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!
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Show Notes
Today’s guest: Friday’s guests: Brian Ibbott and Len Peralta
Headlines:
Recode reports Samsung has bought SmartThings a company that kicked off its smart home platform on Kickstarter in 2012. SmartThings will continue to be run by founder Alex Hawkinson and operate as part of Samsung’s Open Innovation Center in Palo Alto, California. OIC is Samsung’s attempt to create startup feel focused on software and services innovation. SmartThings sell kist to get you started with home automation, but runs an open platform so that other companies can run on it as well.
On ZDNet, Mary Jo Foley reports Microsoft is expected to deliver a technology preview of Threshhold, the codename for the next version of Windows, sometime in late September. Those who install the preview must agree to have monthly updates pushed to them automatically. Features leaked to be in Threshhold include a mini Start Menu, Windowed version of tiled apps, virtual desktops and the death of the charms bar. The voice assistant Cortana may also make it in as well.
Apple confirmed today that it has begun using China Telecom servers to store Chinese user data, according to The Wall Street Journal. Apple said it made the move, first reported by 9 to 5 Mac, in order to increase bandwidth and improve performance for mainland Chinese customers, but the Chinese government’s national security concerns may also have played a role in the switch. Apple says information stored on Chinese servers will be encrypted, in order to prevent easy access to user data by the Chinese government.
GigaOm reports IDC released its quarterly smartphone shipping numbers. Android rose to 84.7% of the market, iOS fell a point to 11.7% while still increasing volume. Windows Phone fell a tad less than a point to 2.5% although its volume fell. Paul Thurott at WinSuperSite pointed out Microsoft had one vendor, the in limbo Nokia, during the period, and has signed on 14 device makers since then. Blackberry has virtually no silver lining however, falling from 1.2% to 0.6% and losing a third of its shipment volume.
The Next Web reports that eBay is in talks to accept Bitcoin at Braintree, a mobile payment platform it acquired last year, according to the WSJ. Paypal and Ebay will not be accepting Bitcoin yet, but reportedly PayPal officials have been meeting with various Bitcoin companies in the past few weeks, although no agreements have been reached.
TechCrunch reports on a Y-Combinator startup called One Codex that wants to become a Google for genomic data. One Codex is currently in open beta and can search its growing database of 30,000 bacteria, viruses and fungi in real time and identify data sets in minutes. It can also act as a curated indexed reference. Founder Nick Greenfield says a file that took genome search algorithm BLAST 2 minutes and 30 seconds to process took One Codex 1/20th of a second. Conceivably doctors could sequence the genome of a pathogen and search it on One Codex to identify it. That would be much faster when testing for diseases like tuberculosis.
TechCrunch reported on an a Reddit AMA conducted by the Internet Explorer team in which the idea of renaming Internet Explorer came up. Jonathan Sampson said he remembered a long discussion on the idea, said it was only a few weeks ago and added “Who knows what the future holds :)”
News From You:
The Next Web reports Google has announced its Safe Browsing service will add protection against unexpected changes to user’s computers such as switching home pages and modifying operating system defaults. Google will show a warning in when a site attempts to trick users into downloading unwanted applications. You can still install the software by manually opening the file. The Safe Browsing functionality is also used by Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari; so far Mozilla has expressed interest in the update, while Apple has kept its trap shut as usual.
sdc111 passes along The Verge report that both Comcast and Time Warner have withdrawn contributions towards a dinner honoring FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn next month, after concerns raised by watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. Both companies have donated funds for years to the dinner, which champions diversity in the cable industry, but decided to withdraw funds to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Never one to mince words, Comcast said accusations of currying favor ahead of the potential merger with Time Warner were “insulting and not supported by any evidence.”
el_n00bo_loco pointed us to the Independent article that mobile carrier EE has introduced a ‘jump the line’ fee when calling customer service. Customers willing to pay 50p during business hours won’t have to wait on hold to speak the next available operator. The option is not available for prepaid customers. As you might expect, the Internet embraced the change with loving comments like “disgusting” and :definitely leaving EE”.
AAAAAAAAnd funkaround who I personally believe may have created his username just to test my pronunciation, submitted the Wired article that researchers from Stanford University and Israel’s defnse research group Rafael, will give a presentation at Usenix next week showing how malware can usea phone’s gyroscope to eavesdrop. The gyroscope is meant to track the orientation of the phone, specifically to enable you to play DoodleJump. However the sensors can also detect air vibrations. That’s good enough to pick up a word her or there. The researchers could said that algorithms could improve the accuracy, but phone makers can defend against it by limiting frequency of access.
Discussion Links:
http://gigaom.com/2014/05/13/lg-lifeband-and-heart-rate-earphones-hit-the-us-on-may-18/
Plug of the day: Want a show that’s weekly and looks at the geekiest stories of the week? It’s called Current Geek, co-hosted by Scott Johnson and it’s on the Frogpants network.
Pick of the Day: Ninite via Jamie Brand
Wanted to make you aware of this service for all the tech
professionals in the DTNS community. This service by Ninite creates customized installers including various programs that you can select including browsers, runtimes, security and developer tools, and allow you to roll them out over multiple work stations quickly and easily. It will also manage the updates for said applications in the background without bugging the end user. Very useful for IT Pro’s that oversee a lot of work stations. Thought I’d let you know, and thanks as always for a solid show!
Today’s art is available at: http://lenperaltastore.com/
Monday’s Guest: Alex Hanna, web developer and podcaster
I would call IE “Window”. But that would certainly be too confusing for people.
Where are the show notes?
I see the header but no actual notes