Molly Wood is on the show and while we celebrate the movement of Ballmer from tech mogul to eccentric sports owner, we also ponder why Uber and others seem to think they can make Webvan and Kozmo’s business models work again.

MP3

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 and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guest: Molly Wood, deputy technology editor for The New York Times, yo!

Headlines

The HTC One (M8) for Windows Phone became a reality today and likely the longest name in smartphones. It’s essentially the same as the Android M8 but only available in a 32GB version. It’s available in the US to start, from Verizon for $99 on contract. 

The Next Web reports that former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has stepped down from the company’s board of directors so he can focus on his new role as owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. Ballmer plans to remain Microsoft’s biggest individual shareholder, but wrote in a public letter to CEO Satya Nadella that it would be “impractical” to remain on the board with his other time commitments.

Android Police has some secret unconfirmed source of info about Google’s upcoming subscription music service, which they say will be called YouTube Music Key. The new service will offer offer ad-free music, audio-only playback for background or screen-off listening, and offline playback. YouTube Music Key will allegedly be free for the first 30 days, after which the service will run $9.99/month. According to Android Police, that price will include both YouTube Music Key and Google Play Music Key, the new name of Google Music All Access.

Engadget reports that Dropbox-owned Mailbox has begun rolling out early access to its desktop email client. If you are a current Mailbox user or signed up for the beta, you should be issued a betacoin as well as a few more betacoins to share with friends. The rollout goes in batches so you may not receive your betacoin right away. The software runs on OS X Mavericks and shares several features with the popular mobile app. The company has not decided on a release date for the final version.

The Next Web reports Uber has launched a test service called ‘Corner Store’ in parts of Washington DC. For a couple weeks you’ll be able to choose an Uber driver from the corner store tab who can deliver you various convenience store items like toothpaste, shampoo, aspirin, etc. When you’ve selected an available driver, you’ll confirm your address, then get a link to a list of available items and prices, then choose your items if available, then wait for a call from the driver to place your order, then when the driver arrives you go outside and confirm your order. It’s that EASY! —- Also Uber hired President Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe to be Senior Vice President of Policy and Strategy.

The Next Web passes along details from an IDC report that Q2 shipments of smartphones in India grew 84 percent year over year. Overall though feature phones still made up 71% of all shipments, meaning there’s plenty of room for that skyrocketing smartphone market to continue to rocket into the sky. Micromax was India’s overall top mobile phone shipper, while Samsung topped the smartphone category.

News From You

tm204 submitted a subscription only report by The Information that we know not everybody can afford to read — so we also found a story from CNET —about Google’s attempts to find new users by offering some of its services to children. This would include a child-safe version of YouTube featuring a dashboard to let parents monitor their children’s activity. Any new version of the site targeted at kids would need to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which imposes restrictions on web companies targeting children under 13 years old. Most big tech companies shy away although kid-focused businesses like Disney and Nickelodeon have found plenty of ways to work within the law.

magoojc posted the Ars Technica article about a settlement between Personal Audio LLC and Adam Carolla over a patent dispute that affected podcasting. Both sides filed a joint motion to dismiss and agreed to a quiet period until Sept. 30. Both the lawsuite and Carolla’s countersuit were dropped without prejuice meaning they could be refiled. Personal Audio is still suing CBS, NBC and Fox over video-on-demand services. The EFF is challenging the Personal Audio patent in an “inter partes review” being conducted at the US Patent Office.

Sewell2 pointed out the Ars Technica story about Delaware’s “Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets and Digital Accounts Act,” which gives heirs and executors the authority to take legal control of a digital account or device. Right now under California law for instance, if I die, my heir does not have the right to access any of my Twitter accounts. However some oppose the law as it makes no provision for confidential records, such as those of patients stored in a deceased Doctor’s email account.  

Discussion Links: Uber’s doing what now?

http://blog.uber.com/cornerstore

http://blog.uber.com/cornerstoreinventorylist

http://blog.uber.com/RUSH

http://blog.uber.com/uberMOVERS

http://recode.net/2014/08/07/instant-replay-the-second-coming-of-on-demand-delivery/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/19/6045095/uber-cornerstore-delivery-service

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/04/wunwun-because-everything-should-be-available-on-demand/

https://www.instacart.com/faq

http://mercurystartups.com/node/14

https://www.therealreal.com/about

http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/19/uber-corner-store-turns-the-transit-app-into-a-delivery-service-for-daily-staples/

http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/15/uber-to-test-moving-services-in-atlanta-nashville/

Plug of the Day: Alpha Geek Radio

Pick of the Day: Battery Doctor via Jamie Brand

I’ve been using this app for awhile now and I swear by it. It’s called Battery Doctor and it frees up memory on your phone. Whenever I launch a game or memory intensive app, I will run this to free up some memory. It’s free and available for iOS and Android phones.

