Tom reviews some more announcements from CES, especially Sony’s Internet TV service, with Justin Robert Young.
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Show Notes
Ford CEO Alan Mulally told the Associated Press Tuesday that he would remain at Ford through 2014, essentially pulling himself out of the running for CEO of Microsoft. Sources told Reuters no appointment was likely from Microsoft until the last week of January or in February. Recode’s Kara Swisher reported her sources say no earlier than February. The company said it could take up to a year to replace outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer when they announced his retirement in August. Current top candidates for the job are internally Tony Bates, former CEO of Skype, and Satya Nadella, EVP of Cloud and Enterprise as well as soon to be internal candidate Stephen Elop, formerly CEO of Nokia.
US phone carries announcing new plans: Sprint’s new family plan lets customers add up to 10 individuals to a plan whether they’re family or not. The first customer is $55 a month 1GB of data and each customer added is $5 less than the previous, to a minimum of $25. Also T-Mobile announced they will pay up to $350 per line to cover early termination fees. You’ll need to trade in your existing phone, buy a new T-Mobile phone, and sign up for a new T-Mobile plan. Last week, AT&T announced it would pay $200 for every line that T-Mobile customers switched to AT&T.
Sony announces cloud-based TV service with live TV, DVR, and video on demand: The company doesn’t yet have the deals it needs for Web TV in place, but that’s not it’s real problem, according to Recode.
News From You:
MPAA joins W3C: TomGehrke pointed us to a TechDirt article reporting the US Movie Industry group MPAA has joined the Web’s standard’s organization World Wide Web Consortium aka W3C. The W3C has stood for the principles of openness on the Web, and many are upset that the MPAA which promotes digital locks, might try to roll back some of that openness. There is a major controversy over whether digital locks should be standardized as part of HTML5.
Dell reveals 28-inch 4K monitor that will sell for $699: tm204 submitted a Forbes article about the P2815Q monitor, which uses an IPS LED display with a resolution of 3840 x 2160. No word on the inputs but it did get a global launch date of January 23rd.
Leaked pictures surface of Nokia’s Android phone UI: SkyJedi let us know about the AndroidPolice’s story about leaked pictures of Nokia’s Android phone UI. The ‘Normandy’ is thought doomed as Microsoft gets ready to take over Nokia’s handset business, but AndroidPolice believe it might survive as a low-end dual-SIM phone. The pictures came via evleaks and show an Android phone with a very windows-y lock screen and shots of Viber and Skype.
More links from the show
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer unveiled new products including a new online magazine called Yahoo Tech headed by David Pogue:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/08/us-ces-yahoo-idUSBREA061C020140108
The CentOS project teamed up with Red Hat to build a new CentOS in the hopes of accelerating adoption:
Facebook has acquired Indian startup Little Eyes Labs, and will move the entire team to Menlo Park, California:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57616873-94/facebook-buys-indian-startup-little-eye-labs/
China’s Alibaba, often compared to Amazon, announced it will develop a mobile gaming platform:
http://gigaom.com/2014/01/08/alibaba-to-launch-mobile-games-platform-in-competition-with-tencent/
Great show, you and JRY are awesome together. Oh, and who won last generation’s console war? The consumer (according to my friends).
Great show Tom. I’m glad you’re still here to give us our daily dose of tech.
I didn’t really buy into the theory that tech products are limited by science fiction. SciFi has all sorts of cool gadgets that aren’t watches or touch screens. The bald guy on Cloud City wore a head mounted controller than ran the whole city. R2-D2 was a voice activated hacker robot. I’m sure someone had a forearm mounted computer. Star Trek TNG used chest badges for radios, not watches. None of these are real products. I could do this all day, listing sci-fi tech we don’t have, and so could any of us. We aren’t limited by sci-fi.
Google Maps wasn’t on any TV show I watched. And none of them listened to music off the cloud, just the Catina Band, and that was live.
What sci-fi has is ability to imagine without the limits of science or physics, so writers over time came up with a lot of great ideas (and some scary ideas too, like TVs that watch people in their homes). But current tech is limited to what we can actually do….and we can make watches, not hyper space portals.
So, here are my thoughts for the new show.
Like others, I’m not sure about the Yay/Nay approach. The way I think it would work well, personally, is as follows:
1. Intro to show, Intro to guest… Go through the stories like you’ve been doing. I like this format now, I didn’t personally care for the top x (generally 10) stories of the day. If the guest wants to chime in with a comment here and there, whatever.
2. Next do the calendar. Since all of the above was solo, might as well put this solo item in closer to the beginning (also in case it sparks any discussion as well).
3. Now this is where I think you should discuss (x) (maybe 5) stories of the day. However, my thought here is to have the guest pick their favorite (x) stories. This might eliminate the awkward nature sometimes of the guest not really have anything to contribute to the stories, but if they pick the stories, I think the discussion would be more interesting. You might want them to decide on their favorite stories ahead of time. Also, maybe no discussion of NPD numbers since many of us drive during the podcasts and don’t want to doze off.
4. Q&A as usual, also discuss with guest.
5. whatever else… 🙂
So thats my thoughts on a format….
I enjoy the show. Thanks for continuing after TNT. I think a daily tech news show should be made available by drive-time on the east coast (say 5pm) if it is to get real traction. Just 2 cents. Thanks.
Regarding the proposed Sony video steaming story:
It’s not just the acquisition of content that’s a problem it’s also a problem with the ISPs. Go over to DSL Reports.com and look at the Comcast HSI forum which has a fairly lively thread about folks complaining about Netflix streaming HD content at SD or worse resolutions during prime time. It’s not clear whether this is due to Netflix choosing backbone carriers that are overloaded, transfer agreements Comcast has or truly either Comcast or Netflix slowing the streams. Folks that observe this behavior find they have no problems with Amazon Prime movies or HULU streams. If Comcast or other ISPs do the same thing to Sony’s offering or just say they will block the streams, it will fail. Sony, of course, could say that none of it’s video content could be shown through Comcast, regardless of source. Most of the premium channels would be out of business because of the huge library Sony owns.
Great show. Looking forward to more! Nowhere can I find a time for the live program. To me, news has to be immediate otherwise, why bother.
I you and Justin are both right, and wrong, about televisions (smart or not) and “solving the problem”, as Justin said.
I think an opportunity exists for the television makers to sell both televisions and their branded “chromecast-like” devices to consumers. It’s easy to upgrade the dongle but keep the television.
And of course, your Vizio television would not work with a Panasonic dongle.
Comments on show format:
I’m not a fan of the “Yea” or “Nay” segments.
Your guests are intelligent and learned about tech. I would prefer to hear them express their thoughts alongside yours.