Ron Richards is on the show today reacting to the Microsoft BUILD announcements, specifically Android apps running on Windows 10 phones.
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Show Notes
Today’s guests: Ron Richards
Headlines:
BREAKING: Secret, the app that Silicon Valley insiders used to tell nasty things about each other to each other is shutting down. It’s survived by YikYak.
TechCrunch is reporting Windows 10 Microsoft Developers will be able to reuse code from the Web, Old desktop apps built in Win32 and .NET, Android apps built in Java and C++ and even iOS apps built in Objective C. ArsTechnica is reporting that Microsoft released Visual Studio Code, a free editor for Windows OS and Linux with support for GIT. Final release expected this summer.
TechCrunch has revealed Microsoft announced the availability to developers of the release candidate for the full .NET framework for Windows AND a full preview for the .NET core runtime for Linux and OS X at aka.ms/netcore. According to The NextWeb Microsoft’s next cross-platform integrations that allow developers to build apps that embed inside Microsoft Office. The example used was an Uber ride reminder created in Outlook on the desktop that pops up on an iPhone.
In even more Windows news TechCrunch says the new browser in Windows 10 will be called Microsoft Edge. The Verge revealed Microsoft demonstrated the Windows 10 feature called Continuum working on phones. The idea is to plug a phone into a mouse keyboard and full-sized monitor and universal apps will adapt tot he screen size to work like a desktop. And Engadget is reporting carrier billing is coming to all Windows 10 devices so you can buy something in the Windows Store and put it on your phone bill.
Finally Hololens is still damned impressive can help architects and anatomy teachers and make a real robot look even cooler with a virtual overlay and it’s all universal Windows Apps!. Is the face-mask designed by Alex Kipman too cool to care if its vaporware? (Yes I know MS promises it will come in the Windows 10 timeframe) Also Microsoft said AFTER the announcement that its working with Unity Technologies to bring HoloLens support to the Unity game engine.
The Verge reports Google has announced a new Chrome extension called Password Alert to defend against Phishing attacks. The extension compares a hashed version of your Google password to any string of characters you submit through a browser. If it finds a match— and you’re not on a real Google login page— it will redirect you to a warning page. The code is open source and could be adapted to other systems.
Instagram announced a new official account dcalled @music. Tech Crunch reports that this is the first time the company has created a dedicated account devoted to a single subject. TechCrunch also says the account will only have six posts per week but they’ve posted three times today so… who knows. Posts will be grouped by specific hashtags. for instance #LocallySourced will cover unsigned acts, and #15SecondLessons will include how to videos. Instagram created the account because it noticed that one quarter of the most popular accounts on the service were from musicians.
Richard Allan, Vice President Public Policy EMEA at Facebook wrote an opinion piece in the Financial Times warning that Europe risks strangling companies by forcing them to deal with national regulators in the eurozone according to the The Wall Street Journal. Allan wrote: ““Facebook’s costs would increase and people in Europe would notice new features arriving more slowly, or not at all.” Facebook is facing a wave of privacy probes from various EU national governments and has argued that it believes that they do not have jurisdiction over it because it is headquartered in Ireland and has passed EU audits.
The Verge reports that Samsung is once again in sole possession of the title of “world’s biggest smartphone shipper“. According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung shipped 83 million smartphones in Q1 of 2015 down from 89 million a year ago but still good enough to wrest first place away from a tie with Apple. This quarter Apple sold 61 million smartphone devices. Samsung’s growth comes from less profitable mid and low range devices. Lenovo-Motorola combine for third though also down from a year agao and Huawei took fourth.
The Verge reports that an error in American Airlines’ iPad app delayed a dozen flights yesterday. One chart in the American Airlines navigational database shares its name with another chart for Ronald Regan Washington National Airport. The iPad app that American Airlines uses became unresponsive because of the duplication. The problem won’t be fixed until an update is pushed out May 8th. Until then, pilots flying to Ronald Regan Washington National Airport will have to use paper charts or a PDF of the charts in a separate app. In 2012 American Airlines became the first airline to get FAA approval to use iPads in all stages of flight replacing 35 pounds of paper flight manuals and saving about 1.2 million a year on fuel.
News From You:
Starfuryzeta sent an IT World article about how Ham radio operators have been helping to fill communication gaps in Nepal after the earthquake on Saturday that killed at least 5,000 people. Ham operators in Nepal and India are working in shifts to help people try to get in touch with relatives and pass on information. Ham radio can work off solar power and low-voltage batteries too, which means the radios can continue to work long after smartphones and laptop batteries die. Operators in Nepal and India have been working in shifts to keep communications going with hams in other parts of the world like Turkey, Australia and New Zealand, often helping trace relatives and friends.