The real reason I’m making this a pick for you however, is a feature they added recently. You are now able to setup a service called One Tap Boost, and after a quick settings profile is setup, it will add a boost icon to your springboard. One tap will now quickly free up memory for you without having to open the main Battery app, and it also closes automatically once you’re done! A great app for those who use several apps throughout the day!

Wednesday’s Guest: Jeff Cannata, co-host of a brand new comedy podcast called We Have Concerns

Alex Hanna joins the show to talk about the leaked Moto 360 watch, Twitter messing with your stream, and updates tot he Xbox One that make it easy for Microsoft to take your money.

MP3

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 and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guest:  Alex Hanna, web developer and host of Diamond Dialogue

Headlines:

MacRumors spotted some pictures on Chinese website Dianxinshouji.com of a purported Apple lightning cable with a reversible USB end. The USB 3.1 Type C cables will come with reversible USB on both ends. But these alleged Apple cables fit into a current Type A USB port by making the connector thinner. Ars Technica reports a company called Tripp Light offers reversible USB Type-A cables.

Mashable reports that a Best Buy spokesperson confirmed that a page for the Moto 360 was accidentally published on the store’s website over the weekend. The page listed the device for $250 with a 1.5-inch round backlit LCD face and voice-activation. It would run Android Wear and be water resistant as well as available in silver or gray. The Moto 360 is expected to be announced at Motorola’s September 4th press event in Chicago.

ReCode reports Twitter started experimenting with surfacing posts favorited by people you follow, making favorite work like retweet. The favorite is used by a lot of people to bookmark something or sometimes to silently compliment or even be sarcastic about a post. Making it work like retweet seems like it would be redundant to make it work like retweet.

TechCrunch reports US hospital operator Community Health Systems announced that attackers have stolen about 4.5 million records with patient names, addresses, birth data, phone numbers and SSNs. The data seems to have been stolen between April and June of this year. Community Health Systems will offer identity theft protection to all the patients whose data was stolen.

GigaOm reports that Softbank announced Monday it will be the exclusive carrier for a new smartphone from Sharp, called the Aquos Crystal. The phone will come in two screen sizes, 5-inch 720p and 5.5-inch 1080p both with a Snapdragon 400 CPU and 1.5 GB of RAM. Both phones have almost no bezel meaning the front is almost all screen. The 5.5-inch Aquos Crystal X will arrive in December with the 5-inch version coming to Japan August 29th. The Acquos Crystal is expected to be available later in the US on Softbank-owned Sprint.

GigaOm reports Uber is no longer banned in Berlin as the company has lodged an appeal. The prohibition of Uber is suspended until the case is resolved. Uber did not stop operations after the ban was issued last week.

Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen has a new game called Swing Copters. The Verge says the game will be free to play with a small ad or dollar to play ad free.You essentially tap to lift a character with a propeller hat up and avoid swinging hammers. Touch Arcade says the game should be available in the iOS app store on Thursday. 

Everybody who’s been yelling that Nintendo should make games for mobile can shut up now. Bloomberg affiliate the Pokemon Co. announced a trading card game for the iPad. There is already a Pokemon trading card game for the desktop. The iPad game will come to the US and Europe though a release date was not announced.

Engadget has a great story about a violinist named Roger Frisch who started experiencing tremors, but only while he was playing. Doctors determined that he needed a brain pacemaker, but in order to know exactly where to implant the device, they needed a little musical assistance. The patient stayed awake during the surgery and played violin with a special bow, equipped with a motion-tracking device– when Frisch played steadily the surgeons knew their equipment was in the right place. The operation was a success, a link to the video will be in the show notes, or you can just wait for Season 11 of Grey’s Anatomy. 

