Had a lovely time chatting with the awesome Andrew Zarian this morning on the IAIB spotlight. We talked about where Internet content has come from and where it’s going, at least from my own perspective.
You can listen in and watch here.
DTNS 2162 – PaperBowl
+Patrick Beja joins to talk about the dispute over Facebook’s Paper app, who won the Super Bowl on the Internet and Flappy Bird.
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 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 and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Attn: Facebook Legal, Trademark Division: The NY Times reports that hot on the heels of the release in the US today of Facebook’s new iOS app Paper, comes a complaint from a company called FiftyThree that makes an award-winning drawing app called Paper. Georg Petschnigg, co-founder and chief executive of FiftyThree told the NY Times he has asked in writing for Facebook to refrain from using the name. He also took to the FiftyThree blog to implore Facebook to “apply the same degree of thought they put into the app into building a brand name of their own.” FiftyThree has a trademark on the name “Paper by FiftyThree.” There are many other apps in the iOS App Store called Paper as well.
Windows 8.1 is now 4th most popular Windows OS TechCrunch passes along some Netmarketshare data from January showing that Windows 8.1 has passed up Vista to become, as of January, the 4th most popular edition of Windows at 3.95% to Vista’s 3.3%. The most popular Windows is XP with 29.3% an actual rise over December’s 28.98%. Meanwhile the first update to Windows 8.1 known as Update 1 leaked over the weekend showing interface changes making it easier to use a keyboard and mouse, and the ability to pin Metro apps to the desktop. Update 1 is expected to be released as early as March 11.
News From You
DrewCPU, mranthropology and a whole bunch of other folks are excited about this Next Web report that Google has opened up the ChromeCast to all developers. The SDK for Android, iOS, the Web and Chrome. Developers can incorporate the code into existing apps without having to rewrite. Developers can get the new SDK at developers.google.com/cast/ and sample apps at GitHub. Users of ChromeCast should expect to see many more apps with ChromeCast capability in the coming months.
The Verge reports Microsoft, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and Yahoo have all now reported numbers for National Security Letters and requests made under the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Combined the numbers can only be reported to the nearest 250 and if separated only to the nearest 1000. Apple and LinkedIn reported their numbers last week and chose to report combined numbers of fewer than 250 requets. The remaining companies today broke the requests into categories. No company listed getting more than 999 orders in six months for any one category.
AllanAV posted a DSLReports link to a TorrenTFreak article about an AT&T Mobility patent filed in September that would enable a carrier to charge a customer more money for certain kinds of traffic, like file sharing or video. A user gets a certain number of credits for certain types of traffic and data requested is checked to see if it is permissible or non-permissible according to the carrier. While a patent filing is far from a working system, the recent decision against FCC Net Neutrality guidelines makes systems like this more interesting to follow.
More links from the show:
Tom Merritt: The Making of a Top Technology Journalist – BCW438
I had a very enjoyable conversation with Bruce Naylor of Business Computing Weekly. I don’t know if I would describe myself as a ‘top technology journalist’ but nonetheless it was fun to chat over projects and models for content and such. Bruce is a great guy.
You can listen in here.
Today in Tech History – Feb. 3, 2014
In 1879 – Joseph Wilson Swan demonstrated the first practically usable incandescent filament electric light bulb to 700 people at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne.
In 1966 – The Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft landed safely on the moon in the Ocean of Storms. It was the first lunar soft landing and first transmission of photographic data from the Moon to Earth.
In 2011 – The Number Resource Organization announced that the free pool of available IPv4 addresses was fully depleted. The IANA allocated the last of the blocks equally between the five Regional Internet Registries.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
Today in Tech History – Feb. 2, 2014
In 1046 – English monks recorded “no man then alive could remember so severe a winter as this was.” Their analog weather blog entry recorded the beginning of the Little Ice Age.
In 1931 – Friedrich Schmiedl launched the first rocket mail (V-7, Experimental Rocket 7) with 102 pieces of mail between Schöckl and St. Radegund, Austria.
