DTNS 2317 – Fire Sale

Justin Robert Young, Scott Johnson and Brian Ibbott fill in for Tom on vacation and talk about Twitter’s Buy Button, Amazon’s Fire Sale, and Apple’s upcoming big day. MP3

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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

Tech Crunch reports that Twitter has announced its first commerce product — The ‘Buy’ Button. According to a Twitter blog post, the rectangular blue button with the words ‘BUY NOW” will be visible to a small number of US users. Clicking on the button will allow those users to make purchases within the tweet. Payment and shipping information will be stored by Twitter for future purchases. The test will begin on mobile and eventually move to desktop. We’ll be chewing on this one in our discussion section in just a bit.

According to Ars Technica, there’s a fire sale on the Amazon Fire Phone. The device, which is still exclusive to AT&T will now cost 99 cents for a two-year contract. A contract-free phone is now 200 dollars cheaper, dropping from $649.99 to $449.99. Amazon has not released sales numbers for the Fire, but reviews have not been too kind, and a recent study tracking mobile ad impressions for the new phone implies that sales have been lackluster.

The Verge reports Apple has now added another layer of iCloud security. As first spotted by MacRumors, Apple has already begun sending out alert emails when iCloud accounts are accessed from a traditional web browser. The alerts are being sent out even if the specific browser has been used previously to access iCloud. According to The Verge, since iCloud is typically used to link apps, browser logins are now being treated as unusual enough to trigger an alert.

The Verge also reports that Reddit has shut down the subreddit tied to the nude photos in ‘celebgate’ attack. In a statement published on its official blog, a representative for the company said that “we deplore the theft of these images and we do not condone their widespread distribution.” Pressure to shut down the subreddit intensified once it was discovered that pictures of gymnast McKayla Maroney and actress Liz Lee were taken while they were underage.

Ars Technica reports that DVR manufacturer TiVo has announced that the company its next DVR, the TiVo Mega. Scheduled to be released in early 2015, the Mega is a a rackmount DVR with six tuners and 24TB of storage, which works out to about 26,000 hours of recorded SD content, or 4,000 hours of HD. That’s three YEARS of television. The device will cost approximately $5,000 dollars. So that’s 3 years of tv for only 21 cents a day!

Ah, the joys of Autoplay. Facebook announced today that it now serves a billion video plays per day, with two-thirds of those views from mobile devices. Hey did I mention that new auto-playing feature that’s on by default? The company also says it will soon be rolling out a YouTube-like view counter for public video and a metrics dashboard for publishers who can’t wait to roll around Scrooge McDuck style in all that glorious auto-play generated revenue.

Facebook also announced today that it now has 100 million monthly active users in Africa. That means half of Africa’s Internet users are visiting the social network each month. Eighty percent of those active users are getting their Facebook fix on mobile devices. Facebook has spent a lot of time and effort getting their site to work well with weak signals and older phones found in Africa.

Ah yes! The mists are rising! The ocean roils! We are here! Apple Announcement EVE! Are the stories that pop up on The Devil’s Night of tech rumors MORE credible or are we so excited that we’ll believe ANY lie this close? YOU DECIDE! Here they are! Perpetualy unfulfilled iFeature NFC appears to be happening, Bank Innovation.net reports the iPhone will utilize tokenization technology to facilitate payments and 9 to 5 Mac chimes in that Apple and Disney retails locations are being upgraded to the latest iBeacon and NFC tech in anticipation of the phone’s arrival. 9 to 5 Mac also posts screenshots of some of the native apps for the new 5.5 inch iPhone which demonstrates a new “landscape” mode that boasts an iPad-esqe 2 pain interface.

Watch it all tomorrow at 10am Pacific: http://www.apple.com/live

News From You:

anotherjmartin sends us an Ars Technica report that Comcast has begun using its 3.5 million US wifi hotspots to serve ads for Comcast products, regardless of whether the website being viewed wants those ads, or even knows those ads exist. It works like this: when a w-ifi user requests to view a page, Comcast injects its JavaScript into the packets being returned by the real server. In addition to obvious security concerns, Comcast may also have injected itself back into the net neutrality debate: as US regulators ponder whether Comcast and other ISPs should be required to deliver broadband without altering or initiating data packets. According to the company, Comcast home customers are not affected. You know, yet.

And KAPT_Kipper passes along a BBC report that Intel has launched a new generation of processors featuring 14 nanometer transistors, the smallest ever to appear in a commercial product. The new Broadwell Core M chip is 50% smaller and 30% thinner than the last generation. According to Intel, manufacturers should now be able to produce “razor-thin” fanless tablets that are less than 0.35 inches thick.

Discussion Section: Twitter Buy Button

http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/08/twitter-commerce-buy-now/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/8/6120079/twitter-commerce-buy-button

https://blog.twitter.com/2014/testing-a-way-for-you-to-make-purchases-on-twitter

Pick of the day: Followmy.tv via Anthony Eales

followmy.tv helps you keep track of all your TV shows and in particular what episode you are up to. Netflix, Hulu & Amazon does this well already but if you are watching on network & cable television as well as downloading you need somewhere to keep track of what episode you are up to. followmy.tv does it all in one place with a very handy dashboard that has all the next to be watched episodes of TV shows you are watching.

With the power of always knowing which episode you are up to in a TV show you can plan your own TV schedule with ease.

Honourable mention goes to Trakt @ https://trakt.tv but I much prefer followmy.tv

Plug of the Day: All the t-shirts!

Did you know that Daily Tech News Show T-Shirt is available in white, black and Ash at Slashloot.com in the podcast section? Did you also know you can also find fine Morning Stream T-shirts and other fine promotional items at slashloot? What, you’re more of a Night Attack fan? Well those t-shirts are available at http://www.scamstuff.com/collections/diamond-club

Tomorrow! Scott Johnson, Veronica Belmont and Allison Sheridan take on Apple Day!