Michael Wolf is on the show today, we’ll cover the latest net neutrality stuff, YouTube’s music service but also talk about Quirky’s move to bring down the price of the smart home.
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Show Notes
Today’s guest: Michael Wolf, host of The Smart Home Show
Headlines:
Tom Wheeler is having a bad week. The Washington Post reports that hours after the President of the US expressed his opinions on the FCC’s Open Internet Guidelines, Wheeler told executives from major Web companies in a meeting. “What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business. What I’ve got to figure out is how to split the baby.” He also started a meme inadvertently by repeatedly telling participants, “I am an independent agency.” Meanwhile FCC’s Special Counsel for External Affairs Gigi Sohn tweeted that “all options are on the table.” Which is in danger of being tableflipped I expect.
In other net neutrality news, FCC press secretary Kim Hart told the BBC. “There will be no vote on open internet rules in the December meeting agenda. That would mean rules would now be finalized in 2015.” That won’t sit well with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson who said at a conference that the company might pause its roll out of fiber to 100 cities until it knows for sure what kinds of rules will govern the Internet. At the same conference Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said, “I think the independent agency of the FCC will make the right decision,” and did NOT add “You have a nice independent agency here, be a shame if something happened to it.” Google responded by making gigabit fiber for businesses available in Kansas City.
TechCrunch reports that YouTube is launching a subscription music service called “Music Key” in beta next week. The service offers access to Google Play’s music library, as well as ad-free music videos, background playback capabilities and offline caching on YouTube. for $7.99 a month at first and then $9.99 per month. To sign up for an invite, go to youtube.com/musickey YouTube has already added music videos in a new section that features personalized playlists and soon full albums.
GigaOm reports on Microsoft’s decision to open source the entire .NET framework as well as making it cross-platform for Linux and OS X. The change will take a few months but Microsoft has started creating .NET repositories on GitHub. Microsoft also announced Visual Studio Community 2013 which will let students and small dev shops build cross-platform applications for free.
The New York Times breaks down some of the results of a Pew Research Center survey of US citizens about privacy. The upshot is people in the US want privacy but won’t do much to insure it themselves. 81% do not feel secure using social media. 80% os users of social networks are concerned about advertisers and 70% about the government. Still 55% are willing to share info with companies for free services. Those with more education higher incomes or those who are generally younger care more about privacy. For instance 59% of young adults feel email content is sensitive compared 42% of older adults.
Samsung announced their Gear VR headset, which uses the Note 4 as a screen, will go on sale in the US in December. Pre-registration has begun at Samsung.com. But GigaOm reports that’s not all. Early adopters will be able to watch live feeds of 36-degree videos in real-time from festivals and other memorable places. Samsung showed off Project Beyond today, a device with 16 cameras that can capture video in 3D.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports that Beats announced the release of new wireless Bluetooth headsets today, the first product released since Apple bought Beats. The Solo2 Wireless work within 30 feet and can be used to take calls, adjust volume, and skip. Beats claims 12 hours of wireless playback on a charge. You can get them later this month for $299.95 in black, white, red, and blue. The red one will only be available from Verizon Wireless through the end of the year. Because, marketing.
GigaOm notes the official Android Twitter account says Android Lollipop is rolling out to Nexus devices. Go to Settings > System Updates > Check Now to see if it’s there for you yet. If you don’t want to wait, factory images are available at developers.google.com for Nexus 5, 10 and the 2012 and 2013 versions of Nexus 7.
News From You:
metalfreak submitted the Make article about Robert Coggeshall aka Sudo Bob, making a teletype from a Raspberry Pi. He took a spare teletype he picked up from the NYC REsistor folks at MakerFaire 2013, hooked it up to a Raspberry pi , plugged in an iPad for a typing interface and voila. Teletype. Find out more details at makezine.com or get the full scoop at sudobob.com.
GoodDoc wanted to make sure we all knew that illustrator Randall Munroe spent all last night and this morning live-drawing the European Space Agency’s attempt to land a robot on a comet. Because, oh yeah, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft travelled for ten years to rendezvous with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which is moving through space at 80,000 miles per hour, and today they attempted to land a robot probe named Philae on the surface of the comet and it WORKED. Mostly. Philae’s harpoons didn’t fire, but it does act like it landed but their not sure its stable. So ESA is working on that. Check out the final drawing at xkcd.com and feel good about being an earthling today.
Ischenko passed along a report from The Next Web that Amazon is planning to test its Prime Air delivery drones in the United Kingdom. They know this because Amazon placed an ad to hire an engineer based out of Cambridge, UK with “flight test experience, manned or unmanned” and “5+ years of relevant aviation experience, either civilian or military with either manned or unmanned aviation”. In case that isn’t exactly you, Amazon is also hiring Site Leader, Project Manager, Software Development Engineer, Senior Research Scientist and an Office Manager.
And KAPT_Kipper pointed out the followup from Ars Technica to yesterday’s story that the GNOME Foundation was preparing for a trademark battle with Groupon, which put out a point-of-sale tablet product that used the name Gnome. Groupon has given up and “decided to abandon our pending trademark applications for ‘Gnome. We will choose a new name for our product going forward.”
Discussion Section: Quirky
http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/11/7193765/quirky-ge-wink-uniq-spotter-norm-factory
Pick of the Day: Amazon Smile via Shlomo from Brooklyn
I’m sure almost everyone who listens to the show has bought something from Amazon.com or shops from there regularly. Here’s something that will make your Amazon shopping experience a little more generous. A few months ago I discovered that Amazon has a program called AmazonSmile. To get to it, instead of going to www.amazon.com you go to smile.amazon.com, there’s even a Google Chrome extension called Smile Always that will always redirect you to the smile version of the Amazon.com webpage. When you shop on AmazonSmile, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the money you spent to the charity of your choice. You select this charity when you first visit AmazonSmile and can change it whenever you want. Almost every major charity you can think of is on there as well as many local charities. Organizations can register to receive donations through AmazonSmile on org.amazon.com. Obviously 0.5% is not a lot of money, but if you already donate to charity or if you can’t afford to, this is a nice option that costs you nothing.
Thursday’s Guests:Jason Hiner & Lyndsey Gilpin