Habichuelacondulce sent us a Boing Boing post that a Forbes source says Tesla is contributing a car to be used by two researchers to demonstrate the reality and limits of remote car attacks at this year’s Defcon hacker convention. The talk is called Remote Exploitation of an Unaltered Passenger Vehicle and will be conducted by Charlie Miller Security engineer at Twitter Chris Valasek Director of Vehicle Security Research at IOActive. Tesla hasn’t commented officially on the talk and is not listed in the summary.
Discussion Section Links:
Pick of the day:
Russell writes:
A while back this book was mentioned on the show and it sounded interesting so gave it a read (listen on Audible actually).
Tubes outlines the history, design, and implementation of the physical infrastructure that is the internet. It is a really great story about what the internet really is, as opposed to the world wide web; hard, complex infrastructure. The internet is in a lot of cases thought of by its use as opposed to what it actually is and this book explores the fascinating and complex web (no pun intended) of individuals, companies and municipal entities that have worked together to create the this massive and pervasive piece of infrastructure that we depend on. Blum meets a number of pretty interesting characters along the way and brings a human dimension to the story of the people who make the internet go; a somewhat different breed than the C-suite folks that you more find in the media more often. A great story for those curious about what the internet is and how it works.
Great content on DTNS as always! Looking forward to having Scott and Veronica as regulars!
Messages:
Marlon made us a tutorial video:
Also I am very excited about the addition of these 3rd party apps being added to Google Now cards, because many of the cards are usually time and location sensitive so a spotify playlist card could appear around the time when I would usually be listening or a hotel reservation card from Hilton could show up as I walk into the hotel. Many of these cards are also pushed to my Android Wear watch giving me the information as I need it. But you have Ron Richards on the show he can tell you all about it. LOVE the SHOW
From a Boss in the Great White North:
In Episode 2481 you and Patrick were talking about the comment features coming to Dropbox. I wanted to Chime in with my two cents.
I’m a full time UX Designer and Part time teacher at a local college. This new feature will solve two big issues for me:
1. Sharing files with VERY non-technical clients that need to comment on the work we’ve done. This will allow us to send files and have them comment in the same system we’ve already trained them in.
2. Getting files from students. The course I teach (mobile web development) has the students creating files in all kinds of formats. So at the begging of a semester I set up a folder for each student and and shared drive for the class. I can then drop any file type I want in the appropriate folder and the students have access to it right away. The comment feature will make marking so much easier as I won’t have to open 6 different applications to add comments, just dropbox.
Big add for me.
Jason Hill from hot, summer-like Hachimantai City, Japan:
I’m a proud Patreon supporter. Your discussion of the steam mod communities on yesterday’s show reminded me of another Internet community that I was a part of way back in 2005. It was bought out by Yahoo and the community started to flee in droves all over the ‘net when they tinkered with site. Eventually just let it stagnate all together. The members of the community begged and pleaded, but their words fell on deaf ears. That place was flickr, and while it might still exist, and is still probably one of the best places for serious amateur and semi-pro photographers to highlight their work, there really isn’t much of community there anymore. It’s an empty husk of its former self. This is sad, because I learned most of my trade from the people there. If yahoo had actually responded to the feedback, I imagine flickr might still be a dominant player today. But that’s a what-if. The community can make or break you as a company, and I think Steam knows this. You can’t let a community hold you hostage, but you can’t ignore them either. There is a fine balance. Anyways, keep up the amazing work.
Joshua wrote:
To put the valve story into perspective, imagine Apple steps in, says to podcast creators, you can sell your podcasts and we will give podcasters 25% of the proceeds…
That puts the valve story into perspective. It’s both insulting to content creators and those of us paying knowing that Apple / Valve would be taking 75% of the proceeds with very little going to those making the content.
The part I think you guys missed is where we the people paying are not ok with content creators only receiving 25% of the proceeds.
It’s a record company disguised as a software company, valve should have first and foremost had a better price split.
Levi wrote on the blog:
I would have liked some additional info about the G4. It’s not simply a leather back on a G3. One of the big features that I’m looking forward to is the much improved camera, with lots of great stuff for photography enthusiasts, including a much faster lens (F1.8), manual controls, and a RAW format option. Theoretically the faster lens should make low-light photography MUCH better, and the manual settings will allow for longer exposures, again, making low-light images much better and less noisy.
Bishma from blissfully rainy Eugene, Oregon writes:
I just wanted to give my two cents on the G4 announcements from yesterday. Certainly the leather back made all the headlines because it was headline worthy. That said, I think the most important differentiator that the G4 has going for it is what didn’t change from the G3. The battery in the G4 is still user swappable unlike, I believe, all the other flagship phones announced this spring. This is the feature that will have me purchasing from LG next moth rather than Samsung or HTC next month.
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Thursday’s guest: Justin Robert Young