In 1935 – Detective Leonarde Keeler, co-inventor of the Keeler polygraph, tried out the lie detector on two suspected criminals in Portage, Wisconsin. Both suspects were convicted of assault.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
Today in Tech History – Feb. 1, 2014
In 1951 -TV viewers witnessed the live detonation of an atomic bomb blast, as KTLA in Los Angeles broadcast the explosion of a nuclear device dropped on Frenchman Flats, Nevada.
In 1972 – Hewlett-Packard introduced the first scientific handheld calculator, the famous HP-35 for $395. It was the first handheld calculator to perform logarithmic and trigonometric functions with one keystroke.
In 1985 – Shortly after its founding the November before, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence kicked off. SETI Institute began operations.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
DTNS 2161 – Facebook Opens to Savings
Ewen Rankin joins to chat about Microsoft’s next CEO, How Facebooks selfishness is helping everyone and its REAL purpose behind the new Paper app.
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 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 and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Satya Nadella likely to be chosen as Microsoft’s next CEO Multiple sources including Recode, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal report Satya Nadella will be chosen to become Microsoft’s next CEO. Allegedly the Microsoft board will meet this weekend, likely during times not overlapping with the Super Bowl, to discuss the hiring. Also under consideration is Co-founder Bill Gates stepping aside as Chairman, though remaining on the board. Board Member and former Symantec CEO John Thompson has been leading the search for Steve Ballmer’s replacement, and is rumored to be in line to succeed Gates as Chairman.
Windows 8.1 to boot straight to desktop? In an unrelated— or is it— Microsoft news, The Verge reports its sources say the upcoming Windows 8.1 update will default to booting straight to the desktop, bypassing the tiled Start screen. Windows 8’s first release had no option to boot into the desktop, requiring users to click the desktop tile every reboot. A system update made available a setting to change the default to boot to desktop. This would be a complete reversal on the issue for Microsoft if true.
News From Snowden: Canada edition It’s about time Canada got some attention from a Snowden leak don’t you think? Engadget passes along a CBC News article describing how Communications Security Establishment Canada or CESC, collected metadata from thousands of travelers in Canadian airports by tapping into the free WiFi service. Data collected over a two-week period was used to track travelers as they connected to other WiFi hotspots in the US and Canada. The operation was just a test and CESC claims “no Canadian or foreign travelers’ movements were ‘tracked.’”
News From You:
SunBun submitted this Ars Technica Story to our SubReddit. Personal Audio LLC, the company that claims to own patents on playlists and podcasting, has subpoenaed the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s list of donors. Personal Audio says it needs the list in connection with its lawsuits against podcasters like Adam Corolla and the Discovery Channel. The EFF claims the subpoena violates the US First Amendment protection of free association, and argues Personal Audio wants to use the information to bolster its defense of the patents in the patent office.
Pete_C sent us this TechDirt link about the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) has sent cease-and-desist letters to several organizations who run “learn to code” events, claiming that they’re teaching coding without a license. The operators of Coding Boot Camps are the target. They seem to have run afoul of rules meant to crack down on post-secondary scams. Hackbright Academy, Hack Reactor, App Academy, Zipfian Academy, and others have been targeted.
clemro submitted a TorrentFreak article about Federal Judge Stephanie Rose ruling that downloading a torrent file and joining a swarm does not qualify as ‘acting in concert’ which lets Copyright holders group large numbers of defendants together in a case. To prove acting in concert requires among other things, showing the defendants were involved in the same series of transactions. Copyright holders argue that infringers used the same torrent file with an identical SHA-1 Hash. The judge deemed that too imprecise writing, “Any ‘pieces’ of the work copied or uploaded by any individual Doe may have gone to any other Doe, but may instead have gone to any of the potentially thousands of others who participated in a given swarm and are not in this case. This means only one defendant can be named in each case making it much more costly to proceed.
AllanAV points us to a Consumerist article about the Kansas State Legislature considering a bill to make it illegal for city governments to build municipal broadband networks. The bill states its aims as increasing competition and innovation. To that end the bill prohibits a municipality from providing video, telecom, or broadband or to spend any money on infrastructure to enable a private business to do the same. IN other words, Google Fiber in Kansas City would be against the law if it cam after this bill passed.
