while I am not at my desk.

(3) Music / Podcast / ‘Economist audio’ control. I am often out running with my phone in one of those arm cases. When I need to pause audio the pebble is just great.

(4) The Misfit step counter app is great, allowed me to replace my Nike Fuel Band (yes I can pick the winners!), nice to have sleep tracking too. An always on display with the time also showing is great – this Misfit screen is my default screen

(5) The battery life is not bad.

Some down sides:-
(1) Almost all of the Apps are terrible – I installed a number of them and quickly found them useless. If I need to browse evernote a watch interface is not the way to do it. This is probably why Pebble are moving to the timeline approach.

(2) The build quality of the original pebble is a bit toy-like. I scratched the plastic screen early on, something I had never done with any other watch.

(3) The watch can disconnect from the phone, and suddenly stop sending notifications – this problem has improved with O/S patches.

(4) It is big and ugly.

I think the Apple Watch (or at least version 1) will struggle:-
(1) A watch is for information you can get at a glance, I will be surprised if any killer apps that are more than glorified notifications emerge. (even maps on a watch seems limited use, especially as you need your phone with you)

(2) It might be made of high quality components, but it is not a thing of beauty (no matter how many pages Apple buy in Vogue).

(3) ApplePay (or NFC based tickets for something like the London Underground) might be nice, but not really a huge time saver to have them on your wrist as opposed to your phone.

(4) It is not cheap.

(5) If you are trying to monitor your steps and sleep patterns when will you charge it?

My my 2cents worth,

Simon

====

Hi Tom(and Patrick as he was there for the discussion),
I just wanted to write in about the discussion on yesterday’s show about the whole treason/no treason issue. There is a very clear legal definition of treason(well actually a couple different levels), that while most people may or may not be aware of, all cleared US government employees and contractors have explained to them upon receiving their clearance. By that definition, Edward Snowden absolutely, positively committed treason. The real discussion should be is: “Was it justified?”, and/or perhaps, “what punishment if any is deserved?”
The best analogy I can think of is Robin Hood vs Bonnie and Clyde. Both absolutely committed armed robbery, but we don’t say that Robin Hood didn’t commit armed robbery because we are happy with the results…
Love the show.

Todd

Thursday’s guest: Veronica Belmont

Patrick Beja joins to talk about whether Huawei, Pebble or someone else is winning the smartwatch war. And will Apple make it all pointless anyway? Plus Molly Wood pops in to sum up all you need to know about Mobile World Congress.

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Show Notes

Today’s guest: Patrick Beja, DTNS contributor

Headlines: 

TechCrunch reports Gartner has its figures for smartphone sales out for both 2014 and Q4. Smartphones passed the billion mark last year selling 1.2 billion overall out of 1.9 billion total mobile phones sold. In Q4 Apple took over the top spot selling 74.8 million smartphones for 20.4% of the market. Samsung slipped to second dropping from 29.5% to 19.9% of the market. Lenovo maintained 3rd place rising from 5.8% to 6.6%. Huawei stayed fourth followed by Xiaomi which tripled its sales. Samsung still ended with 30.9% of the market for the year with Apple second at 15.5%.

The Verge reports Pebble announced the Pebble Time Steel, essentially a stainless steel version of the Pebble Time. It comes in three colors, steel, black and gold, for $250 on Kickstarter with a shipping date of July.  Pebble also announced the release of plans for Smartstraps that can integrate with the Pebble Time data port and add sensors for things like heartrate and GPS.

ReCode reports BlackBerry had 4 announcements at MWC. The BlackBerry Leap is a 5-inch touchscreen smartphone that will sell for $275 unlocked this spring. Also coming later this year are a new keyboard-based Blackberry, a curved screen devices with a slide-out physical keyboard and one other device. CEO John Chen noted BlackBerry finished Q4 profitable and stated revenue is stabilizing and future quarters should also be profitable.

Recode reports that cloud-storage company Box will buy Berkeley-based Subspace, shut it down April 3rd, and fold its employees into Box.  Subspace helps make sensitive data accessible on personal mobile devices in a secure fashion.

TechCrunch is reporting BitTorrent’s Free File Sharing Service, Sync has left beta. Now called Sync 2.0 the DropBox alternative will also feature a paid Pro plan starting at $40 per user a year. New feature highlights include a new UI thats more consistent between desktop and mobile versions and a new certificate security model. The free edition will be limited to 10 folders although each folder will have unlimited storage. Pro users avoid that limit and also get folder permission and ownership settings, making it easier to access folders across devices. Sync 2.0 is available now for Mac, Windows, Linux and Free BSD and mobile versions rolling out to iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Amazon Kindle. It also works on several brands of network-attached storage.