News From You:

jaymz668 submitted a How-t-Geek article about how shocked, shocked they are to find fake versions of programs in the Windows Store. The smokingest of the guns they found were several links to fake VLC media players that charged you money and then just linked you to the real VLC app. They found loads of other examples, some that don’t even have Windows Store versions like iTunes. Microsoft certifies Windows store apps for content compliance before making them available and has offered promotions where they paid developers $100 for every app accepted in the store. Howtogeek did not claim any of the apps had malware.

tm204 wants to know: Are you feeling a bit confused? Do you lay awake at night, wondering whether all those terrible new stories in your feed are legitimately outrageous or just outrageously funny? Well, you may be suffering from Satire Awareness Deficiency. Or as it’s know around here, SAD. According to Mashable, Facebook is testing out a new tag to help SAD users distinguish fact from funny. How will it work? The tag will put the word SATIRE in front of SATIRICAL ARTICLES from publications such as The Onion. But how you ask, will the algorithm determine which articles from The Onion are satiric, and which are legitimate reviews of your new TV show? Don’t worry, if there’s anyone I trust to know comedy, it’s an algorithm. 

Metalfreak pointed out the LinuxGizmos post about a non-profit spinoff from the UNiversity of Cambridge called lowRISC is developing an open-source 64-bit SoC that hopes to enable fully open hardware from the CPU to the development board. The SoC is based on the new 64-bit RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture out of UC-Berkely. RISC-V comapres favorably to the 32-bit ARM Cortex-A5. You can find out more at http://www.lowrisc.org/

Discussion Links: 

http://www.cnet.com/news/xbox-one-august-update-lets-you-buy-and-download-games-remotely/#ftag=CAD590a51e

http://www.cnet.com/news/major-xbox-one-update-rolls-out-to-preview-members/

http://majornelson.com/2014/08/17/next-xbox-one-update-begins-rolling-today/

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/smartglass

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/08/18/xbox-one-august-update-starts-rolling-today-bringing-new-activity-feed-mobile-purchases/

Plug of the day: Daily Tech News Show Shirt  with Mustafa from thepolarcat.com’s logo now available in white, black and Ash. Look in the podcasts section.

Pick of the Day: 

 

Tuesday’s Guest: Molly Wood!

Brian Ibbott is on the show and we’ll talk about 50 Cent’s new earbuds that measure your heart rate and the way the ice bucket challenge for ALS is revealing subtle secrets about tech moguls. And Len Peralta is here to illustrate the episode!

MP3

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 and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Breki Tomasson joins us and we’ll talk about why everyone hates Uber. At least every city government, it seems. Berlin is the latest to ban the ride sharing service.

MP3

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 and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
Today’s guest: Breki Tomasson, founder and host of the CSICON podcasting network

Headlines

The Berlin Senate’s State Department for Civil and Regulatory Affairs ordered Uber to stop infringing passenger transportation law with its service. The Senate is concerned for passenger safety with unlicensed drivers as well as insurance to cover the drivers themselves. Uber says they have insurance but they still face €25,000 fines for every ride in violation. Uber also will appeal the decision and believes it can continue service.

NPR reports that the Knight Foundation commissioned data analysis firm Quid to analyze responses to the US FCC’s request for feedback to its proposed Open Internet guidelines. About half the responses were derived from templates which is low compared to the 80% templated response to financial regulation. Two types of responses were not part of organized talking points. One focused on maintaining a diversity of opinion. The other invoked meritocracy and the idea that people should be able to compete equally. Quid was founded by NASA scientist Sean Gourley and former Yelp product manager Bob Goodson.

Robin Williams daughter Zelda announced she was leaving social media for a “good long time” after some users posted offensive images and messages to her in the wake of her father’s death. The Washington Post reports Twitter says they have suspended the offenders, and will not tolerate abuse “of this nature.” Twitter’s VP of trust and safety said the site will further improve policies adding, “This includes expanding our policies regarding self-harm and private information, and improving support for family members of deceased users.”

Engadget reports YouTube has refreshed the apps it makes for TV with it’s new Material Design look. It includes features already available on smartphones including a guide that pops up on the left, latest videos from subscriptions and curated channels. The new look is available now on the Xbox One and will roll out to other streaming devices over the next few weeks.

Following in the footsteps of tech luminaries Satya Nadella and Mark Zuckerberg, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller has taken the infamous ice bucket challenge, in which you or someone you know dumps a bucket of ice water on your head in order to raise awareness and money to fight the nerve-disorder ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Schiller then challenged Apple CEO Tim Cook. Don’t forget it’s all meant to help http://alsa.org/

The Wall Street Journal reports that Africell, an African telco run from Lebanon has received approval to move into Uganda where they will take over Oranges former operations. The company has a long road ahead of it to combat giant incumbents like MTN, Vodafone, Safaricom and Bharti Airtel. But Africell is the market leader in Sierra Leone and Gambia and hopes to continue to expand by targeting smaller markets where it can grow fast. Chief Executive Ziad Dalloul noted the carrier has seen boosts in subscriber revenue because data use has been doubling every six months.