More links from the show:
Yahoo resets passwords for some email users after coordinated effort to compromise accounts
Online storage company Box has secretly filed paperwork for an initial public offering of stock
Today in Tech History – Jan. 31, 2014
In 1958 – The United States successfully entered the space age with the successful launch of the Explorer I satellite. Data from the satellite confirmed the existence of the Van Allen radiation belt circling the Earth.
In 1961 – The U.S. launched a four-year-old male chimpanzee named Ham on a Mercury-Redstone 2 rocket into suborbital flight to test the capabilities of the Mercury capsule.
In 1971 – Astronauts Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell lifted off on the Apollo 14 mission to the Fra Mauro Highlands on the Moon.
In 2013 – The Consumer Electronics Association announced it was awarding the Dish Hopper co-winner of Best of CES and would begin searching for a new awards partner. CBS had forced CNET editors not to award Dish a prize due to ongoing litigation between the two companies.
Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.
Cordkillers: Ep 4 – Spoilerin’ Tim
In this Spoilerin’ Time, Tom and Brian discuss Archer and “The Square”
DTNS 2160 – Paper anyone?
Dan Patterson Joins to discuss what Facebook’s new app ‘Paper’ means for Facebook and for journalism. Also why Prince has called off his war on the Internet.
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 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 and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
Facebook announces new app ‘Paper’ Recode reports Facebook announced a new app called ‘Paper’ today coming to US iPhones Feb. 3rd. The app is a Flipboard style way of accessing Facebook content with the addition of curated sections of public content from around Facebook. So in addition to seeing your friends vacation photos presented in lovely magazine style you can also look through sections like headlines, creators or even LOL.
Microsoft possibly nearing CEO decision Now that Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg has taken himself out of the running for Microsoft CEO, Record reports its sources say Microsoft may be a week away from making a decision. Executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group, Satya Nadella, seems to be the top contender at this point. All of this has happened before. All of it will happen again.
So That Happened: More on the Lenovo / Google / Motorola deal Yes Lenovo did buy Motorola’s handset business from Google for $2.9 billion yesterday. Recode reports Lenovo plans to keep the Motorola brand name and engineering talent in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area. No word on the Texas manufacturing plant that makes the Moto X. Ars Technica reports Google holds on to Motorola’s Advanced Technologies and Projects division which will be folded into the Android team. Google also keeps the patents. Those lovely warm valuable patents.
GoDaddy admits one of its employees was socially engineered TechCrunch has it that GoDaddy admits one of its employee was socially engineered into giving out information that helped an attacker gain access to Naoki Hiroshima’s domain names, leading the Hiroshima giving up his @N Twitter account. And according to the Verge, Paypal says the company did not give out Hiroshima’s credit card details. The attacker claims to have posed as an employee of Paypal to get the information. Meanwhile Twitter has unblocked the @N account which apparently belongs to . Follow Badal_NEWS.
News From You:
petec posted to the subreddit a Recode article citing sources who say Samsung is agreeing to bring Samsung’s Android device interfaces more in line with Google’s. Reportedly Google execs were dismayed by the customizations Samsung demonstrated at CES earlier this month and began hammering out a new compromise then and there. Certainly Google selling off the Motorola handset business isn’t going to hurt.
JackRB submitted this story from WirelessWeek quoting Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam at the Citi 2014 Media and Telecommunications Conference saying, “Eventually, unlimited has to go away,”and adding that competitors who offer unlimited data do crazy things when on the edge of bankruptcy. In the US, major carriers Sprint and T-Mobile offer versions of unlimited. Verizon and AT&T do not.
And clemro, or perhaps clemro’s MacBook Pro, posted an Ars Technica story reporting the Prince war is over. The artist once and now again known as Prince had filed a lawsuit accusing 22 people of “massive infringement and bootlegging of Prince’s material” for providing links to unauthorized copies of one of Prince’s performances. Tuesda, Prince and his attorneys dropped the case entirely without prejudice, stating the bootleggers in question had taken down the illegal downloads. Prince is known for being litigous. His music lable, Universal Music, filed a takedown of a Prince song being played over a baby video on YouTube.
More links from the show:
Google announces quarterly earnings
Zynga gets all excited and announces their quarterly earnings a week early