The Verge reports the HBO Go app for PS4 launched today and functions just like the PS3 version.  As with all new HBO Go apps, your cable provider has to allow you to log in.  The biggest cable provider not playing along with this version of HBO Go is Comcast.
Comcast, however, has made its HBO and Cinemax channels available today via its Xfinity TV Go app.

BizTechAfrica reports Visa and Bharti Airtel will bring mobile payments service to Kenya, Gabon, Ghana, Madagascar, Rwanda, the Seychelles and Tanzania. The service will allow users to us Airtel Mobile Money to pay in stores that accept Visa and withdraw money from ATMs. The Airtel Money Visa Card has launched in Kenya and will roll out to other markets in the first half of 2015.

CNET tried Fujistsu’s concept phone that uses infrared lasers and cameras to scan your iris and unlock your phone.  Fujistu explains that the human iris is more complex and more reliable than a fingerprint. CNET reporter Andrew Hoyle was impressed by the easy setup and use.  Fujitsu says the scanner should arrive in phones later this year.  And look for the horrible dystopian futurescape of eyeball stealing and eyeball replacement soon after that!

Reuters reports Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, said Tuesday that his client Edward Snowden is working with US and German lawyers on a way to return to the US. Kucherena made the statement at a news conference for his book on Snowden.

Reuters reports an Apple spokesman actually said something to the press today. Apple plans to release a fix next week for the security flaw called “FREAK” On March 3, researchers disclosed a vulnerability in SSL/TLS that dates back to the 1990s. The FREAK attack was originally discovered by K. Bhargavan at INRIA in Paris and the mitLS team.  You can learn more at the website freakattack.com

News From You: 

Philo1927 sent us the news that Canadians have been “spocking” their currency to honor the late Leonard Nimoy. Canada’s $5 bill features the 7th Canadian Prime Minister, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who looks enough like Mr. Spock to make the transformation easy with a few pen strokes. The bank note is also a shade of blue that’s close to Spock’s uniform. Canadians have been spocking fives since at least 2008, but picked up again when Design resource tweeted encouragement for Spocking. When word got out to Canadian William Shatner, he said via Twitter, “…the defacing of the Canadian $5 bill warms my heart.” The Bank of Canada? Not as thrilled. stating that “Writing on a bank note may interfere with the security features and reduces its lifespan,” and “markings on a note may also prevent it from being accepted in a transaction.”

Zuntax sent us The Verge version of the New York Times report that Hillary Clinton exclusively used personal email when she was the US Secretary of State from 2009-2013.

According to The Times, Clinton did not have a government email account during her term as Secretary.

US Federal law states that letters and emails written and received by federal officials are government records and, unless they contain classified or sensitive materials, should be kept where third parties can access them.

Personal email accounts are supposed to be reserved for use in emergencies.

Discussion Section Links: 

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/3/8140837/huawei-watch-design-interview-mwc-2015

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/03/us-huawei-tech-usa-idUSKBN0LZ0BM20150303

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/3/8139835/pebble-time-steel-smartstrap-announcement-launch

http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2015/03/03/pebbles-smartstraps-are-a-big-deal-and-bad-news-for-apple/

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/03/pebble-time-is-now-the-most-funded-kickstarter-project-ever/?ncid=rss

http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2015/03/03/pebbles-ceo-isnt-worried-about-apple-watch-because-its-lacking/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/1/8128483/lg-watch-urbane-lte-hands-on

 

Pick of the Day: F-Lux  via Eric from Lovely Cleveland

First, Great Show. Been listen since BOL. Tom you do a wonderful Job, You ever think you might want to do it for a living?

A pick for you.. F-Lux. https://justgetflux.com/ It changes the computer’s monitor output from brightness to color output. Blue light segments are bad for sleeping and this changes the hue to remove it. The program also dims the screen at night to match your room. Being a dedicated IT guy I spend hours on my computer and at night. This helps saves my eyes.

I liked the show you did where you told everyone how you guys at DTN work. I think you should take this another step and show how other people work. I would even continue and go the next step and show how couples and households work together with technology.

Thank you to you and the other people who help. Jenny, Roger and so on.

Eric from Lovely Cleveland.

Wednesday’s guest: Jonathan Strickland