Christian Cantrell is on the show to talk about Pebble’s claim to revolutionize the smart watch and be less focused on apps. What would that mean?
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Show Notes
Today’s guest: Christian Cantrell, sci-fi author & tech writer
http://www.livingdigitally.net/
Headlines
A new Raspberry Pi is here! Still $35 but packed with more power. Ars Technica reports the Raspberry Pi 2 looks close to the Model B+ but has 4 USB ports, more GPIO pins, and a microSD slot instead of a regular one. The 2 also runs a 900 MHzquad-core (drool)ARMv7. That means you can run Ubuntu Core and even Windows 10 if you don’t want Raspbian. Microsoft will offer Windows 10 free to Raspberry Pi owners. The 2 is the new Model B. The $20 Model A+ remains available.
Everquest has broken free of Sony as the company announced it has sold it’s Sony Online Entertainment games division to investment management firm Columbus Nova. The Next Web reports the division has been renamed Daybreak Game Company. The company will continue to produce MMORPGS like Everquest and H1Z1 while embracing the multiplatform world.
The Verge interviewed Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky who said Pebble shipped its 1 millionth watch on December 31st. And as Android Wear grows and Apple Watch arrives, Migicovsky says Pebble has “found a new framework to use as an interaction model on the watch.” He said apps will no longer be the main focus on the platform, saying “it doesn’t look like what is on your smartphone.”
Intel doesn’t want to get left out of the Internet of Things market the way it missed mobile at first. So it’s buying its way in. Reuters reports Intel has agreed to buy German chip maker Lantiq for an undisclosed sum. In addition to chips for networked devices, Lantiq also produces chips for networking connections, mobile broadband and WiFi. The deal is still subject to regulatory approvals and although the terms of sale have not been disclosed price estimates are around $280 million.
The Washington Post reports the US FCC will consider a draft decision this week to intervene against state laws in Tennessee and North Carolina that puts legal limits on Internet service operated by cities. The decision is expected to say that laws limiting municipal Internet prices or geography inhibit timely and reasonable deployment of high-speed Internet under section 706 of the Communications Act. The draft decision will be followed by a vote on Feb. 26, the same day as an expected vote on Open Internet Guidelines.
Reuters reports Japan message app company Line is launching online grocery delivery in Thailand, Line’s second biggest market after Japan. Line’s service will be offering products such as water, coffee and instant noodles at up to 50 percent discounts and free delivery for Thai shoppers. The service will compete against similar services from Tesco Lotus, CP Fresh Mart and Tops Supermarket.
In a story from the-next-web The Pirate Bay is back up, after being taking down Dec 9 during a raid on a Swedish data center by local police. The site is back on its original domain with a Phoenix image. The first new torrent added contained an image of a phoenix titled “Like a Phoenix, it rises from the ashes”. While the site is up features like RSS feeds are still down.
TechCrunch reports that Google’s share of the US search market, excluding mobile, dipped below 75% for the first time since July 2008. If mobile is included, Google’s share rises to 78%. Yahoo become the number 2 search engine in the US, increasing its share of the search market to more than 28% of all searches, compared to less than 10% in November 2014. This surge is due mostly to Yahoo becoming the default search engine in Firefox, which also helped.
Gigaom reports that IDC shows tablet sales were down by 3.2% tduring the holiday quarter compared to last year. This was the first time IDC showed year over year decline for worldwide tablet shipments since the market’s inception in 2010, only shipping 76 million tablets in Q4. The rest of the years increases balnced the bad Q4 out with Tablet sales for the entire year increasing by 4.4% over 2013 with 229.6 million units shipped. Apple continues to lead the tablet market with a 28.1% share, followed by Samsung, then Lenovo, ASUS and Amazon. Although only Lenovo managed to grow year over year.
News From You:
MacBytes sent us the Reuters report that IBM is bringing back annual performance bonuses for its CEO and other top executives, despite 11 straight quarters of lower revenue, 7% drop in 2014 profits and 11% decrease in stock performance. CEO Virginia Rometty will get a $3.6 million annual incentive payout for 2014, on top of a base salary of 1.5 million, which increases to 1.6 million in 2015. She is also slated to received a $5 million award for 2015 and a long-term stock grant worth 13.3 million payable in 2018. She must have met her personal deliverables or Q targets or OKRs or some such thing. IBM did not deliver bonuses in 2013 at the request of executives.
metalfreak submitted the Liliputing.com report that Dell will offer Ubuntu installed on its new XPS 13 and Precision M3800 laptops. The linux option will cut the starting price of the M3800 by a $100 to $1533 . Machines will ship with Ubuntu release 14.04 installed. Unfortunately that means there will be no out of box support for the laptop’s Thunderbolt port although that may be addressed with 14.04.2 maintenance release. If you need something even smaller and cheaper the latest revision to the XPS 13 ultrabook will come in at $1189.
Discussion Section Links: One Million Pebbles
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7947799/pebble-1-million-smartwatches-sold-new-hardware-coming
http://developer.getpebble.com/blog/2015/01/22/cloudpebble-pebble-emulator/
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/02/apple-watch-retail-plans/?ncid=rss
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/2/7950257/apple-watch-apps-google-uber-foursquare
Pick of the Day: Windscape via Tom Sidla
One of my favorite Apps is Windscape. It’s another weather App, yes, but not like any other I’ve seen. It gathers wind speed data and temps from around the globe and simulates the info with little moving dots. Very cool looking. You can zoom in and out around the globe and see typhoons, storms, polar vortexes, who’s hot and who’s not (literally). It’s $.99, so if you like science and weather, definitely check it out.
Tom Sidla, Pipe Dream Plumbing, Inc.
Tomorrow’s guest: Patrick Beja