News From You

kyro5976 posted the Ars Technica story about Ryan Lackey of CloudFlare and Marc Rogers of Lookout discussing their project called Personal Onion Router To Assure Liberty (PORTAL), the a pre-built software image for an inexpensive pocket-sized “travel router”. The idea is to make existing encryption and privacy tools always there so you can’t forget to turn them on. Portal includes the full capabilities of Tor—including pluggable transports that help foil network monitoring tools. The system is only available as a GITHUB download for now but the aim is to make it available in an easier way.

spsheridan passes along a 9 to 5 mac report that Apple has announced it will explicitly prohibit benzene tied to leukemia and n-hexane which may cause nerve damage from its iPhone and iPad assembly process. Chinese and American labor watchdog groups petitioned the company to investigate whether the chemicals were being used. Apple conducted a four-month study, and claims there is no evidence that workers health was being put at risk but they have updated their restrictions to explicitly ban the two chemicals from the final assembly process.

ccastro425 pointed out the Engadget story that a leaked internal memo published by TMO News indicates that starting August 17, T-Mobile USA will start warning customers that use high levels of data on their unlimited LTE plans, that they may be throttled. T-Mobile claims they are targeting customers who have bypassed the default tethering feature or engaged in peer-to-peer file sharing. Users who don’t respond to the warning will have their speeds throttled for the remainder of the billing cycle. 

MikePKennedy posted the Verge article that Lenovo now sells more smartphones than PCs. Smartphone sales more than doubled for the company between April and June. Lenovo sold 15.8 million smartphones last quarter compared to 14.5 million PCs. 

Discussion Links:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-14/uber-faces-wrath-of-berlin-cabbies-as-car-sharing-app-flouts-ban.html

http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/aktuell/pressebox/archiv_volltext.shtml?arch_1408/nachricht5326.html

http://blog.uber.com/berlinchoice

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/08/14/uber-pits-itself-against-taxi-booking-apps-with-launch-of-ubertaxi-in-hong-kong/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/14/6002831/uber-berlin-ban-taxi-app

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/14/uber-taxi-service-banned-berlin-safety-grounds

http://gigaom.com/2014/08/14/uber-flouts-berlin-ban-despite-the-fact-that-its-drivers-face-massive-fines-for-non-compliance/

Plug of the day:  Take This

Kung Fu Drafter sent us a note saying “given the tragedy of Robin Williams death and the fact that many of my geekier friends (and myself) deal with depression, I thought I would remind my online friends of the site takethis.org” Take This promotes awareness and education of mental health issues and empathy for those suffering from emotional distress with the goal of eradicating the stigma of mental illness.

They just redesigned the site to make it easier for people, to find information about what they or someone they know might be experiencing. They’ll be at PAX Prime in Seattle with a dedicated space called the AFK Room, where people can take a break and regain their calm.

Share your story, volunteer, or donate at takethis.org.

Pick of the Day:  ACLU’s Know Your Rights pamphlet

With the ongoing events in Ferguson, Missouri, today seems like a good time to brush up on your rights as a citizen, or as a visitor to the United States, when it comes to matters of law enforcement. Now you may not be in, or anywhere near Ferguson, Missouri. But you might be at conference someday, or at a sporting event where things get out of hand, or holding a computer in a public place at the wrong time. So Producer Jennie, who has had several disappointing run-ins with various law enforcement agencies in her past life as a news producer, would like you to know that the ACLU has a handy booklet entitled “Know Your Rights” which is downloadable at ACLU.org. Producer Jennie would also like to remind you that in a chaotic unfolding situation, the best thing to do is NOT to yell about knowing your rights to a bunch of upset law enforcement officials, but rather to get to safety as quickly as possible. 

You can use your phone to film the police, even if they tell you not to: Read up on those rights and restrictions here: 

http://gigaom.com/2014/08/14/you-can-use-your-phone-to-film-the-police-even-if-they-tell-you-not-to/

Friday’s guests: Brian Ibbott and Len Peralta