Amber Mac joins us to talk about Facebook’s offer that journalism fears it can’t refuse. Is it AOL all over again or the death of journalism? probably neither. we’ll explain why.
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 guest: Amber MacArthur, Host of TechDownload on AOL/Delta & TV Host, Bestselling Author, Speaker, Blogger, Exec. Producer, Entrepreneur
Headlines
The Next Web reports that Fitbit has revealed three new activity trackers to wear on your wrist. The Fitbit Charge tracks steps, distance travelled, calories burned and allows you to see incoming calls. It costs $130 and is only available in the US today. The Charge HR adds a heart monitor for more accurate tracking, costs about $150, and will be available in the US in early 2015. Finally the Fitbit Surge has all of the above plus a GPS chip for collecting pace, distance, elevation and route history. It will also allow you to see incoming called, message and control music playback. The Surge will cost $250 in early 2015.
The Next Web reports Microsoft announced that Office 365 subscriber will get unlimited cloud storage in Microsoft OneDrive as a part of their subscription. The offer is rolling out to home, personal and university accounts over the next couple of months.
CNET reports on Amazon’s announcement of the Fire TV Stick in the US for $39. It comes with a dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage as well as apps like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Instant Video and a remote. You can also get the voice-recognition remote from Amazon for an extra $30. Fore the first two days of sales, existing Amazon Prime members can get the stick for $19. Other purchasers will get a free month of Prime.
The New York Times reports Facebook has been on a “listening tour” with media outlets suggesting the begin serving pages of content within Facebook Mobile in exchange for a revenue share. That deal would drive a lot of traffic of course but also put Facebook in control of customer data and the reading experience. News outlets have been struggling with the fact that large amounts of their traffic are driven from Facebook these days.
The Next Web reports the Xbox One will get a $50 price cut in the US during the upcoming holiday season, down to $350. Special edition bundles get a cut as well. The price cuts go into effect November 2nd, 2014 and lasts through January 3rd, 2015.
The latest in the saga of your TwitPic pictures is reported by the Next Web. TwitPics archive and domain name will be acquired by Twitter. No new pictures will be allowed but existing pictures will not disappear.
ReCode reports Twitter announced its Q3 earnings of a penny per share on revenue of 361 million dollars. That’s pretty much what the analysts expected. Twitter also had 284 million active users up from 271 million in Q2.
News From You
the_corley sent in an Engadget report that the US FCC fined phone carriers TerraCom and YourTel a combined $10 million in penalties for storing their customer information in the clear, including addresses and social security numbers. The carriers also failed to notify their customers after the mistake was discovered. TerraCom and YourTel provide lifeline cell phone service to low income customers.
habichuelcondulce submitted the CNET report that Elon Musk continues to warn us to be careful with Artificial Intelligence. Speaking at the MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department’s 2014 Centennial Symposium, Musk said, “With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s like… yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon, [but] it doesn’t work out.” Musk has warned on this matter before and believe some kind of national or international oversight should exist.
And KAPT_Kipper submitted a Torrent Freak article informing us that the European Union has ruled that embedding content on a website is NOT copyright infringement, even if the work in question was uploaded illegally. The full decision has not been published on the court’s website, but it states that embedding a file or video is NOT a breach of creator’s copyrights under European law, as long as its not altered. So give it up for iframes, people!
And many of you wanted us to talk about this. Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports pharmacy chains, CVS and Rite Aid have both decided not to support Apple Pay options in their stores even though some terminals reportedly would accept the payments. The two companies are part of the Merchant Consumer Exchange’s system called CurrentC which uses QR codes to conduct transactions, and more importantly lets merchants keep all the money rather than giving credit card companies a cut. (Justin Robert Young has more on the Merchant Consumer Exchange with a look at the numbers)
Discussion Links: Facebook’s Mobile Content Play
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-looks-to-woo-publishers-with-mobile-content-offer-2014-10
Pick of the Day: Writeometer via Danny
Howdy Tom and Jenny,
For the last couple weeks, as I’ve been gearing up for NaNoWriMo, I’ve been using a free Android app called Writeometer. It’s primary function is to allow writers to track their word count progress. It can track several projects at once. In addition to that, it adds a bunch of other features such as a timer, a reward system, motivational quotes, a dictionary, thesaurus, and word-of-the-day function with WordNik as the backend.
I’ve been very pleased with it, and it’s become the Swiss Army knife of my writing tools.
Tuesday’s guest: Patrick Beja, DTNS King in the North