Patrick Beja joins us to talk about brain monitoring and how it fits into health, video games and maybe even the Internet of Things.
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Show Notes
Today’s guests: Patrick Beja
Headlines:
The Washington Post reports Google says more of its search requests are done on mobile devices than PCs in Japan, the US and 8 other countries. The milestone was announced at a digital advertising conference Tuesday. Google wouldn’t put numbers to any of the claims. The company processes more than 100 billion search requests worldwide each month. Google also claimed its mobile ad prices have been steadily climbing and will continue to do so. Google’s average ad prices have been declining for the past three-and-half years.
An unnamed Apple employee told the New York Times that a redesign is coming for the Apple TV remote. When the new Apple TV box debuts this summer the remote control will supposedly have a touch pad for scrolling, two physical buttons and be slightly thicker than the current version.
Apple launched an official “Made for Apple Watch” program for 3rd party accessory makers to create their own bands for Apple Watch according to 9 to 5 Mac. Apple is providing design guidelines and promises to make the attachment “lugs” available soon. The guidelines do not mention the hidden diagnostic port nor provide specs for developing charging accessories.
The BBC reports that Judges at the General Court of the European Union have ruled that the name ‘Skype’ is too similar to the name of broadcaster Sky. Therefore, Skype cannot be registered as a trademark in Europe. The judges wrote that Skype’s logo suggest a cloud and— I quote — “clouds are to be found ‘in the sky’ and thus may readily be associated with the word ‘sky’.” Microsoft will appeal the decision.
TechCrunch reports Berlin’s Delivery Hero takeout service is buying Turkey’s big delivery app Yemeksepeti, which is Turkish for “Food Cart.” Yemeksepeti process more than 3 million orders a month across Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Oman, Jordan and Greece. Delivery Hero processes 10 million orders a month across Europe and the Middle East.
The Verge reports GOG has put it’s Steam competitor— called GOG Galaxy— into open beta. GOG Galaxy includes features like auto-updates, in-game chat and achievements and all features are optional. The one feature GOG Galaxy lacks is DRM
The Verge has a lovely writeup about a Scottish filmmaker named Ryan McHenry who created the ‘Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal’ meme on Vine in early 2013. Sadly Ryan McHenry died yesterday, two years after being diagnosed with bone cancer. So Yesterday, Ryan Gosling uploaded a Vine video of himself pouring some cereal offers a cereal-filled spoon salute to McHenry and then finally eating that spoonful of ceral. A Just Giving page was set up in McHenry’s memoryto raise money for Sarcoma UK. https://www.justgiving.com/ryanmchenry/
News From You:
Sensorymultimedia posted a 5-day-old Washington Post Story about US Congressional Representative Ted Lieu called law enforcement’s request for a back door to all encryption “technologically stupid.” Rep. Blake Farenthold and Subcommittee Chair Will Hurd shared Lieu’s skepticism. Representative Lieu has a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford. Chairman Hurd has a computer science degree from Texas A&M. On the other side Daniel F Conley DA for Suffolk County in Massachusetts testified that companies like Apple are protecting “those who rape, defraud, assault, or even kill” with their encryption policies.
Motang sent us the Ars Technica report about the Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong, showing off his coding skills. The Prime Minister posted on Facebook the source code for a program he wrote in C++ to solve Sudoku puzzles. Prime Minister Loong wrote “Hope you have fun playing with this. Please tell me if you find any bugs!”
Discussion Section Links:
Pick of the Day:
Petie writes in:
Hi Tom, Jennie, Len, and Secret Robert,
My pick of the day is http://rabb.it
It is a site for watching a streaming web content with a variety of users. You can go to the page and click “Chat Now”. It will activate your camera and mic (if you let it) and it will present you with a search box and shortcuts to popular streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, HBOGo, NBC, Hulu and Xfire. A user can log into their favorite streaming site, and then send the URL to all the friends that want to share watching the stream. Anyone plugging in that URL can join the session and watch the stream. There is a lock feature so once everyone is in the session you can keep out any URL-hacking randos that accidentally type in your URL.
If you chose to register you can get the same “room” every time you log in, and you can safely leave your netflix, youtube and other site logins for the next time you have a rabb.it session.
I used this last weekend to watch Django Unchained with my friend in Mexico, and it worked very well. The service dropped one time due to a crash, but the overall quality was great with that one exception. My friends in Maryland, Wisconsin and California used it for a Horror Movie night last month with great results as well.
The service is currently in beta, but if you want to “MST3K” movies with friends who are now in another city, state or country, check out rabb.it!
Thanks, and I really appreciate you guys doing DTNS! Have a GREAT weekend everyone!
Messages:
Ted-san doesn’t see emojis as replacing conventional language, but instead coexisting with them. He says:
“Much like Japanese has Katakana, Hiragana and the pictographic Kanji. Thankfully, emoji are more universally comprehensible, allowing them to bridge many languages and cultures. :-)”
Søren wanted to point out how emojis from different providers appear differnt. He wrote:
On emojipedia.org you can read the definitions of the various emojis, and see how they are designed by Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter respectively. Especially the “Flushed face” is pretty different in the emotion it seems to be conveying on the different platforms.”
Scott from Houston:
Hey Tom and guest,
I had to add an anecdote about the rise in emoji use. My 6 year old’s Kindergarten teacher, who is a friend of the family, talked to my wife laughing because my son had drawn an emoji in his classroom writing assignment. When I asked my son he said that the sentence was sad and it needed a sad face emoji.
[[My son will borrow my wife’s phone occasionally and we let him send me text messages. It’s a great way for him to practice typing and spelling. He has become quite apt at incorporating emojis.]]
And Alan adds:
“The different chicken and toilet you saw illustrates another thing that Veronica was talking about: emojis are thought of as fun because they’re drawn cute, but they don’t have to be. As their usage develops, no doubt there will be many emoji fonts. Veronica also mentioned how emojis are a universal language. I wonder to what extent that will remain true once more abstraction layers are in place. It seems possible, even likely, that abstract uses of emojis will be regional or otherwise limited to specific communities.”
Frank wanted to point out for listeners that if you only use iOS and read mostly DC & Marvel comics the publisher-specific apps let you make in-app comic purchases and still sync to your Comixology library, so any DC or Marvel comics you buy through the publisher-specific iOS apps will still be available wherever else you use Comixology.
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Wednesday’s guest: Jeff Cannata and Scott Johnson
